Making the Leap: Part 3 of How We Gave Up Our Stuff and Became Nomads
The end of one story and the beginning of another
This is the final entry of a three-part story. For the full scoop, check out Part 1 and Part 2.
Sometimes what you thought was a final destination turns out to be a pause on a longer journey.
When Lisa and I downsized from our big house in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona, to an apartment in midtown Sacramento, California (you can read that story in Part 2), I thought we’d be staying awhile. We loved our new lifestyle, and we invested in the community, making friends, volunteering, and exploring.
We traveled a lot. Book tours, visiting family, trips for pleasure and writing inspiration. We revisited the thoughts we’d shot down in the past. What would it be like to not have a permanent home? To go from one temporary rental to another with our stuff? In the past several years we’d spent a month in Italy and the south of France. A month in Vancouver. A month in Michigan. What if we got rid of the permanent place and put the months in rentals all in a row? But not having a home base seemed a step beyond scary.
At the time, we hadn’t even heard of “digital nomads” or “the nomadic lifestyle.” We were simply dreaming, brainstorming on the emotional high of our decluttering and downsizing. It was a fun exercise, but the thought intimidated me. I wasn’t ready. We found lots of reasons to say no, one of which was how difficult it would be to do our quarterly business taxes if we weren’t near our CPA, or at least in the country so he could easily overnight paperwork to us. It seems like a silly worry today, but back then, it was a legitimate concern.
After a few years in Sacramento, things weren’t fully clicking into place. While there was much we loved, like being near our son and daughter-in-law, the overall vibe didn’t quite fit. We were missing our longtime friends in Arizona. Our pricey rental wasn’t our preferred long-term economic option, but when we looked at purchasing a place, we couldn’t find what we wanted for what we were willing to spend.
So we did the perfectly logical thing—we bought a condo in Arizona sight unseen and moved in the middle of the Covid-19 lockdown. Adventurous? Foolhardy? Maybe a bit of both.
It wasn’t as strange as it might sound. Lisa is a former Realtor so we knew a bit about the housing market. We’d previously done a sight unseen purchase when we moved from Michigan to Arizona in 2004, in a boom time when houses would get five offers the day they hit the market. Our time in Sacramento gave us a clear vision of what we were looking for—a small, low-maintenance, loft-style condo near friends in a walkable area of greater Phoenix, Arizona.
After extensive online research in California, we had some trusted Arizona friends meet our realtor at a downtown Tempe property we were interested in. They gave us their perspective while showing us the place via FaceTime. It hit all the right notes, so we made an offer and secured the deal.
The move itself was a stress-filled mess. We’d scheduled our movers for a few days after closing, but as closing day approached, we encountered repeated snags and had to delay. The residential condo was in a mixed use building that also housed offices for nearby Arizona State University and the city of Tempe. Getting the normal sign-offs required by the bank turned into a bewildering mass of red tape, delaying the closing to the point where the frustrated seller was trying to kill the deal. Meanwhile, the moving truck full of our possessions had left California while we sat in a hotel literally in sight of our desired condo frantically trying to get to closing.
Our long-suffering friends (thank you, Bill & Chuck!) let us direct the movers to dump our stuff into half of their garage while we kept extending our hotel stay. The deal finally went through a few days later, and we hired a second moving company to load it all up again and move us in. All this happened in November 2020 with locked-down, masked-up, keep-your-distance Covid protocols during the same week as the contested US presidential election. I think I developed a nervous twitch from all the stress!
When the proverbial dust settled, we owned a wonderfully quirky little loft condo with tons of natural light and good views, in a highly walkable neighborhood near great friends. We were thrilled.
The first few years were fantastic. We got through the pandemic and enjoyed in-person meet ups with friends. Life slowly returned to downtown Tempe.
A little too much life. The architecturally smart upside-down pyramid of city hall outside our window was a magnet for megaphone-wielding protesters. A shuttered night club down the street that had catered to party-hungry ASU students reopened with a flourish, pumping out chest-rattling dance beats late into the night. As work-from-home writers, there was little escape.
As our noise-fueled frustration grew, our tolerance for being landlords waned. We’d converted both of our former Arizona primary residences into rentals, but even with a property manager, the many years of hassles, tenant issues, and the never-ending stream of maintenance costs were driving us mad.
In early 2023, Lisa’s dad passed away unexpectedly, reminding us that tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. We were inspired to live our best lives while we had the chance. Lisa talks a little about that here.
By that fall, the combination of life reflection, noise, and landlord fatigue brought us back to thoughts of living nomadically. During our morning walks on the ASU campus, Lisa and I mulled the pros and cons and shared the things that both scared and excited us. Could we overcome the obstacles? Could we work with our CPA to do our quarterly taxes remotely?
We realized that between book touring, visiting and caring for family, and traveling a small amount for fun (something we wanted to do much more of), we’d been away from our condo for almost four months that year. Why were we paying full-time mortgage, taxes, insurance, and ever-increasing HOA fees for a part-time place?
The real estate market seemed right for selling—home values were still high, but how long would they remain so? Were we committed to hold onto the properties for decades? Or was this the ideal time to step off the cliff? What if we sold both rentals and our condo and invested the money instead of buying a new place? What if we used the proceeds to fund our nomadic experiment?
As the more adventurous of our duo, Lisa had been ready for some time. Finally, I was too. We spent the next eight months renovating, listing, and selling our three properties, all while learning about how to transition to nomadic living (huge shout out to Brent Hartinger and Michael Jensen who provided practical advice through their excellent newsletter Brent and Michael are Going Places).
It was a stressful and exhausting time, but also very exciting. We were not simply running away from unsatisfying situations but running toward our dream. We were choosing to be intentional about how to live what could be the final third of our lives.
The first rental house sold in December of 2023, followed by the second one in May 2024. To ease into nomadic living, we pieced together a cool opportunity for a low-cost rental where we could sleep up to 200 nights a year and only pay for the time we stayed there. We could even store some necessary possessions and bring a few of our favorite furniture pieces, like our writing chairs. It was perfect!
Until it wasn’t. The owners of the property had a life change and understandably decided to sell their place. We had already begun the process of listing our condo when the news came, forcing us into an unexpected decision: do we abandon the plan and keep our loft, or go full nomad before we felt ready? It led to a stressful few days, but in the end, this predicament was a great gift. We’d come too far to turn back, and losing that “safety step” gave us the push we needed to go all in on our nomad dream.
We listed our loft, and it sold the first day. We’d already decluttered our minimal possessions, and then had an extra stroke of luck. The buyer wanted our stuff. Furniture, kitchen items, art on the walls (which was funnily all of our book covers in frames). We sold them everything but our clothes and personal items.
On July 4, 2024, we drove away from our condo for the last time. All our worldly possessions were in the back seat and trunk of our slightly dented 2007 Pontiac G6 two door convertible. I can still remember the overwhelming sense of freedom. Independence Day indeed!
And while that’s the end of the story of how we became nomads, our journey is only just getting started. We’re one year into our mad adventure, and we’ve learned so much about things we like (the sea and hiking) and things we don’t like (the transition days and forgetting where we stashed things. Future post incoming).
Please drop your thoughts and questions in the comments! We’d love to hear them and help you on your own adventure however we can.
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We’re not full-time nomads, but simplifying made all the difference. The more we let go, the more space we made for what matters. Here’s to a rhythm that fits.
The thing that sticks out the most to me in your first 3 installments is how the universe has had a way of opening the exact right path for you guys at the exact time you needed it. Serendipitous!
I am excited to follow along as your nomadic adventure unfolds. My husband and I are still at the declutter and sell off all our things step, but looking forward to joining the open road of nomadism within the next year.