Nomads or Fauxmads? Part One of Three

If you own a home, but spend more time on the road than in your own place, can you still call yourself a Nomad?

Last year we retired from our jobs, sold or donated pretty much everything we owned, and purchased one-way tickets out of the United States. At that point we were following the model of the retiree and digital nomad communities – people traveling the world without property rights in any fixed location, carrying their possessions between landing spots. We deviated from that model a bit unexpectedly when we decided to purchase an apartment in Santa Ana, Costa Rica. Here's why:

The master of traveling light - Jack Reacher

After liquidating our home and belongings, I proposed that we “go all Jack Reacher” from here on out. Reacher is a fictional character, a retired Army officer who roams the United States beating the hell out of bad guys from town to town. Reacher travels with only four things in his possession: An expired passport, an ATM card, a folding toothbrush, and the clothes he's wearing. Every few days Reacher visits a Goodwill or second hand clothing store, takes his selections into the changing room and then donates the clothing he wore into the store when he pays his tab. At least that is what the author says. I suspect that Reacher, like us, has a few boxes of memorabilia and old tax returns squirreled away in a friend's basement someplace.

Living life is fact not fiction, of course, so from the start we made some adjustments: Extra clean underwear. Sneakers. Cell phones, tablets, and laptops. Still, at the end of our possession divestiture we left the US with all the things we needed for a comfortable and productive life in one carry-on bag and a day pack each. Armed with the technology and access to liquid assets, i.e., credit cards, we could go anywhere without fear of being unfed or unhoused.

Much of the guidance we had received from the YouTube and blogging slow traveling nomads was premised upon having no fixed place in the world. You can only eat one meal at a time, you can only sleep in one bed a night, so it seems wasteful and inefficient to maintain a permanent home at the same time you're paying for a hotel or Airbnb if you don't have to, right? Wandering like Reacher was attractive, not just for the prospect of bar fights, but for its economy and efficiency.

Our initial plan was to rent a place in Santa Ana, Costa Rica for a couple of months before hitting the road to Europe, where we would stay until either our Schengen time ran out or the weather got too cold. In the back of our minds we saw Costa Rica as the place we'd “come back to;” the weather is always beautiful and we knew the country well after eight trips there over the past ten years. Vacation rentals there are easy to find and reasonably priced. No need to buy a place when you can easily rent, right? It just didn't feel right, though . . .

We were surprised at how quickly we settled into the Costa Rica community. Within the first few weeks there we developed friendships with our neighbors in the San Nicolas de Bari condominiums where we were renting and the group of multinational expats with whom we played pickleball. It wasn't long before we started looking at the apartments available for sale in the development and imagining a home base there. I was surprised at the sense of comfort I derived from imagining that we would have our own year-round place in Costa Rica. Intellectually, I understood that we really did not need it, since we could likely always find a rental here anytime we wanted , but the prospect of not having anyplace in the world that was truly ours, where we could be anytime we felt like it, left me feeling insecure and unmoored. It wasn't that I needed to have stuff (well, maybe my guitars), I just needed to know there was was one place in the world that was ours, where we could come and go as we pleased, and would always be available. I hate to admit it, but I needed one big fat red pushpin on the globe that marked a place as ours and ours alone.

Nomads or Fauxmads, Part Two will explore the economics of owning a home base, rather than a home. See you then!