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My wife and I have been living like this for the last 10+ years; furnished apartments, short-term contracts, day-to-day essentials purchased locally and sold secondhand when we move.

At first I found it incredibly freeing - and I still do, mostly - but over time I’ve developed this almost nostalgic feeling for a home. Some place that’s filled with my own stuff where I can at least mentally ground myself. The idea of actually having one still seems almost overwhelming, but the concept sounds nice.

Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, or because my family is, or maybe an unsettled life just gets to you after a while.

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I did this for 6 years and eventually craved a home as well. I agree that it's incredibly freeing in some ways, but every time you buy something you have to consider what happens when you move and that isn't freeing at all.

I like to be able to buy items for projects that enrich me mentally or physically. E.g. I recently bought a 3D printer, I buy kitchen tools to cook more interesting recipes. If I moved abroad now, I'd likely do a big clear out but also ship a lot with me.

Selling the 3D printer during my international move was definitely something I regretted.

There's a distinction to be made for tools vs consumerist items.

What is the distinction? Is a kitchen gizmo a tool or a consumerist item? What hobbies use tools (e.g. building birdhouses) vs consumerist items (snowboarding)?

So I've had a 3D printer for about a year and I haven't gotten into it like I thought I would. Printed a handful of things (a N64 logo, a pikachu-naruto, a few other figures, a couple gifts) but that's about it.

Do you have any recommendations for resources that might get me into it more? I'm not aware of too much outside of just searching for things on Thingiverse.

My suggestion is to get into an unrelated hobby, and you’ll find small opportunities to print things useful to that hobby. Dice shakers or holders for Dungeon and dragons, pick holders for guitar, a case for my belay glasses for climbing, etc

Yeah, my rule of thumb for tools is that I don't get one unless I feel a strong need for one at least twice. This has worked out well. (Although I haven't come to grips with how to do "tool decay" so that they don't pile up. That's a problem for future me to deal with!)

I do have a board game hobby, and keep meaning to print out some card and token holder inserts for several of my games, but just haven't been motivated enough to do that. Good thought, though.

https://www.prusaprinters.org/ has some curated competitions for designs. I've printed several winners. (I have a Prusa, but it's obviously not required.)

I have an RSS feed on the most popular Thingiverse models.

Mind sharing the RSS feed link, please?

https://www.thingiverse.com/rss/popular

https://www.thingiverse.com/rss/featured

It looks like I've changed the default update interval on the second link to 12 hours; perhaps it was producing too much stuff otherwise.

The true value in a 3D printer lies in its ability to prototype a something that you cannot readily buy, something that only exists in your head.

Printing out random doodads from Thingiverse is not only wasteful but unfulfilling. You might as well go raid the dollar store toy aisle.

I would recommend spending some time and learning how to use a CAD software. Fusion360 is a popular choice, although with a bit of a learning curve. TinkerCAD is a good browser based option as well, excellent starting point for beginners.

I know the basics of Blender, which I use for pretty simple models for video game development also, but still pretty basic skills so far. I don't know how well Blender models translate into printable models.

pretty well, just setup units into something usable first. you will be able to see the quality of your model and export settings in the slicer

Stuff breaks, see if you can fix it by 3D printing it. I’ve done cupboard handles, window shutter lock handles, belt connectors etc. Also creative objects are fun to do. Get some cheap callipers - they help out.

Design stuff in modeling software. Printing premade models is basically the same as just buying something on Amazon. You have zero control over how it turns out, and you can't iterate through adjustments. That being said, unless you actually have protects that require physical structures, it's going to be hard finding good uses.

To be clear, we do have some stuff that will move with us - coincidentally, one piece of it is a Prusa MK3S and most of the rest would probably be kitchen gear - but if we really wanted to we could get it all in one large checked bag.

> every time you buy something you have to consider what happens when you move

I actually enjoy this part of it. It forces me to be a more thoughtful consumer.

It can get expensive depending on where you go. For example, Costa Rica will tax your used goods that you ship in.

Can confirm. Costa Rica import taxes are very high. We decided to just live with fewer things. I love it, my wife doesn’t.

We also have been living like this for about 6 years. The main difference is we have a home in a very low cost of living place where we can keep "home". It's cheap enough that we just spend a few months a year there, but when we're there we can work through those nesting instincts.

I live out of a single backpack and carry-on. Nothing I carry with me is precious. It could all be replaced in an afternoon with Amazon. I rely on furnished rentals and a couple of "stuff caches" in family closets and garages here and there, mostly with things that make life in that specific place a bit nicer. I've also "bought" family things that we get to enjoy while we are there. I own and also don't own a kayak that I use a few weeks a year and a surfboard I use for a few months.

I've been living the same way for much of the past 30 years. I don't want to completely give up my globetrotting lifestyle, but I crave a home base now. I plan to buy something modest to store things in and use as a primary home, but not so expensive that it precludes locking the doors for a year while I travel or live somewhere else.

If you don't mind me asking, what do you do that allows you to live this kind of lifestyle? Travelling has always been a big goal for me, but making it work with a stable job, and having enough disposable income to afford it is nigh on impossible.

In the post-COVID world many companies (at least in the tech industry) are moving to flexible office policies where full remote is possible.

You don't have to be a youtuber to have that lifestyle.

Maybe not but you do still have to be in a pretty niche industry.

Be careful to clear this with your company first. It can become a tax nightmare and could lead to termination if you’re working at a large organization that doesn’t have a presence where you want to work.

Even within the US, you can't legally just have a nominal postal address somewhere and then live wherever you want. States want their money. A friend of mine was telling me their company is going to start auditing business travel records to make sure that appropriate tax filings are made.

If you're not filing expense reports, will a company "know"? Possibly not. But it seems pretty precarious to expose yourself and the company at risk this way.

They will know through VPN logs - security groups look for anomalous login activity and will want to know why you’re logging in from Detroit when your work location says San Jose.

It also puts your manager at risk to do it - if you tell them, then they know it’s happening and have to do something about it.

I guess you need a VPN for your VPN

People log in from all over the place because of business travel. I doubt that many companies are aggressively data mining where employees are located.

The second point is more significant. Even with almost 100% remote work it's hard to systematically hide where you are from everyone--especially if you do any business travel or expense reimbursement or are in a materially different timezone or climate.

It's true that things are difficult if you don't have primary residency somewhere, but I'm unaware of any obligation to actually stay at the primary residence, so long as you're not de facto residing somewhere else and avoiding legal residency there for tax evasion purposes. Like, you can have a primary residence in NY state, and travel all year long, and so long as you're not actually spending >6 months at a specific residence in another state, and are still paying your NY and federal taxes, I don't think there's any problem. Where things get sketchy is if you're trying to claim NY is your primary residence while living in CA for 9 months of the year. I'm not a lawyer though.

What I'm more familiar with is overseas residency and federal taxes. There are benefits to establishing legal residency outside the US, if you really do live and work outside the US. But then you have to be able to prove it to the IRS. If you can establish a bona fide overseas residency, you get substantial federal tax discounts (like ~$100k tax-free income), and don't have to pay state tax anywhere. But if you spend more than 33 days per year in the US, the burden of proof for establishing a bona fide foreign residency are higher[1].

Edit: update since I can't nest any more replies (to @dragonwriter) below: I sorta changed topics; my paragraph above about foreign residency is only relevant if you're earning foreign income. If you're a US citizen working for a US company, you're not getting away from taxes that way. But you can still save yourself from some personal obligation by setting up a company.

[1]: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/fore...

> you can establish a bona fide overseas residency, you get substantial federal tax discounts (like ~$100k tax-free income), and don't have to pay state tax anywhere.

That’s...not true. State income tax is usually due on dollars earned in the state — it used to be usually the union of (dollars earned by residents) and (dollars earned by work in the state) but a 2015 federal court decision required it to be one or the other, and AFAIK every state with an income tax has chosen the latter over the former because, basically, resident citizens vote in the state while citizens resident in other states, the most common nonresident citizen workers, don’t. So, a bona fide overseas residence doesn't have any effect on state income tax liability.

I'm not a lawyer (or an accountant) either. I believe the threshold varies by state but I don't know if there's anywhere that it's at a level where "normal" transient travel would expose you. I assume the biggest issue is people like consultants who may travel to a work site during the week for months at a time. (Or, as you say, someone who has a permanent address of some sort in a low/no tax state but actually lives most of the time somewhere else.)

ADDED: It appears that the threshold is essentially non-existent in many states. https://www.concur.com/newsroom/article/what-are-state-tax-i... (I think this is the solution my friend's company is actually using.)

I didn't mean to imply that I've been living out of a suitcase for 30 years. I move frequently (every 1-2 years on average; longest stint in one town for the past 30 years was three years); rent furnished houses more often than not; regularly take a year or more off between jobs; travel for months at a time every few years. I don't have or want a stable job (longest job was a little over three years).

I've never had a mortgage; I generally have zero debt (not even car payments); no dependents; usually no pets (I miss having pets, though). I don't own much of anything that I'm not willing to get rid of. I like the idea of having a home base and some permanent material items, but so far I don't like it as much as I like being flexible.

Working in tech offers the option of remotely working from anywhere. I've worked from home (or wherever) at a number of places, going back to the early 90s. I've still spent more time in normal office jobs than remote. Now that covid has permanently altered the landscape, I expect to do it a lot more.

There are unhealthy psychological aspects to all this. I avoid commitment, I feel trapped by obligations and responsibilities, I'm always thinking about what's next instead of being content with what I have. It's not for everyone.

Wow, you're actually the real life version of George Clooney's character in "Up in the Air".

I always thought it was an exaggerated portrayal, but it seems your ways are even more extreme than in the movie.

Such lifestyle is so completely foreign to me, that I'm fascinated. If an alien landed on my lawn tomorrow and said "I fart gold coins", I would have an easier time believing such a thing exists than your lifestyle.

How do you make friends? Can't employers sense that you're going to leave soon? Or is that specifically what they're looking for?

My life isn't glamorous, and much of my itinerant lifestyle has been lonely and depressing. A few times, I moved to cities where I had an established base of friends. A couple times, I managed to make new lifelong friends. Many times, I moved somewhere and never made good friends. It gets harder the older I get, but I think I'd have similar problems even if I hadn't moved as much. As I get older, the biggest challenge with friendships is that people my age have spouses and children. They've grown up and in many ways I haven't. I'm slowing down lately. I used to think I was exploring and trying new things, maybe looking for my place. Now I'm more aware of the negative aspects, like that I'm afraid of commitment, unwilling to settle, unwilling to accept that "this is the rest of my life". I'm still not ready to do that, but I no longer think that it's a universally good thing.

I job-hop more than most people, but it's not completely out of the ordinary in tech work. Many people stay in one area but still change jobs every few years. People used to occasionally question some shorter (1-2 year) job stints on my resume, but I haven't been asked about it in over a decade. I don't think that particular aspect raises eyebrows anymore. There are more tech jobs than people to fill them; it's a job-searcher's market and has been for a long time.

Check out my area, near the XNA airport. Away from Bentonville unless you want to pay more.

XNA has the worst TSA though historically. I’ve flown out of there over a dozen times and only during Covid times did they not practically want to do a body cavity search. It’s a combination of carrying too much electronics when I fly, with machines which give flakey readings with the swabs, to what seems like trainees who are strict by the letter when it comes to protocol, even when it’s inappropriate to do so. It’s a nice airport otherwise, especially where it’s located, but there’s only so many times you can endure that and not start to hate it.

It's also an unusually expensive airport to fly in and out of (https://www.fayettevilleflyer.com/2011/04/07/nytimes-blog-na...). I was flying for business, like most of the traffic, so everyone is price insensitive.

If you travel enough that you find it to be a burden, just pay for prescreening. If you get TSA PreCheck, which is pretty cheap and easy, you'll get waved-through all the domestic stuff (plus you get to cut in line). If you're primarily concerned with international travel, then Global Entry is amazing. You won't even have to talk to anyone from customs or immigration, and you'll never see a line. Just walk up and slap your hand on the kiosk and off you go. Global Entry is also pretty cheap ($100 for five years), but is more of a pain in the ass to get; you have to schedule an interview, which will take a couple months, pass more-strict background checks, and visit an airport for the interview itself, but all of that will take less time than 1-2 stints in line at the JFK immigration queue.

I already have that, but neither help when they do an ETD swab on your bags and gets a false positive from the machine as I was describing in my reply.

Where do you get furnished short-term apartments at competitive price? Airbnb or something else? Living in furnished apartments has always been my dream (for one reason or another I moved eleven places in the last ten years, even if I’m not a digital nomad at all), but in the US you pay easily a 50%+ premium over a standard yearly lease for an empty apartment.

Not OP, but I’ve been doing this and found that contacting people on AirBNB and making an offer often (after a bit of haggling and false starts) will land a great place for not much more than a regular unfurnished rental. I think a lot of people get into AirBNB dreaming of big $$ but then realize how much work it is to coordinate dozens of different guests each month to maximize $$ and then ultimately like the idea of one renter for a few months to give some relief.

Also, the market of people specifically trying to rent furnished long term rentals is very small and they tend to aim to “executives” that are in town for a period of time before buying their own place. They charge accordingly. It is a big red flag for me to see someone or a company marketing their furnished rental as “executive suites” or similar

The availability of furnished rental depends on local market.

For example in France students need lodging during their studies. So France cities with universities have a strong unfurnished rental market. Of course that's mostly small surfaces.

Note also that in France taxes are different for owners when renting unfurnished.

I rented a room in my house on Airbnb for about two years. Each time a guest leaves we need to clean, switch bedsheets, restock amenities; creating overhead. If done efficiently it cost us 30 minutes of time which was still worth it, but of course we glad to get the occasional renter who wanted to stay for a week or month.

Yes one bedroom would be quick but a lot of people having to clean multiple bedrooms, living rooms, kitchen (!!), etc it can be laborious.

We don't move quite that often - we're usually on two-year cycles, so we just sign standard 1+1 leases. As one of the sibling comments said, the local market heavily influences the housing stock and we've always been in big expat-heavy cities where renting furnished places is pretty common.

It's also a thing to negotiate furnishing with the landlord, e.g. I'll pay an extra $100/mo in rent if you agree to do an Ikea run and you can keep it at the end of the lease.

If I need to be somewhere for <1y but >1m, I'll try to deal directly with AirBnB hosts but sometimes you just have to eat the borderline usurious serviced apartment fees.

When I've needed a furnished apartment, I've done it separately -- rented an apartment, then rented furniture separately. They'll come in and set up the furniture and come and pick it up when you move out.

Last time I rented furniture, it cost around $250/month to furnish a one bedroom apartment. They supplied all of the furniture, we supplied dishes and cookware.

For a longer term lease, it may be cheaper to buy cheap furniture from Ikea, but it's a lot more hassle, it's so much easier to let the rental company come in and set up, then take it all away when you leave.

My wife and I did this for 7 years as well. I had a strict "one item in, one item out" rule where for each new item we acquired, one had to be let go. She was not fond of this rule, and I can't say we followed it fully, especially as her photography career (and the amount of equipment it required) took off.

Eventually, we bought a house. It felt like a huge shift from the vagabond lifestyle, but I don't regret it. We still travel a lot, and rent our house out on AirBnb while we are gone.

I think in the end, traveling full time was too much for me. Having a home to go back to and recharge before planning the next trip seems more balanced.

Have you moved around a lot? My partner and I have started doing this. Using airbnb for housing. The experience has been good so far but staying somewhere for less than 60 days seems to be too much moving. It's also made work/taxes a bit complicated since we both work remotely.

We operate on two-year cycles now; the first year or so we did the month-to-month digital nomad thing accidentally because our plans changed at the last minute, and you’re right that it’s just too much.

Taxes are another matter entirely since we do this internationally, but there’s a pretty well-developed network of expat accountants that make it as painless as it can be.

George Carlin had something to say about "stuff" and houses.

https://youtu.be/3jus-OaJV8E?t=400

My current place is rented unfurnished. So I had to buy a sofa so that I could actually entertain guests. Now I have a quite expensive large, sofa that may not fit into my next place and so I'll either have to hope that I can sell it or just end up giving it away to a furniture charity.

Having my own mattress is a must though.

If you’re in the US, just put it on Craigslist. I have always been surprised about what people are willing to buy.

I had an incredibly damaged couch that I was ready to throw in the dumpster, and a young dude happily gave me $100 and picked it up with his truck, with no effort from my part.

I got rid of hundreds of items over the years on CL, and I don’t think I ever failed to sell any!

Why not buy a sofa second hand through a thrift store or charity shop? Costs tend to be lower and you can always donate it back when you're done with it.

OP didn't specify the sofa was new but this is a great point that I think about a lot. People talk about rescue dogs and make a big deal out of it but then refuse to buy anything secondhand. My "new" car has 190k miles on it and I love it.

Couches tend to fall in the same category as mattresses for a lot of people.

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