Why we move every 3 months

Nomad life: Is this the new American dream?

My wife and I and our two fearless cats uproot and transplant to a new city every three months.

We originally took off from DC, my wife is a stoic travel nurse and I’m a starving writer. I knit together six different income streams, but as far as the bulk of the bacon, a travel nurse brings home a considerable amount of weekly cash, forming our financial baseline.

Everything we own fits into a Honda CR-V. Have you seen the documentary, Minimalism? It’s something like that. We take only clothes, kitchenware, sports equipment, instruments, books, and our two four-legged mini-tigers.

As a travel nurse, my wife receives her three-month assignments from an agency. She voices her preferred locations and her agent does his best to find her a contract in those areas. So far, we’ve lived in Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and now San Mateo (Bay Area).

She often doesn’t find out until a week in advance. It’s stressful and last-minute but such is the life we’ve chosen.

The reason I wanted to write this is two-fold: how and why.

For the how part, I’d like to share the eight phases of transitioning to a new area. We have it down to a science. Moving to a new city is hard and lonely but this…