No Fixed Abode: Quitting Home Ownership

A little over a year ago, I quit my job, sold my home and gave away 99% of my possessions so that I could travel the world. It was the most exciting thing I’ve ever done.

To me, quitting a great job was very scary (No more income! A large gap in my employment history! Burning bridges right, left & centre! Throwing away a fabulous career!) but I’ve come to realise that for most people, that isn’t the scary part. The thing that everyone asks about — the part that they can’t quite get their heads around — is that I don’t have anywhere to live.

GIVING UP ON HOME OWNERSHIP

In New Zealand (as in many other countries) we are brought up with the idea that owning your own home is one of the key benchmarks for success in life. For reasons I can’t entirely recall, I was fixated on the idea of buying my first house before I turned 30. So, that’s what I did — in 2010 I became the proud owner of a four-bedroom home, mortgaged up to the eyeballs and being slowly driven insane by the banana-yellow walls in every single room (this is how we managed to afford a four-bedroom house on a modest income. Some idiot had painted the entire house in a shade of yellow so violent it induced headaches in most people within minutes).

It was nice. We repainted the house until it was actually quite pleasant. We planted things in the gardens (most of which died). We bought nice things to put in our nice house. We made friends with the neighbours and joined the library and…