We looked at rentals through Airbnb and VRBO and quickly found that everywhere is expensive in the summer. We wanted to visit friends and family in California, we had a week-long family camp in Washington State in July, my husband had to be back in Chicago in August for a work thing, and we wanted to spend a chunk of the off-season on the East Coast. We had to leave when our lease was up at the end of April. We had a few "anchors" to guide our route as we planned. Photo by Annie Reneau How we planned where to go and what each place cost We kept an old-school road atlas in the car and highlighted our route as we drove. (We also figured that what the kids learned from a year of travel would be just as valuable as whatever they'd be missing in regular activities, so weren't worried about the disruption.) I figured what we saved in kids' activities would certainly cover gas costs, especially if we were only making a long drive around once a month. Since we wouldn't be living in one spot, we'd put a pause on the kids' lessons and activities we normally would pay for (violin lessons, gymnastics, etc.). What about gasoline costs, though? Driving around the country means a lot of gas money. That meant we needed to keep our vacation rental rent at $1,800/mo or below to keep our same cost of living. We figured that was a little less than what we paid monthly in utilities, so we'd just consider the storage unit cost as our utilities equivalent. That was the top of what we could afford, so we needed to keep monthly housing costs below that.Ī storage unit for all of our furniture and belongings was just under $200/month. We were paying $1,800/month for rent for our house in the burbs, plus $200 to $300 dollars in utilities. Photo by Annie Reneau How we worked it out financially They were not always this happy about it. Our kids got used to monthly long car rides. I started sketching out scenarios and crunching numbers. So I posed the question: What if we moved out of our house and just…didn't move into another house? What if, instead of paying rent or a mortgage, we put our stuff into storage, packed what we wanted to have with us in our car and rented vacation rentals a month or so at a time? We could work and school from anywhere. And since vacation rentals generally include utilities, they are even cheaper when comparing them to regular housing costs. Owners don't want their homes to sit empty and are willing to rent them for dirt cheap.Īs I started researching more, I found that the nightly cost of most vacation rentals is a lot cheaper when you rent for an entire month (though not as cheap as those East Coast off-season rentals). Seriously, in major tourist areas like Cape Cod and Myrtle Beach, houses rent for upwards of 90% less than their peak summer prices from fall through spring. I had no idea tourist hot spots were so cheap off-peak, but once I started looking into it, I was gobsmacked. My husband and I both worked from home and homeschooled our kids (pre-pandemic-that scenario is much more common now), so we were really free to live anywhere.Ī friend of mine had been telling me about an extremely affordable house they'd rented in the Outer Banks in the fall while waiting for their permanent home to get finished. We couldn't afford to buy it, so we had no choice but to move. We were renting a beautiful house in the Chicago suburbs when the owner decided she wanted to sell it. Thank you, Novalingas, for sharing your gifts and culture with us all. Thankfully, some people use their channels for the specific purpose of sharing-free education everyone can benefit from. We can all benefit from learning about cultures outside of our own, and social media makes it easier than ever to expose ourselves to people from all different backgrounds. (Sometimes you'll see the word Inuk instead of Inuit-Inuk is singular, Inuit is plural and also used as an adjective.) Shina's mother has her own TikTok channel as well, where she shares more about being an Inuit woman. Evie Mark, a throat singer and professor at Nunavik Sivunitsavut, told the BBC, "It's a very intimate thing so for sure you're going to be triggered to smile or laugh, especially when you start seeing the person's eyes when you're singing together." Each makes sounds using their throat, belly and diaphragm, matching each other's rhythm until one of them stops or giggles. Traditional Inuit throat singing involves two people, usually women, standing face to face. Throat singing #katajjaq #inuit #throatsinger
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