Step into a Nomadic Lifestyle: No Rent No Mortgage Become a Housesitter
For many couples becoming professional housesitters is a growing and attractive idea.
Jerry Campagna and His wife Dr. Phyllis Campagna sold their home and belongings. Now they spend their time house-sitting.
They are both professionals who continue their work remotely.
They call themselves digital nomads.
No, they are not homeless! They are in high demand to care for other people’s homes and pets.
They travel from East to West and North to South. A week here or a month there. They say:
“We make every house our home.”
They are part of a growing trend of people ditching high rents and crippling mortgages.
They save lots of money, see the world, and get to experience how others live.
For Jerry and Phyllis Campagna this was an act of courage.
Jerry Campagna and his wife Dr. Phyllis Campagna have been able to continue their professional work even though they are moving around the country to house-sit.
How would you describe the life you’re leading now and what brought you to this?
“It started with COVID. So, when COVID struck, as you know, the whole world shut down.
….As everybody was talking about how things were changing due to COVID,. we had an Aha moment. We were sitting on the patio one of those evenings, and it came to us:
Why are we here in one place?”
Jerry Campagna is an Organizational Development and Leadership facilitator whose work is highly interactive inside rooms with teams of people. Now he does a hybrid version of his work partly on Zoom and in person.
Dr. Phyllis Campagna can do all of her doctorate-level business coaching via Zoom.
Before they decided on this new lifestyle and the pandemic was raging, they asked themselves: how were their businesses going to function?
Now they are doing well and their businesses are flourishing. Changing locations did not hurt them or their work.
What’s it like moving from place to place?
As far as work is concerned they discovered that they fall into a new description:
digital nomads.
“So we sold our home and over 90 percent of everything we own.
“W we get an RV? We said no, because that’s like having another house.
So, we discovered an organization called TrustedHouseSitters. com out of the UK. It’s a matchmaking organization between sitters and homeowners. And from that, we started the process of beginning to travel all over the country, working remotely taking care of homes.”
In the beginning, they only received opportunities for short stays maybe a week or two because:
“We hadn’t built our creds yet.”
Now they easily receive month-long or longer stays.
“ It’s not like Airbnb. It’s a very different world. We live here. We experience what’s happening.”
The couple has been doing this now for nearly three years. So it went from They have also embraced new terms for their lifestyle:
“Modern minimalist
it’s a lifestyle. We don’t need so many physical things anymore to be happy. We don’t need to keep up with the Joneses”
This has also inspired their professional work:
“What is your true inner core mission? And then what core strategies are we going to implement to get stuff done now? So, it’s, it’s evolved us personally, it’s evolved us professionally by looking at this lifestyle of being digital nomads, minimalists.”
Phyllis and Jerry have an annual re-evaluation retreat to examine their choices and thinking. In a recent head-to-head conversation, they had a new Aha!
“ Oh, someday we’re going to live off the grid.
And we smile, and I said, we are off the grid. We don’t have a mortgage. We don’t have utilities. We don’t have an HOA payment. We live off the grid now.
Another byproduct of this lifestyle choice is having to live more in the moment for them and their clients too.
Whatever is going to be tomorrow is the basis of what are we doing today, not manana, right? So I bring that again to clients. So the whole concept in the old days of long-term strategic planning. It’s gone, I do 90-day plans with clients. And with metrically driven results, what are you going to get done in three months?”
Did it take courage to take the first step?
“Yeah, we were scared as hell!”
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Phyllis Haynes
Phyllis Haynes, Producer Haynes Media Works, Writer, Speaker Producer and Host, Profonde.TV, Princeton Television Producer, Possible Futures. She is a 25-year on-air broadcast veteran in network news and public affairs reporting. She served as the host of "Straight Talk" for WOR-TV and reported on major issues for ABC Evening News with Peter Jennings and the number one morning show Good Morning America. She received awards for her original independent documentary work. The Daily News heralded her independent production of Aids: The Facts of Life featuring Susan Sarandon as a great learning tool. Her documentary received an award from the American Film Institute and Billboard magazine.