Hey, Sharon. Hello, how are you? Good, I'm good. This kind of looks like when you get up in the mornings, doesn't it? You know, it's a little bit. Yeah, sometimes, sometimes. This is gonna be interesting. I mean, why would anybody not want to maintain a residence? Well, it's a good question, but you'd be surprised how many CRNAs we have that really don't want to. So we're gonna kind of discuss that today and maybe some reasonings behind that. We did a session on domicile, which this is gonna kind of dovetail in with that session as well. But again, these are just basic questions that maybe people want to ask or think about. So one of the big reasons that people are concerned about domicile or whether they should have a residence or not is really state taxes. We went through this in the other session, but the state income tax, people sometimes want to get around that in states like Texas and Florida and Washington State and Tennessee, they don't have a state income tax. So that's one of the reasons that people want to do things like this. You know, you've got some other reasons, but there's state sales tax. You know, what is the sales tax? And that can affect your overall cost of living. And remember, wherever you live and work at, that's where you pay your income tax. So that's what's considered your domicile state. But if you work in different states, you should be paying tax in those states as well. Remember, it's where you earn the money, is where you pay the income tax. So all this kind of goes together, you know. So, you know, when you're evaluating this stuff, I mean, you've got to look at the benefits and maybe some of the drawbacks. If you said, hey, you know, I really don't want to own a home anywhere. You know, then there's some things you're giving up. But if you have that home, I mean, one, you've got a stable place to call home. If you've got children and so forth, that's a big deal for a lot of people. If you're single, maybe not so much. You can kind of rove around. Some people really love and want to have a sense of community. They want to go up to the store at the corner and know the people that work in there. They want to go to their gym and be able to correspond with people that, you know, they've known their whole life. And, you know, then it's also easier to build relationships, you know, not only with people as friends, but, you know, also employers. You get to know, you know, the fellow CRNAs in that area, you know, the chief CRNAs, you know, the opportunities, you know, the people that employ CRNAs. So there are some benefits to that. You know, some of the drawbacks to kind of maintaining a residence is, you know, it's expensive. Owning your own home is expensive. You know, I used to think years and years ago it's a home as an investment. But, you know, when I started running the numbers, I'm not so sure that, you know, renting a place might not be just about as good by the time you figure out all the numbers, all the expenses, the property taxes, going to Lowe's, buying stuff for the place, furnishing it, you know, yada, yada, yada. Then, you know, in certain areas, they have extremely high property taxes. A lot of the places up North, you know, I had a buddy that lived in upstate New York, Sharon, and his property tax was six times what I pay here in North Carolina. And then, you know, as I alluded to earlier, if you're traveling around, you could end up paying taxes in multiple states. So there are benefits and there's drawbacks to that. So, you know, we see more and more CRNAs kind of utilizing this alternative living. And one of those is an RV. And we're going to have a session on this as well, but, you know, traveling the country while working as a CRNA and living out of your RV, you know, this is a lifestyle now, and COVID just kind of exacerbated this, Sharon. We saw more and more CRNAs, more and more people in general buying RVs out on the road, living in their RV. So many people were able to work remotely. And then CRNAs were able to get jobs traveling around. And, you know, the basic pay for a 1099 is a whole lot more than a W-2. So if that is a lifestyle, then you can kind of work in any place you like. Sharon, where would you like to go? Pierce and I talked about doing the RV thing, but it just never came to fruition. It's hard to go around with a 90-some-year-old in a RV. So my life changed having to keep his mother with us. But we had actually talked about that. And you go south for the winter and go north in the summer. It's not over yet. Sharon, and I'll be honest, you know, I have CRNAs that actually do that. You know, some from the Pennsylvania area that go down to Florida and bought a place down there, actually, and go back and forth. You know, I have CRNAs that, you know, live in their RV and travel around the country. Some that are married together, some spouses are non-CRNA, and he or she, you know, just kind of does their thing while one's giving anesthesia. And then the rest of the time they travel and go to the national parks and do fun things out of that RV. So it's not a bad lifestyle if you can make it happen. And CRNAs, right now in the current work environment, there is a lot of work for CRNAs all around the country. And if that kind of trips your trigger, there are some things that you wanna be cognizant of, but there can be some great tax benefits to doing that and a wonderful lifestyle if that's what you're into. Short-term housing, you know, we're seeing that as well. You know, I've got a CRNA now and he travels around a lot to different places and, you know, he gets a VRBO or Airbnb wherever he's working at. And his home base, he has a room in his parents' house when he's at home, which is very seldom. But, you know, he typically stays on six-month assignments in places and moves somewhere else. Gets to see areas that, you know, he really likes and loves and travels around. He says he's making a lot of friends around the country and making a lot of money doing this as well. Because, you know, in his contracts, actually for him, they're actually covering his housing expense. So he has really virtually no housing expense, which for most of us is 20% plus of what we make on an annual basis. So he's able to sock a lot of money away. AKA, again, Sharon, no kids makes you richer. Isn't that the truth? Every year, whenever my girlfriends and I, we go for a week down at Myrtle Beach and we go in November and it's off season. And we met a lot of travel nurses down there who were being put up in the resort where we were staying at. Very nice resort. And that was where they were staying while they worked at a nearby hospital, which is not a bad gig. Not a bad gig. No, no. And then as you were alluding to early, you know, snowboarding, you know, going down to Florida when it's cold everywhere else and going back up North when it's warmer. You know, it used to be that you just kind of saw the very rich and elite do this. And now it's become a lot more commonplace with people kind of in the winter months transitioning to one place and in the warmer months transitioning back. Again, all these options are, or they are in place of a residence or you can keep a residence. So you need to look at it both ways. What works for me, what works for my family, my situation? What are my financial resources able to do this? But you can do all of these or some semblance of all three of these when you're doing 1099. Back to the resort that we were staying at down at Myrtle Beach, I met an older couple and what they did is they had timeshares and so they had eight weeks of timeshares. And so during the winter, they would go further South and just timeshare, trade in their timeshare and go from place to place for eight weeks. Yeah, what a great strategy. Yeah, they were, cause I have some timeshares and sometimes you think what in the world was I thinking when I did that? But I thought, man, that's a great idea. So they were two weeks at Myrtle Beach and this was November. It was still very warm and then they were going to Florida and then over to Arizona and doing two weeks or three weeks and three weeks in each of those states. Again, great, great opportunities. Kids can kind of cramp that style a little bit, but if you're a little more seasoned or you decided not to have children, these can be great, great opportunities. I know other CRNAs are actually homeschool their kids in the RV out on the road. One stays home, one works and they find things for the kids to do all along the way and it can be done. So it's a matter of what you want. You know, we talked about domicile before and that's one of the things with traveling is you do have to have a domicile and you need to research this. You need to know the pros and the cons and domicile in our other session, we talked about that, that's really where your long-term home is. It's your base. And in order to do that, you know, you've got to register to vote, get your driver's license, change your legal address and so forth. You got to file taxes. And just remember, if you work in another state, you've also got to file taxes there as well. But you know, these, you can maintain multiple places of living as well. That way you've got your domicile in one state and you might have, you know, your residence in another state. So you can kind of work through this. Again, consider the state income tax rates and overall cost of living. We all know that in certain states and certain areas, the cost of living is much higher. Do some analysis work on that. You know, where do you like to live? Where would you like to be? Taxes play one part of that, but it's not the 100% end all be all. Make sure you've got a professional that can help you work through this, be it your lawyer, your accountant, someone that can kind of work through these details with you. Do you really want this residence for job stability? Are you okay with being flexible? You know, Sharon, I know a lot of CRNAs just want to go in to the same hospital, work with the same people, same surgeons, everybody in there gossip about the same people. Oh, I didn't say that, did I? And you know, and then there's others that are more, I don't want to say more risk-minded and want to get out there and meet new people and experience new things and so forth. And then, you know, obviously there are a lot higher costs if you've got a residence. You know, you've got to maintain that residence. You've got to upkeep. Somebody's got to mow the grass while you're not there. Somebody's got to check your mail for you. Make sure the house is okay. Pay your property taxes. You still got all those things. So, you know, a lot of things to take into account as you kind of look at this topic moving forward.

residence maintenance

alternative living arrangements

CRNAs

state taxes

financial benefits