Is It Selfish to Move Away? How Full Time House Sitting Made It Possible

If you've ever asked yourself “is it selfish to move away?“, you're not alone.

For most of my adult life I felt a quiet, nagging guilt about wanting more. More than the city I grew up in. More than the career I'd built. More than a life that looked perfectly fine from the outside but never quite felt like mine.

Wanting a life that actually fits you is not selfish. It's necessary.

For me, the thing that finally made leaving possible, financially, practically, and emotionally, was full time house sitting. And in this post I want to walk you through both sides of that: the guilt of wanting to go, and the practical path that made going possible. If you’re feeling guilty about moving away, that’s more common than you think.

Is It Selfish to Move Away From Family?

Many people wonder, is it selfish to move away from family, especially when it means leaving people they love behind.

No. And I want to answer that clearly before anything else.

Wanting to live somewhere that feels right for you is not a character flaw. It's not a rejection of the people you love. People move away for all kinds of reasons: better opportunities, a different climate, a desire for adventure, or simply because the place they grew up never felt like home.

The guilt comes from love. You miss people because you care about them. But staying somewhere that makes you miserable doesn't make you a better person to the people you love. It just makes you a quieter, sadder version of yourself.

The relationships worth keeping survive distance. In many cases they get stronger because of it, since distance forces you to be intentional rather than just proximate.

Interestingly, I’ve found that homeowners feel a similar guilt. They feel ‘selfish' for wanting a vacation while their pets stay behind. When I step in as a professional sitter, I’m not just watching a house; I’m relieving that guilt for them, just as house sitting relieved the guilt for me. Trust-based travel is a two-way street of emotional freedom.

No, it is not selfish to move away. Wanting a fulfilling life is not the same as abandoning the people in it. The two can coexist.

The Guilt of Wanting to Leave

There's a particular kind of weight that comes with being the one who leaves. The one who isn't there for birthdays, holidays, the small ordinary moments that pile up into a life. I missed years of watching my nephew grow up. I've torn up more times than I'd like to admit thinking about that.

But here's what I kept coming back to after years of living this way:

The people who genuinely love you want you to find the life that lights you up. Guilt that comes from love is real. But it doesn't have to be the thing that keeps you stuck.

The hardest part isn't the logistics of moving. It's giving yourself permission to go.

Why Most People Never Leave (Even When They Want To)

There are usually two things stopping people who want to make a change: money and logistics.

Travel is expensive. Moving abroad requires visas, leases, unfamiliar systems. Even just spending six months somewhere new feels financially out of reach for most people, especially if you're not yet earning remotely.

I know because I felt all of that. The desire to go was always there. The path to actually doing it wasn't obvious.

Full time house sitting changed that equation entirely.

If you’re curious how beginners actually get started, here’s a full step-by-step guide to house sitting.

What Full Time House Sitting Actually Is

House sitting is a simple arrangement: a homeowner needs someone to look after their home and pets while they travel. You provide that service. In return, you get free accommodation, sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks or months at a time.

No rent. No hotel bills. Just a home to live in, pets to care for, and a location you actually chose.

Platforms like TrustedHousesitters, Nomador, and HouseCarers have made full time house sitting accessible worldwide.

I've been doing it full time across 20+ countries. I've lived in city apartments, rural farmhouses, coastal cottages, and mountain cabins, all at no cost. The sits have ranged from a long weekend to several months. Each one has been different. All of them have been worthwhile.

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How It Removes the Financial Barrier to Leaving

Accommodation is typically the single biggest expense in travel, and in life generally. When you remove it from the equation, everything else becomes more manageable.

Think about it this way: if you're not paying rent or hotel costs for three months, how much does that free up? Enough to travel somewhere you've always wanted to go? Enough to try working remotely without the pressure of paying for a place to sleep?

Typical Monthly Cost	With House Sitting
Rent / hotel: $1,500+	Accommodation: $0
Utilities: $150+	Utilities: $0 (included)
Total saved per month	$1,650+ back in your pocket

For a lot of people, house sitting was the thing that made the leap finally feel possible. Not reckless. Possible. That was certainly true for me.

The timing works too. Sits are listed weeks or months in advance, which means you can plan around your life rather than scrambling last minute. You can line up a sit in Portugal for March, another in New Zealand for June, and build a rhythm that works for you.

What I Learned From Living This Way

I've completed over 50 sits across more than 20 countries, and the life lessons have been as significant as the miles covered.

A few things stand out:

You find out what you actually need. When you're living out of a suitcase in someone else's home, the things you thought you couldn't live without turn out to be mostly noise. What you actually need is much simpler and more portable than you thought.

Relationships really do survive distance. The ones that matter, anyway. Some of the people I'm closest to are people I see a handful of times a year. Distance forces you to be intentional about connection, and intentional connection tends to be deeper than proximity by default.

The guilt fades. Not immediately. But as you build a life that genuinely fits you, as you stop performing contentment and start actually feeling it, the guilt quiets down. You stop needing to justify your choices to people who wouldn't understand them anyway.

There is no single right way to live. The conventional path of settling down, buying a house, and staying close to family is genuinely right for some people. It just wasn't right for me. And recognizing that isn't arrogance. It's honesty.

Is Full Time House Sitting Right for You?

It's not for everyone, and I'd rather be honest about that than oversell it.

It works well if you:

• Have genuine flexibility in where and when you work or travel
• Are comfortable with animals and responsible with other people's homes
• Don't mind that each sit is different, with different routines, different pets, different places
• Are happy to commit to a sit even when something better comes along (reliability is everything in this world)

It's harder if you:

• Need a fixed base for work or have commitments that don't flex
• Have young kids in school with fixed term dates
• Prefer the predictability and permanence of your own space

That doesn't mean it's impossible. Plenty of people make full time house sitting work with families and remote jobs, but it takes more planning.

How to Get Started

If any of this resonates and you want to explore it seriously, the place to start is your sitter profile on a platform like TrustedHousesitters.

Your profile is everything in the early days. A strong headline, genuine pet experience, good photos, and personalized applications will get you sits faster than almost anything else.

I've put together a complete guide on exactly how to approach it:

And if you want to compare all the major platforms before committing to one:

The Bigger Picture

I started this post with a question a lot of people are afraid to ask out loud: is it selfish to move away?

The honest answer is no. But I also know that answering the question doesn't automatically make it easy. What helped me wasn't just knowing it was okay to go. It was having a concrete, financially viable, practical way to actually do it.

Full time house sitting gave me that. It might give you the same.

You're not wrong for wanting a life that fits you. And you don't have to blow up your finances or your relationships to find it.

Sometimes the path forward just needs a practical first step.

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