wealthschema/archetypes/x-01-remote-worker-digital-nomad
X-01EmergingAccumulationmoderate tax complexity

Remote Worker / Digital Nomad

Location-independent remote worker, multi-state or international tax exposure, no fixed home, variable cost of living.

X-01 is the household whose physical location does not match its W-2 state of employment for meaningful portions of the year. The testing surface is multi-state residency analysis, Foreign Earned Income Exclusion eligibility, and the health-insurance gap that follows when domicile becomes ambiguous.

Age Range
25–40
Net Worth
$100k–$1M
Cohort
Emerging

About this archetype

X-01 represents a household whose work is location-independent and whose physical presence reflects that — multi-state moves within a calendar year, partial-year residency in multiple jurisdictions, and in a meaningful share of cases substantial-presence-test exposure to non-US tax regimes or §911 Foreign Earned Income Exclusion eligibility. The diagnostic surface for tax software is the residency-vs-domicile determination: state of W-2 employment and physical presence routinely diverge, triggering partial-year residency returns in multiple states, statutory-residency tests (typically 183-day or 184-day rules) in NY, CA, and other aggressive states, and reciprocal-agreement application between states that have them. For households with international time, §911 FEIE eligibility requires either the physical-presence test (330 full days in 12 months) or bona-fide-residence test — both of which are difficult to evaluate without granular travel data the household frequently does not have. Health-insurance coverage is the structural side-effect: ACA marketplace plans are sold by state, employer-sponsored coverage is typically tied to a specific service area, and short-term limited-duration plans fill gaps inconsistently.

The corpus is mass-affluent ($138k median income, $316k median net worth) with a young median age (32) and high credit-card and student-loan incidence consistent with the demographic. The structural pattern is one of moderate accumulation against an above-average cost of compliance — every household carries a retirement goal, and goal on-track flags are mixed. Home ownership runs 60%, which is higher than one would expect for a 'nomad' archetype because much of the corpus is fully-remote rather than literally itinerant: the household maintains a primary residence in one state but works for an employer in another, which is the more common modern pattern. Digital-asset holdings appear with above-base-rate frequency, reflecting the demographic overlap between remote-tech workers and crypto adopters.

The distinction from neighbouring archetypes is the residency-determination surface. Same-income tech workers without the multi-state complication belong in A-06 or F-03; same-income freelancers with platform income but a single residency are X-02 or AR-01. International workers on H-1B with a single US employer are F-06. X-01 specifically requires the location ambiguity to be diagnostic — without it the archetype is just mass-affluent dual-income with a remote-work feature flag.

Defining characteristics

  • Multi-state tax exposure
    Partial-year residency returns in two to four states per tax year. Statutory-residency 183-day tests in NY and CA are routine; reciprocal-agreement application across PA, NJ, MD, and DC adjusts which state gets the W-2 withholding.
  • Foreign earned income exposure
    A meaningful share of the corpus qualifies for §911 FEIE via the physical-presence test (330 days outside US in a 12-month window) or bona-fide residence. Forms 2555 and 8938 surface where domestic-only return preparation engines fail.
  • No fixed domicile
    Domicile and residency diverge. The household's voter registration, driver's license, mailing address, and physical-presence patterns frequently fail to match — a documentation problem for both state-revenue audits and ACA enrollment.
  • Variable cost of living
    Geographic-arbitrage choices (lower-COL state of residency, higher-paying remote employer) compress housing cost relative to income. The corpus supports COL-aware budgeting features.
  • Health-insurance gap exposure
    Employer-sponsored health plans have geographic service areas; ACA marketplace plans are sold by state. Households moving across state lines mid-year encounter coverage gaps that COBRA does not always solve.
  • Digital asset holdings
    Above-base-rate crypto holdings reflect the demographic overlap between remote-tech work and digital-asset adoption. Useful for testing combined multi-state and digital-asset tax surfaces.

Corpus signature

n = 20 households

Aggregated across the 20 X-01 households in the shipped v3 corpus corpus. Numbers describe the corpus, not population claims.

Median income
$138k
p25–p75 $120k–$143k
Median net worth
$316k
mean $341k
Liquid net worth
$104k
median
Investable assets
$190k
median
Income distribution
$95k–120k
5
$120k–145k
10
$145k–170k
3
$170k–200k
2
Net-worth distribution
$150k–350k
14
$350k–550k
4
$550k–750k
1
$750k–950k
1
Goals across the corpus
Retirement20 / 20
Emergency fund14 / 20
Debt payoff9 / 20
Education funding8 / 20
Home purchase8 / 20
Liability composition
Credit cards20 / 20
Mortgages12 / 20
Auto loans10 / 20
Student loans9 / 20
  • 12 of 20 (60%) are homeowners; the remainder rent.
  • NY, MD, IL account for 9 of 20 households — 45% of the corpus.
  • Median adult-member age is 32 (range 22–43 across primaries and spouses).
  • 8 of 20 (40%) carry one or more dependents.

Representative household

X-01-seed-10
Taylor N.Married filing jointly·Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom, CA

Taylor and Kyle sit on the corpus income median and below the net-worth median — typical of the young dual-earner remote household in early accumulation. Both work in finance, both remote-eligible, primary residence is Sacramento but state of W-2 employment is not necessarily CA — and that single fact drives the household's tax-complexity surface. Liquid net worth of $96k against $59k of liabilities is healthy at the income, but they are flagged off-track on home purchase and retirement, behind the demographic norm.

Combined income
$138,918
Net worth
$150,228
Liquid NW
$95,732
Ages
30 / 29
Top goals on this household
Home purchase
$111,134
Retirement
$2,735,400
Debt payoff
$36,778

Schema fields covered

Every X-01 household ships with — at minimum — these JSON fields populated. The full schema is documented in the data set you purchase.

members[].age
income.combined_gross
net_worth.total
filing_status
longitudinal.monthly[].net_cash_flow
longitudinal.monthly[].savings_rate
stress.scenarios[]
liquidity.months_of_expenses

Who builds against this archetype

Three buyer profiles draw on X-01 most heavily. Tax-software vendors building consumer return-preparation flows use it for partial-year residency form generation, statutory-residency 183-day testing in NY and CA, §911 Foreign Earned Income Exclusion qualification (physical-presence test and bona-fide residence), and the related Forms 2555 and 8938 reporting. Payroll and employer-platform teams use it for multi-state withholding logic when an employee's work location varies by week or month — the right population for testing remote-work tax-allocation features that have emerged post-2020. Health-insurance and benefits platforms use it for coverage-gap modeling and state-by-state ACA marketplace eligibility against households whose state of residence is unclear at enrollment.

Testing scenarios this corpus is calibrated for

  • 01Partial-year residency return generation in two to four states per tax year, including reciprocal-agreement handling.
  • 02Statutory-residency 183-day tests in NY, CA, and other aggressive states with day-count documentation.
  • 03§911 Foreign Earned Income Exclusion qualification via physical-presence test (330 days) or bona-fide-residence test.
  • 04Form 2555 and Form 8938 (FATCA) generation with foreign-financial-account thresholding ($10k FBAR, varied 8938 thresholds).
  • 05Multi-state employer withholding logic where work location varies by week or month within a tax year.
  • 06ACA marketplace enrollment with state-of-residence ambiguity and short-term limited-duration plan gap coverage.
  • 07Combined multi-state and digital-asset tax surface testing — crypto disposition events in one state, residency in another.

Edge cases and what's not in this corpus

X-01 is the remote-work, mobile-residency archetype. Long-term international workers on H-1B with a single US employer and a single state of residency are F-06, not X-01. Creator-economy households whose income is platform-revenue rather than W-2 belong in X-02 even when they are equally mobile. Military households whose multi-state residency follows orders rather than choice are F-05 or MV-02 with Servicemembers Civil Relief Act protections that do not apply here. Recent immigrants in their first year of US work are U-03. Cross-border high-net-worth households with foreign trusts, PFIC holdings, and §877A expatriation considerations belong in H-tier with overlay — X-01 does not extend to those structural complexities.

Calibration notes

Income and net-worth bands during v3 synthesis were anchored to mass-affluent dual-earner segments of the Survey of Consumer Finances and to BLS occupational-employment statistics for remote-eligible knowledge work. Multi-state residency, foreign-earned-income exposure, and digital-asset-holding flags were applied as overlay attributes; no published probabilistic prior on remote-worker tax-residency configurations exists that we could anchor to. State distribution (NY, MD, IL concentration) reflects metro concentrations of remote knowledge workers in industry data; it is not a probabilistic prior on nomad residency choice. Per CLAUDE.md §9 the v3 corpus is frozen and not regenerable from current code, so calibration claims are descriptive rather than reproducible.

How this differs from related archetypes

Frequently asked questions

What does the X-01 archetype represent?+

X-01 — Remote Worker / Digital Nomad represents a mass-affluent household (median income $138k, median net worth $316k, median age 32) whose work is location-independent and whose physical presence routinely diverges from state of W-2 employment. The diagnostic surface is multi-state and sometimes international tax residency.

What tax-software features does X-01 exercise?+

Partial-year residency return generation, statutory-residency 183-day testing, §911 Foreign Earned Income Exclusion qualification via physical-presence or bona-fide-residence tests, Forms 2555 and 8938 generation, multi-state withholding allocation, and FBAR threshold determination.

How is X-01 different from F-06 (International Worker on H-1B)?+

F-06 is an immigration-status archetype — single US employer, single state of residence, but cross-border complexity arising from visa status, FBAR obligations, and home-country accounts. X-01 is mobility-driven — US citizen or permanent resident whose physical-presence pattern varies by choice or remote-work flexibility.

Why is health-insurance coverage a relevant test surface?+

Employer-sponsored plans have geographic service areas, and ACA marketplace plans are sold by state. Households moving across state lines mid-year encounter coverage gaps that COBRA does not always solve and that short-term limited-duration plans fill inconsistently. This is the right test population for marketplace eligibility flows that branch on residency.

How were X-01 households generated?+

Deterministically from a seeded sampler (Mulberry32 PRNG) in src/lib/generation/, with multi-state residency, foreign-earned-income, and digital-asset flags applied as overlay attributes. Per-domain version constants are surfaced in each household's _meta block.

Is the X-01 corpus regenerable?+

No. The shipped 1,451-household v3 corpus is frozen and not regenerable from current code (drift confirmed 2026-05-09). Sampler improvements land in a future v4 release with per-archetype golden fixtures in CI to prevent silent drift.

Get this archetype's data

Download households matching this archetype as part of a Wealth Data Set.

Browse Data Sets

Life Stage

Formation
Accumulation
Preservation
Distribution
Transfer