The New Reality of Digital Nomads
hbr.org
hbr.org
Is it the appeal of it that's waning, or is it increasingly clear that there will be a generation or two for which 'solidity' is simply out of reach?
So what do you do? Grin and bear it? Hope for a quick improvement to a problem decades in the making?
A common view among Gen Z or younger Millennials I know is that not only will you have a lower quality of life than your parents (and your kids probably will too), you'll have a lower quality of life even to elder Millennials (who happened to enter the housing market 5 years earlier than you).
So, you can either have a severely hampered life here in Canada (due to cost of housing and general COL), where you just kind of scrape by and try to emulate everything you've seen growing up but without any flexibility or safety net... or you can roll the dice and do something more adventurous, like move out to a rural setting in the US, or go further abroad on an adventure.
The article mentions this dynamic but strangely seems to position it as a lifestyle 'choice' akin to whether or not you like riding bikes or rock climbing.
Also, you can't help but cringe at the conclusion saying this is an "opportunity" for "brands" to capitalize on. Great, what an important silver lining!
For every vocal digital nomad there are 100 folks in same industry who just settle, which can mean a lot of things, not just stereotypical US version "I must own my house or I am a complete loser" (which btw ain't true in any meaningful way and doesn't bring any form of long term satisfaction or happiness, but thats for longer discussion). Even generation ago there were generally exactly same issues for exactly same limited resources like housing, people just got a grip and worked on their goals instead of endlessly complaining how life is unfair specifically to them that they don't have fully paid mortgage by 35 and retire at 50.
I know tons and tons of young people very capable and eager to work in stable corporate environments, way more than I experienced in my days, you just have to zoom out a bit. But this mundane truth doesn't fit popular negative narrative so popular also here with these topics.
Adventures and this are not mutually exclusive, sabbaticals are often used for anything between 3-24 months. If you can't cover the scratch even in 2 years, yeah this ain't life for you (which is an important discovery of course, the sooner it happens the better, but comparably very few find nomading say after 40 as something great).
I've done my share of longer term backpacking mostly in Himalaya, but have it as a long term lifestyle? No thank you, prefer weekend adventuring and raising kids someplace more safe and stable, being close to say tropical beach ain't the most important QOL item on my list.
Isn't there a lot more safety net in Canada than the US (especially rural US)? At least you get healthcare covered in Canada - you'd be on your own here.
What's the audience for the Harvard Business Review?
There are tons of things that are much better in today's life when compared to a generation ago.
Everything always changes, but it's usually that some things get better and others get worse. On average, though, we're still on an upward slope, if you ask me.
Ok, so we've got smartphones and social media now. Sure you can get a lot of info and navigation help with your phone. I'm not sure we're better off with the social media, though. And the big downside now is that housing has become unaffordable. I'm an early X'er and I think we had it a lot better - I graduated with $8K in student loans (paid off in 4 years), bought our first house at 27 ( 20% down with a 15 year mortgage) and paid it off in 9 years. That's a lot harder to do now. Bought a 2nd house (rented out the first) in 2010 when houses were on sale (paid $186K, now worth ~$450K) and paid it off a couple years ago - kind of feel like I've been at the right place & right time, but people 20 to 30 years younger have hit the wrong place at the wrong time.
Sure, there have been medical advances, but often times it's the insurance companies that limit their use because they won't pay.
Cars: generally better. They generally last longer than they did in the 70s and get better mileage, but some of that is negated by them being much larger than they were 30 years ago - ie we could have even more efficient vehicles if they were sized like they were in the 90s. Also, I think peak reliability was probably in the 90s, especially Japanese cars from that era (I still drive a late 90s Honda - it's very simple compared to more recent models which means it's cheap to fix and there's less to go wrong).
We do have a better selection of tastier apples now, so there's that.
And no, I don't think social media has improved anything.
But... I'm 25, and won't be owning a home anytime soon. And not for lack of trying! In Canada, there's a first time homebuyers saving account, which I load up when I can. But food is quite expensive. And so is rent. I had to move (Toronto => Montréal) because I couldn't afford 2500$/m there.
I think people hear that, and attribute that the costs are directly related to me being "too picky" or overspending, unlike people in the past. But I was living in an area of Toronto a parent grew up in. In the city. Food has definitely gotten more expensive in my own lifetime. I tend to be pretty boring with meals I make, so seeing the normal grocery bill tick up from 40$ to 55~60$ has been a bit of a shock, despite buying the same things. I look at my home buyer savings account, and compare to the housing market around here in Montréal which is "good" compared to most of canada, and I see lots of 100k$ down, 750k$ units. Most of which will eat up my savings account with the down payment.
This is while working on a tech worker salary. That puts me in a lucky category, for which I'm infinitely grateful for, it's a lot more stressful for others.
I don't really want to pay a premium to not be homeless, just to fund the last generation's retirement, when I'm already paying their pension and healthcare. Why should I live here anymore? For the chance that maybe I can sell that home for more... to my children's generation?
For better or worse, it's really very hard to look too far into the future and know how things will work out for ourselves. Markets and societies aren't as stable or predictable as they're made out to be.
At least life is interesting, I'll come along for the ride
Also, check out how many North American places are mentioned in this list: https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/cost-and-affordab...
Of course offsetting all of this are other big improvements in QoL - better medicine, healthcare, etc. Also, while interest rates are high compared to last 10 years, historically they aren't crazy. But even 'not crazy' interest rates vs. this disparity in income vs housing prices.
So definite 'agreed' to you and the other posters who brought up it's not a single-variable issue.
But seeing this, and having a remote-friendly job, wouldn't you rather go live on a beach in Costa Rica for a few years?
[1] https://www.tiktok.com/@thebeautyofdata/video/73147673976243...
Let's not forget that interest rates were not just relatively lower, they were actually really low just a few years ago. They have gone up since but I agree they still aren't high, especially compared to what my parents got from the banks when they financed their house.
A lot of my family are builders, and when you talk to them, the old adage "they don't make them any more how they used to" is said with a "thank goodness" attached to them. In other words: they build quality has also continually gone up since the last generation built their homes and that explains a part of the increase in cost (of course, there are other factors).
I do agree with your notion that there have been a number of big improvements in the QoL. That said, though, a house is certainly the main expenditure most people ever do in their lifetime. In other words, if the one item that's orders of magnitudes more expensive that most everything else you'll ever buy in your life, the effect of that price increase is especially painful - and especially hard to compensate through savings in other places.
> wouldn't you rather go live on a beach in Costa Rica for a few years?
I personally wouldn't but, and I wonder if most people would love the idea of doing that but when it comes to actually pulling through would chose not to?!
That said, I was lucky enough to live parts of my life on three different continents of this planet - while for my parents, when they were my age, international travel was still something exotic and very expensive.
[Article is from 2019, before Trudeau boosted the Immigration numbers to astronomical numbers] "In 1971, those in the top 20 per cent by income had a home-ownership rate approximately 10 per cent higher than those in the bottom fifth. This difference has grown severalfold in the ensuing decades. Millennials are entering home ownership in small numbers and later than their forebears: 50 per cent of millennials own a home today compared with 55 per cent of people their age in 1981." https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/08/01/Gov-Created-Housing-C...
The housing situation in Canada (not just Toronto and Vancouver) is on a scale unlike any other developed country.
Australia?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-67723760
Maybe it's a thing with British colonies...
I've worked outside in both places, -40C and +40C. there is a reason most of the population is in a few expensive places.
roughly have of the US makes ~37k USD or less per year. how are they going to buy a house when the average prices are going up dramatically?
the single largest cause of bankruptcy in the US is medical debt
reasonably well off white collar workers, including many of the non-FAANG, non-Unicorn types on this site, will never be able to afford a house without moving hours out of cities.
political bad actors, blatantly funded by corporate and foreign interests, are actively trying to paralyze and overthrow the government
college, instead of getting cheaper and more ubiquitous, is more expensive than ever, creating an entire generation chained to non-dischargeable debt
recent research has shown that credit card debt is now at an all-time high
unprecedented heat waves, flooding, and stronger hurricanes than ever, suggest that climate change is here, and it's going to get very ugly
and after years of relative peace we're now seeing multiple, brutal, conflicts that threaten, in some cases, global escalations
but it's an upward slope, you say?
But sure you’ve got Netflix rather than cable tv so I guess that offsets it.
I’ve made a blast as a Java/Full-stack developer in my generation, leaving hairdressers of my city in the dust in terms of purchasing power. But in 10 years? I’ll still be as rich, but AI developers will earn 10x more than me.
It scares me to death, not for myself, but how can normal people compete with a normal job, when there are more and more internet millionaires, dropshipping lords, bitcoins kingpins, youtube magnates and AI clerics who can stomach x2 on food prices and x10 on housing?
This meme has reached the level of conventional wisdom, so any response feels a bit like trying to empty the Atlantic Ocean with a thimble, but the evidence that Gen Z and Millennials are in any way materially worse off than their parents is very weak.
They are, in fact, doing quite well:
https://twitter.com/johanknorberg/status/1780638119156408480
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/04/16/g...
And that's before we account for the truly massive and unprecedented wealth transfer that's about to happen when the Boomers really start dying in big numbers.
When it's all said and done Millennials are going to be the richest generation of all time and still talking about how uniquely bad they have it, which I guess is the most Millennial thing imaginable.
https://twitter.com/johanknorberg/status/1780892502070898828
Nonetheless, this meme has reached the level of conventional wisdom, so any response feels a bit like trying to empty the Atlantic Ocean with a thimble.
The ultrawealthy know that there is no way to sate the desires of the poor to tax the rich but they can get away with pretending that "the rich" are exemplified not by them by people earning $150k with no assets and lead the charge to tax them to the hilt.
Yes, wealth inequality is increasing. There is more variation in that set of 50 year old gen-x'ers than there was in that set of 50 year old boomers.
But on average and normalized for age, younger generations have both more wealth and more income than older generation.
My parents are shocked by how often we eat out. And not without cause. These life conveniences are way more common today, and we have the money to support it. And before someone talks about dual income, my parents both worked and we are single income.
By all measures, material standard of living has improved.
In reality people are more stressed out today not because of money but because they choose to live complicated, stressful lives mainly driven by unhealthy social media addictions. That's why they feel materially poorer than their parents despite all evidence to the contrary.
If someone is prettier than you or has more luck with women than you and it's in your face every single days you'll feel shitty no matter how much money you have.
> By all measures, material standard of living has improved.
Ah! You've fallen for it. Those are not the same thing. Consumer luxuries do not a standard of living make.
Material standard of living is a secure home, ready and sufficient access to nutritious food, ready access to remedies and ease for illness, welcoming opportunities for fulfilling work, etc
Access to all of those things is eroding, and for essentially everyone (not just young people). You can have 5 ways to watch a video now, and your choice of 500 varieties of sugar water, and can hop on a plane instead of taking a road trip, but none of those have made the life of yourself or your family meaningfully improved.
The conflation of idle luxuries for secure living is a trap that lets people not notice as real standards continue to decline.
> The conflation of idle luxuries for secure living is a trap that lets people not notice as real standards continue to decline.
I agree, which is why you should have read my comment:
> In reality people are more stressed out today not because of money but because they choose to live complicated, stressful lives mainly driven by unhealthy social media addictions. That's why they feel materially poorer than their parents despite all evidence to the contrary.
That's the end point. People work too much to make money so they can afford junk and material improvements in their life, instead of working to make their life nice. My family had less growing up and was much better off. As adults, my wife and I have chosen to replicate my parents and her parents way of life (one working parent, heavy time spent with family and friends, no divorce, no broken families, no spending all day at work, prioritizing life over money, etc). That works. Always has. Doesn't matter how many yachts you own. If you don't have a loving wife / husband and a good family or you never see them, and you have no friends (not the fake superficial friendships many Americans have, but actual friends), then you're always going to be sad.
I still read it that way on a second look, but maybe I'm reading it wrong.
The one's who do well have remote work jobs and benefit from the vastly lower cost of living. The most interesting arbitrage is people who move from developed countries and start small-time online businesses and make $1000/month. On this amount of money they can live reasonably in developing countries while they would be living in poverty in their home countries. The goal of a lot of them is to make enough monthly that they can move back and live off their businesses in their home countries. It's a way to get out of the rat race. These people are essentially moving to developing countries for economic opportunity which is absurdly ironic because locals complain about them raising prices and then move to developed countries for economic opportunities themselves.
- hey, you are a nomad, do not ruin your life with clothes, just rent them where you go, drop the dirt one there;
- hey, do not even own a computer, just go to a desktop center and log-in to "your" cloud solution
- hey, you do not need a local network of friend, just buy services, your friends will be remote or matches on our new shiny service
- ...
As a result those who try became slave, because they need to work to pay services, but owning nothing they have no slack to move when things goes bad. From a "nice freedom life" to a "live to work" the step is EXTREMELY short.
I would guess that the number of people who are using remote work to work as "digital nomads" is dwarfed by the number of people who are using it to return closer to their roots. Many people are using the flexibility to move closer to their families so that their children can grow up around grandparents and cousins.
Tech was heavily concentrated in a few cities in the US, and now tech workers can spread out more across the country.
In addition, once you move out New York and San Francisco and work remotely, the "good life" suddenly becomes attainable. You can work remotely and be able to afford a nice home with a lawn. You can have the flexibility to be involved with your children's school events. You can make friends with a diverse group of your neighbors instead of spending every waking moment with fellow tech workers.
1. A strong desire to get more out of life. 2. The fact that marketing to this niche is psychographical not demographical.
Not new concepts in the travel, or other industries, but as the numbers of people associating with digital nomadism grows, the niche can open up larger markets.
My own 4 year old startup, Nomad Stays, was created to solve some of the lifestyle sourcing issues that living 9 years as a digital nomad, and visiting over 100 countries had shown me was hard.
It seems kind of odd to juxtapose those two adjectives. I mean, either something is desirable, then you might wonder whether it's achievable (or, conversely, if something is not desirable, why worry about whether it's achievable).
I suppose what they're trying to say is that there are (a) some to whom these supposed "hallmarks of stability" are not desirable; and that there are (b) others to whom they are desirable but don't feel achievable any more.
And then I wonder why that is. I mean, (a) is kind of beyond discussing - as the ancient Romans already knew "de gustibus non est disputandum", so if you don't like to own a house or have a 9-to-5 job, then that's it.
But if you are someone in this current generation and are attracted to these things, why would you feel that they aren't achievable any more? I suppose the point would be that there are less affordable houses available and less 9-to-5 jobs? But especially if you are in IT (after all, we're talking about "digital nomads" here), your salary is likely above average. So you, if anyone, should be in the market for a house. Maybe not a dream house worthy to be featured in a TV show, or one that's overlooking the lake. But you can certainly get a house.
And there are certainly enough jobs that are at least close to 9-to-5. Not everyone is burning through sprints all the time, although we all have heard of jobs like that. Mostly from people who quite them, though.
But I wouldn't be surprised to confirm that my gut isn't correct.
Suggestion: "... an end to billionaires".
It’s not all bad really. As someone in the US living the middle class “American Dream” honestly it’s too much stuff. I don’t want so many things and am constantly looking for ways to minimize possessions.
On one hand, this is absolutely true, where people living in houses with many thousands of square feet still rent storage units to store their extra stuff. On the other, having minimal possessions is in some ways a sign of the luxury of the times; it's a vote of confidence in the status quo, that no substantial decrease in the availability of stuff in the future (corollarily, no substantial decrease in your future purchasing power) will take place.
For people whose expectations are different, it makes sense to convert some of their purchasing power into stuff now, in case stuff becomes scarcer in the future.
There are only economic migrants of varying skin tone.
It's not just a racist term, they're different.
As if my circumstance living a 10 year long extended vacation in Mexico, able to ripcord my life back into the US at any point + paid in USD, is in any way the same as a Mexican trying to immigrate to the US.
This always was such a silly argument. "Expat" means someone in a well-compensated position living in a different country, usually sent by a multinational corporation, who expects to move back to their country of origin once their term is over. "Immigrant" means someone who expects to settle in their new country permanently.
Usually the latter group is not paid as well as the former, due to the incentives involved; for the most part, well-paid people living in places that are good to live in don't want to relocate themselves permanently elsewhere.
Seems like it would be useful to differentiate the parts that all immigrants have in common from those that we don't, but this appears to just come down to racism, so we generally don't.
There is one difference. Economic migrants are typically a net positive to the local economy while “DiGiTaL nOmAdS” tend to fuck things like rent and food prices up where they go.
If you live to Germany and draw a salary from a German company you are an immigrant
As the article describes, this choice may be becoming less of a "choice" than a necessity, and in that case we probably shouldn't refer to them as digital nomads. But it doesn't mean that vision doesn't exist for some people.
I was intrigued by this company: https://byrotation.com/
Not really useful to me, and I suspect there's a lot of "ew" factors, but it could be interesting.
> Our “Rotators” can rent and lend their designer fashion directly with each other, thereby creating a community of sharers.