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Comment by urbandw311er | Hacker News Reader

I find myself wondering how this person pays for their nomadic lifestyle. Presumably they have some sort of remote job; it would be interesting to know how much they have to earn to offset their expenses.

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I am not the OP, but traveling in a nomadic way is often significantly cheaper than you would expect. When I was doing this, I had roughly $4000/mo in expenses, and more than half of that is because I kept a house in the US while I was on the move, so I had to still pay mortgage, insurance, utilities, property taxes, etc. All-in, it's fairly easy to get by on less than $2k/mo as a single person in /most/ of the world, that's only about $37k/yr before taxes. Myself and most of the other digital nomads I met in my travel mostly worked location-independent remote tech jobs, often as one-person consultancies or as subcontractors to a prime contract agency, most of us made more than $100k/yr.

My observation when I'm talked to people about my experiences is that they imagine travel is a lot more expensive than it actually is. The most expensive thing I ever had to pay for was my plane ticket to get out of the US. Once I was abroad, even flights were significantly cheaper.

Legit question, how do you work stably enough to have a good income to support this? Personally I find living a "regular" life and maintaining a 9-5 job is hard enough in terms of time management and logistics. And that's with the ease of not having to think about where my next accommodation, next meal, next shower will be.

Do you find yourself more time pressured? More stressed? Spending more on conveniences to make life easier?

Honestly, when I was doing it, I didn't really find any of that difficult. The biggest pressure was from other people who I met while traveling to go out and party or do fun activities while I preferred working. I used time zones to my advantage when I was in Europe and Africa, so I'd have a nice relaxing morning, have a good breakfast, and then work in the mid-day through the evening, go to bed and do it again, and my weekends were still my weekends to do whatever I chose. When I was in South America I just worked normal east coast hours because most of the continent is on EST time zone or similar. It really wasn't as big a deal as you might imagine.

It's not like I was homeless, I would know I wanted to spend a month or thereabouts in a city and I'd get an AirBnB or otherwise arrange accommodations, I'd pay for a coworking space to have a good place to work with stable internet connectivity (this actually was one of the most difficult things in some parts of the world, back then), and I'd eat like the locals either cooking at the AirBnB or going to local restaurants/cafes.

I don't think being nomadic has to mean living like a hobo, those are not necessarily the same things. I never stayed anywhere that didn't have basic indoor plumbing at least, although a few times I'd have to hand wash clothes in a sink and hang them to dry outside the window, which was kind of a bummer but not a world-ender.

Overall, my productivity didn't suffer at all, and I didn't find it stressful from the things you mentioned with even a modicum of planning ahead. In fact, being able to explore different parts of the world and head out when I felt satisfied or got bored, meant that I always had some sort of moment for inspiration that helped to fuel both my curiosity and my work.

In my case I simply refuse jobs that don't let me work when I want to. Daily standup? Absolutely no way. Weekly standup? Only as long as I can skip it on the regular.

I'm extremely productive and I'll work weekends, but if on a Tuesday at 11am I feel like going on a trip, I absolutely will and you can't stop me.

People often also overlook that you need a visa to do remote work in most countries, but that really kills the vibe digital nomads are going for.

In 2016 I was travelling on 1000 AUD a month in Asia.

Granted this was no life of luxury, but I wasn’t exactly holding back on much either.

It can be much cheaper depending on your lifestyle. When I did it I mostly stayed in hostels which cost much less than renting. Subtract out all the other costs like electricity bills, car payments, etc and it can be inexpensive.

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