Comment by seekingcharlie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by seekingcharlie | Hacker News Reader

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I've been a "digital nomad" for the last year. I left my full-time job in Australia & headed for Berlin & just picked up a few casual consulting gigs via Dribbble (I'm a designer).

I quickly realized that I really enjoy slow traveling - staying in places for 2-3 months & trying to keep a normal routine. I work full-time now, pretty crazy hours, but I generally move somewhere new every 3 months. I spend a few months of each year in SF & the rest in Europe. I'm heading from SF to Split, Croatia in 3 weeks for most of the summer.

As a final note, there are many different ways to travel. You never really understand how cheap it is until you actually do it. Before I left, everyone told me that I would need a liquid $50k to spend a year in Europe & I remember being worried that I only had about half that - very funny to me now. I've saved more traveling than what I have paying rent somewhere in Australia.

TIPS: * Try & get paid an SFBA salary & live in cities that have a very low cost of living in comparison. * Re trying to get a remote job - move to the job for 3 months first, work your ass off & prove your worth, THEN ask to move remote. * Sell everything. Forget about clothes, shoes, books, records. If you can't pack light at first, believe me, you will learn on the road!

May I ask you when you go for these 3 month stints in a city, what do you do about housing? Do you go for temporary apartments or some sort of temporary roommate situation? I work as a freelancer and while a lot of my work can be done independent of location, I've been interested to move for certain projects. However, since we're only talking a couple of months, I wasn't sure about the best housing options.

I've done a mix of both, but mostly I do AirBnb. It's much cheaper if you're renting for 2-3 months & owners usually always agree to some kind of discount as it's much better for them to have a secure long-term booking.

Thanks for that tip. I didn't even think of possibly asking for a discount for a multi-month booking.

Most hotels will do the same thing FWIW.

I've been interested in something similar to that. How did you keep from getting lonely? Seems like 3 months is just enough time to make new (real) friends and then leave?

It is lonely sometimes, but I'm naturally pretty independent & it doesn't phase me too much. I've met a lot of random people either through renting rooms, coworking spaces or just being approached in cafes by people that also work in tech when they see Sublime open on my screen.

I have met some really cool people, but like you said, I generally leave before we can become 'real' friends so the friendships I have made haven't really been that strong unfortunately. I don't get a lot of time through the week & I usually spend my weekends doing the touristy/exploration stuff so I'm kept busy.

Sometimes I find myself wishing for a group of friends / SO to do this with, but I don't know a lot of other people that can travel & work at the same time. I'm not really keen on the whole backpacker trip either.

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