We've been full-time nomads for 4 years, and are in the middle of our second year of travel outside the USA. This article is a good overview for a particular type of travel, which I tend to perceive as vacation travel.
Its great to take a year off, and see all those countries on $22k, and if you're considering doing that, I highly recommend doing something like what he's doing!
For us, we chose to make international living more of a lifestyle. We are running our startup this way. When we added our third co-founder, it became three of us traveling this way. It is working out pretty well. We use AirBnB or local real estate agents to book accommodations. We stay in a country for 3-6 months depending on their visa length.
We work a sort of regular schedule, so we're not out seeing tourist sites every day. But that's what we do on the weekends.
At the end of the day, living like this, all over the world, is cheaper than it would have been if we'd just stayed on the West Coast of the USA. Well, cheaper financially.
One way we keep things cheap is by trying to focus on inexpensive countries. Our time in europe was great, but even there we stayed in berlin (which since the wall came down still has reasonably priced rents), and a small UK town. Mostly we're focusing on less developed / expensive countries which is also the more interesting ones.
We book maybe 1-2 flights a year. We are careful about this. We got a nice 7 day "vacation" in Venice when we were able to save $300 by booking a layover thru that part of Italy on our repositioning trip. Taking your time on your flights lets you maximize flexibility and gives you great opportunities like Venice. Keeping major international flights to a minimum keeps our expenses low.
All three of us live out of big suitcases. We were trying the "one bag one world" thing and living out of a 55 Liter backpack. This was ok in terms of size, but airlines have decided that refusing to take bags, even if they're carryon size, is a revenue opportunity, so rather than fight them, or deal with the hassle, we've switched to a 2 bag solution- one carry on for the expensive electronics and one checked bag for the clothes etc. (so 2 bags each, though the carry ons tend to be rather small.)
I really need to do a blog post about this. Actually, I have a dozen blog posts, but I need the blog first. And the blog is not coming until the MVP is done.
Anyway, traveling around the world for a year-- totally good idea, not that unreasonably expensive, and if you want to make a lifestyle out of it, you can do it, by increasing the amount of time you spend in each country to bring the costs down.
Only downside of living this way: there's some impact on productivity due to the travel. So, we lose probably 4-6 weeks a year of productive time because of it. For instance, we didn't get a damn thing done in Venice. Some of those "lost" weeks are the most fun too.
What are you waiting for to write those posts? I'd love to read how you manage to change your country of residence, and about all the small things that you have to consider.
And the blog is not coming until the MVP is done - I'm guessing they're not waiting but prioritising effort on their startup and the Minimum Viable Product.
We're basically, Engineer, Designer, Writer. The Writer is the newest person and a recent college grad, what her role eventually becomes isn't clear (marketing? design?) For some reason this makes me think of the TV show Castle with him showing up with a bullet proof vest that says "writer".
The next stage of growth is hiring independant contractors for specific jobs that need to be done, and when we start wanting to have full time employees, they can be located anywhere. People want to telecommute and we like the sort of github style management policy.
I imagine that once a year we'd all get together in the same place for an annual meeting. Its also quite possible that we'll end up getting outside investors and have to start living in the Bay Area or something like that.
Its great to take a year off, and see all those countries on $22k, and if you're considering doing that, I highly recommend doing something like what he's doing!
For us, we chose to make international living more of a lifestyle. We are running our startup this way. When we added our third co-founder, it became three of us traveling this way. It is working out pretty well. We use AirBnB or local real estate agents to book accommodations. We stay in a country for 3-6 months depending on their visa length.
We work a sort of regular schedule, so we're not out seeing tourist sites every day. But that's what we do on the weekends.
At the end of the day, living like this, all over the world, is cheaper than it would have been if we'd just stayed on the West Coast of the USA. Well, cheaper financially.
One way we keep things cheap is by trying to focus on inexpensive countries. Our time in europe was great, but even there we stayed in berlin (which since the wall came down still has reasonably priced rents), and a small UK town. Mostly we're focusing on less developed / expensive countries which is also the more interesting ones.
We book maybe 1-2 flights a year. We are careful about this. We got a nice 7 day "vacation" in Venice when we were able to save $300 by booking a layover thru that part of Italy on our repositioning trip. Taking your time on your flights lets you maximize flexibility and gives you great opportunities like Venice. Keeping major international flights to a minimum keeps our expenses low.
All three of us live out of big suitcases. We were trying the "one bag one world" thing and living out of a 55 Liter backpack. This was ok in terms of size, but airlines have decided that refusing to take bags, even if they're carryon size, is a revenue opportunity, so rather than fight them, or deal with the hassle, we've switched to a 2 bag solution- one carry on for the expensive electronics and one checked bag for the clothes etc. (so 2 bags each, though the carry ons tend to be rather small.)
I really need to do a blog post about this. Actually, I have a dozen blog posts, but I need the blog first. And the blog is not coming until the MVP is done.
Anyway, traveling around the world for a year-- totally good idea, not that unreasonably expensive, and if you want to make a lifestyle out of it, you can do it, by increasing the amount of time you spend in each country to bring the costs down.
Only downside of living this way: there's some impact on productivity due to the travel. So, we lose probably 4-6 weeks a year of productive time because of it. For instance, we didn't get a damn thing done in Venice. Some of those "lost" weeks are the most fun too.