Becoming a Digital Nomad - Our Journey

FastCompany's article, titled The Digital Nomad’s Guide To Working From Anywhere On Earth, states that "Still, the majority of digital nomads are freelancers or small business owners, and a disproportionate number of them are developers or content creators of some kind."

In July of 2017, we went paragliding, white water rafting, canyoning, and mountain hiking in Switzerland. While there we saw a goat parade and the Matterhorn in Zermatt, tried Gruyere cheese in Gruyere, took a chocolate tour at the Maison Cailler chocolate factory, witnessed alpenhorn playing in Kandersteg and visited Jungfrau, the top of Europe, near Grindelwald. We also saw the castle in Thun and took a boat ride across Interlaken. It was the most exciting vacation that we had ever been on and we were convinced that it couldn’t stop there.

Early in 2018, we decided to quit our jobs in Orlando, Florida and start up Eat Wander Explore.  But we decided to grow this business while we were on the road, traveling the world.

As a consequence of that decision, the past number of months have been an amazing journey through many new cultures coupled with a breakneck crash course into content creation, blogs, social media, digital marketing, search engine optimization, video editing, virtual reality tutorials, and swift app developer courses.  We’ve had to find time to fit in all the work and learning while on the road.

But, we can now say that we have visited the Eiffel Tower in Paris, ate cactus ice cream in the Masca Valley of Tenerife and hiked the Volcano Trail in La Palma of the Canary Islands, tasted and smelled our way through the Medina in Marrakesh, spent a month traveling through Italy by train, crafted our own Sound of Music tour in Austria, journeyed through the Highlands of Scotland, explored the Dan-yr-Ogof Caves in Wales, relaxed in a thermal spa in the ancient city of Bath, tried out a Harry Potter bus tour in London, spent three weeks in Ireland, ate the most delicious waffles in our lives in Belgium, attended Oktoberfest in Munich, and ate gyros while island hopping in Greece.

As of November, 2018, we have been learning a lot about Exodus while in Egypt and will soon be taking the railway from the Pyramids of Giza to Luxor, Aswan and Abu Simbel. And at the end of the year, we'll be watching penguins on the shores of Cape Town, South Africa before continuing our journey into Asia and Oceania in 2019.

But we are still doing it, and we are just as committed as we’ve ever been to Eat Wander Explore.  If anything, our time abroad has taught us that it's possible to work from anywhere, even while seeing it all. However, we have also learned that starting a business on the road is exhausting work - as you are constantly required to learn new things.  Yet, we managed to get this far and we were able to start making some income within only a few months of being on the road.

Traveling forever may sound very expensive if you haven't traveled for more than a few days or a few weeks at a time before.  If this is the case, you are probably thinking of "vacationing forever" instead of "traveling forever", which are entirely different.  While the FREE Nomad Guide will teach you to travel forever, and if you do it starting with the Step 1 you may eventually be able to vacation forever too, it is important to understand that it will take a bit of work and a good amount of your time - while traveling - to get to that point. 

So, the first step is to recognize that traveling will be work, not (always) a vacation.

What type of work are we talking about? Basically just keeping up with the income you are generating through your side-income strategies… strategies that will earn you small amounts of money when you start out - which will grow into large amounts over time.

Traveling costs money.  Even if you save up enough money for 1 year, 2 years, 10 years, or 20 years of travel (retiring?), you will still eventually run out of money.  So, we recommend learning how to create an endless supply of money! It’s easier than it sounds, but it does take a little bit of work. This is the step that will determine your future success.

So, we recommend starting this step 1 at least 2 years prior to your intended travel adventures to allow it enough time to begin growing a decent income stream for you. We have learned that most travel bloggers will travel for 2-4 years, on average, before their side income will begin earning them enough money to live on. We didn’t set up our strategies in advance and it really made things tough at the end of our first year - which happens to most travel bloggers, even the famous ones!

You may think that you can simply save up, like we did, but even if you have been saving for your entire life, you may find out that the money eventually runs out. We only saved up enough for one year of travel, and the amount of work we had to do during that year - while we were traveling - was not easy OR fun. So, for your sake, please consider our advice.

Thank you VERY much for reading our article. We actually created this website to help people reach financial independence. Did you know that by having a remote job and traveling endlessly, or living in a country that has low costs of living, you can actually reach retirement quicker? Plus, retirement abroad is up to 75 percent cheaper as well! Learn more by exploring our website: EatWanderExplore and REmotiFIRE.

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