What kind of remote jobs do you guys have? and how are you guys able to pay off expensive travel costs?
I do internet marketing and digital advertising for a real estate company in the US, mainly driving traffic to my colleagues there. With a 13 hour difference the schedule is a bit tough sometimes, but it’s been working good for us. Travel costs do add up, so it pays to have friends around the world 
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Hi udesign48
Good query. Over a 3-year period, 2013-2016, here in Asia we hosted nomads of all kinds, always hoping for the ‘high-achievers’ and being selective. For variety of activity, dealing with travel costs, here’s what we encountered:
- Photographers - for stock libraries, magazines, shooting while on other business
- Venture capitalists - on family travel, but scouting, meeting, all the while
- Web designers, coders, bloggers - working from only MacBook Airs
- Ex-pats gone native - based in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand - new couples on breaks
- Airline family members - flying anywhere free
- Housesitters - stepping-stone around the world, each flight short
- Retired doctors - flying low-season rates
- Chinese telecom reps on business - nicest people
- Chinese businesswomen shopping - nicest people
- Chinese stock market traders - nicest people
- Swiss luxury watch salesmen - scouting customers while vacationing
- Hitchhiking across Mongolia - using cheap boats otherwise
- Prostitutes - the John pays the tour
- ‘Reformed’ Ex-cons - still marking targets for ‘associates’
The trend toward the last two are why we called it a day, but always fun. Really enjoyed folks.
I’d say over all, people cut costs by going off-season and doubling-up on their travel purposes, business and pleasure, business and family, reducing taxes with deductibles, dining in not out, living like locals.
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One more aspect. While folks were away from their bases, each travel was short.
Shortest one week, longest a month, average about ten days.
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@duncanmn @danil.alexander
Thanks for your replies. I’ll take a look at those options.
But I’m curious about living expenses. Even if I stay at a $70 per night hotel or hostel, that’s still going to cost $24,000 a year. Let’s say I pay $30 a day for food and transportation. That’s another $10,000 a year.
I’ll need some $33,000 a year base money to live as a complete nomad. Unless, I make $50,000 a year completely online, that’s going to be a challenge.
Maybe you’ll be required to work 18 hours a day, 7 days a week for something really challenging to pay that off.
$70 per night is wayyy more than most nomads pay on average. Say you stay in each location for 1-3 months, like many nomads do. Say you’re in a shared Airbnb apartment (or something you find on a local rental site). Depending on where in the world you are, you might pay $200-1000 per month. Only a handful of cities around the world would be more expensive than that. And in lower cost countries you can easily get your own place in that range.
I’d say at $15,000-$20,000 per year you can already live comfortably as a nomad—as long as you avoid the most expensive places, and avoid the high season in the most touristic areas.
Travel costs aren’t that high as long as you travel off-peak and stay in each destination for longer. Flights that cost $1500 most of the time, can be had for $500 if you’re flexible, etc.
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Airbnb sounds interesting.
At where I live, you can rent a desk at an office for $250 a month.
Hotels charge from $45+ per night.
I’m trying hard to set up a stable online business. Maybe becoming a cryptocurrency & forex trader could solve this issue although I’ve seen some countries’ governments shutting down bank accounts of crypto traders. Maybe it’s best keep everything in crypto currency.
http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/crypto-crackdown-begins-bank-threatens-to-close-customer-account-because-of-coinbase-purchases-against-policies-will-need-to-be-discontinued-immediately_12202017
https://oldreport.com/2018/02/26/another-thai-bank-shuts-down-accounts-of-local-crypto-exchange/
Another option is becoming a senior web developer. A senior web developer with 10+ years of experience in all kinds of frameworks can get paid $50,000 a year completely online.
btw, Airbnb doesn’t work at where I live.
Minimum price starts from $1300 a month which is the same as normal apartment rent.
Average price here is $2-3k a month. Unless you make $5k a month completely online, this is going to be difficult. Even if you make $5k a month online, pricing doesn’t seem to be that great.
Yes, make $10k a month online, rent one of these $3k a month apartment. That’ll make more sense!
or become a millionaire.
Cant stay at hotels man, really need relatives or close friends to be stopping by for free or for next to nothing. I rent an upper room at my friends family (his mother and father) for $500 a month ($17/day) in the US, which I think is very generous on my end because I know them well, but I have a personal half-floor with a bathroom to myself, pretty neat.
They cook add a few goods here and there, keeping that food budget slim. $250 a month for food and dining in mint in November.
As far as this:
What I learned from trying to trade crypto and consecutively losing money was that it’s stressful af, complicated af, and more likely than not you will lose money starting out.
Even worse part that it truly becomes your day-job
I have a friend who’s been trading forex for over 6 years and he wins more than loses, trades tens of 1000s of dollars at once, 6-difit account.
I mirrored his buys and sells for 15 days and made money from $200 min deposit I had to put in to $213 until I stopped. There were 20 actions (buy/sell instances) and the variation as follows:
$13 in 15 days is far from what you wanna be doing)
to scale this up and make the minimum $1,300 in 15 days you’d need $200,000 to play with.
Now, in simple terms $13 in 15 days is over 4000% a year
But unless you have someone like my friend to guide you and balls of a high grade durable titan, then I would not recommend trading of any sort on your life’s savings, the money you need to sustain yourself. Only extra cash as you would do betting in a casino…
I’d agree with @tkrunning on $20k a year sustainable income and above is when you can start bringing your nomad dreams into action.
You will probably need at least $30k+ a year if you have monthly obligations (debts, monthly payments) or you want to invest in yourself or starting something up
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Well my budget isn’t so different from yours now.
I’m trying to work as full stack web dev, app dev, journalist, marketing guy… But the whole plan seems to be impossible without at least $5k+ online monthly income. That will enable secure and stable living even without a permanent address. As I said, at some cities, Airbnb won’t help much. Airbnb price starts from $1200 a month here.
You had better not to be a trader of such phantom markets that wastes your money and life.
Good company works for you day and night, and gives you more than ten times return.
Buy a few of stocks turning a huge cash flow, and then forget about it until you become millionaire.
for example,
At first, you had better choose a lowest cost broker with security and deposit insurance.
I trade forex for Audacity Capital
It’s their money
When I reach a profit of 10%, it’s split 50/50 and the amount to trade with is doubled.
Starting capital is 15000$
When you go minus 10% its over, but this is quit difficult to happen.There is no time limit to reach the 10% profit.
There is a one time fee of 199£ and a monthly fee of 99£. Trading platform is MT4, its fast and spreads are small. I started this month and I am quit happy with the enrollment process, interview, etc.
All is fast and people treat each other well.
I have joined this community to figure out exactly the question you asked.
I am a retired engineer; life was good back when I was still working and traveling at the same time. I tried cryptocurrency trading after retirement but experienced more losses than wins. I have a friend whose husband is a very successful online poker player, and they travel to a different country every month. 
I wish I had that exact same talent! 
@NomaDavid Cryptocurrency was also in losses for me. Someone suggested me Crypto mining, guess what! That to end up in losses.
Crypto mining was profitable for me before ASICs came along. 
I had a mining rig with 4 GPUs and was able to mine 1 BTC, however I sold them too early so I could buy myself an ASIC. 
What’s the price you got for that 1 btc? 
I remember getting the GPU mining rig back in the day for like $400. I mined just over 1 BTC with it and sold when the price was only slightly over $800. If only I had held onto the coins instead of rushing to sell! Still kicking myself over that one!
@NomaDavid dang If you held on to it, you could’ve earned 50-60 times return. Even I would kick myself like that 