After the World Tour,  Around the world,  Digital nomad,  TDM,  Tips

Becoming Digital Nomad: The Ultimate 2020 Travel Guide

After our world tour, we decided to continue traveling while working. We became digital nomads in May 2017.

Digital nomadism is still a very marginal way of life but it intrigues and sometimes makes you dream. Here’s what we can say about it to demystify it a little and help you if you want to get started.

Note: this article contains links to the other articles of our blog, to make it easier for you to navigate & read.

Our activity

If during 11 months of world tour, we were on vacation and living off our savings, this is no longer the case! Back to reality. Like everyone else, we now have to earn a living.

Even if it can exist, few digital nomads spend their day sipping a mojito with their feet in the pool.

We have created a company that offers webmarketing consulting. It was quite easy for us because we were already doing this job as employees. We simply went from being employees to being self-employed and working mainly with former colleagues. The only notable difference is that everything is now done remotely. The biggest difficulty lies in the time difference when we are in other latitudes, because for the rest: online telephony and videoconferencing considerably reduce distances.

We made an article showing examples of digital nomadic activities and explaining how we find clients.

Housing, work and travel

If you pay rent in Paris, you can find temporary accommodation that will cost you less almost anywhere in the world. We did an article comparing the cost of housing for a nomad vs. a sedentary person in several cities around the world. You will also discover the joys of not having a telephone subscription, housing insurance, electricity bills, …

Having lived in France, the cost of living is also cheaper almost everywhere. Numbeo is a great tool to compare countries.

We stay almost exclusively in Airbnbs, except in some places in Southeast Asia where we can stay in high-end hotels forless than €700 per month. The secret is to stay at least one month in each location. You will then benefit from automatic discounts on Airbnb (feel free to negotiate an additional discount). The same goes for the hotels, contact them and ask for their rates if you stay for a long time. We also try travel hacking to reduce our accommodation and travel costs.

We thus choose a comfortable accommodation which will be our base for a month / a month and a half. We prefer to work from our accommodation, so we look for one that has tables and chairs that can be used as a desk (often it is a dining table). The only exception is Budapest and Mexico where we preferred to go to a coworking space because our furniture was not comfortable.

We decided to work mainly at the beginning of the week. From Monday to Wednesday we have a very classical working day with office hours. From Thursday to Sunday we are much more flexible. We can work if necessary but we prefer to visit the city or sometimes go on extended weekends to discover other regions.

Also think about taking a vacation! Your family and friends may think you’re always on vacation, but you’re not. Like everyone else we have some bad luck, stress, … It is necessary to make real cuts from time to time, without having to think about work. We take the opportunity to visit countries not adapted to a nomadic digital life (or too expensive), like Egypt, Iceland or Florida lately.

Choice of destinations

When we arrive in a city/country, we try to quickly plan the next destination to book transportation and accommodation. At the beginning, we had a visibility of our itinerary over the next few months, much less now.

The choice of a destination is a subtle mix between :

  • Our interest / things to discover in the destination
  • The need or not for a visa (how lucky we are to have a French passport!)
  • Our budget at the moment (cost of living on site)
  • The price of the plane ticket to get there
  • The quality of the internet connection
  • The weather (big bonus if you can go out in sandals / short sleeves!)

It’s really a luxury to be able to adapt your living space to your budget. Have you signed a very lucrative contract? Go to Japan, it is a very expensive destination but absolutely to be discovered. Your budget is tight at the moment? Spend a few months in Southeast Asia while you rebuild your life.

To avoid unpleasant surprises, check before arriving in a new country whether you need to present proof of exit from the territory and find a solution to this problem.

Our favorite destinations at the moment?

Administrative

It’s not the most pleasant part but it has to be taken care of 🙂

We have created a company in France under the SAS status. Most digital nomads start as auto-entrepreneurs which is a very good choice (less burden and more administrative simplicity). You will find here an article that explains how much you can expect to earn depending on your turnover and the status of your company.

We use a domiciliation service from our company and a service that receives our mail and scans it for us to be able to consult it online. Now, we opt for another service that manages both the domiciliation and the reception of mail

We also use an accounting firm

If you no longer reside in France, a question that often comes up is that of taxation. It is a vast subject and much more complex than some people would have you believe. In our case, we are still considered French tax residents. We do not live in any country for more than 6 months, which could justify a change of tax domicile. We have discussed this here. Many digital nomads end up moving to Thailand which is a bit of a paradise for digital nomadism.

If you stay in the European Union, there is a good chance that you will be covered by health insurance (ask for the European Health Insurance Card). If you leave Europe, your credit card usually covers you for the first 3 months. Beyond that, subscribe to a specific health insurance such as Chapka. Be well informed on this subject, the lack of coverage can have dramatic consequences. An insurance is always too expensive, until the day you need it…

If you go outside the euro zone, you will need an international credit card to avoid exchange fees. We made a comparison of N26 and Revolut to help you choose. The recent Boursorama Ultim card may also be an excellent choice. If you need to make international transfers, we advise you to use Azimo

If you have a driver’s license, remember to apply quickly for your international driver’s license (the procedure is done remotely but can take 3 months). It can be interesting to have an American Express card if you regularly rent vehicles, so you will not have to pay for the insurances that will be covered by the card.

If you are leaving France for an indefinite period of time, it may be useful to apply for a “grand voyageur” passport.

We also kept a French cell phone subscription. Free Mobile is an excellent choice, its offer at 20 €/month allows you to use internet and phone in many countries. When you are in a country that isn’t covered, you can switch to their offer at 2€/month that you use only to receive SMS. If you travel frequently in Europe why not opt for Lebara Mobile.

We even have a (French) landline phone number that we can use to receive or make calls at an unbeatable rate via VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). It’s very funny when our customers think we are back in France (seeing our number starting with 01) while we are on the other side of the world. Here are a few tips to make an efficient phone meeting.

If you’re in a country with an average internet connection that doesn’t allow you to make good quality VOIP calls, Rebtel offers an original service: they allow you to call in France by calling a local number, through regular phone lines!

On the rare occasions when we need to receive a physical letter (e.g. credit card renewal), we are delivered by DHL, Fedex or UPS.

Finally, even though we travel all over the world all the time, we are still preparing for our retirement.

Hardware

Becoming a digital nomad is also becoming minimalist by force of circumstance since you bring your house with you at each change of accommodation.

During our world tour, we had taken only the bare minimum (77 objects!). By becoming a digital nomad, we still made the choice to take a little more to gain comfort. We swapped our backpacks for two suitcases and have a total of 41.6 kg of luggage for two. We take with us everything we need to live and work (we can survive down to 0°C, below that we would need extra equipment that won’t fit in the suitcase 😀 )

By being minimalist, we live with fewer things but we don’t hesitate to put a price tag on having quality objects that we will enjoy using. For example, I bought the Bose QuietComfort 35 noise reduction headphones. Absolutely overpriced but with unequalled comfort and sound quality. As for Anh, she opted for AirPods

Working long hours in front of our computer, I really think that you shouldn’t make concessions on the ergonomics of your work environment. So we use a stand to raise the computer to the right height, an ergonomic keyboard and mouse. Quality earphones for phone calls with our customers.

We even allow ourselves a few luxuries that aren’t essential such as a Chromecast (allowing us to broadcast our screen on the TV) or a bluetooth speaker to listen to music with good sound quality. With all this equipment, we immediately feel at home anywhere in the world! Recently, Anh started to make vlogs, we show you our photo & video equipment here

It is possible to live with much less luggage, some nomads have only a small backpack that can fit in an airplane cabin. This is the ultimate freedom but it is necessarily at the expense of comfort.

Internet connection

The internet connection is the oxygen of the digital nomad, without it we are dead 🙂

It’s a little bit limiting the possible destinations. It’s because of the fear of a bad connection that we didn’t go to Laos and that limits the potential destinations in South America. See the connection speeds by country here.

Before booking our accommodation, we try to ask our guest to do an internet speed test. Not always easy to get a precise answer but we have a trick to try to get an idea.

Whatever the country, we buy a local SIM card with internet that allows us to use the 4G connection in case of problem (and incidentally to be able to phone). In some countries such as Morocco, we use only that through a wifi pocket to share the connection and the TripMode software to master the software that consumes data without you realizing it. We have some tips to surf faster.

We don’t use it much but we also have an international SIM card that allows us to use the internet anywhere in the world with very low roaming charges (we use Drimsim). Very useful when we arrive in a new country and we don’t have a local SIM card yet.

If you spend time in Europe, Canada, the United States or Australia, it can be very smart to take a Free Mobile plan.

Another tip: the Wifi Map application is absolutely great and gives you the password of thousands of wifi spots all over the world.

Once in your home, it can be interesting to identify the precise place where the intensity of the Wifi signal is the best. There is an application for this.

Also consider using a VPN service to protect your connection and overcome geographical limitations. A VPN also allows you to benefit from a fixed IP. This is useful because in certain professional contexts, access can be restricted, for security reasons, to a specific IP address.

If you miss French television, there are ways to watch it.

The paid services we use

We also use several services, some of which are indispensable, others for comfort and leisure:

As well as the mobile applications essential for travel.

For more information, see all our articles on digital nomadism here

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