Review of our 6 months as Digital Nomads

Ohlala, time flies! It’s already been 6 months that we travel and work at the same time. I find that time passes much faster when we work (even part-time) than when we are 100% unemployed (like during the world tour).
In 6 months, we put our suitcases in 6 countries, i.e. 1 month/country. It was too fast!
I thinka month and a half per city and country, at least, will be much more reasonable. And then, we quickly understood that we don’t like big cities anymore (Bucharest for example, has finished us off) => in the future we will prefer nice small towns and avoid capitals if possible. Seville meets these criteria: we are currently there, and having a month and a half to visit the city and its surroundings is a great luxury.

In 6 months, there have been ups and downs, good and bad decisions. We did some “test & learn” to adapt to our new life (coworking or not, how to negotiate the rent of the airbnb, how to manage everything remotely…). We have been able to work on intellectually stimulating projects, to gradually get out of the SEO/SEA framework and become even more efficient.
We really like this lifestyle and we can’t wait to be in Asia and see if it’s still compatible when we add 5 hours of time difference with our customers.
Recently, due to a budget cut, my biggest customer cut my working time. Nothing to be alarmed about.
But it awakened bad reflexes in me. Stressed life”/”we’re all going to die” mode reactivated: (1) ahlala I should have diversified my income more (2) ohlala I shouldn’t have refused this big contract in August (which didn’t motivate me at all)
This is how I found my greatest fear: Fear of the future! This fear that prevented me for years from living in the present moment. This fear that I thought I had gotten rid of forever at the end of the world tour. It has come back! And it was so sneaky that I couldn’t identify it right away, I just felt bad in Paris, thinking that it was the stress of it all.
And then the fact that I was leaving again, discovering a new city, gave me time for reflection. I understood: I was under stress because I was afraid of the future. I realized that my desire to diversify my income was just a result of the “best practices” given to entrepreneurs, my fear of the future and my guilt of working so little. My former boss always told me that the health of his company was not good, having a CA totally dependent on one client.
But if you think about it, you really shouldn’t be afraid. Unlike my former boss, I don’t have any employees, and I don’t want to work full-time anyway. Because we only need 570€/month to live well somewhere in the world.
Yes, according to nomadlist.com, there are plenty of cities where the monthly rent is only 50€. But let’s suppose we still want hot water and private toilets – in a country that isn’t at war hihihi. Let’s go for 200€/month, including Internet – which is the monthly rent in a small city in Asia for a long time (1 year or more). In addition to this, we need food (250€/month for two, or 8,3€ per day – quite reasonable if we cook ourselves), health insurance (80€/month), transportation and leisure activities (40€/month). Add to this the company tax, income tax, mail transfer, accountant’s fees etc. => this gives us a minimum turnover of 1140€/month to cover all our expenses.
And if I’m too desperate, I can always squat for free in one of my parents’ apartments in Hanoi, which reduces the minimum turnover to 740€/month.
Two of us have to make it anyway! Otherwise, we’d better change jobs 😀