Choosing a City to Work from Remotely

by Katie Hart | May 24, 2017 | Travel Planning

Choosing a City to Work from Remotely

One thing to consider when working remotely is where exactly you will be operating your business! If you’re wanting to work from home in your pajamas, the answer is easy, but if you want to use your new-found freedom to see the world, the possibilities are endless.

I’ll not be going into visa requirements, since that is different for every type of passport and every country, as well as constantly changing. It will also depend on how long you would want to stay in a country.

Most people have a vacation mindset when they travel. If they want to visit 10 countries in two weeks or go explore places without reliable internet, they can. But digital nomads need to be aware of how a change of location will affect their work and their clients. They can still go on a whirlwind tour or trek into the wilderness, but they do it within vacation time they’ve budgeted for themselves and build a more solid atmosphere for their daily lives.

But you can still build this solid atmosphere in amazingly cool places you’ve always wanted to visit!

There are certain variables you’ll want to consider when choosing where to go, and fortunately, a great site exists to help you gauge what cities are ideal for digital nomads! The Bucketlist Bombshells introduced me to Nomad List, a free site (though becoming a paid member has additional benefits) that presents many statistics to help you choose a city!

The main 4 variables the Nomad list looks at are cost of living, fun, safety, and internet. Each of these are further broken down into specific aspects, and they all add up to a Nomad Score.

You can then filter the results by your own preferences. Say you don’t really care where you go as long as you can live there cheaply – you can look for places under $1000 a month. Say you want to go somewhere in Europe – click on Europe. Say you only want places with very good internet – you can see the average bandwidth for the city, and find some coworking spaces with reliable speeds. Say you want to easily fly to surrounding areas – search for airport.

For myself, I’ll like to work from Europe and travel frequently to other countries. The cheapest places are in eastern Europe, but most cities I’d like to visit are in western Europe. Berlin is centrally located and a reasonable $2000/month, and has a very high Nomad Score (plus Germany has a freelancer one-year visa option for longer stays). I would prefer the UK, but prices range from $2500-3000, though that pales in comparison to Switzerland’s and Denmark’s $4000 a month!

And remember, as a digital nomad you’ll be able to change up where you live frequently – so you can balance out a more expensive location with a cheaper one part of the year.

Where would you like to base your business, at least for a few months?

Want to hire me as a Pinterest Designer and Manager to help you get more traffic, leads, and income for your blog or business? Check out this page to see what I can do to help you grow!

Digital Libraries

by Katie Hart | May 22, 2017 | Resources

Digital Libraries

I grew up a bookworm. Books were my escape and I reread my favorites every year. As a result, I’ve amassed quite a collection – 35 boxes’ worth during my last move (and that was pared down a bit).

I do, of course, have additional books in my Kindle library, and even some duplicates. I haven’t been able to justify the cost of rebuying digital versions of books I already own, though I will snatch up free ones and some 99 cent favorites. I also don’t read as much as I used to, and prefer physical copies. I love staring at my bookshelves and remembering all ups and downs of emotions that came from reading those books.

It’s especially true on my classics and children’s books shelf, which is closest to me as I type. These are the books that I have loved for decades – books read to me by my parents, books I got lost in when I was lonely, books I read aloud to my younger siblings, and books I’d hoped to read to my own children one day.

As a future digital nomad, I know I will have to give up some of these books, and put all but a couple of the rest into storage. Fortunately, there has been no better time in history for taking your library with you – digitally!

And it’s not just books. All media is available for download or streaming. I uploaded my music library to Google Play Music and donated my CDs. I do still own a decent collection of TV shows and movies on DVD, but they are mostly just backup to Netflix and Hulu’s ever changing collection, and to lend to friends (but are used for those purposes less and less every year).

So someday, when I leave all this behind, I’ll be a little sad to say farewell to my books, but I won’t miss out on reading a single word, since I can take whatever I want with me.

Which of your possessions would be the hardest for you to give up as a digital nomad?

Want to hire me as a Pinterest Designer and Manager to help you get more traffic, leads, and income for your blog or business? Check out this page to see what I can do to help you grow!

GGB Challenge Day 1 – Reasons Why

by Katie Hart | May 9, 2017 | Digital Nomad Skills, My Tech and Travel Journey

GGB Challenge Day 1 – Reasons Why

It’s so serendipitous how this worked out – yesterday I listed all my obstacles to becoming a digital nomad. Today, Globetrotting Girl Bosses (update: now Bucketlist Bombshells Tribe) started their 7-day challenge asking us to write down the reasons why we want to work online! So I am sharing that with you here! (Also, the order suits my personality – I always want to get the bad stuff out of the way first so I can focus on the positive! So you might think I’m a pessimist if you only talk to me for a few minutes or read the first part of a blog post, but I’m really not!)

Freedom to Travel

This is the biggest reason why I want to become a digital nomad – I got bit by the travel bug 2 1/2 years ago, and one trip a year is not enough! I used to think that I need to wait to travel until I was married, or had a lot of money, or had a big group of friends going. Now I know I can figure out most curveballs travel throws my way, and in fall 2017 I’ll get the chance to try a new challenge – solo travel in a country where English is not the primary language! I always try to see far too much in my limited time traveling – I want the freedom to linger. I want to spend 1-2 weeks (or more) in a city, not 1-2 days.

Freedom to Set My Own Schedule

I am not a morning person. My brain just doesn’t work well in the mornings – no matter how much sleep I’ve had the night before. I hate working 8-5 (though I know others have even earlier schedules), and I live for Friday and Saturday nights where I can stay up being creative (if I haven’t deprived myself of too much sleep during the week). My ideal schedule would be staying up till 4am and sleeping in till noon (I’ve even worked second shift before and done this). But I also want to be able to spend time with family and friends some evenings.

Freedom to Be Creative

While my job does allow for some creativity now that I’ve studied FileMaker and can do some development work, most of my tasks are boring and repetitive. I do know that there will still be some repetition in any job, but if I am my own boss I can outsource and automate any tasks I don’t want to do over and over. I can say no to projects. I can set things aside and come back to them fresh. I can figure out new and better ways of doing things.

Freedom of Unlimited Earning Potential

As a solopreneur, I will be in charge of how much money I make. I won’t be at the mercy of working a year or more before I get a couple more cents an hour. If I don’t have enough clients, I can hustle and find some. If I have too much work, I can raise my rates. I can develop products that earn me money while I’m out exploring castles and dreaming of ways to expand my business. And I can help others earn money as well – whether cross-promotion, team-ups, long-term partnerships, or even employees.

Freedom to Foster Community

I love how supportive people can be in the tech/design community and in the travel community. I want to have more time to build and grow that community. I’m the type of person who sees a request for help or advice, and if I know anything related to the topic, it’s like catnip and I can’t help but try to assist them! I’ve spent hours researching problems and solutions for others for free. I want that to be part of my day-to-day workflow without feeling guilty about not doing “real work”. It will be my real work.

Freedom to Be Me – Confidently

I’m not the most confident person. I am always second-guessing myself and thinking that others are better than me. Building a business will give me something to look and say, “I did that!” whenever doubts come in. And I can create it my way, building on my strengths and eliminating the things that tear me down. I can spend my time working with and for the people who bring out the best in me. I can wander through new cities and build new friendships based on who I am at that moment and find more to like about myself every single day.

Want to hire me as a Pinterest Designer and Manager to help you get more traffic, leads, and income for your blog or business? Check out this page to see what I can do to help you grow!

Digital Nomad Obstacles

by Katie Hart | May 8, 2017 | My Tech and Travel Journey

Digital Nomad Obstacles

It’s really easy to get discouraged when you are pursuing a dream – especially when you don’t have a clear picture of what that dream is and what steps you need to take to reach it.

I have loved the idea of moving to Europe and/or becoming a digital nomad with frequent stays in Europe for years now. But it always seemed impossible. And wouldn’t I find the guy of my dreams sometime soon? Better not make any concrete plans, since Prince Charming would find me soon and we’d travel the world together.

Well, Charming is still MIA, and I realized I could do this travel thing myself. I also realized two weeks of vacation a year is not nearly enough for all the travel I want to do, and I was spending 25-30% of my budget just getting to Europe, plus the days of jet lag. So I started taking courses to up my digital skills to help make a nomad life possible.

But I still have many obstacles in my way.

Money

I know I will need a solid buffer of cash before I will feel comfortable leaving my fulltime job. But I am also making far less than I’m worth at the company, and a discussion about salary hasn’t happened 2 months after requesting it. Coupled with depleting my savings to help my sister buy a car (she’ll pay me back eventually), my upcoming 2-week trip to Europe, and spending money on training, and my finances, while not terrible, should be healthier. Once my trip happens in early September, I can start putting aside that money for a much longer trip!

Housing and Belongings

I just signed a year lease. My sister and I moved to a new place so that a good friend could move in with us (and we could potentially add a 4th person later on). That makes my rent actually quite reasonable, but still something I would have to pay, even if I’m not here. At the end of the lease I would still need somewhere to put my stuff if I wasn’t living here. I can see getting rid of some things, but I don’t think I can pare down my 75ish boxes and furniture to a couple boxes in someone’s basement. Having a home base here in the States wouldn’t be a bad thing, but it would drain my money faster.

Family

One of the reasons why I can see myself keeping a home base here is that most of my family is in the area. I have 8 younger siblings, and my parents and all but two are in the area – and it would be especially hard to leave my two nieces. So I can see myself splitting my time between here and Europe – coming home for a month or two at a time would be much nicer if I had my own place. But still, money – for keeping a room in an apartment and plane tickets back and forth.

Visas

Depending on where I want to live in Europe, it may be impossible to work there legally. Most digital nomads aren’t in one place for long enough to worry about that, and just stay on tourist visas (but moving from place to place can be a lot more expensive). I was thinking this would kill my dream outright, until I found out about a freelancer work visa in Germany that is difficult, but not impossible to get. While living in the UK or Ireland would have been preferable (hello, English language!), Germany is a great alternate choice for me, for several reasons. One, since most of my ancestry is German (various branches of my family immigrated to North America between 1700 and 1900), I’ve always been interested in the country and culture. Two, due to this, I’ve actually been studying German, so this would help both my comfort level in the country and improve my skills with the language. Three, it is very centrally located for exploring the rest of Europe. Four, I love castles, and Germany has many beautiful ones to visit!

Current Job

I’ve been with my company for three years now and my skills have improved greatly during that time. I also have a casual dress code, short commute, and great coworkers. While my salary and vacation time is lacking, this job does give me more time and emotional freedom to pursue freelancing on the side that a stressful new job with a longer commute would not. It would be great to work for my company remotely in the future, and they have approved my trip to Europe, so I am reluctant to leave, even for a job that may pay a bit better and help me save money.

Business Under Construction

I have not officially launched my freelance business and have therefore earned $0 with my new skills. Will I be able to make a living as a freelancer? The last freelance money I earned was writing for a magazine 4+ years ago, and that was just a couple hundred extra a month. I will want to be fully established with several clients before I can even think of moving it to fulltime, not to mention the needed money buffer.

Conclusion

All of this points to it being at least a year until I make the leap to digital nomad. But here are some steps I will be taking:

Launch my business so I can start earning money and paying myself from it
Start saving more every month
Get rid of more stuff
Use my trip to evaluate where I would want to live in Europe

What obstacles to becoming a digital nomad do you face?

Want to hire me as a Pinterest Designer and Manager to help you get more traffic, leads, and income for your blog or business? Check out this page to see what I can do to help you grow!