Disclaimer: This isn’t about traveling cheaply, in fact quite the opposite…
I recall Tim Ferriss giving a good piece of advice (among many), specifically in this context, to focus on the specific problem/issue rather than the person, even when the person is a good example for that particular situation.
I want to talk about a YouTube video I watched, of a digital nomad describing his transition from his office job to starting his travels, and bring it up specifically in the light of whether you’d do the same trade he made.
In the spirit of the Tim Ferriss tip above, I won’t link the video, but I will summarize basically, that this was a man in his mid-to-late 30’s to early 40’s (who knows really – the effects of stress hit differently) who gave up what he claimed was a lucrative job in cybersecurity in silicon valley, to start out on the digital nomad life.
He described giving up his nice car, plush apartment, benefits, and the high salary that made it all possible, although I specifically didn’t use the word “lifestyle” because he claimed he didn’t have one: it was just work work work.
That was his before:
Good renumeration, bad lifestyle conditions.
His after, became more or less the opposite.
The video was made from his studio apartment in some developing SEA country (I feel I am giving no identifiable information in this detail, as it would be amongst a sea of beginner nomads making videos from their studios, although many of them are trying to sell the “amazing” lifestyle of being “so free” while also having to live in studios, whereas he was being very transparent about his realities), and he was describing things in his life now as mostly a lot less work, and a lot, lot, less pay.
Like What You See?
What struck me was just how good an example all this was of something I have found time and time again: the predominant filter that nomads seem to take about just how damn cheap everything can/”should”/has to be, or, probably most often, bragging about things’ cheapness.
“Oh that restaurant was the best – it was so cheap!”
“Man, my place is so cheap! Amazing!”
“I love X, it’s so cheap!”
You can’t go near a day in a nomad hub without hearing or participating in a conversation with these tones being strongly present, if not literally verbatim.
In his video though, what really struck me was the amount of time he spent pontificating over the value of a particular purchase he made, and thinking about the exchange rate and trying to correct himself, over the matter of a few dollars. He wanted to be sure to correctly represent whether the thing he was talking about was a dollar, or two dollars, or five (whatever the exact amount was – again he is probably not the first to do this, so we’re focusing on the concept rather than the details), lest the viewer be vastly mislead.
It’s a sign of integrity – and surely you could hear it in his voice. He was being transparent, he mentioned as much and just how hard it was for him to make the video.
I am proud of him for even taking the leap, and I don’t mean to disparage it one bit, as it’s certainly a great indicator of character to leave one’s cushy circumstances to leap into the unknown..
But the obsession of whether something costs a dollar or two for the actual minute or two he spent talking about it and disclaiming this and that around it, saddened me a bit, and made me want to e-reach through the monitor, shake him a bit, and let him know (I don’t shout, but if it helps you to imagine someone trying to be hyper motivational and shouting this, go ahead):
“Travel doesn’t have to be a trade off between your present and your future!”
To me, his situation really begged that question: does the leap have to be (or be likely to be) into something that, objectively speaking, puts one worse off in the future, at least financially?
And it’s one I put to you, whether you would make that trade…
…But I want to put it to you in a specific light: do you think that’s the trade you have to make?
You see, something that was abundantly clear to me from the video – something I’ve noticed time and time again when speaking with those precise people (who do not make up the whole, but are plentiful) that seem to filter the value of objects & experiences primarily through their cheapness factor – is that this was a trade made out of escapism, a certain sense of desperation, which in his case was due in part to burn out (who hasn’t been there, lucky if you’re there with enough money to take off and figure things out along the way as you recover), and a sense of a mutual exclusivity or even contradiction between being able to have both a good income and a life of travel and time enough to do things you want.
That is the spirit in which I want to pose that question to you:
Would you call life overall better, if you were working far less, making a pittance, but doing so from somewhere you could subsist from that pittance?
Would you still have that view when considering the trajectory for your future, and the idea of having to be stuck on that subsistence treadmill basically forever, and potentially being in an even worse spot if some type of unforeseen event put you on the wrong side of the razor thin line you were skating?
And what if that wasn’t even necessary? If you knew it didn’t have to be a massive pendulum swing from one side to the other where income significantly decreased as travel increased – which to everyone’s credit has been the paradigm related to travel since just about forever – would that still be a trade you’d make?
The reality is, it’s not a matter of one or the other.
You can absolutely do and have both.