Ever wondered how to choose a travel destination that not only satisfies your wanderlust but also aligns with your work-from-anywhere lifestyle?
We've got answers!
We are back with another exciting episode and this time we navigate the journey of selecting the perfect destination for you. We dissect the eight key factors you need to consider before making this pivotal decision - border control, climate, cost of living, safety and security, bucket list activities, community, lifestyle, and work environment. This episode offers you the keys to unlock the nomad mindset and thrive as a profitable nomad.
Listen in as we offer valuable insights and strategies for narrowing down travel destinations as a digital nomad.
Join our free private Facebook Group Digital Nomad Start-Up Circleif you're interested in living nomadically, growing your online business, and forming a community of others doing the same.
Ever wondered how to choose a travel destination that not only satisfies your wanderlust but also aligns with your work-from-anywhere lifestyle?
We've got answers!
We are back with another exciting episode and this time we navigate the journey of selecting the perfect destination for you. We dissect the eight key factors you need to consider before making this pivotal decision - border control, climate, cost of living, safety and security, bucket list activities, community, lifestyle, and work environment. This episode offers you the keys to unlock the nomad mindset and thrive as a profitable nomad.
Listen in as we offer valuable insights and strategies for narrowing down travel destinations as a digital nomad.
Join our free private Facebook Group Digital Nomad Start-Up Circleif you're interested in living nomadically, growing your online business, and forming a community of others doing the same.
Hello and welcome to the profitable Nomad Couple podcast. This is a show where we share all of our secrets about building a sustainable location independent lifestyle.
Speaker 2:
We are Austin and Monica. We're a digital Nomad couple here to help you develop an entrepreneurial mindset, ignite your passions and develop a purpose-driven online business.
Speaker 1:
Get ready for weekly insights and inspiring stories to empower you to live life on your own terms.
Speaker 2:
So are you ready to unlock the Nomad mindset and embrace a life of limitless possibilities? Let's dive in. Hello, hello and welcome to this episode on picking where to go.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, this is something that people have been asking us a lot about, especially recently that we announced that we're going to Colombia at the end of this year, and it's a really good question, because when you can go anywhere in the world, how do you pick where you can go, and it can be kind of tricky to narrow it down and figure that out.
Speaker 2:
This is kind of a weird dilemma I guess we came across when we first started digital nomadding.
Speaker 2:
We realized most people choose where to live based on either where their family lives, because they want to be close to family, or where they're going to school or their work. The job kind of dictates where they live. As a digital nomad, the whole world is opened up to you and you are not tied to any specific location, which I feel like. One of the first things you start to ask is where are we going to go live? And especially if you're someone who's bucket list is as big as my mnemonicas, there's so many places that you want to travel to. Part of you just wants to go and visit all of them right away. But you've got to prioritize where you're going to go first, and sometimes that can be kind of hard. So we're going to hopefully, at the end of this episode you'll have some better strategies and ideas for how to narrow it down and how to research and know what to look for in each place to know if it's the right place for you.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, a little caveat before we get started. There is no wrong answer when deciding where to go and why. All of it is super subjective. It all just depends on what you want. Every place you go is going to have pros and cons, and if you end up somewhere you don't enjoy, that's okay. You'll have memorable experiences and you can move on and know that in the future that's not going to be a country you want to go back to.
Speaker 2:
It's kind of like we talk about how online business is one big experiment, and traveling and living in different countries is very similar. Every time you travel somewhere new, you're going to find new things that you do enjoy and new things that you don't enjoy, and that's going to help you hone in on knowing where to go the next time you travel. Another thing to keep in mind, too, is these things are going to change. What you want now and where you want to live now might be different than where you wanted to live five years ago and where you're going to want to live five years from now, in the future, but that's, I mean. I think that's a beautiful thing. That means you're changing, you're evolving as a person. So this is maybe an episode to continually go back to, or an idea to continually go back to and continue to evaluate what it is that you want. So, with that in mind, what makes a good destination for you? Well, first off, you got to want to go there. I feel like that one's a given. This destination should fit your lifestyle. It should be a place that you can afford, based on your budget and your income. It should be a place that you are permitted to travel to. So not all countries are permissible based on the passport or the visa requirements, and then it should have what you are looking for, and what I mean by that is, you know, good internet speed, or maybe a certain type of community, or maybe you are searching for a certain type of climate. Whatever it is, that place should have it.
Speaker 2:
So what do you start looking for when you're deciding where to travel, monica? And I think that one of the first things you should do when you were trying to decide where you want to travel is to decide why you want to travel, and this is something that we really like to like. An exercise we really like to give people is to find your why. Cause this is going to help carry you through all of your travels and all of your endeavors. But then also, if you know why you want to travel, that's going to help you narrow down. You know it's going to help you filter, use that criteria as filter for what these destinations have to offer for you, and then it's going to make it easy to know what you're looking for.
Speaker 2:
So, as you are researching different destinations, you know exactly whether it is or is not a good fit for you, so we're going to jump into eight different factors that you should consider when trying to find out where you want to travel to, and these are eight factors that were highlighted from Kristen Wilson. She is a digital nomad expert. She literally wrote the book on digital nomadding digital nomad for Demi's. It's a really good book. I recommend you go read it and she breaks it down into four fixed factors, which are things that are out of your control, and for flexible factors. These are things that you do have some control over, and so we're going to touch on each one and talk about how to research it and what to consider.
Speaker 1:
All right. So the first is border control. So this is knowing if your passport allows you into the country, what they allow into the country, for how long they let you into their country, different things like that, and all of this information can be found on your government site. So if you are coming from the US, travelgov is a really good site to kind of get the ins and outs of the border control.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I mean, maybe you want to live in Portugal for a full two years, but your visa only allows you to live there for six months. Like, obviously that's going to limit how long you can be where there are, I mean, there's tourist visas, there's work visas, there are digital nomad visas now. So there's lots of options and different options will have different limits. But yeah, that's going to be one big factor. So definitely look that up and know before you go.
Speaker 1:
All right. The next fixed factor, which is actually a really important one for us, is the climate. So I am a sunshine seeker, a summer chaser, if you will. I do much better in the sunshine and the warm weather, so it's important for me to pay attention to the climate. It'll be important for you, too, to show up knowing what you're getting into, and a really great resource for that is weathersparkcom.
Speaker 2:
Weathersparkcom. It's awesome. It's like breaks down everything precipitation and cloudiness, and temperatures and humidity and you can look by individual city. It's a really, really good resource, but not just like do you want sun? Do you want snow, you know, if you're going somewhere for their winter sports or things like that. But also there are certain regions that have like dangerous weather, like hurricane season or typhoon season. You don't want to be traveling in places that are dangerous, so that's also something you definitely want to consider.
Speaker 2:
The next one is the cost of living. So this is just whether or not you can afford it. Some regions and countries of the world have an incredibly low cost of living and especially if you're making money in the US dollar, then your dollar is going to go a lot farther. Some places don't have that benefit and you're actually going to be spending more than you earn or you're going like the exchange rate is not going to be in your favor is what I mean.
Speaker 2:
So we recommend checking out different comparison tools. You can just Google cost of living comparison tool and then you can enter in, you know, either by city specifically, or by country, and see how it compares to where you're living now, and you can get it. I mean, it's not always going to be perfect, especially since everyone's living circumstances varies incredibly, but it'll give you a pretty good estimate and at least a pretty good idea of what you can expect when you get there. You can also check out Nomad list. We're going to reference them a couple times. There's a lot of good resources on Nomad list, but I believe they also have a cost of living comparison tool that you can use.
Speaker 1:
The fourth and final fixed factor.
Speaker 2:
Geez wow that was a lot of fourth and final fixed factor.
Speaker 1:
We said that really well is safety and security. And now this is a really interesting topic to me because safety is relevant. It really depends on on several different factors. Number one if you're traveling alone or with a group, your gender, your sexuality, your race and ethnicity all play different factors into what is safe and what is secure for you. And also I think there's a level of just like I might feel safe in different situations than you do, like I might have a higher or lower tolerance for safety than you do. So this is a really interesting one it is important to kind of pay attention to.
Speaker 1:
We would recommend checking out travel safe dash abroadcom. It's a really good resource for people to kind of break down what are the risks? Are there pit parking, pit pickpocketing risks? Are there risks in taxis? Is it you know what are the risks in each of the cities that you're looking at going to? Beyond that, I would definitely recommend reaching out to travelers who have been to this place, especially travelers who are in a similar situation as you are as far as sexuality or race and ethnicity go, just to kind of get a feel for if this place is going to be safe for you or not.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, just a little added thing about travel safe dash abroadcom. That I really like is it gives you a safety score. Like Monica said, it's broken down by different categories, but then that gives you a general score based on all those factors combined, which is really nice. So those are the four fixed factors. You've got border control, climate, cost of living and safety, insecurity. Now we're going to jump into the four flexible factors. So these are things that you have a little bit more control over. So the first one is your bucket list, and that one simply is where do you want to travel to, like what are some things you want to see, types of cultures you want to experience or people you want to meet, what are some monuments you want to go see and visit? You know, I feel like that one's pretty simple Just what's on your bucket list and what do you want to see and do.
Speaker 1:
Then the next one is what kind of community do you want to be in? Do you want to have a really strong digital nomad community? Do you want to integrate more with the local people? Do you want to learn a certain language? There's a lot of different factors that kind of go into this community aspect. Again, really great resource I is Nomad List. Nomad List is really cool. Actually, it's a really big rabbit hole to go down, but it's really fun. And then the next one is Facebook groups. We have joined a ton of Facebook groups all over the world and met some incredible people at their Facebook groups.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, we're going to link a previous episode in the show notes we just did one recently on building your community so that we dive a lot deeper into that one in that episode. The third of the four flexible factors is your lifestyle. So this could be things like you know, are you more of a beachgoer or a mountain person? This could be like for Monica and I a life. Something that we really want in our lifestyle is we want to live somewhere that we can walk around. We want to be able to walk from our apartment to the grocery store, walk to the bus station. We want everything in walking distance and obviously like we're happy to take in a bus or a car train every now and again, but we want everything primarily to be walkable for us. I mean, maybe you're someone who really wants to do yoga every day and do like a yoga retreat. Whatever it is that you are into, whatever lifestyle you want to live, you can look into what that country or city offers in that regard.
Speaker 1:
And finally, the work environment that you will be most productive in that you want to be in while you are building your business or while you are working online. So do you want to be in a place that has lots of cafes or co-working spaces? Do you want to be in a place that's busier? Do you want to be in a place that's quieter and just kind of like, pull all of that into your decision making. Another good resource for that is you guessed it Nomad List is really good for telling you about where are good places to go for your work environment.
Speaker 2:
The reason Nomad List is a good resource for a lot of these is there's so many data points from so many different Nomads from all across the globe and it's kind of a pooled resource that, like people can submit what safety was like for them, what the climate was like for them, and so it collects all of these different data points and information into one spot, so it makes it really easy to get a. I mean, it's not going to be perfect, but it gives you a good estimate or a good suggestion of what you could expect.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so we are not in any way, shape or form like endorsers, or what's that word?
Speaker 2:
Affiliates.
Speaker 1:
Affiliates yeah, we're not affiliated with Nomad List. We just really enjoy spending time on Nomad.
Speaker 2:
List. There's a lot of cool stuff on there. We did see, though I don't remember what city it was specifically, but there is a city that we, our country that we absolutely loved. We definitely want to go back there. And then we saw on Nomad List, after we'd already traveled there, like it wasn't ranked super highly. A lot of people didn't have obviously the same experience that we did because it was kind of ranked a little bit poorly.
Speaker 2:
So there is a lot of subjectivity in Nomad List, so keep that in mind as you're browsing. You might find something on there that other people say like oh, never travel here because it has this. You're like actually, that's exactly what I want. Which brings us back to our first point is there's no right or wrong answer to any of this. It all depends on what you're looking for. You know what you want out of the country. So just want to recap briefly the eight factors to consider. We've got border control, climate, cost of living, safety and security, which are all fixed factors, and then the four flexible factors. We have your bucket list, your community, your lifestyle and your work environment.
Speaker 1:
So, when it comes to picking a place to go, we want you to go through this exercise. First thing we want to do is to write down what kind of lifestyle you want to be living. Then, from there, you'll write down three cities or countries that you would like to visit that kind of call to you. From there you're going to research those areas. I would start with no med list, but you can also go to your government site and go through each of these eight factors that we talked about and research each place based on these factors.
Speaker 2:
That should help you narrow down to a place or two that you want to go visit. You can put that towards the top of your list. And again, I know we've kind of reiterated this point a couple times, but just one more time before we hop off Things can change. Like you might think right now that what you really want is one thing, you go there, you find out it's not what you wanted. You're just collecting information at that point and then you can make a more informed decision and as you grow and as you live your life, things are going to change. That's 100% Okay. Don't feel bad about that. It's not anything that's fixed that we'll talk about this till we're blue in the face. That is one of the most beautiful things about being a digital nomad is that you get to create the life that you want and nothing is set in stone. Thanks so much for joining us here on the profitable nomad couple podcast. We appreciate you listening to us today.
Speaker 1:
If you enjoyed this episode, share it on Instagram and be sure to tag us. At Austin and Monica, together, we can inspire others to embrace a location independent lifestyle.
Speaker 2:
And while you're there, we'd love to connect with you, so make sure you follow us for more tips and inspiration on living your dream location independent lifestyle.
Speaker 1:
Until next week. Remember that you have the power to shape your own path. So stay curious, stay adventures and stay connected.