How To Save Money And Elongate Your Travels By Travelling Slowly
Perfect hello and welcome to another episode of the Y we travel podcast today we want to find out how you can save money and elongate your travels by traveling slowly no I’m a slow Met Myself And um other people are finding out that this is actually a very good
Way to travel around the world so with me on the show today I have Sarah and Ryan they’re traveling for quite some time and they’re also slow Mets and we want to dive into this right now so let’s welcome to the show hi Sarah hi Ryan how are you today hey clous happy
To be here hi you see from nice to meet you also I’ve never heard the term slow mad before yeah right I think I will use it from now on yeah it’s called slow nor mading so slow met in short form and I think that’s that’s the best way to
Describe what we’re doing so give me a bit of a background before we get started how how did you become digital norat what was the decision- making process there and since when are you on the road so it was separate for both of us so if I start and then you can go
Through your your own experience but um in at the end of 2018 I decided to pack up from the UK and I went to Australia um on a working holiday Visa and I had a really great time I was there right up until March 2020 and I went back to the
UK because of the whole pandemic thing and I spent about a year and a half in the UK working in a few different jobs and uh I just wanted to be back on the road I wanted to be free um I knew people were making money online and
Traveling while doing it and I thought right this is for me at this point I’d already been building up my skills in photography and then while I was in the UK I started learning videography as well um so in 2021 was it 2021 yeah yeah November 2021
Uh I decided to leave to go to Barley which a lot of people that are aspiring Nomads decide to do um it was good for me it’s not always good for some people but I ended up being pretty lucky with the networking that I managed to achieve
While I was in barley um and through that time I sort of continued to build up my skills and then eventually at the beginning of or at the end of last year at the end of 2022 uh I went freelance and I went completely on my own started
Building my own clients and since January 2023 we’ve been traveling together well we met in June 2022 but I’ll let Sarah explain that um but yeah since since January 2023 we’ve been on the road traveling slowly yeah for me is a little bit different um it goes back to
2017 and I had no idea what a digital nut was the only things I knew is that I was really sick with my um office work back at home in Switzerland and I just decide one day to be like okay I want to quit everything by see you and I took a
Oneway flight to India where I start my backpacking Journey at that time and which brought me through uh I think around 113 different count around South Asia and Southeast Asia where I found a lot of digital nomads and there I start to realize that oh my God there is not
Only the option to actually work in the office but I still can work whever I want to be with just my own laptop so um while I was uh traveling I started to understand better what skills I could build based on what I like and I started
To approach the word of social media in terms of social media managing and uh then from in 2019 I flew back uh to Europe for a couple of year I was little bit confused about what I actually want to do because it seems that everybody
Can be like oh I want to become a digital NORAD and that’s a straight path I’m just going to go through there for me it was a little bit like oh I would like to reach that point but I don’t really know how to so I was like jumping
Trying to find my own way and this brought me back to Europe where I worked for a couple of year um during the pandemic so I was able to have a job which was remote at home um but still um brought me to work from Germany at the
Time I decid to move back in Germany so it was still remote but not completely fully remote because I cannot really travel while doing it I can be everywhere in Germany but not everywhere in the world which was my goal so um in 2021 then I decided to fly to Bali
Because it was the last place I was during my Backpacker journey and I was like okay let’s go back from where I finished and try to start over again and then I met a lot of people a lot of great connection that really inspire me to understand better where I can move to
Became a full-time digital Nomad and uh as same as Ryan I was able to landar some great um network with people so I land my first clients and like this was like a BAL rolling and uh then in 2022 June I met Ryan and things were going
Well for both of us we were leaving then together in Bal for another six months and then in January 2023 this year I think we decided we we are not over with Bali but it’s we are ready to start to travel fulltime again kind of and from there we decide to travel different
Count soueast Asia now we are in South America and the rest did in Europe as well yeah moving around I think that’s a bit of a common nominator for a lot of people they start with backpacking um they see there is a potential of having a life abroad from they’re coming from
They don’t want to stop traveling um but obviously being a Backpacker being in South America for instance on the Great good trail on southeast Asia and just moving forward like every week can be very tiring exhausting and obviously it’s very difficult to focus on creating a business on maintaining a job and so
On and so forth so what was the transition process for you from your mindset it’s like yeah we we’re Backpackers into oh no we are digital Nomads we’re working was what was the process um I think it started when we were in barley we were in barley for a
Long time um we were both there we both just coincident moved there at the same in the same month within the same few days or something like that um so it started there obviously and we started to build up our networking and our resources for dig being becoming a
Digital Nomad um but when we left in January 2023 we already had ongoing clients we had regular work um we went to Thailand and originally we were like we we never wanted to travel as fast as we did when we were backpacking that’s for sure um but we we were like right we
Still need to make maintain our work we need to keep our clients happy but also we want to be able to explore so for the first sort of month in Thailand we decided to actually move every week um but we quickly realized that even this
Was going to be too fast for us uh we were finding that we were spending 5 days inside working and then a day or day two two days max outside exploring and we felt like we were just rushing the area so we at one point in February
When we got to changai we were like right let’s just book for the month and and uh and we did we did that and during that month we managed to explore a lot of the surrounding areas we went up to Chang Ry um and and a few of the other
Places and we realized that this is probably the right speed um and we’ve been doing that ever since so we ever since then we’ve been staying in places for a month at a time um there’s multiple benefits to that which I’m sure we’ll talk about soon um but yeah so now
Now we we pick a place that we want to go we usually try to make sure it has decent Wi-Fi or know it’s going to have good internet connection uh and we stay for the month and since then we’ve been really feel like we’ve been really experiencing the area that we’ve been
Staying in and we have much more opportunity to explore whilst also still being able to upkeep our work yeah and I will add as well that I think that we can’t even afford to be like Backpackers anymore right now because we can’t we don’t have let’s say the luxury to stay
In a host like party also where a lot of maybe younger people are where there are a lot of party we still need quiet place with a good Wi-Fi we don’t want to have noise when we have call with our clients so I think we transition without really
Thinking about it we simply understand which are our needs in becoming digital Nomads and which responsibility we have so I think it was a very um normal um transition transition yeah okay let’s talk a little bit about the advantages being a slow Nomad um you said obviously
You have a bit of more structure in your day how do you schedule your your days or your weeks because obviously you want to see also something of the place you’re in or not only working how do you work with that do you want to go for
That yeah so um this really depends from place to place I think because we like basically we know that we want to stay in one place for at least one month we have different type of working schedule um for maybe Ryan Works more on Project
Based I work more on our hourly so we have to try to also manage both of our times what we do um is that before arriving one place we already decided which type of activity we want to do and we start to understand where in which
Day we can put this activities so we already have kind of General plan what we want to do and the rest of the time we can work um in terms of uh daily work uh that’s that’s really we have quite we we we’ve developed sort of a pretty good
Routine with waking up early in the morning getting up doing some work then we always try to make sure if we if we’re not on an exploring day or we’re not particularly busy we always try to go to the gym and make time for our physical health because a lot of people
Tend to sort of put that to the side sometimes it’s hard to especially for us at the beginning as well when we were back in Thailand we didn’t really try to implement that into our routine until about April but we always found that when you’re a digital Nomad you’re constantly sitting inside somewhere
Might be in a calf it might be in a co-work space or for us quite often it’s it’s at home um and you don’t you don’t realize sometimes that you’re neglecting your phys physical health as well um so yeah and we also try to organize the trips like Sarah says in advance before
We come but we also try to put them on weekdays just because we can um so to try and avoid sort of the weekend crowds of the domestic tourists as well and stuff like that um but yeah we’ve we’ve over the last sort of three months especially I think we’ve developed
A very sort of productive routine that um really helps us balance like like like Sarah said hers is hourly so she has something that she needs to deliver at the end of every week I I’m a video editor so minees are more projects so I
Sort of just you know I get my projects in and then I usually deliver them within a week as well but um but mine’s a little bit more predictable you have daily tasks that you need to do whereas mine I can sort of say all right this
Project needs to be done uh by you know within the next week but I can sort of put it off for a couple of days if if I need to go explore or I can just sit down and get it done so I know that I
For like so like for example if it has to be done in a week I can get it done within two days and then I know that I have the next five days that I don’t have to do that project sort of thing yeah um but it’s definitely been a
Journey to figure out how to balance sort of work and play as well um but I think I think we got there yeah let talk a a little bit about diving into the place you are into culture into your environment surroundings and so on so obviously being a Backpacker there’s entertaining
More than enough you said you’re in party hostels you’re meeting people all the time if you’re in your own place um focusing around work it can be sometimes a little bit lonely for a lot of people out there and they basically just in another place doing the same thing but
Not really getting in touch with the people that living in the place and getting the experience of culture what do you do to make sure that you get all of this in um we we try to put aside time to go out and meet people um just for example
Last month we were in Lima in Peru and it we went we decided to try we hadn’t tried a Pisco Sal before which as you probably know is is very cultural here in Peru um so we went out and had a couple of them and then we ended up just
Chatting to the table next to us which were a group of uh peruvians and we joined them for the night that was fun um this month has been very handy for us we actually we’re staying in an Airbnb at the moment which is a bit of a duplex
But it’s within uh a Family House sort of thing so we actually spent um Christmas with the family here and I think we’re going to spend New Years with them as well which is pretty cool but it is one thing that we definitely struggle with I think
Is the lon not not the loneliness because we have each other but we have the social life is difficult because as you mentioned it’s hard to get out and meet people when you need to sit inside and work um sometimes we sign up to co-work spaces like we did last month
And we’ll talk chat to a few people there um some I don’t think we’ve ever actually like there’s plenty of obviously Facebook groups that you can join that they sort of arrange meetups and stuff but I don’t know if we’ve actually ever done I think that uh we
Struggle with the fact that even though we travel slow we still stay in one place for one month and we are so busy during that month that I think I feel that meeting someone is like the last thing that I’m going to think about it because every going say we have each
Other and uh we love we love partying and we love to talk to new people but I think it’s not something we necessarily looking for I mean we look forward but it’s let’s say the last things that we have to think about it right now but another way
Is that right now we are in South America and is where we know less people let’s say so we try to in this case this months we are staying together with this family which is amazing um but when we were in Southeast Asia we have more
Friends Bas a little bit all around so it’s also easier for us let’s say oh let’s we let’s meet someone in koala lur because we know that someone is going to stay there if we if we going to go back to Bali we know that there are people
That we can hang out with but I also think it helps that we’re both very present on social media and we have been for a long time and we have a lot of uh as a like my I built my social media on travel photography and I met a
Lot of travel photographers through Instagram so there are people around the world that we know have the same interests as us that we can meet up with um I mean South America is very sparse for that I think yeah I don’t know anyone actually in South America at the
Moment no Min but I think as you said like like for instance Facebook exper group would probably be the best way to find new people the fact is that we don’t we are in them but we don’t use it for that purpose but if someone is new
Into this world let’s say someone quit everything to move to the other side of the world to start a noal career I think that expa group are probably one of the best best way sometimes for instance in Bal there was this um M Bumble best friends so basically
Bumble dating app but it has the best friends option I think Tinder has that as well yeah yeah these are also great way to meet people and usually you know in this platform you also find many people that are in the same shoes as you
So maybe they feel longing as well and I think it’s the best way to meet but as well social media like really social media I think is the one of the best way to find people from around the world so I think the internet is your place definitely as a digital Nomad
Everything is digital there but um let’s let’s talk about a little bit on um how to get started and the biggest fears of people is obviously how can I make money um that’s the one so what do you think is the minimum amount of money that you
Need to make per month um to to maintain this kind of lifestyle and a lot of people might have fears as like how can I find accommodation how do I get from A to B is the place safe and so on so forth how how do you approach all of these different
Topics ah so we do all of our research in advance for all of these um so the biggest thing that we always preach to people who ask us how do I become a digital Nomad as well is you you need to have a skill you need to have something
That’s marketable to other people you need to have an unfair advantage that other people don’t have that they want to then hire you for for the most part I mean you can always try and find work as an online customer service chat bot agent person or you can teach English
Online or something like that but they’re not sort of like what’s the word sort of like they’re not sustainable over the long term um in terms of amount of money it obviously does depend on where where you are uh we always would recommend people to go to Southeast Asia
Or now possibly South America now that we’ve been here and experienced it ourself um and you could easily live off ,000 to $1,500 a month I mean that’s our budget actually mine’s there we try to budget about $1,200 a month um so you can even do less if you if if you are
Happy to stay in hostels if you are happy to eat local food all the time rather than you know the western food um so yeah we we budget about 1,200 um what what else was there what else did you ask in the question how do we approach um finding accommodation
Information about the location and so on I think that’s mainly on internet like for accommodation we always relate to Airbnb that so far we found great for finding long-term accommodation also because um again like we have a budget so as staying one place for one month through A&B Airbnb give us Big Discount
Like between 20 and 40% discounts compared if we will book for only two weeks let’s say there will be no discount so that’s that’s a great way for us to budget and it’s something that will definitely recommend another benefit of slow travel exactly exactly
And uh sou this St is a great place to start out because you don’t need tons of money I mean if you like it’s very personal actually the way you the amount of money you want to start to travel to I think it’s like based on what you make
You feel safe personally I always said myself before I start to traveling I need to have at least 10,000 EUR to start to travel and once I reach that level I can just quit and it’s fine like I don’t want to have a plan B because I
Know if I will have a plan B I will fall back which is not the best advice maybe but for me it works and I don’t know like I I feel that that was a great way to push me to keep going forward towards a digital lifestyle and
Then for researching the place we sort of um we try to pick places that we know are going to be suitable for digital Nomads anyway at this point we don’t try to choose location or cities that don’t have a particularly large digital Nomad presence because we know if there is
Already going to be a digital Nomad presence we know there’s going to be good Wi-Fi we know there’s going to be uh accommodation available we know there’s going to be good food options around we know there’s going to be co-work spaces if we need them or or a
Gym or whatnot um so we pick them and then we usually Google before we book our Airbnb we usually Google the like best uh best neighborhood in XYZ for digital Nomads and we’ll sort of compare what we find on blogs on the internet um and then we’ll just sort of pick and go
From there they tend to be the more expensive uh neighborhoods but they also tend to be the safer neighborhoods as well um so that’s sort of like two birds in one stone in trying to figure out sort of where to go and also where safe and where’s not safe and then we use
That uh location as a base for the month and then we do our sort of weekend trips or day trips from there or explore in a local area so that’s sort of like our process of trying to find accommodation and where we would go yeah and I that
Maybe at first you may think oh my God I have to find a place and stay for one month there what if it’s not a perfect place what if I arrive there and I don’t like it the thing is that one month flies so fast you arrive there you
Unpacked and one month goes away like this and you have to P again they like oh where this mon has gone yeah what’s the worst thing that can happen exactly I understand you um trying to help other people that want to get into the digital nor lifestyle with
Your YouTube channel and other ways tell me a little B about it this is Sarah’s passion so ah yeah so I have a YouTube channel where yeah I try when we go to a digal place I like to make video about it like how is the digital NAD life
There um I have some more maybe educational content where I talk about how you can start um I I feel that there is not as I said there is not a straight line for everyone because at the end of the day it narrow down still about
Finding a job and we all know that it’s not like the easiest things in in life but I I feel that it’s nice to um um having someone to talk to about how to start out because sometimes people that want to start a digital NORAD life um
Are struggling in the current life maybe they’re unhappy and usually in the environment they are is an environment that where people are like why why do you want to travel the world that’s a little bit like are you not happy with what you have right now but we don’t all
Have the same dream so I feel that um I was in that position and if I can give some support to someone by kind of showing them a a way to become a omad um that that’s why I try to do in my YouTube channel that’s what you want F
Isn’t it is sort of teach people yeah how to become digital n and sort of help them along the right path yeah I mean I I I can’t help them find a job that’s that’s up to them but like if I can show them a way you know to that this is
Actually possible there are people out there that do it they are outside there are so many digital Nomad Visa that they can um take like since the pandemic these things explode there are a lot of placees you can move to and start your remote career there so there is a way
That’s that’s the main thing yeah very true before we come to the end of our chat today is there one final thought that you want to leave our listeners with um I so besides just making sure you have a skill or building a skill to become a digital Nomad I think the
Biggest thing is just to do it I think it’s just to leave a lot of people they put it off they’ll say oh I don’t have enough money right now to go and do it or this is coming up so I can’t leave or you know the world is in a weird state
So I’m not I can’t go at the moment but you got to put all of those sort of thoughts aside and just just up and go get if you if you haven’t got a job then save up like Sarah says maybe 10,000 Euros or dollars or whatever you working
But honestly I don’t think even you even need that much I think I left the with £3,000 in the bank account and and a dream sort of like one of those um if it if you go if you really want it to happen you’ll make it happen one way or
Another you’ll make it happen so if if this digital Nomad life is the life that you really want to lead then stop hesitating and just sell everything and go like Sarah says without a plan B and if you don’t have a plan B then plan a
Then plan a has to work yeah I agree with Ryan I feel that um if you want to do something life you should go for it I know that it seems very know like those type of inspirational type of quot but honestly that’s all it is like if you
Have a dream just go for it it’s GNA if it’s not going to work out it’s because maybe you have to try to change the direction but if you are seated at home and every time something goes wrong you you dream about traveling the world and working
Remotely like don’t wait to every time feel bad to try to think about it think about it also when you are feel good because you can use that as trigger to actually become a digital number and travel the word full time true words yeah where can people find out more
About you guys and get in touch with you so we’ve just started a new brand called across every border and we are across every border on YouTube on Tik Tok on uh Instagram our website and on Pinterest um I also have a an Instagram under my
Own name r Ley Banks but I’m not very active on there anymore but you’re still active on on your one yeah I have Instagram YouTube where I talk about digital Nomad and the endle is Joo shapes and you can find me there I will put the link in the show
Notes I will put the links in the show notes so just one click away Brian Sarah thanks so much for your time today to give us an Insight on your slow travels around the world I wish you all the best on future travels and hope to share to
You soon thanks so much very much so much have a lovely day
Welcome to this episode of the Why We Travel Podcast. In this episode, we talk with Sara & Ryan about why they choose a slow-paced approach to travel as digital nomads.
You can learn more about Sara & Ryan and their travels at https://acrosseveryborder.com/
The Why We Travel Podcast website: https://whywetravel.net/
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