Money Lessons I Learned From Becoming A Digital Nomad

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This is the digital nomad quest podcast, Sharon Tseung. teaching people how to build passive income, become financially free and design their best lives.

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Hey guys, Sharon from digital nomad quest, and today we’re gonna talk about the money lessons I learned from quitting my job and traveling the world for two years as a digital nomad. So it’s actually been a while since I did my two years then as a digital nomad, I basically traveled all over Europe and Asia and I had quit my job to kind of devote my time to building passive income streams online. So I was building income streams through Etsy, blogging, Amazon, and I was just working out of cafes in different places like Lisbon, Athens, Bucharest, Korea, Thailand, a bunch of different places. So even though it’s been a while, the CNBC acorns article came out. And in it, I talked about all the lessons I learned. So I wanted to kind of recap it and talk about it today. Now, let me tell you a bit about the journey. So in 2014, I just noticed all the life I was missing out on, I traveled around Europe for about a month. And I saw people just living life enjoying the present moment, they’re playing music, they were just so happy. And I kind of realized how much life I was missing out on because I had been living in the Bay Area all my life, I never lived in other places. And it was so interesting to hear their perspectives and how different it was from where I was back home, people all around me were ready to climb the corporate ladder kind of settled down. And I had so much I wanted to see, I was getting tired of the same routine commuting to the same place in the same four walls of the office. And I was just worried that that was going to be the rest of my life until I was too old to enjoy my life in retirement. That’s why I was wondering whether there are other ways to live. And then I stumbled upon the term digital nomadic, which is basically location independence, working from the comfort of your laptop, so you could be anywhere you want. And then I also learned a lot about passive income and creating cash flow where money works for you. So you don’t have to trade your time for money. So I became clear that I wanted to do this, I decided to book a one way flight to Stockholm. And I booked that six months out with a lot of fear. And me I was really scared, I had no idea what I was doing, because nobody around me was doing the same things. But I was just working hard building up my passive income, I took multiple part time remote positions. And then in 2016, I did it I went to Stockholm. And then I went all over Europe and Asia, I was able to build multiple income streams and come back from this whole trip where I boosted my net worth through it. You know, usually people spend all their money on travel and have to work and do it all again. But the way I did it was I made sure I got cash flow and passive income where it covered my daily expenses. And I was able to enjoy my time freely. Now again, I’m devoted to teaching you guys about financial freedom and how to create passive income streams on these different channels. And I was recently laid off two months ago. So essentially, I’m retired from the nine to five just working on my side hustles when I feel like it, allowing that cash flow to create that freedom and time for myself. Now let’s rewind and talk about my money lesson. So first off, I spent a year and a half preparing my finances. Now I have heard of people who just buy a one way ticket to Chiang Mai, which is one of the most popular places for digital nomads. And they’ll have only like $500 in their pocket. Just hoping it all worked out. I was amazed when I heard these stories, like I literally met people like this because to me, I’m way more risk averse. I want to make sure everything goes kind of smoothly. And then I’m planning out every step of the way so that I feel safe financially. So I’ve always been a big saver. But when I really locked in those plans, like I bought that one way ticket, it just kicked me into high gear and I was like I need to get this working. I literally was so focused on my goals, I was so obsessed with this idea of passive income that I stopped hanging out with people as much I started really working hard. Okay, so when you’re starting out, you have to put in that work, I basically spent all 2015 trying to figure out how to create passive income, I shifted from real estate at the time to more online side hustles. And I took on two additional part time remote positions on top of my full time job. So I was thinking, you know, this will help me transition to building passive income while I’m on the road and it would allow me to boost my savings. So I would have a good amount in case anything goes wrong. I basically save for about two years of expenses or more. So you know, people usually recommend around six months but I was going into high gear working on that but also working on my side hustle and then at the same time I began blogging and then creating digital products on Etsy learning how to sell digital product just to prove to myself that I could succeed in creating cashflow. And once I hit that first 50 to $100 a month selling Kindle books selling digital products on Etsy. I was like, You know what, this is gonna work. I’m gonna keep working really hard on this. So by May of 2016, I had enough to really justify going abroad and like I mentioned, I had saved at least two years of expenses and I had remote part time positions that I could keep up with and when I quit my job, they actually let me do that as a part time position. So I basically had three part time remote positions while I was abroad.

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now because I spent so much of that time building these things up, and I started seeing more and more passive income from my ventures, but also my investments in stocks, crypto and real estate was helping me with that passive income as well. I was putting more into stocks and crypto during that time. And it really showed me the time and freedom I could be having. If I let that money work for me, as well as I had the side hustles going for me, I was blown away when I started living month to month in different places. Whereas before, I felt a lot more stuck. I had no other options here, I was able to see the world and really live life to its fullest potential and see what it’s all about. So that’s why I’m all about time freedom. And I hope you guys are learning from this channel where you guys are trying to create that for yourself as well. Number two, my perspective about work and what I valued also changed over time, I really realized, honestly, how privileged I was. And because I’m from the US, it does make it a lot easier for me to create these side hustles and opportunities. For example, if you want to rank a blog through SEO and make a lot of money from it, it’s a lot easier in the US versus like Greece. You know, I spoke with someone who tried to do the same thing. But in Greece, you’re not going to make as much money as if you were to do this in the US. So I was really grateful. In some cities, the average that people were making was around 600 to $1,000 a month, I met people who are making that amount, even as coders and it made me appreciate being from the US a lot more. But at the same time I realized that didn’t dictate how much happiness people had so many of these people, maybe they earn less, but they were more present and happier than a lot of the people I knew back home people abroad were really focused on you know, their friendships, their relationship and working on things that gave them joy, like music. Meanwhile, at home, a lot of people were chasing success trying to climb the ladder, like I mentioned. And to me, it’s a pursuit, that’s not going to make you much happier, in my opinion, having money to create that financial stability and freedom is going to make you happier, but continuously chasing more and more is not going to make you much happier. So I realized from this experience, that there’s really no one way to live, I can’t judge other people because their way of living could be making them so much happier than how other people are back home. Everyone’s values are different. And everyone’s version of success is different people equate success to money. But honestly, that’s not always the case. And usually not the case. To be honest, if you guys have heard of the top five regrets from the dying they are I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feeling. I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends, I wish that I’d let myself be happier. So if you guys see these five things, none of them say Oh, I should make more money. In fact, they say I shouldn’t have worked so hard. And I should have pursued a life that was really true to myself. That’s what I saw in a lot of these people. They were living lives true to themselves. And I hope to do the same and inspire others to do the same as well. Number three, I decided to come home and build a life that I wanted for myself, you know, I thought I had made it after I made some passive income, I was able to cover my minimal day to day expenses. I was living in Chiang Mai, Thailand at the time, I was spending $600 A month there. And overall with all my nomadic I was spending 1400 A month average across all these different countries including transportation, accommodations, entertainment, food, and all these different things. So I was like, You know what I’ve made it my passive income covers these expenses, I could just retire as a digital nomad. But I realized I wasn’t happy chasing cash flow. And it’s kind of going back to what I mentioned earlier, it made me unhappy, just kind of thinking always about these numbers that I had to hit at a hit this numeric goal for passive income and so on and so forth. Like I mentioned, I was in Chiang Mai. And a lot of people around me were very complacent, just happy with covering their minimal expenses. And that’s cool and all. But for me, I felt like I was too young, I had a lot that I wanted to do with my life, I was still very ambitious and wanted to learn more. So I decided to come home. This was a huge lesson in itself for me, because I realized that financial freedom is actually not the entire goal. So I talked about all these things. But in reality, it is just a means to an end, you need to figure out what matters to you most what you dream of doing who you want to spend time with how you want to live your life, because if you’re constantly thinking about money, at least for me, it’s not going to make you happy. So it was a huge money lesson to really understand what’s important for me and actually build a life that I truly cared about. And honestly, it was hard for me to come back because I knew people would judge me right. If I didn’t continuously do this for the rest of my life, then maybe people will think I failed and came back home and didn’t hit my goals. There was this fear of judgment, but I realized that it’s more important to be in line with my values. And I also realized that it’s okay to be in different stages of your life. I think the only time you fail is really when you totally give up and stop working on the things that you know you care about. So this was a failure. It was just a shift in my path based on the lessons I learned so I came back to the Bay Area in 2018. I decided to learn more and build my skills to be around

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loved ones and create something impactful. That was something I was missing. With all of this, I was improving my passive income numbers, but I didn’t feel like I was putting all my energy into one thing I was super proud of and passionate about. So I decided to start my YouTube channel, my Tiktok, where I really talk about how to create this passive income, create the side hustle towards financial freedom, and this has become the impactful fulfilling thing that I was looking for. So after this two year journey, where I was trying to figure out if I would love to become a digital nomad for the rest of my life, to see if I’d be able to live a life true to myself, like literally, these were the two questions I was wondering for myself. And I was also wondering, Where’s home for me? Who am I truly and I really figured all these things out with these two years of travel and building these passive income streams, I truly kind of realized what financial freedom meant to me. So the last point that I already mentioned is that I learned that financial freedom on its own, it’s just part of the ultimate goal now that I’ve had this experience financial freedom really means the time to spend with my loved ones who travel when I want to, to work on things that I’m passionate about, like creating valuable resources for you guys around financial freedom, personal finance, side hustles real estate doing other things like creating music, even fishing gardening, I wrote down a list of 101 goals that I want to pursue, a lot of it is around creating and learning. And it’s also a freedom that lets me become more stress free. And I don’t have to worry about when my next paycheck is, or if I’m going to be able to pay rent. It’s also a freedom to not be stuck in an office working a job that I don’t really like and I’m not passionate about and instead use that time to spend with my loved ones. I literally spend like 24/7 with my husband. And we’ve created that freedom where we can spend a lot of time with each other, I can go back home and visit my parents and my brother as well as my friends in Dallas and in the Bay Area. Were even thinking about digital nomadic next year and it just creates a lot of freedom to do the things that matter to you most and that brings me to what financial freedom really means for me is to help me live a life that’s true to myself. So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode on the money lessons I learned while I was abroad and building passive income. It’s been a long time and I hope that I can go ahead and do that again next year with Shawn That’s kind of what we’re planning to do soon. And I’m so fortunate that I spent these past seven years working on my passive income stream they really truly changed my life because in the past before all of this started, I was really not building multiple income streams. I was working for me and I felt stuck to a job whereas now I don’t have to work in one if I don’t want to and I am retired from the nine to five. So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Please make sure to rate review and subscribe. It really helps our podcast grow. And thanks again. I’ll see you guys in the next one.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai