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This is really enlightening to read. I had no idea people held such notions about digital nomads. I started my DN life 14 years ago while living in the US. I
by z9znz 4y ago
This is really enlightening to read. I had no idea people held such notions about digital nomads.
I started my DN life 14 years ago while living in the US. In my company we had a number of remote workers around the country, and servicing clients around the world. Working from home, I realized I didn't have to stay in one place with bad air pollution. So I moved to a ski resort area in Colorado. Initially it was just for a month, but then it became 3 months, and then it became 3 years.
You don't have to go to Bali to be a DN.
And using "resources and connections to wangle living someplace" is not necessary. You are free to go as long as your current boss doesn't object. Do you think this is some kind of special treatment only afforded to a certain group of people?
Even if your boss or company does not explicitly allow you to work from abroad, you can often do it without even being noticed (or as they say, ask for forgiveness instead of permission). If you do your job well, who cares where you are at the moment...
Regarding cost of living, hell yes. In the spirit of capitalism, it would be irresponsible to not live where your money serves you best. If you lived in SF, earning 250k, and paying 3k/mo for an apartment, you could instead live well on the beach in Thailand for 3k in total (less actually). Think of how much you could save if you still earned that 250. And imagine the great food, every day massages, friendly happy people! who don't shoot you, and fantastic weather!
I don't know why I'm telling you all this. It's better for us DNs if the rest of you stay locked in your US lives.
And for those who want to talk about taxes, I have to file in two countries, and I pay 45% total tax rate. Even so, when I work remotely in SEA, I get a lot of quality of life for my work (and I work only a few months at a time, then take a few months off).
- bombcar 4y agoSomewhere between 3 months and 3 years you left off being a digital nomad and became a digital immigrant (or as we used to say, you moved to Colorado). And the reason companies will start to take notice (I agree they often didn't back in "the day" especially if you still returned "home") is that governments will start to take notice; if you're in Colorado then Colorado wants your company to establish a nexus and correctly withhold Colorado taxes. And that begins to apply to other countries as well. We're still ahead of the curve and many countries can't really determine tourists vs digital nomads, but they'll start getting better at it. And hopefully that'll make it easier for people to take advantage of it.
- z9znz 4y agoI did formally relocate to Colorado and start paying their local taxes. Later when I moved to Amsterdam, I started paying Netherlands taxes. There's no dodging, at least if you are able to setup residence somewhere. If you are unable to setup residence somewhere, then you are not really dodging as you are not able to pay if you wanted to. (But you are also not officially allowed to be working). In my view, however, if you are not taking local jobs, but you are adding consumer spending to a region, then you are not taking something away from the locals.
- bombcar 4y agoYeah, you've done it legally (others are illegal immigrants perhaps) - but "taking something away from the locals" isn't the only measure, and income tax is part of that. Obviously if 5,000 nomads descended on a small town there'd be services that would be strained - of course even paying income tax wouldn't necessarily solve all of those. Hopefully it'll be more hammered out as time progresses so there's more options available.