You’ve probably seen adverts suggesting you can earn a great income working just a couple of hours a day from a beach chair. And while the reality is often quite different for most of us, it’s entirely possible to build a worthwhile and profitable career which allows you to travel and live whenever and wherever you like. Whether you want to experience new cultures or spend more time with friends and family abroad, find out how to become a digital nomad and work from anywhere.
How do you define a digital nomad?
We all have our own idea of the difference between occasionally working away from the office and becoming a digital nomad. But the standard definition is simply someone who earns a living working online in various locations of their choosing.
It’s up to you if that means keeping a home base and address whilst working away for weeks or months each year, embracing van life, or living out of a suitcase for a foreseeable future. Some of the key benefits of self-employment are flexibility and control over your career, so why not take advantage of it?
Is your current business and career remote-friendly?
If you’re freelancing or self-employed, then you don’t need to convince a boss or manager to let you go travelling. But some occupations are easier to take on the road than others. If you’re a programmer, writer or SEO working entirely online without the need for regular in-person client meetings, then it’s fairly easy to pack your laptop and head for the airport. But if you’re a lawyer or accountant, then you might be expected to be available face-to-face as necessary.
Planning ahead could allow you to switch your client base, prioritising those who are happy to work with you entirely remotely. Or if you’re a personal trainer, for example, you could schedule extended time to work on books, training materials and online courses each year rather than delivering training onsite.
You may also want to plan around your business by travelling around large industry conferences and events, connecting with other freelancers in different countries, or visiting potential clients and sources of inspiration.
Even if you’ve been freelancing or self-employed for a while, becoming location independent can throw up new challenges, so it’s worth planning ahead and building up some additional emergency funds. Especially as a sudden loss of client income could leave you literally stranded.
Equip yourself for the nomad life
A good laptop and mobile phone are obviously fairly essential, but there are other things that will be invaluable once you start travelling. Power banks will save you when you can’t get to a power socket, and noise-cancelling headphones will help you work even when you’re stuck in a busy airport lounge or train station. For security and to ensure you can access apps and services you normally use in the UK, a good and reliable VPN will be invaluable.
You should also check your mobile phone options, whether you plan on buying local sim cards, or want to invest in a data package for your smartphone. And set up international banking before you leave, notifying your bank and credit card provider that you’re going abroad to avoid any issues.
Your essentials will vary depending on how long you intend to travel for, and whether you’re on a ‘workcation’ or making a permanent switch. And whether it needs to fit in a carry-on, or you have a converted van to fill. And it will probably evolve over time as you discover new tricks and tools to make life easier, or that you could actually do without that second computer monitor. But planning in advance will cut down on costly mistakes, and help you decide what you need to keep, store, or potentially sell to help fund your travels.
Having travelled to work abroad by motorcycle, when you’re packing an entire office into one rucksack, you soon learn to ditch anything that isn’t essential.
Research your destinations
Even if you’re travelling to visit friends and family, or places you might have visited previously on holiday, it’s important to check the legal requirements for visas, health insurance, and taxes to make sure you’re not caught out. The rules can, and probably will, change in the future, so it’s best to check with the relevant government website before committing to a specific plan, and regularly checking for any updates.
Some visas or residence permits will require you to prove you perform work for companies registered outside of that country. For example, you can’t work for an employer in the Republic of Croatia if you’re there as a digital nomad.
Your budget and the cost of living will also be important to understand before you set off. The difference between neighbouring countries can be quite substantial, for example Germany and Poland or Norway and Sweden, which reduces the pressure on maintaining your client income, and means your existing funds will go further.
If your main reason for becoming a digital nomad is to experience new countries and cultures, it’ll be frustrating to work 60-hour weeks and never actually get away from your laptop. The flip-side being that it still needs to be a place you actually want to visit.
You should also check if it’s somewhere that’s safe for you, as this can vary depending on your gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and other factors.
Some countries are particularly welcoming to remote workers, offering digital nomad visas (such as Spain, Greece, Portugal, Indonesia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Iceland, and others). Many of these last for 12 or 24 months, but do require proof that you earn above a minimum amount (for example £1,890 a month for Spain, or £2,650 for Costa Rica). But many offer various initiatives such as villages built specifically for digital nomads in Brazil.
Unless you’re camping or living in a van, you also need to consider your accommodation options, whether it’s a private rental, house sharing, co-living, or a hostel. Be realistic about how you prefer to work, as if you prefer a peaceful sanctuary to be productive, a hostel is unlikely to be the right solution. But it might be perfect if you enjoy being surrounded by other people while you’re working.
Be prepared for emergencies
Make sure you know what to do if you lose your passport, your wallet is stolen, or your equipment breaks. Spare chargers, cables and other essentials are all invaluable at times, speaking as someone who turned up in Paris on a tight deadline, only to discover a power lead was still at home, 365 miles away.
Health insurance is important for you, travel insurance is great for your equipment, and breakdown cover will be useful if you’re travelling by car, van, or motorcycle. As remote working has become more common, it’s easier to find suitable specialist policies for those working abroad.
If you’re a UK resident, you can apply for a UK Global Health Insurance Card (GHIC), which allows you to get necessary state healthcare in the European Economic Area (EEA) and some other countries, either for free or with a payment equivalent to what a local resident would pay. This replaces the existing European Health Insurance Card (EHIC), but if you already have one, you can use it until it has expired. It’s not a replacement for private travel and medical insurance, but will help to ensure you can access medically necessary healthcare. For specific information on the GHIC, it’s worth looking at the NHS website.
Having friends or contacts in a country can also be incredibly useful in an emergency, even if you may have only chatted online in the past. The freelance and digital nomad community can be hugely helpful when an unexpected problem crops up.
It’s impossible to plan for everything, but some preparation will help you stay calmer and mean you can deal with the unexpected when it occurs. Whether that’s hiking out of a Welsh forest at dusk after your transport drove away without you, or arriving at an airport on a delayed flight to find all trains and buses have stopped for the night.
Most of these challenges become amusing stories to share in the future, and can lead you to meeting helpful new people to drive you to the nearest town. Or reconnecting with an old friend who happened to live fairly near to the airport.
Make use of communities
Even if you like the idea of being a solo traveller and the adventure of being all on your own, it’s handy to have local connections and communities as a back-up when needed. Arriving in a new country can also be lonely and isolating, especially when it’s combined with being self-employed, but actively seeking to meet people, attend events and participating in groups and communities will soon counter this.
Co-working spaces have sprung up in most urban centres around the world, and can be a great resource to get some work done, but also to meet other business owners and freelancers.
You might find that you love your new location when you first arrive, but culture shock and isolation can become challenging at least stages. This process was first described in the 1960s as the W-Curve Model, and has often been applied to university students to explain how things can fluctuate over time until eventually reaching acceptance and integration.
It’s important to understand that travel can have positive and negative effects, and isn’t a complete solution to every problem you might be experiencing. Using it as a fresh start or a catalyst to also work on issues like stress, social anxiety or other challenges to your mental wellbeing will help you to make the most of your new opportunities.
Don’t forget to actually enjoy the experience
Whether you’re travelling for a few weeks or the rest of your life, you need to make sure that you actually have time to explore and enjoy your destination. Setting clear boundaries between work and leisure time, and having enough time off to rest and recharge, will help you avoid burnout, and mean you get the benefit of being a digital nomad. There’s not really much point in swapping being chained to a desk in one part of the world, for doing the same in another part of the world.
Meeting new people, exploring new cultures and seeing different places can revitalise you, both personally and professionally. And can help you to see your work from different perspectives, leading to new processes and opportunities that you might not have spotted during your normal daily routine.
How IPSE can help you to become a digital nomad
While you’re travelling and living abroad, it’s important to keep up with the latest news related to the self-employed sector, and IPSE can ensure you’re aware of any changes when you plan to return to the UK.
You can also find plenty of IPSE members with experience of living abroad currently, or those who have since returned, in the IPSE community. You might also want to get guidance on tax and legal matters through the IPSE helplines, or be able to save via our Offers from selected partners, including breakdown cover from the AA, or discounted English Heritage membership if you want to stay and work in the grounds of a castle.
It might be helpful to have UK-based cover if clients need support on-site or if you’re going to be unreachable for a time. Find collaborators and partners with our IPSE member directory, and if you’re nipping back to the UK for a short period, you can access more than 400 co-working spaces through AndCo as part of your membership.
Need more advice?
While the dream of working a few hours from a beach isn’t always reality, building a successful career as a digital nomad is entirely possible - discover how to w...
Covid-19 significantly impacted self-employment in the UK, leading to income losses, business closures, and mental health struggles, with lasting effects still fe...
Have you ever had a business idea that needed significant capital to start? Angel investors offer an alternative to business loans or venture capital (VC) funding...
