Mr. Nomad Numbers

We are a couple who travel the world and want to inspire people to think differently about the life they can design for themselves through our journey.

[Interview #002] Fully Appreciating Life Through Slow Travel

We stumbled upon Ali & Alison’s journey through their instagram feed and we immediately connected with them. They are like-minded people that decided to embrace nomadic living as part of their lifestyle and this is why we decided to reach out to them to write this interview.

Both Ali & Alison grew up in the US and met each other in 2004 in Seattle, Washington. Back in Seattle their typical day revolves around work since they were both gone for their jobs 50-60 hours per week.

They had their wake up call when Alison ran their numbers against the typical FIRE calculation of 25x annual living expenses in July of 2017 and realized they had reached their financial independence number. By becoming nomadic they can now separate themselves from their career-focused lives and the urge to participate in lifestyle inflation. They have taken their curiosity to explore new places, which used to be funneled into a vacation just once every 2 years, and made that into their full-time lifestyle.

By Mr. Nomad Numbers, ago

[Interview #001] Becoming Nomadic Through Real Estate investment

We were introduced to Emily & James by our friend Jessica (@TheFioneers). We later learned about their incredible journey and had to reach out to them to share it. While we felt that retiring from a regular job in our mid-30s was a good achievement, wait until you hear how James and Emily leveraged geo-arbitrage, an aggressive real estate investment strategy and a positive mindset to become financially free in their 20s. They had a really clever way to reach early retirement… well earlier.

By Mr. Nomad Numbers, ago

Our Top 5 Airbnb Stays Around the World

For the past 18 months of our nomadic journey, we basically lived full-time in AirBnB apartments apart from visiting family. That means a total of 17 AirBnBs in 17 cities and 8 countries. That’s a lot of bookings, making ourselves at home and enjoying beautiful places. Since our stays aren’t just a quick weekend but our homes for at least a month, we want to make sure our apartments are not just good but amazing! We prioritize level of comfort, the location, an awesome kitchen, ideally a view and of course the budget we want to stay within. 

We’ve gotten so good at finding temporary homes that we share our best tips to find the best and most affordable AirBnB homes in our ultimate Airbnb money-saving guide. 

In this article, we will be going over our top 5 AirBnB homes along with many pictures and of course the cost. Accomodation is one of the big three expenses categories people have (along with food and transportation) but it can also be quite affordable to live in beautiful places. The same quality of apartments in San Francisco, where we were living before, would have been ridiculously expensive. Are you ready to see some of our amazing homes around the world? 

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By Mr. Nomad Numbers, ago

Why long-term travel is the best health insurance plan you can get

Being long time travelers can be a wonderful thing, especially if we decide to travel with purpose. It can also be a lifestyle philosophy that can cost you less than the cost you are currently paying to stay at home. But when we shared with people that we traveled the world for less than $30K during our first year and that we only spent $8 to pay for healthcare insurance, they were wondering if this number was bogus or if we have decided to entirely opt out of healthcare insurance.

In this article, we will add some clarification and dig into the large topic of health care insurance. We will explain (1) how we got coverage in California in 2019 for $1 per person and per month, (2) what insurance we decided on for year 2, (3) why we think our health care costs are going to be a fraction of what they are in the US (even if we pay out of pocket) and (4) why we believe that we (and most people) will be saving thousands of dollars each year by avoiding the US healthcare system. Ready to talk about health care? 

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By Mr. Nomad Numbers, ago

Traveling with Purpose

Whether it is for a short 2 weeks vacation, a 3-6 months sabbatical from the office or even if travel has become your lifestyle, there is no shortage of beautiful places in the world to visit. Most of the time people will pick a destination because it is “trendy” or because one of their friends recommended it to them. Very few people will actually ask themselves what they want out of a travel experience before picking the destination after some introspection.

In other words, we rarely start with “our why” we want to travel but rather focus merely on the “what” or the “how” expecting the magic to happen once on site (check out this great book from Simon Sinek to get more insights on this topic).

This lack of self examination can lead to dissatisfaction in many areas of life. Like going to college, getting married, buying a house or even having kids without asking ourselves first and foremost if these are things we really need to live a truly fulfilled life. 

In this article, we will explore why it is important to travel with purpose and provide some ideas to get you started. If you’re seeking some inspiration and want to go beyond checking off a travel itinerary, this post is for you!

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By Mr. Nomad Numbers, ago

Destination Report: Lisbon – Part One: What to do, see, eat (& avoid)

After Porto, we spent the second half of our time in Portugal in Lisbon for almost a month. We decided to stay in this capital because we were curious to know more about this growing digital nomads hub that has become a trendy European destination over the past few years. The city actually reminded us a lot of San Francisco which we will talk more about in this blog post. Let’s go explore Lisbon!

By Mr. Nomad Numbers, ago

Destination Report: Porto – Part One: What to do, eat, see (& avoid)

One of our favorite things about our nomadic lifestyle is that we can design it however we’d like based on our priorities. We can slow it down or speed it up, go to a food destination or a cultural city, spend time sightseeing or working on projects, meet up with friends or set out on our own, save money in Central America or splurge (within reason of course!) in the Caribbean. One of the biggest advantages to us is the ability to spend long periods of time with family and friends that live in different parts of the world. Since my family lives in France, I didn’t get a chance to see them very much during my 10 years in the US. Now we plan on spending 1-2 months every year with them and focus on great quality time versus the quick holiday catch up I was used to do. This is what brought us to Europe this summer!

Today we are fast forwarding a bit to our first slow travel destination of our 2nd year of long term travel: Portugal. (June was spent in France with family and was all over the place. Early July was spent with friends in beautiful Costa Brava Spain and we well talk about both at a later time). Given how popular Portugal is among expats, digital nomads and retirees, we were looking forward to see what the hype was all about! We decided to spend about 2 months in Portugal, spending our time between Porto and Lisbon. Porto was our first stop and we ended up with pretty mixed feeling about this city. Let’s see why by exploring Porto!

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By Mr. Nomad Numbers, ago

2 Day Itinerary and Cost – Douro Valley, Portugal

You have to visit the Douro Valley if you are in Porto, I can’t believe we even hesitated because it is an amazing place. Not only does this valley have the perfect weather conditions to produce Port wine, the beautiful and dramatic landscape make it seem unreal. No surprises that this site has UNESCO World Heritage status in 2001 as you will be able to attest through the pictures and video we are sharing in this post.

By Mr. Nomad Numbers, ago