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!
In this week’s blog post, we are taking a deep dive into our budget and how the two of us spent less than $2,400 USD during the month we spent there.
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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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.
About a year ago, we decided to quit our regular jobs, give up our lovely apartment in San Francisco and sell all of our possessions to become nomadic and enjoy travel as part of our lifestyle. We have been embracing slow travel, minimalism and a nomadic lifestyle for a year so we thought that it was a good time to reflect on the past year. In this blog post, we will discuss the pros and cons of a nomadic lifestyle and hope this will give you a full perspective if you are interested in pursuing this lifestyle.
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When we decided to get married and sell everything to travel the world, we knew that this new lifestyle was going to be fun, exciting but also cheaper than staying at home. What we did not know was how much cheaper it was going to be to live a very high quality of life where we would enjoy the local food scene, cook amazing meals, take regular getaway trips, spend time in nature, attend local shows/festivals and everything else you get the freedom to do when you decide to travel the world slowly.
As we are closing our first year of nomadic travel, I am digging into our finances to answer this question and the results are pretty exciting. In a nutshell in the last 12 months, we slow traveled to 10 locations in 5 countries for about half the cost of living in San Francisco. But more than reducing our spending, geo-arbitrage let us rebalance our expenses towards activities that we enjoy the most, spending more time with our respective families, living a less stressful life and exploring new places in the world.
So let’s dig into our spending report for our first year of nomadic living!
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If you understand money, life is incredibly easy. If you don’t understand money, like the vast majority of people, life is incredibly hard. Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung So inspiring! Some links to the products mentioned below are affiliate links, meaning that if you click and make a purchase, Nomad Read more…
This is a pretty dense lifestyle article, which is a follow up on our origin story. If you aren’t into lifestyle design, feel free to skip and check out one of our destination report instead!
One of the benefit of slow travel for me can be quantified by the number books I’ve been able to read since we embarked on our nomadic journey. I recently discovered Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, a thought-provoking odyssey through human history. While I won’t go too much into the book in this post, the author go in length to explains how humans see the world is mostly defined by the stories we create for ourselves. This reminded me about the Hero’s Journey that Vicki Robin (author of New York Times Bestseller Your Money or Your Life) introduced to us when we met her at the Chautauqua Retreat in Ecuador (back in 2017). It is a wonderful self transformation template that can be used by anyone looking to design their best life so I felt like it was worth sharing. Are you ready to follow your bliss?
(author of New York Times Bestseller Your Money or Your Life) introduced to us when we met her at the Chautauqua Retreat in Ecuador (back in 2017). It is a wonderful self transformation template that can be used by anyone looking to design their best life so I felt like it was worth sharing. Are you ready to follow your bliss?
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If you’ve been following us for a while, you know that we are aspiring minimalists that have decided to sell most of our possessions in 2018 to make the world our home and nomadic travel our new lifestyle. As part of our journey, we became big proponents of the slow movement and have incorporated it into our lives beyond slow travel by embracing slow food and slow living which have made our lives more meaningful and fulfilling.
In this article, let’s slow down (pun intended) and take a step back to talk more about our origin story. Where do we come from individually, what brought us together, what led us to decide to leave most of our possessions behind us to become perpetual nomads and where do we see this new lifestyle leading us.
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It is the early morning exactly one year ago. I’m standing up front, surrounded by magnificent and giant redwood trees that have been living here for thousands of years. On my left side, I see close friends and family members. On my right side, our wedding officiant is reminding everyone to be present and absorb the energy of such a unique nature setting in this very special moment. Holding my hands and standing in front of me is the love of my life (Mrs. Nomad Numbers). She is wearing a stunning dress that is competing with the early sunlight that is illuminating the entire grove we are gathered in. As I look into her eyes, I can feel the love radiating around her. This was one of the highlights on the best day of my life that took place exactly one year ago.
