Our best zero-waste travel tips to reduce your footprint

As full-time travelers, we take a lot of transportation, live in multiple apartments, eat out at restaurants, shop at markets, taste new snacks and enjoy exploring our beautiful planet. Since we explore much more than the average person, our impact on the environment is very much a concern for us. In the article, we share tips on how we reduce our impact on the environment that we apply while we travel but many tips you can easily apply at home.

What we learned from interviewing 12 nomadic couples and individuals travelers

I know that our story to design a life on our own terms wasn’t due to luck by any means but rather because this was something we truly prioritized in our lives. There’s also multiple ways to achieve your ideal lifestyle and no two stories are the same.

About 6 months ago I started to look for other couples and individuals that have become nomadic like us to understand their origin story and travel lifestyle. Through a series of twelve interviews, I was able to collect enough data to identify what these stories had in common and what set them apart.

In this blog post, you will be discovering what all of these interviews have in common and what set them apart. You will also have access to top advice and resources from our interviewees if you are interested to start designing your own life. You will also learn more about their favorite travel destinations and best travel tips.

Cost of Nomad Living in Taipei during the coronavirus

In this post, we will take a look at our past month of expenses and share what our cost of living in Taipei has been during this pandemic so far. We will also check to see how we are doing towards our new yearly budget goal for 2020 that we recently decreased from $30K to $20K. Are you ready to escape the day to day and take an early look at the cost of living in Taipei, Taiwan?

[Interview #008] Reprioritizing life after a health wake up call

Ryan and Emily are in their mid-40s and have been married for almost 10 years. They left their home in the US (North Carolina) in August 2018, and started their full-time travel adventures. They haven’t looked back since. They spent just over 13 months in South America—Peru, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil. They went back to the eastern US for 5 weeks to spend some time with their friends and family. Currently they are spending their second year in Southeast Asia – 2 weeks in Myanmar, currently in Thailand, and planning to visit Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam soon.

2019 End of Year Travel Rewards Report – How we earned $10K in free travel money

Last month, I bragged a little on Twitter that we managed to accumulate half a million travel rewards points in 2019 alone and I wanted to follow up with more details. If you’ve been following us, you know that Travel Rewards is one of the core strategies we use to travel the world for less than staying at home in the US. Do you believe that world travel is unaffordable because of airfare cost? Well we can show you with the magic of travel rewards, we were able to travel to 4 continents, 9 countries and 15 cities for 2 people for under $2000!

[Interview #007] Priority Shifts, Remote Year & SlowFI led to the Nomadic Lifestyle

Eric initially reached out to me by answering one of the emails he received from us after subscribing to our newsletter. As we started chatting I ended up learning about his recent transition to the Digital Nomad lifestyle and the Remote Year program him and his girlfriend used as a way to smoothly transition into the nomadic lifestyle and also easily connect with like-minded people

2019 Year End Spending Report – Still traveling the world for half the cost of staying home

As we closed out 2019 and our first 18 months of nomadic travel, I’m digging into our finances to see how we did in 2019 and we are happy about the results. In our first 12 months of travel, we reported that we spent less than $30K which was about half of the cost when we lived and worked in a high cost of living city. Not only did we cut our expenses, we rebalanced our spending towards activities that we enjoyed the most, are living a less stressful life and are having the time of our lives. In 2019, we are happy to report that we pretty much kept the same level of spend through to the end of the year.

[Interview #005] 44 cents a day to Millionaire by 31

These guys may not need much of an introduction because they are popular bloggers, featured in mainstream media and are now successful authors! They are also just fun and genuinely kind people.

We learnt about Kristy and Bryce back in late 2016 through their blog Milleniual-Revolution.com because they were doing what we wanted to do! Reaching financial independence and traveling the world. We had come across a lot of FI people and a lot of travel people but not a lot of people doing both. We read their cost of travel article and were blown away at what we read. These guys were traveling around the globe on less than $30K USD a year and they were planning on traveling for many years to come. We made the great decision to attend a FI retreat in Ecuador and were fortunate enough to meet Kristy & Bryce in person. It was a life changing week spent with our tribe and since then, they have become good friends!

At the time, I did not know Kristy & Bryce’s entire story but I was impressed by the fact that they became financially independent by 31! It turned out that Kristy had a rough childhood in rural China and lived in poverty for many years. She covers the series of events following her childhood in great detail in her fantastic book, Quit Like a Millionaire. Two decades later, she reached a net worth of a million dollars.

She is not only a rock star but a great example that anything is possible if you believe in yourself and have the appropriate financial know-how.

Let’s hear from Kristy!

How to never pay ATM fees while traveling abroad

Today we are going to talk about some of those nasty fees you occur while traveling when withdrawing foreign currency. We found a solution that has helped us save about 2.5% of our money withdrawn by ATM which would’ve been eaten up by an ATM “transaction” fee – that’s $25 for every $1000 withdrawn so it adds up! We’d much rather put that money towards a special dinner in Thailand than pay bank fees. With this solution we don’t have to worry about which ATM to use and how much cash to take out since all ATM fees will get credited back to our bank account at the end of the month. And best of all, this solution is entirely free for everyone in the US! If you’re not a US resident, we have an alternative solution for you too. Let’s dig into our ultimate ATM hack!