interview

Michelle is a 36 year old event manager/festival organizer from South Australia. She currently lives in New Zealand where she spends time on a short work contract, after completing a full year of slow travel around the USA in June 2019. Since 2007 she has been to 40 countries, spread across annual trips but she still calls Australia home!

Michelle became interested in the concept of financial independence in 2012, discovering it via Early Retirement Extreme and Mr Money Mustache blogs. She has been learning about general personal finance topics to make the most of her money, with expectations of limited income potential in her chosen career. FI provided a clearer, big picture motivation for her savings efforts, which had previously been focused on funding her next overseas vacations or dry spells of work.

Sergio and Shannon are husband and wife (respectively an IT consultant and project manager consultant + corporate trainer) from the United States that feel lucky to be best friends. They see merit in improving their faults and supporting each other in the effort. They both strive for continual improvement and live a life full of small actions, small choices and small decisions that have a big impact on their lives. They’re also full-time house sitters (57 and counting) and digital nomads pursuing FI/RE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) who’ve traveled to 4 continents, 26 countries and over 80 cities since 2016!

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.

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

Noémie & Fabien are 31 years old, respectively from France and Quebec. They have been in a relationship for almost 8 years. They called themselves semi-nomadic as they spend on average, half of their time in Quebec working, and half of their time traveling (without working). They are currently based in Quebec, when they work about 25 hours/week, by choice. They look for jobs as they go along, always on a contractual basis. Even in Quebec, they consider themselves nomadic because they change houses all the time since they have chosen not to have a fixed address. In fact, their whole semi-nomadic lifestyle is based on housesitting.

They choose to work less because they want to have time to participate in community life through different social commitments; they consider themselves socially-committed people. Through their minimalist and semi-nomadic life choices, they try to do their best to live in the present moment by respecting others and by participating in the community in which they live.