What Life Is Like For A Digital Nomad With Family
In early April 2019, we had a bit of a celebrity moment! Our worldschooling story was featured on CNN Travel. We even made the homepage of CNN! Overnight, virtually the whole world knew about our life as a digital nomad with family. We had friends sharing our video on Facebook, and we even had messages from families who saw our story and were wondering how they could become a digital nomad family like us.
Quite honestly, I am loving the attention (though it pretty much died down quickly, fame is so fickle!). I enjoy being able to represent families who are leading a digital nomad lifestyle. And most importantly, I love the fact that we’re showing the world that families of color are doing these types of things too! For me, it’s validation that our location independent life isn’t just a weird thing that only a few families are doing. Many families are choosing this type of lifestyle nowadays.
This post was updated on September 28, 2021.
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The ups and downs of being a digital nomad with family
Being location independent may seem like a dream lifestyle. But in reality, the life of working nomads has MANY ups and downs. My husband and I are blessed to have jobs that we can do remotely. This certainly helps us have a bit of steady income as we travel. But with the flexibility of being location independent comes some level of insecurity.
Every time we move to a new location, it’s somewhat of a crap shoot whether we’ll have solid internet connection. For a digital nomad with family that depends on reliable internet for our livelihood, this can be problematic. Spending a week with extremely SLOW internet speeds, like we did in Costa Rica, can greatly diminish productivity. Something that takes a few hours to do with fast internet can take the whole day.
Since we ARE working nomads, we have a few international WiFi options in case we are ever in a situation where there is no WiFi whatsoever in our hotel or vacation rental. Before we left, we purchased a TEP, which offers us a mobile WiFi hotspot (although I have to admit, the WiFi with the TEP is unbearably slow!).
Our most often used backup plan is to use our mobile phones as hotspots. But this option can be quite costly, as we burn through a lot of data in just a few days by doing this. Sometimes we also use an external router to help boost our WiFi signal.
You can buy this external router to use on your travels. It's one that we use quite regularly.
Want to know what other supplies we use? Here are the eco friendly travel products we rely on daily.
What it takes to have a digital nomad lifestyle
In all actuality, having a digital nomad lifestyle depends on several factors. By far, our most important consideration is to have a reliable internet connection. But aside from internet connectivity, we also need to have consistent cash flow and ample to maintain balance in our traveling lifestyle.
Cost of living considerations
If you're a digital nomad traveling through Central America or Southeast Asia, the cost of living can be quite affordable. Take a look at how much we spent living in Mexico for a month, or in Indonesia.
However, although the cost of living in many of the locations we choose tend to be cheaper than the cost of living back home, we still have what I consider "fixed costs" that we need to cover. These include health and life insurance, storage fees for our stuff back home, credit card bills, and student loans.
Since we didn’t start off with a big chunk of savings when we set off on our trip, we constantly need to make sure that we have money to continue traveling. Our backup plan in this case is our credit card. If we absolutely run out of cash, then there’s always enough on the card to purchase a ticket home.
However you choose to finance your trip, it's important to understand all the costs that go into traveling full time. Affordable world travel is possible with a family, but it takes a lot of work and discipline.
Ready for a change? Take the first step to living a life of full time travel.
Taking it slow as a digital nomad with family
In addition to internet connectivity and cashflow, the other important factor to ensure our digital nomad lifestyle is time. Many of the traveling families we know travel fairly fast. They’re hopping from one country to the next every few weeks.
As a digital nomad with family, we can’t travel that way. There would be no time to work! We need at least a month in a city to adequately establish our work and schooling routine. Plus, we've found that slow tourism helps us minimize our environmental impact and help support local economies a lot more.
Anytime we’ve traveled fairly fast, we find it's difficult to stay on top of our work and school schedules. It ends up stressing us out! For our family, we prefer to take it slow when it comes to travel. Time is one of the most important things we need in order to make our life as a digital nomad with family work.
What life is like for a digital nomad with family
Ironically, our day to day life as a digital nomad with family resembles our life back home quite a bit. We usually spend Monday through Friday doing work, and the weekends are reserved for exploration and play as a family.
Since we don’t have day care to rely on, my husband and I split up our work days. With each new place we travel to, we have to figure out a split that seems equitable for each person, and still adapts with the time zone. Sometimes this means working nights.
On days when we travel, sometimes one of us doesn’t really get a chance to work. Alternatively, sometimes we’ll schedule an excursion on one of our work days because that’s the only time available. Every day is a constant negotiation of work schedules.
On a typical day, we’ll wake up and make breakfast. We do our morning routines (we try and do five minutes of meditation each day, much to the complaints of our kids!) and then we go into the schedules for the day. School time for the kids is a mix of focused class time (math, writing, reading, language arts) and field trips.
Around six in the evening, we come back together for dinner, either at home or somewhere out on the town. In the evenings, we either have individual free time or watch a movie or TV show together. Bedtimes are around 8:30 pm (because I can’t seem to get the kids to go to sleep any earlier!), and then we do the same thing again the next day.
Read here to learn more about what goes into our worldschooling lifestyle.
Balancing work and play for our family
I thought that by becoming a location independent digital nomad family, my challenges of balancing work and play would miraculously go away. But in reality, work-life balance is just as much of a challenge for me as it was back home.
I’m constantly struggling to balance all my work tasks with spending time with the kids, spending time with my husband, and spending time for myself. I feel like there is never enough time in the day to do all the things that I want to do. Admittedly, even working nomads struggle with work-life balance.
In addition to balancing work and life, we also balance keeping in touch with friends and family back home. Making sure we stay connected with our loved ones is an important part of that balancing act.
The best part of being a digital nomad with family: quality time together!
Perhaps in a year or so, we’ll have a better balance. But one thing I do enjoy about this digital nomad lifestyle is that it really has afforded me more time to spend with my family. Even though we’re working just as hard as we were back home, the fact that I can see my kids throughout the day makes the work much more bearable.
I am enjoying watching my kids experience the world. I love seeing how they learn and interact with the new things they are experiencing. And I’m even appreciating the time I get to spend with my husband. At the end of the day, I wouldn’t trade this life for anything!
Are you a digital nomad with family? Share your experiences with this type of lifestyle in the comments!
Want to become a digital nomad? Read these post:
11 Helpful Tips For Becoming a Worldschooling Family
10 Must Have Travel Items: A Nomad Family Buying And Packing Guide
4 Reasons Why You Need a Travel WiFi Router
Use my ebook, Hey Kids, Let's Go Travel! as a resource to start planning your family gap year today!
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