Digital nomad – the money question

How did we make it happen? This is the all times most asked question, we get. Read on to get insight on our experiences around the money question.

Af Cecilie Felumb Conrad | December 25, 2018

Now, we get the question of money very often, in the form: How do you do it, or how did you make it happen? Understandably. And recently, I realized, it has been four years, since I wrote a text, dedicated this subject. So – I think it is time.

The Short Verison

If you only want the short version, it goes like this: We decided to change our income stream to a location independent one, and worked for it, until this part of our income was large enough to live from. At the same time we saved money enough to do a bus conversion, as this was what we wanted. Then we did it. How to make an online business, you can find literally hundreds of courses online, even online courses on how to make online courses teaching others to make online business. So, I will not address this level, as I am no expert.

The important version

About money, I know other things, much more important. I will not be able to share it all in one article, since the full moon is setting, the roosters are singing, morning is coming, and I have decided to share all, I manage to write before sunrise. Then I will get up and join the party of life.

You see, our relation to money is a journey. Just like every other phenomenon in this life, we, as humans, have a relation to it. I am a psychologist, and I find this extremely interesting. Not just our relation to money, but our relation to …. well, everything, everyone, everywhere. When we work with relations, we can effectively change our lives, and this is such a huge freedom and such an amazing adventure. At the same time, as humans, our relations to all phenomena in life are interconnected, so nothing is irrelevant, when you work with one thing, you basically work with the whole system. Like an enormous balancing act: Move one part, and everything changes. Sometimes, you really feel it, and sometimes it seems almost nothing happened.

Now, let’s focus. On the money.

How your relation with money was constructed to begin with

As we grow up, we learn about money, and at the same time we learn mathematics. When we become adults, we learn to earn money, pay taxes and spend money. For many people, this is the whole story, you might ad a budget and a mortgage and some savings, but that’s basically it.

But there is so much more to this story, and all of it is much more interesting.

You see, the beliefs about money will guide your experience, and therefore the reality of money. You might learn as a child, money is bad, maybe due to religion or some experience, your parents had, where money (or the absence of) ruined someones life – then you will grow up not liking money, hate it a bit, when you have them, feel they are dirty and maybe you feel guilty if you are happy you earn money. If you learn, money can never be talked about, this will guide you adult life, and you might never learn anything about money. If you learn, money are hard to earn, this will become your reality, until you choose to change it.

You also learn, growing up, how to make money. Many people, including your parents, will teach you how money flow into your life, and until you make conscious choices as to work with these beliefs, they will be real to you.

Don’t you find this interesting? Reality is constructed from our beliefs. Even in our bank account.

Now, some of you might hate what I am saying, thinking: I have only 10 euros in my bank account and I have to feed my children the rest of the week, what kind of choices do I really have?! And I assure you: Many. And that is both on the practical level of how to manage with 10 euros, and on the more important level of thinking and feeling.

Reality is constructed from our beliefs. Even in our bank account.

The inner work is the important work

Even if it seems, my family is a wealthy werstern family, living the life in abundance (and we are), I can assure you we have been there, and know this is not easy. All I am saying is: It is much easier, than you think, and it is totally doable for everyone. Inner work is inner work, and it IS work, you have to do it, work with it, dont give up. If you do it, your life with money will change. Fix your thoughts, and your problems will fix themselves. I shit you not.

In our story, the relation to money work is this inner work, we keep doing. I cannot say, we have found perfection yet, but I can share some of our milestones and choices. And as the sun is rising, I will give you bullets:

Money is energy, or the abstract of energy.
Money is representation of value.
Money is, as long as you spend time earning it, life lived.
Dept is selling your future freedom, don’t do that, if you can avoid it.
You can avoid it.
Reflect on your money flow.

Fix your thoughts, and your problems will fix themselves

On money flow and life balance

As money is energy passing through your life, where you put it WILL affect you: Where did the money come from and where does it go? What do you want to support as to where you put your time and attention (earning the money) and what do you support as to where you spend it?

You are a channel of energy, and the inflow and outflow of money is energy flowing directly through you. It is therefore of great importance, where the money come from, how you (mentally) receive it, how you hold it as long as you have it, where you send it.

About earning money

We learn, we have to work (hard) to earn money; we learn this when we are young. Most people learn this both at home and at school. Children see their parents leaving for work (important) all weekdays, and the learn they go go school, so they can get an educations, so they can get a job. This is the laws of the universe, it seems.

But is it true?

Our first objection is: Does it have to be hard? We have chosen, we will only work if it is either meaningful or fun or interesting or challenging or all of the above. In such, we would in most cases do the work even if it did not give us any income. This is one point, where you can chose to change the perspective, and everything will change. Maybe not overnight, but eventually. Some of the work we do is boring or stressfull or both and some of the work we do is fun and makes very little or no money.

To change from “hard work” to fun/interesting/important/meaningful, can be done all in the mind. But of course, it is also a question of choice and focus. If you believe this to be possible and hold it as true, you will over the long run change your work life and chose better. As for this very day, you can reflect upon your work life, and find favorites, and start enjoying it. This will change the perspective, the feeling, the focus and be the beginning of a better life with money.

The question of value

An interesting reflection about money and work, is the negative affect money have on the value of not-payed-with-money-work. So, we tend to forget the value of all the other things people do, such as driving their grandmother to the doctor or washing their floors or cooking dinner. Even if we try to take this non-payed work into account, we often measure the value of it in money: What is the economic value of a cultural tradition of helping the elders? Could be the reflection. But more interesting is: What is the energetic vaule in your life, and how does it ryhme with your basic values, ethic choises, inner being, integrity.

The moneybias confuses levels of value. Stop to think. And to feel.

The more important question of values

Now, I said it! The troll is out of the box: Values. This is the most important inner work you can do. Do it slowly or agressively or systematically, but do it: Find out what is most important to you, what you are truly passionate about, what makes your heart sing, what is the perfect constellation for your inner being. This is by no means a question of money, but your relation to money will become so much easier to work with, once you start doing this job.

As this is the core, and it can be said this short, I will repeat all of it. If you take one thing from this text, take this point:
This is the most important inner work you can do. Do it slowly or agressively or systematically, but do it: Find out what is most important to you, what you are truly passionate about, what makes your heart sing, what is the perfect constellation for your inner being.

About the spending of money – practical advice

Where you put your money affects your balance. As we have developed over the years, this has become more and more evident. But let’s begin with the beginning.

We never spend money, we don’t have.
That is: Spend only money, you actually have. After you earn it. When it is in the account or pocket.
Make a budget! Everyone can do this. Make sure, you can pay your bills.
Pay your bills with gratitude and happiness, or change your budget.
Make strategies and general choices, don’t micromanage
Use your head: Think about your expences

As I am writing this text, I know my insights might not be for everyone. If you like to micromanage feel free to do so. But be warned: If you reflect on every single cent you spend, you might become overly obsessed with the details and loose the big picture.

What do you need? And why?

Now, the balance between inflow and outflow seems to be problematic to everyone. It seems people spend all the money they have, no matter the amount. As long as they feel fine about it, this is not a problem, but most people seems to think, this is a problem, they need just a little bit more.

Then it is time to stop and think. Again. What do I really need? And why?

We have done this many times in our life, and actually find the challenge quite interesting.

I know from experience, I can live many years without new clothes and shoes, eat basically rice and (cheap) veggies, and be completely happy. BTW – thousands of people live like this, just not in European capitals. But if they can do it in Vietnam, why would it be hard for me?

Oh, the commercials. And the neighbours. To be aware of context and commercials is to me like the weekly cleaning of my house (or bus, now): The fact, everyone else buy a new backpack every year, easily makes you think, you need it too, unless you stop and reflect. The thousands of commercials work, they make everyone, including myself, want things, looks, travels, stuff, dinners, jewlery, gadgets. To clear my head from all of these ideas, and get back to what is important to me, I need to do the inner work. Frequently. Like brushing my teeth.

Do I need it? Equals: Does it support the things, I hold important? Does the flow feel right? Do I feel on track with this?

And I will say it again: Do your inner work on values, and life with (or without) money, becomes so much easier.

Strategies makes life easy

Because of the abundance of the supermarkets, and the thousands of commercials, it can be (actually it always is) very confusing and even stressful to go shopping, in real life and online. No matter what, you will be confused and make bad choices. The question is: How many, how often? Can you somehow avoid it?

In our family we have general rules, and strategies, and this makes our economic life quite easy. Let me share, what we have chosen, as a general inspiration, not as a truth for everyone.

Food. We chose to live vegan, gluten free, organic. This boils down the supermarket to 10 percent. We do buy about 5% non-organic, as we sometimes cheat and just crave something that is not available in organic quality, or we find ourselves in a situation with no other options of non-organic. But even though this organic-rule is not rock solid, it does make everything much easier. Is it more expensive? Well. The individual bag of carrots might be more expensive, but all of the impossibilities, all the things, we can’t chose, balances this out and more.

The vegan, organic, gluten free makes it hard to eat out, and many easy bad choices are impossible. When we finally do eat out it might be more expensive, than your regular pizza, but as we do it so rarely, this works for us. If we have less money for some reason, we can just not eat out.

“But you travel full time. How do you do it?” Well. We travel with a kitchen, and never leave the house without a bag of food. This was – by the way – exactly the same, when we lived in Copenhagen. Always bring food and water. This is not an economic choice, I do not do this to save money, I do it because I want real food (and the children want the same), but never the less it does work on the budget too.

We basically just buy all available organic food, that is not processed. Then we cook it. We do think about the price of passionfruit vs brown rice, but we eat both. In a good balance, I think.

Clothing. We only buy underwear, sometimes socks, and shoes. We do not want to support the clothing industry. If in need, we go to second hand shops to find new clothing, but most often people just give us their leftovers, and we have enough.

Hobbies, free-time, reading, studying. As for books there is no limit. We just buy all we want. Mostly on the kindles. Art supplies, craft-things, workbooks — well, the same, though we focus on finishing projects before shopping for new ones. This is a good rule, since in my experience, we can want to do many things, but find it hard to actually put in the hours. To buy a workbook or yarn for a pair of socks is also a commitment to spend the hours working on it, and … it is a good reflection to stop and think: Do I have the time at the moment. What else do I already have at hand or on my list. Should I do this first?

Personal care. We make products for the body ourselves, buy basic soap and use as little products as possible. We go to the public pool once or twice a week, and we do enjoy spa if possible. We spend a good amount of money on supplements, we really need, and realize, personal care is mostly a question of putting in the hours to make the products, and more importantly do the workout, wash the feet, do the meditations. Beauty is in the harmony, not the accessories or shiny lipgloss.

Beauty is in the harmony, not in the accessories

Basic living costs. Tiny house living.

Now, we live in a bus, we are doing an experiment as to: What do we really need? It is quite interesting, life is basically the same at 20 sqm as it was at 200. Here we learn many important life lessons, also about economy. The tiny space makes things so obvious. We just put up some lamps and it is just so obvious: 4 boxes of lamps and a roll of wire takes up so much living space and i so annoying, you put up the lamps right way. In our big apartment, it could have been weeks, even months, and some projects just never got to the point of being done. So, we learn this. Don’t buy stuff for your home unless you are willing to put in the hours. If you are not, it is not important and that is fine.

Housing, electricity, internet, heat, water, telephones, insurance. All of this we have, and we have reflected upon the balance of the cost to the value in our life.

And speaking of values: Now the sun is rising, I will stop writing. The issue of money, choices, process, inner work, values and balances is a very interesting one. I hope, you will pose all of your questions, so I can continue sharing our insights and thoughts.

My final comment being on fear

And as a final point, I will leave you with this very important living rule, we hold in our family, a rule that also apply for money: Fear has no place in our life. We do not believe in fear, we don’t value fear, we NEVER act from fear. Fear is to be dealt with (preferably ignored), should work as a reflection-trigger, but NEVER as a reason to either do anything or avoid anything.

We never act from fear, fear is a reflection-trigger

And bonus final very important comment on value

This point might seem banal to some people, but I believe, it is the most important, there is. Do not ever confuse money with value. Zoom into what is truly important. The fact, you woke up this morning, your heart is beating this moment, your mind is your own and as such your freedom is enormous, your health is (hopefully) at least all right. All of this is incomparable to money value. The divine beauty of a tree alongside the road, of the stars at night, of your children’s eyes, of art and music, of friendships and options. All of this you can not buy, and if you forget to truly value this, you lose something extremely important. And valuable beyond measure.

In my experience, this focus will eventually reflect back on your money balances and take away the stress. Somehow, it is always possible to reflect on a need and compare it to true value, and often just let go, breathe, smile, relax.

That said, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas