Nomad Numbers Blog

Our Top 5 Airbnb Stays Around the World

For the past 18 months of our nomadic journey, we basically lived full-time in AirBnB apartments apart from visiting family. That means a total of 17 AirBnBs in 17 cities and 8 countries. That’s a lot of bookings, making ourselves at home and enjoying beautiful places. Since our stays aren’t just a quick weekend but our homes for at least a month, we want to make sure our apartments are not just good but amazing! We prioritize level of comfort, the location, an awesome kitchen, ideally a view and of course the budget we want to stay within. 

We’ve gotten so good at finding temporary homes that we share our best tips to find the best and most affordable AirBnB homes in our ultimate Airbnb money-saving guide. 

In this article, we will be going over our top 5 AirBnB homes along with many pictures and of course the cost. Accomodation is one of the big three expenses categories people have (along with food and transportation) but it can also be quite affordable to live in beautiful places. The same quality of apartments in San Francisco, where we were living before, would have been ridiculously expensive. Are you ready to see some of our amazing homes around the world? 

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By Mr. Nomad Numbers, ago

Why long-term travel is the best health insurance plan you can get

Being long time travelers can be a wonderful thing, especially if we decide to travel with purpose. It can also be a lifestyle philosophy that can cost you less than the cost you are currently paying to stay at home. But when we shared with people that we traveled the world for less than $30K during our first year and that we only spent $8 to pay for healthcare insurance, they were wondering if this number was bogus or if we have decided to entirely opt out of healthcare insurance.

In this article, we will add some clarification and dig into the large topic of health care insurance. We will explain (1) how we got coverage in California in 2019 for $1 per person and per month, (2) what insurance we decided on for year 2, (3) why we think our health care costs are going to be a fraction of what they are in the US (even if we pay out of pocket) and (4) why we believe that we (and most people) will be saving thousands of dollars each year by avoiding the US healthcare system. Ready to talk about health care? 

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By Mr. Nomad Numbers, ago

Traveling with Purpose

Whether it is for a short 2 weeks vacation, a 3-6 months sabbatical from the office or even if travel has become your lifestyle, there is no shortage of beautiful places in the world to visit. Most of the time people will pick a destination because it is “trendy” or because one of their friends recommended it to them. Very few people will actually ask themselves what they want out of a travel experience before picking the destination after some introspection.

In other words, we rarely start with “our why” we want to travel but rather focus merely on the “what” or the “how” expecting the magic to happen once on site (check out this great book from Simon Sinek to get more insights on this topic).

This lack of self examination can lead to dissatisfaction in many areas of life. Like going to college, getting married, buying a house or even having kids without asking ourselves first and foremost if these are things we really need to live a truly fulfilled life. 

In this article, we will explore why it is important to travel with purpose and provide some ideas to get you started. If you’re seeking some inspiration and want to go beyond checking off a travel itinerary, this post is for you!

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By Mr. Nomad Numbers, ago

Destination Report: Lisbon – Part One: What to do, see, eat (& avoid)

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!

By Mr. Nomad Numbers, ago

Destination Report: Porto – Part One: What to do, eat, see (& avoid)

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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By Mr. Nomad Numbers, ago

2 Day Itinerary and Cost – Douro Valley, Portugal

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.

By Mr. Nomad Numbers, ago
Reflections

Pros and cons of a nomadic lifestyle

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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By Mr. Nomad Numbers, ago

Year 1 Nomad Travel Spend Report – Traveling the world for half of the cost of staying home

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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By Mr. Nomad Numbers, ago