Driving alone around in Africa is what you consider life? I know working 9-5 is not a good life. However working on something you love, in an environment with friends and family and fun, is a good life i.m.h.o. I always have the feeling nomads always need to shout of the roofs of "how much better their life is". However I do think, what you are doing is super cool. However seeing it as "this is the only life thats worth living" is a bit extreme.

> I always have the feeling nomads always need to shout of the roofs of "how much better their life is".

If you travel as a nomad and pass through places that serve as meeting points with nomads, you tend to find that while some blog their travels and recommend the lifestyle to everyone else, there are plenty of people quietly living the life, without any internet presence documenting it, and they might be very quiet and introverted people. It might be compared to vegetarianism/veganism, where some have the impression that “vegetarians/vegans always need to shout what they are doing”, but perhaps the majority of people with that diet are just quietly following it without making a big deal of it to others.

I’m a digital nomad, I work as translator. I’m currently traveling for the next several months in West Africa. I wouldn’t say that this life is any better than anyone else’s (I just know that it’s what works for me personally) and I’d consider it strange to try to advertise it to others who haven’t shown any inclination towards it. That said, if someone already feels wanderlust, then I’m always happy to give advice, as I have benefited greatly from that kind of travel skillsharing and I do my part to pay it forward.

Thanks for your story. It's tough to avoid the tendency to assume the more visible individuals are representative of the group. But as you note, that usually isn't the case, so we should try to avoid doing so.

Honestly, it sounds more like just an advertisement for their "lifestyle blog". Just like everyone and their mother is vegan now, and has to make sure you know it every second of the day.

I've been quietly doing it for about 8 years and have met many others like that, but you aren't completely wrong. About 3 years ago I tried to become more of a part of the "digital nomad community" and found it to be full of hucksters.

"Look I'm worldly - I'm traveling the world!"

"Look, I'm a founder! I put a web app up!"

"Sign up for my newletter, my blog, my instagram, my X, Y, Z so you can find out how to make the same ad revenue I do, off of people just like you! You don't have to be you forever..you can take advantage of the yous and become one of the mes!"

/s

Not sure if you're trying to instigate, but I agree that there is just too much marketing noise, and I wish everyone would just shut up.

“Come on try it” “No thank you” “Oh it’s really good just try a bite” “No im alright thank you” “Really!? Just a bite”

.. sometimes telling people you’re vegan can help avoid awkward situations like when a friend got some cake they wanted to share.

I'm not talking about becoming a situational mute. But you already knew that. Why does HN have so many pedantic instigators?

I took 6 months sabbatical to backpack. And after the 5th month I was ready to go back home and live a more stable, quiet life. Being a nomad is not for everyone. It wasn't for me.

I like to get away from the everyday annoyances back in the UK (of which there are many) but...

When I have been in another place for a few months the differences I initially find refreshing soon melt away and I find some other stuff to get annoyed about.

In a way, it's great to know the grass is not always greener elsewhere and to accept that, yes, being a nomad doesn't suit everyone.

It isn’t either or: you don’t need to work 9-5 in order to have a family and friends, the only alternative being driving through Africa. He just said 9-5 isn’t life and I think he is right. I work 9-5 and now that I am a father I will beging cut down work. I find it a lot more rewarding to see my daughter starting to crawl than building some software for someone.

If you don't mind me asking, how will you cut down work? Is your employer willing to just reduce your hours, or do you have other plan?

I don't plan on cutting back yet, but I'd like to know for the future, since I've never actually met a career professional doing so.

It looks like mosselman lives in the Netherlands. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15497755 . You are in Portugal (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8029643 ), which also has paternity leave. One difference, according to http://www.theportugalnews.com/news/portugal-among-best-for-... , is that:

> Portugal is the member state with the fifth longest period of paternity leave, with a potential of 21 weeks to care for their newborns. However, this report paints a different picture when it comes to the division of domestic chores. Here, Portugal joins Estonia, India, Japan, Mexico, South Korea and Turkey as among the countries where women put in three times more time on such tasks than their male counterparts.

That sounds in Portugal fathers are more expected to work/be a career man, and mothers stay home, than in the Netherlands.

Nah, we're too poor for that: before the crisis, 87% of women between 25-to-44 had a job here (now they're just unemployed, not voluntarily staying-at-home).

They do most of the chores despite having jobs. We're a very patriarchal society still.

Point taken.

That answers your own question, does it not? That is, fathers don't take time off to spend more time with their babies because they are too poor to risk losing that job?

(This assumes that men tend to be paid more than women.)

Fair enough, but I do know some (though not many) middle-class people who could afford it.

We don't know if mosselman is exceptional or typical of Dutch fathers.

That is, if only 10% take time off, and you only know 5 middle-class people who could afford it, then odds are that even at the Dutch level you wouldn't know anyone who does that.

I suppose it's possi ... okay, that was too easy. A search for "how many Dutch fathers parental leave" comes up with http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2015/06/just-one-in-fo... which says "Just one in four Dutch fathers takes parental leave".

Not sure how this conversation went into parental leave - I actually know fathers who've taken that :) But that's just a month or so. I was talking about working fewer hours (rather than stopping altogether) on a longer-term basis. I find that much harder to achieve than taking a leave, which is similar to regular vacations, which companies are used to handle.

I did consulting work for a Swedish company. They have very generous parental leave policies, including people who were on 50% time for a year.

I also read that in some of the European countries (I'm from the US) there is a right to part-time employment while on leave. I figured that mosselman was from one of those countries.

Searching now I found http://cepr.net/documents/publications/parental_2008_09.pdf from 10 years ago which says:

> Of the 21 countries studied here, ten allow parental leave to be taken on a part-time basis: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden. Portugal is notable in that it gives parents an incentive to choose part-time over full-time leave: parents have three months of full-time parental leave or 12 months of part-time leave.

Based on mosselman's followup, my guess was correct.

Thanks for the link! I had no idea our law allowed for that!

Haha I am not sure in which branch of the discussion to respond, so I will do so here. I am from the Netherlands yes and we can have 26 times our employed hours 26 times full time for me) per child to be spent before they are 8, unpaid. You can use all those hours at once, or spread them out. I will do the latter and have 1 paternal day a week the coming 2,5 years. Looking forward to it as well. Yes I am lucky enough to be able to handle the income decrease.

Be good at what you do. Do it in half the time. Work from home so no one complains that you're getting all of the work done in half the time (people will complain about everything). Of course, you have to find a position that isn't a sweatshop to begin with for this to work. Small businesses--not startups--can be good places to practice this.

> However seeing it as "this is the only life thats worth living" is a bit extreme.

I didn't say it was for everyone, I just said it is for me.

I have lived both lives, and I know what I like and don't like. I'm certain I am the most qualified person to decided what kind of life is right for me.

You have to find you "only Life thats worth living". If you say it'd be a 9-5 life the joke is on you.

Love what you're doing but I've always thought of your site as more of a "Lifestyle Porn" niche. Similar in a way to the money moustache guy who retired really early. Most people aren't going to actually try for the lifestyle since chances are it wouldn't work for them (or they won't work for it) but love the idea of hacking life so you can get away from the 9-5.

Do you know how the Money Moustache guy retired early? I always felt something off about his blog. Some good posts for sure in isolation but as a whole it never felt right. Now it makes sense. I and most others don't have the luxury of retiring early (yet ;))

He advocates for prioritizing your health, do cool free stuff instead of cool non free stuff and do not be too materialistic. The more you read, the more you understand this is not even about saving or retiring early.

He retired early by having a high (but not sky high) income and saving like 50-70% of it.

Nothing he did is unbelievable, you can't apply everything but you can apply a lot and it really gives benefits, no matter if your goal is to retire early or not.

Plus he doesn't sell anything and doesn't fool anyone to earn money. :)

Wasn't the whole Money Moustache thing based on the fact that he and his wife had both a good income to start with?

I read many things in that direction.

"I made millions with real estate! I simply bought a flat, refurbished it and then either became a landlord or sold it for much more money! It's so simple even you can do it. I started with getting like 50000€ after an car accident..."

"I retired with 40 and you can do it to, you just need a job that makes you 100k a year..."

I think he has an article that covers his finances from when he started working to when he retired. The short answer is double tech incomes and very limited spending. If your household is pulling 250k and living off 25k a year it makes retirement a lot more attainable.

Good for you! You've clearly found a style of life that suits you very well, and that's something worth cherishing.

But the nomad style isn't for everyone, and its challenges are as unusual as everything else about it. Since Hacker News is at least tangential to those sections of the tech entrepreneur thoughtsphere where nomadism is extolled as the best and only thing, I think this is a conversation worth having here.

I agree, 9-5 isn't a life. But traveling 24/7 isn't a life either. We travel to get to a destination. When you make traveling a constant inecessity it just kills the joy within it. Seems like more of a symbol of indifference rather than actual character growth.

We (nomads) don’t travel to get to a destination - the travel itself is the destination

You and I both know that is misleading. Travel is the same whether you are in a moving plane or cramped fake one in a movie studio. It's the places. Perhaps the ones seen transiently through the train window while in motion. But how can you bottle up traveling into a static and repeatable phenomena??

At one point I was tempted to try buying a boat and becoming a sea gypsy, problem is boats are expensive holes in water that you pour more money into.

I also have the problem that my hobby-job revolves around making and tinkering with electronics, Tesla coils, radios machines etc. I would simply get bored without access to a well equipped electronics lab and mechanical workshop. So until I can afford a super yacht it is 9 - 5 for me.

> "I would simply get bored without access to a well equipped electronics lab and mechanical workshop."

Could you not just use hackerspaces wherever you went? Also, if that's your hobby, why not live somewhere with great electronics markets? Living on a boat that could sail in and around the East China Sea (Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Seoul, Taipei, Tokyo, etc...) seems like it could be fun.

Doesn't Simone Giertz do this? Maybe you should look into her.

Opened your site on mobile and first thing presented to me where 2 products on Amazon affiliate (a torch and mug) and no content nearby. Your lifestyle blog lost me there.

Nice, glad it's working out for you! Just curious, you wrote that you funded the first expedition by saving from your salary, but how are you paying for the second?

The first trip was in 2009-2011. His second trip started in 2016. He must've put in some work inbetween. He's also monetised his traveling with books, partners etc.

More importantly though, from the info he posted, it shows he spends about $1200 a month traveling mostly through South-America. Which isn't too crazy, gdp per capita in the continent is about $450, Africa is even 'easier', in that the gdp per capita is about $150 a month. So he's often spending a multiplier (2-7x) of the national average on a minimalistic 'sleep 500 days of my 650 day trip in a tent' lifestyle. Keeping this number low is key to everything, if you don't have kids it's doable to save for such a lifestyle.

He does mention he worked along the way, really curious as to what kind of jobs he landed and if that meant he stayed in any one place for longer periods of time!

I've got a few friends here and there who've got a few hundred thousand in equity sitting in their home and modest savings. At a 5% annual return, one could spend $15k a year of their $300k investment and live such lifestyle in perpetuity.

The modified jeep alone was 50k or more.

Gas is 5k.

He said gas was 7k and the jeep was 6k, for the trip he referred to as costing 27k.

The Africa trip is another jeep, the jeep itself didn't exist when he did his first 27k two year trip, and indeed he modified it a lot. Probably a lot more expensive but also not necessary. Where'd you find the 50k number?

A new Rubicon is 37k plus at least 10k of modifications.

My Jeep was not even close to 50k.

I bought it used for $22,500 CAD.

Yeah but your modifications alone gotta run at least 10k.

I have a van I'm modding out and a roof rack and reinforced bumper alone is 6k.

The point is you have income from somewhere that allows you to be carefree with your time and money.

It feels a little disingenuous when people say "I will never go back to full time 9-5 5 days a week."

Like it's a choice most people have.

It's like Donald Trump saying he's a great business man and you should take his advice...when he really inherited a ton of money.

This is all speculation on my part though and I really wish you the best no matter what your situation is.

Looks like an amazing trip! Stay safe!

Sure, the modifications were around $10k, which means the total price was A LOT lower than $50k.

And no, I don't have "income from somewhere".

I worked a 9-5 for 5 years and saved every penny I could, now I'm living on those savings. Yes, I'm trying to earn some money on the road, and it's currently covering about 25% of my monthly expenses.

> It feels a little disingenuous when people say "I will never go back to full time 9-5 5 days a week." Like it's a choice most people have.

I think it's sad you think like that. It is a choice, if you want it to be. It's hard work, and requires changing around your priorities, but it absolutely is a choice. I have met hundreds and hundreds of people doing it [1], including families with kids, including people from every walk of life you can image.

[1] I'm interviewing interesting people I meet living on the road - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNiCe5roBX1gdbLoAclKw...

I worked a 9-5 for 5 years, saved every penny and now I'm living on that!

Thanks! I should definitively save more :)

Cool. What kind of work do you do on the road? Also, if you don’t mind (ball parking is fine), what do you make and what are your expenses?

Any idea what your Carbon footprint it? I've always been curious about this.

I have not figured it out, though I suspect it's lower than the average North American going to work every day.

I only drive about 60 miles on average per day. I have no electricity use. I don't buy "stuff" (clothes, TV, couch, furniture).

This will give you an idea for flights: https://my.flightradar24.com/

How do you afford this?