The Digital Nomad Life: An Honest Account After Two Years on the Road
The Instagram version of digital nomadism is a laptop open on a beach, coconut somewhere nearby, the suggestion of limitless freedom. It’s a compelling image. It’s also responsible for an enormous amount of bad decision-making by people who quit their jobs based on an aesthetic rather than a practical plan.
Here’s what two years of working remotely from various countries actually looks like — the parts that are genuinely wonderful, and the parts that travel accounts don’t tend to photograph.
The Part Nobody Admits: Wi-Fi Is Not Universal or Reliable
The digital nomad economy runs on internet access. And internet access quality varies so dramatically between countries, cities, neighborhoods, and individual cafés that it becomes a constant preoccupation. A beautiful guesthouse with inadequate Wi-Fi is not a viable workspace. A stunning beach town that hasn’t upgraded its infrastructure is a vacation destination, not a remote work location.
The places that have consistently worked in practice, as reported by the nomad community: Medellín (Colombia), Chiang Mai (Thailand), Tbilisi (Georgia), Lisbon (Portugal), and Bali’s Canggu district. These locations have reliable high-speed internet, established coworking ecosystems, and communities of fellow nomads who have done the vetting work already.
The places that look amazing on Instagram but routinely frustrate people who try to work there: most small beach towns in Southeast Asia, much of Central America, rural European locations, and anywhere that markets itself primarily to tourists rather than long-term residents.
The Time Zone Problem Is Real and Annoying
If your job involves any real-time collaboration — video calls, Slack availability during business hours, anything synchronous — your geographic freedom is constrained by where those hours fall. A developer on U.S. East Coast hours living in Thailand (11-12 hours ahead) is working midnight to 8am locally. That’s a lifestyle, but it’s not the lifestyle the photos suggest.
The locations that work best for people with U.S.-based jobs: Latin America (Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica) stays within 1-2 hours of Eastern time. Portugal and most of Western Europe are 5-6 hours ahead, meaning reasonable overlapping hours if you’re comfortable with a later local schedule. Southeast Asia and Oceania work best for people with full asynchronous flexibility or who work for companies in compatible time zones.
The Tax Question Is Complicated and Important
American citizens are taxed on worldwide income regardless of where they live. This doesn’t change when you leave the country. The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (FEIE) allows U.S. citizens who meet the physical presence test (330 days outside the U.S. in a 12-month period) to exclude up to approximately $120,000 of foreign earned income from U.S. taxes. But “foreign earned income” has a specific IRS definition, and remote work for a U.S. company is a gray area that’s worth discussing with an accountant before assuming the exclusion applies.
Most other countries’ tax rules add another layer of complexity. Portugal’s Non-Habitual Resident regime has been attractive for longer-term stays. Georgia (the country) has a flat 20% tax rate and straightforward residency options. Each situation is different. Budget for an international tax accountant before budgeting for anything else — it’s the expense people skip and regret most.
The Social Dimension: Building Relationships While Moving
Loneliness is the digital nomad experience’s least-photographed dimension. Moving every few weeks means constantly building new social connections from scratch. The nomad community’s solution — coworking spaces, Facebook groups, organized meetups — works reasonably well for the extroverted and the persistently social. For introverts, it can be exhausting.
The pattern most long-term nomads eventually settle into is a “slow travel” approach: spending 1-3 months in each location rather than moving weekly. This allows enough time to develop actual friendships, to find the good neighborhoods rather than just the tourist ones, and to feel like a resident rather than a permanent first-day tourist.
What It Actually Costs: An Honest Breakdown
The nomad lifestyle can be cheaper or more expensive than home, depending entirely on where home is and where you’re nomading. Southeast Asia (Chiang Mai, Bali) is dramatically cheaper than most U.S. cities — total monthly costs of $1,500–$2,500 including accommodation, food, coworking, and activities are realistic. Latin America runs $2,000–$3,500 for comparable comfort. Western Europe is roughly equivalent to or slightly cheaper than major U.S. cities — savings are marginal.
The expenses people forget to account for: annual flights back home for family events, travel health insurance (essential; standard health insurance doesn’t cover overseas care), visas and visa runs, professional-quality equipment replacement (things break, get stolen, or fail), and the time cost of constant logistical coordination.
The Real Question: Is It For You?
Digital nomadism works brilliantly for a specific type of person: disciplined, self-directed, comfortable with ambiguity, energized by novelty rather than exhausted by it, and able to work effectively outside the structure of an office. It’s a genuinely extraordinary way to experience the world, to meet people who have made unconventional choices, and to develop the kind of global perspective that permanently changes how you see your home country.
For people who derive identity from community roots, who need the social structure of a regular office, or who genuinely love having a home they return to — it’s probably not what they imagine it to be, however beautiful the photos are. The best travel decision is always the one that matches who you actually are rather than who you want to look like.
