Things to Consider Before Becoming a Digital Nomad: Reality Check
I think most articles either glorify the life of being a digital nomad or write about why it’s not a long-term plan. I think I’m somewhere in between. For example, I could never be an RV family as we tried that and it was a disaster for all of us, but unlike social media likes to make the van life a goal, it really isn’t the only option.
After years and years of moving around we thought we should settle in, bought a house and stayed that way. Yet, not even 2 years in we got ready to move again and change our base 🙂
I think we’ll always be digital nomads.
I won’t lie to you: there are a lot of issues when being a digital nomad, and even more issues when you add kids to it. But, I have a love-hate relationship with chaos as my husband says and my toddler is the same. We both complain and then adapt easily. In fact, Dylan was only 2 years old when he told my husband that he’s ready for a new house and started asking to travel to places he found out about.
What Pandemic Taught Us
If the pandemic taught us anything is that nothing is permanent in this life. One would say that it makes the digital nomad lifestyle easier, but the reality is that it’s quite the opposite.
Bustling parties within the communities became non-existing, co-working spaces and hostels had to close down and many travel people realized that they’re stuck in never-ending lockdowns all alone.
Others got kicked out or locked in countries or cities they didn’t plan on staying in long-term (hello Australia!). Many couples or even families became separated for months.
While some managed to travel around a bit despite the restrictions they were hit with additional costs of testing, canceled flights, and quarantines. All of that was still before the inflation hit all of us.
Am I saying that the digital nomad life is over? Not at all, but it requires even more planning than ever and a bigger safety net in terms of finance, planning and quality of life.
Travel Planning Takes a Lot of Time
Travel planning takes a lot of work and time. You need to book flights, prepare for all eventualities, arrange accommodation, and necessities and then it might all fall apart on you.
On top of that, you still need to work to sustain your lifestyle and take care of the kids. It’s exhausting.
At home or at a longer base you travel from can have the privilege of a laundry machine. I’m lucky that my kids aren’t messy at all, but as much as I like laundrymats lots of times things get lost or ruined and you need to plan things carefully so that your clothes have time to dry.
Can’t Be Hopping Nonstop
Traveling with kids while you work is super challenging. You cannot plan much and be prepared for every eventuality. You can plan to leave a certain place at a particular time and that’s when your kid may decide to throw up or shit their pants.
If you can’t find an open supermarket you might just skip dinner and eat a bag of chips instead, but with kids it can be tricky. On the road we always end up overspending for food, because we’re too busy, tired or lack the possibility of cooking.
You also don’t want to be hopping around nonstop. At some point you’re tired of “another waterpark”, “another zipline”, and things become less and less exciting when you get to do them nonstop.
On top of everything else, you need to keep up with your life – you cannot escape it completely. The number of times one of my banks or cards didn’t work despite a travel openness and I had to spend hours on the phone with banks trying to fix that… and don’t even get me started on when an ATM ate my card and phone stopped working and I had to borrow the money to fly back to London from Sydney as it was the only way to handle things.
Flexibility with Babies
When I traveled with Dylan when he was a baby we could squeeze everything into a carry-on for a few days. However, as much as I wanted to be minimalistic in terms of raising my children I cannot imagine not having certain items full time for small kids.
I’m not talking about gadgets like fancy cribs or formula makers. Babies need stuff – bottles, bassinets, swaddles, change of clothes for different weather. We cannot travel with a carry-on with two kids anymore.
On Instagram new parents often glorify traveling with babies as easy. I’ve been there, I also thought it was easy and that it would stay that way.
Once the baby became a toddler we couldn’t stay at any AirBnB anymore because we couldn’t babyproof the staircase, a glass table with trinkets was a hazard for everyone, and marble floors with dirty carpets for early walkers were made of nightmares.
On top of the simple fact that many cool places simply don’t accept kids, which requires even more planning when traveling to certain places.
Accepting the Reality with Kids
I once read that “travel kids can potentially take part in whatever activity anywhere.” That might be true, however, many parents don’t realize that their ids might be different than you and want different things. I thought it was a fantastic idea to live by the beach with my toddler… just to realize that my toddler hates the ocean and sand.
We spent 3 months living by the beach and managed to drag the child out there twice for 15 minutes… half of the time trying to convince him to stay and play and other half chasing him when he decided to go back to the apartment.
You might be an excellent and experience van-living couple, but your child might hate this lifestyle. I had my reality checks as soon as my very smart and determined toddler turned 15 months old and started having opinions – and he’s traveled his whole life so it’s not like he wasn’t adjusted.
Medical
While babies can be flexible, many people don’t realize how many medical appointments there are within the first year of their life. And that’s if they’re all healthy without any other needs.
When we lived in Italy we quickly realized that there are various issues with private pediatricians because they cannot do it all and my husband didn’t speak the language, so I ended up having to fly to another country to do it. That wasn’t a big issue at first, but then my pediatrician recommended that my son needs some physical therapy… weekly. We couldn’t fly to another country weekly at this stage. Thankfully, it was nothing too serious, but what if it was?
You can say that you don’t go anywhere that we haven’t first researched health care. Nope, things happen when you change your location often. Things that you don’t expect.
Other friends discovered that while they were living in Hungary they had to report to a social worker every month because that’s the local law and had to adjust their schedule around it.
Homeschooling Issues & Working with Kids
While homeschooling could teach more and schools have many flaws, I don’t want to take away the social aspect from the kids. On top of the obvious – some of the concepts of worldschooling and unschooling seem a little bit extreme for some people, including myself.
In my opinion, while kids are social and can make friends easily, having regular friends vs “friends on the go” is huge, especially in this day and age. My own best friends are from school and college, but I went to school in Europe when you don’t switch classes every year in the US.
Both of my kids have been in daycares since they were 8 months old. I cannot imagine them not going to preschool even now, especially when Dylan is already telling us he misses his friends when he stays home sick or we’re traveling somewhere where there are no kids.
A babysitter/tutor full-time didn’t work for us no matter how hard we tried to make it work. Mostly because our kids are way too engaged with us, so if we’re home they’ll be banging at our door every 5 minutes until we all come out and play together.
It was frustrating to us, the kids and tutors and we were kicked out of our apartment desperately looking for a coffee shop with internet or co-working space.
You can still get plenty of breaks in some school systems if you stay in places for a while. When we started school we signed up for a year-round calendar which allows us to still travel 5 times a year.
The school doesn’t necessarily mean a cement building that confines children (I feel like they’re more confined to their iPad education) – my kids went to a fun school in Mexico that was child-led and in the middle of the jungle teaching them practical and interesting things. All screen-free.
Food
Some countries make finding good food difficult. Making your own meals using local ingredients is by far the most budget-friendly method of eating local for a digital nomad. But, with little kids it’s adding extra stress.
We rarely cook on the road, because I’m either missing spices, tools, or the most important thing: time. At some point, another take-out gets boring.