hey it's patti scharf CPA and co-founder of catching clouds the leader in
e-commerce accounting and I am with you in petone New Zealand I'm actually
across the bay from Wellington wait where is it back there somewhere and I'm
under this structure because it's like stupidly windy and my phone keeps
shutting off so hopefully the video and sound are not too choppy but in any case
so we're going to be in New Zealand for three months another month in Australia
and then we're taking kind of a slow boat home so there are other people who
have been following along on our journey and they want to create something for
themselves that is similar and so they wanted some more of the details about
how do you work remotely and travel at the same time so I thought I'd give you
some tips on basically the planning on how what got us here so that you can do
that for yourself all right okay so the first thing you're going to need is a
source of income you know go figure it takes money to to go do stuff so luckily
the world is a lot more open I think now to virtual working opportunities you can
get a remote job working with maybe the company that you're at now or you can
look for a job that offers that opportunity our whole company that we
created we created it so that our clients could work from any beach in the
world and we want to be able to do the same and we wanted our employees to be
able to do the same so we are all completely virtual and I know that it's
becoming more and more popular I know that a lot of people they started maybe
their amazon store so that they could start creating that lifestyle for
themselves so I think that it's becoming more and more popular and hopefully you
can find or make that opportunity for yourself the second thing that you need
is to decide where you want to go and I think there going to be a lot of
different factors that play into that one is going to be
if somebody is coming with you if somebody's coming with you then you know
you have to agree upon it together maybe you guys have always had a dream of
going - I don't know New Zealand then you know maybe see what you can do to
make that a reality or maybe you don't care where you go you just want to get
out of Dodge and you want the money that you're earning in the u.s. to go further
then maybe you pick something like Chiang Mai Thailand I know that that's a
really popular place for a lot of people to go I would just warn you that if
you're going somewhere like that where there is a lot of like Westerners
visiting there who are carrying around their laptops and stuff like that don't
surround yourself just with the exact same kind of person that you are
get out meet people who are of different nationalities find out the history find
out like anything about the place that you're visiting don't just like kind of
bring your own culture with you the third step is once you know your where
it where it is that you're going you need to develop a budget yeah this is my
favorite part cuz you know I'm an accountant so the first thing I did when
we decide we were going to New Zealand was to pull out my spreadsheet we start
plugging in numbers and stuff so you want to find out kind of what the cost
of living is hopefully that was part of your decision when you decided where you
wanted to go and then start thinking about all the biggest expenses that are
going to be playing into this so typically that's going to be things like
your accommodations or you can just go fine so it's going to do things like
accommodations it's going to be maybe excursions it's going to be your flight
tickets their you know your airline tickets you do need to consider things
like food but honestly you're going to eat food whether you're at home or there
so it ends up being kind of a wash so like when we were budgeting for this
what we did was we we saved up for all of the big
expenses that we knew were coming like all the Airbnb charges our rental cars
our excursions we're taking a cruise back and so those kinds of things we
allocated that out we saved up for that stuff but then all the cost of living
stuff we just tried to figure out is what we're making in the u.s. the same
as what we would spend abroad now you have to pay attention like we have a
house so that mortgage payment isn't going away just because we're not in the
house so we had to do things to figure out how to handle that you might want to
rent out your house you might want to list it on Airbnb you might want to just
pay the mortgage and you know that's part of it if you're able to do that
sort of thing so those are all things that you should pay attention to when
you're developing your budget okay so bonus tip I want to talk about Airbnb
really quickly the vast majority of the places that we're staying
were booked through Airbnb several advantages through this one you can pick
your own budget so you can find really cheap places to stay maybe get a private
room in somebody's house or something like that
or you can pick really nice places to stay so like for Christmas we booked
this place that had these amazing views it was more than we would typically
spend on a nightly stay we just stayed there for half a week and then stayed
somewhere less expensive during other parts of our trip I would say make sure
that you pick something that has like a super host that's what we did it gave us
a little bit of like confidence that we were in good hands and make sure you
read the reviews so that you know that you're staying somewhere other people
have stayed that it'll just give you a little bit more confidence in the
decision that you're making and we've been through about I think nine
different places at this point we're about five weeks in and
we have we haven't had a bad one so yeah that's that's our advice to you here's
the other thing that we did is it gave us an opportunity to go through and
review our current expenses and cut out the things that maybe we could do
without like we got rid of cable and replaced it with Hulu and Netflix then
we researched to see if Netflix and Hulu would work over here it said that it
wouldn't but actually Netflix does so I don't know what's up with that but we
just connected to Wi-Fi and now clicks is working for us so we're not gonna
look a gift horse in the mouth on that one but then anything you're not going
to be using just cut it you know cut your Rec Center membership or your your
workout membership or like like we're not going to be driving our cars for
five months so we dropped our car insurance to the lowest possible amount
so so start thinking about those kinds of things when you're looking forward to
some kind of international travel the fourth thing that you're going to need
to know is all the things that are different in the country that you're
going to like you know the electrical plugs you might need to get a converter
for all of your you know hair dryers and things like that so or you know your
laptop so that it's going to work in the in the country that you're going to
another thing is internet you need to make sure that you're going to have
reliable internet if you are working remotely you need to be able to get
online to do that work so make sure that there are stable internet connections
you might check out and see if there are any co-working spaces when you are
booking your lodging make sure that you pay attention that the houses that
you're going to have Wi-Fi these are kind of important things for digital
nomads and remote workers to know about look and see if you need to get any
special shots make sure that you have enough medicine if you're on any kind of
prescription meds make sure that you have enough for the duration of your
travel you may need to go to your doctor and get a
you'll note or something like that you'll want to check out the exchange
rates so that you know how far your money is going to go in the other
country lots of countries require you to get a visa before you travel to them so
look that up and make sure you have a visa so that you can travel there and
speaking of visas this is different kind of visa but credit cards so make sure
that your credit cards are going to work internationally and call up your bank
and give them a heads up that you're going to be travelling abroad so that
they don't put a hold on all of your charges and while you're at it look and
see what kind of deals they've got going on before we came over here we signed up
with a Chase Sapphire card and they have triple points on every dollar we spend
traveling and which is amazing and then it also has a lot of like travel
insurance benefits and things like that so go see what you can dig up you might
want to get a new credit card or you might want to you know talk talk to your
bank and just just see what they can do for you the next thing that we did was
we figured while we were at it we might as well check all of the stuff that had
to do with our lives so we reviewed all of our estate planning and our wills and
things like that and just made sure that everything was up to date and that if
anything happened then our kids would be taken care of our property would be
taken care of our business would be taken care of so make sure you check out
the video that I did on protecting your business I talked a little bit about
that and again if you do have a house or maybe like a dog or something like that
you're gonna need to find somebody to take care of your property while you're
away that's what we did my son's friend's mom is taking and keeping our
house safe keeping our dog fed while we're away okay so my last bit of advice
is when you've decided that you want to make this change and go on a trip like
this or big embrace the nomadic lifestyle
first of all book your flights because somehow once you book your flights like
it makes it really hard to turn back it makes it harder to talk yourself out of
it it makes it harder for you to come up with excuses why you you shouldn't go so
book your flights tell your friends book your your Airbnb s or your hotels or
whatever and just make it a reality alright so I hope you haven't found this
helpful if you've gone on a trip like this and you have additional tips please
leave those down below if you are planning on going on a trip let me know
if this helped you or if you have come across anything else in in your travels
or anything but I I'm just really interested to hear about other people's
experiences so I guess that's it I hope you liked this video if you did
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I'll catch you later