Digital nomad

[Cathal]

Or I guess we call it digital nomads. To me things are very simple purpose wise and all I need is to be able to sustain myself financially, I am a very frugal person.

That is my entire goal, to take care of my needs so I don't need to depend on other's. What are good ideas or areas to work on? I am 26 now, my biggest issue is not having a bachelor's degree in the sense of teaching English because that's what I had my eye on, I want to live in Thailand mainly for the Buddhist culture, I could go to college next year and it may provide a lot of security and possibility, but man I really do not want to do that for 4 years.

I could go into social media/content creation/private tutoring, Any input on possibilties from reading this?  Any answer is a good answer

[WalterM]

It seems that the best option is just to go to Thailand and try teaching English without the bachelor's degree. You can experiment all formats of teaching once you're there. If it doesn't work, it's okay, you can always come back and do the bachelor's degree later if you wish. The experience you're going to have living abroad will be valuable anyway.

[Cathal]

@WalterM I've looked into that, actually Thailand is exactly where I want to go for other reasons but it's actually a huge issue to do without a bachelor's degree. So I have this kind on my mind of okay, bite the bullet and spend 3 years get a degree, get experience, and get a decent paying job where I don't have to work so much or subject myself to unstable conditions, longer hours less wages and more hassle - no luxuries of the work permit and so on.

I want to live in Asia. So, in Asia, they want you to have a bachelor's degree at least. I actually don't give a shit what I do so much, but in my country Ireland, 3 year is the minimum. Man 3 years though lol...

[WalterM]

I don't know about the english teaching market in Thailand, I live in Brazil. Here I think a native English speaker can easily find students to teach, be it one to one or in group. I think you can earn the same or even more than in an English school, as people are willing to pay you more because you're a native. You would have to invest in marketing your classes.

Here there are a lot of foreigners who target the brazilian market in social media and are a huge success.  Many of them work with teaching foreign languages. Maybe you could do the same in Thailand.

I had classes for almost a year with an exchange student from France to learn French and I learned more than in a regular school, she didn't have a bachelor's degree in French.

If I were you, I would only consider the bachelor's degree if I wanted to pursue the career of teaching for life.

[Michael569]

I've spent about 4 months together in countries of South-East Asia , working remotely for a few weeks so maybe this will be helpful a bit. 

You can totally do it. Living in Thailand (outside of tourist hubs like Phuket, Samui, Ao Nang & Krabi) or even Vietnam, Kambodia, Philippines or Malaysia is totally doable, and you sustain yourself for years if you have enough money. A lot of Westerners, Aussies and Kiwis do it. The country is riddled with digital nomads who have figured out a way to make living while travelling. 

There are a few key points to make this work: 

• you need to have some sort of income, it doesn't need to be a lot. If you are happy sharing hostels and eating local thai food, then you can live off 500-600 USD per month, maybe even less if you are very resourceful and creative
• If you don't have any income, you can always earn some money locally by teaching English, and working in tourism (they actually REALLY want foreigners who speak proper English to work in their tourism but don't expect to be paid US salary) 
• this is more of a philosophical point, but you should make sure digital nomadism doesn't become your escapism from facing existential questions in your life (this is EXTREMELY common scenario) such as "what should I do with my life" because trust me, those questions will come back to bite you in the ass the moment you return back.

But yah totally doable and in fact, if you have the drive and the resources, you should absolutely do it. You can use this time to develop your life purpose or even start a business. Many whites even choose to start a family, marrying a local Thai girl and having a pretty awesome life - if that's your thing, that could be done. 

Just don't waste all that time by partying & polluting as do many who go there to "re-discover themselves" and end up broke, depressed, with severely damaged health and no plans for future. 

Hope that helps

Edited January 3, 2023 by Michael569

[Cathal]

@WalterM thanks for sharing your experience.

yeah I know it's quite possible, the main message I've gotten is get a bachelor's if you want to live in Thailand for a long time, which I do, but I know Vietnam and Cambodia are a little different, but i've seen trends across my reddit posts that make me really consider getting a bachelors and actual teaching experience and understanding how to teach properly - but if I could get an position online, even making 700-1000$ a month I would have 0 concern going to college. Thanks for your advice, i'm extremely frugal and can stick to that no problem, I am basically going to just put my head into the book's of learning and get some experience, i want to be competent and not too full of shit , online-teaching sounds very attractive for me because the main reason's why are having access to wats (buddhist monasteries)

i don't have these existential issues, i am merely trying to get financial independence so when I go out of retreat, i'm not stuck or dependent on my family. i have 0 interests with careers or ambitions to get a lot of money, i just want to sort myself out to practice as much as possible while having a place to go back to when i need a break from monasteries, i've ran into this problem staying at them for the last 7 months too often, so i'm here tryna sort it out

 

[Pudgey]

Don't make your end-goal to work for a foreign country - these counties, even though they are cost-effective - could easily be riddled with corruption. Don't ever rely on a 3rd world country for your income. You need to develop a skill and sell it as a service to truly become a digital nomad. Otherwise, you will be struggling and backpacking into nomanland instead. 

So, firstly - develop a skill. This could be copywriting, programming, marketing, SEO or any other skill you might be interested in. You spend 6-months developing that skill, everyday and then you develop another skill that supports your main skill. For example, if you become a programmer, you need customers - so you need to learn customer acquisition strategies, branding and marketing skills.  

Once you get customers, you need to learn customer support and handling customers. Essentially, you will be developing yourself as a freelancer for your digital nomad journey. This is where you can TRULY be somewhat free in your journey and be able to work when you want and backpack and make the income to support yourself and without heavily relying on other countries.  

It appears you are interested in online teaching: First, you need to find your teaching niche. You can use CHATGPT to give you ideas. This way, you at least know what  you want to do. Then, as you learn how to teach, develop the skill on how to launch your own website, create your own logo and create a personal brand of yourself and how to market yourself. For websites, you can use WIX, Squarespace or Wordpress (HIGHLY RECOMMED Wordpress). For logos, you can use Canva or buy one off of Fiverr. For personal brand and website building, you can buy a cheap course off of Udemy as well. Basically, you need to 100X the amount of skills you have to survive as a digital nomad. Otherwise, you will be a broke foreign roach. 

[Cathal]

@Pudgey Indeed, i'm 26 now so i'm trying to plan this out for my 30's, so i don't mind sacrificing this comfort i'm in to get to financial independence, throughout everything i've experienced so far i feel like unless you're going to live in a commune or ordain, it's the bedrock in which everything is built off and now i feel incredibly responsible to give myself a good life in terms of comfort and convienience so spiritual growth may more and more blossom, so to the extent i can develop my ability to teach and have a stable income through doing that really depends on like you said, getting this skills support skill thing going on, probably like web-dev/marketing/seo/social media and so on.

i've began that, have a squarespace website, started posting on tiktok/insta/fb - but i do want to be a good teacher if i'm going to be teaching people. but yeah i'll see, i am particularly interested in finding a niche right now

[John Paul]

I’m about to be 27 in USA.. my strategy is just to save money and buy multiple properties to make passive income through renting to other other people. And also through increasing my properties’ values and refinancing.

[Pudgey]

@Cathal Looks like you are on the right path. A niche is extremely important. I suggest a niche that is not too competitive, but big enough to attract customers and they must have money of course to invest. But, you also have to be somewhat interested and motivated in it.