How to Go Nomad: 12 Not-So-Easy Steps to Become a Digital Nomad

Going nomad isn’t easy. It’s hard. But it’s also simple.

There’s no magic hack, no secret club, or Facebook guru’s course that’s going to make it happen overnight.

Like most things in life, it’s just about starting down the path— putting one foot in front of the other until you end up where you want to be. We can’t walk that path for you, but we can point you toward the trailhead.

This guide is about taking those first steps: the ones that will actually take you from doom-scrolling “digital nomad” hashtags on the couch and help you to become a digital nomad, walking out your front door for the last time — with a plan in hand.

So, before you list all your worldly possessions on Facebook Marketplace and hop a flight to Bali, take a beat. Going nomad isn’t just a matter of booking a one-way ticket and hoping for the best (though sometimes it works out that way 😬).

The truth is: a little planning can go a long way (like, around the world). And I don’t necessarily mean complex, color-coded-spreadsheet kind of planning either, though they can be pretty bloody handy.

I’m talking about the practical steps that bridge the gap between “this is a wild dream” and “I actually live and work anywhere I want — and I’m not calling my mom for a bailout from a train station in Albania.”

This is your digital nomad checklist: twelve steps to take you from daydreaming to actually living it.

This isn’t theory. These are the things we had to figure out ourselves (sometimes the hard way) before we traded the nine-to-five for a life on the road. From creating a budget that actually works, to choosing a location, sorting out visas and taxes, to figuring out what to do with the junk in your garage — these are the unglamorous but essential steps that turn “I want to be a digital nomad” into “I am one.”

Along the way, I’ll link you to practical tools — like our packing guides, budget templates, and location guides — and share some of the mistakes we made so you don’t have to repeat them.

So if you’re serious about becoming a digital nomad, here’s where to start.

Grab your coffee (or perhaps a stiff drink), and let’s break it down: the twelve things to do to become a digital nomad.

How to Become a Digital Nomad

12 Steps to Going Nomad

1. Define Your Why
   👉 Without a strong “why,” you won’t survive the tough days.
2. Build Your Nomad Bucket List
   👉 Big, small, or ludicrous — this is your star map for where freedom can take you.
3. Create Your Budget
   👉 A lean, realistic budget buys you time, resilience, and longer adventures.
4. Build Your Income Strategy
   👉 Reliable streams (plural) = the difference between thriving and panicking.
5. Sort Out Your Finances
   👉 Get modern banking, multi-currency accounts, and an emergency fund in place.
6. Pick Your Date
   👉 A circled date on the calendar turns “someday” into “launch day.”
7. Pick Your Destination
   👉 Your first stop isn’t forever — just choose somewhere exciting and practical.

👣 Optional Step: Test the Waters
👉 Try a one-month trial run before you burn the ships.

8. Cover Your Admin & Insurance
   👉 Paperwork is boring, but it’s what saves you from bureaucratic nightmares.
9. Go Fully Digital
   👉 If you can’t run it from a laptop and phone, it’s not nomad-proof.
10. Wind Things Up at Home
    👉 Clear the decks — housing, stuff, bills, pets — so you can actually leave.
11. Plan for Community & Support
    👉 Build networks on and offline so you don’t end up isolated.
12. Prepare Mentally & Emotionally
    👉 Flexibility, resilience, and mindset matter more than gear or visas.

1. Define Your Why

This might be the most important — and most overlooked — step in becoming a digital nomad. Its purpose is to ignite enough fuel to free you from the gravitational pull of stasis, doubt, and fear.

Before you start selling your couch and downloading flight apps, pause for a second. Ask yourself: why do I want to go nomad?

Your “why” is the anchor that will hold you steady when things get rough (and they will). When you’re sweating through a visa run, trying to lead a meeting from a noisy café with shaky Wi-Fi, or wondering why you thought it was a good idea to drag your entire winter wardrobe through Mexico, your “why” is what will keep you moving forward.

For some, it’s freedom. For others, adventure. Maybe it’s a lower cost of living, or perhaps finally writing that book you’ve been talking about. Whatever it is, write it down. Literally. Journal it. Stick it on your fridge. Tattoo it on your forehead if you must. Just get it down. Because when your friends and family inevitably ask, “So when are you going to get a real job again?” you’ll start to question why exactly you’re doing this yourself, and you’re going to want an answer better than, “Uhh… beaches?”

Without a strong “why,” your chances of even navigating the logistics stage are slim. With one, you’ve got your compass.

2. Build Your Nomad Bucket List

This is the fun step — your star map for after liftoff. It gives your plan shape, direction, and momentum.

What’s the point of location independence if you can’t use it to live your wildest dreams… whatever they may be.

Make your bucket list as long and as ludicrous as you want. Don’t self-edit. When we set out, the idea of living in a ski town, sailing the Mediterranean, driving across Australia, and living in Mexico each felt as wildly improbable as the next — each one a “maybe someday if the stars align” kind of dream. We never thought we’d get to do any of them… let alone all of them, plus countless others along the way.

That’s the beauty of going nomad: once you take the first step, doors open you didn’t even know were there. Your bucket list will grow and change over time, and if you stay the course, it becomes a guiding vision board pulling you toward your wildest dreams.

In February 2020, for example, we left our van parked in Mexico to fly to Australia to visit family. We had no idea the gate would slam shut behind us and we’d spend the next two years “locked down” in Australia. Luckily, #53 on our list was drive around Australia in a camper — so that’s exactly what we did.

When borders finally reopened, we figured we had one more adventure left in us. We consulted the list: buy a boat and sail the Mediterranean for one season. That was four years ago. That single bucket list item became a way of life we couldn’t imagine being without today.

Your “why” keeps you in the game. Your bucket list? That’s the tool that lets you imagine — and then live — your wildest dreams.

3. Create Your Budget

Okay, the fun part is done. Hopefully, we have some motivation and momentum to get us through some of the not-so-glamorous steps toward going nomad.

And to start, budgeting. If you’re already retired or set for life, you can skip this part. For everyone else, grab a notepad or boot up Excel.

There’s nothing less exciting than budgeting, but the truth about going nomad: it costs money. There’s no way around it. Before you quit your job and start browsing flights, you need to understand what this lifestyle will actually cost you.

And no, you don’t need to get it perfect. But you do need a baseline. Start by writing down your monthly expenses at home (housing, food, insurance, Netflix, lattes). Then adjust it for nomad life: accommodation abroad (Airbnbs and hostels), transport (flights, buses, fuel), travel insurance, and a healthy buffer for those inevitable “oops” moments.

When we first started traveling, we didn’t have a single income stream (see below). We survived by militant budgeting — down to the coins we tipped a street performer at a stoplight in Santiago. Every peso mattered, and stretching them was the only way we could keep going. Almost a decade later, things aren’t so dire, but the lessons we learned about discipline, sticking to a budget, and watching our pesos like a hawk have stuck with us.

And honestly? Starting lean was the best thing we ever did. A barebones budget forces you to make smarter choices, travel longer, and weather the inevitable ups and downs without panicking. If you can build your first budget around “what do I need to survive?” rather than “what would be nice to have?”, you’ll buy yourself time and resilience. You can always add luxuries later as income grows — but starting lean gives you the longest runway.

The goal isn’t to slash your budget to the bone forever. The goal is to make sure the lifestyle you want matches the money you have (or can earn). Nothing ends the dream faster than realizing you’ve been living champagne dreams on a beer budget.

This step is absolutely foundational in building a successful digital nomad lifestyle. Before you figure out how to make money online or choose your destination, you need to know how much it costs to live. The budget can be finessed as you continue down the path, zeroing in on where you’ll travel, when you’ll leave, and what, if any, income you can expect along the way — but starting to gather this intel now will help you make all those decisions down the track.

You can start sketching out a basic budget on the back of a napkin using broad buckets like start-up costs, income, expected weekly and annual costs…

Or…

You can get super granular and detailed like us and start building out your own detailed budget using the very same templates we have been using and refining since we started traveling in 2018.

👉 Get Our Nomad Budget Template

4. Build Your Income Strategy

Now that you know how much you need to live the dream, it’s time for the million-dollar (hopefully less) question: how are you going to pay for it?

This is where we separate the backpackers from the digital nomads. Up until now, we’ve been setting ourselves up for a long trip that, while wonderful, will one day come to a screeching halt. To keep this party going we are going to need to pay the piper. To do that we need an income.

For most digital nomads, this income will come from freelancing, consulting, remote jobs, running a business, side hustles or, ideally, a combination of the lot.

You don’t have to invent the next big app or become a crypto millionaire. You just need a plan that reliably covers your expenses — ideally with a little buffer for those unexpected “I’ve arrived in Bangladesh in monsoon season” moments.

When we set out, we weren’t planning to become digital nomads. But very early in the journey, we realized we weren’t going back. The problem? We didn’t have jobs or an income strategy of any kind.

Kelli had some savings and we had a very strict budget, and that was it. No grand plan, no remote job lined up, no business ready to go. Just a hard stop on our nine-to-fives and the decision to figure it out as we went.

Over time, we pieced together remote consulting, freelance contracts, short-term gigs, small businesses, digital products, and investments. None of it happened overnight, but little by little, we built the streams that keep us moving today.

I started out teaching English, first with a Polish school working with adults, and later with a platform teaching Chinese kids online. Kelli picked up short-term accounting contracts she found through Upwork. One job led to another, and over time she built a roster of regular clients and eventually launched her own consulting firm.

At the same time, we dabbled in online projects: a blog, a vlog, and a few websites that never really took off.

We were able to reinvest some of the money we saved by living simply on the road, and little by little, our income streams began to stack up.

It wasn’t quick, and it definitely wasn’t easy. There were plenty of stressful moments — and even now, we’re very aware that the digital nomad life is a fragile one. A small change in circumstances can make things difficult fast.

But compared to where we started, we’re far more secure, more future-proof, and, most importantly, confident in our ability to make this lifestyle work even if our income were to drop to zero tomorrow.

If we had been planning to go nomad from the beginning, we would have thought about income in advance. And you should. Having at least one reliable stream of income before you walk out the door — and ideally a backup — will take your chances of succeeding as a digital nomad way up. Because clients dry up, projects end, and algorithms change. Multiple streams make you more resilient.

Some starting points:

• Freelance & Consulting: Writing, design, programming, accounting, marketing.
• Remote Employment: Many companies now hire fully remote employees — from startups to multinationals.
• Content & Creative Work: Blogging, YouTube, photography, digital products. (Spoiler: this takes time — don’t bank on it day one).
• Side Hustles & Passive Income: Templates, courses, affiliate marketing, investing (again takes time and patience to develop).

👉 If you’re looking for more pointers on how to make money as a digital nomad, check out our list of the Best Jobs for Digital Nomads Today

The point isn’t to build a perfect empire before you leave. The point is to be able to bootstrap the beginning phase, cover your budget, buy yourself time, and start stacking bricks. You can grow, diversify, and pivot along the way.

5. Sort Out Your Finances

At this point, you know how much money you’ll need, and you’re starting to get an idea of how much money will (or won’t) be coming in.

It’s time to set yourself up for success on the road by removing as many financial roadblocks as you can.

When I first moved to Amsterdam with Kelli, I only had one bank account from a brick-and-mortar bank in Australia. The first time I used my card overseas, the bank froze it. To unfreeze it, they demanded a signed copy of my ID and bank card. Not by email. Fax or snail mail only.

After tracking down the last working fax machine in Amsterdam, I sent the documents — along with a handwritten note asking them to please close the account forever and send my money to a bank from this century.

Lesson learned: Set up your finances before you leave, or you risk learning the hard way, too.

When it comes to sorting out your finances for a nomad lifestyle, here’s where to start:

• Pay Down Debt: The less you owe, the freer you’ll feel. High-interest debt + unstable income = stress.
• Emergency Fund: Build (and maintain) a cash buffer for unexpected expenses (such as missed flights, medical bills, etc.)
• Set Up Online Banking: Make sure your bank lets you manage everything online and won’t freak out the first time you log in from Croatia.
• Open Multi-Currency Accounts: Services like Wise or Revolut make it easy to get paid in one currency and spend in another without losing a chunk to fees.

You’ll also want to think about how you’ll actually get paid. Some clients prefer PayPal, some wire transfers. Make sure you’ve got accounts set up for each and that you’ve tested them before you’re relying on them for rent money.

And don’t forget: some countries require proof of funds to issue visas. Having clean, accessible bank statements can save you a lot of explaining at immigration.

The bottom line: set up your finances so they work wherever you are, not just when you’re at home. Future You will thank you the first time you’re trying to pay for a sim card in Montenegro at 11 p.m. on a Sunday.

6. Pick Your Date

A dream with a date is just… a dream. Circling a departure date puts us squarely in plan territory. It gives you something to aim for, something to look forward to and plan around, and something to spurr you into action when that date’s one week out and you still haven’t figured out whose going to take care of you cactus collection.

Start with a realistic timeline. Six months is usually a sweet spot to budget, declutter, sort your admin, and put your affairs in order. Any longer and you risk getting stuck in the “someday” loop. Any shorter and you’ll be frantically googling “what’s a power of attorney and do I need one?” at 2 a.m.

7. Pick Your Destination

Once you’ve circled a date on the calendar, it’s time for another fun step: choosing your launch destination. And if I were you, I would expand my horizons beyond what’s trending on TikTok.

Think visas, tax implications, cost of living, safety, internet speed, and whether there’s actually a community of people you want to hang out with.

Bali, Mexico City, Chiang Mai, and Medellín are all tried-and-true digital nomad hubs. But here’s the best part of being a nomad: you can go anywhere. Montañita, Almaty, Tblisi, Ljubliana, La Paz, Bansko, Valpraiso, Banos, San Crisotbal …ANYWHERE!

The places that we’ve loved the most are almost invariably the ones we hadn’t ever heard about until we started travelling in the area. San Pancho on Mexicos pacific coast is a great example, a place that would have never been on my radar if we weren’t travelling slowly by van throughout the country. Since stumbling upon it for the first time it quickly became one of our favourite spots, we’ve returned twice and got married there in 2022.

Don’t overthink it, though. The beauty of this lifestyle is you’re not locked in forever. Your first destination is just that — the first. Pick somewhere that excites you and makes sense logistically. You’ll have plenty of time for detours.

Choosing a first destination is another crucial step in how to become a digital nomad. It’s where the plan becomes a ticket, and your choice can also have a serious impact on your first impression of this lifestyle.

👣 Optional Step: Test the Waters

Are you really ready to go full nomad? After setting a date and working out some of the logistics, this is the perfect time to do a trial run before you burn all your bridges.

Book a one-month Airbnb in a new city, rent a campervan or a sailboat for a few weeks, or take your job on the road temporarily.

It’s a low-stakes way to figure out things like:

• Can you actually work productively on the road?
• How does your budget hold up outside your home country?
• Do you genuinely enjoy the lifestyle… or do you just like scrolling Instagram photos of it?

We once met a young couple in a marina who had sold everything to buy a boat and live their dream of sailing the Atlantic while working remotely. They spared no expense in outfitting their boat for ocean crossings. But before setting off, they decided to do a weekend trial sail — just a short passage and a few nights at anchor.

They came back several days later, looking utterly defeated, with their boat looking worse for wear. A squall had rattled them, they struggled with anchoring, and to top it off, they’d been swarmed by insects at anchor. By the end of the week, their dream boat was back on the market, and they were on their way home to see if their old boss would take them back.

Some people find a month away confirms their dream. Others realize it’s not for them — and that’s fine too. Better to figure it out with a refundable Airbnb booking than after selling your house and giving away your dog.

8. Cover Your Admin & Insurance

Before you hit the road, you’ll need to wrestle with everyone’s least favorite sport: paperwork. It’s not fun, but skipping this step can turn your dream into a bureaucratic nightmare.

Insurance, taxes, and legal paperwork are crucial for anyone researching how to become a digital nomad. Skip this step, and you risk fines, denied entry, or huge bills when things go wrong.

Here’s the short list of things to handle before you go:

• Insurance: Health, travel, liability, and gear insurance if you’re carrying expensive equipment. You may never need it… until you really, really do.
• Taxes: Figure out what you will owe (and to whom), earning income in a foreign country. Many countries tax you based on residency, not location, but the rules can get messy fast. Talk to an accountant who understands expats/digital nomads, or bootstrap by crawling expat websites and forums to get the up-to-date info from people living there now.
• Legal Documents: Wills, powers of attorney, birth/marriage certificates, driver’s license renewals, all digitized and stored safely online.
• Voting: Don’t forget absentee/overseas ballot registration if you want to (or if you have to) stay involved back home.
• Residency/Visas: Some countries require proof of funds, return tickets, or specific types of visas. Don’t wing it — research before you show up at immigration with a smile and a backpack. Today, more and more countries are offering digital nomad visas, and many that dont still have pathways for foreigners earning foreign income to stay longer than a tourist visa. Doing your homework here can save you stressful, expensive and exhausting boarder shuffles every month or so

👉 We Use SafetyWing Travel and Health Insurance

Buying, selling, importing, and exporting vehicles abroad. Paying taxes. Replacing passports. Border runs. The dreaded Schengen shuffle. Visa applications. We’ve handled a huge amount of paperwork during our travels. And if there are two lessons we’ve learned along the way, it’s:

1. Bureaucracy is a nightmare wherever you go
2. With patience and persistence, you can overcome it, where there’s a will…there’s a way.

Sorting out admin isn’t the most exciting part of nomad life, but it’s the foundation that lets you relax once you’re on the road. And the stronger your foundation, the fewer problems you’ll have.

9. Go Fully Digital

If you’re going to live a location-independent life, your admin and tools need to be location-independent too. No filing cabinets, no mystery mail piling up at your old address, and no desktop tower that requires its own suitcase. You’ve already switched over to an online bank (if you haven’t…do so), now its time to see what else can be digitized.

Move your life (and files) to the Cloud, it’s not just documents anymore. These days, the cloud is your filing cabinet and your external hard drive. Scan and upload all your important papers — passports, IDs, medical records, tax forms — and store them securely online with backups (Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive).

But also think about:

• Photos & Videos: Back them up to Google Photos, iCloud, Backblaze, or Adobe Cloud. You don’t want to lose a year of travel memories because your laptop took a bath.
• Work Files: Sync projects across devices so you’re not chained to one machine. Desktops, towers and massive storage devices don’t travel well — and they definitely don’t fit in a carry-on.

Next, if you don’t already have one get a good VPN. It’s your lock and key for life online. It encrypts your connection so you can safely do things like banking or client work on sketchy café Wi-Fi.

It also lets you:

• Access geoblocked content (because sometimes you just want to watch your Netflix library).
• Log in from “home” when websites or banks get picky about location.
• Get an extra layer of protection on public networks.
• Stop others (icluding your boss and clients) knowing you’re working from a beach in Costa Rica

👉 We recommend and use NordVPN

Round out your setup with essential apps:

• Navigation: Google Maps offline, Maps.me
• Translation: Google Translate, DeepL
• Productivity: Google Docs offline, Notion, Evernote, ChatGPT
• Accommodation: Booking.com, Airbnb etc

The goal: you should be able to run your entire life — banking, admin, storage, and work — from your laptop and phone. If it requires a desktop tower, a filing cabinet, or a trip to the DMV, it’s not nomad-proof.

Cloud storage, online banking, and VPNs are must-haves if you are planning to become a digital nomad. They keep your money, work, and memories safe — and let you live conveniently and safely beyond borders.

10. Wind Things Up at Home

Before you can start your new life, you need to close out the old one — or at least put it in stasis. Bills, furniture, mail, and whatever mystery drawer is still full of phone chargers from 2008 all need to be sorted.

Housing comes first. Handing back the keys, subletting, selling or renting. Handing back the keys… well, that one’s the simplest, subletting (when possible) can help keep a foot in the door, if you own your place, selling can free up cash, while renting can generate income.

Don’t forget subscriptions and services. Cancel or pause what you won’t use — gym memberships, Amazon deliveries, HelloFresh. Switch streaming services to digital-only plans you can access abroad (though beware geoblocking; a VPN helps). Keep an eye out for sneaky bills that keep charging long after you’ve left. And then there’s the mail problem. Forward it, digitize it, or outsource it to a service that scans and emails letters to you. Or, if you’re lucky, convince a parent or sibling to play “unpaid mail clerk.”

Figure out what to do with pets, cars, plants, and all the other loose ends. Sell the car, rehome the plants, and be realistic about the logistics of leaving a pet behind.

Then there’s your stuff. Declutter ruthlessly. Sell, donate, gift, or trash anything you don’t truly need. For the things you absolute must keep, consider storage — but remember, once it goes into a box, chances are you’ll forget about it forever.

When we first set out, we were so worried about the things we couldn’t take with us that we packed a box of what we thought were our most treasured possessions — clothes, keepsakes, little “must-haves” — and sent it to be stored with Kelli’s mom. Somewhere along the way, the box was lost in transit. We were devastated. For a couple of months we held out hope it might turn up it didn’t. Then we sort of forgot about it for a while, when we finally did turn our attention to it we couldn’t quite remember what was in the box and to this day, we can’t really figure out why it was so important.

And honestly, this is one of the best parts of becoming a digital nomad: learning how little you actually need to be happy. Once you strip away the clutter, you realize freedom isn’t just about being able to move anywhere in the world — it’s about no longer being weighed down by things you thought you couldn’t live without. Minimalism has been one of the most freeing, rewarding lessons of our journey, and it’s made space (literally and figuratively) for experiences instead of belongings.

Before becoming a digital nomad, you need to winding things up at home. It’s about clearing the decks as much as you can. The fewer things you have tying you to your home, the more free you’ll be to focus on the adventure ahead.

11. Plan for Community & Support

For years, we didn’t put much effort into building community on the road. We’d both already had our backpacking seasons in our twenties — the ones where you make a new best friend every three days and replace them just as fast. By the time we started traveling together, we were more focused on each other than on making new friends. We kept up our relationships back home and that was enough… until Nora came along. Suddenly, community wasn’t just “nice to have,” it was something we wanted for her too.

Over the past year, we’ve leaned into connecting with other traveling families, and it’s been a game changer. Nora has playmates, and we’ve found ourselves saying yes to more social situations we might have skipped before. Apps like No Foreign Land when sailing have helped us find families with kids nearby, and those connections have been some of the most rewarding of our travels. What started as an effort to help her socialize ended up enriching our lives just as much.

That’s the truth about nomad life: it can get lonely if you don’t plan for community. You’re not just leaving your house; you’re leaving your office buddies, your neighbors, your climbing gym crew, and your go-to babysitter. The good news is that community is out there if you look for it — coworking spaces, expat hubs, family groups, or online networks like Nomad List, Facebook, and Discord. Even a handful of people to swap tips or share a beer with makes all the difference.

Start small. You don’t need a 50-person crew to feel at home. Sometimes just one or two good connections are enough to turn a strange place into your place. Community doesn’t just keep you company — it can make nomad life more sustainable.

12. Prepare Mentally & Emotionally

You can have the budget nailed, the income streams lined up, the visas sorted, and the cloud storage humming — but if your head and heart aren’t in the right place, nomad life will chew you up.

Because here’s the truth: being a digital nomad has more boring, stressfull and exhausting days than it does enriching exhilirating. Some days you’ll be pinching yourself abchored off a Greek island or hiking to a glacier in Bolivia. But many days you’ll be forcing yourself to work to a deadline, sweating through a border crossing, hunting for Wi-Fi, or wondering why your Airbnb only has two forks and no frying pan.

Living light is liberating, but it also means learning to live with less. And while there’s no doubt you’ll appreciate that you can live (and live well) without massive flat screen and a smoothie maker theres somedays you’ll definitely miss it. Flexibility and adaptability is part of the deal.

Get comfortable with uncertainty. Flights get canceled, borders close, clients vanish. We once left our van in Mexico for what we thought would be a quick visit to Australia, only to end up stuck there for two years when the borders slammed shut — a detour that turned into one of our best adventures. If you can roll with the punches, nomad life can feel less like a string of setbacks and more like a series of surprises.

Friends, family, colleagues, even strangers may not understand. You’ll hear, “When are you coming home?” or “When will you get a real job?” Smile, nod, and come back to your “why.” That’s what will carry you through.

Often, the most challenging stretches aren’t when something spectacularly goes wrong — no storms, no broken gear — but the quiet grind. Being stuck somewhere too long because you can’t face one more round of “where / how / when.” Weeks where work calls bleed into visa research, nap schedules into provisioning, and nights dissolve into scrolling friends’ barbecues and baby showers from a rickety fold-out table, feeling left out and left behind. The freedom is still there; the stoke… not so much. But even in those moments, things always turn. The winds shift, a friendly face appears, or you stumble into a view that resets everything. The sun always comes back out.

At the end of the day, the digital nomad lifestyle isn’t really about beaches and laptops — those stock photos lie, or at least don’t tell 90% of the story. It’s about learning to live with less, adapt more, and embrace uncertainty, while chasing experiences you never thought possible. It’s also about letting go of old routines and identities, and sometimes shaking off other people’s expectations of who you should be.

👉 Discover the Hardest Part of Being a Nomad…That No One Talks About

Final Thoughts

Becoming a digital nomad isn’t about hacks or courses. It’s about taking one step, then another, until suddenly you’ve walked yourself out the front door and into a new life.

And now, you’ve got the roadmap:

1. Define Your Why
2. Build Your Nomad Bucket List
3. Create Your Budget
4. Build Your Income Strategy
5. Sort Out Your Finances
6. Pick Your Date
7. Pick Your Destination
   • 👣 Optional Step: Test the Waters
8. Cover Your Admin & Insurance
9. Go Fully Digital
10. Wind Things Up at Home
11. Plan for Community & Support
12. Prepare Mentally & Emotionally

That’s it. Twelve steps between doom-scrolling “digital nomad life” hashtags and actually living them.

It won’t always be smooth. Sometimes you’ll be jet-lagged, lonely, broke, or stuck explaining to a border guard why you don’t seem to have your visa document on you right at that moment. But other times you’ll be sailing the Med, driving across Australia, or watching your kid take her first steps in a country you couldn’t even find on a map five years ago.

The point is, it’s possible. Very boring, ordinary people like us do it every day. If you’ve read this far, you can too.