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** This post was written by Tina Gibbons. Find out more about Tina at the bottom of this post. **
The location independent lifestyle lends itself to moving from location to location and seeing the world, whilst simultaneously building or maintaining your location independent business.
However, being a location independent digital nomad doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to move from place to place regularly – it simply means that you can. You could choose one destination or ten – it doesn’t matter – the point is that you have that freedom to choose and whatever you do choose – your business and income will remain unaffected.
This post explores the advantages and disadvantages of staying in one location for an extended period and why, for some people it might be the ideal kind of LIP lifestyle…
1. Lower Travel Costs
The most obvious benefit to choosing one location for a longer period is that you can make considerable savings on flights and other travel costs. You could potentially save enough money to cover your cost of living for an additional 1-3 months in a place, just by flying to that destination and staying there for a year rather than having to pay for the flights to fly to three separate locations within the same year.
2. Cheaper Rent
In many countries, you can negotiate a much better price on accommodation if you commit to staying for a period of 6 months – with an even better price if you commit to 1 year. For the location-commitment shy among us that may be a scary prospect!
However, if your business is new and you want to keep your costs and outgoings down, you could commit to three months initially to see how you like the place, then consider the possibility of a one-year contract – this allows you to build the savings into your business plan and provide yourself with a little extra cash flow whilst your business is in start-up mode.
3. Avoid expensive mistakes and set up costs
If you spend a long enough time in one particular place, you will learn where to go to get the best value for money – where to do your food shopping, which restaurants to eat at and so on. Most people make “expensive mistakes” when they first arrive at a destination and start exploring. Staying in one place for longer enables you to get the most out of your money in that particular destination.
Move to a new place – and you can guarantee that your cost of living for the first month will increase and will remain higher until you suss everything out. The same also goes for set-up costs – whenever you move to a new place, your first shopping bill is generally always higher, due to stocking up your new place with basics that you’d rather not carry with you. The more frequently you move, the more frequently you’ll have to set up.
4. Local prices versus tourist prices
Some countries (particularly in Asia) have one price for tourists and another for locals. If you become a regular at a bar or restaurant or are seen to be a regular member of the community – you will soon encounter local privileges such as discounts and tabs.
It can take a number of months to build up this kind of relationship and learning the local language helps. Prices may not vary enormously in all cases – but over the course of a year, the difference would still create a noticeably positive impression on your cash flow.
5. Time is money
For those of you who struggle to find the time to build your business profitably whilst living and working in a country where the cost of living is high, the option to select one destination where the cost of living is much lower, could be an ideal solution.
Visiting a country with a low cost of living for an extended period, without the disruption of moving from one location to another, could buy you the time you need to consolidate and launch your nomadic business plans.
6. Learn to travel in your own LIP style
If you are not used to travelling and unfamiliar with getting to know new places and people, making a step to one destination eases you into things gently.
You only need to organise accommodation once, your plans are less complicated and you can build your ideas and future plans at a slower pace. You can spend more time nurturing relationships and getting to know a culture that is different to your own, which will increase your confidence when/if you move to another destination in the future.
7. Deeper experience of different cultures
People like to travel for different reasons. Some people want to see multiple cultures, architecture, scenery and traditions; some want to experience different cultures and perspectives; and others (like me) may be looking for a place they would like to settle.
For the latter two groups, staying in any given destination for a longer period will be far more fulfilling. The longer you stay the more layers you peel away as your understanding of the local culture increases. It takes a long time to reach the core of a culture – but the insights and experiences you gain along the way, make the journey and the effort worthwhile.
…But now the downsides to staying put:
Visa regulations and immigration policies are the main obstacles you will encounter when considering staying in one country for a longer period. There are usually a number of different options available for longer stays such as business visas, education visas, investment visas or long stay visiting friends or family.
Some of these options come with restrictions on whether you can work or not, though generally, if your clients are all offshore and you don’t “set up business” in the country you are visiting, this shouldn’t be an issue. If you are considering staying longer in a country than the average tourist visa allows, checking out the long stay visa options for your desired destination should be top of your to do list.
I hope this post has provided some inspiration to those of you considering launching yourselves into the location independent lifestyle who are looking for ways to reduce costs or looking for deeper cultural experiences whilst travelling. If you have anything to add, please feel free to blast us with your comments…
My wife and I are seeking a Location Independent lifestyle, but will probably not be traveling too often, because of many of your stated reasons. We would rather live somewhere long enough to really get to know it, the foods, the people, the idiosyncrasies. Once we get to know it and get bored, then it will be time to move on.
Great points: reducing the transaction costs of life and travel are perhaps the most important things for location independent professionals to sort out.
And staying put really allows for deeper experiences.
The key to me is to learn your style of travel, learn when to trust your gut on when to stay / leave, and to not force yourself into too many schedules: it is about independence, right? :)
Point number 7 resonated with me–staying in one place to get a deeper experience of the culture, become a quasi-local. That’s what I look for in travel.
Elliott was just writing on Twitter about getting a one-year multi-entry L Chinese visa, whatever that is, so long-term stays can be done.
What’s the difference between “staying in one place”, and “moving to another country”? Isn’t it pretty much the same thing at some point?
Great post, Tina. I agree that it certainly takes time in a new place to find your way around, decide if you’ve made the right choice over accommodation, suss out the alternatives and generally to feel comfortable. That said, the life of a LIP needn’t be all new places. One of Lea & Jonathan’s declared aims when they started their travels was to find 3 or 4 places that they really liked and then go back to them. My point is that even if you do have restrictions in the form of visas, like in Thailand, you can always come back a few months later. We have done this in Phuket and this time round, coming back to the same accommodation, not only did we get an ‘old-timers’ discount, but we were treated like old friends in various places we’d frequented last year. In all, it took about a day to get up and running. I think that the ideal LI lifestyle would, in the long term, be one or perhaps two new places a year and re-visits to old haunts for the rest of the time.
@Scott – I think in this instance, Tina is referring to staying in one place for more than a few weeks or months at a time (e.g. staying put for 6 months to a year+) rather than moving to another country so frequently (i.e. every 2-3 months which is what we were doing).