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The notion that “all good things come to those who wait” is not one that sits well with lifestyle designers and anyone aspiring to become location independent. If you, like me, want something – you’ll probably want it now. In fact now is not soon enough – yesterday is better!

But if you want something badly enough, you’ll do what’s necessary to get it – and that’s exactly what the couple we feature in today’s interview did.

We’re always talking about lifestyle design and location independence being a journey – well, the 3 year journey that Danielle & Josh share with us today might sound familiar to many of you…and I hope will serve as inspiration that, no matter how far away you think you are, if you keep at it, it will happen for you too.

Where did it first start? What are your professional backgrounds?

Our journey to becoming LIPs started almost three years ago. My boyfriend Josh and I had made the decision to move out of Canberra, the National capital of Australia, a place where people either worked directly for the government, or for a business that supported it in some way shape or form.

We had both had a taste of life as public servants (I managed to stick it out for a whole three months), which we had vowed never to return to, and had begun dabbling in other areas.

Josh had been messing around with computers since he was a little kid and his passion for web development was already seeing some results. I was not sure what I wanted to do, but was making some money as a bookkeeper while I figured it out which was helping me afford night courses in business and marketing that I hoped would come in handy one day.

The only problem was, while bookkeeping can be done just about anywhere, for web developers in Australia, the interesting projects were mostly based in Sydney or Melbourne so for Josh to progress much further, probably meant moving to one of those places.

With Sydney only two hours from Canberra, and not a place either of us were particularly drawn to, much to the horror of my mother, we picked Melbourne, arriving on the 12th January 2007, and within a month had found a cheap place to rent and were settling into new jobs, neither of which paid as well as ones we had left behind, but at least they provided a steady stream of money into our accounts.

Sounds good – steady income, ok jobs. What was wrong?

Unfortunately, the money we were earning started burning holes in our pockets as we searched for things to spend it on, not particularly out of necessity but out of an ingrained sense that it was what was expected of us as working adults of a certain age and income bracket.

Sure, some of the things we bought were necessities – my old futon was a smidge too small for Josh’s tall, lanky frame (he had to sleep diagonally so that his feet didn’t hit the end) and our washing machine needed a well timed kick half-way through a wash cycle, otherwise it just sat there full of water.

But when we began collecting random kitchen appliances (popcorn machine, anyone?) that barely fit the tiny amount of cupboard space we had and all sorts of other random bits and pieces, we figured we better find something sensible to invest in before we frittered away all our hard-earned money.

What steps did you take to help better manage your finances? Why did you buy a house?

We set some financial goals, reeled in our spending habits and stuck to a budget and got to work saving for a deposit on a house.

Fast forward a year and, having discovered we quite enjoyed the challenge of seeing how little we could live off each month, we managed to build up a tidy little deposit and were ready to purchase our first property. Our weekends quickly turned into a seemingly endless procession of open homes (I’m pretty sure some of the real estate agents thought we were stalking them), until we finally picked a place that could be rented out at a rate that just about covered the mortgage expenses.

Buying the house definitely helped us establish good saving habits though, and soon enough we were able to build up a bit of a safety net which gave us the confidence to step back a bit and give some serious thought to what we wanted our future to hold, while attempting to disregard the deeply ingrained notion that establishing careers, buying a house in the suburbs and settling down to have babies was the logical choice (sorry mum).

So once you were on top of your finances, what happened next? Why weren’t you satisfied?

The biggest frustration for me was that regardless of how efficient I was at my job, I was still obliged to be at my desk a certain number of hours each day which, having worked for myself doing freelance bookkeeping in the past, seemed like such a frustrating waste of life.

For Josh, someone who can get so involved in a project that he doesn’t surface for hours on end, the general lack of flexibility in even in the most casual of work places became a reason to look for an alternate solution.

So began the next stage in our journey…

Why the move to location independence?

Over the course of another twelve months or so, Josh took on more freelance jobs until he was able to work fully from home, and I ditched my office job completely when I realized that trying to negotiate a compromise with my employer was leading me no-where, and picked up a casual position in a bike shop that gave me time to take on a few more subjects, getting me ever closer to the completion of my degree.

By January 2009, with the economy crumbling around us, Josh’s work was showing no signs of slowing down, but the place I was working for was starting to feel the pinch and, being a casual, I was one of the first to go.

Luckily interest rates on our mortgage had also dropped while rents had continued to go up, so our property was providing us with a small but positive cash flow, meaning that instead of getting another job straight away, I was able to take on even more subjects.

When February rolled around we were both essentially working from home: Josh doing freelance web development and me finishing my studies online, and we got to thinking that since all we really needed was an internet connection to keep doing what we were doing, really, we could live anywhere.

Spurred on by the odd couch-surfer we had hosted over the past few months and their tantalising talk of exploring the world, we took action.

We set a date, bought our tickets, sold off or gave away all but a backpack each worth of stuff, waved goodbye to family and friends and on the 22nd of July, set off on a new adventure.

Where have you been on our travels so far?

We’ve spent the last few months traveling up the West Coast of America, stopping every few days at places with an internet connection so that I could submit essays and Josh could keep his clients happy (and we could reassure our parents that we hadn’t been eaten by bears), until we arrived in Vancouver, Canada where we plan to hang out for the next few months or few years, depending on how much we like it.

Three years ago I could not begin to imagine being where we are today, and trying to picture where it will go from here is equally as impossible.

I do know this though: the possibility of me sitting in front of a computer working nine to five for someone else at a job that bores me stupid , now seems as remote a possibility as living in an apartment in the middle of Vancouver once did.

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