Pros & Cons After 4 Years as a DigItal Nomad (honest opinion)

Four years. That's how long I have been living as a digital nomad. Constantly moving, working remotely and experiencing life in different countries. But is it actually worth it? In this video I will give you my honest opinion on the pros and the cons of this lifestyle. Should you become a digital nomad or would you be better off just moving abroad as an expat? Or in some cases is it actually better to just stay in your home country and travel occasionally? By the end of this video you will know whether this lifestyle is worth all the hassle or is it just an overhyped dream. So first of all I used to think that just moving to my dream place to live it would just solve all my problems but that's definitely not the case and perfect place definitely doesn't exist. There's different problems and your personal problems come with you anywhere you move. But definitely if you're like me and you don't really connect with the nature or the weather, the people, the mindset, whatever in your home country it's really good idea to think of the different options for your life to live in different places and try different lifestyles. So let's start with my raw take on the lifestyle as a digital nomad first. For me this is quite perfect because definitely like as many people like I like to travel, I like to experience new places and I get kind of like bored in one place like I notice it after many years now that anytime I'm more than like two, three, four months in one place I kind of all the days feel the same and I get like less inspired and like I don't know like it just doesn't feel the most exciting in a way and that's why it's so nice to every few months move to a new place and get that feeling again that wow like I'm so inspired and excited about life and like experiencing these new things in a new place, these new flavors, new smells, new tastes like it's just like new people also like you meet a lot of new people with different mindset like it's just an amazing lifestyle in this way and also the nice thing about the digital nomad lifestyle when you're moving around and like be free to go anywhere anytime is that you can avoid any like bad seasons like most places have rainy season or typhoon season or something like that you can avoid all that like I do like I always call based on the season so I'm always in sunny weather most of the time not right now but like usually and also with this lifestyle you have a lot of freedom when it comes to like optimizing your taxis and your setup because you can be anywhere anytime and you don't need to be in one place for a whole year so that's a lot of the positives which are of course amazing but there's of course a lot of negatives also and the way I would explain this is that if I compare my lifestyle to someone who's an expat so they just move to a different country for example Indonesia they move to Bali and they just stay in Bali all the time what I'm kind of jealous of those people is that of course when you stay in one place all the time you get to like build connections and community around you make good friends and like a friend group and have your routine and really learn so much about that one destination I of course have got a lot of those positives in Bali because I have stayed way more there but it's just that feeling always like you build your circle around and then you leave so that's sometimes that for all the positives I love leaving Bali and traveling and trying different places every year but also I feel a friends in the new places of course you always meet so many people so it's not a problem but like having the deep connections it's a bit struggle and by the way specifically for this problem I created my new school community the Nomad Tribe to make a space that is more like for those deep connections with like-minded people so even if we travel around we always have one place to go to ask questions meet people on the calls and have meetups and just have like more deeper connections with people because it's definitely a struggle a little bit when you're a digital nomad this is what most people say so I've been thinking a lot lately that would it be just better to actually live in one place as an expat and lose some of the positives of the full digital nomad lifestyle but for example Bali like it's pretty good place to live long term like the weather is year around the best option and also for me like as a home base like it's my favorite with the vibe and the people and the culture and everything like Bali is really good in that way and there's a lot to do like it doesn't get boring and then every now and then I can still do like travel like I can still do trips from Bali like if I have home in Bali I can still do some trips anytime I want or I can go for a month or two during the rainy season anyway so in that way you would get like most of the positives of the digital nomad lifestyle without getting so much of the negatives and I noticed also after a few years that I love the feeling of coming to a new even like a place that I have been before like Da Nang like I just love the feeling coming back here like changing environment like it's so nice but that feeling kind of like I lose it after one week two weeks and then it feels the same again like not so inspired so is it better to chase that new feeling all the time after year after year or is it better to settle down more in one place and still can travel and experience places without losing the community and the people side of staying in one place and by the way one of the best travel hacks I have found as a digital nomad is using eSIMs. Wi-Fi is still not always reliable and of course you need mobile data when going around and honestly I don't even bother with physical SIM cards anymore using eSIMs is just so much easier and hassle free. You can set up your eSIM just before your flight to have a working internet the second you land in your destination. No need to search for SIM card at the airport and deal with top-ups and by the way the SIM cards bought at the local shops or at the airport are often quite unreliable they might just stop working after a while. But with Holafly the sponsor of this video you can get reliable unlimited mobile data in over 200 destinations and they have also regional plans so if you're traveling around Asia for example you can just get one eSIM that works across multiple countries. So no more worrying about running out of data or any surprise fees. So if you're traveling soon check out Olafly and get an eSIM for your trip. I will leave a link in the description trust me it just makes life so much easier and by using my discount code JAWSETHENOMAD you will get 5% off and help support my channel. And one thing also now after a long time I noticed like if I think of like just staying in your home country in some cases like it's just so easy like you're a citizen in the country where you live like you're from there you know how everything works the taxis setups like you really save so much hassle when you just live in your home country like there's less risk and less like worry about like how things gonna change in the world and in a way when you travel from your home country every now and then you really do enjoy the travel. I remember traveling from Finland like to Bali or Philippines back in the day when I still lived there like I was just like it was amazing to travel like the best experience like I was just like happy tears almost like every day it was just amazing feeling you know to finally travel to a new place like that. But when you do this all the time you kind of lose that like magic of traveling like it's still nice and it's amazing but it's not as like incredible like it was back in the day. So I would say that if you don't have any place that you really want to live instead of your home country if you're kind of happy with your home country it can be even make sense to just stay living there because like yeah that mindset of like okay if I move to this new place things gonna change and be so much better like it's not really like that it can be because you meet new people you get new opportunities you develop your mindset and all that of course but in a way it can be also pretty good to just stay in your home country if you have your close friends and family and really enjoy your life there and have all the positives with that. And also more about the topic of health of course when you move to these places in Southeast Asia for example in some ways you can be way healthier because you're in a like outside in nature with good weather like surfing or like eating nice food in the restaurants easy like really healthy options but of course there's also like the negatives like you can get food poisonings easier in Bali for example you can get like tropical diseases like dengue fever from the mosquitoes you can easier get like into scooter accidents or something so there's definitely like there's a lot of like risk when it comes to health also and I definitely have to say that I haven't always been the healthiest when I live in Southeast Asia because of all these things and that's why I would recommend get a good travel medical insurance of course when you travel the one I'll be using is link in the description you can check it out like that's what I would recommend and nowadays I use their complete plan that means basically it's best for these anomalous that are long-term living this lifestyle because you have more comprehensive health care with that. So it's not really a problem when it comes to health care like in Southeast Asia there's good hospitals so it's not really something I would be too worried about if you get this insurance for long term. So my opinion based on my own experience I would say that it's really good like it's been amazing to live this lifestyle for the past four years and I will probably keep doing it for at least one or two years more but after that yeah I based on everything that I already say like I've been thinking that would be better to have a home in Bali or like in some place that I love the most and change the lifestyle a little bit like that especially if I build a family one day that I definitely looking forward to do and want to do it would be much better to stay in one place and can still travel but settle down a little bit and in Bali for example there's good international schools so that would be kind of like what I'm seeing for the future and by the way if you're getting value out of this video please like the video and subscribe to not miss out on all the future content about digital normal lifestyle in different places and of course one positive that I need to mention is that when you live this digital normal lifestyle you can live anywhere you can save a lot of money like cost of living is almost cheaper in some of the places in Southeast Asia for example compared to western countries that obviously will like you don't need to make that much money to live a really good lifestyle so that's the opportunity but of course the challenge is like can you make money online like without needing to be in a specific place because in most cases you can't really get like a job in Bali or something like that you need to work online and if you can make it happen it's really amazing setup but it can be a challenge of course and also like the world and the countries and you don't really know how things gonna change with climate change also like how different countries gonna develop to better and worse conditions for living so that's why it's nice to have this freedom of like I can kind of just choose whatever makes sense for me whatever I see is the best option I can go there and have the freedom and flexibility so that's definitely a big positive about this lifestyle and one thing I've been thinking that it would be nicely like if I'm getting a home in Bali of course would be nice to own it like would be nice to invest into a property but it's not that easy because in Bali it's always leasehold so it's kind of like a loose value by time so it's not like a long-term investment in that way so that's one negative that in my home country of course I would buy a property it would be really good long-term investment so there's not really that kind of opportunity when you as a foreigner in a foreign country so that's one negative but of course like you can also make good business with properties opportunities in Bali like you can build a lot of properties and like have different businesses around that but for a simple investment as one person buying one house like it's not that nice that it would be in western countries when you actually own the land and own the house so yeah every lifestyle every place have the pros and cons you just need to choose something that is like for you the pros are more important than the cons that's just how life works and for me digital normal lifestyle yeah it's it's been a good choice like I really I'm like I'm happy that I did this and I make all the effort to be able to live like this and for most people I would also recommend doing this at least for one or two years to kind of also see like you can't really know what is your favorite place to live before you try many like just moving to Bali or just moving to one place and just settle down there like how could you know that you wouldn't interactually living in Thailand way more so that's the positive of trying many places that you can actually find like what is the best for you where you feel the best where you meet the best people for you like most like-minded and then choose one place for long term because I would say that most people wouldn't want to actually live for the rest of their life this is a normal lifestyle of course like most people want to build some kind of community and home and family in one place instead of always traveling like it can get a bit exhausting always changing place and never settling down somewhere so yeah in the end of the day I would always recommend trying to build some kind of business online to give you the freedom to choose because that's really the greatest feeling ever so yeah I hope to see you in the tribe like and subscribe and see you next week