There are people where the couple works for 20hrs a week each and travel the world with their spouse and 2 kids and live a decent (middle class?) life. Is nomading like this possible and realistic in the USA? Or is the cost of living just too high?

34 comments

  1. I’ve met people who make 6 figures remotely. It’s hard but not impossible. It’s just easier when you live in a place that’s cheap. There are places in the US that are cheaper than others.

  2. IMHO that’s a terrible thing to do to a kid. I think kids are better off with a home and a stable schedule that allows lots of time to play in the yard with the dog and neighborhood kids.

    Just my 2 cents.

  3. Well I think one of the reasons people are “nomads” is because they don’t have visas to stay in a place over 3 to 6 months

    People don’t really “nomad” in the US like that if they have decent work from home jobs. Some do but it’s rare. There’s lots of places with low cost of living and a lot of people just move there permanently.

  4. The improbable part of this is the “20 hours each” thing.

    Idk why we’ve had so many questions on that lately but for the vast majority of jobs that’s just not a thing. Especially the ones conducive tona digital nomad lifestyle.

    You could basically only do it by freelancing on something, which can be really rough. If you’re not setting your own hours and making decent money online, you’re working full time as an individual.

    Also most jusy…wouldn’t want to do that to kids. That’s incredibly isolating and most seek stability so kids can build regular friendships, learn to function in settings like a classroom, keep solid routines, all that jazz.

  5. I don’t see how you could possibly make enough money living like that, certainly *not* a middle class lifestyle, unless you’re getting money from someplace other than your job. I also think it’s awful for the child. They need stability.

  6. I am sure its financially possible, depending on the success of your business or your salary if not self employed.

    Typically though people are much less cavalier about breaking the employment laws of the US and other countries with strong enforcement.

    I can just imagine the look on the face of any HR person once they find out you’ve actually been working in 6 different states on a tourist visa.

  7. As a single or a couple yes. With kid no. Decent temporary housing is difficult to come by; landlords prefer to rent to people who will stay someplace for at least a year. Airbnbs are expensive and so are hotels. You do not want to be hopping motels with a kid – or without one, for that matter.

    Also you’ll definitely want to own a car.

  8. These people succeed because they get paid in US money yet live/spend that money in countries with far lower cost of living Thailand, Belize, Mexico, etc. The economics don’t work if you’re spending the money in the same place you’re making it. Also I bet most of these nomads spend more time working than they let on.

  9. The first time I read about Digital Nomads, it was about people in the US, mostly younger single people who would move from city to city, sometimes with a friend group, six months in Denver, three months in Nashville, and so on. This might have been 5 or 8 years ago. So, yes, it is possible to do in the US.

    As already mentioned, this plan seems difficult with children, and moving around every few months or every year gives them the “army brat” experience. Probably not ideal for the kids.

  10. > There are people where the couple works for 20hrs a week each and travel the world with their spouse and 2 kids and live a decent (middle class?) life. Is nomading like this possible and realistic in the USA?

    I don’t think that’s realistic anywhere.

  12. I’m technically a digital nomad (in Laos right now). I have met probably at least a hundred other nomads over the past year I’ve been traveling.

    Digital nomads do not generally travel in the US and they do not generally travel with their kids. I suspect you could find someone out there who does both but I doubt they call themselves a digital nomad and their life is probably extremely unconventional in other ways.

  13. A number of people do RV life as digital nomads so to speak. People that work remotely use cell phone boosters and Starlink for internet and either use solar power generators or stay in campgrounds and RV parks with electricity.

    If you stay in mostly cheaper campgrounds like state parks and national forest/national park campgrounds that’s around $30 to let’s say $40 a day on the higher end. $40 a day is around $1200 a month. KOA and similar RV parks are going to be $70 – $80 a day. Some state parks, if they don’t have water and electric hookups, are $20-$25 a day.

    Plenty of RV lifers on YouTube if you want to see what that life is like, and a lot of them have kids.

  14. It’s possible, I know a couple who did it for a few years while being brand ambassadors for an outdoor gear company. They drove around in a fancy van going places and taking video and photos of them using the equipment for social media. They got tired of the lack of space and the day to day challenges of being /r/vandwellers, it’s not easy to up and move where you’re sleeping and resting constantly.

    Possible and easy/common/popular are entirely different conversations though. It’s possible to drive around in the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile for a living, but there are only 6 people that actually do it.

  16. It’s impossible. The people you see doing this are *possibly* living out of the country, but more likely lying. A ‘decent middle class family life’ does not include living out of a van. This is what you do *before* you have kids.

  17. It’s call RV life and there’s a whole section of it on YouTube, tiktok, and IG. It’s similar in cost because of gas and maintenance on the rvs. But the parents work remotely and the kids home school and they just live and drive around the country.

  18. ?

    If you are going to have kids you need to put them first. So, that means stability and a school.

    If you want to be a digital nomad, do that on your own.

  19. If you find a job that supports your lifestyle on 20 hours a week, sure.

    If you don’t, then no.

    This is assuming citizenship or green card. The US doesn’t have a “digital nomad” visa for remote workers. If you’re here working a job, you’ll need the appropriate visa and there’s a ton of them to choose from. H1B is the most broad one but tends to be very competitive. There’s other visas meant for more temporary and seasonal work like to fill jobs at summer camp, but those are very temporary.

  20. I have met one couple, while hiking, who were doing it fir a year. They didn’t plan to do it after a year or after having kids.

  22. Can this happen? Yes, but only in very specific circumstances.

    Most digital nomads are able to make their lifestyle by earning money in a market that has a high cost of living and thus higher wages and then living in a lower cost of living market. So, it works if you earn a U.S. salary and then move to a low cost of living country. The U.S. has places with lower costs of living, but they still won’t be as cheap as some of the more popular places for digital nomads elsewhere and they certainly aren’t desirable—That’s why they are cheap. And these places are almost assuredly going to be rural, which means that you will need to buy or rent a car, an immediate expense that wouldn’t necessarily exist in more expensive, walkable, urban centers.

    And the 20 hours a week is part-time work in the U.S., which almost assuredly doesn’t include benefits. Two adults working part-time in the U.S. aren’t going to be middle class, and that’s not including kids. It would make way more sense in the U.S. to have one parent work full time and have one stay home if a couple wanted to try being digital nomads because the working parent has better odds of earning more individually full-time than both parents would together part-time and the working parent could earn benefits.

    And the digital part is limiting—in many ways, it would be much easier for two traveling nurses, for instances, to earn enough for more nomadic lifestyle—And nurses work long shifts but tend to be fewer than 40, so this is closer to your ideal—but these roles aren’t digital. A lot of seasonal workers, in the right roles, could make enough money to be middle class—but again, these workers are not digital nomads.

    And there are individuals who could be digital nomads for 20 hours a week and support kids because they are specialists in fields like art or tech—But realistically, they’re not married to someone else who is working 20 hours a week because this pool of people is so small. The spouse is almost assuredly acting as a stay at home parent, working less than 20 hours, or working full-time, depending on how much the first individual makes.

    Basically, the couples who could be digital nomads in the U.S. and both work 20 hours a week and be middle class and raise kids are people who are independently wealthy or semi-retired, people who have a big enough nest egg that the salaries are not important here.

  23. There are full time RVers, yes, but the 20 hr work week each is not going to support anyone unless they are retired and already have some kind of income.

  24. This isn’t exactly what you’re talking about, but I do know someone who travels for a living and takes their wife and kid along. Specifically, he has a job that requires him to live somewhere on Earth for a few months, and then move on to live elsewhere for a few months, and so on. Sometimes he takes extended time off to spend time with family and he does have a nice house that he uses during time off.

    In his case, his kid is basically homeschooled through some online school, so the kid has the same online classmates and the same teachers despite moving from country to country periodically. Additionally, because of the line of work that this person is in, there’s a small group of people involved so there tends to be a lot of overlap among the people who also travel with kids. Despite that, I wouldn’t say that the kid is growing up being completely similar to what kids deal with today, but he also isn’t really being deprived or abused or anything to where he’s going to feel fully left out from his peers. In fact, he gets along well with my kids who are growing up in basically one place.

    All that being said, while that type of lifestyle is *possible* I don’t think it’s *realistic* for most people. Additionally, having 20 hours of work even for these folks isn’t realistic. The person I was describing above is a performer, and he has typical rehearsals and performances, but he has a lot of unofficial work outside of those where he has to spend time trying to convince donors to give money to their programs and doing side gigs (which are themselves pretty official things and not busy work just to make money).

  25. 20 hours a week doing what? My buddy is a highly qualified, freelance, full stack software developer and rarely works more than 20 hours a week because he charges and gets $200 an hour. That’s a good (even a very good) amount of money everywhere except NYC, SF, and LA.

    He’s not a “digital nomad” but there’s nothing stopping him from being one if he wanted to.

  26. It’s feasible, but it’s not really a thing that people do, because there are areas with low cost of living that you can just settle in permanently. There’s no reason to do the nomad thing unless you just want to constantly be traveling.

  27. This is a very complex question and the answer is dependent on the specifics.

    It would be difficult for a US couple to live a digital nomad lifestyle and work part time and make it. For one thing, the whole digital nomad lifestyle isn’t common. And can have significant tax implications. Even for US companies, they need to be licensed in states where they operate. Having employees working in a state can require a company to be licensed. So it’s tricky even for citizens and those with work visas. .

    For a family coming over as tourists, it’s even trickier. To work for a US company, you’d need a work visa and those can be hard to obtain. If working for a foreign company, they may be required to have a legal entity in the US. And if you’re working for a Bangladeshi company you will probably be paid in BDT. If the average salary is 300,000 BDT that’s about USD 2,600. That’s not enough to live on – it’s not even close.

    So it’s probably not realistic.

  28. Is it possible? Absolutely, in many different ways. But there are two big problems with what you asked.

    First, 20 hours working. Nobody can afford a middle class lifestyle on 20 hours a week. Also, most jobs don’t have part time positions. You typically only see part time roles in lower end service industry types of jobs. Servers, fast food, stuff like that.

    Second, the two kids. I’ve known a lot of people who did it single and I’ve known a few couples who did it together. Adding in kids would be a huge mess.

    I did the digital nomad thing for about 3 years right out of college. My first job was a consulting job in IT that hired me out to companies all across the US to come in for a few weeks and fix their problems.

    Most of the people working that job lived somewhere like a normal person and would fly in on Monday morning and fly out on Thursday evening. I just didn’t have an apartment or place to live so for the three years I worked there I just lived in hotels (on the companies dime) in whatever city they sent me to for a while.

    It got really tiring and isolating though to never be able to put down roots and build a life anywhere so I left that job.

  29. It can be done and there are van life and overland people who do it, but it’s not exactly easy. You need a job that allows you to work whenever and wherever, a vehicle you can live out of comfortably, and you still need a home address where you can register your vehicle at.

    One example that I know of is the Bell family who’ve driven more or less around the world in a Land Cruiser. You can see their stuff here: [https://www.a2aexpedition.com/](https://www.a2aexpedition.com/)

  30. For the most part it will be really difficult. It’s a pain in the neck with health insurance alone

  31. I have a co-worker who’s doing this right now with his wife and toddler. I’m not even sure where he is now. He was in Arizona for a while but I’m pretty sure he’s moved on. His wife doesn’t work, either, it’s just his salary, which is probably around $125k or so.

  32. Depends on their jobs and such… typically you’d see such a family sell their house and buy an RV to do such a thing. They might have a fair amount of equity in a house they roll into an RV and living expenses. Keeping an RV operational and having places to park it nightly can be costly but probably less than a home mortgage and typical home owner costs.

    There are also other factors, however, like schooling, medical care (especially for kids) when there aren’t constant pediatricians/primary care doctors.

  33. My girlfriend and I own a digital business & have been living in different places each month for the past year or so. Our team also works virtually. We work about 25 hours/week each.

    It is absolutely possible if you own your own business, but very difficult if you are freelancing or have a standard salaried job.

    It is definitely possible. Monthly rents in new places each month will be approx. 25-30% more than if you signed a 12-month lease somewhere, all else equal.

  34. The kids make this nearly impossible. If you are 18 and live in a van you could probably get away with it.

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