Expat Tales: Why we gave up six-figure salaries to become digital nomads

Deciding their high-paid but high-stress corporate careers didn’t align with their values, Aucklander Paul Ryken and his partner Sandra Rosneau, from Germany, downsized and became digital nomads.

We both had corporate careers before we : Paul worked as a product manager for a global IT company, and Sandra as a management consultant for Australia’s largest financial institution. Those corporate careers, while providing six-figure salaries, also .

In 2012, taking unpaid leave, we did our first three-month trip together – a backpacking trip around the world that took us to all the countries the dances we knew and loved came from (we met through Latin dance). That trip showed us we can be together 24/7 for an extended period (and still love each other).

Then, before we married in 2014, we (first individually and then jointly) wrote down what we wanted our marriage to be like (we call this our commitment statement). As this was the second marriage for both of us, we wanted to be clear that values-wise, we were both on the same page. Coincidentally, that was also when we stumbled upon the concept of minimalism.

As we reflected on our values and what we wanted our future to be like, we realised that our comfortable middle-class life in Sydney wasn’t really what we wanted, and without a house and the associated mortgage payments and other expenses, we wouldn’t need to work as hard or earn as much. With Paul’s son Matt’s cystic fibrosis deteriorating and some close friends and relatives dying way too young, we also realised life is short. Why waste it with anything that doesn’t align with our values?

So, sometime in 2015, we made a plan in a big Excel spreadsheet. And over the following year and a bit, we slowly worked through it, digitising our life, and reducing our possessions from a four-bedroom house to carry-on backpacks. We’ve now been location-independent for seven years and love it.

Since we are location-independent, we don’t have a fixed abode.We are spending two months travelling around Indonesia. Earlier this year, we spent three months in Japan and a month in Australia. And most of 2024, we’ll be travelling around Europe.

That said, during Covid-19, we bought a bare plot of land in Hawke’s Bay, which we slowly (whenever we are in New Zealand) turned into a permaculture farm. After a lot of hard work installing the basics, starting the regeneration and getting a tiny house built, our property is now rented out – one of the income streams that finances our lifestyle. It also provides us with a place we could retire to and live on relatively self-sufficiently one day. Or a place to hunker down, should there be another global pandemic

Wherever we are in the world, our life is not an extended holiday. Yes, we are privileged to explore beautiful places, but we also need to earn a living.

Apart from (the income from a rental tiny home on a permaculture farm in Hawke’s Bay), we earn a living from financial investments and our travel and lifestyle blog, although the latter is more of a passion project.

A big advantage of our lifestyle is that we are our own boss. If there are any deadlines, it’s us who sets them.We are much more flexible when we decide to work, and when we explore. It’s usually based on the climate and weather: in a tropical climate like Indonesia’s, we are out and about in the morning and again later in the day when the temperatures are more pleasant. In the middle of the day, we retreat undercover/indoors and work.

Another advantage is that we travel slowly.We can also stay in a place much longer than one would be able to when limited by paid annual leave. That gives us the chance to immerse ourselves in local life, get to know the locals, ask deeper questions, and better understand a destination. This in turn gives us the insight we need to write about sustainable travel with some degree of authority.

Our lifestyle also means we can spend time on what we value: learning, wellbeing and sustainability. We have the time to research our destinations and the gear we travel with, making sure that we make purchasing decisions that are not harmful to the planet and the communities we visit or that make our gear.We have time to volunteer in the communities we visit. Our environmental footprint is much lower as we take advantage of the shared economy by using public transport and staying with locals.

While it suits us, our lifestyle is not for everyone. We live with (and thus like) the locals: Here in Indonesia, our accommodations are mostly homestays. That means locals open up a room or more in their home to host guests from Indonesia and overseas for a nightly fee.While the fee is a fraction of the accommodation costs we would incur in New Zealand, the standard of living is also much lower. We don’t have a problem with that, but others may.

We also don’t get to spend as much time as we’d like with close friends and family. However, because of that, we don’t take the time we have with our loved ones for granted.

Having farewelled our corporate careers also means we earn much less. Because we want to continue our lifestyle for as long as we enjoy it, we spend our funds consciously, and we ask ourselves with larger spends: Is this purchase aligned with our values?

Sadly, it seems almost any country is cheaper than New Zealand – even Australia. To give you two recent examples: our nightly accommodation costs in Japan averaged about NZ$70 staying in short-term rentals and guest houses run by locals. And here in Indonesia, it’s even cheaper at about NZ$32 staying in homestays and guest houses.

We explore our destinations, though it’s not really time in a leisure-sense, as we might end up writing about our experiences. We especially love hiking and being out in nature in general. Paul also runs almost every morning, which keeps him healthy – both physically and mentally. Other than that, we love reading books, watching documentaries or chatting to friends and family via video calls.

We keep track of all our spending, no matter where we are in the world, and share our spending on our website.

While we haven’t lived a normal corporate life in New Zealand for a long time, our location-independent lifestyle costs us about half of what it used to cost us when we lived our corporate lives in Sydney.

Even when we are in New Zealand or Australia now, we spend far less, as we tend to house-sit. With accommodation costs making up about a third of our expenses in New Zealand or Australia, house-sitting enables us to reduce our expenses significantly.

Nothing really. That said, we do look forward to hearing New Zealand birds again – tūi especially. And with us not being able to cook here in Indonesia, we do look forward to cooking our own meals again when we are in New Zealand later this year.