Living a Nomadic Lifestyle with Children and Family

Dateline: Central Serbia

Living life as a Nomad Capitalist is not much different from living life any other way. Things are going to change and you’ll have to learn how to adapt. 

My life as a Nomad Capitalist now is very different than it was when I first started. 

Having worked with hundreds of people, I’ve seen a progression. Younger people who are just starting out with lower incomes and net worth like moving around. They like flexibility. 

People who are a little bit older who have been successful for longer are increasingly looking for a home or even two or three bases. 

This lifestyle can be adapted to you and your needs. 

So, how does being a Nomad Capitalist impact your spouse, children, and parents? And can you live the nomadic lifestyle forever?

In this article, I will specifically discuss what your nomadic lifestyle might look like if adapted to having a family and how to make it a sustainable and enjoyable way of living however your life might change as the years go by.

HOW DOES A SPOUSE CHANGE THINGS? 

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People assume that being a Nomad is a single man’s game. They think that maybe you can get married, but eventually, your spouse will get sick of the nomadic lifestyle, and when you have kids, everything will come tumbling down. 

What I’ve learned in almost 15 years of business is you can do what everyone else says you can’t do. 

If you want to have a partner or be married, you can find people who appreciate this lifestyle. It may be challenging, but it can be done. 

Mrs. H and I have talked about how neither of us likes where we’re from. We like to explore and find other places, places that really warm our souls and make us feel welcome. 

We have the mindset that this is not an experiment.

Like any other aspect of a marriage, if you want to make this nomadic lifestyle work, you’re going to need to communicate about it. Communicate openly and frequently. 

Your feelings and decisions may change with time. You might have to come to a compromise. But being married or being a Nomad Capitalist isn’t something where you have to choose one or the other. 

LIVING A NOMADIC LIFESTYLE WITH CHILDREN

I don’t have any kids of my own and I won’t presume to tell you how to raise your kids. But I am going to share what I’ve talked about with my wife and other people who have kids and have traveled around the world. 

Personally, I have slowed down the pace. I’ve hired more staff and some of those new people are picking up the slack of what I used to do. They’re doing a lot of the travel and I’m increasingly slowing down my pace to my Trifecta method. I do a lot less zigging and zagging and constant travel. I leave that to my staff. 

That makes things easier. 

But here are some of my thoughts on raising your family as a Nomad Capitalist, whatever that nomadic lifestyle looks like for you. 

BOUNDARIES

If you’re going to have a family, the first thing you will want to put in place is a certain level of boundaries so that there’s some stability. 

Part of setting up a nomadic lifestyle is establishing your plan well in advance. Work with your partner to come up with a plan for how you are going to raise a family. 

If you establish great communication and boundaries, you can continue to live a nomadic lifestle with children. 

START SCHOOL LATER

Kids that are born today seem to be in school almost when they’re eight weeks old. People have two-year-olds that are going to school. 

When I was born, my mother stayed home, she had a job that she quit so she could stay home. She educated me, taught me how to read, taught me a lot of stuff. I started school right before I turned six years old. 

For me, step number one is to change the paradigm back to the way it used to be. 

If you can keep your kids at home for the first six years, that makes it a little bit easier to continue your nomadic lifestyle because that big impediment of them needing to be in a school in a physical building goes away for those first six years. They stay with you. You’re teaching them.

And, quite frankly, I think travel is a great teacher. 

If you’re living in a couple of different places, they can not only learn to read and to speak your language, but they can learn to potentially read and write and speak the language of some other country where you are. 

If you’re living in Panama, they can learn Spanish. It’s a pretty good tool. That zero to six age range is one of the best age ranges to learn the language and to retain the language, that’s really a great opportunity to keep them home from school. 

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SCHOOLING OPTIONS: CONSIDER A TUTOR

The second question you have to address is what do you do after they’re six? 

My friend actually wrote the book on world schooling. You can find it on Amazon. She talks about concepts like world schooling, unschooling, some of these concepts seem a little bit extreme for some people. 

What I found, rather than just letting your kids run around and educate themselves, you can hire tutors. 

I was reading something the other day about people in the United States who are hiring nannies and tutors and how expensive it is. It’s really expensive. In places like Manhattan, you could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year having these people come and help educate your child. 

But when you leave the United States, you find that there are a lot of countries with really smart people, very well-educated, perhaps more than you’d find in the United States. And they cost a fraction of the price. 

If you were traveling, you could find quite a lot of well-educated people who would jump at the chance to travel the world, see different places, and earn an above-average salary. For the price of a private school in some parts of the US, Australia, or an international school overseas, you could hire a pirate tutor who has experience in teaching your child and they could travel with you. 

They could live with you. They could go through a formal curriculum. This way your child is in school but they would also have the time to explore the world around them and live in different environments. 

The time when the kids are in school is the hardest time because there are so many preconceptions. 

Just look at the homeschooling community in the United States where I’m from. They are constantly asked if you put your kids in homeschooling and they don’t like it, will you put them in public school?

There’s this kind of natural order that public school is the only thing and everything else only serves as being subservient to that. 

But what if we flipped that? There are plenty of other options and alternatives. If your kid doesn’t like public school, would you let them be homeschooled?

This is a paradigm that needs to change

FRIENDS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD

There are plenty of ways for your child to socialize. When I talk to nomads with children, they say their kids meet people everywhere. 

Maybe you want to live in one home base, that way your kids will have more stability. Or you move every once in a while. Whatever the case may be, there are so many different permutations you can use with this. 

But frankly, when I talk to parents who do this, they say kids are adaptable. They love having different sets of friends in different places. They love going and seeing and experiencing different things.

This is an opportunity for them to become world nomads at a young age. Traveling the world, meeting new people, learning new languages, that’s going to give your kids endless opportunities. 

PREPARING FOR UNIVERSITY 

Let’s say you do want your children to have some form of conventional schooling. You could compromise and have your children spend their first years of school with a tutor and then settle somewhere for a few years so they can attend high school and prepare for university. 

Maybe you sell the business and move to London, for example. For those last four years of a kid’s education, you’ll settle in one place so you’re children can attend a fantastic high school and prepare for the university experience – if that’s what they even want to do. 

Now, your kid might not want to go to university, so this may not be the case for you. I believe we should give our children the opportunity to do what they want to do and that may or may not be university. 

However, there are other benefits if you do decide to settle for a while. You could use this as your chance to get a high-level residence permit and citizenship that you’ve been wanting for a while but haven’t been able to put the time in just one place. Maybe go back and become Canadian while your children are attending high school.

CARING FOR PARENTS

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Many people feel the need to care for their parents in their old age. If this is something that is preventing you from living the Nomad Capitalist lifestyle, you need to have a heart to heart with your parents. 

Communicate with them to figure out how a nomadic lifestyle might impact them. 

It’s possible that they don’t need you permanently caring for them right now. It might work out that another family member or friend is there to take care of them. 

If it gets to a point where it’s critical, you can take a break and go to take care of your parents if you need to. Just because you are living offshore currently, doesn’t mean you always have to. 

You don’t have to make a hard and fast decision now. Things change. 

While it’s not possible for everyone – whether due to finances and health – one perk to your lifestyle that your parents may enjoy is the opportunity for them to travel as well. 

If you are living overseas, they can travel to see you. It gives them an opportunity to travel the world. 

YOU CHOOSE YOUR NOMADIC LIFESTYLE

Your time as a nomad does not have to be permanent. You can have an escape switch. You can go back to whatever life you want. 

A lot of people do it this way. 

For me, this isn’t just an experiment. This is my lifestyle. Sure, things will change as life goes on, but right now I’ve found a way that suits me and my current family. I have a plan and ideas for what I would like to do with my family in the future.

It’s all a part of my holistic plan. 

If you need help planning for your offshore future, you can contact us here. One of the things we offer that other offshore service providers don’t is the human element. We understand the motives behind what you do, your concerns, and your needs, because we are right beside you, living this nomadic lifestyle.

Source: https://nomadcapitalist.com/2020/11/23/nomadic-lifestyle-children-family/