Hey there my Steemit friends! This may be the last post of my series on "How to Live Travel Pro" however it very well may be the most important! Living Travel Pro is all about being free, free in as many ways as possible. It's about being able to pick up and go anywhere in the world in a moment's notice. It's about not having things hold you back. It's about not being tethered to anything, anyplace, anyone, for any reason!
With the global crypto currency movement, political movements, and social movements all going in the direction of decentralizing, not tying yourself to one country or government should be better understood. However this is something that most people living an international lifestyle feel they have to succumb to.
To live Travel Pro you stay with a tourist visa. Many countries offer you a minimum of a three months stay and you can often renew sometimes indefinitely. My lifestyle is not about moving locations every week. Sometimes you want to stay in the same place and just relax and hang out for months and adopt a domestic lifestyle of the given location.
Living Travel Pro is very much about international living, not necessarily travel and bopping around continuously. I made the mistake of tying myself to Ecuador with an investors visa. I also did the same mistake in Hong Kong; and I'll never make that mistake again. With very few exceptions, almost everyone I have met that has tied themselves to a country and government I have found that they eventually regret it.
That should be said for x-pats from western countries moving to lesser developed countries. They often have this grand idea that they are going to move to some exotic country and have this incredible life. They sell all their possessions and uproot themselves from their lives in their home country. The very next thing they do is root themselves even more so in their host country, often before even testing the waters to see if they really like living there.
They sometimes move large sums of money, get a permanent resident visa, spend endlessly on translators, lawyers, paper work in general, all very frustrating stuff that is often not cheap. Then they make the biggest mistake of all. They buy real estate really tying them to the location.
They often over pay for the real estate as they are the wealthy gringo and pay gringo prices, then when they want to sell they try to pawn it off to the next gringo that does not know better or simply sell for a loss, or sit on the property forever more. Very seldom do expats stay in the country they move to for over seven years and truly make a long term life for themselves.
They often run into problems they did not anticipate; and after taking a long look in the mirror they come to grips with the fact that they are again not happy with where they are and then the whole process of up-rooting one's life begins all over again. Whether they move back to their home country or a neighboring country it's a major expense and burden to deal with all over again.
Some countries will make you pay to cancel your visa, you'll have all sorts of legal headaches upon entry and exit. It often turns into one big mess and around every corner and every process you find yourself reaching into your pocket to get things done. Not only is it exhausting many feel alone, confused, and helpless in a country where they really did not know the laws, the culture, and language in the first place.
Not being taken advantage of by those offering to help can feel like a daunting task in it's own right. For all these reasons and more I highly recommend anyone wanting to live internationally stick to a tourist visa, do visa runs if you have to, divide your years up between two countries you enjoy if that's the legal manner of things.
Once you start getting involved with real-estate in foreign countries, permanent visas, large sums of money, legal contracts and more, that's when you really begin to complicate your life. I highly recommend renting over buying anyway. It's a much better deal in most cases as well.
Take Ecuador for example, you can rent a very nice apartment in many parts of the country for as little as a couple hundred dollars. I've seen x-pats renting out their luxury homes they have built for as little as four hundred dollars a month just to keep someone on the property and not have the place go abandoned.
When it comes to renting in South East Asia and Latin America there are incredible deals to be found, it almost makes buying a house a huge unnecessary commitment, head ache, up-keep/tax expense, and responsibility that you simply do not need to have.
So when it comes to Living Travel Pro, don't think that you left one country and all the ties and now you have to become equally if not more tied into another country. When you start getting into permanent visas you're now making deals with governments. Is that what you want to do?
How about Nicaragua for example. I found that a very good country to visit and spend some time in, even live there for several months or more. But do you really want to make a deal with the government of Nicaragua? Do you want the Nicaraguan Government to hold power over your life? I certainly do not.
A lot of what I'm talking about in this article relates to people that move from one country to another to live in. However if you really want to Live Travel Pro, you really don't want to stay in the same place for more than three months anyway. Why is this? Because after three months you've seen everything, you've experienced everything, life begins to get monotonous, and simply put it begins to get a bit boring.
So when Living Travel Pro all you need is a three month visa, and like mentioned most countries around the world will let you stay at least three more months on a simple visa run. So really tying yourself to a country and a government is not needed and causes way more problems than it's worth. It's almost like unnecessarily handing power over your life to some foreign alphabet agency that you do not know nor should you trust.
Just as a disclaimer, working in another country is not what this article is about. This article pertains more to ex-pat retirees, digital nomads, and Travel Pros! I do not condone working illegally on a tourist visa.
On that note this aught to wrap it up for my "How to Live Travel Pro Series". Those who've been following along I sincerely thank you and hope that you have not only enjoyed but have gotten something of value out of it; maybe something that you can apply to your own life and travels. Until Next Time! -Dan "World Travel Pro"
With over 11 years of travel experience I answer travel and international lifestyle questions. Leave a question in the comments and I may make a Steemit post just for you!
THANK YOU
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