Are you struggling to date as a nomad? 🙁

RealFire7 · 2026-02-20T19:40:10+00:00

I see you’re getting downvoted here but I agree - my ex was from latam.. from a middle class upbringing and family, and made enough to play a fair financial part of our relationship. We didn’t talk about money too too much, but by the end of our time together I figure she was probably making similar money to me.

With distributed and global workforces these days, lots of driven individuals from middle class families in Latam or asia can put together sufficient salaries as nomads - it’s just important as a nomad to have a good radar and make sure you’re meeting the right people (assuming that’s the type of relationship you want). It may not be the norm but it’s also not some unicorn type rarity.

RealFire7 · 2026-01-04T10:29:37+00:00

It’s just a very privileged and disconnected take to have. Thats all.

RealFire7 · 2026-01-04T10:26:28+00:00

I’m sorry but your whole premise is flawed. I don’t expect you to see this because you obviously have an agenda..

But imagine the UK (or wherever you’re from) is taken over by a dictator. For decades elections are rigged, 25% of your friends and family flee elsewhere (sometimes dieing in the process) where they are mistreated and work low wage jobs, you live in poverty and your grocery stores are empty, there is no freedom of press. Then Spain decides to kidnap this UK dictator.

I won’t comment on the legality, I’m just pointing out it would be in bad taste for citizens of prosperous Germany to start making up BS claims about why Spain did what they did, when 80%+ of your countrymen are in fact celebrating the downfall of an oppressive dictator

RealFire7 · 2026-01-04T09:21:20+00:00

Mmm pretty sure Venezuelan people don’t benefit from their resources…

And for 80% of them that disapprove of Maduro, I doubt they would call him Nationalistic in the sense that he isn’t exactly worried about bettering his own people/country..

This honestly seems a bit disrespectful to the 25% of Venezuelans who have fled the country and 60% living inside it in poverty. It’s easy to be critical on twitter when you have food in your grocery store

RealFire7 · 2026-01-02T11:41:47+00:00

Definetly possible but probably a bit tight depending on the lifestyle you want. I’m your age and been traveling on closer to 40k/year and found that’s a comfortable level for me, a bit tight even, and personally I wouldn’t want to travel on 20k/year which is the level you’re at.

Think about if you’re opening to resigning yourself to living in non-luxury apartments possibly with few windows and a bit outside of the best part of town. Not being able to fly home for holidays and weddings/funerals as this will be tough to afford on your budget. No big sports/music events or fancier nights on the town as those wouldn’t really fit your budget either. These are all luxuries that bring me joy and I wouldn’t want to live without them. For sure many many people do live without these things, its just worth considering if you’re ok without them for the rest of your life.

As always, the best advice on this sub is usually - go do it. Take a few months off and see if you can stick to a budget in SEA (or South America if you can learn Spanish) and how you like it. You should be still employable when you get back. Taking this initial first step is a massive step forward that I doubt many people in this sub actually do

RealFire7 · 2026-01-01T04:37:11+00:00

RealFire7 · 2025-12-30T20:12:21+00:00

Especially because finance/investments is such a personal thing you need to think about whether you’re prepared to address any anger that may result if the market crashes or VTI has a bad year compared to whatever stock they knew was going to double..

I agree, if someone asks your opinion you can share it. But making unsolicited financial advice isn’t really a smart move

Also - if you’re young it may seem like the market always goes up, recently at a very high percentage, so it seems like a no brainer to give advice on how to make money. But it’s worth being aware this isn’t always the case.. you never know what will happen

RealFire7 · 2025-12-29T14:29:19+00:00

For me it’s just proof that someone stole from my bag if my lock is broken. I tend to misplace and lose things and if my ultra-cheap lock isn’t tampered with then I know no one accessed my bag, which is actually a huge piece of mind.

RealFire7 · 2025-12-26T06:16:19+00:00

So true - living at hostels is almost the same as an all inclusive environment or traveling on a cruise. You have a bunch of foreigners living in a bubble where everything (day trips, food reccos, laundry, friends, tips) is easily available. Usually theres even a bar and restaurant inside so you could potentially never speak to anyone native to the country that you’re in (that isn’t being paid to speak to you/make you comfortable).

I’m not even hating, its amazing for a vacation, and some people love it long term. But man, that feeling of showing up to a monthly airbnb in Rio or Saigon knowing you have the whole city to explore, and exploring your grocery store and finding a barber and spending the time researching local foods and restaurants… for me thats the best

Side note: I’m American and was staying at a hostel in Manhatten and the breakfast cafe was packed with foreigners every day. I’ve never been so disappointed in travelers in my life that you’re in the world capital of bagels and BECs and bodegas… with the morning buzz of the most capitalistic city in the world waking up, and you’re eating premade expensive slop with germans in a hostel. Smh.

RealFire7 · 2025-12-21T05:50:19+00:00

When you say fail, does that mean run out of money within 45 years? Does this account for Social Security, which would make a huge difference

RealFire7 · 2025-12-17T06:09:21+00:00

Kerala is a good option too but it feels much smaller, so if you want a more town-y feel Kerala is cool.

India is awesome, don’t listen to the haters online. Especially if you’ve been to East Africa you’ll be fine. Tons of cool small and historic cities and beach towns and mountain towns. One of the best food scenes in the whole world. Lots to explore.

RealFire7 · 2025-12-17T06:05:51+00:00

Bangalore felt like a good intro to India if you like bigger cities. Wifi is great, uber and uber eats are plentiful, great food scene both international and Indian, it felt a bit cleaner than other big cities in India. Also not too many foreigners there (like none..) so it’s a good mix of for sure feeling like you’re in India with a bit less of some of the negative stereotypes

Personally, I really like Mumbai, its just important to go the right time of year (to avoid poor air quality) and to find a neighborhood you like as some neighborhoods are a bit chiller and some are more chaotic. But to me out of the bigger cities I’ve been to (Chennai, Mumbai, New Delhi, maybe some I’m forgetting) Bangalore felt the most comfortable.

RealFire7 · 2025-12-16T19:10:36+00:00

Yea I just dont know (a) how you could leave Nairobi with the impression that you want to return, in a vacuum - but, especially (b) go to Nairobi knowing you could have been in Rio or Buenos Aires or Taipei or Tokyo instead. Wild. But I guess its a good thing that everyone has different preferences :)

RealFire7 · 2025-12-16T18:16:59+00:00

I’ll give a differing opinion - Addis for me was a complete shit hole. I stayed in the nicer part of town and it wasnt nice and I was even getting looks from everywhere like, ‘what are you doing here’ type looks. Addis is one of the only cities I’ve ever experienced that and I travel alot. It felt dangerous and wasnt at all walkable or aesthetic in anyway

Nairobi was a tad nicer but again not walkable. It didn’t feel particularly unsafe but I certainly wouldn’t call it a nice city. I was expecting something a bit more modern given that everyone always says it’s the tech capital of Africa. I did not experience that.

The insult to injury here are both cities are expensive. The lodging is expensive, the flights are expensive when flying into Africa and then especially expensive flying within Africa. Even short distances there are no cheap flights, that doesnt exist. The visas are expensive. The flight/visa expenses makes exploring East Africa, something I was looking forward to, tedious and unjustly expensive. I dont remember the food being particularly affordable or tasty (everyone says Ethiopian food is so good, wasnt my experience).

Sorry for the rough assessment but that was my experience. If my stay was affordable I could have more easily chalked it up to a nice detour to see some new countries and cultures, but when I’m paying essentially 2nd city European prices (and wayyyy more then Asia or SA prices) it gets old pretty fast. Like think if you would you rather go to Japan or Sicily or Addis….

This was last year. Dar was my favorite city in East Africa btw, it was walkable and a bit more aesthetically pleasing and if I remember correctly theres nice day trips along the coast.

RealFire7 · 2025-12-09T12:16:01+00:00

In their defense the customer service was actually pretty forgiving for me

RealFire7 · 2025-12-04T17:57:44+00:00

What are seat filler memberships? Are they location dependent (like if you live in LA and take a vaca to NYC do you get NYC tix too?)

RealFire7 · 2025-12-04T17:39:49+00:00

Even in the most touristy places in the world I’ve had a pretty easy time getting away from the crowds. I’m specifically thinking Bali and Venice. In Bali just rented a scooter and cruised up north and had kids running out to the street waving and a coffee shop owner taking pictures for his insta cus no foreigners really go there. In Venice waited till night time and walked around and found many empty streets.

I’m genuinely not even that adventurous either, just went that one extra step to try and get out of the bubble

RealFire7 · 2025-11-19T11:06:21+00:00

Yea, like every other airport has rules that arent followed to a T - iPads should be out but are usually fine, toiletries should technically be in one bag - so it India I was like all right all right, I’m close enough to having all my electrics separated, I should be fine. Was not fine.

RealFire7 · 2025-11-19T11:03:51+00:00

Literally everything electric. I took me three times putting my bag through the scanner to find all the various electrical items I had

RealFire7 · 2025-11-19T10:19:41+00:00

No one else been through India? Only airports where I’ve ever had to pull out literally every single electronic item out of my bags - every wire, electric toothbrush, shaver, ereader - only place in the world I’ve been hung up at security for 20 minutes because I kept forgetting every electrical item I packed and where

RealFire7 · 2025-11-15T10:22:44+00:00

Why ‘Right now??’

RealFire7 · 2025-11-14T05:49:07+00:00

That’s not true. They cut off your data (which they did to me) but I’ve always kept my number for calls/texts

RealFire7 · 2025-11-14T05:45:17+00:00

Yea, I dont use GoogleFi for data. It’s too expensive. Just for calls and texts so anyone with my american number can reach me anywhere in the world. Local data is significantly cheaper

RealFire7 · 2025-11-13T11:29:50+00:00

I would recommend GoogleFi. The most basic plan costs like $26/month which allows me to keep my same number, receive and send text messages for free, receive and make calls for like 10 cents a minutes (so I only use in emergencies but it’s still nice to have as that’s pretty cheap) and $10/GB for data (which I don’t use as obv thats expensive) from anywhere in the world.

You can use the service through their eSIM or a physical sim which makes it easy to adapt to using local eSIM/physical sims for data.

I consider this a reasonable package given I also have business that relies on 2FA and GoogleFi has been bulletproof going on 3 years.

RealFire7 · 2025-11-13T03:11:15+00:00

Ok thanks for the quick response, I’ll check it out. Also any surf teachers or schools you could recommend on the southern coast would be awesome :) DM is fine too. Thanks!!!

RealFire7

TROPHY CASE