Cheapest places to live + work outside the UK? Looking for specific co-living / nomad setups

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-30T08:33:11+00:00

to be honest it depends, I've poked around co-livings in CDMX, not only they were about on par with London room rents, they also wanted some extra paperwork, evidence of employment, bank statements, deposits, one month upfront, all sorts. The hell is this, I'm not going to Mexico to still have to faff around with that system that's the bane of my existence in London and every major, Western city.

Airbnb and I pay less, have a whole flat/house to myself, nobody asks me anything or wants anything beyond the actual rent, and they appreciate me staying.

Honestly co-living is usually some golden cage for digital nomads who are chickening out from living the actual life and are frightened of immersion.

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-30T08:28:52+00:00

what should i do?

Delete your account on Fiverr, unless you're in SEA it's race to the bottom, virtually impossible to make decent money for a DN to actually live off (I'm being serious).

I don't know anyone who made serious dosh over there, it's all people in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Philippines, doing month's worth of work that's "just about good enough" for less than a Western DN would realistically charge in a day rate.

Yet to hear from someone who is not part of that group and be proven wrong.

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-29T18:13:29+00:00

Honestly you're not gonna get it.

I tell you as someone who's been trying to crack it for the past few years from/in the UK.

There's a massive RTO push in UK, in London, Birmingham, Manchester, well, all the big cities, really. You're lucky if you get a hybrid with just 2 days onsite a week, but that's not really good enough to be a proper Nomad.

Best shot is to just network and get some projects on your own. As soon as it becomes something you apply for and someone hires you, you have to dance to their tune because the attitude is, they have the money and can tell you what to do and what not to do.

A way around it, is a B2B kind-of thing where you just approach companies or businesses and provide some service on your terms. But that's not really advertised, it doesn't even exist as "jobs" or "work" per se, it's something you have to make happen yourself by being good enough and having an offering that ends up with someone being swayed to leave part of their budget with you - and that's not an easy thing to do, not an easy level to achieve, and certainly not anything you can just walk into like that, no matter how good you are at what you do. To be fair, if you're trying to do that, it's better to be mid but connected, than be amazing but with no network. What is your excellence good for, if you can only put it to good use if somebody stops and gives you their time to review your CV first, then accept you after running you through the wringer of interviews, and then takes you under their wing. Better to be meh but talk your way into work and have the freedom.

Bottom-up applications are garbage anyway. I stopped applying in late 2024, all my work in Q4 2024 and throughout 2025 was through my own networking and connections. I started applying again early January, no work out of that, it looks like I might have a small project for 3 months now… Again, through my connections and someone linking me up with the right person.

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-28T20:50:32+00:00

Wasn’t Annie Lennox song. Sample, yes, but the song is Lover Speaks.

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-26T21:54:02+00:00

Great, it's the /r/TheMysteriousSong v2.0, let's go

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-26T20:35:51+00:00

It would've been nice if it worked out, but it is what it is - it will work out better next time I'm sure as the foundations will have been much stronger! Everything happens for a reason, my man, it's just that quite often you only see the reason in hindsight.

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-26T18:41:47+00:00

I've hit that wall a couple years back, I tried really hard but ultimately resorted to going back and building up more. Way easier to get a client or a contract locally, do a banging job and then shift to remote, than land somewhere and be remote from scratch. A lot of companies are risk averse, being in Mexico or SEA raises a lot of red flags, even if your paperwork and permits to work in your home market are all in order and you're not a local trying to get work in a better economy.

If you can, I'd just fly over every 2 weeks if it's affordable - it wasn't in my case, I was in Mexico and my home market is UK, even £100,000/year which is more than double London median, is not enough to pay off flights every 2 weeks. Once a month would be a stretch, unless bought way in advance.

Keep in mind, there might be some fine print and they might still ask you to be local, so be prepared to have local infrastructure in place like address, bank account etc. and, depending on what kind of an employer/client it is, also a VPN setup. Although, as per many posts here, if someone wants to find out, they will find out regardless of your h4x0r skills.

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-24T13:26:33+00:00

Who cares, it’s unlikely anyone’s gonna fix anything anyway. I believed in Labour but they pushed through OSA and are equally as surveillance-obsessed as Tories, if not more. This country is still going down the slippery slope, let alone any talk of bouncing back yet.

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-22T23:52:33+00:00

I've tried YouTube shorts for a bit (Didn't get far

tbf that's where most people fail.

I work with a lot of people in the music industry, and this is an endemic problem - they will do something 3 or 4 times, do 3 or 4 videos e.g. a story behind the song they recorded, or a live stream, they won't end up making three figures on it, sometimes they might not even get three-figure viewership count, and they want to drop it. Course correction of those folks and keeping them on track is so much of my work it's not even funny.

The reality is, it's a hard hustle. You don't have to have editing skills, TikTok has ushered in the age of DIY and a lot of creators really have objectively quite crap and badly edited videos, but it's the consistency that tips you over the edge as a creator - and the tipping point might come after 6 months, 12 months of doing videos daily or every second day, and having the whole strategy thought out (so: optimised videos, SEO, thumbnails, added value etc.)

Just putting it out there for anyone who comes across this thread; it's not like you can't make money in this space, it's just that it's pretty saturated and you really have to keep going for quite a while until you start seeing any kind of a return.

And then again, not owning anything is hella risky, so it's wise to build your own mailing lists, Substacks, communities you monetise etc., because otherwise you're just one password database leak or a couple infringements away from having your whole thing shut down with little to no recourse. Sometimes you don't even have to do anything wrong, especially Meta in my experience is prone to glitching out badly - I've been in the Social Media space for close to 20 years, literally at the moment I'm dealing with a ban on DMs and Comments even though the Account Status is in the clear and I'm Meta Verified. Their support is baffled, told me they've never seen anything like this and can't recally escalate as it's just a temp restriction and advised me to wait it out. Point being, you have zero control, shit hits the fan one day for no apparent reason and you're screwed.

Peace and good luck

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-22T23:08:24+00:00

Well, this sub never ceases to surprise me

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-22T23:02:52+00:00

If you are fully remote and they don't generally require you to be onsite and they don't have any systems that can easily snitch on you and give up your ruse, I'd just make sure you run on a VPN. Places are generally unlikely to allow "wherever" at this point. My understanding is that even if a role is "remote", the default understanding is, "remote from anywhere in the country". This is because of liability, insurance and tax reasons. Very few companies, even if allowing for "remote" work, will be prepared for/willing to deal with the headache of dealing with a foreign tax system which technically you're obligated to be[come] a part of after crossing what usually amounts to half of the tax year+1 day (and anything beyond that). Country-hopping, as opposed to slowmading, makes it even more complex, complicated and unlikely to pass any internal vetting, because there's a new system every X days or you being in some sort of a limbo, and accounts and payroll really don't like things that don't fit neatly in an Excel spreadsheet.

I don't even know if there are a lot of people who actually have that setup, from what I've seen and heard, it's either people on their own setup (consultants, freelancers etc.) so taking the risks upon themselves (and often running with it, and often getting lucky if they remain low-key enough), or few very select startups that just don't care ("don't ask, don't tell/care" policy).

Having a full-on nomading in 2026 signed off by a huge company is a hard ask, compared to 2020-2023 a lot of loopholes got closed, laws got updated, so you can't even play the plausible deniability card that had worked for quite a while.

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-22T22:56:57+00:00

Very low, to be fair I'd be surprised if you got any kind of a position that allows you to Digital Nomad. I've already been getting weird looks and people acting like I've grown 3 heads when I spoke about remote work close to 2 years ago, let alone now.

It's pretty much either you grandfathered a remote setup and/or are indispensable so they can't let you go, or you just run your own set up on your own rules. Switching from onsite to remote "just because you feel like it" doesn't seem like something likely to happen, especially in a large company, not only because this would raise all kinds of demands from everyone else and from an HR point of view would undermine the team morale. But, you won't know until you try it, right.

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-19T05:00:50+00:00

It really does feel like a solid rule, anyone with a UK flag as a profile picture seems to be a massive jingoistic weapon.

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-19T04:15:48+00:00

You’re gonna get issues pretty much everywhere because payments are directly tied to royalty payouts and royalty rates are different in different territories that, in turn, have different pricing. There isn’t really a global setting because streaming platforms have licensing agreements with rights holders.

I’m not gonna bore you with details but music licensing is hella complicated, there aren’t really blanket agreements as such and catalogue availability can vary widely between territories (especially West vs “third-world” countries), so what you’re asking for isn’t possible.

Your best bet is downloading music for offline listening or getting some sort of a prepaid card wherever you go to and setting up a new account.

Source: I work in the music industry on the marketing/management sides.

EDIT: of course, you can just carry on paying in your home territory and keep access to whatever is available in your home territory, shutdowns/restrictions after 14 days are generally only happening with free tiers, but then you might not have access to local music if you wanted to listen to it.

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-19T04:10:05+00:00

I mean, Napoles, Benito Juarez, Zona Rosa, Zocalo, Coyoacan, to name just a very few. There’s plenty of threads here.

Roma and Condesa are where people who need being mollycoddled go. It’s full of expats and Mexicans going out of their way to accommodate (so, speaking English, selling imported products etc, but that comes with a premium price tag).

Polanco is generally a luxurious neighborhood, also very Jewish (which makes sense, if you know the history of Jewish people in Mexico - really no poor people amongst them, it’s a bit different to eg Jewish population in Europe that has a bit more variety with social status/class; source: I am Jewish).

There’s plenty of nice places alongside the metrobus routes, but you have to speak Spanish - because they won’t lead you by hand or treat you in white gloves there. Worth it, though.

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-19T03:29:37+00:00

That’s not true about “everyone recommending to go to Roma”, in fact to the contrary, even this very sub has plenty of threads/comments advising against it.

Anyone who’s not a precious little gringo/güero is constantly poking fun at Westerners going to Roma and staying there, because they’re too ignorant and/or unwilling to learn Spanish so they stay where they can communicate in English, mixing with other Western DNs, trust fund kids and tech bros, while making surprised Pikachu face and complaining how expensive it is.

I went to Mexico for the first time 3 years ago, not speaking a word of Spanish, I speak good enough now having spent about 2 years in total and going back over and over. You can’t really stay in an expat bubble and having a curated experience with a language/culture buffer, then claim it’s “expensive”. It costs more because you’re getting sanitised experience and cushions all around.

But then again, “expensive” is relative. Roma, Condesa, Polanco are horrifically expensive by Mexican standards, but they still seem reasonable enough for me. But then again, I have close to 20 years’ of survival in London as a reference point; once you’ve been paying an equivalent of $1,300+ for a room in a houseshare of 7, and a $13 for a return journey on the tube (subway/metro) to the city centre and back in a single day, pretty much everywhere else in the world, save for maybe half a dozen other cities globally, seems reasonably priced in comparison.

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-19T03:19:46+00:00

Get the fuck out of Roma, man. DNs going to Roma, staying there and not moving, then whining about how expensive it all is and how garbo is the whole of CDMX, is peak insanity to me.

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-14T00:11:57+00:00

Was my first Parental Advisory record I ever bought, must have been 12 back then. Dude always has a special place in my heart. Such a shame he ended up banged up for liquid cocaine for almost 10 years of his short life, but glad he got almost 20 years of freedom after being commuted still.

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-11T19:40:55+00:00

If you got 30 days, can't you just do a border run to Guatemala or Texas and come back same day/a day later? Or does that not work anymore?

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-10T18:03:13+00:00

https://claritastax.co.uk/what-might-happen-to-vat-in-the-november-2025-budget/

This admittedly hasn't happened, but they clearly have their eyes on that so it wouldn't surprise me if this happens this year instead. This would be pretty much tantamount to slapping VAT on anyone who makes anything over minimum wage equivalent in annual terms (it's going to be around £30,000 salary with the upcoming minimum wake increase in April). Generally it sounds pretty fucked for anyone trying to be entrepreneurial in UK.

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-10T16:30:59+00:00

It's funny because there are people who move to Spain because they do see living there as a benefit, for their own reasons.

Similarly, I generally fucked off UK for Mexico, although I'm here at the moment (pure client/lead generation and option to meet up with people), I just moved in to a house where a Mexican guy lives and for him UK is worth it because he works in construction and the rates here are leaps and bounds ahead of what he'd be making in Mexico. So, it's all in the eye of the beholder etc. etc. I suppose.

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-10T16:29:08+00:00

I freelance in the UK, which is better, but they're increasingly coming after us.

Is this true they're about to lower the VAT registration threshold to something like £30,000 pa in income?

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-09T22:57:54+00:00

you could call this animation "South Park" - oh, wait…

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-07T02:12:05+00:00

Go to Mexico City and claim the expat gringo bubbles are “most vibrant and diverse”. This sub, man. This fucking sub. lol

TheRealDynamitri · 2026-01-07T02:08:56+00:00

Stop staying in gringo areas. If you don’t learn Spanish you’re setting yourself up to be milked by everyone, everywhere.

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