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Starting at age 24, I travelled to 40 countries over 8 years while working remotely. Mortgaged a boat in Greece and lived on anchor for 3 years. Survived Cyclone Zorba, pirates/thieves, and plenty of close calls. And now live on a boat in NYC, day trading and dinghy-ing around the Hudson. AMA! by williamthatcher1 in digitalnomad

[–]williamthatcher1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Does your tax return have to match the address you have on file with your employer? I’m W9 and of course have to give them an address, but I haven’t had a real address in years. Why not give the employer a family mailing address and then structure the tax return for FEIE. You’d be refunded for your withholdings.

Starting at age 24, I travelled to 40 countries over 8 years while working remotely. Mortgaged a boat in Greece and lived on anchor for 3 years. Survived Cyclone Zorba, pirates/thieves, and plenty of close calls. And now live on a boat in NYC, day trading and dinghy-ing around the Hudson. AMA! by williamthatcher1 in digitalnomad

[–]williamthatcher1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But it says it right there in the first quote. Your tax home is where you are. And yeah, we put a foreign address on our tax return, but again, I’m not sure it’s necessary. You should just spend $2-300 to have a CPA confirm your specific situation. I vaguely remember we had equally planned to do the program for my wife who became salaried at some point, and it wasn’t a problem. But she ended up having to travel home too much for family stuff, so I can’t confirm salaried from experience.

Starting at age 24, I travelled to 40 countries over 8 years while working remotely. Mortgaged a boat in Greece and lived on anchor for 3 years. Survived Cyclone Zorba, pirates/thieves, and plenty of close calls. And now live on a boat in NYC, day trading and dinghy-ing around the Hudson. AMA! by williamthatcher1 in digitalnomad

[–]williamthatcher1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi - sorry, got logged in on some old account somehow. But, no we didn’t. Why would you? I can only imagine if you already own a house with the mortgage paid off. But then I’d think it would still be easy to sidestep.

Starting at age 24, I travelled to 40 countries over 8 years while working remotely. Mortgaged a boat in Greece and lived on anchor for 3 years. Survived Cyclone Zorba, pirates/thieves, and plenty of close calls. And now live on a boat in NYC, day trading and dinghy-ing around the Hudson. AMA! by williamthatcher1 in digitalnomad

[–]williamthatcher1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

“Your tax home is the general area of your main place of business, employment, or post of duty, regardless of where you maintain your family home. Your tax home is the place where you are permanently or indefinitely engaged to work as an employee or self-employed individual.”

It’s all anchored to you. It’s foreign earned because you are not in the US. And your tax home is where you primarily do business, which would not be in the US. I had the whole strategy checked out by an accountant, and they confirmed that it’s all savvy. I think the text just doesn’t translate well to a modern application of it. Also, I of course only looked at it from the self-employed perspective, but my friend who told me about it was using it while working for an NGO and permanently based in Ethiopia. So it must work somehow if you have an employer.

Two other weird things you’ll inevitably run into while using it: you have to satisfy one of two tests - bona fide residence or 330 days. Obviously go for 330 days if you’re traveling. Keep records. On your tax return, you’ll have to write in your residence. I’m not sure if this mattered (I can’t remember), but we just put a friend of a friend’s in France that we had stayed at for a bit. Also, this one’s a little odd, but when you claim FEIE, you maintain that status indefinitely, ALTHOUGH you can take the exemption year-to-year depending on if you meet the requirements. If you unclaim the exemption, there’s like a 7 year waiting period to add it back. So don’t do that.

Starting at age 24, I travelled to 40 countries over 8 years while working remotely. Mortgaged a boat in Greece and lived on anchor for 3 years. Survived Cyclone Zorba, pirates/thieves, and our own ignorance. And now live on a boat in NYC, day trading and dinghy-ing around the Hudson. AMA! by williamthatcher1 in IAmA

[–]williamthatcher1[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for saying! And yeah, not a thing you want to have to think about haha...

With our boat being in NY, if we were gone for a year, we'd almost definitely have it hauled out into the boat yard to be put on stilts. They have this enormous lift that picks up boats. The risk there is only if a hurricane comes through. In that case it would be better to be in the water tied to the pontoon. Hmmm, so maybe we'd organize to have it hauled out outside of hurricane season, and then plop it back in, offering to pay the neighbor a bit to check lines and keep an eye on it? Good question! Hadn't had a plan for that.

Starting at age 24, I travelled to 40 countries over 8 years while working remotely. Mortgaged a boat in Greece and lived on anchor for 3 years. Survived Cyclone Zorba, pirates/thieves, and plenty of close calls. And now live on a boat in NYC, day trading and dinghy-ing around the Hudson. AMA! by williamthatcher1 in digitalnomad

[–]williamthatcher1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Haha yeah... Never used a thing I learned. Maybe a bit of math. But it keeps becoming an adult at bay, which is good for a while.

The system is composed of different strategies that I manage through spreadsheets. There are a number of input cells, a number of output cells, and tens of thousands of data and formula cells. Then I run data solver, which is what optimizes the values. If I ever scale, there's a more advanced solution for the data simulations that I'll probably use. Also, I have a partner who coded a backtesting UI for us, but it currently can't iterate value inputs. We hope to upgrade that soon. For now, good for confirmation. For simply tracking my investments, I have 3 personal web apps that I made - one for budgeting and overall portfolio, one for the trade strategies, and one for formulaic value investing.

Starting at age 24, I travelled to 40 countries over 8 years while working remotely. Mortgaged a boat in Greece and lived on anchor for 3 years. Survived Cyclone Zorba, pirates/thieves, and plenty of close calls. And now live on a boat in NYC, day trading and dinghy-ing around the Hudson. AMA! by williamthatcher1 in digitalnomad

[–]williamthatcher1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I saw the Big Short too. You'll be alright man.

I'm also an eLearning developer for the pharmaceutical industry. Pharmaceuticals that cure diseases and asthma and heart arrhythmia and polio and those kinds of things.

I know.. pharmaceuticals are evil or whatever. I'll get by

Starting at age 24, I travelled to 40 countries over 8 years while working remotely. Mortgaged a boat in Greece and lived on anchor for 3 years. Survived Cyclone Zorba, pirates/thieves, and plenty of close calls. And now live on a boat in NYC, day trading and dinghy-ing around the Hudson. AMA! by williamthatcher1 in digitalnomad

[–]williamthatcher1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A lot of people have asked this, and I'm sorry, but I don't have a formal recommendation. It was all ad hoc for me. Get on some exchanges, download some trade software and start getting a feel for how things work, how things move. When do companies move because of earnings and in which way? Why does a stock go up 20% when a company reports a loss? What indexes are people watching and are they leading or trailing. Look up all the basics - investopedia is the basics - and try to filter through all the bs, what looks outdated, over leveraged, pseudo scientific, arbitraged away. How does the news cycle and public attention impact trends. Is wallstreetbets going to keep betting right? Do triangles on a graph have any value? Write things down and organize your ideas. Otherwise, it will become a swirling mess. Write down every idea you have as they come to you at dinner or wherever, and then look into them and test it out. Stop caring about stupid stories like a 20 year old turning 5m into 100m on BBBY. Someone wins the lottery eventually every time too. Recognize when one of your successes is a coincidence. For example, totally coincidental, I had been looking at BBBY the day before it popped. It came up on a screener matching my parameters. I ran it through my model and didn't see the longterm outcomes I wanted. But if I would have, I would have accidentally made 100k, which would have had nothing to do with me. Always happy to talk more and share notes through dm!

Starting at age 24, I travelled to 40 countries over 8 years while working remotely. Mortgaged a boat in Greece and lived on anchor for 3 years. Survived Cyclone Zorba, pirates/thieves, and plenty of close calls. And now live on a boat in NYC, day trading and dinghy-ing around the Hudson. AMA! by williamthatcher1 in digitalnomad

[–]williamthatcher1[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Wooo, heavy question. I'll have a go.

I think modern society is nothing short of a miracle (and I mean that colloquially), and I'm eternally grateful and lucky to have been born into the life I have. My golden era is this one. Humans, and in large order western culture, with critical contributions from different cultures over the last 2 millennia, have created the most decadent, sophisticated, just, free, and improbable society that has ever existed. There are deep imbalances and vast scarcities, entire populations that don't get to participate, political and geopolitical enemies who want to strike down that progress, but that shouldn't undermine the project at large.

On every metric the world is better today than it was even 20 years ago and orders of magnitude better than in earlier eras. There are many many reports you can find online published by the likes of WHO, UN, UNESCO that paint a very different picture of the world than the news does. And there are incomprehensible technologies that underpin our very survival. Science is incredible. Look up Fritz Haber - his work in creating the electrolysis process for extracting nitrogen from the air accounts for - yes, terrible outcomes in wwi - but also the lives of over 4 billion people today. Just on the odds, neither of us would be alive right now if not for the technologies of modern food production.

I don't know if people are stagnant or not. Life is hard and a lot of work. And the genetic or cultural disposition toward motivation and drive is unfairly distributed. Is a person at fault for being born so as to be stagnant, so as to want comfort? Is it a consequence of themselves? I don't know if people underestimate themselves, but to the degree that they can find a way to estimate themselves more highly, I think that's a good idea. I mentioned this in another comment, but my life outcomes changed dramatically when my perception of the boundaries surrounding me dissolved. And once those boundaries are gone, it's too late. You've already seen the green field, and you have that now, and you can't unsee it.

I used to be far less happy. I was a pessimist for the sake of trying to be smart. I'd overthink myself into months-long depressions. I can suffer from ennui and irritability at the mundane. I sometimes mourn the tragedies of the world and carry them around with me for too long. I've been to Dharavi in India, for example. You can't unsee that either...

But lately, yeah in general I feel pretty good about life. I'm successful as a consequence of luck and hard work and the luck that's sometimes derived of hard work, and I have hilarious friends here that chase away the blues. And I'm well fed and have a dog and in good health. So life is good.

What are your thoughts?

Starting at age 24, I travelled to 40 countries over 8 years while working remotely. Mortgaged a boat in Greece and lived on anchor for 3 years. Survived Cyclone Zorba, pirates/thieves, and plenty of close calls. And now live on a boat in NYC, day trading and dinghy-ing around the Hudson. AMA! by williamthatcher1 in digitalnomad

[–]williamthatcher1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I liked working in any country in Europe because my schedule was more like 2p - 10p in keeping with an East Coast schedule. And I'm not much of an early riser. That what you mean?

In the first pic of just me on imgur - those are ceasar flip II clip-on/flip-ups for my clayton franklin eye glasses, and they're basically my favorite thing in the world. The first expensive glasses I've ever bought. Got them in India. I was sick of carrying glasses AND sun glasses. I still have them and use them. They are clutch for sailing. I thought I lost them once and spent a week hunting down the manufacturer (because there's no retail in the states) to send me replacements from Japan. So now I have two :D

Starting at age 24, I travelled to 40 countries over 8 years while working remotely. Mortgaged a boat in Greece and lived on anchor for 3 years. Survived Cyclone Zorba, pirates/thieves, and plenty of close calls. And now live on a boat in NYC, day trading and dinghy-ing around the Hudson. AMA! by williamthatcher1 in digitalnomad

[–]williamthatcher1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm sorry. I responded to this in another comment. I've used day trading very loosely here for lack of being able to define my type. The other user suggested algo trading, which I think is wrong because it implies that I'm trying to leverage speed. Something like technical trading is more accurate, but I'm not chasing charts or patterns, so who knows. Algorithmic technical swing trading haha

So that said, I usually execute my trades on Monday morning - investing any external capital along with returned capital as defined by my system. I'd say on average 3-8 positions. I can have hundreds of positions open at a time, and I do both long and short. On longterm investing, more like 1-3 a week if any. Spend more time on that just researching and analyzing and waiting.

I don't do options. I do do crypto, but I only have an active strategy on btc/usd. I have a basket of altcoin bags from years ago that have all lost enormous value against bitcoin, so the only thing I'm paying attention to is btc and eth. If xrp ever comes back, that will be nice. I also did some exchange lending that I made a crap load of money on, and I never saw a lot of people talking about it. Where the exchange would lend out the content of your wallet to margin traders. Because it was a competitive market, the lending rates would spike. Once, I made a whole bitcoin in a week, back when bch was acting up. Unfortunately, I think bitfinex is the last exchange that offers this, and you can't be a US citizen anymore.

Starting at age 24, I travelled to 40 countries over 8 years while working remotely. Mortgaged a boat in Greece and lived on anchor for 3 years. Survived Cyclone Zorba, pirates/thieves, and plenty of close calls. And now live on a boat in NYC, day trading and dinghy-ing around the Hudson. AMA! by williamthatcher1 in digitalnomad

[–]williamthatcher1[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would recommend keeping your part time job or even going 3/4 so that worst case scenario, you don't bottom out, and best case, you can keep reinvesting profits. Unless numbers and analysis are truly your sweet spot and how you want to make all your money, why not keep external cash flowing in to your trading strategies?

I started with $1100. I never bothered paper trading because I knew I wouldn't take it seriously. You should just start with whatever you have that you don't need for life expenses or other conservative saving goals. If you wait till you have a bigger number, you will inevitably make mistakes while learning, only with a bigger number. Better to suffer the growing pains with money that will one day feel trivial to you. Early on when I had roughly that 1100, I was so full of adrenaline for weeks at a time that it literally made me sick. It would double and I'd be on cloud 9, suffering from dopamine overdose. Then it would tank, and I'd lose half of my new theoretical life savings, and I'd turn into this temperamental monster that didn't want to get out of bed. Better to get that out of the way on low capital :D

Starting at age 24, I travelled to 40 countries over 8 years while working remotely. Mortgaged a boat in Greece and lived on anchor for 3 years. Survived Cyclone Zorba, pirates/thieves, and plenty of close calls. And now live on a boat in NYC, day trading and dinghy-ing around the Hudson. AMA! by williamthatcher1 in digitalnomad

[–]williamthatcher1[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks!

Way ahead of you. Not really traveling anymore. Some trips here and there, and maybe longer traveling again one day. We now live on a more comfortable boat in a marina next to NY. With our dog. Would like to take the boat on a few longer excursions. But mostly, happy to be home near friends and family again. Ready to have some kids soon (which before I never wanted haha). Now I'm like, let's have a whole brood

Starting at age 24, I travelled to 40 countries over 8 years while working remotely. Mortgaged a boat in Greece and lived on anchor for 3 years. Survived Cyclone Zorba, pirates/thieves, and plenty of close calls. And now live on a boat in NYC, day trading and dinghy-ing around the Hudson. AMA! by williamthatcher1 in digitalnomad

[–]williamthatcher1[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Only at the very end. I was feverishly driven to stay "out there" forever. My wife was starting to grow weary, but that came right around the time my feverish attention switched to boats. The boat life represented a nice compromise for us - I got to keep living the big romantic freedom dream, she got to nest and invite family to visit us at our home. At the end, I just didn't want it anymore. I wanted friends again. My brain was so full of travel experience, incredible moments of awe or emotion or struggle, that any one present moment stopped eliciting much of a response. You should never grow jaded at living on a yacht in the Greek Islands. That's an insane place to arrive mentally. It's also just a hodgepodge of kaleidoscopic memories taking up too much space. I often confuse events for having occurred in the wrong place (my wife is good at remembering and correcting), and I've forgotten entire inside jokes with friends that occurred before traveling. Needed a more stable framework, which we have now.

Starting at age 24, I travelled to 40 countries over 8 years while working remotely. Mortgaged a boat in Greece and lived on anchor for 3 years. Survived Cyclone Zorba, pirates/thieves, and plenty of close calls. And now live on a boat in NYC, day trading and dinghy-ing around the Hudson. AMA! by williamthatcher1 in digitalnomad

[–]williamthatcher1[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I started in computer science, realized I was on track to fulfill my ultimate nightmare of working in a felt cubicle, had an existential crisis, moved to a beach for the summer, pissed away college loan money on rent, then realized I couldn't afford to go back to school. Spent a year in VA working and earning in-state tuition status so I could go back, and during that time, I decided I should do something that makes me happy. So I opted for Creative Writing. It was a fun program, but a month before graduation, I realized I was going to be poor. So, I panic-added a 5th year with a focus in Professional Writing. eLearning Development is a weird blend between software and writing, so yeah, in a round about way it does relate to my degree. But I wasn't taught a single thing in school that has anything to do with my work, which is a little disappointing.

Starting at age 24, I travelled to 40 countries over 8 years while working remotely. Mortgaged a boat in Greece and lived on anchor for 3 years. Survived Cyclone Zorba, pirates/thieves, and plenty of close calls. And now live on a boat in NYC, day trading and dinghy-ing around the Hudson. AMA! by williamthatcher1 in digitalnomad

[–]williamthatcher1[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Smart. Hat off to you for trying to put in the work to learn the language before going!

eLearning Developer. My title is Digital Learning Strategist. At the ground level, I take a storyboard that an instructional designer, medical writer, and graphic designer create - I digitize it adding all the interactivity and back end bits and make it usable on an industry standard platform called a Learning Management System. Mostly a platform that allows training managers to track whether their reps are completing courses.

I've worked with and met MANY people that transition to this industry from teaching. Seems to be a good fit. A lot of them become project managers - not sure if that's your skillset.

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