Today we’ll feature another digital nomads Sam & Zab from Indefinite Adventure. Sam tells us all about his favorite destinations, the challenges of his lifestyle and more!
Could you introduce yourself? What is your background?
My name is Sam, and I’m a 30 year old British vegan gay guy. I’m interested in social justice, science fiction and cooking, among other things. I was born and grew up in London, where I also went to university and studied linguistics. I used to teach English as a foreign language (and indeed sometimes still do) but mostly now I run my blog Indefinite Adventure, do freelance writing and travel a lot with my husband, Zab. We now live in Berlin, Germany.
Do you monetize your blog? How many subscribers do you have?
Indeed I do monetise my blog. The main way that I directly do that is by accepting sponsored posts, but having an extensive portfolio of travel writing already on my blog has lead to other freelance writing work which pays better, so I am leaning more towards that now. I have a 9 month old newsletter which has almost 300 subscribers and I get around 10,000 views a month on my site.
Are there any WordPress plugins you can recommend?
Yes! The ones I like best are all for maintaining the security of my site: Akismet is great for stopping spam comments, Wordfence does a brilliant job of letting me know if there have been any attacks on my site and WP-Ban is occasionally useful for prohibiting users by IP address from visiting my site.
What disadvantages come with your lifestyle?
For me there are two main things: not having a regular income and not being able to see our closest friends and family regularly. Since I work on a freelance basis, I don’t get paid holiday or any of the many other benefits of being an employee and sometimes my income fluctuates a lot. Of course, the benefit is that I can work as much or little as I want and be more or less wherever I choose, but there are definitely times when I think how much easier it would be if I worked for someone else.
Then travelling a lot means that we split our time between many places so we don’t have the ability to see the people closest to us often, and we also are meeting amazing people all the time which is both exhilarating and exhausting.
How do you manage health insurance?
In Europe my husband and I are covered for small stuff with our EHIC cards, but outside of Europe, we always buy travel insurance for the duration of our trip that includes medical cover. Fortunately, we’ve only ever had to use it once in just over three years of full time travel, and that was while we were in South America in 2013 and got a bit sick.
Which company do you buy health insurance from?
Well as I said in my answer, we use a travel insurance company that also provides medical cover as part of the travel insurance, so it’s not specifically health insurance, but it is good and I do recommend it. They’re called World Nomads, and they allow you to buy, renew and extend your travel insurance even when you’re not in your home country, which is great for people who travel a lot!
Are there some “hacks” how to get cheaper airline tickets?
Not really. Sometimes I’m surprised at how other people search for flights and don’t consider alternatives. I always start by looking at Skyscanner and look at flights on different days, times of day, with various airlines and even from or to different airports. For me, the main way I find cheap flights is by being flexible.
So far what have been the best destinations and which places were disappointing to you?
In South America, I was really pleasantly surprised by Bolivia which just had so much to offer with its amazingly diverse landscapes, great food, friendly people and beautiful colonial architecture. In Europe one of my husband and my favourite destinations is Sweden, which is such a wonderful place to visit in the summer. Sure, there have been some less than inspiring places I’ve visited on my travels, but I prefer not to dwell on them and instead remember the good aspects. That said, I do occasionally find London, my hometown, somewhat disappointing!
To read more articles from Sam & Zab’s site please visit Indefiniteadventure.com.