How to work from roam and travel while you earn
It sounds like a dream come true, right? Continuing to earn and contribute to your super while you live a life of travel and adventure. Alex Brooks explains how two couples manage it.
By Alex Brooks
Forget about working from home and start working from roam. Here’s how to embrace the art of bleisure: mixing business and leisure.
Ingenious lifestyle seekers are hacking their career plans to live as digital nomads who can adapt to different opportunities and business ideas that let them work and earn from wherever they choose to be.
If you think life’s too much fun to be lived sitting on a couch or in an office, then read on…
Sydney, Melbourne and Paris too
Nicola and Orlando Reindorf change location every three months, splitting their time between Sydney, France and the United Kingdom.
Christmas is always spent with family, though the location for 25 December celebrations changes each year.
The British-born couple are now aged in their 50s but moved to Australia 24 years ago and began their fashion and marketing businesses, The Standard Store and Flying Standard.
“We still work every day, just not face-to-face like we once did,” Nicola explains.
Their dream was always to live part of the year in Australia and part of the year in Europe, though raising 2 sons meant they had to wait until they had finished school and been ‘gently encouraged’ to leave the nest to make their overseas lifestyle a reality.
“When you become a parent, you think your kids are going to be with you forever but parenting is really only for such a short period of time,” Nicola says.
The couple’s sons – now aged in their 20s – moved from Sydney to London, which meant the large family home could be sold.
Nicola and Orlando now have 2 homes: one in the south of France and a lock-up-and-leave apartment above their Sydney store in Surry Hills that is rented out on Airbnb when they aren’t in town.
It took them 10 years of dedicated planning (and renovations) to put the right systems into their business and hire the right people to achieve their goal of living and working across the world.
They’d originally planned to start living overseas in 2020, but Covid-19 put a halt to that idea. Once the world opened up for travel again, their plan finally came to life.
“The upside was that Covid also made it more acceptable not to be physically in one place to do business. So in retail stores, you can’t work from home, but people are now much more accepting of Zoom meetings,” she says.
The family has the distinct advantage of having British and Australian passports, which makes travelling and commuting between the 2 countries easy: “We never have to do an Australian winter.”
They also spend January to March in Paris each year to do the buying for their fashion business.
“I was lucky because my own parents moved from Britain to France and were role models for international living,” says Nicola.
House and pet sitting around Australia
Inga Ray and her partner Russ Reeden met 5 years ago and have barely spent more than a few months in the same place.
The couple aged in their early 50s are inveterate travellers, soaking up different sights and cities as they camp in their roof top tent or house sit all around Australia via Aussie House Sitters.
Both of them chucked in their full-time jobs after originally heading off to experience remote Western Australia and the Northern Territory on a 6-month long service leave.
The couple rented out their permanent home in rural Victoria and have been on the road for more than 3 years, living a simple lifestyle supplemented by housesitting and creating content for their own business, Life Life Now Adventures.
“We don’t drink or smoke or go out for takeaway – we don’t do expensive tours, we love getting off the beaten track and doing the free things that nature provides,” Inga says.
“We’re going to do this until we’re too old and crippled to continue – we absolutely recommend it.”
Russ’s favourite spot is above Broome along the Dampier Peninsula while Inga recommends Purnululu National Park (the Bungle Bungles) and the Kununurra region.
“I’m a Victorian and I hated Sydney with a passion but now I just love it,” Russ says.
The couple have minded houses and pets in plush harbourside locations that they’d never have been able to afford if it weren’t for Aussie House Sitters.
Inga’s adult children live near the Snowy Mountains and Russ’s are in Victoria, so they make a pitstop to visit the kids but usually only stay in one place for a fortnight or so.
They once spent 3 months house sitting in the Barossa Valley and supplemented their income working nearby on a merino sheep station where they worked as the gardeners on the historic 10-acre garden.
The only downside is they no longer have their own pets, but they get their fix by looking after other people’s.
More ideas: 5 fun ways to look after a pet without the hefty price tag
“We’d love to have animals but you can’t go into national parks and housesitting is more limited when you have your own animals with you ,” Inga says.
“I have daydreamed about being a nomadic traveller my whole life - now I get to do it.”
A warning about finding your ideal work from roam job
If you’re serious about looking to work from home or roam, it’s vital to steer clear from the many work-from-home scams that use social media, job websites and messaging platforms to lure you in.
Many job ads promising big salaries to work-from-home are simply scams from criminal organisations trying to trick you into paying money upfront, pay you in cryptocurrency or even get you to transfer illegitimate money through your personal bank accounts.
If you’re looking to find a legitimate job where you can work from anywhere, you’re best to stick to reputable companies who comply with work health and safety laws and have valid business profiles on platforms like LinkedIn or Seek.
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