This Financial Case Study features details of Layne’s lifestyle and avant-garde career, so you can learn more about the long-term travel lifestyle and its many forms. Enjoy! 

How long have you been living/working on the road, and where have you traveled to?

I first discovered The Professional Hobo in 2013 and realised I didn’t have to be sedentary and miserable for the rest of my life (imagine!). I think I got fed up and googled something like, “how to travel free,” thinking that a helpful result was about as likely to come up as if I’d googled “what is the meaning of life.” Instead, there was Nora.

I was stunned by what she was doing and jumped on the bandwagon as soon as I could manage it! I took a nine-month practice run in 2014—teaching English in China, volunteering at a backpacker’s lodge in Addo Elephant National Park (South Africa), renting an apartment in Kathmandu, and house-sitting in Doha and London. 

After that, I was (obviously) never the same, and I gave up my last apartment in Seattle at the end of 2015 to travel full time. My most life-changing travel experiences since then have included island-hopping in the Maldives, visiting Antarctica, and road-tripping Madagascar (beaches and baobabs and lemurs, oh my!). 

Please describe what you do for income. 

At first, I did something I don’t necessarily recommend and that was moving into my suitcase and letting my lease expire before I had landed a remote job or started a location independent business. Not the most responsible move I ever made. But sometimes you leap and the net appears! 

Within a month I had found (on the jobs page of the DFW Craigslist) a remote job ghost-writing for a tech startup. As the company grew, I ended up leading a team of writers, and then the whole writing department, and finally I inherited two more departments. 

There is a lot of upward mobility (and remote opportunity) for hard workers in the startup world. Seven years later, I am an AI operations director, specializing in building globally distributed teams of 50+ people for tech companies who need “humans-in-the-loop” on the backend of their AI or SaaS applications. The tech industry’s big secret is that AI is often half-human. 

How many hours per week do you work on average? 

I’m currently working with a completely remote legal tech company called Index Solutions and the workload varies quite a bit. Things are slow at the moment and I don’t often have more than a couple of hours of work to do per weekday (Monday-Friday). During times of rapid expansion, I do work up to 35-40 hours/week. 

How much money do you make? 

$96k/year

Do you make enough money to support your lifestyle? 

Yes, even with a weakness for fancy hotels! I tend to spend about $3k per month (there is a hard-core theatre habit going on, I admit it) and save about $3k per month. 

Most of the year, I’m house sitting all over the world and working remotely. Then, once or twice a year, I take a big blowout trip and spend most of my savings. 

The goal I’m working on at the moment is to save up a down payment to get into real estate investing, so that I can have a home base for a few months a year and also start saving to save, instead of just saving to spend. 

What do you like most about your career and lifestyle? 

I love working completely remotely, coaching others and empowering them to work completely remotely, and being able to change my location at will. I was very, very unhappy as a sedentary person. It still makes me feel a bit panicked if I think too hard about how much of the world I’ll never see, despite my best efforts! 

What are some of the challenges you have with this career and lifestyle?

Constantly moving (and searching for the next roof over my head) does get exhausting. Applying for house sits, having zoom calls with prospective sits, and constant house handoffs are time-consuming.

 I am nowhere near finished with travelling, but I’ve been feeling the need to nest pretty deeply in recent years. After seven years of total homelessness, I’m ready to work toward having a sanctuary that I can return to for a few months each year (and where I can keep The Perfect Pillows, and stash the other seasons’ clothes, and own a favourite mug and one of those scratch-off maps). 

Nora’s Note: I laughed out loud when I read this, because when I got an apartment in Toronto after 12 years of full-time travel, the some of the first items I got included a pillow and a scratch-off map. I’m only there periodically but I always enjoy a few good nights’ sleep and scratching off a few more countries.)

I plan to rent the place out on Airbnb when I’m not there. Another substantial challenge is relationships. I love my solitude but it can get lonely out there, and it does tax my closest relationships that we’re only together a few months a year. 

See also: My Sordid Attempts at Love on the Road 

What is your vision for the future of your lifestyle on the road?

I’m super inspired by Robuilt’s Airbnb empire at the moment and want to create my own portfolio of unique places that I can (a) stay in when I’m around and (b) rent out when I’m not.

I’d like to buy old buildings that were not originally designed for residential use (e.g. a boot factory in Texas, an old firehouse in the Pacific Northwest, a church in North London) and partner with my friend Elizabeth (an artist and architect) to turn them into homes. 

I think that ultimately, I would like to continue travelling to new places 30-60% of the time, while nesting in one of my home bases for the remainder. 

Of course, all of this is expensive! So I’m investing in founding an online travel training business to share all the knowledge I’ve built around air mile hacking, house-sitting, and working remotely. I’m excited about it because it combines the expertise in remote training strategy that I’ve built in seven years of doing my “day job” with the all-consuming and one true love of my life: travel. 

Any advice for the aspiring traveler about living and working on the road and managing finances?

Take my Travel Hacking Masterclass! It’ll teach you everything I know about travelling rich on a backpacker’s budget.

I spent ten years piecing this stuff together and you’ll learn it in 30 days flat, including how to fly (in business class) and stay (in beautiful homes) all over the world for nearly free, how to protect the environments and communities you visit, how to get up to 50% off on luxury hotels and resorts, how to get free car and RV rentals, and so much more. 

You should enrol through the above link specifically in order to share the wealth with the one and only Professional Hobo (she was the first light at the end of my long, dark tunnel of sedentary life, after all!). 

My Nomad Academy bundle has also been released and covers working remotely. I wish you a lifetime of adventure! Please know it’s more possible than it feels at first. 

This post Financial Case Study: Layne, AI Operations Director appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

She is also the author of the forthcoming novels The Empress and The Wicked Unseen.

This Financial Case Study was originally published in 2017. Since life happens while we’re busy making plans and Gigi’s life is no exception, I invited her to give us an update on her lifestyle, career, and income. This article juxtapositions her life in 2017 with her life in 2022. Fascinating stuff! Enjoy. 

How long have you been living/working on the road, and where have you traveled to?

​2017: I just celebrated my five-year anniversary of full-time travel, actually. It was late May 2012 that I locked up the door of my little white-picket-fence house in Denver for the last time and headed abroad. Since then, I’ve mostly been bouncing around Europe (the place I feel most charmed and most at home), though I’ve also spent some time in North and South America.

2022: I’ve just celebrated my 10-year anniversary of leaving the US! The last five years have been mostly spent in Europe (including stints in Estonia and Croatia on long-stay visas), and a couple months ago, I got approval for residence in Portugal, which will now be my home base.

Please describe what you do for income.

​2017: In the last five years (and the 10 career years before that), I’ve actually done quite a few different things all centered around writing, strategy, and online marketing. I’ve been a full-time copywriter and content strategist, a travel guide author, a foreign correspondent for a travel magazine, etc.

These days, I am mostly a copywriter and content strategist. Basically, this means I plan for, create, and manage content for companies in the travel and tech industries. I write websites, brochures, billboards, and blog posts. I help clients plan blog content and understand how to connect with readers. Etc.

In a given month, copywriting and content strategist work makes up about 50 – 90% of my income and it’s what I usually lead with when people ask me what I do.

The other 10 – 50% comes from several different sources, including my 11 self-published, unusual travel guides, web consulting (helping clients build WordPress websites, understand SEO, etc.), my DIY Website Workshop (a new income source I launched this year: a seven-week course designed to help creatives and entrepreneurs launch a strategic, professional website), travel writing for magazines and websites, and the occasional tiny bit of affiliate income from my blog. 

2022: In the last five years, I’ve primarily focused on content strategy and copywriting work for tech companies, while on the side I’ve been writing novels. This winter, I sold two of them, making fiction—for the first time—an income source for me. 

My debut adult novel, The Empress, is novelization of the upcoming Netflix series about Sisi and Franz of Austria. My young adult debut, The Wicked Unseen, is set during the 1990s Satanic Panic and centers a creepy town and a creepier disappearance. The Empress comes out in October 2022 and The Wicked Unseen will hit bookshelves in summer 2023.

This year, I expect my income breakdown to be split about 50/50 between my fiction and my tech client work.

How many hours per week do you work on average?

​​2017: When I first started freelancing, I worked like crazy, probably anywhere from 40 to 80 hours per week. But now that I have six+ years of self-employment under my belt (and have had some serious stress-related illness), I try to keep my hours under 25 per week.

2022: Ten+ years into self-employment and full-time travel, my hours are pretty variable. This winter, I worked well over full-time hours in order to hit my novel deadlines and deliver client work. This quarter, to combat some of the burnout that schedule wrought, I actually plan to take time off from client work to travel, focus on language lessons, and work on my next novel.

How much money do you make?

​2017: This varies pretty greatly month to month, but the average is somewhere around $3,000 per month right now. This year, my lowest month was about $1,100 (and, Murphy’s Law being what it is, that was also my highest spending month of the year) and my highest month this year has been just over $4,000 (and, irony at work again: it was my second lowest spending month).

2022: I’m thrilled to say that for the last couple years, I’ve broken into the low six figures! The more I embraced working with tech companies on long-term contracts, the higher I was able to raise my rates (getting up to $150 per hour last year). 

This year is an odd one because I sold two novels and the way publishing pays is very different from contract work. Where my contract work is typically billed monthly and pays on a Net-30 payment schedule, publishing usually pays advances based on milestones. Every contract is different, but milestones might include:

• Upon signing your contract with the publisher
• The delivery of the first draft of the book
• Acceptance of the revised book by your editor (basically them saying “yes, this looks great and ready to go into production”)
• On publication of the book

In less-great contracts, some publishers are even trying to pay advances after publication (which is pretty ridiculous for something called an “advance” and meant to support you while you write and revise the book, but I digress). 

So, all that to say that my monthly receipts are all over the place. I had a $35,000 month this year and an $86 month. I expect to make right around $100,000 total. 

It is pretty cool to look back on the interview I did here five years ago and see that my highest-earning month back then was $4k. My income flow was steadier but much lower. I’m grateful for how things have shaken out.

Do you make enough money to support your lifestyle?

​2017: Yes! My lifestyle is actually extremely affordable (I spend way less traveling than I ever did living in the States), so what I make is more than enough. My goal this year is to save about 50% of what I make (and when I say save, I mean the goal is that 50% will go into retirement and/or emergency funds). So far, I’m hovering just under the goal at about 49.5%.

Right now that extra money goes into high interest savings/checking accounts, but I’d like to put it to work for me a bit more and have been researching options for investing – just haven’t yet felt confident enough in my knowledge to pull the trigger. (See also: How to Manage Your Money: The Ultimate Guide to Financial Planning for Travelers)

2022: The answer is still a strong yes. But this year has been a bit trickier than usual because setting myself up for a home base is more expensive than traveling full-time (I’ve spent money on furniture, visa fees, electric company nonsense, etc.). I still expect to save a substantial portion of my income (my goal is 50%, which goes toward taxes and then into retirement and emergency funds). 

Because I have a home base, I’m also (for the first time) planning to buy property, so some of the savings will be for an investment in a house or apartment.

What do you like most about your career and lifestyle? 

​2017: Freedom and creativity!

I have always loved both writing and problem solving and doing a mix of content strategies and writing projects means I get to do both on a regular basis. There’s something deeply creatively satisfying about helping a client find their voice, simplify their website, or take a complicated topic and make it simple enough for a non-technical reader to understand.

I also love that both writing and strategy force me to be constantly learning. In my career, I’ve written about everything from Belizean beach resorts to addiction to oil and gas regulations. Some of these topics are fun and light. Others are research-heavy. And I love how much I end up learning about topics I never would have researched or discovered on my own.

Finally, there’s the freedom. It was pure chance that I chose a career that I can do from anywhere and on any schedule, and I’m so glad I did. I love that I can create a schedule that highlights my most productive hours, gives me the freedom to take a break and get outside on a gorgeous day, and allows me to work from Paris one day, the Croatian coast the next.

2022: Same answer! I love the freedom and creativity of life on the road.

What are some of the challenges you have with this career and lifestyle? 

​2017: The only big ongoing challenge for me has been Wi-Fi. Getting to a new place and finding out the WiFi isn’t good can throw a serious wrench in my work-life. I’ve gotten better about this over the years (now I ask my Airbnb hosts to do a Wi-Fi speed test and send me the results), but it was incredibly frustrating those first few years. (See also: How to go Location Independent: The Ultimate Guide)

2022: I expect that finding the balance between having a home base and traveling to present some of its own challenges in the coming year or two since I’ve been so mobile for so long.

What is your vision for the future of your lifestyle on the road?

​2017: Right now, my partner and I are thinking we’d like to have a home base in Europe and spend about six months per year in one spot while traveling the other six. So that’s probably in our near future. We’ll still be location independent and working fully remotely, but it is nice to have a place (or a couple of places) you love and come back to again and again.

Career-wise, I can’t imagine ever giving up on writing, though the types of writing I do are constantly shifting. In my spare time, I’ve actually been revisiting a childhood dream of mine and writing a novel. I’ll be really excited if I can take that passion project and turn it into an income source and possible career path as well.

2022: My plan here in Portugal is to stay in my home base about eight months per year (the required amount of time I need to stay in country to maintain my residence) and travel for the remaining four. This year, as I’m settling in, I won’t travel abroad quite as long, but will go traveling within Portugal to get a better sense of my new home. 

Career-wise, I can’t imagine ever giving up on writing, though the types of writing I do are constantly shifting. Publishing is a fickle career path, but I’d be lying if I said my secret dream was anything less than writing novels and only novels. 

I’ve been aiming for what they call barista-FI (where I have enough money to retire at 65 and only have to make enough to cover expenses until then, allowing me to work an extremely low number of hours per year and do just fine) and I’m hoping to hit that milestone by my early 40s (in a few years). If I sell another book this year, I might decide to move that timeline up. Only time will tell.

Any advice for the aspiring traveler about living and working on the road and managing finances?

​2017: The most important thing to understand is that the principles that apply to saving and spending back “home” apply on the road. To live a financially sustainable life, you need to make more than you spend. And the bigger the gap between what you make and what you spend, the better. 

That said, I think my biggest tip is to understand yourself. Know what you love. Know what you hate. Know what you need and what you don’t. If you need a quiet sunny space to work, don’t be afraid to put more of your budget toward finding the right apartments along the way. If where you live doesn’t impact you as much, but what you eat does, give your food budget the bigger boost. And if tourist attractions don’t thrill you, you can skip them and their entrance fees – even if everyone else thinks you “should” go up in the Eiffel Tower. Know yourself and spend your money accordingly.​

2022: My previous answer still rings true for me even with double the time on the road.

Want more of Gigi? Waaaaay back in 2012, she wrote an entry for my Week-in-the-Life series, highlighting a week in her life in Belgium and Germany.

This post Financial Case Study UPDATE: Gigi Griffis, Writer and Content Strategist appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

Gabriel is among the rare but increasing ranks of people who earn a full-time living as a vlogger on YouTube through his channel Gabriel Traveler, which is very impressive! Learn exactly how he does it below.

2022 UPDATE: This article was originally published in 2018. When I randomly ran into Gabriel in Bulgaria (as he captured on this video), I asked him if he wanted to give us an update on his career and finances. This post is now a comparison between his 2018 answers and his 2022 updates. 

How long have you been living/working on the road, and where have you traveled to?

2018: It depends on how you calculate it. My travels first began in the summer of 1990. But as far as making a living while traveling, it’s only been two to three years. I’ve been to 45 countries on five continents, including eight times to India, five times to Thailand, four times to Greece, three times to Nepal, three times to Spain, etc., etc.

2022 UPDATE: My travels have continued over the past several years, with only occasional breaks back in the United States to visit friends and family for 1-3 months per year. I’ve added lots of new countries as well as revisited many of my favorite places. I’ve now been to 82 countries in total, eleven times to India, six times to Thailand, nine times to Greece, four times to Nepal and four times to Spain.

Please describe what you do for income.

2018: My main source of income is ad revenue from my Youtube vlogger videos. I’m also an author of seven books which are available on Amazon.com. Three are published through publishers and the other four are self-published through Amazon Create Space and KDP. I make more money from the self-published books than from the ones with publishers. I also make money from Amazon affiliate sales, travel insurance affiliate sales and from supporters on Patreon, as well as the occasional odd job here and there.

I recently spent a month washing dishes in Alaska to pump up the bank account a bit more for winter travels. (In other words, I’m not exactly getting rich.)

2022 UPDATE: Nothing has changed as far as sources of income since I haven’t added any new revenue streams, but things have shifted a little. Basically, a greater percentage of my income is now ad revenue from YouTube since my income from the videos has increased, whereas income from the other sources has stayed the same or decreased. Patreon is my second biggest source of income and all the other sources are essentially negligible at this point. I haven’t had much luck lately with Amazon affiliate sales, increasing sales of my own books or travel insurance affiliate sales.

How many hours per week do you work on average?

2018: That’s really, really hard to say. My work as a vlogger involves filming travel videos, editing them, posting them to Youtube and then managing my Youtube channel. Filming as a vlogger requires going out and exploring places, which is basically just being a traveler and then filming some of it. So that doesn’t really feel like work. Editing takes a lot of time on the computer, but I don’t keep track of hours. I rarely, if ever, go a full day without doing one of those things, so it’s always a work day even though it never really seems like it. I could pick a random number out of the air but that would just be a guess. Basically, I spend a lot of hours every day focused on the things that conveniently end up funding my travels.

2022 UPDATE: Nothing has changed in this regard. I still work daily on filming and editing videos for YouTube as well as managing my channel. None of my other streams of income require any work to manage them. And since the videos on YouTube are by far my most reliable source of income, I concentrate all of my efforts there.

How much money do you make?

2018: It varies month to month but my income is in the general range of $2,000-3,000 per month. Roughly 80-90% of my income comes from ad revenue through my Youtube vlogger videos. Google owns Youtube, they control the advertising and so when you have a Youtube channel then Google is your boss, so to speak. They send you paychecks monthly, which in my case are deposited electronically into my bank account. My vlogger paychecks from Google in recent months have been over $2,000, plus my additional revenue from the other sources adds up to another few hundred dollars.

I don’t have an apartment back home or a mortgage. My only monthly bills other than my traveling expenses are a very cheap storage unit, my student loan payment and my phone payment. I don’t keep track of my daily expenses at all, but watch what I’m making daily and try to spend less than that and then I’m saving money every day while I travel.

2022 UPDATE: As mentioned, nothing has changed in terms of source of income but luckily my income overall has increased substantially. I now make around $5,000-8,000 per month from YouTube ad revenue and my Patreon account now pays more than $500 per month. It’s actually a bit of a mystery to me why I’m making so much more on YouTube, because my total number of views per month has pretty much stayed flat over the past five years, averaging roughly 1.5 million to 2.5 million views per month. One major reason my income has increased is certainly because my videos have gotten longer and YouTube pays in part based on how long people watch your content. Other reasons could be that YouTube is generally paying more now per view than in the past, and perhaps my content is now attracting higher quality ads that pay more.

Do you make enough money to support your lifestyle?

2018: Currently, yes. The big variable is which country I’m in and how expensive it is. For example I’m in India at the moment, which is super cheap. I have a room for $15 a night (which is a little expensive for India, I could easily find cheaper), I’m spending maybe $10 per day on food and a few more dollars on other extraneous expenses. That means that I’m way under budget and saving money every day. If I go somewhere more expensive such as Europe, then I would be staying mostly in dorms and probably be close to breaking even with my daily expenses vs. how much I’m making as a vlogger. My ultimate goal is to get out of being a budget traveler and have the option to stay in nice rooms anywhere I like. But I’ve got a ways to go still to get to that point.

2022 UPDATE: As my income has increased, I’ve adjusted my traveling and now tend to pay more for accommodation, rarely stay in hostels, rent cars more often, etc., so that my traveling expenses have increased. But my income has increased more than my expenses, so I’m saving more. For one thing, since I’ve been a budget traveler for most of my life, my approach is still geared towards trying to keep costs down as much as possible. So I tend to look for that cheaper room or take a bus instead of a taxi, etc. As a result I’m saving money every month after all my expenses are covered, which is a pretty amazing situation to be in.

What do you like most about your career and lifestyle?

2018: The complete freedom and flexibility. I have no boss other than the ones that send me paychecks, who I rarely have to talk to (only through email for various issues with videos). My Youtube channel is completely my own thing, so I create whatever vlogger videos I feel like creating, whenever I like. If I don’t feel like filming on a particular day then I don’t. I can take a day off whenever I feel like it. Speaking of which, I should probably do that more often to give myself a break from the computer and the internet.

2022 UPDATE: No changes in this regard.

What are some of the challenges you have with this career and lifestyle?

2018: A lack of life stability and stable relationships, other than my friends and family that I see once or twice a year whenever I go back home to the United States. I travel with others occasionally for short periods of time. But mostly I meet and talk with other travelers briefly here or there and then probably never see them again.

2022 UPDATE: No changes in this regard.

What is your vision for the future of your lifestyle on the road?

2018: I’m in Rishikesh, India at the moment at a restaurant overlooking the Ganges River, thinking about going on an adventure into the Himalayas and trying to decide where I’m going next after India. I don’t know where I’ll be next week or next month, so the next year or two or five is wide open. My main focus for now is increasing my monthly vlogger income and my savings so that I have more possibilities available to me in the future rather than being constricted to always being a budget traveler.

I want to get to the point that I can afford to have my own place permanently somewhere in the world, travel part-time throughout the year and have a familiar place to go back to and live for part of the year. 

(Nora’s Note: Funny….I was in Rishikesh just a couple of months ago when I too decided I wanted the same thing! Here’s the (funny) story of how that happened.) 

2022 UPDATE: As mentioned above, I’m now in a much better position financially, which gives me a lot more flexibility to stay in nicer hotels if I want, as well as rent cars, go on tours, etc. But I’ve also shifted my perspective on non-stop travel and am more interested in finding a home base somewhere that I could have my own house or apartment, while traveling for shorter periods of time throughout the year. 

(Nora’s Note: Yep. I hit that stage a few years ago, and now I have a home base from which I travel as and when I want – which it turns out, it still a ton). 

I haven’t actually taken any steps to make this happen yet, but am planning on looking into options later this year once I head back home after my latest big trip. I’ve been traveling constantly for almost all of 2022, six months straight at this point, visiting fourteen countries during that time and will be ready for a break in the coming month or two. We’ll see what actually happens. 

Shifting into living in the same place somewhere permanently is a big challenge at this point with nothing established, especially when I make more money the more I travel. So it will require a major lifestyle change and personal adjustments on lots of levels, including either finding other sources of income or else shifting my YouTube channel into a different type of content. Whether or not that could work is a big unknown.

Any advice for the aspiring traveler about living and working on the road and managing finances?

2018: Find something you like doing that integrates into your traveling, get immersed in it and keep doing it. If it’s writing about your travels and providing information that way, then get serious about it and the opportunities will come your way eventually as a result of your dedication. Don’t count on a viral article or video or photo or whatever. If it happens it happens, but that isn’t likely how you will find success. Instead it will be by consistently putting stuff out there that is genuinely enjoyable and useful to people. You have to have something substantial to offer people, so figure out what your skills or knowledge is and then start distributing that in whatever way makes sense: writing, photography, videography, podcasts, teaching through Skype, etc.

But you have to be dedicated to it even when it isn’t going well and keep at it. It took about four years from when I first learned how to edit videos to get to the point where I was making a living as a vlogger. So don’t expect you’ll start out and make money right away, but you never know, maybe you will. Other people have better strategies than me that have worked better. There are an infinite number of different ways to do it, especially with the internet at your fingertips. Focus on accomplishing something almost every day, no matter how small. It will add up to a lot over the course of a year.

2022 UPDATE: I fully agree with my former self from five years ago, so nothing further to add on this subject.

This post Financial Case Study UPDATE: Gabriel Traveler – YouTube Vlogger appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

This Financial Case Study was originally published in 2016. But a lot can happen in six years, so I asked Tiffany to give us an update on her lifestyle and career. Find our more about how they make ends meet and how things have changed, below!

How long have you been living/working on the road, and where have you traveled to?

2016: I started moving around the country and then world once I went to university. It was during this time that I realized how easy it actually can be to move around the world and find interesting jobs while living in amazing places.

Since 2001 I have:

• Lived in Flagstaff, Arizona and worked as a secretary for the campus Fire Life Safety Department;
• Lived in Denver, Colorado worked as an Americorps Member doing environmental conservation projects;
• Lived in Salt Lake City, Utah worked as a Wilderness Therapy Instructor;
• Lived in New Zealand picking cherries, grapes and worked for some people we met on a beach;
• Spent a month traveling around Fiji;
• Lived in Gettysburg, PA worked in an At Risk Youth Home;
• Lived in Elmore, Vermont worked as a Park Ranger;
• Spent a winter in Costa Rica and had a big road trip to Florida;
• Lived in Waterbury, Vermont worked as Park Supervisor;
• Moved to Australia for two years and worked on a potato farm and cafe;
• Made a few trips out of Australia to renew my visas and traveled to Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia;
• Lived in Groton, Vermont worked as an Innkeeper returning for three summer seasons;
• Spent one winter doing a four month trip through South America visiting Peru, Chile and Argentina;
• Did a massive overland trip through Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Botswana, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa.

Throughout all of these travels, moves and jobs are many other mini-adventures, various skills gained and many memories made. 

2022: I am quite pleased to say we have continued to enjoy extended travels to update this list with. Since our initial post we have:

• Traveled around Asia for one year. (Highlights: hiking in Nepal and saw pygmy elephants and visited other amazing parks in Malaysia.)
• Took at trip to Egypt and Jordan.
• Worked at Townshend State Park (a very charming historic park.)
• Did a big 2 month USA road trip and calculated all our costs.
• Did a five month Mexico to Ecuador trip. (Highlights: famous ruins, Panama Canal, 15 days in the Galapagos!)
• 2 month trip to Brazil with goal to see jaguars, giant ant eaters, and the maned wolf. We did see all those and our maned wolf video went viral and is almost up to 6 MILLION views so far!
• Worked at Camp Plymouth State Park.
• Found out about these amazing backcountry, off-grid lodges in the middle of the woods run by the Maine AMC (Appalachian Mountain Club.) Spent two winters running the charming Little Lyford Lodge and loved it!
• Have utilized the Covid times to continue learning, investing in ourselves, help family on some significant projects and be grateful for the areas we have been fortunate in. 
• As a complete surprise, Tiff got a total hip replacement in November 2021! Turned out I had severe arthritis and it got to a point where it severely impacted my daily life. I feel so much better after surgery! This video shows me shoveling my driveway 1 month after surgery. This winter we continue healing, working on ourselves and being cozy in Vermont. 
  
  

Please describe what you do for income.

2016: Right now my primary income source has been from seasonal jobs around the world. This has been highly advantageous to me as I have been able to move to get the best jobs I can find. I am slowly building up contacts with magazines as a freelancer and getting some other sources of income gigs lined up as well.

2022: Primary source of income is still from our VT State Parks job. The past two winters we also worked our seasonal winter job with Maine AMC which helped boost long term savings and investments a good bit.

I did make over $3,000 this last year in various business and side hustle money. Most of these have a W9 to go with them, so I will pay back a decent chunk of the $3K in taxes. Sources were mostly selling photos on Adobe, YouTube, Etsy, writing and selling cards. 

This past spring I got curious about different ways to save money I might not be aware of. I went down a rabbit hole that ended up in me writing this post: How I Saved $535 in Two Weeks. Prior to challenging myself to research this post I had not heard of apps like Fetch I wrote about in the post. Now I use them all the time. Since April of this past year I earned $1,581 of various reward money – not bad!

I also got a lot more educated about finances and taxes. If you are able to take advantage of incentives such as maxing out a Roth IRA and an HSA (Health Savings Account) for American readers, doing so may reward you with tax deductions and lower AGI (adjusted growth income.) 

The bottom line I can’t emphasis enough: be frugal and continuously educate yourself. 

How many hours per week do you work on average?

2016: Well, this depends a lot on what I am doing at the time. When I worked in a remote mining town in Australia, I worked two jobs and squeezed as many hours in as I possibly could. On average, I worked at least 65 hours per week if not more, and yes, I did get tired after a while. But, that push helped me and my husband not do any official work for an entire year. So it seemed like a pretty good pay out.

In recent times I have found myself working seasonally as an Innkeeper as I manage a beautiful lodge in a 27,000 acre forest. I really enjoy this job, although it is demanding. I am scheduled to work 48 hours a week and I try not to work any more than 55 hours a week. It is because of working this more intense job, both of us have been able to take our winters off and not do any official work for five months of the year. I have used this time to see our families and spend one winter in South America and last winter we had an epic road trip across ten African countries last winter.

2022: This fluctuates greatly throughout the year. When we are in season and on payroll for our park job, we refer to it as “park-living.” We live and work there. When it’s peak season it feels like blur and everything blends together. There are quieter times in the season when we get to enjoy the park more and maintain hours. I know I work 48 hours a week minimum. 

When we are off season and not working in the park, then the pendulum swings and I am working on my projects. I try to maintain a routine with some discipline otherwise I would be a scatterbrain and never get anything done. Ironically during these periods, I often wake up at 5am to get started on my projects. I find having that discipline helps keep me on track. 

If I’m being honest, my head space can go all over. It takes me a while to get in the groove so by getting up early, I allow myself that wind-up time I need to focus. This early morning time seems to be a tangible way to make myself sit in a chair and make progress on my goals. 

We also approach our travel style, to a certain extent, as a job. We invest a lot of time in researching trips and finding the best value. We exchange time for slower transportation, cooking, altering our schedule to get better deals, taking red eye flights. So, although it’s not work per se, we exchange a great deal of time in order to reduce our cost and therefore need to work less overall to pay for the trips. 

See also: How to Get Free Accommodation Around the World

How much money do you make?

2016: My travel style has varied greatly over the years and is still changing all the time. I’ve gone an entire year traveling off savings and had no money coming in. Then I have other times I have worked 70 hour weeks and been able to put most of my money in the bank. So I guess what I am saying is there is no normal year!

To give you at least an idea, and keep in mind since I am married, we file our taxes jointly, our annual income ranges between $30,000-$48,000 per year combined. There are also years like 2012 where we did not earn any income and lived for an entire year off savings while going on a massive road trip around Australia.

2022: Our annual income still fluctuates a lot between $30K-50K combined. As we didn’t work in Maine this past winter, I anticipate being on the lower side this fiscal year. 

What I think is more pertinent to focus on is how much we can save. Over the last year I have gotten back into the habit of tracking all our yearly incomes and expenses. 

Here are some rough calculations:

Usually our annual expenses, including our trips is usually: ~$25K. Covid year and no traveling: ~$15K (We just hunkered down and worked. One month we spent $0 on gas as we didn’t even need to fill our gas tank once!) So on our higher income years, we are able to save and invest a decent bit of money.

Every year we have made it a priority to grow our savings and investments larger than they were the previous year. 

Do you make enough money to support your lifestyle?

2016: Saving has always been important to me. I never wanted to put myself into a situation I couldn’t get out of, so I have always ensured to have a savings and continue to grow it. To me it is exciting to reach certain saving milestones and continue to set other financial goals.

My savings goes up and down greatly depending on whether I am earning (ie working) or spending (ie traveling). I still never feel quite comfortable when I watch the bank account going down, but I make money to travel. That is my passion and that is what I do. So I choose to work seasonal jobs while also working on my writing and photography and that combination is enough to support my lifestyle.

2022: Yes we do. We have continued to grow our investments over the years and recently I have taken our finances and investments a lot more seriously. Chris and I both have always been disciplined at saving and somewhat knowledgeable about investing. I have become more interested in the FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) movement. I spend many dinners watching documentaries, verified YouTube channels, reading books, and looking for anything and everything I did not yet know regarding finance. 

Without quite realizing, we have essentially semi-retired, on average, about six months of the year for over a decade. We have had our good health and youth to go on all these far-flung adventures. All the while we always believed in saving. I foresee a future continuing where we have our comfortable short-term retirements as well as long term retirement. I am proud to say it is possible to do both: travel for extended periods of time and grow one’s net worth. 

See also: A Guide to Financial Planning for Travelers

What is your vision for the future of your lifestyle on the road?

2016: I am always thinking about the future and how I will continue to evolve. I know I want to keep pushing myself towards the next step of professionalism with my writing and photography. People ask us all the time if we will ever ‘settle down’ or will we stop traveling. (Nora’s note: I hate that question!).

Traveling and this lifestyle is definitely not a short term endeavour for us. When we get tired of living out of our backpacks, we find a job or a place we like and stay there a while. When we feel rested we hit the road again.

The best part about this lifestyle is I feel free to live the life I choose. I feel so very fortunate to be able to pick and choose where I want to live, work and what I want to do. I am motivated every day to jump up out of bed because I know I am working towards my goals and dreams. And to me, that is one of the greatest feelings of being alive.

2022: The same.

Any advice for the aspiring traveler about living and working on the road and managing finances?

2016: From my experiences, the best thing you can do for yourself is do whatever it takes to get rid of any debt you have and live a frugal lifestyle. Especially when Chris and I were younger and still had college debt, we made sacrifices and chose not to participate in a lot of expensive activities that a lot of our friends did. We rarely went to bars, we didn’t eat out a lot and we didn’t buy things we were not going to use.

After getting rid of debt, always have a savings that can last you at least six months. As a traveler and if you are looking to work on the road, always, always, always have that core savings. 

2022: Emphasis on frugal lifestyle – because then you can get so much value out of whatever it is that you truly like. I love finding so many other bloggers and YouTubers living and praising the frugal lifestyle. I get energized seeing other people brag about how long they have owned a T-shirt or how they used up all these random ingredients to make a meal. Less food waste and money saved. It’s been informative and fun to find other people taking pride in achieving that goal. 

That energy continues to grow and snowball as I see our investments growing and we are in the position to travel comfortably for months at a time.

Never underestimate the value of saving $5, the value of investing $5, the importance of having a secure base (both emotionally and financially) for yourself, and the power of being kind to everyone. 

This post Financial Case Study UPDATE: Tiffany Soukup, Working Seasonal Jobs appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

But things change, and I wanted to give Barbara a chance to update us on how her life and career has changed over the last five years. 

I think it’s important to acknowledge that lifestyle design is a fluid thing, and no lifestyle should be a life sentence. The beauty of a location independent career is the ability to change how (and where) we live our lives according to our preferences, and in some cases, necessity. This financial case study will outline just that. 

See also: Why I got a home base after 12 years of full-time travel

This post was originally published in 2017. In 2022 it was republished as a completely updated post. 

What happened since 2017? 

So much has changed since then. I had decided to make my biggest wish come true and become multi-locational by renting an apartment longterm. I chose Chiang Mai to be my new first home. But it wasn’t meant to be. Just 10 days after I had moved into my apartment – I was actually on a spontaneous trip to Hawaii in those days – I got a call that my mother had been diagnosed with cancer, final stage. I didn’t think long. I had to go back to Germany. 

Long story short, I moved back to Germany to stay with my family in this difficult time of our lives. My mother stayed with us for another 8 months before she took her final breath. It is strange. You know that this moment will come very soon (and we were actually lucky to have her for 8 months and not just a few weeks) but it totally hits you! That’s why, emotionally, I didn’t manage to leave. 

Just more than half a year later I pulled myself together and told myself that I need to leave because I’m not happy in Germany. I left in January 2020. Yeah, bad timing. I guess you all knew by reading the year that it didn’t turn out – again – the way I had planned. 

In march 2020, I flew back to Germany but I couldn’t stand the thought of being on the other side of the planet and lose my second parent to that stupid virus. I’m still here. In Germany. I met someone on Tinder (classic!) and we got married in April 2021. I still dream (quite literally) of my life as a nomad but it’s not my reality anymore. Maybe one day again…

How long have you been living/working on the road, and where have you traveled to?

2017: I started my nomad journey on November 5th of 2014. I began with a trip around the world (Latin America, North America, Oceania and Asia) to see if I really like traveling and working on the road. After that I just moved on because I loved it. I traveled Europe in summer and went back to Latin America in winter. After two years putting the focus on Latin America and Europe, I decided that it’s time to explore Asia again, where I am now.

2022: After writing this, I spent an incredible 2.5 years in South East Asia with regular visits in Europe to see my family. But I traveled much less than before. I enjoyed it a lot to come back to a few places that I kind of called home – Chiang Mai, Singapore, Saigon, Canggu. I mostly traveled for visa runs not to explore new places. I made friends among locals and expats. I had my favorite cafés to work from, to have amazing breakfast or to meet my friends for a chat. My life was just perfect.

Please describe what you do for income.

2017: I’m a freelance translator and copywriter, I published 10 ebooks (two of which have been published as paperbacks, too) and I earn money through collaborations with my blog Barbaralicious. As well, I created an online course for students of languages or translator studies on how to become a freelance translator.

2022: I’m surprised to read that I still called myself a translator and copywriter at that time. I put more focus on my blog afterwards, I guess and went to being a full-time blogger, teacher (I teach blogging and social media at a local school here in Germany but I teach online), and photographer. 

Also, I published 24 self-published ebooks by now and the first one with a publishing house has been published back in June 2021. My second book with a publishing house is already written but not out yet and I just signed the contract for a third one. So, I would say things have changed quite a bit but in a good way. 

How many hours per week do you work on average?

2017: I work around 100 hours per week. Sometimes a bit less, but it happens as well that I work more, for example when I have many collaborations or events to attend, because I still have freelance projects and my blog, which I both don’t want to pause in those occasions.

2022: I have no idea… I don’t count the hours at all anymore and also don’t know what exactly to count. If I need to guess it’s probably between 30 and 70 hours a week depending on the workload. 

How much money do you make?

2017: Unfortunately, my income varies a lot.

With freelancing projects, sometimes I make 2K Euro in a month, sometimes I make nothing at all. In 2016, I made 12K by freelancing so 1K per month.

It’s similar with my books: On good months, I make 200 Euro, in bad months just 30 Euro. My online translator course wasn’t too much in my center of attention, but I want to change that now and make money with it.

2022: It still varies a lot but my monthly average is higher now. It also needs to be higher because life in Germany is so much more expensive. I make an average of 2-3K per month at the moment.

Do you make enough money to support your lifestyle?

2017: My income alone wouldn’t be enough to support myself. Nevertheless, I always find solutions to not have to ask others for help: At the moment, I have a house sitting gig for one month, for example, which means that I have a big apartment with a pool for myself and don’t pay a penny. I have to feed a cat though. But that’s fine for me. Other solutions can be collaborations. Very often I don’t pay for accommodation because I will promote the place. I go on press trips where everything is paid or tours that include some nights in a hotel. In the first four months of 2017, I paid for a total of two weeks; the rest was covered by my collaboration partners.

2022: Yes, it’s enough. Especially because my husband and I pay the bills together now. And it would also be enough to hit the road together. Unfortunately, my husband isn’t allowed to work remotely.

What do you like most about your career and lifestyle?

2017: I love the freedom and independence. I’m choosing where I go and when I go.

2022: I would like to answer: I miss exactly what I wrote back then. I miss my freedom and independence. I would go back to being a nomad immediately. 

What are some of the challenges you have with this career and lifestyle?

2017: One of the greatest challenges for me is that most people don’t understand the lifestyle. Very often, I hear: “You can’t live like this!” or “You are always on vacation!” No matter how hard I try to explain the digital nomad lifestyle, some people will never get what it’s about. It took my family almost 1.5 years to understand it and I’m not sure if they really do now or if they just say it so we don’t fight anymore.

2022: I can still relate to the challenges I had back then. It even got worse since now people say things like “Oh, you finally got a normal life” or when I tell friends how much I miss Thailand “Get used to it. This is the normal life”. It breaks my heart. But at the moment, I won’t be able to change the situation.

What is your vision for the future of your lifestyle on the road?

2017: I will probably be nomadic in a certain way for the rest of my life. I don’t think that I will ever be able to settle down again. I would like to have several bases though making my life multi-locational and move from there. At the moment, I’m more roaming around without any base at all, although I still have a room at my parents’ place. It doesn’t feel like “my home” though and I would like to have something like it. So perhaps a condo in Chiang Mai and a room in Bali would do!

2022: It’s still my dream to live muli-locational. Maybe one day.

Any advice for the aspiring traveler about living and working on the road and managing finances?

2017: If I could go back in time, I would probably tell myself not to leave with so little savings. It takes time to be financially independent and it makes things so much easier when you don’t need to worry about money all the time.

(Nora’s note: Amen to that! I too, built up my location independent career on the road, and it was difficult. See also: Things to do to Prepare for Lifestlye Travel)

2022: Follow your heart! Money is important, yes. But life is short. Don’t waste it waiting for the right moment…

This post Financial Case Study UPDATE: Barbaralicious appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

In 2010 they sold the physical business and focused on their location independent business and lifestyle. Since then not only has LiveLingua taken off, but they’ve ventured into a variety of other business, and even some angel investing.

2021 NOTE: This Financial Case Study was originally published in 2016. So I asked Ray and Laura to give us an update – and there’s lots to update. They have a new boss – a family member who is currently 18 months old and who runs the show! They have also grown their Live Lingua team to over 15 employees, and Ray has started another business venture which we’ll dig into more below. They also plan on moving to Taiwan in the next couple of years, so their son can grow up tri-lingual (native English, Spanish, and Mandarin). Ever the linguists they are. 

Read more about how their lives and location independent careers have evolved over the years! 

Want to see Ray in action? He’s brilliant, charming, and totally down to earth – which is a feat when talking about bootstrapping multiple 7-figure businesses. Check it out in this interview about his remote careers and travel lifestyle!

How long have you been living/working on the road, and where have you traveled to?

2016: We have been living on the road since 2010. We have a “base” in Mexico but spend three to four months traveling every year. We like to spend one to two months at least in a new country to really get to know it instead of moving through them in a few days. In the last few years, we have been to France, Germany, Luxembourg, The United Kingdom, Cuba, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Peru, Panama, The Philippines, Japan and Hong Kong. We have also traveled all over in the US and Mexico.

2021: We still love to travel, but due to COVID and a baby we have not had much chance to do so in the last two years. Once our son is a bit older we definitely plan on picking this up again.

Please describe what you do for income.

2016: We build online education businesses. Our main focus is in online education in language. Depending on the business the revenue comes from paying for the services (for example paying for language lessons with one of our teachers) or from monthly membership fees to the sites.

In the past few years I have branched out into other projects as well including an online education math tutoring site (onmatu.com), a travel site for Mexico (teachmemexico.com) and I’m currently working with a partner in the US on a site to help kids in underprivileged communities in the US catch up on their vocabulary (my400words.com). Laura also gives cooking classes when we are home in Mexico (laurascocina.com).

We have recently also taken a step into Angel Investing and own shares in a chocolate factory in the Philippines (gintochocolates.com) but for now that is an expense and does not generate profit.

2021: We have cut back on our businesses a lot in the last few years so we could focus on what works. We have closed or sold almost all the businesses in the description above and focused on LiveLingua.com and the new project of PodcastHawk.com, which is an SaaS product that helps people get booked on podcasts on auto-pilot. 

Our income is about a good bit higher than it was back then, but even that number is a bit deceiving as we are investing a lot in back into our businesses.

How many hours per week do you work on average?

2016: Ray: I “work” about 40-55 hours a week. But I am an admitted workaholic and love what I do. Creating online businesses is my idea of fun so by my definition I only really “work” (doing stuff I don’t enjoy like paying bills) about 5 hours a week.

Laura: I work 10-20 hours a week.

The important detail here is that we work when we want and because we want to. It is not because somebody is looking over our shoulder. If we are tired, we take a day or week off whenever we want.

2021: Ray still works 40-55 hours a week, though his business coach is trying to get him to reduce that time. 

Laura is still at 10-20 hours, but she is currently training a replacement at Live Lingua so we hope to have that down to 1-2 hours a week within the next 6 months.

How much money do you make?

2016: Between all of our online education businesses and after paying our virtual staff we net about $18,000 US per month. It has been steadily growing at about 10-20% a year for the last few years and we hope the trend continues. It does fluctuate a bit since we are in the education field and we have high and low seasons based on the US school year calendar. The profit comes from payment for classes or membership fees on the sites. I just added – three weeks ago – some Adsense to a free section of Live Lingua and it looks like it will bring in about $200-300 a month, but it is too early to tell.

We also make some extra money when I get invited to do talks on entrepreneurship and Laura gives her cooking classes, but those are very inconsistent.

2021: Our take-home salary between the both of us is about $50,000 USD a month. But as I mentioned above the company profits are actually higher than that but we re-invest heavily.

Do you make enough money to support your lifestyle?

2016: Yes. We actually only pay ourselves about 25% of what we make each month. We live a very simple lifestyle. We don’t own a car, own our house in Mexico (we renovated a small old historic home in downtown) and have no debt. It also helps that we make USD and spend Mexican Pesos since the strong dollar means everything and Mexico feels like 50% off to us now.

The rest we are saving and investing. We max out our 401k plan each year and have the rest in short-term bonds (best we can get with the low global interest rates) as we are saving up for a down payment on a house or apartment in the US that we hope to use as rental property to generate more passive income.

2021: The only costs that have gone up since the last time are those involving our son. We live in the same house and have about the same lifestyle. We did buy a car since then – in case we needed it for an emergency for our son – but never rarely it.

What do you like most about your career and lifestyle? 

2016: The freedom. We work when we want from where we want. We also like the ability to create a new business. That creative process is what get’s us up every morning and gets us excited to work. To me, creating a business, is now like an art form. Once you learn the basic tools and skills, it is a matter of hard work and letting your imagination run wild. I have a list of over 100 businesses I want to do on my computer right now and can’t wait to get started on them. Of course, we will probably only have time to do 5-10 in my lifetime, but it does not matter. It is the knowledge that we “can” do any of them that keeps us motivated and excited.

2021: This has not changed.

What are some of the challenges you have with this career and lifestyle? 

2016: The uncertainty. Both in the lifestyle of traveling and in being an online entrepreneur there is no guarantee. We have gotten to borders and not been able to get across due to visa issues, which changed all our travel plans. We have lost businesses overnight due to changes in Google’s algorithm and had to build them up again from zero. The lifestyle is not for the faint of heart, but the rewards for doing it are worth it.

2021: This has also not changed.

What is your vision for the future of your lifestyle on the road?

2016: In the next 12 months, we are planning on moving to Southeast Asia. We will set up a base in the Philippines (I am half-Pinoy) and then spend the next three to five years exploring that area. Laura has always dreamed of taking a yoga course in Bali so we plan to spend some time there as well. After that, we want to move to Italy for a few years and explore more of Europe and northern Africa.

On the business end, we will continue to work on our existing online businesses and maybe creating a few new ones. The beauty of our work is that as long as we have internet it will go with us anywhere.

2021: So our initial plan to move to Asia was interrupted by some medical issues, then having a child, then COVID, but it is still the plan. 

Any advice for the aspiring traveler about living and working on the road and managing finances?

2016: Make a budget before you start. Don’t just try to wing it as you go. You can find some great information online on average costs in the countries you are going to visit to get started, but always assume you will pay more. In many countries, you will be overcharged once they realize you are a foreigner so it will cost you more. 

Also, always make sure you have an emergency “get me out of here” fund set aside before starting, and never touch it for anything else. That just has to be enough really for a plane ticket home. That way if anything happens you always have the peace of mind of knowing you can go home whenever you want.

See Also: Financial Planning for Travelers

2021: Same as before.

This post Financial Case Study UPDATE: Ray and Laura – Online Education Entrepreneurs appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

Please enjoy this financial case study shedding light on their travel style, income, work habits, and much more! 

This post Financial Case Study: Esther and Jacob of Local Adventurer appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

This financial case study was originally published in 2016 when Candice was in Berlin. Her life and career has changed in SO many ways since then! And below you can read all about her evolution. Enjoy! 

See also: This is the Best Way to Visit Newfoundland; one of my absolute favourite travel experiences, in part because Candice and I hung out in St. John’s for a few days! 

This post Financial Case Study UPDATE: Candice Walsh – Writer, Blogger, Social Media Manager appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

This financial case study was originally published in 2016, so I asked Sasha and Rachel to give us an update on their career, lifestyle, and finances. Below you will find their old answers and their 2021 update. Enjoy! 

This post Financial Case Study UPDATE: Sasha and Rachel, Grateful Gypsies appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!

This Financial Case Study was originally published in 2016. As was the case for nearly everyone worldwide (but perhaps especially anybody in the travel and airline industry), Erika’s lifestyle came crashing to a halt as a result of Covid. She took nearly a year off from her job and hunkered down in Seattle with her husband and cat. However, while international travel was only a distant dream for much of the year, she was still able to enjoy local travel and road trips around the Pacific Northwest.

Here’s how Erika is transitioning from her career as a flight attendant to something a bit more pandemic-frendly. 

See also: Tips for Transitioning to Full-Time Blogging

This post Financial Case Study UPDATE: Erika Bisbocci, (Former?) Flight Attendant appeared first on The Professional Hobo. Please click through to read it in full!