How to find your place in the world
After nomading for over 5 years, I feel it’s time to settle — either down somewhere, or with someone and keep slowmading (careful not to settle “for” someone). Since the question “How do you determine your homebase” seems to come up on nomad forums, I thought I’d share what I’ve learned.
In these 5 years, I’ve spent between 1 and 9 months in a place. I lived in Bali, Latin America, New Zealand, the US (CA, HI, MA, FL, TX), Europe (mostly Romania), Dubai, Cape Town, and some places I’d never consider for settling in (Egypt, Tunisia). Aside from Bali, I haven’t lived in Asia or Australia (only visited). There’s no “perfect” home base, but I have a few top candidates. What matters is how to think about selecting them — the principles that you can use to drastically reduce the choice space.
The key is to realize what you can control about a place, and what you can’t.
Choose based on the latter. Lots of people look at Cost of Living (CoL) as a criterion; I find that misguided. You can make more money, but you can’t change nature, the weather, the culture/people, or the official language. Start with the most selective criterion that’s a deal-breaker for you. For example, if you absolutely must live in a surfing city with warm weather, that eliminates most places on the planet. Start with that.
Let’s look at some common criteria.
1. You can’t control the climate.
That’s one reason why a lot of rich people live in California (though you can live there for much less than what most people think). Money can buy happiness, and nice weather directly improves happiness. Unpleasant weather can make half the year at least not fun, and for many people, even depressing. I’d rather focus on making more money, than be limited to places with low cost-of-living but bad climate or other shortcomings.
2. You can’t control nature.
I love greenery and the ocean, and especially the juxtaposition of sharp green cliffs and blue waters. That’s not found in many places in the world.
If you pick only this, plus nice weather and fluent English, that leaves only one place in the world: Hawaii (and if you want a bit of urban life, Oahu/Honolulu). And indeed, assuming I never went to Hawaii, I could fall in love with Oahu in one Sunday by landing at the airport in the morning, walking along Waikiki beach enjoying the beautiful palm trees, the crystal clear water, the blue sky, and the sun-kissed sand; grabbing lunch at Queen’s Beach; followed by hiking Diamond Head for some stunning views, then returning to Queen’s Beach for a session of acro yoga and community fire spinning performance after sunset.
But for the sake of argument, let’s say you have more relaxed criteria. Most other things are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of control:
3. You can’t (easily) control laws and regulations.
First and foremost, you should have a passport that allows you to reside in the target location, or you should be fine with visa runs, or spending only part of the year there. This isn’t a huge impediment, as most countries let you stay for half a year without much fuss, and having two home bases is a desirable proposition if you want nice weather year-round.
Taxes are another example, but there are various ways to legally reduce your tax obligations. The misguided war on drugs is a different example, with places like Portugal or California being far saner than Singapore or Dubai on recreational drug use; or you can just take risks, as many people do. Bureaucracy in general is hard to control (from receiving international packages to starting companies), but you can outsource some of it.
4. You can’t control the language or the culture
…much, but you can choose to live in a part of the country/city where your favorite language is spoken. For English, your second best bet is upscale neighborhoods in large cities in countries outside of Latin America and Asia (the continents with the worst levels of English proficiency). Still, I’ve found that when living in places where I didn’t speak the language, I had to dumb down my communications to use the most basic English that the locals would understand, or the basic local language that I could speak. This had a priming effect of dumbing down my entire intellectual expression, a fact observed by my American friends with whom I kept in touch (and despite keeping in touch with them in English!). Thus language has become a major criterion for me. Learning a language well enough to enjoy its nuances takes years, and there are far more useful things I can do with that amount of time.
Thus, I’m only interested in settling down in areas where fluent English is widely spoken, at least in my immediate surroundings (see below). You could also choose to live in place where other languages you speak fluently are widely spoken. I did try that in Romania, and while my general language prowess seemed to remain intact, my English vocabulary did suffer. (Side note, it was “cuter” to not quite know a Romanian word in Romania, than to not know the most appropriate English one in the US.)
5. You can’t control the people
Your existing friends are where they are (or if they’re nomadic, they move around), and many people choose to just live where they have some friends; also, you obviously can’t control the locals. But, you can choose to make new friends very selectively, for example by engaging in activities you’re truly interested in, then investing in some of those who join and have one other important thing in common with you. For example, I enjoy acro yoga, but a lot of acro yogis are spiritual hippies, which I’m definitely not. So in Hawaii, Romania or California, I’ve selected acro yogis who were also intellectuals (engineers, entrepreneurs, creatives etc.) You can also maintain online friendships to satisfy your particular intellectual pursuits, but some of the best moments in life are shared with people physically close to you.
6. Dating
A particular aspect of the “people” variable is dating — some places are much better than others at dating. Generally, large cities win thanks to sheer numbers, but if you’re strict on a cultural match, Rio won’t do the trick for someone not into the Latin culture, despite its population of 6.7M. Similar considerations apply to ethnicity and religion. As an atheist, dating in Romania (the most religious country in Europe) would be an exercise in frustration, or a lottery (though Bucharest is less brainwashed in that regard than the rest of the country). Why not stack the odds in your favor?
Dating can turn the entire “Where should I live?” question on its head. A lot of couples meet in large cities, then move out in the suburbs. Some to have kids, some to afford more housing, some for the peace, some simply because the city has fulfilled its role of helping them find a partner. If you’re keen on finding a life partner and have niche preferences, you might want to optimize for people first, but make sure your prospective date is excited about moving together to the destination that really excites you, or that you’re fine remaining in their location. Love may or may not compensate for shitty weather, lack of nature, or high CoL.
7. Infrastructure
While you can’t control infrastructure, you can choose the best parts of it. For example, Cape Town doesn’t even have reliable electricity in most of its neighborhoods (“load shedding”), but a few neighborhoods are exempt from load shedding. Bali swarms with scooters and has terrible traffic, but if you live in an enclave like ParQ Ubud, you don’t need to see any of that. Some countries/cities have many great hospitals, but most places have at lease one good one, and for very specific non-urgent medical needs, you can travel to the former.
8. Schools
For parents, school quality is a major factor in choosing where to move. With the advent of online education, this may be less of an issue. On the other hand, socializing kids in person has obvious advantages. Being child-free, I can’t comment much on this aspect.
9. Microlocation
You can control to a much higher degree your immediate surroundings. I work from home, so I spend most of the day in my apartment. A nice apartment has repeatedly made me happy despite mediocre surroundings, so I’ve often invested in one that was also centrally located, and only walking distance from a gym I like. The corollary here is that for your day-to-day happiness, what I call “microlocation” (your immediate surroundings — apartment, street, neighborhood) can make a much larger practical impact than the macro-location (e.g. living in the US vs. the UK). More in this interview I gave during NomadBase Live 2021.
The concept of microlocation has some implications:
- It’s mistaken to write off a place because your hotel/Airbnb was in a mediocre area. An annoying microlocation (e.g. due to noise) might negatively color your entire impression of a place, while a great microlocation might be just a few blocks away. That’s a good reason to stay longer in a place, though you can scope out neighborhoods in advance remotely using Hoodmaps and Google Maps (satellite + Street View).
- You can find a great microlocation in most places in the world. The other side of this coin is that you can become isolated. For example if you seek an English community in a Hispanic city, you can find a group of expats, move in that area (say, Palermo in Buenos Aires), but you’ll still be somewhat isolated from the rest of the country. That may matter more or less depending on your immediate circle of people. If you have a life partner, and people you can outsource bureaucratic tasks to, it will matter less.
- Optimize as much as you can the things you do most often and most of the time. Some apply to everyone — get a great bed, laptop and phone (and maybe car), and keep them in great shape. Other things should apply to everyone (e.g. great gym). The rest depend on your particular interests and goals in life.
Another look at the problem
Life goals offer another angle of addressing the “Where to live” question. Try first figuring out WHAT you want to do in life that’s location-specific, THEN figuring out WHERE to do that. If you want to eventually work in biotech for example, low-CoL locations in LatAm or Eastern Europe won’t do the trick. And rather than spending 5–10 years in Bali then moving to a biotech mecca like Boston or San Diego, why not start planting roots in San Diego already?
If you don’t know yet what to do in life long-term, that’s OK, but the subject of another post. In the meantime, you can keep traveling and exploring. Try also to explore interests in addition to places. For me for example, meeting a bunch of nomads who enjoy improv and hiking and acro yoga reminded me that I enjoy these hobbies enough that I want to have them in my life on a regular basis.
Either way, the sooner you come to peace with the decision, the better (otherwise you can spend years agonizing about where to live). Here are some pointers to help with that:
- Realize that the decision is mostly reversible. You will incur some costs, but you’re not really trapped anywhere. As a nomad, you can pick up and move relatively quickly. Even if you settle down, once a nomad — always a nomad.
- It doesn’t have to be forever.
- A bunch of things will suck, but some things will also suck anywhere else.
- You can fix most of these things.
- You’ll get used to most things. Nothing is as bad as it first looks.
- Remember the microlocation. If where you ended up sucks, try moving to a different neighborhood, then a different city; don’t freak out and leave the entire country because your neighbor has a 3am ukulele habit.
OK, the selection process yielded a place. Now what?
First, try to get excited about it. Watch 4K drone footage. Then remember that things will look much less spectacular from eye-level, and watch peppy “influencer” videos (finally they’ll actually be useful!). Read the Wikivoyage page about the place. Read its Wikipedia page. Plan a trip. Consider using a house sitting site to find a free spot from which to explore the city (but please take good care of the pets!). Simulate actually living there: walk in the neighborhoods you want to live in. Where will you get groceries from? Where will you go to the gym? What might the place feel like on weekends? During the winter? Try to stay for at least a week.
Be aware of external factors that can color your impression of the place. Nice sunny weather makes everything look much more cheerful than gloomy, cloudy days. Night time can make things look very different than daytime (try Vegas). If you feel tired or sick, don’t blame the place. If you’re in a new exciting situation (new job/relationship/friends/etc), don’t think the place creates all of your excitement.
Find a quiet park, sit on a bench, and visualize your life there. For that day, for a week, for a month, for a couple years.
Realize that the vast majority of people never consider this question. They’re fine with wherever they ended up because of school/work/someone they met, or socioeconomic restrictions. You are privileged.
And remember — start the selection process with the most selective criterion that matters to you.
