To be able to travel all around the world while making an income is a dream for many. Most lifestyle bloggers end up in logically lower-cost places such as Thailand, Mexico, Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia. All are wonderful places to live, and you only need to make $1,000 a month!
Nothing beats the nasi goring, roti canai, kankung belachan, and satays of Indonesia and Malaysia. Thailand, Philippines, Mexico have the most beautiful white beaches. No wonder why these countries are so popular. Perhaps we should all buy some property there since they’re growing at much more rapid rates than the US and Europe!
$1,000 a month is a pretty penny to make online or through side hobbies no doubt. It might take years to breach that level without the proper strategy and guidance. However, what if you’ve already achieved $1,000 a month in passive + online income? Furthermore, what if we have dependents to care for or have further aspirations of living a slightly more luxurious lifestyle than a room in a shared house in a very hot country?
It would nice to be mobile like a pro-golfer and start the year off in Hawaii and move East as the weather gets better no? I’ve thought of these questions over the years and have come up with a current fantasy lifestyle: Cruising!
THE JOY OF CRUISING
For about $4,000 a month per person, you can enjoy living on one of the most luxurious cruise’s in the world. On the cruise, you will have multiple pools, hot tubs, spas, theaters, restaurants, libraries, sports facilities, and casinos.
You’ll never have to pack or unpack your bags because you can wake up in Barcelona one day, and Malta the next! Say goodbye to pumping your own gas, car insurance, home insurance, mortgage loans, maintaining your property, cleaning your room, or figuring out where to go. You could turn into one big tub of lard and love every moment of it because you never have to do anything at all! Of course you won’t, but I’m just saying.
For $8,000 a month, a couple could live like a King and Queen. And for $10,000 a month, you could get a suite and also have a kid too. I’m talking about the top of the line here to give us stretch goals. A family of three can certainly enjoy cruising for $6,000 a month as well, but things would be tight.
$10,000 BOGEY + $2,160 IN EXTRAS!
As a community of bloggers and online entrepreneurs, the Internet is our lifeline. We take for granted the unlimited amount of data and access we have at home for $50 a month. Hop on a cruise, and it is a totally different story!
The cruise I was just on had a 100-minute package for $50 ($0.50/minute) and a 250-minute package for $100 ($0.40/minute). I went with the $100 package because I was certain that I’d spend way more than 4 hours and 10 minutes on a 12-day cruise! In fact, I ended up spending 12 hours, or $300, which is right on budget with what I had planned of 1 hour a day.
When we’re talking about $4,000 a person or $10,000 for a family, $300 doesn’t seem like much. But, $300 is my minimum amount since 3 hours is what I would spend on average a day if I was blogging on the ship full-time. Hence, at 90 hours of work a month, that comes out to $2,160 a month in low speed satellite internet access!
FIGURING OUT A BETTER WAY
$2,160 a month in Internet access is clearly ridiculous. If I was a full-time blogger, 90 hours of work a month is probably the average, if not the lower end of the spectrum for the amount of hours worked. Hence, what I ended up doing was the following:
• Wrote all completed posts in word document. The title, category, SEO, and relevant links were all prepared so I could simply upload to WordPress and schedule. This saves 1-2 hours of work online, or $24-48 at $0.40 a minute.
• Opened a Safari, Firefox, and Chrome browser all at once with multiple tabs on each browser, which has all my relevant pages. This way, when I log on, I can just refresh my dashboard, mail, favorite site, reader, and so forth, rather than having to re-log in all the time. Does this pose a security risk? Definitely, if someone steals my laptop, which is why I have multiple levels of password encryptions before anybody can get in.
• Took advantage of Internet happy hour! Yes, believe it or not, the cruise will have internet happy time at least once or twice a week where costs will be half i.e. $0.20/minute
• Took advantage of any and all cafes at port. I spent about 1 hour on average in each city I landed doing work on-line after buying a $3 cup of tea of course. I realized free wifi is everywhere nowadays, and started taking serious advantage during my second week of vacation.
Doing these four things lowered my blended cost down from $0.40 cents a minute to around $0.30 cents a minute or $1,620 a month. $1,620 is still ridiculous for Internet access, but I’m on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean for goodness sakes. This couldn’t have been done just 10 years ago!
THE BIGGER GOAL: JUST EARN MORE
Besides the Internet, there’s not much more money you have to spend on except for the occasional glass of Cabernet to go along with your free beef wellington. If you want to go on shore excursions, it will cost about $100/person for 4 hours. I’ve just chosen to focus on Internet expenses since it is so outrageously more expensive than the $50 or whatever a month we’re paying on land.
Making more money cures a lot of things. There’s so many ways one can make money online, it’s not even funny. My absolute favorite way is to make someone else more money so I can make some money. If someone said they’d make you $1 million dollars if you just had to run a mile, you most likely would and conceivably pay that person $500,000 for the opportunity. Heck, I’d probably pay the person $990,000, or 99% if all I had to do was run 1 mile for $10,000. It just makes me happy to bring deals to Yakezie Members, despite the amount of hard work and time that is involved.
We all know about all the different online and passive income streams already, so I won’t get into detail here. What I do know is that the longer one keeps at their online endeavors, the more opportunities they get. It’s an absolute virtuous cycle that at some point becomes too much you have to start turning potential clients down. You get to raise prices and be pickier with advertisers. In other words, you get to start choosing your own destiny and dictating your own terms. Isn’t that what lifestyle blogging is all about?
DREAM WITH PURPOSE
My dream three years ago was to make enough money from my truly passive income (CD, savings, and bond interest income), semi-passive income (rental property income), non-guaranteed income (stocks and bonds), and online endeavors to have pure financial freedom to do whatever I wanted. It wasn’t enough to just have a goal to “make enough money”, there needed to be an actual amount.
After a couple two-week long cruises, I’ve come to realize that amount is $12,000 a month, or $150,000 a year after taxes. Before taxes, the gross figure is closer to $185,000 a year. Holy moly that’s a lot! But, as I remind myself all the time, anything worth doing is worth doing!
As we come to a close, let’s circle back to the $1,000/month, live in South East Asia lifestyle blogger trend that currently populates the web. You can see how small the amount is after talking about $12,000 a month. There’s no way after you start dreaming big about $12,000 a month will you ever fail making just 10% of that if you try! Because at $1,000 a month, you can’t even afford internet access!
Here’s to dreaming big and executing our goals with purpose! Always have a financial checklist to keep your goals on track. You’ll be glad you did!
Readers, what would be an example of your ideal lifestyle blogging scenario? How much money after taxes do you think you need to make in order to live that dream? Share your story!
Photo 1: Blue Dome, Santorini 2011. Sam
Photo 2: Sailing Away From Venice, 2011. Sam.
Photo 3: Reading the NY Times and Writing Off Room’s Balcony, 2011. Sam
Looking to learn how to start your own profitable website? Check out my step-by-step guide on how to start a blog. It’s one of the best things I did in 2009 to help earn extra money and break free from Corporate America!
Having only that $12,000/yr income from internet sources is risky. I get it how some lyfestile bloggers are living on the edge in various exotic locales, but if that one crutch goes, it’s back home w/ the slow boat.
That’s a really good point. There’s inherent risk in only shooting for this amount for your sole income source.
I would probably have to make 2-3x a year from blogging versus what I make at my ‘day job’ before I would consider retiring. Suffice it to say, I have a *long* way to go! It never hurts to dream big, though!
Why such a big multiplier MB? Thx
One thing I have learned is that you need specific goals to shoot for. If you just have a vague concept you’re aiming for it will be much harder to get there. You need to be able to target right in on the bulls-eye.
For me to quit my day job and blog full time I need to be making double my salary. I figure that would give me enough to cover the cost of insurance plus have some to invest and enjoy. This year I’ll be close to 50% of my salary so I still have a ways to go.
PS – great pics. How was Santorini? I’ve heard it is amazing there.
Santorini is now in my top 5 most beautiful places to vacation in the world! It’s absolutely breathtaking. I wish I stayed longer.
Blog income = 50% of day job income is huge. Congrats on that. Why double the income though? Is it to account for the risk?
Precisely. If it was just me I’d be a lot less cautious, but with a family to think of I want to keep the safety net around a bit longer.
You are re-defining ‘dreaming big’ for me. haha. I think I would be happy making a third of your 12k a month because my wife still plans on working. She finds meaning in what she is doing and I agree that she is on her way to doing something worthwhile. I hope to be 1/3 of the way by the end of 2012. By the end of 2013, I think I could reach my 4k a month goal. We’ll see.. I may change my goal – but not if you keep talking like this. :)
How’s your wife gonna work on the boat?!
4K/month is awesome. So if you are shooting for 4K/month, might as well shoot for 8K/month to get to 4k/month!
haha – I’m not sure. I think I will stay off the boat and just take elaborate vacations (when she gets time off). At least until she retires. :) If it becomes 8k a month, we might both “retire” – we’ll see how it takes off.
$185,000 a year online – seems like a pretty solid number. $185,000 is also in the upper echelon of the land based earners, so that would definitely be a good amount of money to consider globetrotting.
So, are you going to go for it? That would be pretty slick – financial blogging from the perspective of a worldwide traveler. Every post would have a tag-line from a different country, haha.
Yep, definitely going for it. Just need for the number to be regularly above $10,000-$12,000 a month, with big swings to the upside.
Everybody should just go for whatever big number stretch goal they have.
I think combining the Personal Finance niche – which definitely supports quite a full FT bloggers, with Traveling (which I hear earns some people quite a bit) will be a killer niche. I bet you can pull it off.
Aiming for $10k per month within 5 years is within reach of all of us, and sooner if we seriously commit to this objective. This would satisfy my desire of never working in an office ever again.
Location is more challenging. I enjoy moving around, living in different countries. I think it’s important to travel and stay there for a while to decide whether the culture agrees with you. One year on the boat is all I could handle before needing more stability. I like to plan my own schedule.
I agree. The key is $10k+/month steady, w/ $10k as the lower end of the monthly average.
I don’t know if I could do more than 3 months on the boat, but who knows! It would be a fun quarter of living.
Yep, I did calculate this one recently and the number stands at $10,000 monthly. This will allow me to quit my day job and work only on things I really care about; or not work at all. A steep growth from royalties of about $640 yearly at the moment. I have started preparing the conditions and am going for it in the next five years – what can I lose except my current limitations?
I agree with MoneyBeagal I would need 3 or 4 times my day job income before I could consider leaving the “rat race.”
I can’t believe internet is that expensive still on a cruise. Do you think it is a money maker for them?
3-4X your day job income seems really excessive…. and perhaps impossible unless you make little, which you don’t. Why such a big multiplier?
I’m sure the cruise makes a good margin. But, since the demographic is older, not so many use that much internet.
I know it isn’t going to make sense, but it doesn’t seem “real” to me. Sort of like someone (maybe google lol) is going to take it all away.
I hear what you’re saying actually. How can we get paid as bloggers? That’s when you know you’ve found something you really enjoy because you would do it for free.
Wow, living on a cruise ship is expensive. We took a short 3 days cruise once and didn’t like it. We’re land blubbers. :) The $1,000/month lifestyle is much more attractive to me, but I would like to make $2,000 from various sources to be safe. Internet earning is unsteady and Google has too much influence over it.
The point is, if you shoot for $10,000 a month, $2,000 a month will be as easy as pie!
Internet access on our honeymoon cruise boat was ridiculous. We agreed not to get so involved with the outside world during our trip. However, we did make a one time payment of $50 or so for about 30 minutes of of internet access to check our emails and stuff. That’s all we needed basically.
I don’t know that I would want to live solely off internet earnings or only on a cruise ship, but I do like the way you challenge me to focus and attack goals with more intensity.
To each their own. Share what you’d like to do.
My current dream is to pay my house off in less than 4 years. If I make $40,000 online next year, I believe that’s entirely possible. With what I make currently, I don’t think this goal is out of the question. In going after it though, I’ll most certainly make more than what I would have if I didn’t! :)
You’re lucky to live in a low cost area of living. $40,000 online would be great! But, the taxman takes 20%. Nothing reminds us more about taxes than doing something on our own.
My dream is to be content and be able to travel with my future wife. I’m not one to dream of Ferraris and HUGE houses. Thanks for the inspiration to keep working hard and to achieve our dreams!
A huge house is painful. Too much to clean! Perhaps once you drive a Ferrari, you will start dreaming of one :)
My idea of an ideal lifestyle is just about here. I have enough savings to support my retirement and just woeking to reach retirement. I am trying to earn extra income from blogging to pay for luxuries (wants) and more importantly keep me mentally active. Travel more often and stay healthy. My really big dreams are realized, but I keep adding goals to keep myself motivated.
My dream does not have to reach $12000 per month. I would be happy with half as much after all my kids are grown up and don’t need to be taken care of by us. I will be looking into retiring abroad where the standard of living is not as high as where I am living now.
I had no idea Internet would be that expensive! My dream right now would be to make $4,000 a month online. After that, I would raise the bar.
Why $4,000? You wouldn’t be happy for a while at $4,000?
I’ve heard about those cruises where you can live on a ship. I wonder how it feels in a month or two of such living? Boring? :) Internet earnings can be great but they don’t provide me with enough security to be able to retire from my job. Even if I make 10K a month. Too much depends on Google and I don’t like this dependancy.
I think the entertainment and acts would definitely start getting boring. The good thing is new entertainment comes on board every 12 days on average.
What is it about Google that you depend on? Adsense? I don’t rely on Google for more than 20% of my income I don’t think.
Man your cruise looks fun. My dream is to pay off everything and be financially able to retire at 36. I doubt I will actually just retire, but knowing you’re able to is a lot of fun.
It was pretty darn fun, and I have a ton more pics! Why 36 and not 37?
I’d love to cruise around South America. I’m not sure I could cruise around the whole world for more than a few weeks without getting restless for land and just being at home, but maybe not! I went on a cruise with my family and loved it. If I was blogging full time I’d want a home base in someplace warm and I’d travel to a new place once a quarter for 2-3 weeks. I’m not the type that could be on the road all the time.
South America would be great during our winter! I’ve never done that before, and it’s definitely on my list.
Having a home base is a no brainer for sure. I will choose Hawaii!
1k a month is completely doable for me. I’d like to retire in a small town by the beach that’s close enough to a big city to keep me busy and entertained. But if I was completely honest with myself, it’d probably be closer to 4k a month.
I think setting realistic and attainable goals is really important. My issue is the amount of goals I set. I think I sometimes try to do to much and then I never really succeed. I just end up getting everything half started. My project this year is to sit down and really determine my life plan and set actual time lines to it. I need to narrow it down just a bit so that it is actually attainbale. I don’t want to end up feeling unfinished later on in my life.
Sounds like a good plan Miss T! Perhaps just Focus on 3 main goals a year.
Interesting perspective on the relationship between goals and reality.
It also gives me a fresh perspective on the relationship between wealth and enjoying your wealth. If you can travel around the world 52 weeks a year on resorts and cruises for $12,000 a month you’re doing quite alright. I’ve never really considered how much it might actually cost to fund an adventure like that…your number is way less than I would have pulled out of thin air.
I like the startup mentality, though. Shoot for X and only X, but realize the massive benefit of even 1/10th of X dollars. Great post.
Most lifestyle bloggers are pretty young i.e. in their 20s, so to them, living in a far away land for cheap is great. I just wonder what happens to them when they get in their 30s and 40s.
Living on a cruise sounds great for a while, but I’d like a home base to relax for half the time a year at least.
It’s fascinating to watch bloggers try and make money by showing others how to make money. It’s a great business model!
Sometimes we fantasize about traveling, writing and making money doing it but really we love staying at home! Right now we need about $5,000 a month to live on after taxes. If we make more it goes as extra contribution to our savings or paying off the house.
Sounds like a very realistic and achievable goal. I wish you good luck! It’s great to need less of an amount to lead your life of your dreams.
I’ve never actually sat down and figured out what I would need to actually leave my job but 10k a month after taxes or more sounds about right. I like living in Maryland, I wouldn’t need to cover the cost of living in a foreign locale, but in order to cover the cost of living here, to carry the cost of health insurance for myself and both children, save for college and finish out paying for the next six years of private school, I would need at least that to feel comfortable.
Considering that I’m not even at 1/10th of that figure now, I have a lot of work to do if it’s ever going to happen.
A number of people have said $10,000 a month after taxes… so closer to $13-$14,000. With the median household income of around $4,000/month after taxes, are we being a little extreme?
Cruising would most definitely be a fun way to live. Although, I love to blog and all the perks that come with it, my real passion is baseball. My dream is to have enough land to have a barn with batting cages inside; to teach kids how to swing and hit the ball while making it asset for myself. Blogging is something that will give me the luxury to stay at home and run my other side businesses.
Sounds like the Field of Dreams. That would be great. I wonder how much it costs to build a baseball field in the middle of America?
I have a buddy I just talked to today who married a woman of Colombian descent. They’ve been buying up land and real estate in Colombia. They have property managers and she has family down there to make sure it’s going OK. They plan on moving down there in about 5-7 years when the properties are more profitable, they’ve saved more in US Dollars, and they can build their dream home. Pretty neat idea, if you don’t mind living there! Make your money in a high cost country, then move to a low-cost country when you’ve saved up a bunch!
Sounds like a good plan! Or, you can just work in NYC or San Francisco, earn money for 20 years, and then literally retire ANYWHERE in America or the world, and it will be cheaper.
It seems most of us want “just a little more.” Few of us would admit to wanting it all, or showing too many signs of greed… but most of us would say all we need is a little more. Ideally, I’m ashamed to say after that… I don’t need much, “just a little more.” I’m quite happy where I’m at, doing what I’m at… and I’m making new friends along the way.
Sounds good. How’s your investing in the markets performance YTD? Is it taking you closer to the promised land?
I like the inspiration, Sam. The lifestyle possibilities for people who have the opportunity to be moblie (no kids) is really quite great these days. Even otherwise, for people like me, there are plenty of reasons to aspire and reach higher. Nice post.
But even with a kid, you can get a suite on the ship! They’ve got school, day care, and other activities for kids!
Great inspiration, Sam. The photos look beautiful.
$10k after taxes sounds about right to live comfortably. But I am shooting for a lot more because of my other dreams/desires I have. So far my online income has been inconsistent so it is a little scary too. I have some pretty aggressive goals for next year to push myself further. Living on a boat is not for me, but my plan are even more expensive so I have a lot of work to do.
Thanks Suba! Do tell what these dreams and desires you have for shooting for a lot more! I’d love to know!
thx
In my country (off course in SE Asia) 1K is too much money and you can have a few internet connection Sam. There are people in our blogger community who traveled half the world with just $12,000. Depends on your style. Whatever works for you. As you said “Bigger the goal: earn more”. I can just add “lower the goal: and achieve now”, get inspired and achieve a second goal.
Ah yes, sounds like the “Goal Snowball” you are referring to, to keep your motivation and goals alive. I like how you say “$1K is TOO MUCH money!”
Where would you advise I live if I were to choose SEA?
$1k wouldn’t be enough for me because of all the dreams and goals that I have. I would be much happier with 5x-6x that amount, because then I would at least match what I could be doing if I was working full-time. I also want to get out of the rat race which means working out of choice and not out of necessity. If you stick at 1k-2k a month, you will not build any capital toward the future.
At the same time, can’t downplay the upsides of having a location-independent lifestyle!
Oh, as for the cruise lifestyle, I think this is the wave of the future. I am big on seasteading and think that in 20 years or so we will see a big push toward this. It’s too bad the freedom ship concept failed, but I believe we will see more and more cruise ships that you can actually live on, and not catered only for the rich but also for the middle class.
I’ve estimated costs for a seasteading type venture based on the expenses and they are not unreasonable — they are similar to what one would be paying for a $350k home in a large city. Many middle-class and upper middle class families would be able to afford that, especially if you consider that you might not even have to pay income taxes.
Of course it will cater to those who offer services and work in the services industries and not so much to those in manufacturing. As they build BIG seasteads, the costs will come down with the economies of scale, and there will be more opportunities to generate wealth with network effects. The sweet spot might be large cruise ships/seasteads with permanent populations of 10,000 or more.
Wow… 10,000 on one boat? Our ship held 2,500 total.. so I can’t imagine a boat 4-5 X bigger! However, conceptually, it makes sense since the majority of our earth is water!
What a fun way to live if the boat was big enough. I can definitely see this happening more and more in hundreds of years time!
I think the biggest boats are already close to 10,000 if you include the staff. Freedom Ship was designed to be a floating city of 50,000 but those guys violated the idea of proving the concept before trying to attract tens of billions of dollars in investment.
I really hope it’s not hundreds of years out!!! I want to experience this within my lifetime. :) I think it really holds a lot of promise, because it is a new frontier. Imagine entrepreneurialism combined with new spaces. This stuff is happening right where you live, Sam.
Wonderful pictures, Sam. I will definitely buy the $100 internet package on our 15 night cruise this Spring. We have 10 sea days so will have lots of time to write in addition to relaxing and eating!
I will go along iwth the $10K a month figure in order to quit the day job. That’s enough to replace my income plus make up for having to pay for my own benefits.
Oh wow! I’m excited about your cruise! 10 days at sea means….. you’re going to Australia? If not, where you going?
Use the free wifi at the cafes! Internet is SO slow on board!
We are sailing to Hawaii RT from San Diego which accounts for the many sea days. In between each set of 5 sea days we have 5 days visiting 4 islands.
Wow, AWESOME! That’s going to be so much fun! You’ll have to write a post about the expenses, planning, of it etc.
I want to be like Jim Rogers – retire rich, and then travel around the world. But my life’s goal is to start a charity; especially to help the poor in China.
Tony, that’s an amazing goal. You can do it!
Personally, I’m still deciding how much, but I agree with not limiting oneself. There are so many opportunities available. $12,000 a year just doesn’t cut it, yet it is still a wonderful side-hustle.
Internet access is so expensive on cruise ships! I’ve never been on one (hence the shock:)), but will be taking a cruise with my husband and parents next year to Alaska. Thanks for the heads up!
As for my dream, it would be to live in Japan for a year. My husband and I are currently playing around with this dream and excel sheets…who knows? I think I figured out that we would need to save up $27,000 to take care of our expenses (mortgage, home insurance/property taxes/association fee, and to still contribute max to both of our Roth IRAs for the year. This figure is before taking into account that we would probably rent out our home for the year, and I would continue making income on my blog…so the number would probably be closer to just $10,000. Not bad for a whole year abroad!
[…] tub, all you’re doing is contemplating. In addition to coming up with a crazy plan of writing full-time from a cruise ship for $12,000 a month, I learned a lot of things that I’d like to share with […]
If you think about it, accessing the internet in the middle of the ocean is pretty amazing. That technology costs a lot. If it didn’t, people could just used their smartphones :) Anyway it’s all about being more efficient. I find that I’m more productive without the distractions of social media. You can do quite a lot online, then I upload what I need when I’m in port at a cafe.
Anyway, back to the point. I think I would be good with $3,000 a month.
It definitely is amazing indeed! What do you do on the ship?
Sorry for the late reply. I’m one of the IT guys :)
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I am definitely inspired raise the bar for my blog! Goal for 2012: $2500.00 per month for blogging income.
[…] posts about my cruise and generated more income than the cost of the trip. My favorite is, “Dream Big And Execute Your Goals With Purpose!” $5,000 business expense no problem right?Disclaimer: I am not an accountant, although […]
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