Chapter 11: Perpetual Vagabonding
“But the traveler’s world is not the ordinary one, for travel itself, even the most commonplace, is an implicit quest for anomaly.” – Paul Fussell
It may seem extreme, but living life almost exclusively on the road must also seem equally romantic. The possibilities on the road seem endless, and although you’d be living an unconventional lifestyle by many people’s standards, you’d be living a life of constant enrichment.
Imagine for a second what it must be like to call the road home. The world is literally your backyard, each new city full of potential friends and family, and your life would be a series of valuable reference experiences. Every walk down the sidewalk would bring on a new set of emotions and ideas.
For some, this is what Location Wealth represents: the ability to live life in constant motion, through perpetual travel.
“For my part,” Robert Louis Stevenson reminds us, “I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake.”
The experience of travel itself is the passion and purpose of a vagabond. To them, Time Wealth is the simple ability to earn money in ways that’ll allow them to live in constant movement.
It could be a freelance writing gig, it could be a SaaS product, or it could even be as a dishwasher in whatever town you find yourself in, but if you’re a vagabond, then a little money is all you need to achieve true Time Wealth. The most valuable thing to you is to maintain your exploration through a simple life.
Or, if you built your Time Wealth correctly, you could be running a multi-million dollar online business from your backpack.
It’s really not that hard, logistically. If you have a company that outsources most of its needs, runs lean, and sells online products, you have the skeleton of a company that can withstand the perpetual motion of its owners. You could even buy a wifi access card to ensure you’d have Internet connection.
Then, you could begin to test the strength of your moveable company by going on increasingly longer trips, to increasingly farther places. With each trip, you’ll learn more and more about what you still need to outsource or streamline, and you’d figure out if there were any single point of failures with your business.
It will get to a point, as long as you’re comfortable, when the only thing you’d need to run your business is a tablet and some Internet. You could literally fit your entire business, your entire material possessions, hell, your entire life, inside a backpack.
What’s funny is that many of the people reading this can’t even wrap their heads around the idea of successful vagabonding. I think we, myself included, think about vagabonding as one – ok, maybe two steps above homelessness. Even I think about dirty beards and tattered clothes when I first think of vagabonding.
But in today’s world, it’s not only possible to vagabond and come back more traditionally successful than when you left, but it’s probable. Which is why your focus on Time Wealth is so important. If you set up your projects with intention, you can become wildly successful, both monetarily and with true Wealth.
Think about it this way: if you were able to build a business or collection of projects that were location independent, and earned you a combined $100k per year, and you decided to reduce your possessions to a backpack, think about how much of that $100k you’d save!
You wouldn’t have a mortgage, wouldn’t have rent, wouldn’t have cable or electric bills, wouldn’t have a car payment or car insurance, couldn’t get parking tickets, couldn’t have your car break down, wouldn’t have to do any home repairs, or anything that costs money.
Your only cost would be the amount you spend on the joys of travel. You could be lavish, yes, but you could also be frugal, couch surfing and the like. It all depends on the amount of value you extract from specific types of travel.
Even if you lived a little more lavishly, and didn’t mind living on normal people expenses, you could allocate your rent or mortgage costs to the cost of renting hotel rooms, Airbnb-ing houses, and spending the night in the occasional hostel, and come out as traditionally wealthy as if you never left the comfort of your home.
What’s more, and we’ll get more into it later, you could even Airbnb your place, wherever you live, and become an honorary vagabond. That way, you cover your rent or mortgage like you didn’t have one, but can still come home to something. No shame in having a home, even for a vagabond.
Do you see how each Principle of Wealth is connected and why each one is equally important? If vagabonding is something that interests you, or if you hear the road calling your name, its important that you create your Emotional Wealth and Time Wealth in a way that will let you pursue your Location Wealth.
If you’re going to vagabond and receive all the value it gives, but still want to make traditional money, then your collection of projects better be as lucrative as they are location independent.
It would probably be easier – and definitely safer – to hold a traditional job and live in one place, sure. You could climb the corporate ladder right to the $100k we’ve been talking about. But, you’d miss out on the Emotional Wealth and Time Wealth gained through the Location Wealth of vagabonding.
If vagabonding is an important component to your Location Wealth, but you still want that $100k, your focus needs to be on Time Wealth gained through location independent entrepreneurship. It’s 100% possible, but you’re going to have to work for it.
For those of us who don’t need traditional wealth, and want the Location Wealth of vagabonding, it could only be a mindset shift that’s needed.
It’s so easy to travel “tomorrow.” Vagabonding is an act that’s easy to put off. It’s a nontraditional way to live life, and is socially frowned upon. It’s hard to think of success and wealth in any other way than nice cars and big houses, but if we can shift the way we think, and value these Principles of Wealth, then we’ll realize that possibly the most valuable thing we can do is to vagabond today.
For true vagabonders, Location Wealth is achieved through the value of the journey.
What’s great, if vagabonding doesn’t seem right for you, is that you don’t have to vagabond forever! Vagabonding is synonymous with long-term travel, and even a two-month trip is long-term. It’s entirely possible to embrace the value of Location Wealth through vagabonding by building a life that allows for 2 – 6 month trips.
When you’re on the road with no date in sight, you’re a vagabond, even if that date will creep up on you eventually.
What’s even greater is that, like before, travel and Location Wealth is a mindset above all else. It’s entirely possible to be an emotional vagabond in heart and mind through the act of treating every day like a new experience, with endless possibilities.
There are many forms of Location Wealth, one being perpetual motion. If vagabonding and long-term travel are for you, great! If not, also great! It surely doesn’t mean you’re poor in the area of Location Wealth.
But I do implore you, vagabond or not, to adopt a vagabond’s mindset. Live life in wonder and amazement, even if you never leave the confines of your neighborhood. Each experience outside the walls of your home is a possibility for growth, and a true vagabond is someone who sees that.