Last updated on July 4th, 2023 at 06:36 am
This post is the third in a series that I am doing on preparing to move abroad. If you have been dreaming of long-term travel or moving abroad, this will be a great resource in your planning. I plan to cover the stages of planning and what you need to consider before taking a big trip like this as well as all the emotions leading up to it. I will be posting weekly. Hope you will join me on this journey before the journey!
There are 88 days until we begin our year of long-term travel in Bali, Indonesia.
This week, we moved about 30 boxes into our storage unit. Things continue to feel overwhelming as we get close to departing to spend one year abroad. Last week I covered what we are thinking about as we get closer to our departure date and some tips for you to handle the stressors if you are also planning to travel long-term or move abroad.
Our Original Plan for Moving Abroad
For our year of long-term travel, we will be staying on Bali (specifically in Canggu), an island in Indonesia. Why did we decide to start our year-long trip around the world in Bali, Indonesia? Well, our plans have morphed a lot since we originally came up with the idea.
Moving to Spain
When we started talking about this seriously in 2020, we were initially going to try to get approved for the Non-Lucrative Resident visa that allows you to stay in Spain for a year, with the possibility of extending the visa, as long as you have a certain amount of money in the bank and none of your income is coming from Spanish companies. We visited Spain in 2018 and really loved it. We could picture ourselves living in Barcelona. Barcelona is popular amongst expats and, at the time, was a pretty affordable place to live.
However, you need to have significant funds in the bank, at least €27,792.96 plus €6,948.24 for each family member that will be accompanying you, and we still needed some time to save up for that. As we were planning and saving, the cost of living in Spain continued to increase so that it wasn’t as cheap in comparison to Denver, Colorado as we were hoping. Finally, the visa is really designed for people who are retired or living off investments and not working. We were planning to save the required amount of money for a year in Spain and plan to continue to get Luke’s paychecks, but it wasn’t a guarantee that we would be approved for the visa.
Moving to Portugal
We pivoted to Portugal because the D7 visa, which is similar to the Non-Lucrative Visa in Spain, allows you to stay for a year in Portugal as long as you have a certain amount in savings (although it is much less than is required for Spain) and you have proof of residency in Portugal. Portugal requires €8,460 yearly, plus an additional 50 percent for the spouse and 30 percent for each dependent child.
We decided that moving to Portugal for a year sounded like a good idea even though we’d never been there. We just love European culture so much. Similar to Spain, Portugal is also considered one of the best places for expat living recently. The locals are apparently very friendly and easy to connect with, which is not common in many countries. The cost of living is relatively low in Portugal, making it an affordable destination. Although in a post-pandemic world where many people can work remotely, prices in Portugal have already increased on AirBnB since we started thinking about this year abroad.
It is also tricky to get approved for the D7 visa, as it is also technically geared toward people who are retired and have passive income. People who are still earning an income through remote work have been approved for the visa, but, again, it is not guaranteed. We read many things that said that getting approved for the visa was very subjective to the immigration officer you were dealing with that day. The main hurdle for us was proving that we had a residency in Portugal, which could not be through AirBnB as we’d originally thought. It would be risky to sign a year-long lease without traveling to Lisbon to look at apartments first (we’ve already done that once when we moved to San Luis Obispo right out of high school and it didn’t go very well).
Luckily for you, both Spain and Portugal have recently rolled out digital nomad visas to combat this extra difficulty. These laws are still in their infancy and are just becoming available so we weren’t really sure if we could count on getting approved for them.
Why did we decide to start one year of long-term travel in Bali?
So while we were feeling a little down about our plans to go to Portugal, we started looking on AirBnB at different locations just for fun. That’s when we found our rebound location, Bali. It was definitely an impulse. The AirBnB we found was cheap with cute decor, a private plunge pool, and a patio and backyard area. The AirBnB is a two bedroom and sleeps four people so we can have visitors. It is quirky (the kitchen is outside), but it has good reviews. It is only about $750 a month, which is unheard of in most places, and it was available for the months of May and June. Originally, we had thought that we would move to Portugal in July, so based on that timeline, we decided to go for it. We didn’t want to lose the AirBnB, so we booked it. We thought that we would still be heading to Portugal in July (more on that later) and we can actually save more money living in Bali than we would living in Denver, even without me working, so it seemed to make sense.
Long-term travel in Bali is popular amongst digital nomads
Bali has been popular amongst expats and digital nomads for a while now, almost to the point that some digital nomads seem bored with it. It sounded perfect for us though, because we don’t have experience with long-term travel or the digital nomad lifestyle. We knew in Bali that lifestyle had been prevalent long enough that there would be infrastructure (good WiFi, coworking spaces, etc.) to support it. There would also be plenty of resources online about this location, whereas off-the-beaten-path destinations might not have as much information available. There might be more opportunities to meet other expats or digital nomads and make friends. These were the primary reasons we considered when making this choice, as well as the cost of living. Plus it was adventurous and would get us out of our comfort zone, which is one of the main reasons I wanted to take this trip in the first place!
That’s how we landed on Bali, Indonesia for our first stop. Pretty impulsive, huh? So how did we go from staying in one place in Europe for a year to traveling around nomadically? How did we decide on the rest of the locations, you might wonder? And what else did we need to do to prepare for this year of travel? Check in next week to see how we decided where else we wanted to experience long-term travel on our trip around the world.
Originally written January 29th, 2023.
Did you enjoy this post? Pin it for later!
