Building a Location Independent Career

[2rocky]

I know there are careers out there that allow folks to be anywhere in the world and do work people will pay them for.

It was a big jump from 7/365 nature of the dairy business to the seasonal nature of the beef business, to the 8-5 40-50 hour work week of a town job. Seems like the next step is to find a way to get paid regardless of where you live.

For the folks who were able to do that, what made it possible to get out of the rat race and move somewhere else?

Seems like most everything is lower Cost of Living, but salaries are equally low.

Consulting in my field of expertise is a possibility. Did folks start doing that before they left the nest of a salaried job?

Did anyone buy a business in their dream location? I'd love to hear the good and the bad and how they made the cashflow work.

 

[AvidIndoorsman]

My sister and I are basically in that bucket. Similar jobs, totally unrelated fields.

My sister was always remote... she applies for jobs with the intent of being fully remote up front.
I was a full time employee of a company and then left and consulted while living in MT. Same company just fully remote.

I hate being 1099 and dealing with all that crap... but if they money is right.

Tech industry is a bit different from what it sounds like you would be looking to do.

 

[SD_Prairie_Goat]

I know there are careers out there that allow folks to be anywhere in the world and do work people will pay them for.

It was a big jump from 7/365 nature of the dairy business to the seasonal nature of the beef business, to the 8-5 40-50 hour work week of a town job. Seems like the next step is to find a way to get paid regardless of where you live.

For the folks who were able to do that, what made it possible to get out of the rat race and move somewhere else?

Seems like most everything is lower Cost of Living, but salaries are equally low.

Consulting in my field of expertise is a possibility. Did folks start doing that before they left the nest of a salaried job?

Did anyone buy a business in their dream location? I'd love to hear the good and the bad and how they made the cashflow work.

Knew a coworker when I was a consulting engineer that worked remote all the time. Not too difficult when most consulting work is remote, but you have to be a rock star for a company to be open with you always being remote and not able to visit job sites as needed. That's why there was only 1 truly remote engineer out of the probably 150 employed with me.


Knew a classmate who was working on remote work for substation construction observation. He was working it to be remote 2 weeks, on site 1 week. Rinse and repeat. Not sure what happened with that as I talked to him right before Covid.


Not too often engineers have those opportunities in my line of schooling, but it does happen.

 

[buckbull]

Lots of information technology jobs fit that bill but having reliable high speed internet access is required in the place you call home.

 

[Wildabeest]

COVID-19 is proving that more jobs can be carried out remotely than we ever thought possibleI think we’ll see companies downsizing their investments in office space and encouraging more WFM. Doing away with personal offices or cubicles and instead just having flex space that can be shared and used by people when needed. I think you are picking a good lime to consider this.

I manage a team of about 70 people, and ~80% of them technically do not have offices. They travel a lot, so they spend more time at airports than any other particular place. They can live wherever they want so long as they are close to a decent airport. A big part of their compensation is based on success metrics, so I don’t have to worry too much about them slacking off if they are not physically in an office. I screen people pretty hard during the hiring process to make sure they have the self motivation and discipline to be successful in that type of role and environment.

Consulting or sales / sales support would be good candidates for work from anywhere. But again, I think we’ll see lots of jobs and careers being more open to it. My son works in the finance department for an oil and gas company. Your traditional “desk jockey” type job. But due to COVID he’s worked just as effectively as ever at his Denver based job from my place in UT. He could have done it equally well from anywhere in the world (time zones notwithstanding) so long as he’d got a decent internet connection.

Best of luck to you!

 

[44hunter45]

I work remotely for a well known computer company. For me, it means lots of travel and a lot less leisure than I would like.
Also - Rural internet can be a real drag. Bandwidth is a constant issue.

 

[FLS]

Another option is contract work. Live where you want to live and get paid well to go do xyz for a predetermined period of time. Gut it out for 6 months them come home with your pockets full and take the rest of the year off.

 

[1_pointer]

Another option is contract work. Live where you want to live and get paid well to go do xyz for a predetermined period of time. Gut it out for 6 months them come home with your pockets full and take the rest of the year off.

This option with an RN license or higher level provider license could allow one to work in a whole lot of places.

 

[cedahm]

Consulting in my field of expertise is a possibility. Did folks start doing that before they left the nest of a salaried job?

Minus 10 years in the Retail and Footwear worlds, I’ve worked for consulting firms (including running my own independent practice for 5 years) over my career. All Supply Chain focused, which is a fairly in-demand skill. Skill set is important. Many industries are not accepting of remote employees but that is changing quickly. Many of my friends and colleagues are independents as well.

Independent consulting, particularly in Tech-heavy roles or many Sales and Marketing roles, is easy to make work anywhere, geographically speaking, but it's challenging to adopt the 'eat what you kill' mindset from the field to your professional life. There can be periods of drought that a lot of folks that have held traditional jobs with regular paychecks and the support generally provided by a corporation (IT, insurance, etc) are not used to dealing with.

Other caution - “Remote” often ends up being a euphemism for what @Wildabeast said - “be close to a commercial airport". I am at a large firm now with over 100 US office locations, and I visit an office maybe 7-8 days a year - usually for recruiting and/or other special events. The number could be 0 if I wanted it to be. I could live anywhere in the US (in prior jobs, I could have expanded that to anywhere in the world), and have made varying overtures to do so with my better half, but we are pretty happy here and at my rapidly advancing age I’m not sure I’m ready to start over. The downside is I am on the road 40-50 weeks/year - and in most sales/engineering/operations consulting roles, that level of travel will be common. A friend who is an independent in the Marketing/Advertising space travels only ~5 weeks a year as the need for physical collaboration is low. A contract DBA and software architect friend never travels.

Be careful calculating your 'salary' if you go independent (and definitely talk to your accountant about setting up an S-Corp). The Hourly rates as a 'single-shingle' look really attractive on paper, but when you take out Insurance, accounting services, marketing and sales pursuits, payroll, non-working time (aka "vacation" to the rest of the world), etc you effectively need to make about 2X your current salary as an hourly rate to stay in the same ballpark. I had 2 years where I absolutely killed it, 1 where I was comfortable but not great and 1 where I made 33% of 'normal'. Those can be tough swings to take depending on your lifestyle/family.

Small illustrative anecdote follows: My last year of Independent consulting (2017), I had a project wrapping up in early July and had already signed an SOW with a client to start a new one in October. I had finally made my dream work out of having 3 solid months off for the last of fishing season and all of Archery season. Fishing and scouting for 2 months 4-5 days a week was glorious. Up on the mountain opening weekend of archery, I climb to a peak to glass and happen to get cell service. Phone starts blowing up with missed calls and texts. Client had lost funding for the project and was delaying it 6 months. Poof - there goes half a year of income in 5 minutes. When I eventually dragged my butt home, I started looking for both another project and a full time gig. I went with the latter for a variety of reasons, but I will 100% go back to the Independent game at some point.

 

[Damien]

There are many options actually. It all depends on what professional skills you have. Those who have good experience in IT or close to it are the most fortunate. Finding a new remote job is not a problem in this case. The main thing is to have stable Internet access. However, this is not the only way. One of my neighbors lost his job (energy company,staff reduction). I'll clarify - he lives in Europe. So, he found another option for himself. He bought a powerful used SUV (longo dealer). He then applied for a mobile tower service technician job with a local mobile operator. He has rented housing (inexpensive) in the middle of his area of responsibility. Perhaps it really was the perfect solution for him now. Yes, it doesn't feel like working in an office but the salary is even higher now.