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Perfect working dream?

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also if you just move to say cornwall, it is unaffordable and owuld take longer to get to say york than if you were flying from spain lol

I live in Cornwall and can confirm that it is very expensive, not only to buy/rent property but general living costs. It is also very conjested in the summer, transport links are still lacking. A train to London takes 8+ hours if it's on time.
 
I dont see the fascination with going to a different country where the sun is always out the sea is blue etc my idea of the perfect working dream would be this in the UK.........................
 

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Not just sun and sea. Lower crime rate, lower cost of living, better quality of living, etc
 
I dont see the fascination with going to a different country where the sun is always out the sea is blue etc my idea of the perfect working dream would be this in the UK.........................

That is lovely but...I'd rather go for somewhere where this is standard dress code.




























* Been dying to wear it! Had to get that in before one of you lot did :)
 
That is lovely but...I'd rather go for somewhere where this is standard dress code.
* Been dying to wear it! Had to get that in before one of you lot did :)

Good point, this is what I would get stuck with LOL
 

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Funny how everyones chasing the same dream lol

We spent 7 weeks in California earlier this year for the exact purpose of scoping it out to go live....

Then Google fucked things up royally.

Lesson in life really. You cant run a business on SEO. Period. You deffo cant uproot your life and loved ones and risk a foreign move if you run a business on SEO.

So... we're starting a different more traffic diverse business now because lets be honest... who wants to live in the dream location and be sat there checking ur iphone constantly to see if ur still on page 1 for xyz keyword. Wake up, take your morning dump and first thing you do is check the serps. No way to live.

Oh this seems like a long long time ago LOL

431991_10150614746469219_126772229_n.jpg
 
Not so sure on the Google front - to be honest it depends entirely where you live.

I spent 4 years in Vietnam, 2 of which I was working online. My living costs were £300-700 per month - inclusive of rent, bills, food, eating out 10 times a week, socialising and occasional little weekend breaks. 3 years I spent in a big city, great fun but higher living costs, one year by the sea in a beautiful, chilled out city. If I'd stayed not only would my savings be considerably greater - which would help enormously with Penguin - but my living costs considerably lower than rigth now, I could have shrugged it off and jumped in the sea while I planned my next move. Instead I'm watching a storm hit, wondering how many months till I'll be jumping in a (warm) sea again! :)

(tho if I hadn't been doing so well/didn't have some savings to tide me over it is true it would be harder to find replacement income out there)

Thing is it was fantastic living overseas, and I now miss it an awful lot, but although when I left the UK I was completely over England and the crap that comes with it, I realised eventually that I still love the people here even if thigns like the cost, the politics and the consumerism get me down.

You can do a lot to integrate but you will always be an expat to some degree - especially in Asia vs Europe. I spoke the language and had lots of local friends - and would hate to end up in some stereotypical British enclave on the costa del sol - but at the end of the day a shared culture means a lot of things like a shared sense of humour, an understanding of each others emotions and reactions to things. I did need at least some expat friends! The city was great for that but pollution and noise got me down, the beach was fantastic in every other respect - but after a while I was missing the social side of things.

Personally my ideal would a bolthole in the UK for the summer, and a winter somewhere warm and tropical. When the weather is good in the UK/Europe it's my favourite kind of hot, but I can't bear winters anymore, Asia has made me a wuss. Tho that would essentially mean two homes and lots of airfares - plus at some point our little one will need to go to school - so I think it needs some futher thought.
 
I dont see the fascination with going to a different country where the sun is always out the sea is blue etc my idea of the perfect working dream would be this in the UK.........................

Yes, if certain things were to change I would do that too. I was very lucky, I come from the northern highlands of Scotland and its probably one of the last more-or-less unspoilt areas of the UK. I lived in a little victorian cottage in a forest, about 200 yards behind a castle. I used to sit in the garden with a coffee in the morning, surrounded by forest, and my nearest neighbour was the castle.

Idyllic it would seem, but in reality it cost me a lot of money to run that house. The winters were long, fuel was expensive, plus with the way Inverness was growing so quickly we were starting to get local crimes creeping in.

Not to mention the huge amount of retired couples moving up there from the south of Scotland and from England, pushing property prices up by over 22% a year for ten years straight. When I was a young lad in the north of Sutherland you would never have met someone from Edinburgh in the wintertime, never mind from England. Now you are lucky if you meet a highlander there. My old dad would never have believed it.

So I did have an idyllic life in some ways, but sometimes things arn't quite what they seem. I also wanted to give my daughter a better quality of life. I still miss that little cottage, but here our quality of life is better for much less.
 
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@ aegean and namdas

2 very good posts. thankyou
and also you both ahve been brave enough to try the dream

I too love England and it really is a beautiful place
almost unrivalled beauty we have in lake dstrict, peak district, derbyshire and yorkshire dales, cornwall and devon, kent and sussex and so on

subject to funds I probably would choose to live just down the road further in the derbyshire dales in a nice farmhouse as the area ia so beautiful with clean air and good local towns, I think hands down the most amazing part of the midlands where we are
but it costs. and frankly it just doesn't stop raining
I actually don't want sunshine allday everyday as know that wouldn't be answer either


the ideal world is the right place here and when weather grotty go abroad
but that's the life again if loaded

there's many countries I wouldn't even consider right off the bat. u.s is one of them, along with pretty much the whole of asia

I want to be near to uk, not just for me but kids also, the history and diversity of europe and architecture and beautiful cities means I always want to be in europe, but there has never been a time in recent memory where there's been so much chaos and worse to come tbh

great believer in doing the opposite of what the masses are doing and now and a bit further on could be a great opportunity to snap up an amazing property in spain or greece

it's amazing what you can pick up in spain but you have to be very careful as our buying rules are very tight but in spain you can buy something and get all checks done and turns out you've bought a nightmare

when we all decide to go for it, we should blog about it I think
do all the pros and cons
 
Also worth considering is that if you've consciously structured your business to be (trans)portable, you can then take off for a month or so to "foreign climes" at a moment's notice whenever the fancy takes you (assuming funds, etc.) and your day-to-day will be unaffected. So you can base yourself where you like but also go wherever you like for as short or as long as you like*.

Ok, I admit that's simplified for a "all jobs location-irrelevant, no kids" lifestyle model - if you have children in education or a partner in employment for somebody else at a specific "physical location" then of course none of that is possible.
 
Also worth considering is that if you've consciously structured your business to be (trans)portable, you can then take off for a month or so to "foreign climes" at a moment's notice whenever the fancy takes you (assuming funds, etc.) and your day-to-day will be unaffected. So you can base yourself where you like but also go wherever you like for as short or as long as you like*.

Ok, I admit that's simplified for a "all jobs location-irrelevant, no kids" lifestyle model - if you have children in education or a partner in employment for somebody else at a specific "physical location" then of course none of that is possible.

This is true and I take pred's point above about culture etc (tho there is plenty in Asia, just different) but I really like the way a longer 'working holiday' works - pick a spot, get an apartment there for 3 - 6 months and use as a base to explore. You have somewhere you can get real work done that can still be 'holiday' before and after work yet doing trips off to explore is dramatically cheaper than having to exit UK every time - particularly if you are in a place with lower living costs.

In many ways it allows you to live the dream without being completely loaded as all the costs become a lot more manageable - and justifiable too, as much of it is living costs vs holiday costs. More importantly perhaps it allows you to soak up a lot more and feel more immersed in the country - learning more of the language, local food, customs etc - than passing thru on a 2-4 week break. It is a very different experience - and in many ways much more rewarding - to live somewhere for a while than to go and play for a bit.

edit - sorry just to add on the first point that is pretty much exactly what we did. First 2 yrs in VN I was working for a charity, returned to the UK for a year and ran an ecommerce site for a while but fulfilling orders meant feeling really tied down, so we deliberately decided to structure our biz so we had no roots and could effectively work anywhere. It is a bit odd now tho as I've been back for a couple of years but still think in same way - to the point I don't even have business cards for events etc because i've been adamant for so long that I don't want customers - now I have a child I probably should think about becoming slightly less transient :)
 
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Fantastic thread, inspirational comments. Keep them coming...

As many will know I have spent the last few years back and forth to Australia (now-ex- Wife, being Australian) I have had the big house with the big swimming pool and endless amount of land etc. etc.. Last year we decided to return to UK for good, put our son in a very good local school and settle down. Cut a long story short few months ago my wife returned to Australia with our son and has since moved on with another man. Half a million quid later I find myself back where I started 7 years ago, gone complete full circle.

Was not going to mention any of this as this is not a sob story, just makes one consider things in a new light, you can have it all, I can't take my good friends and family support, material items come and go. Who knows where I will be in 12 months time, probably still here. Where ever you end up you will still be British and moan about the weather. Either too hot or too cold.

Greece is a fantastic place, lovely people. Great food. I used to spend a lot of time in Tenerife, north of the island where it was quieter and laid back, suited me well. If I had more time and inspiration I think I would consider opening a pool bar somewhere. Always fancied that idea. Guess I could follow that up now, my world has changed some what..

bbq.jpg
 
Fantastic thread, inspirational comments. Keep them coming...

As many will know I have spent the last few years back and forth to Australia (now-ex- Wife, being Australian) I have had the big house with the big swimming pool and endless amount of land etc. etc.. Last year we decided to return to UK for good, put our son in a very good local school and settle down. Cut a long story short few months ago my wife returned to Australia with our son and has since moved on with another man. Half a million quid later I find myself back where I started 7 years ago, gone complete full circle.

Was not going to mention any of this as this is not a sob story, just makes one consider things in a new light, you can have it all, I can't take my good friends and family support, material items come and go. Who knows where I will be in 12 months time, probably still here. Where ever you end up you will still be British and moan about the weather. Either too hot or too cold.

Greece is a fantastic place, lovely people. Great food. I used to spend a lot of time in Tenerife, north of the island where it was quieter and laid back, suited me well. If I had more time and inspiration I think I would consider opening a pool bar somewhere. Always fancied that idea. Guess I could follow that up now, my world has changed some what..

bbq.jpg

Genuinely sorry to hear about the breakup.
Chin up though, Hey !
 
Great thread.

Funny how everyones chasing the same dream lol

We spent 7 weeks in California earlier this year for the exact purpose of scoping it out to go live....

Then Google fucked things up royally.

Lesson in life really. You cant run a business on SEO. Period. You deffo cant uproot your life and loved ones and risk a foreign move if you run a business on SEO.

So... we're starting a different more traffic diverse business now because lets be honest... who wants to live in the dream location and be sat there checking ur iphone constantly to see if ur still on page 1 for xyz keyword. Wake up, take your morning dump and first thing you do is check the serps. No way to live.

Oh this seems like a long long time ago LOL



Not sure where in California you were looking but my gf and I sat down a while ago to work out where we would like to live and San Diego came up very near the top.

As with all these things the distance from family always become an issue, especially with elderly parents. The compromise we might yet do is try to stay somewhere sunny in winter and have summers in the UK.

But as with you Pengiun threw cold water over the idea in the short term. I guess better to learn that now compared to after the committment has been made. Now trying to sort out how to alter the business model.
 
I've always been tempted about the possibilities with a global geo such as IonianIslands.com to allow relocation.
 
Glad this is drumming up chat and hopefully setting goals even more for people :D

Just out of interest, with people saying "don't rely on Google with online businesses " (which I agree with) - how are you doing that to maximum effect?
  • PPC from other networks?
  • Direct type-ins from other marketing?
  • Other Search engine SEO targeting?
  • Built a business up that's well known and people know of your website?

How many areas or websites do people have bringing in the money, are you relying on 1-2 or have a good spread of areas and many websites?

I think the ideal would be in the COLD months abroad following the sun in many locations and the peak of UK summer back home. As that would obviously be only an option for the singles out there. :rolleyes:

Just to add, you can whilst away make it as cheap or as expensive as you like -
For example I can buy a beer pool side for 3.5 euros (1/2 ltr) or buy 12 cans of the same stuff for 6 and drink it by the pool.
 
How many areas or websites do people have bringing in the money, are you relying on 1-2 or have a good spread of areas and many websites?

For me personally as a web developer it can be a bit rocky, plus the work I do doesn't always mean you know whats going to happen next. I think if it was just myself and my wife it would be a lot easier, but having the extra burden of medical bills for my daughter puts extra pressure on me. So in a nutshell its quite insecure, but you only have one life and sometimes decisions are about taking a degree of risk.

So my income here on Rhodes consists of:

a) My main web development work, which is freelance and one job to another.
b) I have two website maintainance contracts, worth only about £1K per month
c) I make around mid £xxx per month from Google

When the jobs are coming in its fine, but sometimes things happen. In December last year I had a major £xx,xxx contract fall through just after I actually started it. These things happen, but the upshot was (combined with the time of year) that I had practically no web work for 3 months after. Yes, I was worried, but it would be the same if I was back in the highlands.

If you are motivated enough you can do it. Over the next 6 months or so I hope to develop two or three new sites of my own to generate good revenue, I have a couple of really great ideas, it would reduce my dependancy on clients for work. At the moment I am (and my family) are at the mercy of any clients I can get.

Its a rocky road, with no promises, but if I never came here or never tried it, I'd probably have regretted it. I do the best I can.
 
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