I Was an Expat Freelancer. Lessons Learned the Hard Way

Thanks for the write-up! I am a junior in college who is very interested in that sort of lifestyle when I graduate and finish off my student loans. I'd be happy as a clam if I could find a job or a number of freelance projects that'd allow me to have a decent standard of living abroad while seeing different parts of the world. I have a few questions if you would be so kind to consider.<p>Are you considering trips anywhere else? How is your Spanish after spending a year in Mexico? What was your relative standard of living like when making money from these projects? Did you go into it with a reasonable "war chest" of savings to live off of while acclimating to the environment? Was it ever a deterrent to potential hirers that you were abroad? What was the coolest part of your experience?<p>I might have a couple more depending on your answers.

I tried something similar this past summer while traveling through Europe/Turkey and found that the hardest part freelancing (beyond the difference in time zones) was finding stable wifi in order to transfer client files. Even in a place like London I found myself in train station Starbucks uploading files.<p>I imagine if you stayed in a country for a while it'd be easier to get mobile broadband but hopping around a continent makes it pretty difficult since you can't (in my experience) get sim cards with data plans and use them in several countries.