We have some exciting news at Where’s Sharon – we are moving to Asia on December 31! We are not moving with a company or going to teach English. We are moving to become digital nomads.

What is a digital nomad?

A digital nomad is basically someone who works online (the digital part) and travels (the nomad part). It is something we have wanted to be able to do for a long time, ever since I first read about families who do this a couple of years ago. Read more about what a digital nomad is and why we want to be ones.

Many people work online. Some do freelancing work, using sites like oDesk, and some start their own online businesses. The latter is what we want to do. We want the flexibility and freedom which can come from having our own online businesses. I am already working hard on several ways to make money online and I do already make some money from this site. J makes a little bit of money from a software product he part owns and has some other ideas of how to make money with software products.

If you want to know more about how we are earning money online, I blog all about it on my other blog – Digital Nomad Wannabe.

Why move to Asia?

It is so much cheaper to live in Asia than Australia. We will be able to live on less than half of what we do now and have a much better lifestyle as well.

This means that by moving to Asia, we are buying ourselves time. J won’t have to work on other things, so he can dedicate all his work efforts into this as well. It also means that the amount of money we need to earn to sustain ourselves is a lot smaller and more achievable than if we stayed here in Melbourne.

We have enough money to live there for about six months, so this gives us quite awhile to try to make an online income work. It also gives us a lot of opportunity to travel and see even more of this great continent. It is definitely not a hardship to move to Asia. We can not wait!

What about the kids?

Enjoying the Philippines on our trip last year

They will come too of course! S is very excited about the idea and wants to live in Malaysia and have dad at home every day. Z is less able to talk about it, but we have no doubt that they will both be happier in an environment where we can both give them far more quality time than now.

This is also the ideal time for us to do this. S does not start school until 2016, so we have a bit over a year before we have to worry about that. They will be able to go to preschool in Asia. At the moment, we are committed to returning to Australia for school.

What about us?

We are excited! J is also a bit scared, but really the worst case scenario is that we can’t make an online income work for us and we come home after six months. There is nothing bad about a scenario which involves us spending six months together in Asia!

One of my “offices” on our trip to Asia last year

It is a bit scary putting our plans out here like this though. I worry about feeling like a failure after I tell the world that this is what we are going to do if it doesn’t work out. However, logically I know this is silly and I would be a far bigger failure if I let what other people think stop me from pursuing an awesome opportunity for me and my family. Besides, if I let what other people think stop me from doing things, then I would never have taken two x one year periods off work to travel or travelled with young kids, and obviously these things have worked out very well.

What next?

We will continue to work on our online businesses until we leave. We post monthly income reports on Digital Nomad Wannabe if you are interested in reading how we are progressing in meeting our income goals and the different things we do to make money.  We will continue to blog about our family travel adventures and our experience in moving to Asia on Where’s Sharon.

We also have a few trips planned for closer to home in the lead up to our departure, so look out for those.

We are also working out exactly where in Asia we will base ourselves. Read about it in our post about where we will live in Asia. I would love your input!

This has now happened! Read more about living in Asia.

In the meantime, what do you think? Crazy or awesome idea?