The Administrative Side of Full Time Travel

You just know it’s going to be one of those nights when we whip out the laptop-stands and stock up on all manner of things to keep us awake and going through the night. By “one of those nights” of course I mean we’ll be catching up on all the admin we’ve sort of let pile up while we’ve been out actually enjoying our travels and this administrative side of things is often left out by many of those travellers documenting their travels as part of their exploration of the so-called digital nomad lifestyle.

Travel bloggers and specifically those travel bloggers who work in the holiday marketing industry are no different – oftentimes they like to share the more enjoyable side of their travels such as which hotel they stayed in, how they got around and what they got up to. The truth is there is a lot of administrative work to do, especially if you want to maintain the sort of structure which allows you to keep enjoying your travels while earning money as you do so.

So no, when we whip out all the “all-nighter” gear and prepare ourselves to do some serious admin work we’re not quite engaging in the typical work completed by typical digital nomads. So no, we’re not typing up articles as freelance writers or designing and editing graphics as freelance graphics designers, neither are we coding as freelance developers do or indeed even editing videos like freelance video editors do.

What we are doing when pulling all-nighters is a bit of accounting, albeit not in a very professional manner – we basically just update our travel-expenses-versus-income spreadsheet and cross-reference that with the various platforms over which we handle our finances. We’re also busy with tasks such as synching all our documents and media with the back-up facility we have in the cloud, so too taking care of the organisational side of our travels which lie ahead.

Every so often we also liaise with our designated Flight Delay Compensation solicitors as part of the claims process to get compensation for any inconveniences suffered due to the inevitable flight delays we’re subjected to as frequent travellers. Fortunately though, that particular process is quite a straight-forward one because the solicitors really just handle everything from start to finish, while some more of the other administrative work which occupies our time includes the likes of efiling our taxes.

It’s definitely a challenge handling taxes when you’re halfway around the world every chance you can get, but we’ve been looking at the likes of what is called e-residency, which is basically just a way through which to get electronic residency in countries such as Estonia, meaning you basically don’t have to pay taxes since you’re out of your home country for a period that runs longer than that which would require you to pay taxes.

So yeah, while we definitely enjoy our travels and everything which comes with being out on the road full-time, there is indeed a lot of behind-the-scenes admin work to be done.