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April 2018: Travel and Income Report from Spain, Malta, Nepal and Greece aboard the Nomad Cruise

I really need to settle down and get back to work. This has been another crazy month of traveling and I swear this is my last month of 4-hour workweek mode before I get back to grinding and building my businesses again. I started this month in Chitwan, Nepal hiking through the jungle and running into wild boars and even a rhinoceros which was close enough for me to throw a stone at, if I wanted to get charged and trampled. Then going from eating nothing but lentils and rice for weeks, sleeping in freezing tea houses and using squat outhouse toilets, I flew to Malaga, Spain and aboard the luxury Nomad Cruise. It was such a culture shock, but somehow my life has become a drastic swing of comfort, work, and travel that it's not even strange for me anymore. 

Here's everything I did, saw, ate, and visited from April 1st-30th, and how my passive income businesses have held up. This is my April 2018 Travel and Income Report, one that I almost skipped and didn't write because I'd honestly rather be hiking with the other digital nomads I met on the cruise and playing with my new camera that I just bought, my first ever real camera. But, for the past 3 years, I've dedicated the 1st of every new month to going through my accounting, logging into all of my dashboards, and openly sharing that info with all of you who have been following along, so here I am, sitting in my hotel lobby in Santorini, Greece sipping complimentary coffee while writing this. So enjoy, I hope you enjoy this month's write up.





Traveling from Nepal


If you haven't already, make sure you read my blog post about Chitwan and Nepal as it really was an adventurous trip that I really enjoyed. I don't know if I'll be going back anytime soon as it was also a tough trip for adventurous travelers more than it is for fun or work but it was well worth it. After that was a flight from Kathmandu airport through New Delhi, India landing in Barcelona, Spain where I was supposed to have just a short layover and another flight down to Malaga. But as with any travel plans, things change and flights get delayed. Luckily it was my final leg which meant I didn't miss any connections and just had an awkwardly long, overnight layover in Madrid. A huge lesson learned was to give myself more of a buffer between flights and the cruise leaving as if I had missed any of the connections, especially the one first flight leaving Kathmandu I might have been screwed and missed the boat. My original thought was that I had already spent so much time in Spain last year and that I wanted to make the most of Nepal while I was there. But the result was only having 1 night in Madrid and 1 night in Malaga making it an exhusting trip where I didn't get to see much.

I also didn't get to adjust to the time difference and had severe jet lag the first couple of days on the cruise. As much as I love the idea of traveling on a whim, booking flights in advance to and from countries when there aren't that many alternatives is something I've now learned to do at least a month in advance instead of waiting. Luckily I had a great time on the Nomad Cruise which I wrote about here. Malaga was a beautiful port city that I could have easily spent a few more days in, and I regret not going to Madrid earlier. I landed around 9pm in Madrid but since I had an 8am flight and desperately needed some sleep, I decided to find a place to sleep in the airport instead of going in town. I thought about sleeping randomly somewhere in the airport, but instead decided that I would either try my luck at the 24-hour airport lounge and sleep there, or spend the money on a hotel near the airport. Luckily my buddy David Vu got me a priority pass as a present, and I somehow managed to talk my way into the lounge even though it was technically only for international flights and my Madrid to Malaga one no longer counted. There they had a decent buffet, although nowhere as good as the ones in Kathmandu and New Delhi surprisingly, a great shower, and a napping room which was perfect for what I needed. I realized that the airport lounges with fancy looking food like LAX or Madrid is never as good as places that just serve buffet style rice and curry like in India which doesn't look as appealing as the individually wrapped sandwiches or placed tapas but tastes way better.



Airport Lounge in Madrid where I slept

At the airport lounge in New Delhi, India

Cruising to Greece



Being on the cruise ship, it was pretty easy to see a lot of difference places and even a few countries in a short time. However, the biggest downside is feeling like a complete tourist and not a traveler when you're there. Being in a place like Malta or Crete for just 7 hours is just enough to see a few sites, explore the main city and have lunch in the center, but really doesn't allow you to get to know a place at all. It's not enough time to see how locals actually live, get to know the culture, or do anything besides an organized tour or go for a walk. The worst thing is going there for few hours and thinking "okay I've seen it" or "bucket list checked" and never going back again. With places like Crete, so many people I've met have said they loved it, but now that I've been there and checked it off and checked it out, I don't really have a big desire to go back even though I'm sure I missed most of what makes it special. The same goes with Malta which is an entire country that I've now checked off even though I was there for just half a day. 

The good news is that once we were off the ship, a bunch of us hung out in Athens for a week before coming to Santorini for another week which was plenty of time to get to know both of these cities. I'll write more about traveling in Greece later, but it's been a fun few weeks of travel. 


Spending the day in Crete, Greece
On the rooftops of Valletta, Malta


Online Passive Income



The good news is that even without working very much and just staying in what I call maintenance mode or the 4-hour workweek mode, I've still been able to make enough money to cover my expenses. On one hand it seems like the ideal life to be able to travel the world while earning enough to keep doing it for possibly forever without really working that much. However, the truth is, making just enough to survive and keep afloat is stressful as it limits you to what you're willing to spend money on and worries you about the future. With all businesses, even passive income streams, if you're not growing them, they're slowly deteriorating, which means, taking 2 months off to travel and enjoy life is great, taking 2 years off to be lazy and not work is a death sentence to your income.

Also as much as I enjoy minimalism and living cheaply, I also want the option to be able to comfortably stay in nice Airbnb's or nicer hotels when I want to and not worry if hotels in Europe are $100 a night compared to Asia where they're less than 1/3 of that. That being said, while everything else is just maintaing, I'm acutally happy to see my youtube earnings are increasing and it's my first month at almost $300 which is awesome as I really enjoy making videos for my channel. Aside from that I'm still making a few thousand dollars a month from all of my affiliate income streams that I've set up over 2 years ago now and teach inside my course Income Boss.


Youtube Ad Revenue

Dashboard of one of my Affiliate Earnings



Dropshipping Store Income



If you subscribe to my email list, you'll know that I have two dropshipping stores that I built a little over a year ago and have had my partner Sebastian run this entire time. He's been doing it on the side along with his other stores and we've recently decided to sell them so expect a listing on Empire Flippers soon. In the email announcement, I mentioned that anyone who already has a successful store or is a member of Anton's dropshipping course would have first access to buy the stores as I'd rather sell them to someone who understands how to actually run a store instead of someone without experience as it'll be easier to hand it over and not have to train them.

So far we've gotten a few interested buyers but we're still holding out for someone who knows they can grow the store and is willing to pay the full asking price of $47,000 for the two stores. If you're interested you can send an email to hello@johnnyfd.com for info on how you can put down a refundable $500 deposit to see the financials and the store URLs. Here are the sales and revenue of the stores for April 1st-30th. 


Sales from Dropshipping Store #1

Sales from Dropshipping Store #2


Other and Total Income



Aside from my passive income streams and dropshipping store income, I also have investments that have become my favorite stream of money as they are truly 100% passive. If you don't have your money making you money yet, it should be a goal on everyone's bucket list. The only problem is that unless you are selling your property or your shares every month, you're not really making that amount yet which is why I never include the on paper earnings or losses in my income reports. Technically for the last two months my networth has decreased as the stock market went down, and this month I've made $2,140.13 in returns. But just like I don't count the growth or loss of how much my bitcoin or cryptocurrencies each month unless I actually sell something, I don't count this either.

The good news is my actual passive income streams make enough each month to allow me to continue to travel, invest a bit each month, and live. The best thing that ever since I've been sending my mom $1,000 each month to help support her as she's getting older, I've inspired others to do the same and both David Dang Vu and Tom Schmit who I met on the Nomad Cruise have been doing the same! So even with these expenses it's been another good month considering the fact that I spent the first part of it in the jungle in Nepal and the rest on a cruise ship and not working.

Total Passive Income:  $5,029.57


*decrease from $5,644.34 last month.



Not counting the $2,140 in paper gains for April


Overall Thoughts for April



It's been a fun month, a really amazing time actually but I really feel like I need to get back into a routine and settle down again for 1-2 months without moving. I haven't decided where yet, but I plan on going somewhere outside the Schengen Zone in Europe to spend the next 2 months and focus on work again, join a gym, and get back into a healthy eating routine. I'm thinking about somewhere in Bulgaria, but Odessa in Ukraine is always an option as well. Feel free to give some suggestions below in the comments, let me know where you plan to be this summer, and how long you're staying. The only thing holding me back from Odessa is that there's no community of digital nomads there, even though the weather in the summer is great, food is amazing, there are coworking spaces, super cheap uber rides and it's really cheap to live there.

Lets see where May takes me as well as everyone I met on the Nomad Cruise. Let me know what projects you're working on and what your summer plans are.


Warm Regards,

Johnny FD







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Post a Comment

  1. Replies
    1. Lviv was awesome. I really liked it there. Just no community in Ukraine yet.

      Delete
  2. Ouch man, I hear ya on the passive income. I traveled through Europe for 9 months on the passive income I was making with Adsense, was making $5k, went up to $13k, then down to $2k... totally can relate if you're not growing it, you're killing it. I'm traveling in Chile now, and there's a volcano to hike up here, and for the past 5 days I've been in this town I done nothing but work. Gotta focus!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for sharing Rio, congrats on the income but ouch, that must suck to feel it go up and down like that. Enjoy Chile!

      Delete
  3. Hey Jonny - been following you for a while and like your journey. Come to Romania, it's a beautiful country with awesome gigabit wifi all over the country, a strong digital nomad community some special places to see (Bucharest, Brasov, Sibiu, Sighisoara, Sinaia, Cluj, Timisoara, Vama Veche).

    I'm British and live in Bucharest and own a couple of hostels here, so if you need a hand with Romania, give me a shout!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh Romania is also out of the Schenghen zone too!

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    2. I've been to Romania, and it was pretty good, I wrote about it here: https://www.johnnyfd.com/2016/08/johnnys-guide-to-romania-bucharest-and.html

      Delete
  4. Your post is very interesting, thank you

    ReplyDelete

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