EPILOGUE

Digital Nomad Nation: Rise of a Borderless Generation

The Flexpat

The Final Evolution of the Nomad

“The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

— T.S. Eliot

Every year, as new nomads are lured into the lifestyle, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and ready for adventure, the nomad nation continues to grow. Even as these new additions happily live out their dreams, there is still a percentage of nomads leaving the life. Some nomads burn out and return to the stability and comfort of home. Some nomads are blessed with relationships, family additions, and career opportunities that require returning to their home country.

However, a small but growing percentage of nomads leave the lifestyle of digital nomadism and indefinite travel but do not return to their home countries. As they face the “settlers’ dilemma” of whether to continue nomading or stay in one place, these nomads gone rogue are blazing the path of the next evolution of the digital nomad. They are evolving into a new chess piece, a new asset within the nomad nation.

They are starting the Flexpat Evolution.

Straddling the previously undefined space between permanently settled “ex-pats” and permanently on the move digital nomads, “Flexible Expats” are leveraging their hard-earned location independence and online income combined with their knowledge of the world and the places they love most, to craft a life part-time settled in the country they love and part-time traveling to the places they love or still wish to know. They still have not gone “home,” but they have built a home of the world they used to wander.

Flexpats.

But this transition to something that isn’t quite “a local” and isn’t completely a traveler doesn’t just benefit their evolved needs and priorities. These Flexpats are and have an opportunity to be the emissaries, advocates, and diplomats for the nomad nation in the places they have decided to call “home.” Bridges between nomad communities and local communities, encouraging connectivity, healthy cultural exchange, and sustainable development.

These flexpats exist within their communities in a spectrum of facets. Some live their quiet dream lives, simply sharing information incognito in online nomad communities. Some ingrain with the local community, building businesses, restaurants, and cafes that cater to the tastes they once carried on the road. Some take the reins and double down on the nomad enclave they love – building digital nomad-specific infrastructure in an ecosystem specifically for the “forever nomad” they once were.

This growing “Flexpat” population isn’t just made up of nomads who’ve slowed down, as other wanderlusters are “tapping out” from the real world in exchange for a life abroad but bypassing the learning journey of the nomad. Some of the new demographics are FIRE retirees and flexpat retirees leveraging lower costs of living with a dream of travel, families of runaways looking for a seasonal option to wander and stability in between, and entrepreneurs leaving high-cost startup hubs to build digital their next startups amidst better quality of life and with more financial runway.

This interesting crowd of newcomers, just joining life abroad, are making for a spicy addition as they join in the same patterns of living, use the same staple locations, and overlap heavily with the former digital nomads’ routines within the Flexpat crowd.

But what makes flexpats so unique?

The Flexpat lifestyle opens up a completely different pandora’s box of nuances, struggles, and demands to live life in a fulfilling way – compared to a life at home or as a digital nomad. In return, the Flexpat lifestyle delivers a unique way to live that balances exploration and stability and holds within it a new treasure trove of personal, professional, and adventure opportunities.

While seasoned ex-pats likely have more in common with the locals of their host country than each other, and digital nomads share a common culture while being dispersed around the world, former nomads turned Flexpat share deep culture with nomads and with each other, with potential that’s just being tapped from their newfound stability and as global citizens rooted in an adopted country they loved enough to choose while still being plugged into the Digital Nomad Nation.

The Flexpat is an intriguing new breed of pseudo-digital nomad, with an approach to living that may be more fulfilling than the coveted digital nomad lifestyle while being an immense asset to the Digital Nomad Nation.

The Digital Nomad Nation is fully formed and gargantuan enough to attract attention on the world stage. As its members are now living out the full potential of the digital nomad lifestyle and striving for even more, the next evolution of the global citizen is coming to fruition.

This is the Flexpat Revolution.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carlos Grider launched A Brother Abroad in 2017 after a “one-year abroad” experiment turned into a long-term life strategy. After 65+ countries and a decade abroad, he now writes about FIRE, personal finance, geo-arbitrage, and the real-world logistics of living abroad—visas, costs, and tradeoffs—so readers can make smarter global moves with fewer surprises. Carlos is a former Big 4 management consultant and DoD cultural advisor with an MBA (UT Austin) and Boston University’s Certificate in Financial Planning. He’s the author of Digital Nomad Nation: Rise of the Borderless Generation and is currently writing The Sovereign Expat.

Click here to learn more about Carlos's story.

EPILOGUE

Digital Nomad Nation: Rise of a Borderless Generation

The Flexpat

The Final Evolution of the Nomad

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR