How some young Canadians are saving money by embracing the digital nomad

Sitting in a bright, plant-filled coffee shop in the town of Písac, Peru — natural light filtering in from a skylight above — Grayson Allen explains that he’s always wanted to work abroad.

The 30-year-old psychologist from Vancouver is a self-described digital nomad, a term for people who perform their jobs remotely from anywhere in the world.

For the last two and a half years, he has worked remotely in the U.K., Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and, most recently, Peru — first for a Canadian company and now for himself.

“It seems like the dream, you know? You get to kind of save money, it’s [a] cheaper cost of living, you get to travel on the weekends still,” Allen told CBC News via Zoom.

“The country’s happy because you’re spending money there. Canada’s still happy because you’re paying taxes even though you’re not using any of the services there.”

Faced with the high cost of living at home, some travellers are turning to digital nomadism to save money — and countries from Portugal to Japan to Barbados have made this arrangement easier by introducing digital nomad visas intended for hybrid work and travel (Canada has also announced its own digital nomad strategy).

Since he started “nomading” on temporary visas, Allen said he’s repaid most of the student loans he incurred from a master’s degree in the U.K. and at one point was saving two-thirds of his paycheque while working remotely.

“A lot of people I know in Vancouver, they’re just surviving,” he said. “My angle is kind of more like, well, if I do want to live in Vancouver in the future, I better make some good money.”

Canadians likely in the U.S., Mexico, says researcher

Digital nomadism exploded in popularity when the COVID-19 pandemic led to a dramatic increase in people working remotely. One study found that 40 million people worldwide identify as digital nomads, most of them from the United States, where a report found that 17.3 per cent of American workers see themselves as digital nomads.

“There’s quite a lot of talk about digital nomad visas at the moment, and they’re all quite confusing, they’re all quite different. But none of those existed before the pandemic,” said David Cook, an anthropologist at University College London who researches digital nomads.

Long before the pandemic normalized the arrangement and countries and workplaces started implementing these programs formally, the cost of living was a major consideration for digital nomads, he said.

“Digital nomads are quite a broad group. Not all are very high net-worth individuals who are earning lots of money. Some are, but not everyone is,” Cook said.

The combination of remote work and travel has led to growing concerns in some…