Twenty Years
Most people who come to Wanderer Financial probably know a good bit of my backstory, but might not realize just how long I've actually been out living this lifestyle. I walked away from trading at the Chicago Board of Trade way back in 2003, with the idea that my wife and I would go off on a grand adventure, sail around the world, and return back to Chicago and "normal" life afterwards.
We had never been on a sailboat, and never really traveled before, so there would have been very little reason at that time to suspect that we would either complete that circumnavigation or end up living on boats and traveling the world for the rest of our lives.
I wrote my first blog post at Bumfuzzle on September 6, 2003 as we were getting ready to head to Florida and move aboard the boat. Twenty years later, I'm still writing blog posts. Read my Bumfuzzle's 20-year Anniversary post here.
Over that time I've traded from probably forty or fifty different countries. Online trading commissions were outrageous back in 2003. Back then I was paying $19.95 for a stock trade, and often much more to trade options. During my first few years of travel I didn't trade a whole lot. I took long-term positions and then disappeared. In addition to the cost of trading, there was also the problem of finding internet. I'd have to carry my laptop around town and find an internet cafe that was able to let me plug a line into it. The hassle and expense made it a pretty unattractive way to earn a digital nomad (I don't think that term had even been invented yet) existence.
As the years passed, things gradually changed. Trading commissions fell to $14.95, then $7, and eventually to where we are today with "free" trades. I say free in quotes because nothing in life is truly free. While we aren't paying anything obvious, high frequency traders are scraping hundreds of billions of dollars off the top, risk-free, at our expense.
Internet has also become cheap and ubiquitous. It was around 2013 when I really started trading actively online again, and by 2017 I was comfortable enough with my connectivity worldwide to be able to start Wanderer Financial and trade from anywhere. Today I can't imagine ever doing anything else. Whether I'm at sea or have the anchor dropped in a bay, I've always got internet and the ability to actively trade and communicate with my subscribers. For me, all the pieces have fallen into place over the years to make trading a true digital nomad opportunity.
If you're just "meeting" me here I encourage you to scoot on over to www.bumfuzzle.com and get to know me a little better. I've been living a pretty transparent life online all these years, showing that this lifestyle is truly attainable and worth the effort involved. I enjoy nothing more than helping others get out here to live their dreams.
Keep Up With the Wanderer Crew No Matter Where We Are
Living, trading, and running a business from a boat is pretty amazing. Just ten years ago the idea of doing all of this would have seemed impossible. While technically it may have been doable, it would have been a near constant headache, mostly due to internet connectivity. These days, almost nothing stands in the way of a mobile lifestyle, whether retired, or working, or some mixture of both. Just in the past few months I've sailed from Mexico to Tahiti to Samoa. Life is different in every location, but work and trading remain the same. The world is wide open to us vagabonds.
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