Copywriter Jason Gaspero at his "desk" in Thailand

What if you could collect your paychecks from the beach? Or from the terrace of a café in Rome? Or both? What if you could spend six months living la dolce vita and the rest of the year working on your tan…?

Good news: It’s not such a pipe dream.

Thousands of expats fund their lives overseas with portable careers. They are their own boss, they have control of their lives…the time to explore—all they need is a laptop and an Internet connection.

It’s called, “working the latitudes.” You earn in one jurisdiction (where the cost of living is relatively high) and live in another (where the cost of living is much lower).

Jason Gaspero is “working the latitudes” as a freelance copywriter. “I’ve got a career in which I’m in total control of my time, my income, and especially, my choice of workplace. Today I spend most of the year living on an island in Thailand. My ‘office’ is now the perfect place for some mid-day snorkeling!”

With a love for Latin American culture and an itch to travel, Jaime Johnson and his laptop struck out for Panama four years ago. Originally from San Diego, California, Jaime makes his living researching and writing reports for financial traders. “All I need to do my work is a decent Internet connection,” he says.

In Panama, Jaime met a “special someone” and a year later he found himself living in her home country of Colombia.

“In Medellin I found one of the most progressive cities I have ever visited. I instantly fell in love with it and I’ve been here for the past three years.”

Medellin’s communication infrastructure is just as advanced as in the States, so Jaime finds working online easy to do. Best of all, he adds, “I make my salary in U.S. dollars and live for about half the price of home.”

And Jaime has branched out and used his new experiences to pen a couple of travel guides, too. (See:Vercolombia.com)

You can easily “work the latitudes” as well and enjoy the freedom to live anywhere, work when you want, travel when the urge strikes. When you slash your expenses overseas, there’s less pressure to bring home that 60-hours-a-week income. You gain the flexibility to relax, slow down, and improve your quality of life.

It’s not just writers who can do this. Engineers, medical professionals, and teachers all have online-earning options.

Take Denis Tonsing, a U.S. lawyer who lives—and works—in the highlands of Ecuador. Denis is drawing down U.S. dollars and at the same time living in one of the most affordable countries on earth. He helps law students to achieve their personal best in law school. And he does it all online. (See: Dennistonsing.com)

Larry Snyder is a registered nurse whose website helps nurses with their continuing education. In 2008 Larry moved from Coral Springs, Florida, to a new life in Medellin, Colombia. “Years ago I bought a bunch of Internet domains and started a business offering nurses continuing education over the Internet. I got the approval of the various State boards of nursing and as the business grew it became clear I could do it from anywhere,” says Larry.

When his girlfriend decided to move back to her native Colombia and start her own company manufacturing clothes, Larry sold his Lexus and rented out his Florida home.

“I really fell in love with Colombia. I find the lifestyle is excellent. The people really go out of their way to make sure you are happy and service is much better than in the U.S.

“Now I work on the website and my wife is expanding her business in Colombia, too.  The Colombian authorities are going to accept our online courses and we’re getting new courses written in Latin American Spanish for this market,” says Larry.

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But “working the latitudes” is just one way to fund your life overseas…

Other expats take their entrepreneurial leaning with them abroad and find on-the-ground income-generating business opportunities they could never have imagined from back home.

Some “retire” only to find a new passion doing something they love. Others are serial entrepreneurs who can’t believe the number of business opportunities they notice once they arrive in a new place.

Arnie White has been traveling since college and says he’s made all his career choices based on the possibilities for travel. “When my wife Pam and I got together 25 years ago, I was involved with importing jewelry from Asia, Bali and Thailand. The frequent travel required made it difficult to keep up. And then we heard about the jewelry industry in Mexico.”

They made an exploratory trip to Taxco, Mexico, and moved their operation there not long after. Their wholesale jewellery business now has offices in Virginia and Taxco but they spend much of their time on the road. (They spoke to IL from Belize while enroute from Merida, Mexico to Guatemala).

Their company, Naldo Jewelry, designs and produces sterling silver jewelry for many of the largest and most successful mail-order catalogs, direct-retail websites, museum and symphony gift stores and accessory boutiques in the U.S. and Canada. It all started as a way to fund their travels, but it turned into an income that funded a life abroad.

Expats successfully earning an income overseas say it’s not unusual to fall into opportunities once you’re ensconced in a new place. Often you end up making money in a way you’d never have predicted from back home. Take Monique Duvall, who settled in Merida, Mexico.

Monique worked as an artist and writer in the U.S., where she used recyclable materials for her sculptures. “We arrived in Mexico in 2001 with my welding equipment and the anticipation that I would continue my work. But Mexican society does not discard, so I could not recycle. Here broken objects are repaired. If not repairable, then the metal is salvaged. I found myself without my raw materials! So I began looking for something else to do,” explains Monique.

“I had a terrible diet, and loved fast food. But then I became pregnant and so I decided to learn how to make healthy bread. I started milling flour myself in 2006. The whole process of bread-making captivated me. I began learning about the Slow Food movement.

“When my work outgrew my kitchen, I rented a separate house as a sort of laboratory and began the work of exploring whole grain breads, natural leavening and cheese production. I even had a herd of goats which we milked and from that made fresh goat cheese.”

Today Monique has a bakery and sells artisan bread, pastries, cheeses and yoghurt to expats and locals alike. She also does a Wednesday and Saturday market and is the local organizer of the international Slow Food movement in Merida. “My bigger plans are slowly taking shape,” she says.

Like Monique, snowbirds Barbara and Joe Wilson arrived in Mindo, Ecuador, with one plan, but ended up doing something different. They had been planning to set up a retirement home. But everywhere they looked they saw opportunities…

“So our house soon turned into a restaurant, a coffee roastery, a hostel, a chocolate- making business and now a microbrewery,” says Barbara. (See: Elquetzaldemindo.com and Mindochocolate.com.)

“It’s a good time to make a move; there are a lot of business opportunities here. In the U.S. we’re used to a level of quality, professionalism and service that people aren’t used to in Ecuador yet. There are lots of untapped service business opportunities and products that are successful in the U.S. and don’t exist yet in Ecuador. There is also a growing market of Americans who are relocating to Ecuador and they want to find some of the things that they are used to getting in the U.S.”

“We set our own hours and create what we do ourselves. We can afford to hire people to help us–that’s easier in Ecuador. We are still working too hard at starting the chocolate business, but we hope to soon have other workers in place.”

Of course, it wasn’t the prospect of hard work that drew Barbara and Joe to Ecuador. They came, as they put it, for the “perfect weather, a low cost of living, the country’s safety and its natural beauty.”

But, as Barbara says, “work is play and that is the best of all worlds.”

In Panama, expat Catriona White would agree. She found a niche funding her lifestyle by doing something she loves. While looking at more “serious careers” Catriona decided to tide herself over by turning her life-long obsession with cooking into an income generator. That’s how she started cooking for people in their homes.

She has steadily built up her business and now her clients range from busy diplomats and families with hectic schedules, to medical patients who are in Panama for treatment. “I called my business Minihaha, which is what we used to call my maternal grandmother because she was small and she laughed a lot and that’s my business in a nutshell.

“I love the fact that there is a demand for this in Panama and an entrepreneurial buzz around the city,” says Catriona. “I had always shied away from cooking as a career because I didn’t want to turn my favorite hobby into a job, but making money doing what you love is most people’s dream. That was a clincher,” says Catriona.

“The great thing is you can do this anywhere in the world. I have hopes to do a tour on a yacht next year before moving to India where I want to spend a year doing a culinary tour learning as much as I can. Maybe after that I’ll be ready to pick somewhere to settle down and open a nice Indian café-bistro.”

Catriona’s not the only entrepreneurial spirit to find Panama alluring. Originally from Canada, Cynthia Mulder and her husband Hiddo first visited Panama in 2000. “We were looking for a place to invest for business, a place which was up-and-coming. Panama was at the point of exploding business-wise so we were here at the right time. We love the country, it has a lot to offer,” says Cynthia.

Cynthia and Hiddo split their time between Panama City and Taboga Island, where their B&B Hotel Cerrito Tropical is located. “We live part time in Panama City in Paitilla (its central) and work in Taboga three days a week. It’s just 12 miles from Panama City by ferry. We have a good life here, our business is growing and we enjoy the climate.

“Before setting up the B&B, we did a lot of research and made various scenarios and business plans. Then… we just did it.”

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“You Don’t Have to Decide Between Work and Adventure”
By Kent Zimmerman
When my wife Christine and I took off on our “Career Break” to travel and see the world, we knew we would be returning to work someday, and assumed it would be back in Boulder, Colorado our home town in the States.

Knowing we would be back looking for new positions in the future, we made sure to develop ways to keep in regular touch with our former work colleagues, board members, service clubs, friends, and all the people who had been important to our careers and life over the years. Besides being people we enjoyed being around they were also individuals who could help us out when it came time to re-enter the working world once we came home.

We worked hard to develop an extensive email list before we left and then wrote about our exploits and travels once a month to the entire group, keeping it short and fun, adding in pictures for spice. The response was great, people receiving it would send back replies with the latest news, keeping us in touch with our former professional worlds…while allowing us to spend three years exploring life on four continents.

In fact it was that monthly posting combined with our love for Cuenca and South America that led us in a completely new entrepreneurial direction, instead of back home to Colorado.

Our former colleagues and friends kept responding to our posts telling us how they too had always wanted to live overseas, to learn a new language, experience life as a local, enjoy life in a different culture.

We realized there was demand for month-long educational travel programs that placed people in apartments in comfortable surroundings and immersed them in the culture and language of new lands. We called our friends and former professional colleagues at the largest educational travel company in the U.S. and Canada, told them about our ideas and ten days later they were down in Cuenca to check it out.

The response to our month-long immersion program in Cuenca has been amazing, selling out nearly every month. In 2012 we are expanding our offerings to Argentina and France.

“An act of courage a day” has been our motto since we started our adventures. Each of us doing one small thing every day that we aren’t sure about… One of these acts was head out into the world and see where it led, and the journey has been amazing. Home will always be Colorado and someday we will be back, but right now we are exactly where we want to be, living and working in an exciting new place…and making plans for the next adventure.

Bottom line, you don’t have to decide between work and adventure. Creativity, hard work and sincere effort are valuable commodities everywhere.

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How to Fund Your Life Abroad

There are more ways to find paychecks overseas, of course, among them: Tour leading, English teaching, hotel management and more. Look out for your July issue for our next feature on ways to fund your life abroad. If you can’t wait that long, see here for more articles from people, just like you, who have moved overseas to work.

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Working the Latitudes

There’s a simple way to take control of your time, your income and your life…all you need is a laptop and an Internet connection.

You don’t have to go to an office in the U.S. or Canada to maintain a respectable and well-paid career. With modern technology you can make a living from anywhere in the world.

It’s called “working the latitudes,” when you’re earning in one jurisdiction (where the cost of living is relatively high) and living in another (where the cost of living is much lower).  And thousands of expats are already doing it (see our main story).

But not only can you make more and spend significantly less, by “working the latitudes” you can keep more of what you earn. Because when you’re resident outside the U.S., you’re eligible for the earned income tax credit. And that means that you don’t owe U.S. taxes on the first $92,900 you earn.

You’ll find everything you need to know about U.S. and foreign taxes, and what they mean for you, in our comprehensive report, The Expatriate’s Tax Bible: The Complete Guide to U.S. and Foreign Taxes for the American Abroad. See here for more information.

Editor’s Note: Check out this video, where International Living Panama editor Jessica Ramesch reports from the city of David in Panama. Jessica interviews Stephen Hyland, who has just opened a boutique café in David.