16 months, 5 countries, 2 kids: what digital nomad life is actually like as a family

In late 2023, my partner and I made a decision that most people thought was either brave or reckless: we gave up our rental in Gloucester, packed what we could, and took our two young kids on a 16-month journey across five countries. I kept working as a solutions architect throughout, delivering projects for a US-based client from wherever we happened to be that month.

This is not a polished Instagram version of that experience. It is the real thing. The highs, the lows, and everything I wish someone had told me before we left.

Why we did it

The honest answer is that the timing aligned. I had been contracting remotely for years, and COVID had proven to every client I worked with that physical presence was not required. The kids were young enough that we were not disrupting school in any meaningful way. And we had always talked about it, that vague "wouldn't it be amazing if..." conversation that most people have and never act on.

What pushed us to commit was realising that the window was closing. Once the kids hit school age properly, it would become exponentially harder. It was now or wait another decade.

So we handed in our notice on the rental, put everything into storage, and booked a one-way flight to Tenerife.

The route

Looking back, I can see a pattern in how we chose each destination. We did not just pick places off a map. Every stop had a safety net built into it, whether that was familiarity, family, or simply keeping the leap manageable. That deliberate de-risking is probably why it worked as well as it did.

Tenerife, Spain (3 months) We chose Tenerife because we already knew it. We had spent three holidays there over the years, so it felt less like a leap into the unknown and more like an extended stay somewhere familiar. That was deliberate. Our first step into nomad life needed to feel safe while we figured out the practicalities. The south of the island has a well-established digital nomad community, reliable wifi in most cafes, and the weather meant the kids were outdoors constantly. Being in the same time zone as the UK meant I could work normal hours and still have evenings free. It was the perfect test run.

South Africa (3 months) Cape Town was genuinely new territory for us. But we had a safety net of a different kind: my uncle had moved to South Africa sixteen years earlier, so staying for three months was as much about reconnecting with family as it was about exploring a new continent. Having someone on the ground who knew the area, could recommend neighbourhoods, and was there if anything went wrong made the whole experience less daunting.

Cape Town itself delivered beyond expectations. Fast fibre internet, affordable Airbnbs, and a quality of life that is hard to match. The kids got to see penguins, go on safari, and experience a completely different culture. Being two hours ahead of the UK meant I worked from late morning into the evening, which gave us proper family time every morning. The exchange rate meant our money went further, though not as far as the headline numbers suggest once you factor in the flights and private health cover.

Mauritius (1 month) This was a stopgap rather than a planned long stay. We wanted to be back in the UK for Christmas, but did not have enough time left in South Africa to justify staying. Mauritius filled the gap, and turned out to be the sweet spot of the entire trip.

Five and a half hours ahead of the UK meant my work day did not start until early afternoon local time. A 9am UK start was 2:30pm for me. Every morning we would hit the beach as a family, proper unhurried time together, and then I would work from around one until ten in the evening. It sounds like a long day, but the rhythm felt natural. The mornings recharged me in a way that no amount of weekend recovery ever had back in the UK. If I could have based myself anywhere permanently, it might have been here. Sometimes the unplanned stops turn out to be the best ones.

Panama (3 months) After Christmas in the UK, we headed to Central America, and this is where the dynamic shifted. Panama City is a fascinating mix of ultra-modern and deeply traditional. The Casco Viejo neighbourhood became our base and the kids adapted faster than we did.

But here is where things got counterintuitive. I was working with both UK and US-based colleagues, and landing in a time zone that overlapped with both sounds ideal on paper. In practice, it meant I was expected to be available during something closer to a full nine-to-five, coordinating between teams across two continents. The flexibility that had defined the earlier legs, those free mornings and that sense of controlling my own schedule, evaporated. I was suddenly working a conventional day again, just in a more interesting postcode.

Costa Rica (6 months) Our longest stay and, in many ways, three distinct experiences packed into one country. We spent two months in San José, two months on the Caribbean coast, and the final two on the Pacific coast. Each felt like a different country entirely. The urban bustle of the capital, the laid-back Caribbean vibe, and the surf culture of the Pacific side. The Pura Vida lifestyle is not just a slogan. It genuinely seeps into how you approach each day. The kids had the kind of childhood that felt like something from a different era: swimming in the ocean before breakfast, wildlife everywhere, a real community of families doing similar things.

The same time zone challenge persisted, though. Being aligned with US colleagues while still needing to coordinate with the UK meant my working hours were compressed and inflexible. The lifestyle freedom and the work demands existed side by side rather than complementing each other the way they had in Mauritius or South Africa.

Why we came back

I will be honest. We did not plan to come back when we did. The intention was to keep going. But during the final two months on the Pacific coast, my contract ended, and I found myself job hunting from a beach town in Costa Rica. The reality of freelance income is that it fluctuates, and without stable monthly earnings, the cost of maintaining the nomad lifestyle while meeting UK financial obligations became unsustainable.

The irony was painful. The very time zone alignment that had constrained my working life now became a barrier to finding new work. UK clients wanted UK hours availability. US clients assumed I was based in the States. Being in Central America, which should have been the perfect overlap, actually made me harder to place.

We weighed our options carefully. South Africa was tempting: lower costs, proven lifestyle, family support. Asia offered a fresh start and even cheaper living. But the UK was the least risky move. The same risk-awareness that had made the nomad life work is what ultimately brought us home. Landing back with family nearby, in a job market I understood, while actively searching for a new role felt like the responsible decision for a family with two young kids and a shrinking bank balance. It was not the ending we had planned, but it was the right one.

Coming back was hard. Re-entering the UK rental market with no recent address history, no payslips from a traditional employer, and two kids who needed school places immediately was a crash landing after 16 months of freedom.

The joys

The kids thrived. This surprised us more than anything. We had worried about stability, routine, social development, all the things well-meaning relatives warned us about. What actually happened was that our children became remarkably adaptable, confident, and curious. They learned to make friends quickly, to be comfortable with unfamiliarity, and to appreciate differences. At two and four, they were too young for formal schooling, so we treated the whole experience as their education. Every country was a classroom. They picked up bits of Spanish, learned about animals they had only seen in books, and developed a comfort with new places and new faces that most adults never manage.

Work got better, not worse. Stripping away the commute, the office politics, the ambient noise of UK life, I found I was more focused and more productive. My clients did not care where I was as long as the work was delivered. And the mental shift of working from a place you have chosen rather than a place you happen to live is more powerful than I expected.

Chase the offset, not the overlap. This is something nobody tells you. The conventional wisdom is that you should stay in your client's time zone to make remote work easier. What I found was the opposite. Being a few hours ahead of the UK gave me free mornings with my family and focused afternoons of deep work. It was in Mauritius, five and a half hours ahead, that I was most productive and most present as a parent. The offset created natural boundaries between family time and work time that I had never managed to establish back home. Meanwhile, in Central America, being available during everyone's working hours simultaneously killed the flexibility that had made the earlier legs work so well. If you are planning to work remotely from abroad, being slightly offset from your team is a feature, not a bug.

Every destination had a safety net. Looking back, I realise we instinctively de-risked every move. Tenerife was familiar from holidays. South Africa had family. Mauritius was a short hop from a place we already knew. Even Panama and Costa Rica had established nomad communities. We were not being reckless. We were being calculated. If you are thinking about doing this with kids, that layered approach to risk is something I would strongly recommend.

Our relationship got stronger. Living in close quarters, navigating foreign bureaucracy together, making decisions as a team every day: it either breaks you or bonds you. For us, it was the latter. There is something about sitting in a San José police station with two small kids, filing a report after someone ripped my deceased grandfather's necklace off my neck in the street, that strips away all the superficial stuff. You find out very quickly whether you are actually a team. We learned to communicate better, to divide responsibilities more clearly, and to genuinely enjoy each other's company rather than just coexisting in the same house.

The cost was manageable. We were not wealthy when we left. The trick was that our biggest UK expenses (rent, council tax, energy bills, car costs) all disappeared. We replaced them with Airbnb accommodation that, in most places, cost the same or less than our Gloucester rent and included all bills and wifi. The countries we chose were deliberately selected for cost of living as well as lifestyle.

The challenges

Flights add up fast. This is the thing that every nomad cost-of-living comparison glosses over. A family of four flying between countries every few months is not cheap, even with budget airlines where available. By the time you add baggage, car seats, and the occasional emergency rebooking, our flight costs averaged several hundred pounds a month. It significantly eroded the savings we made on accommodation.

Healthcare is stressful. When your two-year-old gets a fever at 2am in a country where you do not speak the language fluently, the romance of nomad life evaporates instantly. We had international health insurance, but navigating unfamiliar healthcare systems with small children was consistently our biggest source of anxiety.

It is lonely in ways you do not expect. You make friends quickly in nomad communities, but they leave. Every few weeks, the people you have connected with move on. Building genuine, lasting relationships is almost impossible when everyone is transient. The kids felt this too. They would find a playmate and then lose them within weeks.

Admin does not stop. UK tax obligations, company accounts, client contracts, insurance renewals, vehicle MOTs back home. The administrative weight of maintaining a UK life while living abroad is substantial. I spent more time on paperwork than I would like to admit.

The aftermath nobody talks about

What followed was the hardest part of the entire experience, harder than any of the challenges abroad. The five months after we returned to the UK were the longest stretch without work in my fifteen-year career. The timing was brutal. Both the US and UK elections were creating uncertainty in the market. AI was embedding itself in the industry, and clients were pausing hiring while they figured out what it meant for their teams. The contract market, which had always been reliable for someone with my experience, had gone quiet.

I lost a lot of confidence during that period. When you have always been able to find work within weeks and suddenly you cannot, it does something to your sense of professional identity. The internal narrative shifts from "I chose to take time out" to "maybe the market has moved on without me." It was not a good time.

But here is what I keep coming back to: even during the worst of that five-month stretch, sitting in a rented house in Gloucester wondering whether I had made a catastrophic career mistake, I never once regretted the experience. Not once. The memories, the growth in our kids, the strength it gave our relationship, the perspective it provided. None of that diminished because the landing was rough.

What I would do differently

Build a bigger buffer before leaving. We left with enough, but not enough margin for error. I would want six months of expenses in the bank before doing it again, not three.

Stay longer in fewer places. The moving between countries was exciting but exhausting and expensive. Two or three longer stays would have been cheaper, less disruptive for the kids, and would have allowed us to build deeper connections.

Pick destinations three to six hours ahead of your client's time zone. Mauritius and South Africa proved that the offset model works brilliantly for both productivity and family life. Central America proved that full overlap does not give you what you think it will.

Set a clear return trigger. We drifted into the return rather than planning it. Having a predetermined financial threshold ("if the buffer drops below X, we book return flights") would have made the transition less stressful and given us time to plan a softer landing.

Have a re-entry plan. We had no plan for coming back. No UK address lined up, no school places arranged, no transition period built in. The assumption was always that we would keep going. Having even a rough contingency for returning would have made those first few weeks back significantly less chaotic.

Would I do it again?

Without hesitation. But I would do it from a stronger financial position, with more predictable income, and with a clearer plan for both the journey and the return.

Sometimes the best decisions in your life do not look like the best decisions for your career. I am at peace with that trade-off.