Yes, working for yourself over the Internet can bring you financial security and scads of free time, which will let you avoid conventional life indefinitely. There's no need to take on the responsibilities that come with marriage, children, and community, which admittedly can be a huge drag. However, there's also a lot of deep pleasure in that conventional, normal life, pleasure the nomadic traveller is forgoing - wandering around the world indefinitely comes with an opportunity cost.
If this was just a temporary choice of one thing over the other, I'd say 'go for it, and enjoy yourself', but I wonder if this sort of lifestyle, done long enough, can really be put down. By the time you want a spouse, a family, and a place to put down roots, will the temperamental changes brought on by your nomadic living even make this possible? The guy at the end of the article who's lonely and wants a home - he might want it, but I'm not at all sure he'll be able to get it or keep it.
Perhaps I'm completely full of it. It certainly wouldn't be the first time. But I'm sure I'm not the only one who knows a long-term womanizer who can't manage to settle down, even though he now claims to want to. These guys might be setting themselves up for the same sort of problem, with 'new experiences' taking the mental place of 'new partner'.
As a former military spouse, I find it sort of amusing that people think a nomadic lifestyle is somehow inherently in conflict with having a family. If you also have a good income and scads of freetime, I can't see what the problem is. It sounds like an ideal family situation, where you can be a good provider and also have time for both the wife and the kids. What's not to love about that?
Surely I can't be the only woman on the planet who ever viewed my husband's "nomadic" career choice as a feature not a bug.
This could easily go both ways, though. After enough time settled down, you may no longer be capable of the nomadic lifestyle, but decide you want it badly. Seems to me that either way is a risk. Is there any reason to think that the conventional path is less of a risk, other than the fact that nearly everybody takes it?
I know a few people who live like this but most of them are semi-nomadic rather than totally rootless. They have a home city where they live for half or so of each year, the ones who are richer / picked a low-cost city own or rent a home there permanently, others pick up a new rental contract every time they come back.
There's also people who aren't strictly speaking nomadic but do take long (multi-month) trips and work from there.
The only quibble I have with this article is the use of the word "rich". No-one I know with this life-style is really rich, they have good upper-middle class incomes doing jobs that are easily done remotely and they leverage that to live in a way that other people cannot.
I think that as these guys get older most will start to move from nomadic to semi-nomadic to "takes long working vacations", but some may indeed live like this forever.
If this was just a temporary choice of one thing over the other, I'd say 'go for it, and enjoy yourself', but I wonder if this sort of lifestyle, done long enough, can really be put down. By the time you want a spouse, a family, and a place to put down roots, will the temperamental changes brought on by your nomadic living even make this possible? The guy at the end of the article who's lonely and wants a home - he might want it, but I'm not at all sure he'll be able to get it or keep it.
Perhaps I'm completely full of it. It certainly wouldn't be the first time. But I'm sure I'm not the only one who knows a long-term womanizer who can't manage to settle down, even though he now claims to want to. These guys might be setting themselves up for the same sort of problem, with 'new experiences' taking the mental place of 'new partner'.