Crafting My Financial Compass: The Journey of a Digital Nomad

Have you ever felt the adrenaline rush of checking your bank account, unsure if the numbers will spell adventure or setback? That's the daily gamble for us digital nomads, making budget planning not just about numbers but about navigating life.

I tried different budgeting/financial planning apps and created “one more tool.”

The Challenge of a Nomadic Wallet

Picture this: You're in Phuket, rent’s due, a baby's needs, and a new currency exchange rate to wrap your head around. It’s not just about tracking expenses; it’s about predicting life in different currencies. Traditional money management advice falls flat when your lifestyle is as dynamic as the places you explore.

It’s worth mentioning that personal budgeting is different for everyone, depending on so many factors, so I can’t imagine a one-fits-all solution is possible. This article is mostly about my own experience in setting up the budget.

I genuinely believe that some people struggle with the same issues as I did, where existing solutions do half the work at most.

If you recognize yourself in this story and would like to share yours, I’d be happy to talk more about your journey; please write me at [email protected]

Preamble

Planning a budget is challenging. It takes months to years to properly prepare it, learn your habits, do educated estimates, and stick to the plan. Even so, emergencies happen, and you’d better be ready.

When you’re a nomad (or traveler, or entrepreneur, or you’re just starting your path in financial planning) - you always deal with extreme uncertainty. There always are things you couldn’t think of a week ago; there are always things that will happen in a few weeks or months you are not ready for.

That’s where many people overspend, underestimate, and fall into money stress.

The problem

As a nomad and expat with a family, I had to deal with numerous problems I was unprepared for with “traditional” money planning approaches. The variety of living costs - from rent to groceries, medical expenses, visas, taxes, etc. are different every time. I always have at least three active currencies in mind - the local one, my homeland currency, and the payroll currency - it’s tricky to track everything in one place.

But the main problem is the question: “Do I have enough money till the next payroll?”.

It’s easier to answer if your budget is relatively constant - you learn it, and you’re more or less confident with estimates.

But when you need to know when to buy tickets, when your rent deposit will be returned, payroll changes, etc. - it is easy to miss that little thing and get into the big problem:

1. But payroll is on the 5 and 25 of the month (for example)
2. Estimates show a positive monthly balance
3. You have considerable expenses between 5 and 25 (flight and rent, for example)
4. You’re broke for a week because of that

There are lots of variations of this case, but the general idea is the same:

• Can I spend X now always to have enough cash
• Should I transfer Y from one account to another (it may take days)
• Should I take N from the fund and return after Z days? And so on.

Surprisingly, there are not many solutions for this case, and none help to answer all of them.

The Misfit of Existing Tools

After diving into Excel, my comfort zone, I quickly hit a wall—the nomad's wall. No premade spreadsheet was ready for the financial gymnastics of managing rent in dinars, groceries in rubles, and savings in dollars.

Existing solutions and what’s missing

Here, I’ll list a few options I’ve discovered.

To be clear on what I’m looking for - I want to find two main features:

• Daily balance in the calendar
• Multi-currency support

Excel/Google Sheets

Of course, the first thing most people refer to when it comes to budgeting is Excel. There are countless templates, presets, and macroses to help with this. Actually, “Excel on steroids” tools like AirTable, Notion, and others also go here.

It’s hard to underestimate the power of those tables - you can customize them in whatever way you like, write your macroses, and craft The System.

There is nothing wrong with this approach in general - it helped thousands of people to keep track of their money.

But when it comes to the case above, it lacks several essential things that are very hard to handle, and even if we can do it, it becomes a Frankenstein.

Plus, if we want to simplify logging expenses - it’ll require even more effort.

Regarding daily balance and multi-currency - you’d better be an Excel wizard to implement something like this on your own.

In conclusion, it works for some, but it is not the best choice for us here.

Expense tracking apps

They’re following in our queue. Most offer neat UI, allowing you to visualize spending habits, set goals, and adjust plans, and are suitable for those who don’t want to bother with Excel. Often, those are mobile-only, which is excellent for quick logging but struggle to show things that may be important.

Some offer multi-currency support (some with great auto-conversions to show all of them in Euros, like ZenMoney) and other cool features; others (DollarBird and Calendar Budget) - show daily balance, but only in one currency.

After a few days of searching and several months of testing, I’ve realized that, for example, Calendar Budget is a great tool - it shows daily balances that support multiple currencies (but when you look at the total balance of several accounts with different currencies it just sum up numbers, so if you have 100 Thai Bath, 100 dollars and 100 Argentinian pesos, you’ll see you have 300 in total). Plus, it looks pretty outdated, so I still don’t have all my questions resolved.

So, I’ve started building my own thing.

Crafting My Solution

First, I’ve decided to do the prototype in AirTable - to test the idea, find some use cases, etc. Two evenings later, I realized things were getting quite complex; the target was still not reached, and the solution wouldn’t work anyway.

Okay, let’s write some code.

Frustration became an innovation. I coded a prototype, envisioning a dashboard that understands the ebb and flow of a traveler's life. Here’s a sneak peek:  Notice the highlighted cell? That's the danger zone indicator, telling me when my finances are walking a tightrope.

This screenshot is a bit later version, but here is the solution in a nutshell - we can log transactions in different currencies, see the balance for each currency, and, in this case - see that the cell below is highlighted if the balance is negative (which was the most important feature to me)

Later, I added an option to display the balance summed across accounts in a single currency and lots of other things.

For example, I’ve simplified reconciliation - pull the natural balance for each account and keep planning.

But one of the most significant improvements I didn’t see previously - is a ChatGPT input from the single-line message in Messenger.

I use Telegram, so this - is how it looks now:

It auto-detects the amount, account, date, category, and type of transaction. It’s WIP yet, so it's not 100% accurate, but still.

It’s only a fraction of the features this product has at the moment, and even more are coming, but this allowed me to switch from all other apps and finally see the accurate picture of my budget and see in advance if there are potential risks so that I can handle them timely.

Thank you for reading!

Let's Connect and Collaborate

My journey is ongoing, and this tool is growing. If you're craving a budget that moves with you, let's talk. Book a demo or email me. Together, we can craft the financial compass for the digital age.