Before I decided to make this move, I was living in New
Jersey on a futon inside my sister's house because I didn't actually have a home and that
was not particularly pleasant. So I knew I wanted to sort of get out at the earliest
opportunity that I could make myself sort of financially comfortable to relocate. My name is Steve Tsentserensky. I'm 35 years old. I moved to Croatia from New Jersey. I live on $47 dollars a day here and I make about
$4,635 dollars a month. I learned about the digital nomad visa around August
of 2020, reading on a website called Total Croatia News. It became this little light bulb moment and a
goal of mine that I put in the back of my head that the entire rest of this year I'm going to be working
towards getting out by the end of the year and it'll be Croatia where I go. Living in Croatia is much cheaper than living in New
Jersey or New York for sure. The first few months I was here, I wasn't spending my
money on much outside of groceries and occasional drinks out and things like that. It was winter. It was cold. Now that it's summer, I'm spending more, but it's
still within that narrow confines of like food and a little bit more travel-related expenses
now. My phone bill every month with around 30 dollars in
the U.S., generally cheaper than most people's. Here, it's cheaper. It's about $12 dollars. As far as health insurance goes, I pay $65 dollars a
month. I know the average in the U.S. is north of $400 a month. If I'm going to go out for, let's say, a lunch, a nice
meal, drink and that'll be about ten dollars. I'll try not to eat a ton of meals out. I'm spending a little bit more on experiences, going
to see things, going to sort of get in amongst the country, feel the texture of the streets and stuff
like that. I walk everywhere. I don't take public transportation
much. I take Uber occasionally too. But like, I make a point to have my apartment be as
close to the amenities, facilities, grocery stores, cafes. I try to be as close to sort of the center of
everything as I can. I've always been pretty frugal with how I spend either
that's a byproduct of how I grew up or the fact that I worked in the ways and places that I worked at weren't
financially sort of always stable. As far as any financial obligations or ties to the
U.S., I have no debt, any credit cards I have, I pay off multiple times per month. Since I've been here, I use only local currency so I
can pull out of the ATM or usually I just use credit cards everywhere. I use no dollars. For a living, I'm a writer, video producer, and
photographer. I've been working in video production for about 10
years and writing is actually new, that's something that came about during the pandemic. So writing has only been about a year. Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to travel because of
how it was raised. My parents would always go on these family vacations. So I thought what you're supposed to do with your free
time when you had free time is basically go travel somewhere. I was living in Mexico prior to being in
New Jersey, and as things got more real with the pandemic, I knew I
needed to sort of come back. It was great being with family, but it wears thin at a
certain point when you're you don't have your own space. I was in Croatia in 2019 for about a month and
I knew was a place I already liked. It sort of captivated my imagination. It's just an amazing mix of like natural beauty and
wonderful cities, great warm people. And there's a pace of life different within the
states. Croatia is fantastic, but of course, it has its
downsides. I live in a majorly touristic city despite covid,
there are a lot of people here from crowded streets and packed beaches to longer waits for just about
everything. Comes with a lot of annoyances and it could be
overwhelming at times. Another thing is that government and the bureaucracy
here are famously tough to navigate. And while my personal experience was largely without
hiccups, the general consensus is you never know what to expect. Relocating during Covid was, I think, a
rather unique challenge. There's a lot with getting your obviously your PCR
test your Covid tests. There's tons of emails going back and forth. It was not an ideal time to relocate probably. I got here January. Beginning of the year was when it was official that
you can actually apply for this permit. The permit costs about one hundred dollars for all the
processing and fees associated with it. First, you have to show your proof of income of having
at least $33,000 thousand in your bank account, or you have to be making $2,750 per month. The next step was having proof of employment and
having proof of continued income. Step three would be proving that I had some type of
health insurance. Fourth step was you had to prove that you were staying
somewhere. And the fifth step was having the background check
from the FBI. The one thing I needed that I didn't have, which
presented a lot of problems, because it's not the easiest thing to get fingerprints in Croatia. The U.S. embassy here doesn't do it. So I had to find a way to get fingerprints to send it
to the FBI, have the FBI do a background check, and then get that back to me and then get it to the
Croatian government. Initially, when I first came, I was very worried about
money because I had just started sort of making money as a writer and I just had a few video sort of
projects come back. I was worried I was not going to have enough work. So I started accepting every single job writing job
that people were offering when I arrived to look at my calendar. I had zero free time. All I did was sit in front of my computer and write. It made me much more comfortable. But getting here initially I had savings, but you
don't want to dip into that. Walking you through a day in the life is I wake up
around 6:30 ish and pretty much immediately make coffee. First thing because it's religion here, is coffee. Breakfast, we're usually just fresh vegetables some
bread, egg, whatever, simple start to the morning and keep it pretty basic. And then I sit in front of the
computer and I start the day and I work from home. If I want to take a break, I'll either
go outside for a walk around the day, I'll either make lunch here, or go outside and eat outside
occasionally. So that pretty much covers the entire workday. Pretty good. What do you what are you up to over
there? Eventhough the digital nomad thing feels exotic and maybe
different or like an interesting, strange way to live, it ends up being pretty mundane
and how anyone else would live. I would stay in Croatia. The issue is the visa is one year I have to leave for
three months After the permit here expires, I don't have a definite place I'm
going to go. The idea for me is to maintain the sort of freedom to
decide not have to go somewhere or be in a financial situation where I'm in an emergency and
need to go back to somewhere. It's about sort of maintaining the work to create a
work life balance and a life that is sort of maintainable and transplantable with ease. And that would be sort of the next step.
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