Asset-Light Living

The ideal scenario is to carry all your basic survival essentials in just a single backpack—no need for any additional suitcases.

Inside that backpack, you’d have water, food, a tent, a laptop, clothing, and so on. This setup allows you to hop onto the subway, a train, or a plane without ever needing to check luggage; you can simply carry everything with you, and the load won’t be so heavy that it drains your physical energy.

However, achieving this with just one backpack is often difficult in practice, so one simply has to do their best to make smart trade-offs.

The next key element is renting items. As a digital nomad, your primary accommodation options will be hotels, vacation rentals, or short-term monthly leases in various locations; buying a home is simply not feasible, as doing so would permanently tie you down to a single geographic location.

Furthermore, you can rent a car, rent digital devices, and even rent clothing and other items.

This approach makes financial sense—provided, of course, that your income exceeds your expenses. Otherwise, for certain items, it may actually be more cost-effective in the long run to purchase them either second-hand or brand-new.

Renting an E-Bike

I rented a shared electric scooter.

I stopped by a nearby pharmacy to buy some face masks, as people seemed to be sneezing everywhere I looked.

I visited a bubble tea shop located inside a nearby supermarket and bought myself a cup of coffee.

I then went to a local breakfast joint for a bowl of pork intestine noodles, and later stopped at another small eatery for lunch.

After that, I used the scooter to pick up a couple of packages. The two items I received were quite bulky; without the scooter, transporting them would have been absolutely impossible.

Finally, I used the scooter to haul away and dispose of all the large waste items that had accumulated in my living space.

Since I don’t own an electric scooter myself, I had to rent one. For temporary use like this, the cost is relatively low; plus, I didn’t need to obtain a driver’s license, worry about charging the battery, or pay for a full year’s insurance coverage.

The Summer Sun

The outdoor temperature hit 31°C today. When evening came, I noticed that my arms were bright red—I must have gotten sunburned while riding the scooter earlier in the day.

From now on, I need to make sure I wear long sleeves whenever possible to avoid getting a tan or, worse, getting sunburned again.