ABOUT FINNSAWAY

Welcome to follow FinnsAway, journey of a nomad couple traveling the world. On this site we share our experiences and expenses, provide budget travel tips and bring out the true nature of living and working on the road as a digital nomads. Our aim is to develop FinnsAway site to a useful source of information for other travelers. We also want to inspire other restless souls, who are themselves thinking about the possibility to turn traveling into a lifestyle.

Besides travelers, we are engineers and entrepreneurs, house- and pet-sitters, hikers, trail-runners and craft beer enthusiasts. Freelancing through our own company enables working location independently, which means that we can slowly travel the world while working and blogging. You can read more about our professional background and services on Work with us page.

Take a look also our other websites: Craft Beer Nomads, where we introduce microbreweries and craft beer culture around the world, Nomad Housesitters, where we write about house- and petsitting and Elämää Nomadina, our travel and lifestyle blog and podcast in Fiinnish!

We are Anne and Toni, a Finnish couple that left 9-to-5 life behind in July 2017 and started to travel the world as digital nomads. More than 8 years later, we are still on the road, with no plans to settle down! We are adventurous backpackers and low-cost travelers, often following the road less traveled. We enjoy the feeling of arriving in a new destination, hiking on remote hills, reaching the high peaks, watching sunsets, strolling on old city streets, spotting castles, eating local meals, tasting new beers and meeting like-minded people. We like to travel slowly and stay a bit longer in one location, often house- and pet-sitting.

Our travels are self-guided and budget-friendly; we don’t lodge in 5-star hotels but favor apartments, guesthouses or camping instead, and we always aim to find best deals for flights and bus and train tickets when moving around. We travel the world wearing hiking boots or running shoes, and hit the trails whenever possible, sharing our experiences and routes to our followers.

So far we have spent most of our nomad life traveling and house-sitting around Europe, but also explored new destinations in Central America, North America, Africa and Middle East.

I guess we got bitten by a travel-bug a long time ago. For years we spent all possible holidays traveling, and visited as many as 58 countries during short trips along 12 years. Those all were great escapes from our hectic 9 to 5 life, but providing just short glimpses on what the world can offer.

On our holiday travels, we were always in a hurry to move to the next city or country, trying to maximize the number of places that can be visited in short time. Thus we never really had the possibility to stay in one place long enough to adopt the local way of living, or to fully step out of the beaten track.

During those holiday trips we got to experience wonderful moments and enjoyed every minute. But in the end of every holiday, we were accompanied by a slightly depressing and empty feeling, knowing that we needed to go back home again. Planning the next adventure was always fun of course, but counting the days to next holidays, not that much.

There was nothing really wrong with our life in Finland; we had a beautiful home, good jobs, wonderful friends and rewarding hobbies. But we started to question, if life really should be  about routines and tight schedules, all the way to retirement some day. We wanted to make a change, to be free to travel without a return ticket, and to be able to determine the course of our lives ourselves. And so we came up with the decision to leave it all behind, cut the chains to ordinary life and to make the dream of traveling for a longer term (even for a life time, who knows?) and working location independently as entrepreneurs, come true.

After the first discussions about finding time for a longer trip, it took still years to actually come up with the big decision. It was maybe early 2016 when we started to more seriously talk about leaving, and back then we scheduled the departure to happen on spring or summer 2017.

Then we kept the idea alive, and started more detailed planning and execution in early 2017. By the end of June we had left our jobs, and then got rid of all the rest furniture and other stuff that we had gathered around us during the years. In July 2017 we had sold or donated our belongings down to such volume that basically fits in two backpacks. Then we rented out our apartment, and were finally ready to hit the road.

During the first year abroad we learned a lot about living as nomads, and got assurance that we had made a right decision. During the first nomad year we traveled quite fast, visiting 22 countries, and worked hard with this blog and with  some customer projects. Some people seem to think that we are on an endless holiday, but digital nomad life is not about that really. It’s more about living “normal life” and working abroad, having your freedom to choose where to go, but accepting that nearly nothing is stable, that workdays often are long, and that your home is where you backpack is.

What makes FinnsAway special among thousands of digital nomads and travel bloggers who try to earn money when traveling?

We are two highly educated entrepreneurs with a strong background working in different business environments. We have worked in a wide scale of positions from grass-roots to management level, with start-ups and global corporations alike. After resigning from our previous jobs in Finland, we are now able to offer professional services location independently. FinnsAway is a trusted partner with high quality project management and open communication.

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If you have questions or any kind of co-operation proposals don’t hesitate to contact us