In this episode of Passport To Wealth™, Arielle Tucker CFP®, EA sits down with international bestselling author and speaker Jordan Tarver to explore what it truly means to choose a nomadic life abroad as an American. After surviving a life changing car accident, Jordan made a conscious decision to stop living on autopilot and begin designing a life rooted in intention, awareness, and personal alignment. That decision ultimately led him to leave the US and live nomadically across Europe.

Jordan shares the mindset shifts that helped him embrace uncertainty, redefine success, and navigate the emotional realities of building a life outside the United States. The conversation explores the internal work required to make bold life changes, including cultivating stillness, journaling, and developing clarity around what is trying to emerge in your life.

The episode also addresses the practical realities Americans face when living abroad, including visa limitations, citizenship through ancestry, and the logistical considerations of long term life in Europe. This conversation offers both inspiration and grounded guidance for Americans considering a move abroad or rethinking what a meaningful life can look like beyond traditional expectations.

Takeaways:

1. In this episode, we explored the transformative journey of Jordan Tarver, who embraced a nomadic lifestyle throughout Europe after a life-altering experience.
2. Listeners will benefit from understanding the importance of awareness in initiating meaningful life changes and pursuing one's dreams.
3. We discussed practical strategies for cultivating stillness and reflection, including journaling and meditation, as essential tools for personal growth.
4. Jordan emphasized the significance of dual citizenship and the various visa options available for Americans wishing to live abroad long-term.
5. The conversation highlighted the challenges and opportunities of building community while living a nomadic lifestyle in different countries.
6. We examined the contrasting work-life balance between the United States and Europe, underlining the value of prioritizing personal well-being over incessant hustle.

Welcome to Passport to Wealth.

I'm your host, Arielle Tucker, certified financial planner and fellow US Expat.

On this show, we bring together cross border experts and global Americans to help you make confident decisions about your life, your money and your next move abroad.

Let's get started.

Welcome back to Passport to Wealth.

I'm Arielle Tucker and today we're joined by Jordan Tarver, international bestselling author of youf Deserve this Shit, Creative Artists, former Lee editor at Forbes, and now a proud American living nomadically throughout Europe.

After surviving a near fatal car accident, Jordan made a life changing decision to stop living on autopilot and take full ownership of his future.

That journey led him to write a bestselling book read by over 50,000 people worldwide, shares stages as a motivational speaker and inspires a global audience to choose, change and create a life they love wherever they are in the world.

In this episode, we dive into Jordan's move abroad, the mindset shifts that made it possible and how to embrace uncertainty which can lead to exponential personal and professional growth.

If you've ever dreamed of moving overseas, re overseas reinventing yourself or your life, or finding purpose after a major change, this conversation is for you.

Jordan, thank you so much for joining.

Joining us today.

I'm wondering if we could start off with you telling our audience where you're currently based and where you're from and kind of how did you get from point A to point B be today?

Yeah, of course.

I first want to say thank you so much for the lovely introduction and just having me on.

I'm excited to want to chat about all these things.

It's been a very exciting transition in our life with so much new stuff happening and I haven't had too many conversations yet on podcast.

It's always fun to be able to share more about what's really going on.

Since we decided to move.

So we're currently based in Florence, Italy and we originally moved from the States to Spain and we really thought we were going to be in Spain as our like home base long term.

And then once we got over here we were like, well, like, you know, we could always find comfort really easily in the States.

You know, we could get a place for years on end and we could stay put and have roots in the ground.

And most of you kind of thought about that.

We realized we want, we wanted this chapter to be more about adventure and more about life, just gaining more life experience.

And so we've been living nomadically.

We've lived in four different countries in the past eight or nine months.

And it's been a really fun thing we weren't expecting at all and something that has just added a new layer to the whole experience.

I'm originally from California, grew up in Northern California in Sonoma county in the blind country.

And then I lived in Southern California for about 10 years.

But we've always lived with the just connection to our intuition, to the point where we know when it's time to go somewhere else.

And even though we were in a very great, comfortable life in Seattle, very happy and really enjoying our life there, we just felt this calling to come out to Europe for a short bit of time because it's been something that we've both talked about kind of like throughout our entire eight, nine year relationship, and always really wanted to do it, but never seemed like the right time.

And I'm really curious, you've.

You're living nomadically in Europe, which sounds like pretty much everyone's dream.

Did you need a particular type of visa to be able to have that flexibility?

Or how are you actually, or do you have citizenship?

I'm just curious, like, how, how did that.

What is the process to being able to live nomadically in Europe?

Yeah, so for us, I have dual citizenship, so I'm traveling on an Italian passport.

But.

But for other people, yeah, you do need some sort of visa or citizenship, because when you just have the US passport, you can't stay over 90 days within the Schengen.

And so anyone's looking to live nomadically, you have to get some sort of visa, whether it's a work visa, a study visa or citizenship, or, you know, there's, there's endless visas depending on what country you go to, but you need some sort of visa that allows you to stay there long term.

Or there's really some interesting ways to go about it too.

A lot of people will stay 90 days in the Schengen, which is most of the European countries.

I think there's about maybe like 25 or 27 countries that are in the Schengen, and then you can also leave the schengen for another 90 days.

So a lot of people will go to like the UK now because they're not a part of it.

And so you can go to the UK for 90 days and you come back to Europe for 90 days and you can kind of live that in and out life.

But that definitely adds, you know, a little bit more thought into the travels and the plans and things like that.

And it might not be what you're looking for, but that is a way to get around the need for a visa.

I just want to point that out because as you and I know, living abroad, that right, as Americans, we don't have just access to just show up in Europe without kind of a little bit more thought to it if you want to stay for more than 90 days.

So it sounds like you guys have been super thoughtful about it.

Yeah, I think there are some good planning opportunities for people who do want to spend more than 90 days.

But it is important to consider what the visas.

What are the passports that you have, or.

I'm curious, were you.

Sorry, I didn't mean to go in this direction.

But now I'm just out of curiosity.

Did you apply for Italian citizenship?

I know Italy had to.

There was a huge surge of Italian citizenship through heritage.

Were you able to apply for citizenship that way?

Yeah, so we, we as in me and my.

My immediate family applied for citizenship in 18.

So my sister was living in Paris for about four or five years and she was kind of running out of her visa options of student visa, work visa and all that kind of stuff.

And she was looking for a.

Just a better way to stay longer.

So then my grandfather was born with Italian citizenship.

And at the time, policies have now changed with Italy.

Currently, you could get citizenship through the bloodline within, I think, one or two generations.

So we had been really lucky and fortunate to be able to go down that route.

It was an extremely long process.

So I had to wait two years just for the appointment.

And then it took about another year and a half after the appointment to actually get the physical passport.

So it was a very long process.

It was probably pretty close to four years, if I'm being honest, from.

From setting the appointment to having it in hand.

But then, you know, once it was done, it opened up a huge door for us and it's the reason why we're living abroad right now.

And I Just, just every day I'm grateful that we have the privilege to do something like this.

And also just grateful for my great friend.

Great.

Excuse me.

Great.

Grateful for my great grandfather giving us this opportunity when he came through Ellis island and passing along to my grandfather and things like that.

That is the path that we took to, to get the citizen citizenship.

But it was, it was definitely a long process.

Yeah.

But I still tell people, you know, if you have family that came over in the last couple of generations, it's still worth to go and check what the country's policies are and start that process.

It is a long process.

I don't know any country that has like a super fast, you know, heritage path to citizenship, but definitely a great opportunity.

Okay, now I want to get back to the things that I said we were going to talk about, but thank you for, for letting me go down that tangent.

You talk a lot about, you know, choose change, choose possibilities.

You're living this right, right now.

And so many people dream of change, talk about change, but really hesitate to take that leap.

So what was your first small step toward building the life that you have right now?

I think it was becoming aware of the lifestyle I wanted.

You know, I think a lot of people have this idea that change starts with action, but it, it really starts with the awareness of what you want to change or also how I like to look at it is like what's, what's trying to emerge out of you.

You know, I think a lot of times in society change is this thing about like punishment and fixing.

It's very like survival based.

Like we need, we need to change to, to fix ourselves or to fix this scenario or fix this relationship.

And I really try to reframe it in my life.

It's like, well, what's, what's just trying to emerge out of me?

What are the things that naturally want to come out?

What am I, what are my, my inner callings that I'm receiving from like the universe or God or just messages that I'm getting and how can I help, like, facilitate those things that already are presenting themselves so they can, can, can come into my life and like manifest into my reality and become, become what I'm experiencing on a daily basis?

And so it really starts with getting aware of what those things are that are trying to come through and setting a vision for yourself around those things.

Because that, that's really setting the, the groundwork in the roadmap for actualizing that change into your life and making it and helping it become your lived experience.

And when you're talking about bringing awareness, I mean, how would, how would you tell someone to do you tell them to sit down and journal.

How would you kind of guide someone into just being more aware of kind of thinking about their ideal life or really kind of aligning who they are with what they were put on this, you know, world to do?

I mean, how do you, how do you, how do you take that step?

Yeah, I mean, that's a big question.

I can write a book on that question alone.

Um, but there's a few things that I, that I've done in my life that I feel like have really helped me on that journey of gain awareness.

One thing I will say is like, we live in such a noisy world, you know, we have so many distractions.

All of everyone's busy.

I don't care what you do for work or what you do and your life.

Maybe you're just a parent.

Like everyone is busy.

Everyone is notifications, emails, text messages, phone calls, kids, people that are taking care of.

Like life is demanding.

And the, the downside to that is a lot of times we forget to focus on ourselves or create space to ask ourselves those deeper questions or just have the, the space to even think for a second.

And the one thing I would say like the, the antidote to that is stillness.

It's like, how can you cultivate stillness in your life even in like small bits?

You know, it doesn't need to be this drastic soul searching journey where you, you take a sabbatical and you isolate yourself from people for months or weeks on end.

But even just in the five or ten minutes throughout your day, can you just have some space of nothingness?

You know, it's so easy for us nowadays to pick up, pick up a device and distract ourselves in this moment of free time.

You know, we get bored in between tasks or things we're doing in work.

And so we grab our phone and we do a couple scrolls and now we're into the next task.

It's like, well, that could have been a moment for you to take the moment to yourself amongst your busy day and all your responsibilities.

And I think if we could just cultivate more of that stillness and space in life, that awareness will start coming through and also give you time to work on the exercises that could help you as well, so for me, journaling is a big thing.

I journal every single day.

It has been a non negotiable part of my life for the last nine years.

And it has allowed me to understand who I am by reflecting on past experiences, understanding how those things affected me, reflecting on the current things that I'm going through and how they're affecting me, making me feel, and then also just kind of dreaming up my life, like asking myself like, what do I want?

How do I want to be remembered?

What's the life I want to live?

What are the things that I'll maybe regret on my deathbed one day?

And that has allowed me to just gain this really deep level of self awareness that has afforded me, I guess, the knowledge of the things that I need to do or the understanding of how I need to shift in my life to, to become a certain version of myself.

So journaling is huge.

Meditation is another amazing way to have that space and stillness and silence.

And there's free guided meditations everywhere on YouTube.

I use them basically every single day.

And these are great ways to either do a guided meditation or just meditate to like meditation frequencies.

And you can kind of see what visions come through.

And then there's other things you can do that maybe feel a little bit more practical in terms of like exercise stuff.

So one thing that's a really beneficial exercise is what's called the wheel of life.

And so if you just Google wheel of Life, you'll, you'll see it all over the Google images.

But what it is is it's a circle and it has the gen, the, the main domains of life, you know, relationships, career, money, spirituality, joy, those kind of things.

And what you do is you, on a scale of 1 to 10, you rate yourself like, how fulfilled do I feel in this area of my life currently today?

So you put, you put a marker for that one through 10.

And then you ask yourself, how fulfilled do I want to feel in 12 months from now in that area?

And what it does is give you a quick snapshot of where you are and where you want to be.

And it's a really great way to just gain some quick self awareness of, of what's going on currently and maybe the gap in between of where you want to be.

And then that can start to inform you on, okay, well, I'm not feeling very fulfilled in this area of my life, but in, in, in 12 months I want to be at an eight.

So what can I do differently to feel more fulfilled in that area of my life?

What Can I do differently to feel more fulfilled in my relationship or more.

More fulfilled in my work?

And this is a really great way and exercise that you can do to start to understand the things that you want to change in your life.

I love that so much.

Thank you for sharing some ideas and some resources.

And we'll try to link the wheel of life just so people have, like, a quick link to what that would actually look like as a resource.

I'm curious because one of the things that I notice when I've become an expat is that it brings a lot of stillness into my life and talking to other.

I mean, there's a lot of kind of craziness with an international move, but.

But then all of a sudden, all the noise of, like, the US Media is gone and family pressure is gone, and work pressure looks very different.

And I'm curious if you found that, or you and your.

Your partner have found that over the last eight to nine months, or if it's just been busy in a different way.

I think life will always be busy, but I think that busyness will shift.

And so one thing we've realized is that life will always be life.

You know, you're gonna have your pros and cons wherever you go.

There's not.

There's not the perfect place to live.

There's, I think, the most optimal place or the most aligned place.

And since moving, I will agree with you on the media stuff.

It's so we're so far away from the headlines and the current events and things like that that are happening in.

In the States because we just don't.

We don't get that news out here.

And so it can feel like maybe you're a little bit more distant from that just naturally, because it's harder to get.

To get that.

That stuff and that information.

And there are ways to do it, but we aren't people who.

We don't follow the news anyway.

And so we're not.

We're not seeking out that kind of stuff.

But there's other things that.

That add busyness, like you're talking about, you know, we live nomadically.

And so there's always this thing of, like, the constant figuring out, you know, we're here for this many months, but we need to think about, okay, where do we want to go next, what place are we going to stay in?

And then when we get there, it's then figuring out, okay, what's our routines, what's our lifestyle, where's our shops, where's our stores, where's the.

The pharmacy.

And so there's this constant kind of like, mental load you have to bear of almost like rebuilding your life or reorganizing your life every, you know, handful of months, depending how long you stay.

And yeah, so I would say it doesn't feel less busy.

It just feels busy in a different way.

Different problems to figure out, different challenges to overcome, and different things to focus on.

But I would.

I would agree that it's very different than how life felt in the States, for sure.

I guess what I'm trying to pinpoint is I have.

I feel like I have more time to focus on me and my goals and where.

Where my focus is.

So for.

For example, for me, I'm very like.

I always knew I would live in Europe from, like, a very young age.

I just felt very aligned with.

I was going to build my life in Europe.

And I have spent my whole life right now building my.

My life and a world in Europe.

And I. I just feel like being here has allowed me to just kind of align all of my values.

Like, if we were talking about, you know, journaling and writing down, like, what is the most important things, like, my family is super important to me, so I have more time to be with my family.

We have more time off.

We have less work pressure.

We.

That's kind of what I.

That was, like, the angle that I was going at.

And so I guess it would be very different if you were living nomadically, constantly having to, like, pick up and move.

At some point, I've been able to just settle a little bit, and that's been.

That's been nice for us.

Yeah, we definitely at times missed the stability of having one.

One place.

Um, but I will say, like, the culture is so different throughout all of Europe compared to the States, where we do feel like we have more time for those states, sorts of things.

And I think it's just because in the States, it's very, like, championed to, like, hustle and to grind and to, like, push yourself to them.

Like, burnout is a badge people wear, which I think is odd.

But I guess it took me leaving to realize that was a weird, maybe misaligned approach to life.

But you come here and it's not.

It's not the same.

And even though we're running businesses that are online businesses, businesses that exist in the States and quote, unquote, American businesses, we've really embraced the.

The rhythm of work and how people exist with work and their relationship with work, and I feel like it's really improved our time allocation to those things so that we do have more time for going out in the city and being in the culture and enjoying and things like that and not overworking ourselves.

When I was in the States, I would wake up at 5:30 in the morning, go to the gym and be working on something, you know, by 8.

Now I wake up at 6 here, which is not that drastically different than before, but I have a slower morning.

Which if I did that in the States like I would be stressed out because it's like I'm so far behind but for some reason there's just a different like frequency here and different rhythm.

But it feels good.

I'm curious because you guys are moving around every couple of months.

How are you building community?

How are you staying connected with people?

Are you connecting with other people who are traveling like you, Are you connected with locals?

Like what does your sense of community look like right now?

That's a great question.

I, I would say that's been the, the more challenging part of this lifestyle.

Uh, I think it takes time to really build community and, and being in and out of places.

Sometimes you don't have enough time to really connect and, and build deep relationships.

And I think the place that, in life that we're at, you know, we're in the early 30s, we've been together for nine years thinking about the family chapter and I'm not looking to have a hundred friends anymore.

You know, that was, it was fun, it was fun to have a lot of friends in college and when I was younger, but I don't really, I don't need that.

That's not something I, I don't value the, the, the number of friends.

I, I value the, the depth of the relationship.

And so I didn't come out here to like meet a bunch of people.

That wasn't my intention.

That wasn't our, that wasn't our like goal was like to build this like massive community.

But at times like it does feel like we do lack community.

And so it depends where we are.

Most of our community I would say is in, in Mallorca, Spain, because that's where we have been the longest and, and we have a, a group of friends there.

As we've been traveling through these different areas, we haven't made tons of community, but it hasn't been really our intention when we've been places for a short period of time.

So it kind of depends where we are.

But I will say that is the one, like, domain of life that we would say, like, feels most like, quote unquote, lacking.

Even though it's not a place that we feel like it's having a negative impact on us.

And that is made easier because we have each other.

You know, the fact that we're, we're in this relationship together, we're exploring this dream together and like, on this adventure, we just like, to be honest, like, I could just have her for the rest of my life.

I'm like, I'd be perfect.

And that's amazing.

That's so good.

That's so great to hear that Snow is what you've, you've.

You're perfectly matched.

And I think, like, I always think about that.

I think that's even more important when you are an expat to find your person.

Because I think I asked that question because I think it's important to highlight.

Sometimes you are going to lack community or you are just going to be in transition.

And we're just going to acknowledge we're in transition.

And this looks a little bit different for us as a couple or as an individual.

And I just think, you know, there's something about just moving abroad together.

It's like a make or break.

It will deepen that relationship or the cracks will show and things will fall apart.

And so it sounds like you guys are.

Have found your person.

So that's very exciting.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

Um, okay, I want to ask final question.

For someone who's feeling stuck or they want to move abroad, even just change careers, or, or they just want to break out of their routine, what is something that they could do today to start choosing change?

It's the one thing I recommend to any person who ever comes to me.

If they're either just starting their journey of focusing and choosing themselves or maybe they're a little bit deeper into it, but they've never done it before.

But journaling, my one thing that I know works and I think a lot of people will be like, well, like, I'm not a good writer or I don't have time and valid, like, those are, those are valid.

Those are valid concerns or reasons to not, not want to do it.

But I would say you don't have to be a good writer.

In fact, I think the best type of journaling is messy.

A place for you to just pour your thoughts without worrying about how it Looks, sounds and feels, or grammar.

And then in terms of time, you know, I understand people are busy caretakers, parents, people work in jobs that hold a lot of responsibility.

And what I say to them always is just write one sentence every single day.

That's all.

Write a sentence about how you feel, and that sentence alone will start to become a mirror of your life because it will just reflect back to you, like, what's going on currently, today, how do I feel today?

I feel enthusiastic about what I'm about to do, or I. I'm really frustrated with.

With what's going on at work, or I feel really, like, loved by my partner.

And as we start to write these things every day, you start to get in the rhythm of it, and it kind of starts to have this little, like, pulse to it.

And you're like, okay, I can write two sentences, I can write three sentences, and soon enough it just becomes this habit of yours.

And so journaling is always a recommendation I make.

And the best part about it is it's free.

You know, the only cost is your time.

I think it's.

It's a great investment.

Awesome.

Thank you so much for sharing that tip.

We will be sure to link all of your socials and ways for people to connect with you and your website.

Is there any upcoming projects or events or writing, new writings that you want to share with our audience today?

Yeah, so I am currently working on my fourth book, which is a super exciting part of my journey.

And it's.

It's the book that.

That I feel like I've always wanted to write, but I haven't yet got a chance to write it yet.

So we got some time until that.

But if you're interested in checking out my.

My other writing, I write on the substack, you can just search my name.

Jordan Tarver.

And I'm.

I'm publishing work there every week.

Awesome.

Thank you so much for joining us today, Jordan.

I really appreciate your time.

Yeah, thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

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