🪑 Living far away from aging parents

Welcome to the Freaking Nomads Newsletter, your weekly dose of stories, insights, tools, and opportunities for digital nomads and remote workers building a life without borders.

Hey Freaking Nomads,

Last month my dad mentioned, halfway through a video call, that he'd been to the emergency room.

Two weeks earlier.

He said it the way you'd mention the weather. Slipped on the stairs, hurt his wrist, X-ray, all fine. Then he went straight back to asking if I was eating properly on the other side of the world.

I was sitting in a cafe with my headphones on, nodding like this was a normal update. In my head I was doing the math. How many flights. How many layovers. How long it would have taken me to reach him if it hadn't been "fine."

When I left my London job, my parents were busy, healthy, living their own lives. The distance felt like nothing. A long flight, sure, but nothing that kept me up at night.

Then the years go by. You keep moving. They keep getting older.

I notice it in small things now. He holds the phone way too close to his face. He tells me the story about being a young door-to-door salesperson in the eighties, the one I've heard maybe fifty times, and I let him finish because honestly, I like hearing it. And every "so, you're coming for Christmas, right?" lands a little heavier than it used to.

The guilt is real. I won't pretend it isn't.

But I also don't think the answer is to stop moving. I thought about it that night after the call, if I'm honest. Then I thought about the people I know who live twenty minutes from their parents and still only call on birthdays.

So instead of spiraling, I changed a few practical things.

I stopped squeezing home visits in between destinations. I plan them first now, before anything else goes in the calendar. A proper few weeks, not a jet-lagged weekend where I'm barely functioning at the dinner table.

I asked for the boring stuff. Who their doctor is. Where the important documents are. Which neighbour has a spare key. It felt morbid for about five minutes, and then it just felt like being a grown-up.

And I made my dad promise to tell me things when they happen, not after they're already fixed.

He agreed. I don't fully believe him. But I'll take it.

Is it the same for you? Hit reply and let me know how you keep up with your family.

Luca

Who is hiring this week? Here are some top roles to check out:

Last trip, there were four of us, three different home currencies, and by day two nobody had a clue who'd paid for what.

I'd covered the Airbnb in euros, someone else grabbed groceries in Thai baht, someone else put the day trip on a card that billed in dollars. We tried tracking it in a spreadsheet for about 48 hours before giving up completely.

This time, I'd have just used Peanut Split.

It's one link, no app, no account. Everyone on the trip opens it and adds what they paid, in whatever currency they actually paid it in, and it converts automatically across 156 currencies.

You can split it however it actually happened too, evenly, by percentage, by exact amounts. And at the end, instead of a tangle of who-owes-who, it just hands you a short list: you pay this person, that person pays you, done.

Add an expense with no signal and it sends itself once you're back online.

It's free. No ads, no catch.

Peanut Split is maintained by Squirrel Labs, the team behind Peanut (peanut.me).

🥜 Try it at peanutsplit.com

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