😅 I almost lost $2k planning with AI

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,

A while back, I did what a lot of us have started doing (even the ones who'd never admit it).

I asked an AI to plan a month for me.

I gave it a city, a rough budget, the dates I was flexible around. It came back with coliving space options, a few laptop-friendly cafés, and a list of things to do in my spare time.

I was almost sold. I'd lined up the flights and set aside about $2k for the whole trip, ready to book.

Then I checked. The area it put me in was wall-to-wall tourists, not a fit for a nomad at all. The wifi was terrible because half the neighbourhood was fighting over the same network. And it promised a nomad community that, as far as I could tell, didn't exist.

It had given me something fluent, confident, and completely off. Which, when you're moving your life somewhere for a month, can cost you a lot of time and money!

So I started building my own. Just for me, the control freak that I am.

I pointed it at the one source I already trusted: our own data on Freaking Nomads. The stuff we've personally gathered, checked, and lived on ourselves.

It began as a small thing on the side, and then it turned into an AI trip planner, specifically made for digital nomads. I now plan basically everything with it. Real moves, too. Kenya, Tanzania, Oman, Greece, some of which you followed along with in these emails.

I tell it where I'm thinking of going (sometimes not even that), what I can spend, how I like to work, and it builds an itinerary around that. Real stays. Real flights, priced across 500+ airlines. Flexible dates and based on my budget, because that's how most of us actually travel.

And because it runs on my own preferences, the more I use it, the more it learns about me. So I stopped having to explain myself over and over to a machine.

Even when I'm already on the ground, I can go back to my itinerary and keep asking for personalised recommendations.

I'm honestly super proud of this one. It started as a thing I made for myself, and after a year of leaning on it for every move, it feels wrong to keep it to myself. So I'm not going to.

The AI trip planner is now yours too, as part of our Pro subscription. Go try it, break it, and reply to this email if there's something you'd like to see or change.

And if you're someone who likes traditional research, who enjoys the eleven-tab rabbit hole, don't worry. The normal search is exactly where it's always been. This is just there for the days you'd rather not.

Happy planning!
Luca

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

Freaking Nomads Pro can plan your whole month, price your flights, and tell you which visa fits your passport. The one thing it still can't do is stop me from pointing at menus like a toddler in a foreign country because I don’t speak the local language.

For that, I’m personally using Preply this year.

Doesn’t matter that I change cities constantly (anything in-person would fall apart by week two). I now have an online tutor for my Spanish classes, who doesn't care that I am in China on Monday and Peru on Friday. They just show up wherever you do, and can work around my ever-changing timezone.

So if you want to level up as a traveler, ya sabes 👉 Preply

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We'll see you there, Freaking Nomads 👋