The Runaway Trader Challenge

It’s an idea of magnetically entertain proportions—the financial equivalent of running away to join the circus or exploring the world from the oily decks of a tramp steamer.

Except in this true-life escapade, more and more men and women are cutting themselves free from the treadmill of life to roam the world and enjoy lifestyles like the rich and famous—made possible by new millennium technologies.

The plot is simple: today's dazzling array of computer products and services has enabled millions of ordinary mortals to earn their living with online ventures that can be managed from anywhere in the world where there's an Internet connection.

What that means, of course, is that you can runaway from home on a world-wide adventure with little more than a laptop computer and an ATM card in your rucksack because you can finance your great escape as you go.

The Runaway Premise

Think of it.  I mean, really think of it: You can hole up in a quaint, seaside hut in Manado, Indonesia and be a freelance writer or graphic artist for those clients stuck in some stuffy office back home. When your assignment is completed, email an invoice, download your earnings at the local ATM, and then call it a day and go scuba diving in some pristine bay.

But the proven opportunities don’t end there. For example:

• Savvy members of eBay can snatch up rare antiques on London’s Piccadilly and sell them to buyers from Austria to Zanzibar.  Variations of that scenario play out everyday in more than 33 global markets between eBay’s 157 million registered users.

• Entrepreneurs of every hue and stripe now operate cyber shops with dramatic mobility trading goods and services from anywhere to everywhere on the globe without a trace of bricks or mortar.

• Freelancers of all types – architects and engineers, attorneys and accountants, sales and marketing executives, graphic illustrators, Web designers, and more can sell their services from anywhere. After all, why ghostwrite somebody’s book chained to a 20-lb. desktop in Keokuk, Iowa, when you could be pecking out that copy on a laptop while sipping pina coladas on a sun-drenched beach in Samoa.

• Aggressive stock traders can buy and sell stocks on the major exchanges practically anytime, anywhere on the planet. After e-mail, online trading is the fastest growing consumer use of the Internet. Moreover, new smartphones and handy tablets put traders in digital contact with brokers so now, you don’t even need a laptop to make trades.

I’m one such vagabond who's proving you can travel the world and "earn as you go trading stocks." By way of confession, I’m a self-taught stock trader who for years toiled as a journalist, author and publisher. I’ve written 30 published books, including a few bestsellers. But I’ve given up my career behind the typewriter and taken up adventure travel. And better yet, I pay for my decadence as I travel with online stock trading just to prove that traveling and earning a living online are possible from just about anywhere.

Once you get started earning a living on the road, it’s hard to stop. You can’t come home from one travel adventure without having another one set to launch. And it’s fun and affordable when you can make money as you flit from place to place. If I didn’t have family back in Minnesota, I might runaway and never come back.

As a warm-up, I sharpened my pay-as-you-go stock trading savvy with trips to familiar ports like Las Vegas, Key West, Hawaii, then more exotic locales such as Cuba and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and Dubai.  Then I crisscrossed the United States by car, train, and by plane, racking up at least 15,000 miles and not a few frequent flyer chits.  And I’m not done yet. On the drawing boards are:

• Trekking in the footsteps of Tenzing Norgay to base camp Everest

• Hiking the leafy back roads of the Appalachian Trail

• Pedaling in the ruggedly charming outposts  ing a Kenyan tent safari

• Sailing bareboat in Belize and its endless maze of cays, coves and atolls

• Canoeing the white water of the Tuichi River in Bolivia

And here’s the kicker:  if I can runaway and earn my passage on the go, you can, too!

The Runaway Trader Will Answer the Question: Can you travel the world and pay for your decadence with online entrepreneurship as you go and return home with more money than you started with? That's Manado Indonesia One of Charlie's ports of call →

Running Away is So Easy Nowadays

All you need for your adventure travel around the world is a laptop and an ATM card. (And you could get by without the laptop if you want to spend more time in cyber cafes.) You don’t have to work out of your home or in Dilbert’s office sweatshop. Millions of men and women can take whatever they do for a living on the road with them.

So what are you waiting for? If you’re good at whatever you do, your laptop can be your ticket to revel in ritzy ports of call all over the world. If you’re not, well, you’ll be back in hometown USA with an empty purse but a pile full of memories. And that’s not all bad either. Get moving. Get lost!

“As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.” (Margaret Mead: Coming of Age in Samoa).

Besides, as Aristotle has said, “All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind”

Whatever my fate, you can follow my trading, travels and foibles and get the skinny on all the computer and related gear that will make my world-wide trading mission possible. And, if you like, you can send me your photos that demonstrate it's possible to travel the world and make a living is possible from anywhere on the globe. Whether you’re a day trader, freelancer, online entrepreneur or something in between, I'll publish your stuff and we'll make the whole world a richer place.

Who knows, you might find yourself someday soon, trading away in Margaritaville like Wetherall, or buying and selling exotic goods on eBay from a location so remote not even Jay Peterman can find you.

Ahhh... the wonders of modern technologies. Truly, they can set you free. 

So where’s Charlie? Who knows? Check my blog. The epic journey is now underway!