What’s In a Name?
Hobo is short hand for someone who’s homeward bound. A digital nomad is someone who makes money online and travels year round to places where money goes further.
Digital nomadism solved a lot of unique problems created by Western economies and culture, and as the next generation come onto the scene these same challenges have evolved drastically.
Being a digital nomad used to be about getting ahead; earning dollars and spending pesos. The majority of us leveraged geoabritrage to move mountains and reach our peak potential with very little.
Today, people choose to become nomadic for a host of new reasons –economic migrants, nomad travel, van life, passport bros looking for love untainted by 4th-wave feminism nonsense, tiny house life, anyone working remotely, and the freedom focused all have something in common –we all gotta’ eat.
Been there, done all that. Still doing that. It’s baked into this cake.
Hello.
I’m Michael Hulleman, the guy behind Hobo with a Laptop and I’ve mastered the art of nomad travel over 20+ years. My pronouns are “cope” and “seethe”.
During the pandemic I settled in the Philippines and started a family –I am the proud single father of two sons, and have since regained the itch to continue exploring.
I started as a ‘passport bro’ looking for a wife before the term was a thing, and later progressed to ‘digital nomad’ with a killer passive income.
Today, I think ‘hobo with a laptop’ suits me best.
This blog is about where I go, what inspires me, and explains in detail the numerous ways how I consistently make money online that’s required to foot the bill on a travel-intensive lifestyle, month after month, 20 years and counting.
Click here to engineer your own location independence.
At the bottom of everything, Hobo with a Laptop is about helping people like you make money online while you live wherever, and however, you want to. I help people earn life-building income online as they leave home for whatever reason that motivates them. I’m usually your first few important steps, and happy to be as much.
Hobo with a Laptop has been around since 2012, but things really started, in earnest, in February 2017. It blew up on the scene with credibility-boosting endorsements by greats like Mark Manson and Expert Vagabond in its very busy first quarter of 2017.
After unlocking success relatively quickly, Hobo with a Laptop went on a hiatus in February 2019 –that’s only two years of work, and the site has passively floated in and out of six figures in the time since I took a step back.
In July 2024, I rebooted the brand to celebrate 10 years.
You’re looking at the new wave of Hobo with a Laptop. And as a fun fact for my liberal tree-hugging virtue-signalling friends and foes
–I made my site darkmode and it’s helping to offset my carbon; less power required from the millions of screens that view my website (I’m saving you battery life, too).
But I didn’t do it for the carbon, because carbon dioxide is plant food. I did it because it just looks so damn cool. Zero Cool, even.
Now get off my lawn. █
.
This blog is about where I go, what inspires me, and explains in detail the numerous ways how I consistently make money online that’s required to foot the bill on a travel-intensive lifestyle, month after month, 20 years and counting.
Click here to engineer your own location independence.
At the bottom of everything, Hobo with a Laptop is about helping people like you make money online while you live wherever, and however, you want to. I help people earn life-building income online as they leave home for whatever reason that motivates them. I’m usually your first few important steps, and happy to be as much.
Hobo with a Laptop has been around since 2012, but things really started, in earnest, in February 2017. It blew up on the scene with credibility-boosting endorsements by greats like Mark Manson and Expert Vagabond in its very busy first quarter of 2017.
After unlocking success relatively quickly, Hobo with a Laptop went on a hiatus in February 2019 –that’s only two years of work, and the site has passively floated in and out of six figures in the time since I took a step back.
In July 2024, I rebooted the brand to celebrate 10 years.
You’re looking at the new wave of Hobo with a Laptop. And as a fun fact for my liberal tree-hugging virtue-signalling friends and foes –I made my site darkmode and it’s helping to offset my carbon; less power required from the millions of screens that view my website (I’m saving you battery life, too).
But I didn’t do it for the carbon, because carbon dioxide is plant food. I did it because it just looks so damn cool. Zero Cool, even.
Now get off my lawn. █
Meet The Team
Who’s Mike?
Mike is Hobo with a Laptop and he’s been a Canadian digital nomad since the year 2000, long before the term was coined.
He started in Western Canada at 18 and wrapped 2012 in Eastern Canada before moving to the tropics. He’s now lived in Asia for over a decade.
Before that, Mike wrapped up his Toronto-based career as an enterprise ecommerce professional who worked with Fortune 500 brands and a team of 20+ skilled developers.
In his early twenties he was art director for the Burlington Jazz & Blues Festival, a freelance web designer, ecommerce consultant, and trained sales professionals in the tech industry.
Since he went abroad in 2012, he’s moonlighted as a film extra, become a best-selling author, professional copywriter, comedian, and occasionally helps brands tackle their digital marketing.
Who’s Jazz?
Jazz is our voice to Tagalog audiences, she manages Hobo with a Laptop’s social media accounts on Pinterest, Instagram, and Tik Tok.
After acquiring a bachelor’s degree in Finance, Jazz took the corporate life out for a spin for a few days before figuring out there was more to life than a buck fifty per hour and zero job security in the Philippines.
Surrounded by over 7,000+ islands, living in the Philippines was torture if she wasn’t able to explore them.
Travel seemed like a luxury only foreigners could afford and she was determined to overcome the financial barriers that held her back from nomad travel on her own steam.
Today, she works with Hobo with a Laptop to afford her lifestyle; working as a freelance copywriter, translator, virtual assistant, and social media designer.
Who’s Kris?
Kristine helps Hobo with a Laptop reach Tagalog audiences by translating our blog articles and appearing in our social media.
The pandemic revealed that Filipinos are eager to embrace the laptop lifestyle, and she works hard to port our knowledge to a wider audience of 114 million.
The Philippines is a very internet-savvy country, and it’s the backbone of Silicon Valley companies like Meta, Amazon, Google, and PayPal. The entrepreneurial spirit of the Filipino is a perfect fit to adapt passive income strategies into their daily life and Kristine aims to help.
With a background in advertising sales, her sharp wit eliminates Mike’s long-winded bloviations into clear and concise informative articles for a Filipino audience.
Who’s Mike?
Mike is Hobo with a Laptop and he’s been a Canadian digital nomad since the year 2000, long before the term was coined.
He started in Western Canada at 18 and wrapped 2012 in Eastern Canada before moving to the tropics. He’s now lived in Asia for over a decade.
Before that, Mike wrapped up his Toronto-based career as an enterprise ecommerce professional who worked with Fortune 500 brands and a team of 20+ skilled developers.
In his early twenties he was art director for the Burlington Jazz & Blues Festival, a freelance web designer, ecommerce consultant, and trained sales professionals in the tech industry.
Since he went abroad in 2012, he’s moonlighted as a film extra, become a best-selling author, professional copywriter, comedian, and occasionally helps brands tackle their digital marketing.
Who’s Jazz?
Jazz is our voice to Tagalog audiences, she manages the Hobo with a Laptop Pinterest account, and she writes about her unique experience as a Filipina living the digital nomad lifestyle.
After acquiring a bachelor’s degree in Finance, Jazz took the corporate life out for a spin for a few days before figuring out there was more to life than a buck fifty per hour and zero job security in the Philippines.
Surrounded by over 7,000+ islands, living in the Philippines was torture if she wasn’t able to explore them.
Travel seemed like a luxury only foreigners could afford and she was determined to overcome the financial barriers that held her back from nomad travel on her own steam.
Today, she works with Hobo with a Laptop to afford her lifestyle; working as a freelance copywriter, virtual assistant, and social media designer.
Who’s Kris?
Kristine helps Hobo with a Laptop reach Tagalog audiences by translating our articles. The pandemic revealed that Filipinos are eager to embrace the laptop lifestyle, and she works hard to port our knowledge to a wider audience of 114 million.
The Philippines is a very internet-savvy country, and it’s the backbone of Silicon Valley companies like Meta, Amazon, Google, and PayPal. The entrepreneurial spirit of the Filipino is a perfect fit to adapt passive income strategies into their daily life and Kristine aims to help.
With a background in advertising sales, her sharp wit eliminates Mike’s long-winded bloviations into clear and concise informative articles for a Filipino audience.