businessinsider.com -

One year ago, startup CEO Jay Meistrich sold all his belongings, stuffed a 40-liter backpack with bare essentials, and headed out of San Francisco.

Over the next 12 months he traveled to 45 cities, 20 countries, and three Disneylands, all while successfully building and launching his organizational to-do list startup.

In a blog post on Medium, Meistrich writes that his total cost for the entire year was less than what he would have paid just for rent had he remained in San Francisco.

Meistrich is part of a growing community of “digital nomads,” mostly young professionals who take advantage of high speed internet access and around-the-clock work mentality to work from anywhere in the globe.

This community is made up of developers, designers, writers, journalists, engineers, entrepreneurs and others who choose to live a “location independent lifestyle.”

Meistrich and his colleagues argue traveling constantly is not only cheaper since rent and food costs are usually much less expensive in other nations, but it allows them to be more productive than if they were tied to a single office in an expensive American city like New York or San Francisco.