Author Barry Frangipane Reveals Tips for Living Abroad and Keeping Your Job

TAMPA, FL--(Marketwire - Oct 10, 2011) - You don't have to tell Barry Frangipane that the Internet has made the world a little smaller.

Frangipane, a software engineer and author of "The Venice Experiment" (www.veniceexperiment.com), was used to telecommuting from his home in Tampa Bay, but he didn't realize how far telecommuting could reach until he read "Under the Tuscan Sun," a book about an American who chucked it all to live in Italy.

"The key about 'Under the Tuscan Sun' was that they had a ton of money," said Frangipane, author of a memoir that chronicles his year living in Europe while he telecommuted to his software job in the states. "Anyone could move to a foreign country with a ton of money. We wanted to see if a typical middle-class couple could do it, with a job."

Barry and his wife settled on Venice and devised the following tips on how others could make an American living while living abroad.

• Telecommuting -- The changes over the past 10 years for telecommuters have been subtle, but together they have produced a tipping point making the idea of extreme telecommuting a reality. Advances in the quality of videoconferencing make meetings as effective as they would be in person. I was gone for 13 months, and most of my clients never even knew I had left.
• Housing -- Accept the fact the living quarters are a little smaller, and a little older. American housing, like just about everything else in America, is big compared to the rest of the civilized world. Besides, you'll wind up spending your non-work time seeing sights and exploring.
• Cars -- Choose a place in which travel by car is not necessary. In Venice, everything is connected by the small tributaries and waterways that thread through the city. Most everything you need -- shopping, groceries, business services -- was a brisk walk or gondola ride away.
• Cook -- You could spend a small fortune eating in the tourist trap restaurants, or you could buy fresh groceries every day and live as the locals do, creating your own meals and stopping by the lesser-known eateries frequented by the locals.

About Barry Frangipane

Barry Frangipane has lived in Venice, Italy, Paris, France, and Boulder, Colorado. In addition to being a blogger and author, Barry has been a software engineer for more than 30 years.