You can work US hours from Spain. 

But something usually gives.

By Holly Nilson-Clay
May 21th, 2026

There's a Facebook group for American Expats in Spain that I check sometimes, and a few days ago someone posted asking whether it was realistic to work US hours from Spain with kids. The responses were mixed.

One of the biggest misconceptions about working US hours from Spain is that you somehow get the best of both worlds. US salary + Spanish lifestyle, and in some ways it probably can look like that from the outside.

The boys are growing up in the kind of environment I wanted for them, and personally I feel far more comfortable raising them here than I did in the US. Life feels slower here, more community-oriented, more child-centred. Kids are outside later, families spend more time together and there’s less pressure to structure every hour of the day around productivity.

But choosing where I want to raise my children is one thing - figuring out how to financially sustain that choice is another.

I maintain a separate household in Spain while my husband remains in Los Angeles for work and that changes everything - financially, logistically, and in the way our days actually function.

If we were all living together in the States, the boys would be in school during my working hours. I’d still be working remotely, but evenings would look very different. There would be another parent physically present, extracurricular activities would feel manageable again and homework wouldn’t constantly get pushed aside. I wouldn’t be trying to compress parenting, dinner, client work and emotional bandwidth into the same 4-hour window every night.

Instead, the boys come home from school at exactly the point my workday is mentally beginning. They get off the school bus at 4:30pm, which in Spain is when the day is still very much alive. Families are outside, people are meeting friends in parks and cafés. Especially now the weather is getting warmer and the days are getting longer, the boys constantly want after-school playdates or to swim in the pool. And meanwhile, California is waking up. Slack starts pinging. Emails become urgent. Meetings begin. Deadlines suddenly become same-day problems.

That stretch between about 4:30pm and 8:30pm is easily the most stressful part of my day because I’m trying to exist fully in two places at once. The boys come home needing attention, food, supervision and help, whilst mentally I’m having to switch into work mode.

People talk a lot about the flexibility of remote work, but the reality is that flexibility often just means everything overlaps. Dinner still needs cooking. Kids still need parenting. Except now you’re doing it whilst wearing headphones and half-listening to a Zoom call.

A few days ago, work brought in a mental health mentor to talk to us about stress management and breathing techniques. We were all supposed to sit there doing mindful breathing exercises together on Zoom. At the same time, I was trying to send out a time-sensitive invoice whilst cooking dinner for the boys. So there I am, camera off, trying my best to do the deep breathing whilst refereeing dinner and zone out PBS Kids in the background. It was honestly so absurd I almost laughed.

That’s kind of the problem with this lifestyle sometimes. You become technically present for everything whilst not being fully present for any of it. The boys eat dinner and I’m there, but not really there. Most nights I’m standing at the kitchen counter eating whilst replying to emails or trying to get ahold of folks in California that I've been waiting all day to speak to.

Homework has become one of the casualties of this setup, which bothers me more than I like to admit. Thankfully their school is fairly relaxed about it, because realistically there just aren’t enough hours or enough mental bandwidth left by that point in the day. Reading books before bed has slipped too. The boys love it when I read to them, but most nights I’m rushing bedtime because I need to get back to my laptop.

That’s the part I think people underestimate. Just because something is technically possible doesn’t necessarily mean it’s sustainable long term. Over time, our life has quietly reshaped itself around making this schedule survivable. The boys have given up extracurricular activities, partly because they wanted to, but honestly also because the logistics became overwhelming. I do not miss sitting outside Taekwondo classes in my car with a laptop trying to answer emails before a client call starts, or racing home from fencing practice hoping I’ll make it onto Zoom in time. There was an enormous sense of relief when all of that stopped and that’s uncomfortable to admit as a parent because it forces you to acknowledge how much of your family life has started revolving around your work schedule.

What complicates this further is that hustle culture feels incredibly normal when you’re working for American companies. Constant productivity. Constant optimisation. Constant pressure to build more, earn more, do more. Once you’ve absorbed that mindset, it becomes very difficult to switch off, even when you’re living somewhere that fundamentally operates differently. And Spain does operate differently.

Evenings matter here. 

Social life matters. 

Time outside matters. 

People here just don’t seem to revolve their entire lives around work in the same way. There are ambitious people here obviously, but culturally the rhythm feels completely different. So you end up in this strange in-between space where part of you deeply wants the slower pace of life you moved here for, whilst another part of you is still mentally operating on American time, both literally and psychologically.

The truth is, I actually enjoy the hustle sometimes. I like working. I like building things. I like being somewhat financially independent after years of being financially dependent whilst raising the boys. But I’m also starting to recognise that just because I *can* keep operating this way doesn’t necessarily mean I should. Which is why I'm currently considering downsizing our home and life. Not because life in Spain “doesn’t work,” and not because I regret moving here. Quite the opposite, actually. I still believe this is the right place for the boys. But I’ve realised I need to stop building our lives around what is technically possible and start building around what is actually sustainable.

Because yes, earning US money from Spain is possible. People do it all the time. What’s harder to talk about is what quietly gets sacrificed to make it work.