Can’t Afford to Travel? Nomadic Matt Says You’re (Probably) Wrong

Mindy:
Welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast where we interview Matt Kepnes and talk about travel hacking and living a nomadic lifestyle. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always is my sedentary co-host Scott Trench.

Scott:
Ouch. Mindy with the hostile introduction today.

Mindy:
Sedentary in that you have a baby and traveling with a baby is not as much fun as not traveling with a baby. She won’t be a baby forever. Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else. To introduce you to every money story because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you’re starting.

Scott:
Whether you want to retire early and travel the world or not, wait until you retired early and travel the world anyways, go on to make big time investments in assets like real estate or start your own business, we’ll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards your dreams.

Mindy:
Scott, I am super excited to be here and I am super excited about our new segment, which is called The Money Moment. This is where we share a money hack, tip or trick to help you on your money journey. Today’s money moment is get rid of your cable package. I know many companies try to use this as a bundle your internet to make it cheaper, but many streaming services actually cost less and have live TV built in. Crunch the numbers and see if you come out ahead by separating out your services. Do you have a money moment for us? Email [email protected].
All right, Scott, today’s show we’re talking about travel and travel hacking, and I have a personal question for you. Where is the most favorite place you’ve ever been?

Scott:
I’ll give you three quick ones. One is Maui. As I mentioned on there, if you go between January and March, the whales breed from the Arctic. They come down there to breed and it’s pretty amazing to see a whale jumping every couple of seconds basically off the coastline. It’s a wonderful experience. Ireland was absolutely fantastic. There’s a lot of just really fun culture and stuff going on there. I really love the Irish sports as well, like the Gaelic football and hurling, and it’s kind of just got a unique experience and beautiful country. And then the last one I’ll say is when I graduated college, I did a Euro trip similar to a shortened version of what Matt is really known for, our guest today, and that was a unique lifetime experience.

Mindy:
That sounds awesome. And yeah, I’ve been to Hawaii in January. My anniversary is in January, so I’ve been to Hawaii several times in January. And yeah, you just sit there on the beach and all of a sudden you’re like, oh, look, a whale, oh, look, a whale, oh, look, a whale. They’re just jumping all the time. It’s a really cool experience.

Scott:
What’s your favorite place?

Mindy:
My favorite place that I’ve ever traveled was Greece. I went there in I think 2018 and it was incredibly inexpensive. For some reason I thought a place that beautiful was going to be super expensive, like Hawaii can be super expensive, but is also so amazingly beautiful that you kind of get over the fact that it’s so expensive. Greece was overwhelmingly beautiful, and then you’re like, wait, how much is it? That’s it? It’s not more? And the whole time I was there, I was shocked at how beautiful it was and how inexpensive it was all at the same time. The architecture. This sounds so stupid to say, but it’s so old that everything is so … Europe is just different than America. America’s like 200 years old and Europe’s like two million years old or whatever. So everything’s just different and I love looking at all of that architecture and stuff. Kind of a real estate nerd, Scott. I don’t know if you know that.

Scott:
You really enjoy those Spartan lifestyle travels.

Mindy:
Matt Kepnes runs the award-winning travel site nomadicmatt.com, which helps people travel the world on a budget. He’s the author of the New York Times bestseller, How to Travel the World on $50 a Day and the travel memoir, 10 Years a Nomad. His writings and advice have been featured in the New York Times, CNN, the Guardian, Budget Travel, BBC, Time, and countless other publications. Matt Kepnes, welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast. I’m so excited to talk to you today.

Matt:
Thanks for having me.

Mindy:
Let’s start off with a little bit about your background and how you started nomadicmatt.com.

Matt:
Well, I had just come back from 18 months traveling the world. I was 26, 27 at the time, somewhere like that, 2008, and I was working a temp job in healthcare. Basically, the assistant had gone on maternity leave and I was just there to fill space and redirect phone calls and not break anything. So it was very clear I was to do no work. So I had a lot of free time on my hands and just really wanted to get back on the road. So I created the website as a way to, it’d be an online resume. Like come hire me, here’s where I’ve been featured online, here’s my bylines. There’s a blog component because I’ve been blogging before, so I show people I could write. Really just designed as personal blog/online resume website. Everyone has a website, right? Really that was it. No bigger vision than that.

Mindy:
And what were you hoping they would hire you for?

Matt:
I wanted to do freelance writing, write guidebooks, that whole jam. So worked for Lonely Planet, Frommer’s, all the big companies or maybe CNN Travel. Freelance write somewhere. So yeah, I started pitching myself. I worked at a lot of online publications, 50 bucks, a hundred bucks back then, just trying to build my chops, went to conferences and then just kept blogging on the side. But I had the fortune to be there at the right time. 2008, blogging started to take off. There wasn’t a lot of travel blogs. You had make money online blogs, you had finance blogs, you had blog her, lots of fashion, the mommy blogging craze. So there was a lot of things going on at that time and so I went to all these networking events and that helped because I was there at the right time. So by 2010, 2011, the blog had taken off enough where I could just work on it full-time.

Scott:
It feels like YouTube and TikTok today as the corollary. Blogging was like that environment is for a lot of these folks that are creating content in that space.

Matt:
Yeah. I would say it’s a little different. Now it’s so accepted. Kids are like, “I want to be a TikTok star.” Right. Back then if I was like, “I want to be a blogger,” people like, “What the … is a blogger?”

Scott:
Back then when you got started, where did you find the opportunities for cost-effective travel and this nomadic lifestyle in the first place? Were there more of them? Was it different than it is today?

Matt:
I was a backpacker, so I was just staying in hostels and doing all the backpacker things of cheap travel. Inexpensive meals, dorm rooms, local buses. I mean just backpacking around. So that’s how I kept my costs down. Back then, you’d make money either through Google Ads or selling links. You’d come in and be like, “Hey, if you put my link in the sidebar for 500 bucks, I’ll give you 500 bucks.” And you’d say, okay. Because Google was so unsophisticated back then that you could basically spam websites with links and still rank high. So between those two and just selling eBooks on travel, I was making five to $8,000 a month. I had a plethora of websites. So that was enough to keep me traveling while also reinvesting in the website and hiring designers and stuff.

Mindy:
How do you get started in travel hacking? I think there’s this idea that people want to do it, but they don’t know where to start.

Matt:
You’ve got to get a credit card. I mean, that’s what the simple thing is. The credit card is the vehicle that washes your spending, if you want to look at it that way. You spend money and you turn it into points on your credit card. And you have to pay your bill off every month. Travel credit cards come with a much higher interest rate than your average credit card. So if you’re not paying your bill off every month, the points you’re gaining, you’re just losing to interest. And so you definitely have to be able to pay your bill off completely, but you need a credit card. Without a credit card, there’s no way to travel hack.

Mindy:
What are some of the best apps and websites that you recommend travelers look to snag a good deal?

Matt:
Well, it depends. Deals are forever changing. For example, for flights, there’s never one good website. There’s never actually one good website for anything, because a good deal on one website is a bad deal a month from now. But some places I really love for flights, it’s called Skyscanner. Scott’s Cheap Flights, which is now called Going, has a great email where they send out last minute flight deals or just fare mistakes. So there might be a cheap fare to Japan in August for 200 bucks. So that’s a great website for flights. Skyscanner is another good website for flights.
For hotels, Google is actually really good because if you type into Google hotels and whatever, they’ll show you hotels, let’s say in New York City and whatever date you want. And they pull in all the data from all booking websites, and so you can see which one’s offering the cheapest rate that day and just book there rather than go to Booking.com and then Hotels.com and then Trivago. You just have it all in one place. That said, generally speaking, I find better deals on Booking.com and then when you’re in Asia, Agoda. It just has better inventory. A-G-O-D-A. For activities, that is a very fractured booking environment, but Get Your Guide is pretty good in terms of just seeing a lot of activities around the world. They’re basically like an Expedia, they’re a reseller, so it’s not as cheap as just booking direct, but it basically puts it all in one place for you.

Scott:
Matt, I’m trying to recreate this awesome lifestyle that you have blogged about and lived for the last many years, and it just seems like an exciting, awesome way to spend years or a decade of my life. Where do I start? What is the first thing I should be doing? What’s a practical set of how-tos to get going down this path to beginning my nomadic series of adventures?

Matt:
Yeah, I think the first thing I always tell people to do is to really just get a handle on your spending and savings. Most people really don’t know what’s going in and what’s going out. So when they sit down to say, okay, I want to take six months off, I want to take a year off, or maybe they just want to take a month off, whatever. They say, “Oh, I can’t travel. I can’t save. The bills are too much.” And I always ask them, it’s like, “Okay, well where does the money go?” And most people, they’ll be like, “Well, I have the mortgage. I have this bill, that bill.” Then it’s like, “Okay, but what do you spend every day?” Because there’s really two costs you have in your life. You have your fixed costs like your mortgage and your car insurance or health insurance, whatever those costs are. And then you have all the fun costs. Going to the movies, stopping to get a drink with a friend, even buying a bottle of water on the street because you’re thirsty. So I always tell people to track their spending for a month because you’ll always be surprised.
I mean, buying a movie on Amazon. You don’t really think about that as an expense, but if you’re trying to stay for a long-term trip, every dollar is going to count. So for me, my advice is always start with getting a handle on your finances, where everything’s coming in and going out. So that you can see, okay, what could I really cut, what is absolute I can’t cut it, and what is the discretionary money. And then once you do that, you can start seeing these phantom expenses such as the things you’re never thinking of. That movie you rented from Amazon, the bottle of water you bought on the way home because you were thirsty. All those little things, they do add up, but they’re unconscious spending that we’re not really thinking of. So tip number one is always get a handle on your finances.

Scott:
Awesome. If I have a handle on my finances, what should I be expecting? That’s my history, that’s my current situation. Maybe I work a job here in Denver, Colorado. Rent, all that kind of stuff. When I am on this nomadic journey, what should I be expecting from an expense load?

Matt:
So then you have my book, How to Travel the World on $50 a Day. Pre covid, so maybe let’s call it 70 post inflation. But the idea here is just about traveling like you live. Day to day, you don’t spend ideally a ton of money. You go to work, you spend stuff on food, you take the bus, the train, you go grocery shopping. You’re not out all the time just eating out, taking Ubers. You’re not just blowing through money the way people tend to think about vacation. When you go on vacation, it’s all about just like I am just going out. Fancy dinners and tours and nice hotels. But when you’re traveling, you must keep those costs lower. So you can’t always stay in five star hotels. You can’t go for expensive meals all the time. You can’t take tours and taxis and Ubers, stay in resorts.
You kind of have to travel like you live. Going to the grocery store, taking the bus, staying at cheaper guest houses, looking up free activities, free attractions. Just being a little more conscious of your spending. And so after you’ve figured out, okay, if I really cut my spending, I could save maximum $3,000 a month. Okay. So from that number, you can then work from, I want to go away for a year. It’s going to cost me $25,000 to do this year long trip. And so then you just kind of work back as to how many months it will take you to spend. And what’s great about living in this day and age is when I went to traveling back in started in 2006, I started planning in 2004. So I saved for a couple of years to do this, but back then there was no information online.
How much did things cost? Everything was a rough estimate. I mean, I had to cut my trip short in Australia because when I planned my trip, it was one USD got to $1.30 Australia. By the time I got there, it was one-to-one, which meant my purchasing power was down 30%. And so it totally screwed up my entire budget. Whereas nowadays, I mean you can’t do much about exchange rates and all. Who knows what the exchange rate is going to be in a year. But I had based that money I needed for Australia just on a rough estimate of what little I could find in a guidebook that was written two years ago. Whereas today, there’s so much information online, pretty accurately, how much that trip is going to cost you. So it’s very easy to work from where you are now to where you need to be.

Mindy:
So I want to rewind a minute. You just said you’re not going to be spending when you’re traveling like you’re spending when you’re on vacation. And I don’t know if this is like, well of course, no kidding comment in the traveling and the travel hacking space, but that was really kind of eyeopening for me when you said that. I was like, oh. Yeah, you’re not on vacation for six months. You’re just living in a different location for six months. I think that’s really important to highlight. I love that comment.

Matt:
You have to make this very limited amount of money last, right? And so when you know you’re going away for two weeks, it’s you’re only vacation for six months and you’re going to have money coming in, you’re more likely to spend it. But when there’s no job, if you quit your job to travel, you are making different financial decisions because that money has to last. If you run out of money, you have to come home. And so what you’re going to do overseas is going to be really different.

Mindy:
And how does geographic arbitrage affect your traveling decisions and your financial decisions? Let me see. I want to ask you 17 questions all in one question, but if you’re traveling and using your Australia example, you were in Australia and then the exchange rate changed. Do you make long-term plans, oh, I’m going to go here and here and here and here and here, or do you make shorter term plans and then just pivot based on what’s going on in the world?

Matt:
When everyone plans a trip, they create long-term plans. They’re like, I’m going to do this and that and this and that and that, this and that. The longer you go away, the more you end up just throwing your plans away. I mean, my entire original route was very different than what it ended up to be. I ended up living in Thailand for about seven months. That was not part of my plan. I originally planned to go to Australia and Fiji. I ended up skipping them and going home. I changed my route in Australia, changed my route in Europe. The longer you’re away, the less you start thinking about a month or two months from now, the more you just start thinking about a week or two from now. And so once you start shrinking that planning, you’re a little bit more versatile if things cost shift or you overspend somewhere, you have to make it up. So let’s say you went to Europe and you just kind of blew through your budget, so maybe you’ll stay now longer in Southeast Asia before you go somewhere else to stay in the cheaper countries just to make that difference up.

Scott:
Sounds like planning is everything, but plans are useless when you’re living this nomadic life. You plan for two years, but then you throw out the window and you’re pretty opportunistic about it as things come up and reactive to the way things change. Is that right? Is that how someone becomes more efficient economically while they’re traveling here? Is it about planning to go to these cheaper places or are there strategies? Is there a fundamental set of principles that you’re applying on this journey to make the absolute most out of the experience as economically as possible?

Matt:
Right. Yeah. I tell people to basically just keep a daily log of their expenses. The people that go home early don’t keep track of their money and they don’t know themselves too. If you are going to Australia and it’s been your dream to do all these activities, go bungee jumping, dive the Great Barrier Reef and do wine tours, et cetera, et cetera, and you get there and you just spend all this money and you’re like, “Oh, I ran out of money. I didn’t really budget for as many activities.” Well, that’s where people go wrong because they should have over budgeted, not under budgeted. You go online and it says, oh, you’ll spend an average of whatever. So you write down that average in your budget, never realizing, well, you’re not going to be the average. You want more than that because it’s your bucket list thing.
And secondly, people just don’t write down what they’re spending. So again, going back to that think before you go, knowing your expenses is how you can really manage this pot of gold that you have. And so if you’re just going out and you’re just spending money, buy your hostels, you buy your drinks, whatever, you might be doing it on the cheap, but are you doing within a budget? So I love it when I’m in hostels and I see people with receipts keeping track of their expenses because those are the people who are going to make it to the end. It’s the people who are just blowing through their money left and right, partying, doing activities that are always the ones that go home first.

Mindy:
That seems true in most scenarios. What are some of the best countries to stay in that’ll help you stay in your budget?

Matt:
Southeast Asia is a great affordable region of the world. Eastern Europe, Central America, Taiwan. South Korea is really affordable. South Africa is actually really affordable too as long as you’re doing a ton of safaris. So there’s a lot of regions around the world that are very much affordable, cheap destinations for the tourists on the US dollar. So you have this pick of your litter so to speak. And right now the US dollar is pretty strong, so even if you were to go to Japan, it’s way more affordable than it used to be because you’re getting 140 yen to the dollar. So it’s a very good exchange rate.

Scott:
And so what am I looking for when I’m traveling here? Am I looking for hostels? Am I looking for Airbnbs? Am I looking for hotels? Is it a similar opportunistic kind of plan or are there different regions where you’re looking for different types of accommodations because you know that’s the affordable and great experience?

Matt:
Hostels are really the key to a lot of affordable travel. Airbnb Rooms is also great because you get to stay with somebody in their guest room, so it’s more affordable than just getting your own place completely. And it really depends on where you are in the world. You can do home stays, you can do couch surfing, which is staying with locals. There’s a lot of similar services. There’s one for bikers called Warm Showers. There’s a thing called Camp Space. So if you have a bunch of camping gear, you can set it up in people’s yards. In Europe, you can stay in monasteries. In Australia and New Zealand, there’s a lot of farm stays. And so it’s very unique to different parts of the world. So there’s one great thing about the information overload age we live in right now is you can find that information pretty easily online.

Mindy:
I don’t know what you look like in real life, Matt, but I know what Scott looks like in real life. He’s a pretty big guy and he played rugby for a lot of years. If somebody wanted to take him on, they’d get a good fight. I’m not that big and I have always felt like staying in a hostel would be a little bit scary just in a big room with a bunch of other people, gender unspecific, right? There’s not women’s rooms and men’s rooms. It’s just one big room and whoever’s sleeping there is sleeping there. So how do you keep yourself safe in a situation like this?

Matt:
Hostels are relatively safe. I am only 5’7″. I never played rugby. Hostels are just young travelers looking to have fun. That’s not to say nothing bad ever happens. Alcohol gets involved. Egos get involved. I mean, I’ve met creepy people in hostels. Meet creepy people in real life. But generally hostels are very safe because there’s always people awake coming and going. Most of the issues I’ve heard about or seen really revolve around somebody stealing something. Grabbing something. Somebody leaves their phone out, somebody grabs a phone on their way out. And so that’s why hostels have lockers. It’s bring your own lock kind of thing. Because you’re in a huge room and you have 30 strangers. Who’s to say one doesn’t like stealing stuff? But that said, physical violence is a real rarity in the hostel scene.

Scott:
There’s also the guy that will exchange your $100 of American currency for worthless Belarusian currency when you’re visiting the Czech Republic.

Matt:
One of those people.

Scott:
Maybe there is a difference here in terms of how you feel about it as a man, or particularly me being a larger than average man, for example, and staying in these locations that we should acknowledge to some degree in terms of some comfort, even though to your point, there’s a lot of safety. But I also want to piggyback on this and ask pointedly, is this a young person’s game here? In these hostels, you talked about young people having a good time. Is this something that I’m going to have a lot? Am I going to have to adopt a different strategy if I’m in my 30s or 40s and wanting to do this either alone or with a partner than somebody who’s in their early 20s, in a practical sense?

Matt:
You see people of all ages in hostels. I mean, granted, when you’re 42, you don’t really want to sleep in a dorm, so you don’t see as many older people sleeping in dorms. But that hostel experience is good for all ages. I mean, I’ve seen seven year olds in hostels. And when you ask why, they’re just like, because it’s fun. You get to meet other travelers or you stay in a hotel, interact with nobody. And then there are hostels that are clearly party hostels, and then there’s family hostels and ones that cater to school trips and older travelers and more ET hostels. So it really runs the gamut These days. People think of hostels, especially in the states. Younger people less so because there’s more exposure to newer hostels, but older millennials. Plus we think of hostels like we see in the movies. These danky, 100 gross beds in a dorm and everyone’s loud and it’s just gross and nothing’s clean, and that really doesn’t exist that much anymore because hostels have really improved themselves in the last 10 years as the younger clientele has become more demanding and has just better expectations of amenities.
But you can really find hostels for all ages and all travel types if he just don’t want to stay at a party hostel. But most hostels label themselves as party hostels these days.

Mindy:
Okay, so let’s switch gears here and talk about activities to do when you’re traveling. You mentioned that you should always be on the lookout for inexpensive or free activities. What are some of the things you’ve done while you’re traveling that you can’t get in America?

Matt:
I think you get everything in America, but I will say that free walking tours, every major city in the world has a free walking tour, and that’s a great way to get your bearings on where you are and the history of the place and be like, okay, this is where this thing is, and that thing is. And actually talk to somebody who lives there and be like, “Okay, what do you do for fun? Where should I go for fun? Where do you eat? What’s a non touristy place to go? Something a little bit more unique.” So I love free walking tours. I love going into the local tourism board and asking them basically what’s cool to do that’s inexpensive because the people that work there, they’ve lived their whole life, or at least a long time, and so they’re going to know, oh, if you really want cheap produce, this store is where to go.
If you want free activities, go to this park. There’s always some festival or weekend activity going on. This museum is free on Thursdays. You can do free comedy in X, Y, Z. And so tourism boards I think are a really underutilized source of information because you have … If travel is replicating your day-to-day life in terms of costs, these are people who live in this place and are doing that, right? They know, oh, if you want pre-made meals, go to this grocery store after eight. They’re 50% off. Same thing, you know the budget hacks at the place you live because you live there. They have the same kind of tips.

Scott:
Again, I never traveled like you, Matt. I did six to eight weeks in Europe with two of my buddies after college and did a lot of the things you’re talking about here. But what we did was we flew a lot of places. We didn’t take the buses and trains. We stayed in hostels of course, and partied and sightsaw every single day for a while, and by the end of it, I was ready to go home. Kind of out of money, but mostly I was burned out of traveling. I was exhausted. It was just way too much from a sustainability point of view. How do you recommend folks that are looking for this traveling lifestyle … How did you sustain it for a long period of time, not just financially, but mentally and avoid burnout?

Matt:
I just gave a talk on burnout recently. Everyone burns out. You think of this life as nonstop adventure. You’re going to do all these great things. But you never see the missing the bus, the waiting for the delayed train, the stuck in the airport, the guy that screws you over for money, having to find an ATM, packing up, unpacking, meeting new friends. Every day you’re reinventing your life. You go through life with mental shortcuts. Otherwise, it’s impossible to go through life. It’s like why do you always buy the same things? Because you don’t want to think about it, right? Steve Jobs famously wore the same outfit every day, so he didn’t have to make that one decision because every decision you make is just mentally taxing. Kind of like why when you’re driving, half your brain is driving and the other half isn’t. Because you’ve created all these mental shortcuts. So if you’re driving on the same road every day, you don’t really need to think about it. Just your body goes on autopilot. But there’s no autopilot on the road because everywhere you go is new. So you have to figure out every day, okay, how do I get from point A to point B? How do I navigate this metro system? How do I know if this person is trying to screw me over on a Belarusian currency?
How do I make friends? How do I know this restaurant isn’t going to give me food poisoning? So eventually your mind just kind of is like, I don’t want to do this anymore. So I always just tell people, stop. Take a break. Stay in one place for a little bit. Get to know it and recharge your battery. Just sit around and watch Netflix for a week. Who cares? You have all the time in the world. You have a limited amount of money and a lot of time, so just wait it out. Travel is a battery that needs to be recharged. That’s what I always tell people. It’s not this unlimited wellspring of energy.
You eventually will get burnt out and tired and you’ll just be like, I don’t want to see another temple. I don’t want to go to another church. I don’t want to see another art museum. I just want to stay in one place and do laundry. And so just stay in one place for a couple of weeks. And everyone I know who travels really long term, the longer they’re on the road, the more time they spend in one destination before they move on. Because they just don’t want to pack and unpack their bag every other day. It’s just tiring.
And so yeah, just stop. I always tell people, just stop. If you like where you are, just stay there for a week, maybe two weeks. You can always move on. You can always go back somewhere else. If you try to push through, you’re just going to hate everywhere and you’re just going to increase your burnout, and then you’re just going to go home, which is what I did when I first went away, and then you’re going to be like, why the hell did I come home? I should have just stayed in one place, recharge my battery and kept going. Because then you’re home and you’re like, this is not where I want to be.

Scott:
Matt, thank you so much for sharing all these wonderful tips. It’s just awesome to get a viewpoint into your life with the thousands of nights that you’ve stayed in these hostels, the probably countless incredible memories that you’ve created here and really, really awesome lifestyle for folks to explore here. And it doesn’t sound like it’s going to break the bank. This is something that if you want to work for it and prioritize is within the reach of most people, probably in their 20s most likely, but for everyone really to go and explore and maybe choose to do for a couple months or a couple of years potentially.

Matt:
Yeah. As long as you can save for it. It took me three years to stay for my trip. There’s no time limit it. If it takes you five years, there you go. That’s something to look forward to. A lot of people are, “Oh, I can’t afford to travel.” Okay, well, you can’t afford to travel now. But a little bit of money every day will eventually add up to enough.

Mindy:
Awesome, Matt. Well thank you so much for your time today and we’ll talk to you soon.

Matt:
Yep. Thanks for having me.

Mindy:
All right, that was Matt Kepnes. That was a fun look at Nomadic Travel and also a really interesting look at some travel hacking. Scott, what did you think?

Scott:
I think it’s just awesome to meet folks like Matt that have just a completely different way of going about life and completely different set of life experiences. I mean, good for him. He created an incredible lifestyle, made countless memories and different types of things, really kind of mastered this, I think, aspiration that a lot of folks have for traveling and seeing the world and made a profession out of it and has helped a lot of people, I think recreate it. And it’s not an out of reach goal. There is a tradeoff. You’re not going to be able to do certain types of careers if you’re pursuing this, you’re not going to be able to make certain types of investments as easily. But again, we’ve read that book, Die With Zero. The memories you make from a trip like this for a year or two, there’s something potentially to retire on right there.

Mindy:
I got a couple of really interesting tips from him. First was the travel cards having higher interest rates, and if you don’t pay off your balance every month, it’s really not worth it to do the credit card travel hacking points thing. I do pay off my credit cards every month, but I didn’t realize that they came with higher interest rates. I think that’s a really important takeaway. And also the comment about vacation versus traveling. You’re not on vacation, you’re just living in a different place, so you’re not doing all of these extravagant things, and I think that that can help reframe how much this is going to cost you to do. And there are less expensive places to be. Greece. I could go live in Greece for way less than I’m living right now. My friend Linda lives in Portugal and she lives there for far less than she could if she lived in America. There’s lots of places that you can live for less. I mean, you might even be able to be FI now if you lived in a lower cost of living area. And then if you live in Portugal, you just zip on over to Spain for the weekend or you zip on over to France for the weekend and have a slightly more expensive weekend while still completely living in a totally inexpensive place and having the time of your life. Everybody should be Linda.

Scott:
It’s kind of funny. We just talked about these awesome world travels and I would love to see more of the world and I will. I plan to with it. But often when I go on these travels or think about these trips, even my awesome Ireland trip a couple of years ago right before Covid, I come back and I’m like, oh, the mountains here in Colorado. Pretty good. They’re right there. The weather’s pretty good here. I got my car. Everything’s super convenient. I know where I can get good food. I know where I can have my very happy day. And so sometimes it’s kind of a good reminder of I want to travel and see the world of course and all that, but it’s also kind of important and maybe a refresher to remind of how good being back home is. There’s no right answer to this game of life and game of financial freedom. Only different paths and avenues to explore, and I think everyone should go and try this nomadic lifestyle at some point if they can in their lives and maybe you’ll love it. Maybe it’ll make you appreciate what you have back home.

Mindy:
Living in Colorado, it really is hard to be like, oh, maybe I want to go see different things. We’ve got so much right here. You are right. I drive my kids to school every morning and my route takes me west, which is where the mountains are. So every morning I see that big, beautiful expanse of the front range. I’m like, you know-

Scott:
Me too with daycare. Yeah.

Mindy:
This doesn’t suck. This view is really nice.

Scott:
What a conclusion to draw from today’s episode. So there you have it guys. Oh, we did have one more tip parting thought here. We talked with Matt in the aftermath of the recording and one thing we didn’t talk about was insurance. And he says he always gets travel insurance and three sites that he recommended to people check out for travel insurance are Safety Wing, Insure my Trip and Med Jet.

Mindy:
Because you never know what’s going to happen. Having travel insurance is a really great way to make yourself whole should something unsavory.

Scott:
And that covers things like robbery, theft, medical expenses, and some other things as well. So something to look into as part of your planning process wherever you decide to travel to.

Mindy:
All right, Scott, on that parting note, should we get out of here?

Scott:
Let’s do it.

Mindy:
That wraps up this travel episode of the BiggerPockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench and I am Mindy Jensen saying hit the road, happy toad.

Scott:
If you enjoyed today’s episode, please give us a five star review on Spotify or Apple. And if you’re looking for even more money content, feel free to visit our YouTube channel at youtube.com/biggerpocketsmoney.

Mindy:
BiggerPockets Money was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, produced by Kaylin Bennett, editing by Exodus Media, copywriting by Nate Weintraub. Lastly, a big thank you to the BiggerPockets team for making this show possible.