2021-02-10-Count_the_Costs_and_Your_Goals_May_be_Far_More_Achievable
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00:00:14.800 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you
00:00:17.780 | with the knowledge, skills, insight and encouragement you need
00:00:20.440 | to live a rich and meaningful life now, while building a plan
00:00:23.520 | for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:25.980 | My name is Josh Rasheeds.
00:00:27.360 | Today, I have a simple encouragement for you.
00:00:29.660 | I want to encourage you to put numbers to your goals.
00:00:33.960 | Think about what some goals or dreams are that you have
00:00:38.360 | and sit down and put some numbers to your goals.
00:00:41.840 | And I think if you'll do that, you'll be able to see ways
00:00:45.640 | of achieving certain goals that probably previously seemed totally out of sight.
00:00:50.880 | I was reminded of this truth yesterday.
00:00:53.640 | I was sitting down and thinking about some things,
00:00:57.020 | and I just decided to start putting some numbers down on paper.
00:01:00.260 | And I was really shocked with how it transformed my perspective.
00:01:04.860 | I'll share the example specifically.
00:01:07.260 | I'm traveling right now, currently in Bogota, Colombia.
00:01:10.120 | And as I was traveling, I was thinking about traveling.
00:01:13.360 | And when you think about traveling, I'm attracted often to people who who
00:01:19.140 | well, I'm attracted to the idea of setting and achieving big goals.
00:01:22.900 | I like to do things that other people, not very many people have done.
00:01:25.740 | And one of the things that I have often thought about doing in my life
00:01:28.320 | is traveling to every country in the world.
00:01:31.040 | I've been interested in this for over a decade,
00:01:34.420 | reading about people who've accomplished this goal, just kind of interested in it.
00:01:38.960 | Never really said it as something that I really want to do, but interested in it.
00:01:44.020 | So recently I was watching
00:01:46.960 | some YouTube videos from a young lady named Alexis.
00:01:50.960 | She has a YouTube channel called Lexi Limitless or Limitless Lexi, one of the two.
00:01:55.940 | And Alexis is the youngest person
00:01:58.940 | to have ever traveled to all of the countries in the world.
00:02:02.140 | She did it when she was 20, by the time she was 21 years old.
00:02:05.780 | And I was thinking about my traveling and I was thinking about my children.
00:02:08.920 | I thought, I wonder if I could take my children to every country in the world
00:02:13.560 | and have them break the Guinness Book of World Records
00:02:16.220 | for the youngest person to travel in the world.
00:02:18.700 | I've got four children, ages one, three, five and seven.
00:02:23.200 | And as I was thinking about it, I thought, well, I could,
00:02:25.900 | I could, my one year old start, you know, start traveling.
00:02:28.900 | And by what age could my one year old break that, break that travel record?
00:02:32.580 | And I, again, I'm not saying that I want to do it.
00:02:38.940 | There are a lot of downsides to doing something like that.
00:02:41.120 | I've never committed to this as, ah, this I want to do.
00:02:43.580 | I just admire it when people set big goals.
00:02:45.960 | It's tough.
00:02:47.220 | The idea of traveling to every country in the world is tough.
00:02:51.120 | But what keeps people back from doing something like that?
00:02:54.560 | Some people like me would think about it and say, but do I really want to?
00:02:57.900 | Right. Is that really useful and valuable?
00:03:00.100 | Let's say that I did choose to take my children to every country in the world.
00:03:03.940 | Well, what kind of time commitment would that be?
00:03:06.040 | What kind of things would you give up?
00:03:07.400 | You would give up a lot of of experiences.
00:03:09.800 | You would give up a lot of of experiences of of kind of normal day
00:03:14.940 | to day life and of local social,
00:03:18.040 | so social networks and things like that.
00:03:20.620 | You would gain other experiences and maybe that would be superior.
00:03:23.880 | I'm not so sure.
00:03:25.160 | But along the way, of course, you would quickly come to money
00:03:28.060 | and you would say, well, how can I afford to travel to every country in the world?
00:03:31.300 | How can I how could I do that?
00:03:34.460 | And here's where putting numbers to paper is, I think, incredibly free.
00:03:38.940 | And let me give you the numbers that I put down as I was thinking about
00:03:41.400 | what it would cost if I actually did set a goal like I'm going to travel
00:03:44.900 | and take my children to every country in the world.
00:03:48.880 | Travel, there are lots of people who travel
00:03:51.180 | and those people usually track their expenses.
00:03:54.120 | And so I there's another travel blogger that I have watched
00:03:58.520 | over the years named Drew Binsky.
00:04:00.260 | Drew has traveled to every country in the world.
00:04:02.280 | He's made videos, daily videos about his work.
00:04:04.420 | Drew says that it costs him seven hundred dollars per country to travel,
00:04:09.300 | and he's tracked all the expenses along the way.
00:04:11.800 | Drew's an American citizen.
00:04:14.300 | So, of course, he has fewer visa expenses,
00:04:17.340 | but his seven hundred dollar per country ticket or number includes everything.
00:04:22.040 | It includes visa expenses, includes transportation to and from the country.
00:04:26.280 | It includes lodging and accommodations while in the country and tours
00:04:30.480 | and things like that.
00:04:31.620 | So his number is seven hundred dollars.
00:04:33.580 | And I think that that's probably a pretty accurate number.
00:04:36.260 | Some countries are very expensive.
00:04:37.620 | Some countries are very inexpensive, but it all evens out in the long run.
00:04:40.720 | So let's say you do seven hundred dollars.
00:04:43.060 | So I sat down and I said, OK, seven hundred dollars per country.
00:04:46.140 | Now I lead a family of six.
00:04:49.140 | So seven hundred times six.
00:04:50.840 | Let's assume that there's no cost savings involved with traveling with family.
00:04:55.480 | There are some certainly some cost savings.
00:04:58.420 | You might have fewer hotel rooms.
00:05:00.380 | You don't necessarily have to have six hotel rooms and and transportation
00:05:04.160 | might in some cases be less.
00:05:06.220 | But let's assume there's not cost savings.
00:05:08.800 | So seven hundred dollars per country times six people equals four thousand
00:05:13.000 | two hundred dollars per country.
00:05:15.500 | So that's what it would cost me for me to take my family
00:05:18.560 | of six to each country in the world.
00:05:21.940 | And to me, that feels just about right.
00:05:24.300 | Four thousand two hundred dollars per country
00:05:26.840 | based on my experience traveling to a few dozen countries.
00:05:29.140 | Then how many countries are there?
00:05:31.380 | Well, the numbers vary.
00:05:32.840 | There's one hundred ninety three UN countries.
00:05:34.640 | There's a couple of disputed territories like Taiwan, et cetera.
00:05:37.380 | So a good number is about one hundred ninety five.
00:05:40.080 | And then some people go to two hundred.
00:05:41.360 | But let's just say let's use one hundred ninety five.
00:05:43.420 | So four thousand two hundred times one hundred ninety five
00:05:46.420 | equals eight hundred nineteen thousand dollars.
00:05:49.100 | So let's say that I did set a goal of taking my children
00:05:54.400 | to every country in the world.
00:05:56.040 | My budget for that would be something like eight hundred nineteen thousand dollars.
00:06:00.180 | So let's call it 800 grand, maybe 900, who knows?
00:06:04.180 | Now, in some ways, that's a big number, but in some ways
00:06:08.120 | it's not that big of a number.
00:06:09.640 | So let's add one more adjustment to change the number.
00:06:13.380 | How long would it take me to travel to every country in the world?
00:06:16.580 | Who knows? Right.
00:06:18.340 | There are people who have done it in a year and a little under two years.
00:06:22.380 | That's under the Guinness Book of World Records.
00:06:24.180 | I would not want to travel that way and definitely not with children.
00:06:27.380 | I would want to travel much more slowly.
00:06:29.920 | You figure if there are one hundred ninety five countries
00:06:32.320 | that you're traveling to, if you did it in ten years,
00:06:35.460 | that would be nineteen and a half countries per year.
00:06:37.860 | That's pretty fast.
00:06:39.720 | Now, in some cases, that's easy.
00:06:41.220 | Some places that's easy.
00:06:43.400 | Some places that's not.
00:06:44.420 | And that's where you start to think about, well, what style of travel
00:06:46.720 | would I be engaging in?
00:06:47.860 | Would I want to spend a month in each country?
00:06:49.940 | Well, if you had a month in each country, then that would be one hundred ninety five.
00:06:54.000 | So if you did that as one hundred ninety five countries per year,
00:06:57.240 | then that would be sixteen point two five years.
00:07:00.140 | Well, here's what's interesting.
00:07:01.980 | Let's say you did do it in sixteen point two five years.
00:07:04.540 | Let's call it sixteen years.
00:07:08.180 | Eight hundred nineteen thousand dollars
00:07:10.380 | divided by sixteen years is an annual budget of fifty one thousand dollars.
00:07:15.220 | Eight hundred and ten thousand dollars divided by sixteen years
00:07:19.420 | is an annual budget of my calculator is not working.
00:07:22.560 | Basically, fifty one thousand dollars.
00:07:25.600 | Quick sidebar, once you learn reverse Polish notation,
00:07:29.140 | you can't ever get your other calculators to work quite right.
00:07:31.300 | So I've used I use reverse Polish notation for years.
00:07:36.140 | And now when I go to pick up the calculator on my iPhone,
00:07:38.500 | it just doesn't work quite right for me.
00:07:39.840 | So let's call it fifty two thousand dollars a year.
00:07:41.580 | All of a sudden, now that big, hairy, audacious goal
00:07:46.680 | doesn't seem quite so overwhelming.
00:07:49.660 | Fifty two thousand dollars a year to travel to one country per month.
00:07:56.020 | That's pretty doable.
00:07:58.560 | And all of a sudden you realize that, wait a second,
00:08:00.220 | I'm already spending fifty two thousand dollars a year.
00:08:03.860 | And you realize that there are thousands and hundreds of thousands of people
00:08:06.960 | all around the world who make their living through an Internet connection
00:08:10.300 | and earn more than fifty two thousand dollars per year.
00:08:13.300 | And now you don't all of a sudden have to have a million dollar fortune
00:08:16.380 | that you're going to systematically spend over the next sixteen years.
00:08:19.740 | You just need to earn fifty two thousand dollars a year
00:08:21.980 | and you could accomplish a goal like that.
00:08:24.340 | I find that amazingly freeing,
00:08:28.640 | amazingly freeing, where you take this big, scary goal
00:08:34.240 | take I'm going to take my kids to every country in the world
00:08:36.640 | and you start calculating the budget on it and you figure out,
00:08:41.380 | well, all I got to do is earn fifty two thousand dollars a year
00:08:45.360 | and I could cover my expenses enough to travel to one new country every month,
00:08:51.500 | twelve countries a year.
00:08:52.700 | And over the next sixteen years, I could travel to all these countries.
00:08:55.960 | That's awesome.
00:09:01.080 | To repeat, I'm not setting this as a goal.
00:09:04.480 | I'm not. I don't think I want to do it.
00:09:07.480 | I don't think that's the lifestyle I want to live.
00:09:10.180 | I don't think that that's what I want to do with my children.
00:09:13.680 | It's not a personal goal of mine.
00:09:16.420 | I think there are other non-financial reasons why I don't want to do it.
00:09:21.160 | But it's really nice to know that when you actually start digging out numbers,
00:09:31.000 | most goals, most goals that you and I have,
00:09:34.440 | even the big, scary ones are really eminently achievable.
00:09:38.180 | So I encourage you, if there's a goal that you've been thinking about doing,
00:09:42.980 | get out a calculator and a sheet of paper and start working the actual numbers
00:09:47.460 | and figure out what would that actually cost me.
00:09:50.020 | Might be a lifestyle goal.
00:09:54.760 | What would it actually cost me to go here to do that?
00:09:58.760 | What would it actually cost me to buy this or to engage in this other thing,
00:10:03.860 | to start practicing this certain thing I want to do, this hobby, this skill,
00:10:08.440 | to add in this certain sport?
00:10:11.900 | What would it actually cost me?
00:10:13.800 | And then break it down into a budget amount that makes sense.
00:10:18.140 | And you may find that your goals are still big,
00:10:24.180 | they're still hard to achieve, in which case you need a better engine.
00:10:27.560 | But you may find that they're eminently achievable and relatively easy to do,
00:10:32.420 | in which case you can move past worrying about the money
00:10:36.100 | and you can think about the other things.
00:10:38.500 | I'm not scared of the financial cost of a goal like,
00:10:44.940 | I'm going to take my children to every country in the world.
00:10:47.240 | Because I've done the math and it doesn't actually cost all that much,
00:10:52.180 | even for you as an individual.
00:10:54.280 | If we use Drew's number, $700 per country times $195, that's a $136,000 goal.
00:11:00.720 | Right? If you wanted to travel every country in the world,
00:11:03.880 | it would cost you a hundred and something thousand dollars.
00:11:06.520 | You could do it cheaper, stay in fancier places, maybe it's $200,000.
00:11:11.260 | Not that much money in the grand scheme of things.
00:11:13.500 | So now, once you're free of the financial stress,
00:11:19.900 | you can move on to thinking about the other things and deciding,
00:11:23.100 | is this really a good idea? Is this really something I want to do or not?
00:11:27.040 | Hope that helps you. Have a great day.
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