Family-Travel-Tips-from-a-Full-Time-Nomad-Family
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00:00:30.760 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,
00:00:31.960 | a show dedicated to providing you
00:00:33.120 | with the knowledge, skills, insight,
00:00:34.760 | and encouragement you need to live a rich
00:00:36.400 | and meaningful life now,
00:00:37.680 | while building a plan for financial freedom
00:00:39.220 | in 10 years or less.
00:00:40.920 | My name is Joshua Sheets.
00:00:42.240 | Today on the show, I wanna share with you
00:00:44.420 | a somewhat chatty analysis of family travel.
00:00:48.580 | I'm gonna share with you some of the things
00:00:50.340 | that we are doing right now on our global adventures,
00:00:54.440 | and share some lessons that I have learned
00:00:56.380 | in hopes that these lessons may be useful
00:00:58.760 | to you in the future.
00:01:01.040 | I think of myself and see myself
00:01:03.520 | as something of a human guinea pig.
00:01:05.080 | I really enjoy trying new things,
00:01:07.040 | trying weird things, experiencing things myself
00:01:10.360 | so that I can understand how they work,
00:01:12.920 | understand what it's like to go through them,
00:01:15.080 | and then share those experiences with others.
00:01:17.840 | And so you can just think of me as your human guinea pig,
00:01:21.000 | somebody who's going through the hard work
00:01:22.840 | of doing what we're doing,
00:01:24.560 | which is quite simply living as a nomadic family,
00:01:27.520 | or a family of six.
00:01:29.160 | My eldest child is seven.
00:01:32.000 | My youngest child is two.
00:01:33.920 | So we have four young children
00:01:36.080 | with whom we are traveling the world at the moment.
00:01:39.000 | We are currently in Europe.
00:01:40.800 | We've been on the road for a couple of months now.
00:01:43.200 | I'd have to go back and check the exact dates,
00:01:46.080 | but we've been on the road for a couple of months now.
00:01:48.060 | And at this point in time, I have learned enough,
00:01:51.520 | and I've proven even just some of my own things,
00:01:53.940 | finding some things that are working,
00:01:55.200 | some things that are not working.
00:01:56.680 | And I just wanna share some of those lessons with you.
00:01:59.240 | So if that kind of thing sounds interesting to you,
00:02:02.240 | then stay tuned.
00:02:03.960 | So to begin with, we are now currently in Europe.
00:02:08.040 | As I record this, we have just recently arrived here
00:02:12.180 | on the beautiful Mediterranean island of Malta.
00:02:15.520 | And Malta is a very interesting place.
00:02:18.320 | I'll come back to that in a, perhaps in future discussions.
00:02:23.200 | I think that little islands are very interesting places.
00:02:26.460 | And what's unique about little islands
00:02:29.000 | is they often have to fight to survive.
00:02:32.480 | If you consider the benefits that you get
00:02:36.240 | having a large landmass,
00:02:38.500 | some of the things that you have from that,
00:02:40.480 | and then realize what you would lose
00:02:42.160 | if that were taken away,
00:02:43.080 | you kind of have the situation
00:02:45.040 | that a lot of little islands have.
00:02:47.520 | All around the world, there are small island nations
00:02:50.480 | that are distinct nations, distinct peoples,
00:02:54.440 | but they don't have the resources
00:02:56.140 | that some larger, more powerful nations have.
00:02:59.080 | They don't have the number of residents.
00:03:01.660 | They don't have easy access to resources.
00:03:05.160 | They don't have easy transportation.
00:03:08.520 | A lot of times they're somewhat isolated
00:03:10.640 | and then they have to figure out how do we make it?
00:03:13.240 | And especially in a modern economy,
00:03:15.520 | where it's very rare to find anybody
00:03:18.360 | who actually lives in a sustainable,
00:03:20.920 | kind of just local closed cycle, closed circle economy,
00:03:25.960 | these islands have to figure out
00:03:27.300 | what is our place in the world.
00:03:30.160 | In the coming years, I would like to visit
00:03:31.860 | as many of these little islands as I can
00:03:33.660 | to make sure that I understand
00:03:35.340 | what their place in the world is,
00:03:37.220 | because in the financial system,
00:03:40.180 | these little islands are very important.
00:03:43.860 | One of the ways that islands have found
00:03:46.420 | to build and boost their local economy
00:03:49.340 | is through financial services.
00:03:51.880 | That's often where you get,
00:03:53.780 | if you think of the various tax havens
00:03:56.100 | and offshore banking locations and business jurisdictions,
00:03:59.580 | you'll often find them situated on small little islands.
00:04:03.540 | And because those islands have found out
00:04:05.460 | that they can serve effectively in the financial system.
00:04:09.380 | And various of these islands have different specialties
00:04:13.980 | on which they compete.
00:04:15.660 | You'll often find that islands function as tax havens,
00:04:19.240 | even if they're islands that are part of larger nations.
00:04:22.500 | So for example, Madeira functions as kind of a tax haven,
00:04:26.980 | but part of Portugal.
00:04:28.660 | You have, what is it, Langkawi Island in Malaysia
00:04:33.660 | that functions as a tax, no, Labuan,
00:04:38.380 | which is an island that is, or a small part of Malaysia
00:04:42.200 | that functions as the Malaysian tax haven.
00:04:45.540 | You'll see this with many of the Caribbean islands
00:04:47.660 | that function in the financial system.
00:04:49.980 | They're known for offshore services,
00:04:52.120 | they're known for banking,
00:04:53.100 | they're known for being tax-friendly jurisdictions.
00:04:57.900 | There's a reason why cruise ships
00:04:59.900 | are registered in the Bahamas, right?
00:05:02.060 | If you look at the large cruise ships around the world
00:05:04.140 | and see where they're registered on the back,
00:05:05.380 | it'll usually be a small island nation.
00:05:07.420 | Many people's yachts, you walk through a marina
00:05:10.500 | with large ocean-going vessels,
00:05:12.460 | and you'll see that many of those nations are registered,
00:05:16.260 | many of those vessels are registered on a small island.
00:05:20.180 | In the asset protection space, in estate planning space,
00:05:23.320 | you have jurisdictions like the Cook Islands,
00:05:26.280 | which is overseen by New Zealand.
00:05:28.160 | The Cook Islands is, sorry,
00:05:30.680 | it's a protectorate of New Zealand,
00:05:31.840 | I think would be the precise term.
00:05:33.240 | The Cook Islands is a very important space
00:05:35.540 | in the asset protection planning marketplace.
00:05:39.480 | And so these islands fascinate me,
00:05:40.800 | and Malta is one of those islands.
00:05:43.280 | And so I've come here to check it out
00:05:45.560 | and get a sense of what it is.
00:05:46.920 | And it's also an extremely attractive
00:05:48.440 | vacation destination, beautiful waters,
00:05:51.360 | ancient architecture.
00:05:52.760 | It's fascinating to see how Malta has been colonialized
00:05:56.520 | by practically everyone out in existence.
00:05:59.560 | The Ottoman Empire, the Turks,
00:06:01.720 | attacked Malta quite famously in the 1500s.
00:06:05.760 | Malta has been ruled by the Arabs,
00:06:08.560 | it's been ruled by the British,
00:06:09.920 | it's been ruled by everybody,
00:06:11.600 | it's just because it's a strategic island
00:06:13.760 | right in the middle of the Mediterranean.
00:06:15.880 | So it's just a very interesting place.
00:06:18.160 | But we'll get into Malta,
00:06:19.840 | so maybe some point in the future.
00:06:22.800 | Malta has lots of connections to radical personal finance.
00:06:27.160 | They've been trying to build themselves
00:06:28.800 | as blockchain island.
00:06:30.500 | It was more promising a few years ago
00:06:33.960 | than it has been recently.
00:06:35.840 | There's been some recent troubles with that adventure,
00:06:39.520 | but who knows, we'll see what happens in the future.
00:06:41.280 | Malta famously sells citizenships,
00:06:44.160 | European citizenships,
00:06:45.800 | for people who want to quickly become an EU citizen
00:06:49.120 | and who have maybe a million dollars
00:06:51.600 | that they're willing to invest into the Maltese economy
00:06:55.560 | without getting it back,
00:06:57.600 | then they can do business with the Maltese government
00:07:00.400 | and potentially purchase Maltese citizenship
00:07:03.640 | for themselves and their family members,
00:07:06.360 | which can give them access to Malta specifically
00:07:10.800 | and to the European Union.
00:07:13.600 | Malta's an interesting tax haven in the European Union.
00:07:17.080 | For Maltese residents,
00:07:18.480 | people who set up residency in Malta,
00:07:20.640 | it can be quite an attractive and interesting place to live,
00:07:24.320 | helps people to save substantially on their taxes.
00:07:27.280 | There's a couple of different ways that you can use Malta,
00:07:29.800 | but it has all the benefits of being inside
00:07:31.880 | of the European Union.
00:07:33.360 | And so I'm just here checking it out,
00:07:35.680 | and that's kind of where we started our European adventure.
00:07:38.780 | Now, let's talk about travel more specifically.
00:07:42.040 | The first thing I'll address is simply the doability
00:07:46.680 | and the difficulty of traveling in an age of COVID,
00:07:50.680 | because it has been a real mixture of those two things.
00:07:54.480 | First, you'll have to settle for yourself
00:07:57.560 | the advisability of traveling
00:08:00.840 | in the middle of this current coronavirus pandemic.
00:08:04.640 | For myself and for my family,
00:08:08.000 | during the beginning of the pandemic,
00:08:09.360 | we were quite stationary,
00:08:10.320 | taking all of the appropriate precautions, et cetera,
00:08:14.040 | just like I think most thoughtful people were seeking to do.
00:08:19.040 | But along the way, as the evidence came out
00:08:22.840 | that coronavirus wasn't the deadly pandemic
00:08:25.400 | that I had feared,
00:08:26.680 | then we went ahead and loosened up
00:08:28.640 | and started traveling a good bit more.
00:08:30.400 | And so we've traveled a good bit even through the pandemic.
00:08:34.120 | But one of the things that I have tried to do
00:08:35.840 | is I have tried to choose destinations
00:08:38.360 | where travel was a little bit more doable,
00:08:41.280 | and I have tried to choose destinations
00:08:43.520 | that were a bit more livable in case we got stuck there.
00:08:47.320 | And so in the first few countries of our global tour,
00:08:52.320 | I tried to choose countries
00:08:53.880 | that would be simple to travel to,
00:08:56.000 | would be easy for us to travel to for various reasons,
00:09:00.120 | and countries that would be simple
00:09:02.080 | to deal with the COVID restrictions.
00:09:04.480 | The first country on our global tour for us was Mexico.
00:09:09.080 | And one of the nice things about Mexico
00:09:10.880 | is simply that Mexico, to my knowledge,
00:09:13.920 | never imposed entry restrictions
00:09:16.920 | due to the coronavirus pandemic, which is quite unique.
00:09:20.400 | Most countries around the world
00:09:22.360 | have at some point imposed entry restrictions,
00:09:24.920 | but in my memory,
00:09:26.880 | I don't believe that Mexico
00:09:28.080 | ever imposed entrance restrictions.
00:09:30.640 | And so when we went to Mexico,
00:09:31.840 | there were no requirements to demonstrate vaccination,
00:09:34.880 | there were no requirements to have negative COVID tests,
00:09:38.200 | et cetera.
00:09:39.040 | And so that was our first destination.
00:09:42.360 | We chose Mexico also
00:09:44.040 | because it was a fairly easy place for us to travel.
00:09:47.080 | I speak Spanish,
00:09:48.720 | I'm familiar and very comfortable in Latin America,
00:09:51.520 | and so it was a fairly simple place to be.
00:09:53.600 | After Mexico, we traveled to Costa Rica,
00:09:56.560 | and Costa Rica also has an interesting story.
00:09:59.560 | Costa Rica is a country that did indeed close its borders
00:10:04.080 | quite severely for several months during the pandemic.
00:10:08.480 | But then they eventually opened their borders,
00:10:10.320 | and what Costa Rica did
00:10:11.400 | was they didn't impose a requirement after a while
00:10:14.200 | when we went there.
00:10:15.240 | They didn't impose any requirements for testing upon entry.
00:10:19.680 | You didn't have to demonstrate negative COVID tests,
00:10:23.680 | there are no vaccination requirements to enter Costa Rica.
00:10:27.640 | What they did require you to do
00:10:29.040 | was of course to fill out a health locator form,
00:10:31.080 | which is standard practice for everyone at this point,
00:10:33.840 | and also to demonstrate
00:10:36.680 | that you have appropriate health insurance,
00:10:39.240 | so that if you did wind up becoming sick
00:10:41.760 | with the coronavirus or any other sickness,
00:10:45.600 | that you would have appropriate health insurance
00:10:47.940 | that would cover your medical expenses
00:10:49.480 | and not put a strain
00:10:50.920 | upon their nationalized health insurance program.
00:10:54.400 | Following Costa Rica, we then traveled to the United States,
00:10:57.800 | and I spent three weeks in the United States,
00:11:00.360 | visiting family.
00:11:02.360 | We had a family reunion with our various family members,
00:11:04.660 | which was wonderful, enjoying the holidays.
00:11:07.760 | One of the lessons that I have learned
00:11:09.680 | from being abroad over the last few years
00:11:11.600 | is I miss holidays.
00:11:13.380 | I really do, I really miss holidays.
00:11:15.440 | And I think that those are some of those things.
00:11:17.960 | I'm a fairly sentimental person,
00:11:20.440 | and I learned that I don't miss home, so to speak,
00:11:25.240 | most of the time.
00:11:26.620 | Most of the time, I don't miss being in the United States,
00:11:30.220 | being in Florida, but I do miss it at the holidays.
00:11:34.720 | Going 4th of July or Independence Day
00:11:37.720 | just isn't quite the same
00:11:39.560 | when you're not in the United States.
00:11:41.920 | And I've never really been,
00:11:43.760 | I'm not an intensely nationalistic person,
00:11:47.320 | but still, you can't help but just feel
00:11:50.000 | that sense of unity and nationalism
00:11:54.560 | when you're part of a major holiday
00:11:56.120 | like the 4th of July.
00:11:57.940 | Back in 2018, my family and I, for the 4th of July,
00:12:02.940 | were in this incredible little town
00:12:05.040 | in the middle of Kansas called Wamego, or Wamega,
00:12:08.040 | I think it's Wamego, Kansas,
00:12:09.560 | right in the middle of Kansas.
00:12:10.800 | And it was a wonderful experience
00:12:13.640 | because it was the quintessential, stereotypical
00:12:17.600 | U.S.-American Independence Day celebration.
00:12:20.040 | We were with some friends.
00:12:21.620 | We had a nice barbecue during the day.
00:12:24.180 | We hung out in the pool.
00:12:25.520 | Then there's just this wonderful small-town parade
00:12:27.840 | that's been going on for, I don't know,
00:12:30.000 | 176 years, something like that,
00:12:32.680 | continually every single year.
00:12:34.560 | And I was so fun to be able to take my young children
00:12:37.600 | to that, and they loved the parade.
00:12:39.480 | They loved the horses.
00:12:40.320 | They loved all of that quintessential Americana experience.
00:12:44.360 | It was phenomenal.
00:12:45.960 | But then the next year, we were gone.
00:12:48.520 | I missed it so much.
00:12:49.760 | I missed not being in the United States
00:12:52.600 | for Independence Day.
00:12:54.360 | And so it was so nice this year
00:12:56.080 | to be back in the United States on Independence Day
00:12:58.240 | to be able to enjoy that.
00:13:00.140 | For Independence Day, we were in the Florida Keys,
00:13:02.880 | hanging out on the boat,
00:13:04.480 | looking at the fireworks out on the water,
00:13:06.880 | and that was really nice as well.
00:13:08.440 | The Florida Keys is a special place,
00:13:11.080 | and it's an interesting place to be on the 4th of July.
00:13:15.320 | So we really, really enjoyed that.
00:13:19.320 | Going back into the United States, though,
00:13:20.880 | is certainly quite shocking
00:13:22.720 | because across at least most of the United States
00:13:26.560 | at this point, it feels very much like the pandemic
00:13:31.200 | is kind of a thing of the past.
00:13:33.840 | It was quite shocking after being used to being required
00:13:36.880 | to wear a mask everywhere.
00:13:38.200 | When we were in Costa Rica, for example,
00:13:39.600 | it was very, very tight coronavirus restrictions.
00:13:43.640 | You wouldn't even dream of going maskless somewhere.
00:13:47.120 | You wouldn't dream of standing closer
00:13:50.240 | than two meters to somebody.
00:13:51.840 | And so to go from that back into the United States
00:13:54.400 | where virtually no face masks and everything is wide open,
00:13:59.400 | it really, it was a great experience,
00:14:02.080 | and it was just really nice to be back there.
00:14:04.480 | I did seriously consider just simply staying
00:14:07.860 | in the United States.
00:14:09.160 | I've thought a lot about how the United States
00:14:11.080 | has handled the coronavirus pandemic
00:14:12.880 | as compared to other countries.
00:14:14.880 | On the one hand, the death toll in the United States
00:14:18.060 | is exceedingly high,
00:14:19.760 | especially as compared to some other places.
00:14:22.040 | Now, of course, when you adjust per capita basis,
00:14:24.720 | it adjusts and there can be many reasons for that.
00:14:27.400 | But on the one hand, you could say,
00:14:28.960 | "Oh, the death toll is exceedingly high."
00:14:31.120 | On the other hand, the United States
00:14:33.200 | has got into the pandemic faster than anyone else
00:14:36.200 | and got out of the pandemic faster
00:14:38.640 | than anywhere else in the world.
00:14:40.720 | And that's the real power of the United States,
00:14:44.040 | I think, in my opinion.
00:14:45.760 | There's an old quote, I have no idea
00:14:47.520 | who I could possibly attribute it to,
00:14:49.480 | but something like, "The Americans will always do
00:14:52.760 | the right thing after they've exhausted every other option."
00:14:55.840 | And you can always count on the Americans
00:14:57.600 | to do the right thing after they've exhausted
00:14:59.320 | every other option.
00:15:00.440 | But then when they do it,
00:15:01.960 | there's just something about our American culture,
00:15:05.940 | where we just get into it, right?
00:15:08.760 | We roll up our sleeves and make it happen.
00:15:11.080 | And you see that, that's fundamentally a part
00:15:13.600 | of the can-do spirit that infuses
00:15:16.760 | the United States of America.
00:15:18.840 | And you saw that with Operation Warp Speed
00:15:22.600 | in the pandemic, the development of the vaccine.
00:15:26.800 | You see that in terms of just the culture
00:15:29.360 | is wired for action.
00:15:31.280 | And it's very, very hard to corral Americans.
00:15:34.320 | It's very, very hard to get them
00:15:36.560 | to move in the same direction.
00:15:39.080 | We fight like crazy people among ourselves,
00:15:42.000 | but then when there is something that needs to be done,
00:15:44.920 | it's pretty remarkable to see.
00:15:46.440 | And so being back in the United States
00:15:49.200 | after quite a long time being abroad,
00:15:51.800 | it was just such an amazing culture shock,
00:15:55.120 | such an amazing sense of culture shock for me to say,
00:15:57.840 | "Wow, this is, look at this, like we've moved on,
00:16:01.840 | we're done with this whole thing."
00:16:03.360 | And so that's been a remarkable experience.
00:16:07.160 | So I won't linger too much on the United States,
00:16:09.060 | but I do wanna point out that one of the things
00:16:10.920 | that I have been conscious of is,
00:16:12.720 | okay, if I get stuck somewhere again, right?
00:16:14.840 | Whether it's the Delta variant or the whatever,
00:16:17.420 | the gamma and the epsilon ends up being,
00:16:20.720 | if I get stuck somewhere again,
00:16:22.920 | if the world shuts down again,
00:16:24.240 | which I think is unlikely at this point in time,
00:16:27.080 | where do I wanna be?
00:16:28.560 | And while for a time I thought, you know what?
00:16:33.480 | I'm quite glad to have not been in the United States
00:16:36.520 | during the pandemic.
00:16:38.160 | This point in time, I honestly said to myself,
00:16:40.520 | "I think this is where I'd wanna be going forward."
00:16:43.300 | Because it's been tough, obviously all around the world,
00:16:46.660 | but dealing with the lockdowns and all of the curfews
00:16:51.120 | and confinements, all of this stuff,
00:16:52.960 | and just all the restrictions,
00:16:54.880 | there's been a number of countries
00:16:56.840 | where it's become quite evident to me
00:16:58.520 | that I don't ever wanna be stuck
00:17:00.280 | in this particular country.
00:17:01.960 | I don't wanna be stuck there.
00:17:04.480 | But then there've been a number where I say,
00:17:06.480 | "Okay, that would be a place that I would like to be."
00:17:09.440 | And so at this point in time,
00:17:11.480 | while I don't intend to hop on an airplane
00:17:13.920 | and head back to the United States,
00:17:15.960 | I do think that it's important to acknowledge
00:17:20.960 | that the US is more livable today
00:17:23.800 | than virtually any place that I have been
00:17:26.680 | in the last six months,
00:17:28.800 | at least with regard to the coronavirus pandemic.
00:17:32.120 | And that's a neat, just it's important to acknowledge that.
00:17:36.400 | We left the United States on July 5,
00:17:40.720 | heading to Europe.
00:17:42.280 | And here is where kind of the dance
00:17:44.680 | of travel during COVID has taken place.
00:17:48.520 | The dance has been quite challenging.
00:17:51.360 | Now we worked into it,
00:17:52.360 | which is a strategy that I recommend, right?
00:17:54.560 | When you're gonna do something,
00:17:55.620 | start with something that's not too difficult,
00:17:58.080 | start with something that's easy enough to start
00:18:00.060 | and then move into it.
00:18:01.240 | So we didn't start with trying to go to Europe
00:18:03.880 | with our travels.
00:18:04.840 | I wanted to travel in some places
00:18:06.340 | that were gonna be fairly simple, mostly low cost.
00:18:10.040 | I wanted to go to the United States for the holidays.
00:18:12.360 | I wanted to be able to be there to adjust baggage
00:18:15.000 | and get cheap stuff if we needed to get cheap stuff
00:18:17.920 | to change how we were packing.
00:18:20.680 | But then I wanted to go to Europe
00:18:22.960 | and I was hoping to be here sooner,
00:18:24.220 | but this is the way it worked out.
00:18:25.760 | I wanted to spend the summer in Europe this summer.
00:18:28.960 | And my major goal, number one,
00:18:31.720 | is to spend some time in France
00:18:35.000 | or a French-speaking region of Switzerland,
00:18:38.160 | Belgium, et cetera.
00:18:40.240 | But probably in France.
00:18:42.080 | I have, over the last year or so,
00:18:43.880 | worked hard to improve my own French
00:18:45.520 | and I've started teaching my children French this year.
00:18:48.100 | It's not been as successful as I had hoped
00:18:50.160 | at the beginning of the year.
00:18:51.440 | And so I wanted just a chance to reinvigorate
00:18:54.840 | that project for myself,
00:18:56.640 | reinvigorate that project for my children.
00:18:58.720 | And I thought it would be neat
00:19:00.560 | to just spend some time in France.
00:19:02.240 | And there are many portions, places in France
00:19:04.480 | that are just dreamy locations, right?
00:19:06.720 | South of France is truly an amazing place.
00:19:10.080 | The French Riviera, truly a remarkable place.
00:19:13.280 | And I really enjoy so many aspects of the French culture.
00:19:16.320 | And so I thought it would be really fun
00:19:17.840 | to be in France for the summer.
00:19:20.060 | But first we had to get into Europe.
00:19:22.000 | And as I was studying the situation,
00:19:24.340 | trying to figure out how do I take advantage
00:19:27.560 | of the airfare situation,
00:19:30.320 | but also consider how we could work
00:19:35.680 | around the COVID restrictions, it was quite challenging.
00:19:38.720 | Back in the early part of the year,
00:19:40.000 | I think it was February, I went ahead and bought tickets.
00:19:43.080 | I bought tickets to Europe.
00:19:45.520 | And at the time, Europe was completely closed to tourists.
00:19:49.840 | Certainly, of course, European nationals
00:19:52.680 | could get into Europe,
00:19:53.720 | but it was completely closed to tourists.
00:19:56.280 | And so I didn't know when, of course we're Americans,
00:19:59.880 | and so I didn't know when are they gonna let us back in.
00:20:02.240 | And at the time, the United States of America
00:20:04.680 | was on all the red lists,
00:20:06.200 | all the blocked lists from around the world.
00:20:09.440 | And so I thought, well, what do I do?
00:20:12.080 | Right now is the best time ever to buy tickets,
00:20:14.880 | airplane tickets, because things were crazy, crazy cheap,
00:20:19.360 | but am I gonna be able to get in or not?
00:20:22.540 | So finally I decided I've got to pull the trigger,
00:20:24.920 | I've gotta do it.
00:20:26.080 | And so I was shopping around,
00:20:27.680 | I've become quite good at getting discounted airfares,
00:20:31.940 | because that's one of the biggest expenses
00:20:33.440 | that we face when traveling.
00:20:35.040 | And so I pulled the trigger on some tickets,
00:20:38.960 | and I was able to get tickets from Miami, Florida,
00:20:43.720 | to Lisbon, Portugal for $165 one way on Air France,
00:20:48.720 | which was, I considered a phenomenal deal.
00:20:52.240 | Frequently, your tickets to Europe,
00:20:55.800 | especially in the summertime from the United States,
00:20:58.040 | are $700 and $900 from the East Coast.
00:21:01.600 | You feel really good about yourself
00:21:04.800 | if you can get a round trip ticket for 500.
00:21:07.480 | And so when I got my one way tickets for 165,
00:21:10.480 | I just felt, I was so proud of myself.
00:21:12.400 | I felt, this will be great.
00:21:14.400 | But it was a giant risk,
00:21:16.760 | because I didn't know am I even gonna be able to get in.
00:21:19.440 | The airline softened a lot of the restrictions
00:21:21.680 | on date changes, change fees, et cetera, which was great.
00:21:25.780 | But at the end of the day,
00:21:27.040 | I didn't have any guarantee of that.
00:21:28.900 | So I bought those tickets back in February,
00:21:30.780 | trying to just chart out what I could imagine.
00:21:33.480 | I could not imagine that Europe was going to be able
00:21:36.120 | to stay closed for another summer.
00:21:38.640 | And this has been my observations,
00:21:41.640 | is that how can these places
00:21:43.280 | that depend so heavily on tourism,
00:21:45.480 | how can they stay closed to tourists
00:21:48.200 | for two seasons in a row?
00:21:50.520 | Europe lost the tourist season of last summer,
00:21:53.720 | and then to lose it a second season,
00:21:55.920 | I just thought, you know what,
00:21:56.960 | there's gonna be a lot of pressure.
00:21:59.000 | So the tickets were cheap enough
00:22:01.360 | that if I just wound up with a voucher
00:22:02.920 | or if I lost the money, no big deal.
00:22:05.000 | I didn't make any other arrangements for accommodations,
00:22:08.040 | 'cause I figured that would be easy, but I did buy airfare.
00:22:10.760 | And the lesson there, I would just say is,
00:22:13.000 | the thing that I have learned is,
00:22:15.560 | one of the best things about not being broke
00:22:18.640 | is you can take advantage of opportunities
00:22:21.200 | when they present themselves to you.
00:22:23.720 | I've been broke a good portion of my life,
00:22:26.160 | and I hated it, because I would find opportunities
00:22:30.080 | to buy something, get a really good deal,
00:22:32.400 | and I just didn't have the money to pull the trigger.
00:22:33.880 | I didn't have the money to make it happen.
00:22:35.920 | And I realized that one of the first reasons
00:22:38.960 | why you should build up cash reserves,
00:22:42.600 | just money that's yours, money to spend,
00:22:45.560 | is so you can take advantage
00:22:47.080 | of discounted buying opportunities.
00:22:49.900 | Because the guy who's got money
00:22:51.840 | can always take advantage of a buying opportunity,
00:22:54.240 | and the guy who doesn't can't.
00:22:56.400 | Now, this begins, you've heard me talk, for example,
00:22:59.100 | about bulk buying, right?
00:23:00.680 | It's just kind of the boilerplate language that I use
00:23:03.720 | to say, if you drink a Pepsi every day,
00:23:08.120 | and you're buying your Pepsi at the convenience store,
00:23:10.640 | you're getting ripped off, right?
00:23:12.440 | You go buy your Pepsi from the big box warehouse store
00:23:15.880 | and get it for a lot cheaper.
00:23:17.440 | Well, in order to do that, you gotta have the money
00:23:19.200 | enough to buy 24 of them at a time
00:23:21.040 | instead of just one of them at a time.
00:23:22.520 | And so people who are poor often get stuck in this cycle
00:23:25.640 | where they're paying the highest per unit cost
00:23:28.440 | for the things that they're buying
00:23:31.040 | because they don't have any more money
00:23:32.720 | to be able to buy something more.
00:23:34.760 | And so one of the things that you can do
00:23:37.000 | is move yourself from the perspective of buying things daily
00:23:41.440 | to buying things weekly, monthly, et cetera.
00:23:43.800 | Now, most of my listening audience
00:23:46.560 | has never bought things daily,
00:23:47.840 | but at least half of the world's population,
00:23:50.440 | or maybe that's too much,
00:23:53.560 | but a lot of the world's population lives daily, right?
00:23:57.960 | They earn daily, they earn today's wages,
00:24:01.520 | and then they spend daily.
00:24:02.840 | They earn the money today for the food
00:24:05.240 | that they're going to feed their family tonight,
00:24:07.040 | quite literally.
00:24:08.560 | And so to get out of that cycle of poverty,
00:24:11.600 | you've gotta get a little bit of money behind you.
00:24:14.000 | And so whether it's daily wages and daily expenses,
00:24:17.780 | whether it's weekly, monthly, et cetera,
00:24:20.180 | you gotta get a little bit of money behind you.
00:24:22.140 | But then once you get more and more money behind you,
00:24:25.400 | things become easier and easier
00:24:27.720 | because then you can apply that same principle
00:24:29.920 | to bigger purchases.
00:24:32.360 | Whenever somebody is selling something,
00:24:34.640 | if it's a good deal, you can just buy it.
00:24:37.160 | For example, one of the rules that I have for myself
00:24:40.080 | is if I ever know of anybody who is selling a car,
00:24:43.680 | somebody that I know,
00:24:45.400 | I will always go and look at it
00:24:47.400 | and possibly make them an offer.
00:24:49.760 | And here's my strategy.
00:24:50.780 | It's very simple.
00:24:52.420 | Cars are generally some of the bigger purchases
00:24:56.020 | that we make.
00:24:56.860 | They're some of the more expensive things that we buy.
00:24:59.620 | Now, of course, if you like to buy new cars
00:25:01.580 | and you swap out your cars every few years,
00:25:03.180 | there are other strategies that we could employ there.
00:25:05.500 | I prefer to buy used cars when possible.
00:25:09.980 | I've never bought a new car, so let me just rephrase that.
00:25:12.740 | I prefer to buy used cars,
00:25:14.060 | at least at this point in my life,
00:25:15.700 | primarily because I don't want to destroy
00:25:18.940 | whatever new car we might buy.
00:25:20.820 | Maybe at some point I'll buy a new car,
00:25:22.260 | but I prefer to buy used cars.
00:25:23.820 | And the single biggest risk that you face with a used car
00:25:27.340 | is buying something with an unknown history.
00:25:29.800 | You never can tell with a used car
00:25:31.880 | exactly what the history of that car is.
00:25:35.300 | You might go and buy a car from a dealer.
00:25:37.500 | That's great, but you don't know where that dealer got it.
00:25:39.980 | You don't know why the dealer received that car.
00:25:42.220 | It may have been traded into the dealer
00:25:44.280 | because somebody was getting rid of their problem car.
00:25:46.780 | It just was always sucking up their money
00:25:48.560 | and having problems.
00:25:49.400 | They wanted to get rid of their problem car,
00:25:50.940 | and they wanted to replace it with a new vehicle.
00:25:54.000 | The dealer could have bought it at auction.
00:25:55.940 | Most dealers, especially used car dealers,
00:25:58.220 | acquire their inventory at auto auctions,
00:26:01.220 | and they don't have any history of the car.
00:26:03.260 | Yeah, they have the Carfax report,
00:26:05.220 | but all they're doing there is checking
00:26:07.080 | to make sure it has a clean vehicle identification number,
00:26:09.900 | but they don't know anything
00:26:11.100 | about the background of the car.
00:26:12.620 | And so by getting the car at auction,
00:26:16.960 | you're getting a car and then selling it to you.
00:26:19.100 | They don't know anything about the condition of the car.
00:26:22.100 | Now in today's world, cars are generally very high quality.
00:26:25.220 | Virtually every brand, virtually every model,
00:26:27.420 | high quality, probably no problems.
00:26:30.100 | It's very unusual in today's world to get a lemon.
00:26:32.380 | It's very unusual to get something
00:26:33.820 | that's not working for you, but there's still that risk.
00:26:38.560 | And so, let's say you're buying private party
00:26:41.200 | in the used market.
00:26:42.040 | Well, again, private party,
00:26:43.020 | is this guy telling me the truth or not?
00:26:45.400 | I bought a van a few years ago
00:26:47.780 | and it wound up just being a terrible deal.
00:26:49.740 | I thought I was getting a great deal.
00:26:51.540 | I got the van at a great price.
00:26:53.260 | I had checked out the history of the van.
00:26:55.820 | It was a fleet vehicle,
00:26:58.100 | and so I thought this is gonna be great.
00:26:59.500 | It's gonna be cared for.
00:27:00.760 | Well, it wound up being in terrible shape
00:27:02.620 | and I never figured out the problems.
00:27:03.940 | I spent thousands of dollars and I lost money on it.
00:27:06.980 | And so how do you get out of that solution?
00:27:10.460 | How did that problem?
00:27:11.740 | Well, the answer is a used car
00:27:13.740 | that you know the history of.
00:27:15.640 | So what's the best way to buy a used car
00:27:17.440 | that you know the history of?
00:27:19.360 | My answer, from somebody that you know.
00:27:21.520 | And so if ever I know somebody who is selling a car,
00:27:25.720 | I will always go and look at it and think about buying it.
00:27:29.080 | Because if I can buy a car from somebody that I know,
00:27:33.160 | that I trust, who can tell me the true history of the car,
00:27:36.440 | and I know they're not trying to swindle me in some way,
00:27:39.680 | I can potentially save myself quite a lot of hassle,
00:27:43.900 | quite a lot of money, potentially.
00:27:46.260 | In addition, by purchasing the cars when they're available,
00:27:50.660 | I can get rid of my older cars before they have any trouble.
00:27:53.760 | I like to drive vehicles for a long time.
00:27:57.620 | I think that's wise.
00:27:59.240 | However, there is a point in time
00:28:01.380 | at which a vehicle is worth,
00:28:04.280 | it just costs you too much to keep it.
00:28:06.780 | If that weren't the case,
00:28:08.480 | then fleet managers wouldn't continually
00:28:10.760 | be purchasing new vehicles.
00:28:12.880 | And so a vehicle can get to the point
00:28:14.920 | where it genuinely does absorb too much of your time
00:28:19.000 | and energy and money to keep it going.
00:28:21.000 | Then you have a problem.
00:28:23.000 | You have to decide, do I fix this or do I not fix this?
00:28:26.640 | And generally you have to fix this and then sell it.
00:28:28.840 | And then if you have to fix it and then sell it,
00:28:30.840 | then you have to disclose,
00:28:32.360 | hey, this vehicle's having problems,
00:28:33.800 | that's why I'm getting it.
00:28:34.860 | You have to disclose that to the buyer.
00:28:36.880 | And so you're better off to buy a car,
00:28:40.200 | use it for a significant amount of time,
00:28:42.440 | and then sell it when it's still in perfectly good shape.
00:28:45.560 | You don't have to conceal anything from the buyer.
00:28:48.240 | You don't have to change anything.
00:28:49.320 | You just say, hey, this car has been great.
00:28:50.920 | Tell them the truth about it and pass it along.
00:28:53.120 | And so in my mind,
00:28:54.600 | this is a good way to deal with car ownership.
00:28:56.880 | And so I always bid on cars,
00:28:59.760 | same thing with boats, same thing with any toys.
00:29:02.640 | If anybody that I know is selling something,
00:29:06.020 | I'll always go and check it out
00:29:07.660 | and consider making them an offer.
00:29:09.300 | And of course, sometimes you can negotiate a better offer
00:29:12.280 | because you know somebody,
00:29:14.580 | you can negotiate a better offer
00:29:15.860 | because you helped them just to sell it quickly
00:29:17.500 | with no hassle.
00:29:18.640 | It just works for both.
00:29:19.800 | It's a win-win for both parties in the transaction.
00:29:23.000 | But in order to do that, you have to have money.
00:29:27.220 | You have to have money when the car pops up
00:29:29.540 | on the marketplace or when the ski boat pops up
00:29:32.100 | on the marketplace and you just walk over and buy it
00:29:35.560 | rather than simply waiting until you've saved, et cetera.
00:29:39.040 | You gotta have money for an extemporaneous purchase.
00:29:43.520 | Now, back to airplane tickets.
00:29:45.000 | The same thing has been true with airfares
00:29:47.820 | because the deals in the airfare market right now
00:29:51.720 | have been absolutely stunning.
00:29:53.760 | All over the world, you could fly all over the world.
00:29:55.920 | I was watching tickets quite literally
00:29:58.440 | from Florida to Japan round trip for $350 a few months ago.
00:30:03.440 | Amazing, but of course, Japan is closed.
00:30:07.800 | So you can't get in.
00:30:09.000 | So there's these deals are there,
00:30:10.840 | but you gotta have the money to buy them,
00:30:13.240 | not knowing if or when you may actually be able to use them.
00:30:16.480 | So I've tried to balance it and purchase some airfare,
00:30:21.480 | but my big thing that I wanted to,
00:30:24.080 | with travel was to change continents.
00:30:26.960 | And in my experience,
00:30:28.840 | especially in the wake of the budget airline revolution,
00:30:32.760 | you can get around most continents pretty inexpensively now.
00:30:37.320 | It's amazing.
00:30:38.440 | Again, I feel like I use this phrase all the time.
00:30:42.320 | We live in a golden age, but we genuinely do,
00:30:44.720 | especially with regard to travel.
00:30:46.580 | We live in a golden age of travel.
00:30:48.660 | We live in a golden age of international travel right now.
00:30:52.200 | Most continents except Africa right now,
00:30:56.640 | but Africa is coming along,
00:30:58.440 | but most continents are very cheap to get around
00:31:02.760 | because of the wave of budget airlines.
00:31:05.920 | And I think this trend will continue to get better.
00:31:08.120 | I expect even markets like Africa to come along
00:31:11.200 | over the coming years.
00:31:12.800 | So if you can get yourself to Europe,
00:31:15.320 | of course you can fly around Europe very inexpensively.
00:31:18.760 | You've got Ryanair, Wizz Air, EasyJet, Pegasus.
00:31:24.200 | You've got in Asia,
00:31:26.800 | I don't need to go through the long list of airlines,
00:31:29.560 | but what's still expensive usually
00:31:32.320 | is getting between continents.
00:31:34.260 | So what I've tried to do
00:31:35.120 | is book the intercontinental flights with deals
00:31:39.360 | and then just rely on ad hoc purchases of tickets
00:31:44.360 | for getting around the local area.
00:31:47.400 | And that strategy, at least so far, has been working.
00:31:51.400 | And so I'm happy with that.
00:31:53.640 | I've flown on some budget airlines.
00:31:55.800 | Flew on Aeromexico into Mexico.
00:31:58.720 | I flew from Mexico to Costa Rica on,
00:32:02.220 | it escapes me, the purple guys.
00:32:08.980 | And then I flew from Costa Rica
00:32:12.720 | to the United States on Spirit.
00:32:14.900 | We flew from the United States to Europe on Air France.
00:32:18.640 | And then flew on Air Malta to Malta so far.
00:32:23.080 | And so the strategy is working.
00:32:25.240 | So I'd share that with you,
00:32:26.080 | that if you wanna travel with family,
00:32:28.540 | you're gonna need to figure out your strategy for traveling
00:32:31.840 | and how you're gonna do it
00:32:33.160 | because that is one of those multiplicative costs
00:32:38.160 | that children add to your life.
00:32:40.520 | I don't think much about money with regard to my children.
00:32:45.160 | I don't really care how much they cost me.
00:32:48.080 | I want to have children and I'm happy to invest in them
00:32:52.080 | and I don't really care whether it costs me more money
00:32:55.520 | or I don't really care if I have to work five extra years
00:32:57.800 | because I have one more baby.
00:32:59.440 | I think it's silly to orient your life around money
00:33:02.800 | instead of around love.
00:33:04.960 | But still, there are costs involved
00:33:09.080 | and any thoughtful, responsible person
00:33:10.920 | recognizes those costs.
00:33:12.660 | For the most part, I don't find that the expenses
00:33:15.700 | of children are multiplicative.
00:33:18.980 | I don't find that managing a household of six people
00:33:22.460 | is six times as expensive as a household of one.
00:33:25.700 | However, with airplane travel, it is.
00:33:28.860 | With restaurants, it frequently is.
00:33:32.340 | With hotels, it's not six times, but it increases
00:33:37.100 | with the number of beds that you need, et cetera.
00:33:39.780 | And so if you're gonna do family travel,
00:33:42.060 | you gotta think about that and make a plan for that.
00:33:44.980 | So let me tell you about our plans
00:33:47.640 | as to how we have been moderating the expenses
00:33:51.300 | of family travel as well as how we are doing it
00:33:56.180 | going forward.
00:33:57.620 | The first thing that we have done
00:33:59.980 | is tried to severely cut down on the amount of luggage
00:34:04.980 | that we have.
00:34:06.220 | I can't evade buying six airplane tickets.
00:34:09.540 | For a time, I had a baby in arms.
00:34:11.240 | That was nice for a time,
00:34:12.780 | but I can't evade buying six airplane tickets.
00:34:17.080 | But what I can do is I can try to keep those tickets
00:34:20.140 | as modestly priced as possible.
00:34:23.020 | And especially if you're gonna use budget airlines
00:34:25.540 | to get around, then your luggage is often a big, big factor.
00:34:30.380 | And so what we set out with a goal of doing
00:34:33.460 | was first of all, obviously,
00:34:35.500 | to go exclusively with carry-on travel.
00:34:37.960 | That's important because a lot of times
00:34:41.360 | you can book a ticket.
00:34:43.160 | I think it's called a skip-lag ticket,
00:34:44.900 | which, for example,
00:34:47.440 | let's say that I had wanted to go to Paris.
00:34:49.880 | Well, Miami to Paris is often an expensive route,
00:34:54.700 | but Miami to Lisbon, which is what I flew,
00:34:57.280 | is not an expensive route.
00:34:59.260 | Not so many people are going to Lisbon
00:35:00.920 | as are going to Paris, but I connected through Paris.
00:35:04.080 | And so what I could have done
00:35:06.560 | was simply booked the Miami to Lisbon ticket,
00:35:10.240 | Air France, Miami to Paris, Paris to Lisbon,
00:35:13.400 | and then gotten off the plane, left the airport in Paris,
00:35:15.960 | and never used the leg from Paris to Lisbon.
00:35:19.160 | And there are lots of these out there,
00:35:20.800 | these skip-lag tickets,
00:35:24.200 | and booking opportunities are out there.
00:35:26.420 | The problem is airlines don't like them, first of all,
00:35:29.480 | so you do face some risk when using them.
00:35:32.680 | And more importantly, you cannot check luggage
00:35:35.760 | when you use those kinds of itineraries
00:35:37.780 | because if you check luggage,
00:35:39.580 | your luggage will wind up at the final destination.
00:35:41.840 | So your first thing you need to do is go all carry-on.
00:35:44.920 | Now we face a challenge of how are you gonna deal
00:35:48.760 | with those carry-on suitcases?
00:35:50.840 | Because my children are so young and so small,
00:35:54.760 | they are not capable of taking care
00:35:57.520 | of their own carry-on suitcases.
00:35:59.240 | And so while there are six of us,
00:36:01.560 | I have two adults, and I have a seven-year-old
00:36:05.640 | and a six-year-old, who are modestly helpful
00:36:09.000 | as long as they don't have to physically carry something.
00:36:12.080 | What's more challenging though
00:36:13.600 | is we have other child paraphernalia.
00:36:16.320 | I have a four-year-old and a two-year-old.
00:36:18.520 | Two-year-old isn't a great walker.
00:36:20.440 | Four-year-old still gets tired of walking.
00:36:24.200 | So how do I get the two-year-old
00:36:25.360 | and the four-year-old around
00:36:26.960 | and deal with carry-on luggage?
00:36:28.920 | Now all of a sudden now, those six bags
00:36:30.960 | that six adults, or two adults
00:36:33.160 | and four teenagers traveling together,
00:36:35.160 | those six carry-on bags that would be normally
00:36:39.960 | quite no big deal, now they're quite burdensome.
00:36:44.960 | And then you have the challenge
00:36:47.560 | of what child paraphernalia do we travel with?
00:36:50.680 | Do we travel with a car seat or multiple car seats?
00:36:54.880 | I've got one in car seat, I got another in a booster.
00:36:57.720 | Do we travel with car seats?
00:37:00.080 | Do we travel with a stroller?
00:37:01.840 | What do you do about midnight airport,
00:37:05.280 | walking through the airport at midnight
00:37:06.880 | with a two-year-old and a four-year-old
00:37:08.880 | who've been woken up out of their sleep and aren't happy?
00:37:12.360 | Do we cart them on arms, then how do we do it?
00:37:14.960 | And so you have all these challenges.
00:37:18.200 | And so what we try to do is our strategy was,
00:37:20.440 | well, let's go even smaller with the bags.
00:37:22.240 | And this also can help with budgets
00:37:23.800 | because for example, budget airlines,
00:37:26.440 | budget airlines are not so budget
00:37:28.960 | when you start adding in luggage.
00:37:31.600 | So the strategy here changes.
00:37:33.880 | Your first strategy I think is check your bags.
00:37:36.640 | And when I was younger, before having children,
00:37:39.640 | I never checked bags.
00:37:40.720 | Now that I have children, I find out,
00:37:42.600 | wait a second, there was a whole other side of the story
00:37:44.440 | that is phenomenal.
00:37:45.520 | Checked bags are great 'cause all I gotta do
00:37:47.400 | is pay the bellhop at the airport
00:37:49.480 | to take the bag to the counter.
00:37:50.960 | The bag goes through,
00:37:51.840 | I don't touch it till the final destination
00:37:53.600 | and I can just wrangle all my children
00:37:55.760 | through the airport and I'm good to go.
00:37:57.280 | And so I find checked bags now very useful in my life.
00:38:00.280 | But they're also more expensive
00:38:02.360 | and if you're doing skip lag and budget airlines,
00:38:05.880 | then now the cost of travel is gonna be more challenging.
00:38:08.440 | So we wanted to go with entirely personal items.
00:38:11.120 | Now in a perfect world,
00:38:12.920 | we would do Ryanair personal items,
00:38:16.320 | but we're not there yet.
00:38:18.600 | What we did do, meaning they're tiny little,
00:38:20.680 | is it 20 centimeters by 20 centimeters by 40 centimeters,
00:38:23.160 | these tiny bags that Ryanair lets you bring without cost.
00:38:28.040 | I could fly every weekend on Ryanair
00:38:30.960 | and never pay a dime for a bag,
00:38:32.920 | but I can't do that with children.
00:38:34.540 | But what we did do was we were able to get
00:38:37.400 | into personal item bags.
00:38:39.120 | And so that was our first strategy.
00:38:41.040 | We have at this point,
00:38:43.240 | we wanted to have five personal item bags
00:38:46.160 | plus my carry on my backpack, which is my office,
00:38:49.280 | but we wound up with six.
00:38:51.840 | So we have six under seat personal item bags,
00:38:56.400 | the rolly bags that fit under the seat in front of you.
00:38:59.080 | And that works for the majority of airlines.
00:39:01.800 | It won't work for Ryanair,
00:39:03.480 | but it'll work for the majority of airlines
00:39:05.160 | as a free hand luggage.
00:39:07.160 | And then I have one carry on bag,
00:39:08.960 | which is a large backpack that I have.
00:39:11.880 | And so this strategy works out that with those six bags,
00:39:16.200 | I can stack them.
00:39:17.600 | And so I have a mixture of bags.
00:39:20.960 | I have some spinny bags with four little spinners
00:39:25.800 | on the bottom.
00:39:26.640 | And then I have a couple of pull behind expandable bags.
00:39:29.880 | And so the expandable bags are nice
00:39:31.600 | because I can keep them at the under seat size.
00:39:34.600 | But if I have more luggage allowance
00:39:37.000 | and I have things I need to do,
00:39:38.480 | then I can expand them into standard carry on size.
00:39:41.320 | And so that gives us more luggage space when we need to,
00:39:44.240 | but most of the time I keep them small.
00:39:46.760 | And with them being spinny bags,
00:39:49.880 | I can't remember, is that what they're called?
00:39:51.200 | Yeah, the spinner bags.
00:39:52.760 | Then I can put two of them back to back.
00:39:55.920 | And I found that this is my best way
00:39:57.840 | of schlepping suitcases through an airport
00:40:00.680 | is to use the spinner bags, put two of them back to back,
00:40:04.000 | and then I can drive two of them vertical
00:40:06.160 | and I can stack them.
00:40:07.160 | And so the way that we do it is I have a backpack
00:40:11.080 | that has my office in it.
00:40:12.720 | And at some point I'll do a YouTube video on this,
00:40:14.280 | go through it all.
00:40:15.200 | But I have a backpack that has my office in it.
00:40:17.680 | It's heavy.
00:40:18.880 | It's got two big microphones.
00:40:21.080 | And I went ahead and went heavy on the gear
00:40:24.720 | and the equipment and the camera and laptops and such.
00:40:28.800 | But it's on my back.
00:40:30.560 | Then I have two spinner under seat bags.
00:40:34.520 | And then stacked on top of those spinner under seat bags,
00:40:37.200 | I have two more under seat bags,
00:40:39.560 | which allows me to cart four suitcases myself with one hand
00:40:44.560 | and also to have one hand free for passports
00:40:49.600 | and boarding passes and all the rest.
00:40:52.560 | Then we have two more suitcases.
00:40:54.960 | And then usually I have my two eldest children
00:40:57.640 | pull those suitcases because they're roller bags.
00:41:00.640 | Then we, because they're roller bags,
00:41:05.640 | they can handle them.
00:41:07.960 | They don't have to carry weight.
00:41:09.520 | And then we decided to go ahead and use a baby backpack.
00:41:13.040 | So we've got one of the nice, I think it's Deuter,
00:41:15.460 | one of the nice big hiking backpack styles
00:41:17.720 | for our two year old.
00:41:18.840 | And so in the airport, it's just a lot easier.
00:41:21.000 | We put the two year old on my wife's back
00:41:22.800 | and the baby backpack.
00:41:24.320 | And so that way her hands are free.
00:41:25.920 | She can pull the suitcase if needed.
00:41:27.880 | And then the backup plan is if we need to transport children,
00:41:30.880 | I pop off those bags off the spinner bags
00:41:33.160 | and I put my youngest two sitting on those bags.
00:41:35.920 | Then I can trundle through the airport with two suitcases,
00:41:40.280 | with a child on each.
00:41:41.880 | And then we divide the remaining four suitcases
00:41:44.240 | between my wife and my two eldest.
00:41:46.120 | And so that's been working.
00:41:48.000 | It works in airports.
00:41:49.400 | We haven't done yet a lot of train stations.
00:41:52.480 | We haven't yet done a lot of bus stations
00:41:54.600 | and such like that, but it does work for airports.
00:41:59.520 | And I think here, obviously we should also be quick
00:42:02.200 | to acknowledge that you just pay people
00:42:04.180 | and you rely on the kindness of strangers, right?
00:42:06.000 | Strangers will help us down the stairs.
00:42:08.160 | If we've got a jetway that has a stair that we disembark at,
00:42:12.160 | they'll help you on the buses.
00:42:13.600 | There's nothing to do except rely
00:42:15.000 | on the kindness of strangers
00:42:16.480 | and or rely on the use of professional porters.
00:42:19.420 | But that has made travel bearable.
00:42:21.160 | Let me talk about car seats for a moment.
00:42:24.960 | One of the things that we found,
00:42:27.680 | and this is always hard to talk about parenting things
00:42:30.080 | because as a parent, you get so judged by everyone.
00:42:32.840 | But if you have your kid in a car seat,
00:42:34.360 | you don't have the latches done right or something
00:42:36.200 | and someone, "Oh, this chest strap has to be higher."
00:42:39.720 | If you don't have your kid in a car seat,
00:42:41.480 | then everyone jumps on you.
00:42:43.120 | We learned years ago,
00:42:44.040 | never ever post pictures of your children
00:42:46.680 | and their car seats online
00:42:48.040 | or you will be destroyed by the car seat mob.
00:42:52.480 | What we've done is we found a couple of neat solutions.
00:42:55.020 | One, we have a booster seat for my four-year-old
00:42:59.400 | who is of appropriate weight classifications.
00:43:02.400 | It's a folding booster seat.
00:43:04.760 | The brand that we went with is one called MyFold,
00:43:07.600 | M-I-F-O-L-D, MyFold booster seat.
00:43:11.260 | And it basically takes this,
00:43:13.780 | it takes the booster seat
00:43:17.040 | and it puts it down into a package
00:43:19.200 | that's about, let's say, eight or 10 inches long,
00:43:23.160 | about an inch and a half to two inches thick,
00:43:25.240 | and about three and a half inches wide.
00:43:28.560 | And so it's a very compact package
00:43:32.320 | that is super easy to travel with and it works.
00:43:35.120 | It does exactly what a booster seat does.
00:43:37.680 | But instead of having padding, raising the child up
00:43:40.720 | so that the three-point harness is in a better solution,
00:43:44.000 | what it actually does is it draws the three-point harness
00:43:46.980 | down with a system of straps.
00:43:48.440 | And so we really like that for our four-year-old.
00:43:51.500 | Our two-year-old does not meet the appropriate weight
00:43:54.540 | and height classifications for a booster seat,
00:43:57.120 | but we found a solution
00:44:00.700 | that is basically a car seat vest.
00:44:03.760 | The brand that we chose was a brand called Wizrider.
00:44:07.480 | I think it's W-I-Z-Z-R-I-D-E-R, Wizrider.
00:44:11.360 | And what it is, it's a simple fabric vest
00:44:14.440 | that you put on the child and a strap around him.
00:44:17.960 | And then that vest has some anchoring points,
00:44:21.160 | some metal anchoring points
00:44:22.920 | that use the three-point harness
00:44:25.160 | and keep it at a proper, safe location around him.
00:44:29.960 | So he can just wear that vest
00:44:32.520 | and be properly anchored using the Extant harness
00:44:37.520 | in the car.
00:44:39.640 | And so that's been really neat.
00:44:40.460 | So we take those with us wherever we go.
00:44:42.600 | We use them for taxi cabs, Uber, whatever.
00:44:45.800 | We just have them in a small diaper bag
00:44:48.720 | that is ready to go.
00:44:50.400 | And so we hop in a car seat and I do one
00:44:52.600 | and my wife does the other.
00:44:53.760 | And sorry, we hop into a car, I do one,
00:44:56.360 | my wife does the other
00:44:57.200 | and the children are properly strapped in.
00:44:59.180 | And I'm pretty happy with those solutions.
00:45:01.400 | I think they're really good solutions
00:45:03.840 | for the children's safety.
00:45:05.720 | And they keep us from having to cart around something else.
00:45:10.720 | We thought a lot about a stroller,
00:45:12.840 | decided against a stroller,
00:45:14.680 | thought a lot about bringing a baby backpack,
00:45:17.120 | decided to go with the baby backpack.
00:45:19.760 | It adds one more thing.
00:45:20.880 | It's actually the hardest thing that I have
00:45:22.480 | to fit into luggage compartments and such,
00:45:24.760 | but it does add a lot of range.
00:45:27.200 | I can carry my two-year-old a lot farther on my back
00:45:30.200 | than I can in my arms.
00:45:32.080 | And so I don't know how long we'll travel with it,
00:45:34.920 | but for right now, that's our luggage solution.
00:45:38.720 | And I'm pretty pleased with it so far.
00:45:41.760 | You could get away with less luggage
00:45:44.540 | on any kind of short-term trip.
00:45:46.520 | So we are traveling for an undefined, indefinite period.
00:45:51.520 | So because of that, we have things like school books.
00:45:57.920 | We're traveling to a bunch of different destinations.
00:45:59.880 | So we have an entire bag, one of our entire bags
00:46:02.720 | is dedicated to school books, homeschooling books.
00:46:06.000 | We simplified, but we still do have homeschooling books
00:46:08.880 | for my two elder children.
00:46:10.440 | And although we do use Kindle readers,
00:46:14.200 | we're pretty opposed to screens,
00:46:15.560 | and so we're not doing it.
00:46:16.680 | We could dump the school books and just use iPad apps,
00:46:19.740 | but we've chosen to cart the books around.
00:46:23.800 | Also then toys, some carefully selected toys.
00:46:27.720 | And in addition to the toys, some masks,
00:46:31.760 | snorkel gear, et cetera.
00:46:35.880 | And so one of the bags is dedicated to that.
00:46:38.560 | And so basically we've got, between those, it works.
00:46:43.200 | So that's our luggage solution.
00:46:45.000 | And I would highly recommend it to you
00:46:46.360 | that as an experienced traveler,
00:46:48.600 | the less luggage you have,
00:46:50.600 | the happier you will be with your trip.
00:46:53.040 | Luggage is not a, having a lot of luggage
00:46:58.040 | is not an impediment to a great single destination journey.
00:47:03.160 | If you're gonna get on an airplane, fly to Cancun,
00:47:06.440 | spend a week at a beach resort, fly back,
00:47:09.480 | a big suitcase really is no big deal.
00:47:12.140 | You check it in, they take it there for you,
00:47:14.440 | you give it to the porter, give it to the taxi guy,
00:47:17.220 | he's got plenty of space, you go to one destination
00:47:19.520 | and you're there.
00:47:20.560 | But when you're traveling the way that we're traveling,
00:47:22.440 | changing hotels frequently, changing airplanes,
00:47:25.240 | changing airports, changing modes of transportation,
00:47:27.560 | getting on trains, getting off trains, et cetera,
00:47:30.360 | you will curse your luggage daily if you have a lot of it.
00:47:35.040 | And so I'd recommend to you do everything you can
00:47:37.240 | to minimize it.
00:47:38.380 | I should also just address accommodations.
00:47:44.400 | I forgot, one of the things that we also travel with
00:47:47.320 | is we have one of those fold up sleeping pods
00:47:50.760 | for my youngest child.
00:47:52.180 | That has worked very well.
00:47:54.280 | So far, it generally allows us to do fine with hotel rooms
00:47:58.320 | when we're just passing through,
00:47:59.360 | not for an extended period of time,
00:48:00.920 | but hotel rooms with two queen beds,
00:48:03.440 | because what I can do is just book a standard
00:48:07.000 | two queen room, put the three elder children in one bed,
00:48:11.600 | I put my youngest child on the floor,
00:48:14.000 | we just take a blanket or a cushion or whatever we find,
00:48:17.280 | roll that up and I put down the baby sleeping pod,
00:48:19.640 | which folds up and fits inside one of the suitcases.
00:48:22.280 | And that's allowed us to so far get by
00:48:27.340 | with generally booking one double bed,
00:48:32.220 | one two queen bed or two double bed rooms.
00:48:35.100 | And so that's been a good strategy as well
00:48:37.020 | that I'm generally happy with.
00:48:38.460 | How long that's gonna last?
00:48:39.820 | I don't know, I'm hoping a couple more years
00:48:41.540 | before I have to get two rooms every time.
00:48:43.640 | (laughs)
00:48:44.740 | But we'll see.
00:48:46.340 | When we're someplace for longer, of course,
00:48:48.380 | I get a place with more rooms.
00:48:50.100 | And so I have been quite fortunate right now,
00:48:53.620 | you can hear the children in the other room,
00:48:55.180 | perhaps in the background,
00:48:56.900 | but I've got a nice three bedroom hotel room
00:49:01.580 | here in Malta, which has been great.
00:49:05.420 | And it comes out right now,
00:49:07.180 | this right here is about $100 a night,
00:49:09.740 | which I think is within my traveling budget, et cetera.
00:49:13.500 | There's some other things that I could talk about,
00:49:15.860 | I'll tell you, I miss traveling like this
00:49:18.820 | makes me very much miss RV travel with children.
00:49:23.300 | I am convinced that RV travel,
00:49:25.940 | long-term RV travel is the best way to go
00:49:29.540 | to travel with children.
00:49:31.380 | I really miss it because long-term RV travel
00:49:35.720 | is so comfortable because of the stuff, right?
00:49:38.700 | You can go where you want.
00:49:40.060 | And when you travel with as big of a group as we have,
00:49:42.800 | many of the other costs do change.
00:49:44.860 | So for example, oftentimes it's cheaper for me
00:49:47.740 | to rent a car than it is to simply take taxis,
00:49:51.380 | sometimes I have to multiple taxis.
00:49:55.660 | Train tickets, usually people would say,
00:49:57.540 | oh, I wanna see Europe by train.
00:49:59.300 | Well, if you're one person, train is great way to go.
00:50:02.100 | Planes are a great way to go.
00:50:03.240 | When you're six people, all of a sudden,
00:50:04.780 | driving is often the way to go.
00:50:06.940 | It's just a more efficient way to get around.
00:50:08.940 | We had tremendous challenge, not tremendous,
00:50:11.740 | that was too much.
00:50:12.580 | We had challenges in Lisbon with Uber
00:50:14.780 | because in Lisbon, the requirements,
00:50:18.460 | you order an Uber XL and they have the capacity
00:50:21.820 | of the Uber XL limited to three people.
00:50:24.540 | And so even though we're only six people
00:50:26.900 | and usually you would be able to order an Uber XL,
00:50:30.780 | which would be fine for us as a family of six,
00:50:33.700 | all of a sudden now I have to order two cars.
00:50:36.020 | And so that does take some challenges.
00:50:39.780 | I miss RV travel.
00:50:41.380 | I might buy an RV here in Europe
00:50:43.180 | and use an RV around Europe.
00:50:45.740 | The reason I haven't is just simply
00:50:47.700 | that I don't intend to stay in Europe
00:50:49.140 | for months and months and months,
00:50:50.340 | and I'm not sure how to make it worth it.
00:50:52.660 | Also some challenges of actually owning
00:50:55.140 | and registering an RV here in Europe.
00:50:57.140 | I think I have a solution.
00:50:58.820 | I think I'll be able to buy a car.
00:51:00.740 | I'm planning to buy a car here in Europe
00:51:02.180 | just to use for the summer.
00:51:03.380 | I think I have that worked out as a non-European resident.
00:51:07.900 | The next few weeks will tell the story
00:51:09.500 | if I figured it out, but I found it quite challenging
00:51:11.820 | to figure out as a non-European resident, right?
00:51:15.620 | Just a standard American trying to figure out
00:51:17.420 | how do you buy a car in Europe is not easy to do.
00:51:20.060 | Europeans can easily go to the United States,
00:51:22.380 | buy a car, travel around, sell it when they're done with it.
00:51:25.580 | It's a little bit, it's quite,
00:51:27.180 | it's a bit more involved for us here.
00:51:28.620 | But I think I've cracked that.
00:51:30.340 | Just took a lot of research and a lot of legwork
00:51:33.220 | to figure out, and so we'll see.
00:51:35.100 | Next few weeks will tell whether I've succeeded
00:51:37.300 | in that or not.
00:51:38.340 | But RV travel is really great.
00:51:40.860 | If I had not done quite a bit of travel already
00:51:44.340 | with my family, if I hadn't done RV travel,
00:51:47.260 | if I hadn't test, pushed our limits,
00:51:49.580 | built our muscles, so to speak,
00:51:51.580 | to the point where we're pretty easygoing at this point,
00:51:54.060 | we can live well in small spaces,
00:51:56.400 | we're not super high maintenance,
00:51:58.140 | I don't think I'd be having as much fun right now
00:52:00.220 | as I'm having.
00:52:01.300 | What we're doing now is certainly, it's not easy,
00:52:04.380 | and, but it's something we've worked up to
00:52:06.200 | because we've gotten better at it,
00:52:08.260 | we've gotten stronger at it.
00:52:09.500 | And I would remind you that I really think
00:52:11.700 | these things are skills.
00:52:12.740 | I think most things in life are skills.
00:52:15.060 | And traveling is simply a skill.
00:52:16.820 | It's something that you do, and at first,
00:52:18.840 | you're not very good at it.
00:52:20.020 | And then over time, you get better at it.
00:52:22.120 | And you figure out what works for us.
00:52:24.260 | And in the beginning, I would just simply encourage you,
00:52:26.660 | don't make long-term decisions
00:52:28.700 | based upon short-term information,
00:52:30.740 | and recognize that things will change.
00:52:32.980 | So for example, I try really hard
00:52:36.820 | to be thoughtful and thoughtful with the money that I spend.
00:52:40.900 | But when I'm in certain situations
00:52:44.180 | where I know that frugality is not an option,
00:52:47.060 | I just simply spend the money.
00:52:49.780 | Usually this involves food.
00:52:51.360 | When you're traveling with the little baggages we have,
00:52:53.260 | I don't have a lot of room for extra food.
00:52:55.300 | I can bring a few snacks, but the supermarket thing
00:52:58.100 | and whatnot, it doesn't work sometimes.
00:53:00.660 | And so I just give myself permission,
00:53:02.740 | give myself mercy, knowing that,
00:53:04.280 | hey, I'll be better in the future.
00:53:05.940 | But for right now, it's got to spend the money
00:53:07.500 | and buy my children what they need
00:53:09.380 | so that they're covered.
00:53:11.180 | The biggest challenge does continue to be
00:53:14.660 | what it has always been with travel,
00:53:16.940 | is how do you work productively from the road?
00:53:21.580 | And here, it's not a matter of me,
00:53:24.180 | in the sense that I am very pleased
00:53:27.100 | with my mobile office solutions.
00:53:29.300 | I'm very pleased with how I've got all that stuff set up
00:53:31.940 | that I can sit down at any table, any bed, any bench
00:53:36.060 | in the world and be productive.
00:53:37.860 | The biggest challenge continues to be,
00:53:39.500 | and I knew it would be, the biggest challenge is simply,
00:53:42.060 | how do I make sure that my wife has what she needs
00:53:46.540 | to care for the children so that I can have the hours
00:53:49.740 | dedicated to work that I need?
00:53:51.220 | I'm behind on some of my work goals,
00:53:55.460 | which is frustrating, but I try to be
00:53:58.900 | not as frustrated about it.
00:54:00.700 | But my answer to that solution there
00:54:03.100 | is kind of setting up longer term things.
00:54:05.980 | I don't, at this point in time, I don't try to even,
00:54:08.900 | I don't even try to work while traveling.
00:54:11.400 | Because of my responsibilities as a father,
00:54:15.740 | traveling is enough work as it is.
00:54:19.060 | What I do try to do and am trying to do
00:54:21.660 | is stay places for long enough that we can have the things
00:54:27.540 | that we need and get into that daily routine of life.
00:54:31.060 | Because that daily routine is actually very good
00:54:33.540 | and very important for children.
00:54:35.700 | And so having a place where my wife has the space
00:54:38.940 | that she needs, the toys that she needs,
00:54:40.820 | the books that she needs, the activities, et cetera,
00:54:43.580 | where she can take care of young children,
00:54:45.660 | homeschool on the road, et cetera, that's really important.
00:54:49.580 | And so we're trying to stay places for longer.
00:54:53.060 | Again, I think I'll be in France for either a month
00:54:56.220 | or a couple of months this summer.
00:54:57.780 | And I'm looking forward to that,
00:54:58.740 | just to being in one place stationary.
00:55:01.020 | We're here in Malta for two weeks
00:55:02.300 | and that's allowing us to go much more slowly.
00:55:05.460 | And so there is real virtue and real benefit in slow travel.
00:55:09.120 | I think that fast travel as a family,
00:55:12.780 | unless you are full-time dedicated to it,
00:55:15.480 | you're gonna take a year off,
00:55:16.980 | you're not gonna be working at all,
00:55:18.780 | you're not gonna be trying to be productive,
00:55:20.780 | and you've got the money allocated where you say,
00:55:22.900 | okay, we're gonna spend $50,000,
00:55:24.940 | we're gonna spend $100,000, whatever your budget is,
00:55:27.340 | this year on this trip, I think that's fine.
00:55:30.100 | And that'll work really well.
00:55:31.180 | Then you can just do tourist stuff day in, day out.
00:55:33.940 | But don't expect, especially if you're doing family travel,
00:55:37.580 | don't expect to be able to do that and work effectively
00:55:42.580 | with the challenges of travel with your family.
00:55:47.100 | Focus on slow travel and focus on spurts, right?
00:55:51.500 | The other thing is set up a base in a place
00:55:54.140 | and take a weekend trip from there.
00:55:55.820 | So if I go and I set up and I get an Airbnb in France
00:55:59.660 | for a month, get a monthly booking, big discounts, et cetera,
00:56:03.880 | okay, this is where we are,
00:56:05.300 | but now we're gonna take the weekend trip to Paris,
00:56:07.820 | or we're gonna take the weekend trip to Zurich,
00:56:10.180 | or wherever we're going, take your weekend trips,
00:56:12.740 | go and see something, and then come back to your home base.
00:56:15.380 | I think that strategy of having a home base
00:56:17.900 | and then going out for a short trip
00:56:20.140 | is really a better strategy.
00:56:23.300 | When I was younger, I despised routines.
00:56:25.940 | I thought, who wants to work nine to five?
00:56:28.200 | I wanna work a totally different schedule.
00:56:30.540 | I didn't care for an office setting.
00:56:33.700 | Well, I have learned the error of my ways.
00:56:35.620 | I've learned that most routines exist
00:56:37.940 | for a pretty good reason,
00:56:39.220 | and that even though I don't need to work from nine to five,
00:56:42.020 | I work from nine to five 'cause it works.
00:56:44.380 | It works with my schedule, it works.
00:56:46.460 | Routines with family work.
00:56:48.780 | They make things, they make life easier,
00:56:51.100 | and making life easier makes life better.
00:56:53.860 | I'll wrap up today's episode there.
00:56:57.420 | I'll give you one final closing charge.
00:56:59.140 | There are many more things that I could talk about.
00:57:00.860 | I could share applications that I use,
00:57:02.900 | tricks that I've developed, et cetera,
00:57:05.300 | but I'll continue to share more of those in the future.
00:57:07.780 | I simply want to resolve today's show with this.
00:57:10.740 | We do live in a golden age of travel,
00:57:18.960 | and if travel is something that you aspire to,
00:57:22.220 | it is more doable today than it has ever been.
00:57:26.380 | It really is, and it's doable with so many strategies.
00:57:31.200 | You can pay for it, you can do points.
00:57:33.260 | I've been doing quite a bit of credit card hacking myself,
00:57:37.540 | which has been fun 'cause I'm using the benefits,
00:57:40.400 | using the miles, the points, et cetera, the statuses.
00:57:42.840 | That's been fun.
00:57:43.860 | You can do it just through the simple ability
00:57:47.580 | to arrive in a new town and with the supercomputer
00:57:52.340 | in your pocket, arrange all the needs of your family.
00:57:55.620 | It's amazing.
00:57:57.280 | I lost a flight recently.
00:57:58.420 | I got expelled from a flight.
00:58:00.020 | They wouldn't let us on 'cause we didn't
00:58:01.340 | have the paperwork right.
00:58:02.660 | And I remember just sitting there,
00:58:05.780 | and usually, if that had happened 15 years ago,
00:58:10.100 | I would have sat there and been hours on the phone
00:58:13.480 | and figuring out the money and the tickets and the where.
00:58:16.220 | It would have just been a nightmare.
00:58:17.780 | As it was, it was frustrating,
00:58:19.420 | and it was an expensive mistake,
00:58:21.580 | but I pulled out my phone, I sat, I thought for a moment,
00:58:24.740 | okay, what's the best thing to do?
00:58:26.600 | Four hours later, we got on a plane,
00:58:28.420 | and it wasn't that big of a deal.
00:58:30.340 | I went and spent four hours in the airport lounge.
00:58:33.160 | And so we live in a golden age of travel,
00:58:37.180 | this kind of thing.
00:58:38.120 | Sometimes you should be careful with that, right?
00:58:41.140 | Because if it's something you've dreamed about
00:58:43.020 | for many years, you might do it and find out,
00:58:45.020 | hey, you know what, it wasn't as awesome
00:58:47.220 | as I dreamed about it.
00:58:48.040 | It was cool, but it came with a whole set of challenges.
00:58:50.820 | That's how I feel about it.
00:58:51.860 | I really do enjoy going places.
00:58:55.260 | I really do enjoy seeing new things,
00:58:56.940 | but I've done enough of it to know
00:58:58.600 | that it's not all roses.
00:59:01.620 | It comes with a whole lot of hard work.
00:59:03.460 | But it is more doable today than it's ever been,
00:59:06.980 | and it's easier today than it's ever been.
00:59:09.380 | And so get out there and start building the skills.
00:59:13.140 | I'm trying to share some from my experience,
00:59:16.220 | but one thing you should recognize,
00:59:20.060 | while I'm certainly not the man
00:59:23.100 | with the most frequent flyer miles in the world,
00:59:25.660 | I am an experienced traveler.
00:59:28.020 | And the things that I can do now
00:59:30.380 | are things that I could not have done before.
00:59:32.300 | I could never have traveled with four children years ago.
00:59:37.020 | I remember when my wife and I had one baby,
00:59:38.980 | and we just felt like we have no idea what we're doing.
00:59:41.500 | But parenting is a skill, traveling is a skill.
00:59:45.180 | All of these things are skills,
00:59:46.660 | and that if you just stay focused,
00:59:48.620 | and you build the skills, be patient with yourself,
00:59:51.380 | be patient with the process, trust the process,
00:59:54.060 | over time you can genuinely build up these skills
00:59:58.220 | and live the lifestyle of your dreams.
01:00:00.660 | Thank you for listening.
01:00:01.580 | I will be back with you just as soon as I can find
01:00:04.460 | more time to work. (laughs)
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