Family-Travel-by-Car-is-Vastly-Superior-to-All-Other-Options
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00:00:29.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,
00:00:32.000 | a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills,
00:00:35.000 | insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich
00:00:38.000 | and meaningful life now while building a plan
00:00:41.000 | for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:44.000 | Series of lifestyle shows coming at you in today's show
00:00:47.000 | and then the next couple.
00:00:49.000 | I'm going to share with you a goal
00:00:51.000 | that I have recently accomplished.
00:00:53.000 | It's a rather small goal, but I think it will be interesting
00:00:56.000 | and perhaps help you to have some practical application
00:01:00.000 | of Radical Personal Finance lifestyle hacks
00:01:03.000 | and travel hacks that you'll be able to use.
00:01:06.000 | The goal that I have accomplished,
00:01:08.000 | or at least I'm 95% certain that I have accomplished,
00:01:11.000 | has been to buy, register, and insure a car--
00:01:17.000 | or a van, properly said--
00:01:19.000 | in Europe as an American tourist
00:01:23.000 | so that we can travel around Europe
00:01:26.000 | with our own set of wheels.
00:01:29.000 | I'm in the nation of Portugal right now,
00:01:32.000 | where I have, I believe, accomplished this feat.
00:01:35.000 | The reason why I'm hedging my bets just a little bit
00:01:37.000 | is while I am in possession of a vehicle,
00:01:39.000 | for which I have keys and thus possession,
00:01:43.000 | for that vehicle I have a bill of sale,
00:01:46.000 | I have all of the government paperwork indicating
00:01:48.000 | that a transfer has been accomplished,
00:01:50.000 | I have an active insurance policy on it,
00:01:52.000 | I am still waiting for the final paperwork
00:01:56.000 | from the government with basically my title
00:01:59.000 | in my own name.
00:02:00.000 | And so in theory there could be some hiccup.
00:02:02.000 | But this was something that took me a little bit
00:02:04.000 | of ingenuity to figure out how to do.
00:02:07.000 | It took quite a bit of research to figure out
00:02:09.000 | where and how to accomplish it.
00:02:10.000 | But I believe I've accomplished it,
00:02:12.000 | and I want to share a bit of that story.
00:02:14.000 | And so I'm anticipating at the moment
00:02:16.000 | that this will be a three-series set of shows.
00:02:18.000 | In the first show, I'm going to share with you
00:02:21.000 | why I think it's worth it to consider buying a car,
00:02:25.000 | how this makes, in my opinion,
00:02:27.000 | a dramatic improvement in your travel experience,
00:02:30.000 | especially if you're traveling with children.
00:02:33.000 | In the second series in this show,
00:02:36.000 | I will share with you how I actually shopped for the car,
00:02:39.000 | because the lesson there is, all right,
00:02:40.000 | you show up in a brand-new place,
00:02:42.000 | you need an affordable, reliable, comfortable,
00:02:46.000 | good enough set of wheels, and you need it fast.
00:02:48.000 | How do you do it?
00:02:49.000 | I arrived in Portugal on Sunday afternoon.
00:02:52.000 | As I record this, it is Thursday morning,
00:02:56.000 | and I've done it in three days,
00:02:59.000 | two long days and one half-day worth of work.
00:03:04.000 | And while that's not an insubstantial amount of time,
00:03:07.000 | I consider it a pretty good example.
00:03:09.000 | And I believe that you could do this in,
00:03:11.000 | if not every city in the world,
00:03:13.000 | I believe you could do this in at least 80%
00:03:15.000 | of the cities in the world,
00:03:16.000 | and again, I think probably even higher,
00:03:18.000 | because I think these principles are principles
00:03:20.000 | that work in most places.
00:03:23.000 | Flying into a country that I'm not a citizen of, right,
00:03:26.000 | I'm a tourist here, doing business in a language
00:03:29.000 | that I don't speak, in a currency I don't have,
00:03:32.000 | and yet able to use some modern tools
00:03:34.000 | to do it pretty quickly, and I think it'll work out,
00:03:37.000 | and I'll explain to you how I did it.
00:03:39.000 | And then in the third show, I'll give you the details
00:03:41.000 | of how you could do this yourself in Portugal
00:03:43.000 | if a European vacation is on the horizon for you.
00:03:48.000 | So today I want to talk with you about why a car?
00:03:50.000 | Why do I think it's worth it for me
00:03:54.000 | to fly into a new continent and buy a vehicle
00:03:58.000 | when I don't actually know how long I'm gonna use it,
00:04:01.000 | may just be a couple of months,
00:04:03.000 | and how this can improve your lifestyle,
00:04:06.000 | because I believe that there's a major lifestyle
00:04:09.000 | improvement here.
00:04:10.000 | So first, the backstory.
00:04:11.000 | At the moment, the Sheetz family is traveling.
00:04:14.000 | We are currently perpetual travelers.
00:04:16.000 | We've got a half a dozen suitcases,
00:04:18.000 | all of our stuff is in storage,
00:04:20.000 | and we're bouncing around the world.
00:04:22.000 | And our destinations are a little bit unplanned.
00:04:27.000 | I have a list of destinations.
00:04:29.000 | Most of the destinations that I'm interested in
00:04:32.000 | are I'm interested in for your benefit,
00:04:34.000 | things that I'm checking out.
00:04:36.000 | I just spent several weeks in Malta,
00:04:38.000 | blockchain island, checking out the cryptocurrency scene there
00:04:42.000 | and blockchain and what's happening there.
00:04:45.000 | From there, I'm here in Portugal.
00:04:47.000 | Portugal is a very popular option for lifestyle reasons.
00:04:52.000 | There are a couple of very popular early retirees
00:04:55.000 | who live here in Portugal.
00:04:57.000 | Portugal is quite interesting for tax planning options.
00:05:01.000 | They have their somewhat well-known
00:05:03.000 | non-habitual residence scheme
00:05:04.000 | that allows people to live in Portugal.
00:05:07.000 | In a fairly tax efficient way.
00:05:09.000 | Portugal is interesting from a residence and citizenship option.
00:05:13.000 | They have a golden visa program
00:05:15.000 | offering a pathway to European citizenship
00:05:18.000 | in about five years through property acquisition.
00:05:21.000 | It's been quite popular.
00:05:22.000 | They're changing the rules on that as we speak.
00:05:24.000 | So I'm checking out Portugal as well.
00:05:27.000 | And then I've got a long list of other places
00:05:28.000 | that I would like to go.
00:05:30.000 | We started our travels in Mexico.
00:05:32.000 | From Mexico, flew to Costa Rica.
00:05:34.000 | Costa Rica flew to the United States.
00:05:36.000 | United States flew to Portugal as an entree to the continent.
00:05:40.000 | And then direct to Malta.
00:05:42.000 | We've been in Malta.
00:05:43.000 | Now we're back on the continent in Portugal.
00:05:46.000 | The original plan was to do this entire trip
00:05:49.000 | using air travel and move quite a bit.
00:05:54.000 | I had been intending to spend the summer in Europe
00:05:58.000 | and then the fall in...
00:06:01.000 | Summer in Western Europe, fall in Eastern Europe,
00:06:04.000 | and winter in Asia.
00:06:06.000 | But at the moment, due to the coronavirus restrictions,
00:06:08.000 | it seems that probably we're not going to be in Asia this winter.
00:06:12.000 | It's too closed down.
00:06:14.000 | I can't get in most of the places that I want to get to.
00:06:17.000 | And so I don't think we're going to wind up in Asia at all this winter.
00:06:22.000 | And that's part of what has been the impetus
00:06:25.000 | for my reconsideration of having my own car
00:06:31.000 | and figuring out how to do that.
00:06:33.000 | Because when you travel,
00:06:36.000 | either as an individual couple or especially when you travel as a family,
00:06:40.000 | having your own car,
00:06:42.000 | as long as you're content with the need to put in the miles
00:06:45.000 | to get where you want to go,
00:06:47.000 | having your own car is a major lifestyle upgrade.
00:06:52.000 | I have been interested in what's known as the overlanding movement
00:06:56.000 | for many, many years.
00:06:58.000 | For context, I grew up taking road trips with my family.
00:07:01.000 | We were a road-tripping, summer vacation family.
00:07:04.000 | And we enjoyed it. We loved it.
00:07:06.000 | My parents had a 12-passenger van.
00:07:09.000 | My dad bought a cheap old $500 pop-up camper,
00:07:12.000 | and we dragged that thing across the United States
00:07:15.000 | for, in hindsight, mammoth drives.
00:07:19.000 | But we dragged our pop-up camper from Florida as far north as Maine.
00:07:24.000 | On a separate trip, we dragged it from Florida to Colorado,
00:07:28.000 | one time up to Montana, almost to the Canadian border,
00:07:32.000 | lots of shorter trips in between,
00:07:34.000 | and we got our money's worth out of it.
00:07:36.000 | And I understand why my dad did it that way.
00:07:38.000 | My parents were not wealthy.
00:07:40.000 | They had seven children, and they wanted to provide their children
00:07:43.000 | with the opportunity to see the country
00:07:45.000 | and get an understanding of what was out there,
00:07:47.000 | and that was the best way that they found to do it.
00:07:49.000 | And I loved that.
00:07:51.000 | Some of my favorite memories as a child come from those kinds of travels.
00:07:55.000 | I've also always been intrigued by hitting the road
00:07:59.000 | and heading off on far-flung destinations.
00:08:03.000 | I have taken many trips myself.
00:08:06.000 | When I graduated college, I quit my job and loaded up my old car
00:08:10.000 | and headed across the United States and up to Canada.
00:08:13.000 | I forget the miles now. I'm getting a little bit blurry.
00:08:16.000 | But I put in excess of 10,000 miles, I think, on the car
00:08:20.000 | in a few-month trip.
00:08:23.000 | And I loved it. I loved every second of it.
00:08:26.000 | So I enjoy driving, and I'm not the only one.
00:08:30.000 | There are a lot of people who really love the autonomy
00:08:34.000 | that comes from having your own vehicle.
00:08:36.000 | The single biggest benefit of having your own vehicle to drive is autonomy.
00:08:43.000 | You can go where you want to go, when you want to go there.
00:08:47.000 | You can do what you want to do,
00:08:50.000 | and you can have the comfort and security of your own vehicle at all times.
00:08:54.000 | And that's really valuable.
00:08:56.000 | I admire travelers who set off with nothing but a backpack,
00:09:01.000 | and especially budget travelers.
00:09:04.000 | I admire the budget travelers who stick out their thumb
00:09:07.000 | and hitchhike their way across continents.
00:09:10.000 | I think that's so cool.
00:09:12.000 | I admire travelers who take the local chicken bus
00:09:15.000 | from the big city where they land on the airplane
00:09:18.000 | out to their destination. I think that is super cool.
00:09:21.000 | I have not generally enjoyed traveling that way myself,
00:09:25.000 | and I do not want to travel that way with my wife and children.
00:09:31.000 | It's just not fun. It's not fun at all to me.
00:09:34.000 | I would much rather myself be sitting in a suburban neighborhood,
00:09:40.000 | commuting every day in traffic with everyone else
00:09:43.000 | to a downtown office to work in a cubicle
00:09:47.000 | and have the joys of that lifestyle
00:09:49.000 | versus dragging my family on a chicken bus
00:09:52.000 | to some middle-of-nowhere destination in Nicaragua.
00:09:56.000 | It's fine every now and then, but in terms of a style of travel,
00:09:59.000 | I don't enjoy it. It's not fun. It's not something that I enjoy.
00:10:03.000 | But you give me the same option and say, "Hey, Joshua, here's the keys for,
00:10:06.000 | I don't care, a cheap van, a cheap car, or whatever,
00:10:09.000 | and you can meander your way across Nicaragua as you like,"
00:10:12.000 | I'm all game.
00:10:13.000 | And even if the end result winds up being the same,
00:10:16.000 | I've had cars break down in the craziest of places,
00:10:19.000 | and you figure it out, right?
00:10:20.000 | You figure out how to solve your problem.
00:10:22.000 | Even if the result is the same,
00:10:24.000 | the fact that I started at least with control
00:10:26.000 | and with the ability to go where I wanted to go
00:10:28.000 | and live how I wanted to do it was a big, big deal.
00:10:31.000 | And that's only become more important
00:10:35.000 | as my family has grown and as we have advanced.
00:10:37.000 | Let me articulate some of the reasons why,
00:10:40.000 | at least for family travel,
00:10:42.000 | vehicle-based travel is just better
00:10:46.000 | than virtually anything else.
00:10:49.000 | Obviously, vehicles can be a broad term.
00:10:52.000 | I guess if we were to group them,
00:10:54.000 | you've got planes, trains, automobiles, boats, and bikes,
00:10:57.000 | something like that.
00:10:58.000 | Well, bikes are their own interesting scenario.
00:11:01.000 | You've got bicycles, quite interesting and popular.
00:11:05.000 | I love the people that go out and bike tour the world.
00:11:08.000 | I think that's a phenomenal way to travel if you're into that.
00:11:11.000 | It's not something that I'm into,
00:11:13.000 | at least not into at the moment,
00:11:15.000 | but I understand the appeal of it.
00:11:17.000 | You've got motorcycles.
00:11:19.000 | I've always been interested in motorcycle travel, loved it.
00:11:22.000 | I grew up reading Peter and Kay Forwood's adventures
00:11:25.000 | of riding their Harley-Davidson systematically
00:11:28.000 | to every country in the world.
00:11:29.000 | I always thought that was the coolest, coolest adventure.
00:11:32.000 | And I remember when I first saw--
00:11:34.000 | who was the guy from Star Wars,
00:11:36.000 | Ewan McGregor and his buddy,
00:11:38.000 | that made the long way around
00:11:40.000 | and they did their trip from London across Russia
00:11:42.000 | on their motorcycles.
00:11:44.000 | I just thought that was the coolest thing.
00:11:46.000 | And I've done some motorcycle touring,
00:11:48.000 | but it's not appropriate for me at this phase of life either.
00:11:52.000 | And so I'll leave that to another forum.
00:11:54.000 | Boat touring, yacht touring, I think it's awesome, super cool.
00:11:58.000 | Lots of people do it.
00:11:59.000 | And I think that one of the things that I love about boating
00:12:01.000 | is it can be done in so many ways.
00:12:04.000 | I am being kind of an adventurer at heart
00:12:08.000 | and a hardcore guy.
00:12:10.000 | I've always been attracted to becoming a yachtsman,
00:12:14.000 | crossing oceans on a sailboat.
00:12:16.000 | Maybe someday I will.
00:12:17.000 | At the moment, though, it just doesn't sound like any fun to me.
00:12:20.000 | It doesn't sound like anything that I want to do.
00:12:22.000 | And because my children are quite young,
00:12:24.000 | they are not generally an asset in that environment.
00:12:28.000 | They're more of a liability and add a lot more work to it.
00:12:31.000 | And so maybe the day will come
00:12:33.000 | when my children will be a little bit older
00:12:35.000 | and they can be helpful,
00:12:36.000 | in which case we might buy a yacht
00:12:38.000 | and head out across the world.
00:12:40.000 | But at this point, it's not something that I'm interested in.
00:12:43.000 | There are other interesting styles of travel.
00:12:45.000 | I've always thought doing the Great Loop in the United States
00:12:48.000 | is just a really cool way to travel.
00:12:51.000 | Protected waterways, inland, much of the distance,
00:12:54.000 | but yet really neat nautical experience
00:12:57.000 | cruising around the backwaters of the United States.
00:13:00.000 | In Europe, some people do similar things.
00:13:02.000 | You have the canal boat culture,
00:13:05.000 | whether it's narrow boating in England
00:13:07.000 | or crossing the canals across France.
00:13:10.000 | There's just some neat opportunities there.
00:13:12.000 | But for right now, it's been a little bit slower
00:13:14.000 | than I'd want to be involved in.
00:13:17.000 | And so boating is out for me at the moment.
00:13:20.000 | Not to say forever it won't be,
00:13:22.000 | but I think it's out for me at the moment.
00:13:25.000 | Which leaves us with planes, trains, and automobiles.
00:13:28.000 | So planes, there's no question
00:13:30.000 | that if you want to cross distances, planes are awesome.
00:13:34.000 | I want to say and repeat, even now,
00:13:38.000 | that we are living in a golden age of travel,
00:13:41.000 | especially air travel.
00:13:43.000 | And it's easier, faster, cheaper,
00:13:46.000 | safer to cross the world today
00:13:49.000 | than it's ever been at any point in human history.
00:13:52.000 | And that's exciting.
00:13:53.000 | I love the fact that any ordinary, normal person
00:13:57.000 | can save up a little bit of money
00:13:59.000 | and get themselves to an airport,
00:14:02.000 | walk on an airplane,
00:14:03.000 | and wake up on the other side of the world.
00:14:05.000 | That is awesome.
00:14:06.000 | I love living in this globalized culture that we live in.
00:14:11.000 | But there are a lot of downsides for plane travel,
00:14:16.000 | especially with children.
00:14:18.000 | I'm not opposed to it.
00:14:19.000 | We've been on a bunch of airplanes.
00:14:21.000 | And our trip originally, as I sketched out the idea,
00:14:25.000 | was going to involve quite a lot of airplane travel.
00:14:28.000 | But airplane travel adds a lot of challenges to family travel.
00:14:33.000 | Let me articulate some of those
00:14:35.000 | so that you can understand,
00:14:39.000 | whether it's for preparation,
00:14:40.000 | perhaps you're looking forward someday
00:14:42.000 | to traveling with your own children,
00:14:43.000 | trying to figure out what to do,
00:14:44.000 | or just simply to articulate them
00:14:46.000 | so you can have some understanding.
00:14:48.000 | First of all, plane travel in and of itself
00:14:52.000 | is often quite unpleasant.
00:14:56.000 | The simple exigencies of be at the airport two hours early,
00:15:02.000 | it's quite humiliating to take those you love to the airport
00:15:05.000 | and see their person touched
00:15:08.000 | in ways that you would prefer they not be touched.
00:15:12.000 | It's quite humiliating to have your things gone through
00:15:16.000 | with a fine-tooth comb
00:15:17.000 | and to be reduced to 100-milliliter bottles of stuff
00:15:21.000 | in a quart-sized bag.
00:15:22.000 | These things are just not particularly fun.
00:15:24.000 | But even just the logistics of it,
00:15:26.000 | it often gets stretched out.
00:15:27.000 | For years, I've felt like,
00:15:28.000 | "Hey, if it's less than 500 miles, I'll just drive."
00:15:31.000 | A thousand miles, frequently,
00:15:34.000 | if it's been under a thousand miles,
00:15:36.000 | I've often just rather drive.
00:15:38.000 | Even though it often takes longer,
00:15:39.000 | by my calculation, sometimes it doesn't.
00:15:42.000 | If you take an airplane trip and say,
00:15:44.000 | "Okay, let's say I'm traveling to a destination
00:15:47.000 | that it should be a couple of miles away.
00:15:49.000 | Sorry, a couple of hours away."
00:15:51.000 | Well, okay, a couple of hours of actual plane flight.
00:15:54.000 | But remember that in addition to the actual plane flight,
00:15:58.000 | there is the plane on the tarmac time.
00:16:01.000 | Then there's being at the airport two hours early.
00:16:04.000 | Then there's leaving earlier
00:16:07.000 | to be at the airport two hours early.
00:16:09.000 | I don't like to miss flights.
00:16:10.000 | In fact, I get super stressed if I'm in any way late,
00:16:13.000 | so I often will add three hours instead of two hours
00:16:15.000 | just so I don't have to have any sensation of feeling stressed.
00:16:18.000 | And by the time you get down to it,
00:16:19.000 | a two-hour flight is very easily a six- or seven-hour day
00:16:23.000 | with no delays.
00:16:25.000 | Six or seven hours at 70 miles an hour,
00:16:28.000 | you can get there pretty quickly when you're doing that.
00:16:31.000 | So I don't deny that plane travel is faster,
00:16:33.000 | but there's actually a lot of time involved with plane travel.
00:16:37.000 | And then in addition, you often have uncontrolled delays.
00:16:41.000 | When your flights are canceled
00:16:42.000 | and you have nothing that you can do about it,
00:16:45.000 | you're kind of out of control.
00:16:47.000 | You don't have a lot to do.
00:16:49.000 | So I don't deny that airplane travel is generally faster,
00:16:52.000 | but it's not, in my opinion,
00:16:54.000 | as much faster as we often think it is.
00:16:58.000 | It's a little closer of a race.
00:17:00.000 | I don't want to overstate the case,
00:17:01.000 | but it's a little bit closer
00:17:03.000 | than I think a lot of people would recognize.
00:17:06.000 | What's more difficult to me about airplane travel
00:17:09.000 | is the fact that airplane travel by its very nature
00:17:12.000 | means that you're dependent on the systems of others.
00:17:17.000 | If I'm traveling in an airplane and the airplane is delayed,
00:17:21.000 | I can't do anything except wait or try to go book another flight.
00:17:25.000 | I can't solve my problem.
00:17:27.000 | Unlike with a car where I can just go when I want to go,
00:17:31.000 | I can't do that.
00:17:33.000 | When I'm in an airplane, I'm in a controlled environment.
00:17:37.000 | I can't have--I have a limited amount of luggage space,
00:17:40.000 | as I recently articulated to you.
00:17:42.000 | We don't have a lot of luggage.
00:17:43.000 | And so one of the things that we have sacrificed on
00:17:45.000 | is we don't travel with a lot of snacks.
00:17:48.000 | We try to travel with a little bit,
00:17:50.000 | but we're not traveling with a suitcase full of snacks.
00:17:53.000 | So then when it comes time for me to feed my family,
00:17:56.000 | a lot of times I don't have as much food available,
00:18:00.000 | and then I have to go and choose what's available in the airport.
00:18:03.000 | Well, it's a controlled environment.
00:18:04.000 | And so the prices are half again as much
00:18:07.000 | as what you pay out in the street.
00:18:09.000 | I don't fault anybody for it,
00:18:11.000 | but that gets--those numbers add up pretty quickly.
00:18:15.000 | What I also find difficult is, all right,
00:18:17.000 | once you fly somewhere, then what do you do?
00:18:19.000 | Well, you can rent a car.
00:18:21.000 | But if you don't have a rental car,
00:18:22.000 | then how do you get from here to there?
00:18:24.000 | How do you actually--what do you do at the hotel?
00:18:26.000 | You get to the hotel, and if you don't have food--
00:18:29.000 | you need food, but if you don't have a car,
00:18:31.000 | it's hard to go to the grocery store and stock up on food there,
00:18:34.000 | and so you wind up eating out a lot.
00:18:36.000 | And so you wind up with a whole lot of, you know,
00:18:39.000 | $150 days of feeding your family with breakfast, lunch, dinner,
00:18:45.000 | a lot of it purchased out,
00:18:47.000 | and those numbers add up pretty quickly.
00:18:49.000 | And so there's certainly the financial ramifications
00:18:51.000 | and the lifestyle ramifications.
00:18:53.000 | When you have your own car, on the other hand,
00:18:56.000 | everything can be simpler.
00:18:58.000 | No question, you can have your own mechanical problems
00:19:00.000 | just like an airplane can have.
00:19:02.000 | But when those mechanical problems happen,
00:19:05.000 | you're probably in a pretty decent situation, right?
00:19:07.000 | You've got a comfortable seat to sit in.
00:19:09.000 | You've got a safe place out of the rain, out of the sun,
00:19:11.000 | out of the cold, and so it's not so terrible
00:19:14.000 | while you solve your problem.
00:19:16.000 | More importantly, though, you get to one town,
00:19:18.000 | you like it, you want to stay longer, you stay longer.
00:19:20.000 | You don't like it, you don't stay as long.
00:19:23.000 | You can be much more flexible,
00:19:24.000 | and I love the flexibility of having your own vehicle.
00:19:28.000 | You can stay the places you want to stay longer,
00:19:31.000 | and you don't have to feel like you have to commit.
00:19:33.000 | You're not worried about prices changing on you all the time
00:19:35.000 | like you are with airplanes.
00:19:36.000 | When should I buy the ticket?
00:19:37.000 | How long do we want to stay here?
00:19:38.000 | You just stay as long as you want,
00:19:40.000 | and you leave when you want.
00:19:41.000 | In addition, you don't like this hotel?
00:19:43.000 | No big deal, let's just go a few miles down the road
00:19:45.000 | and look for the competition.
00:19:47.000 | That's harder to do,
00:19:49.000 | especially with a lot of children along.
00:19:51.000 | That's harder to do when you don't have
00:19:53.000 | your own set of wheels.
00:19:55.000 | And, you know, there's a lot more too, right?
00:19:58.000 | When you travel with children, a lot of times your days,
00:20:01.000 | your touring days, look different.
00:20:04.000 | What generally works for us,
00:20:06.000 | as when we're on vacation mode,
00:20:09.000 | we get up in the morning, have breakfast,
00:20:11.000 | go out and do some kind of sightseeing tour.
00:20:14.000 | Go back to our accommodations at about noon,
00:20:18.000 | rest, have a little snack, have nap time.
00:20:21.000 | 3.30, 4 o'clock, naps are over,
00:20:23.000 | get up and go out again for two, three hours,
00:20:25.000 | then come back, go to bed.
00:20:27.000 | And so those are pretty short days
00:20:29.000 | because of the needs of children.
00:20:32.000 | It's not a problem to do that when you've got your own wheels.
00:20:35.000 | You want to go and see a museum.
00:20:37.000 | You drive there, you see the museum,
00:20:39.000 | and you drive home.
00:20:41.000 | But with other people,
00:20:44.000 | it's harder to arrange a tour guide for a one-hour tour.
00:20:47.000 | It's more expensive and harder
00:20:49.000 | to deal with the transportation.
00:20:51.000 | Even the cost winds up being substantial.
00:20:53.000 | One of the things that we learned
00:20:55.000 | when we arrived in Lisbon for the first time a month ago
00:20:58.000 | is that right now Portugal has these restrictions on Uber
00:21:01.000 | and on taxis,
00:21:03.000 | where they're not permitting Uber drivers
00:21:05.000 | to carry more than three passengers.
00:21:08.000 | So even if I order an Uber XL,
00:21:13.000 | and that Uber XL has seats for seven,
00:21:17.000 | meaning it's an SUV usually or a van,
00:21:20.000 | and it has seats for seven, eight, or nine people,
00:21:22.000 | so our family of six can fit in the seats.
00:21:25.000 | We are one social bubble.
00:21:28.000 | The drivers will not take us.
00:21:31.000 | They had multiple ones refuse us.
00:21:34.000 | And so the car won't take three.
00:21:37.000 | It's quite frustrating, right?
00:21:39.000 | Because the vast majority of the COVID stuff is just theater,
00:21:42.000 | just like any security apparatus.
00:21:44.000 | It's all theater. None of it does any good.
00:21:46.000 | It's just theater. It makes people feel good.
00:21:48.000 | But there we are, right?
00:21:50.000 | So then we're stuck having to get two Uber XLs
00:21:54.000 | to get somewhere.
00:21:55.000 | Well, now Uber XLs are 12 euros each,
00:21:57.000 | then 12 euros to get there, 12 euros to get back,
00:22:00.000 | you're at 24 euros.
00:22:02.000 | Same thing, even bus transportation,
00:22:04.000 | things that are cheaper by the time you buy six bus tickets,
00:22:08.000 | six train tickets, et cetera,
00:22:10.000 | there's no question that the cost is a lot better
00:22:13.000 | for having your own vehicle.
00:22:15.000 | So if you're going to travel from China to the United States,
00:22:20.000 | most likely you're not going to drive.
00:22:22.000 | You're going to buy an airplane ticket.
00:22:24.000 | But if you're going to travel from Portugal to Spain
00:22:28.000 | and you're traveling as a family of six,
00:22:31.000 | driving looks a lot better,
00:22:33.000 | if you can drive in some reasonable way.
00:22:36.000 | So how do you get a vehicle?
00:22:38.000 | Well, obviously rental is the way to go.
00:22:41.000 | The challenge is once you get over five people,
00:22:45.000 | we're six, five people you can still fit into an economy car,
00:22:50.000 | a standard car, et cetera, car,
00:22:52.000 | and have room for your luggage.
00:22:55.000 | When you get to six, though,
00:22:57.000 | you move into either seven-passenger SUV land,
00:23:01.000 | which those vehicles only sometimes have enough space
00:23:04.000 | for your luggage as well, or a van.
00:23:07.000 | And now your rental rates often go from $150 a week
00:23:12.000 | in many places for an economy car
00:23:16.000 | to often $600, $700, frequently $850 to $1,000 a week
00:23:22.000 | for a seven-seat SUV or for a minivan or large van of some kind.
00:23:27.000 | $1,000 a week, the numbers start to add up pretty quickly.
00:23:30.000 | And so thus renting a car doesn't really become an economical option.
00:23:35.000 | So what do you do?
00:23:36.000 | Well, my answer is if possible, you think about buying a car.
00:23:39.000 | And here the numbers can make all the sense in the world
00:23:42.000 | if you can arrange the details.
00:23:44.000 | You can buy a car.
00:23:46.000 | I'll use U.S. American numbers.
00:23:48.000 | If you want to tour the United States,
00:23:50.000 | there's no better way to tour the United States than by car.
00:23:53.000 | The United States has a car-based culture, a car-based landscape.
00:23:57.000 | It's a wonderful place to do road trips,
00:23:59.000 | just fabulous place to do road trips.
00:24:02.000 | So tourists from all around the world can and frequently do
00:24:06.000 | go to the United States.
00:24:08.000 | You can fly in. You can buy a car.
00:24:10.000 | The United States has a huge supply of high-quality used cars.
00:24:15.000 | You can for $3,000, $4,000, $5,000, something like that,
00:24:19.000 | you can get yourself a good set of reliable, comfortable, safe wheels
00:24:25.000 | that will work for you to put 10,000 miles on it.
00:24:28.000 | As long as you have an address that you can use to get your title.
00:24:32.000 | And I don't know if it's all states, but it's not difficult.
00:24:36.000 | There's no rules in the United States that tourists can't come in
00:24:38.000 | and buy and register a vehicle. You just need an address.
00:24:41.000 | So you can fly in. You can buy a car. You can do what I did.
00:24:44.000 | You fly in. You buy a car very quickly.
00:24:46.000 | You register it, insure it, boom, you're on the road.
00:24:49.000 | Grab a car for $5,000.
00:24:52.000 | Use it for a couple of months, month, whatever you got.
00:24:55.000 | Turn around on the other side, you can probably sell it for $5,000.
00:24:58.000 | Vehicles in that price range don't often depreciate all that much
00:25:02.000 | with regard to mileage.
00:25:04.000 | Most of your costs will often be the cost of registration
00:25:09.000 | and sales tax on the purchase of the vehicle.
00:25:12.000 | So you're out.
00:25:14.000 | But even if you sell it for $1,000 less and sell it quickly,
00:25:18.000 | $1,000 amortized out over a month-long trip,
00:25:22.000 | now it's very reasonable for you to have purchased a vehicle.
00:25:26.000 | I don't know that I would love to do it for a month.
00:25:28.000 | It's a little short.
00:25:30.000 | It seems like the weight there is probably still on renting.
00:25:32.000 | But if you've got a couple of months to travel with, three months,
00:25:35.000 | then now buying a vehicle makes a lot of sense,
00:25:37.000 | even if you scrap it at the end.
00:25:40.000 | Similar things can happen in many other parts of the world.
00:25:43.000 | And so that's what we did here in Europe.
00:25:46.000 | Once I decided that, you know what, we're probably not going to be in Asia,
00:25:50.000 | I grew really frustrated with not having my own wheels,
00:25:54.000 | my own transportation.
00:25:56.000 | I don't enjoy family travel nearly as much if I don't have my own car
00:26:04.000 | as I do when I have my own car.
00:26:07.000 | It's not one big thing.
00:26:10.000 | Rather, it's a whole bunch of little things.
00:26:12.000 | I'll give you some examples.
00:26:14.000 | If I have my own car, I feel like I have great liberty
00:26:18.000 | in the places that I choose to stay,
00:26:20.000 | and I can choose places that are going to be genuinely comfortable for my family.
00:26:26.000 | Most hotel rooms are not nice for families.
00:26:30.000 | They're great for individual travelers, business travelers, couples, etc., adults.
00:26:35.000 | Any kind of adults, hotel rooms are great.
00:26:37.000 | For children, there's just not a lot to do,
00:26:39.000 | and you've got everyone in a room or two.
00:26:41.000 | There's nothing to do except watch TV.
00:26:43.000 | Your children are allowed.
00:26:44.000 | You're trying to keep them quiet, to not annoy people.
00:26:46.000 | But at the end of the day, children need somewhere to run.
00:26:48.000 | Where do they run? Where do they go?
00:26:50.000 | There's no space.
00:26:51.000 | And so I will--I'll look on Airbnb,
00:26:54.000 | and I'll find a great house that's outside of the main town--
00:26:58.000 | big backyard, pool, woods in the back,
00:27:01.000 | someplace where the children can get outside,
00:27:05.000 | be a little bit loud, etc., and not bother anyone.
00:27:08.000 | But the problem is those places are usually hard to access
00:27:11.000 | if you don't have your own wheels.
00:27:12.000 | The taxi fees are 50 euros to get there.
00:27:15.000 | There's no bus lines that go there.
00:27:17.000 | So if you have your own wheels, it's easy.
00:27:20.000 | But if you don't, that's just not open to you.
00:27:23.000 | And I enjoy much more renting a house,
00:27:26.000 | even if the house is not great.
00:27:27.000 | Give me a not-great house any day of the week
00:27:30.000 | that has a backyard,
00:27:32.000 | someplace where the children can stretch out,
00:27:35.000 | be a little bit louder without bothering our neighbors,
00:27:38.000 | and I'll take that versus a nice hotel room any day of the week.
00:27:42.000 | But you need your own vehicle to be able to get there
00:27:45.000 | in a reliable and efficient way.
00:27:48.000 | So other things, right?
00:27:50.000 | I enjoy traveling with my children.
00:27:53.000 | I don't enjoy eating three meals out.
00:27:55.000 | I don't enjoy having a 40-euro breakfast
00:27:58.000 | by the time I feed them breakfast.
00:28:00.000 | Then, shockingly, 2 1/2 hours later, they're hungry.
00:28:03.000 | Well, then it's more eating out food.
00:28:06.000 | And then you get to the evening time,
00:28:07.000 | then it's more eating out food.
00:28:08.000 | So what do you do?
00:28:09.000 | Well, most of the time, you solve that by doing groceries, right?
00:28:12.000 | You go to the grocery store, and you get some food
00:28:14.000 | that you can make yourself.
00:28:16.000 | But if you don't have a car to carry the food in,
00:28:18.000 | are you going to trot around with a backpack
00:28:20.000 | with a picnic lunch in it every day?
00:28:22.000 | Some parents are dedicated enough to do it.
00:28:24.000 | I'm not.
00:28:25.000 | I probably should flex my muscles and grow a little bit there,
00:28:28.000 | but I don't do that.
00:28:30.000 | And so if I've got a car, you can keep snacks.
00:28:32.000 | You can keep food.
00:28:33.000 | It's easy to say, "Okay, it's dinner time.
00:28:36.000 | Let's go off and say, 'Look, there's a park.'"
00:28:39.000 | Tell my wife, "Take the children to the park.
00:28:41.000 | Let them get their wiggles out.
00:28:42.000 | I'll go to the grocery store, grab a rotisserie chicken,
00:28:45.000 | grab some salami, whatever meat is ready to go,
00:28:48.000 | a hunk of cheese, a couple loaves of bread,
00:28:51.000 | a tub of butter, boom, we're in business.
00:28:53.000 | You've got food, and $10, $15, you're out the door,
00:28:55.000 | you're done versus $60 if you go to just any ordinary restaurant."
00:29:02.000 | And so there's a lot of cost savings involved
00:29:05.000 | with car transportation.
00:29:08.000 | I think I would be willing to pay more to have my own car
00:29:12.000 | because it just makes a better situation.
00:29:15.000 | I'm more relaxed as a father when I don't feel like I've got to fit into bus schedules.
00:29:19.000 | Everything is just more relaxing to me as a father when traveling.
00:29:23.000 | And so I'm willing to pay more in order to get that.
00:29:27.000 | However, the nice thing is you don't have to pay more.
00:29:29.000 | In fact, you actually save money by having your own wheels,
00:29:33.000 | your own transportation.
00:29:35.000 | Talk about trains for a moment.
00:29:36.000 | Trains are fun, but now we get into, again, the same thing, the issues of ticketing.
00:29:42.000 | The classic way to see Europe, for example, is by rail.
00:29:47.000 | There's whole guidebooks on it.
00:29:49.000 | That's a classic way to see it.
00:29:51.000 | And I think that's a phenomenal way to see Europe.
00:29:54.000 | But that works a lot better for a couple of college-age backpackers
00:29:59.000 | than it does for a family with children.
00:30:01.000 | Why?
00:30:02.000 | Well, the cost is one factor.
00:30:05.000 | When you multiply train tickets times six,
00:30:08.000 | it's almost always cheaper to just go ahead and rent a car.
00:30:12.000 | Go ahead and rent a car than to pay train tickets.
00:30:15.000 | If you're actually moving frequently, you take an ordinary ticket,
00:30:19.000 | whatever the cost is, multiply it by six,
00:30:22.000 | and then compare that against getting a car and just very frequently renting a car,
00:30:27.000 | paying for fuel, etc., winds up being a better solution.
00:30:32.000 | Other things that are challenging, though, is the same thing about logistics.
00:30:36.000 | Children can't walk as far.
00:30:38.000 | Their legs are not as strong.
00:30:39.000 | As a parent, you wind up carrying a lot of the bags.
00:30:42.000 | And so if my wife and I were backpacking around Europe,
00:30:46.000 | riding trains, flying on easy jet, etc.,
00:30:51.000 | it's no problem to be dumped off in the middle of the town
00:30:54.000 | and you arrive and you walk two or three miles to your hostel.
00:30:59.000 | It is a problem when, as a parent, you have to carry bags for six people
00:31:04.000 | and you have to carry two of your children, etc.
00:31:07.000 | And so having your own car just really makes sense.
00:31:10.000 | I'm pretty confident that it's going to be a great move.
00:31:13.000 | The biggest challenge for me was can I actually get it done.
00:31:17.000 | I didn't want to ship a car from the United States, although you can do that.
00:31:19.000 | Obviously not a good plan for a short term, but you can do that
00:31:22.000 | if you're going to be there for a while.
00:31:24.000 | And I figured I would probably do it in the EU,
00:31:29.000 | but because of visa restrictions, I can only stay in the EU
00:31:33.000 | for 90 out of every 180 days.
00:31:35.000 | And so I need a car that I can come in and then also take it across
00:31:39.000 | outside of the Schengen zone so that I don't violate the terms of my visa.
00:31:44.000 | So I believe that we've succeeded in that, and I'm happy to report that.
00:31:49.000 | We'll see in the coming days.
00:31:51.000 | I've got to work it out to make sure that we're good.
00:31:53.000 | But at this point, I feel like the world has opened up,
00:31:57.000 | especially in a time of COVID.
00:31:59.000 | I think that was the last factor that I haven't talked about.
00:32:02.000 | It's extra stressful right now to try to figure out travel right now with COVID
00:32:06.000 | because everything was changing.
00:32:09.000 | I did well in choosing my dates to get into Europe,
00:32:13.000 | but then what happened is I'm sitting in Malta,
00:32:16.000 | and I bought one-way tickets, and I was like, "OK, we'll go.
00:32:18.000 | We'll check it out for a time. I'm not going to stay there forever."
00:32:21.000 | But I'm sitting in Malta, and I'm watching things start to shut down.
00:32:24.000 | When we got into Malta, we were able to get in with no quarantine requirements.
00:32:28.000 | Everything was simple, right? Just had a negative COVID test.
00:32:32.000 | Everything was simple.
00:32:33.000 | Then a few days after we arrived, they instituted all of these new precautions
00:32:39.000 | of how to get into the country and a bunch of new restrictions.
00:32:44.000 | And so I felt fortunate that we were able to get in when we got in,
00:32:48.000 | but then without quarantine.
00:32:50.000 | I have no interest whatsoever in quarantining,
00:32:53.000 | sitting in a hotel room for 14 days or 10 days or whatever with children.
00:32:58.000 | That sounds like misery to me, absolute misery.
00:33:02.000 | And so I got nervous, "OK, we got to get out of here,
00:33:06.000 | but then where are we going to go next?"
00:33:08.000 | And certainly, I, on a weekly basis, reconsider,
00:33:11.000 | "Maybe we just go back to the United States.
00:33:13.000 | Maybe it's just too hard to travel right now.
00:33:16.000 | Maybe it's not worth it."
00:33:17.000 | I've been to the United States where everything is simple, everything is open, maybe.
00:33:21.000 | But I haven't chosen to do that yet, and having a car was a good option
00:33:25.000 | because now I feel like now that I have the car, I can go where the borders are open
00:33:30.000 | and I can adjust due to the weather.
00:33:34.000 | We'll go farther north as it gets cold when it gets--
00:33:38.000 | excuse me, then as it gets cold, then we can go south.
00:33:40.000 | And then I can go places where I don't mind being locked down.
00:33:44.000 | I can go places that are freer.
00:33:46.000 | I'm probably going to get out of Western Europe as quickly as I can
00:33:48.000 | and get back into Eastern Europe because I don't love living in the restricted society
00:33:52.000 | where everything is just shut down like it is largely here in Western Europe.
00:33:57.000 | And so I just feel like we can pivot, we can adjust, we can react, et cetera.
00:34:02.000 | So in conclusion for this particular part of the saga,
00:34:07.000 | I love having a car to travel in.
00:34:11.000 | I love to road trip.
00:34:14.000 | You've got to be sure that you actually like covering the miles.
00:34:17.000 | From a business perspective, I don't try to get a lot of work done in terms of road tripping.
00:34:24.000 | Maybe when I was younger I could, but it certainly harms it.
00:34:27.000 | There was a time--there hasn't been a time--maybe there will be a time in the future
00:34:30.000 | when I do just the normal business travel stuff where you fly in, you do your business, and you fly out.
00:34:35.000 | But with family travel, road tripping is a way better way to do it.
00:34:40.000 | Children are tired, there's a hotel, let's just stop.
00:34:44.000 | There's a park, let's stop, stretch your legs.
00:34:47.000 | As a father, one of my major goals--I don't do it perfectly--
00:34:51.000 | one of my major goals is to not be a stressed out dad.
00:34:55.000 | And I get stressed sometimes, there's no question about that, but I don't want to be that.
00:34:59.000 | And so I try really hard to not push myself into a situation where my back's going to be up against the wall
00:35:04.000 | and I'm going to be stressed out.
00:35:06.000 | And so having my own car makes a big, big difference.
00:35:10.000 | So in the next episode, tune in and I'll share with you how I flew into a country
00:35:15.000 | where I don't speak the language and turned around, and a couple days later
00:35:20.000 | I have succeeded in owning a car. I'll share that story with you next time.
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