RPF0574-Trading_Your_Way_Through_a_Vacation
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00:00:14.300 | - Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,
00:00:17.180 | a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:19.320 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need
00:00:21.760 | to live a rich and meaningful life now
00:00:24.120 | while building a plan for financial freedom
00:00:25.840 | in 10 years or less.
00:00:27.640 | My name is Joshua, I am your host.
00:00:29.600 | And today I wanna talk with you briefly
00:00:31.800 | about taking a vacation.
00:00:34.960 | And I'm gonna share an article with you
00:00:36.120 | that I recently read that I really enjoyed.
00:00:38.280 | But the impetus for this particular show
00:00:40.760 | comes from a conversation I overheard
00:00:43.040 | in a restaurant last night.
00:00:45.000 | I was sitting in a restaurant having a little bit of food
00:00:48.020 | and I was by myself.
00:00:49.780 | And while I was there, I was listening to the couple
00:00:53.640 | or to two people at the table next to me talk.
00:00:57.260 | And there were two ladies
00:01:00.080 | and one of the ladies was a single mom.
00:01:02.040 | And she was sharing with her friend
00:01:03.720 | about what she's doing this summer.
00:01:06.080 | And right now she's working four jobs.
00:01:09.840 | She's a single mom.
00:01:10.680 | Her daughter is with her daughter's grandmother
00:01:13.480 | right now for the summer.
00:01:14.520 | And the mom is using this time
00:01:16.840 | where she doesn't have to engage in childcare
00:01:19.600 | to basically work four jobs
00:01:21.160 | and save as much money as she can.
00:01:23.080 | And she's working hard to save money.
00:01:24.840 | And her goal for that money
00:01:26.120 | is to take her daughter on a vacation.
00:01:28.060 | Now, I of course applaud that,
00:01:30.620 | but my heart went out to this mother
00:01:32.800 | because she's stuck in the American rut
00:01:37.800 | of spending crazy amounts of money on vacation
00:01:42.820 | because of not being able to think creatively
00:01:45.800 | about how to do it.
00:01:47.000 | US Americans, as a general rule
00:01:51.320 | and a very strongly applicable stereotype,
00:01:54.600 | vacation very differently
00:01:57.080 | than much of the rest of the world.
00:01:59.280 | Now, you can vacation however you want,
00:02:02.120 | but I don't personally fit in very well
00:02:04.760 | to the US American stereotype.
00:02:06.620 | I first learned this number of years ago.
00:02:07.880 | I was in college and I was working in,
00:02:10.380 | I was living and studying in Costa Rica.
00:02:14.200 | And I was working with a company
00:02:17.240 | that did ecotourism in Costa Rica.
00:02:20.400 | Ecotourism in Costa Rica is a strong deal.
00:02:23.380 | We prepared for one of our business school projects.
00:02:26.000 | We prepared an analysis of ecotourists
00:02:29.040 | and we focused on three countries,
00:02:31.000 | United States of America, Great Britain,
00:02:32.960 | and Germany, German, German people.
00:02:35.760 | And the amazing thing between it,
00:02:39.240 | the amazing reality that we found
00:02:42.240 | was that there were strong and clear differences
00:02:47.240 | between these three particular cultures.
00:02:50.320 | Now, I don't remember the exact numbers
00:02:51.680 | of how much they would spend,
00:02:53.200 | but I'll tell you, I'll give you a broad brush
00:02:56.920 | that I think is pretty close.
00:02:59.600 | US Americans will go on vacation in that time.
00:03:02.680 | They'll go on vacation for one week.
00:03:04.700 | They'll spend $10,000 on a one week vacation
00:03:08.160 | and they'll schedule every single hour of their day
00:03:10.500 | with something to do,
00:03:11.600 | especially something to do that costs money.
00:03:14.520 | The Brits will go on vacation for a month.
00:03:16.980 | They'll spend $6,000
00:03:18.920 | and they'll have a much more relaxed time.
00:03:20.560 | And the Germans would go on vacation for two months
00:03:22.880 | and spend $5,000 and have a much more relaxed time.
00:03:27.200 | And it's just interesting because in my own experience,
00:03:29.440 | I could think back and see exactly that
00:03:32.200 | happening again and again,
00:03:33.520 | where you see that US Americans spend so much money
00:03:37.000 | in such a short amount of time
00:03:38.480 | and they almost don't know how to do it otherwise.
00:03:41.200 | And so in conversations I've had with people similar
00:03:44.120 | to this mother that I was listening to last night,
00:03:47.240 | their concept of vacation only involves spending money.
00:03:52.400 | And it frequently involves spending money
00:03:54.320 | at things that are designed to spend money.
00:03:56.000 | Whether it's go to Disney World
00:03:57.280 | or go in the hotel system, et cetera.
00:03:59.680 | And there are other ways.
00:04:01.520 | Now, maybe sometime I'll give you my ideas on other ways,
00:04:05.680 | but I recently read this article
00:04:07.640 | in a Mother and Earth News compendium of articles
00:04:09.960 | back from the early, mid 1980s.
00:04:12.840 | And this book was super interesting to me.
00:04:15.640 | And I really enjoyed this particular story
00:04:18.440 | called "Trading Your Way Through a Vacation."
00:04:20.440 | I'm gonna share it with you
00:04:21.720 | because it shows how one family
00:04:23.760 | took a different approach to their vacation.
00:04:26.780 | Now you might hear this story and you might think,
00:04:28.800 | oh, I can't even imagine, that is not for me.
00:04:31.200 | You're entitled to hear that and to think that.
00:04:33.720 | You can live as you want to live,
00:04:35.900 | but take this and use it as a creative fodder
00:04:39.800 | that will, and design for yourself an appropriate solution
00:04:44.120 | for an appropriate vacation methodology
00:04:46.780 | that will really help you in the future.
00:04:48.660 | And enjoy this particular story.
00:04:50.120 | I thought it was quite fun.
00:04:51.000 | "Trading Your Way Through a Vacation."
00:04:53.480 | We all need a respite now and then,
00:04:55.400 | but taking a vacation most often means
00:04:57.320 | scrimping and saving to meet the expenses
00:04:59.760 | of being away from home.
00:05:01.340 | However, by negotiating trades
00:05:03.240 | and turning a vacation into an adventure,
00:05:06.400 | it's entirely possible to make that break from routine,
00:05:09.080 | not only pay for itself,
00:05:10.840 | but be profitable and fun as well.
00:05:13.720 | One Canadian couple who liked to get away from the city
00:05:16.440 | to the Okanagan and Silmalkin Valleys
00:05:19.120 | of British Columbia for the summer,
00:05:20.800 | managed to exchange enough labor and produce
00:05:23.600 | to support themselves and their children
00:05:25.740 | for an entire three months away from home.
00:05:28.520 | The couple had previously made friends
00:05:30.160 | with an organic farmer
00:05:31.480 | and had arranged to help him with his work
00:05:33.400 | in return for a reduced price on produce
00:05:36.180 | when harvest time came.
00:05:37.940 | They'd also agreed to bring him some seaweed for fertilizer
00:05:41.120 | when they came from their home on the coast,
00:05:42.880 | where it was freely available to anyone
00:05:45.120 | willing to take the time to gather it.
00:05:47.440 | Foraging for seaweed was one of their
00:05:49.360 | favorite occupations anyway,
00:05:50.760 | so the couple didn't mind at all.
00:05:52.620 | They proceeded to harvest a two-ton truckload
00:05:54.880 | of storm-shredded kelp, eelgrass, rockweed,
00:05:58.760 | and dozens of other varieties of giant algae,
00:06:01.620 | all of it seasoned, so to speak,
00:06:03.860 | with sand, shell particles, and fine wood debris.
00:06:07.660 | After collecting this vegetation,
00:06:09.480 | they spread it out to be washed by the rain.
00:06:12.200 | Fresh seaweed is too salty for use as fertilizer,
00:06:15.000 | and dried by the sun.
00:06:16.840 | Tending and tending it like hay,
00:06:19.080 | they eventually had a third of a truckload of choice,
00:06:21.640 | dry, nutrient-rich fertilizer
00:06:23.520 | to take to their farming friend.
00:06:25.520 | When the couple, their six-year-old son
00:06:27.260 | and three-year-old daughter,
00:06:28.240 | arrived at the farm in mid-July,
00:06:30.320 | they found their friend way behind in his hoeing.
00:06:33.180 | The grass, pigweed, and nightshade
00:06:34.880 | were choking his soybeans, squash, corn, and tomatoes
00:06:38.000 | so badly that he couldn't keep up with it by himself.
00:06:40.800 | He immediately offered them a credit of $4 per hour
00:06:43.540 | to hoe his fields for him.
00:06:45.420 | This was all the excuse they needed
00:06:46.840 | to pick up their tools and get to work.
00:06:49.120 | After gently prodding their friend with,
00:06:51.360 | "How long have we been hoeing so far?"
00:06:53.360 | and "What do you think the kids' work is worth?"
00:06:55.960 | the couple came right out and asked
00:06:57.760 | whether they could swap the whole family's efforts
00:07:00.720 | for produce.
00:07:02.660 | Further discussion, further bargaining,
00:07:09.920 | resulted in a deal that was satisfactory
00:07:11.840 | all the way around.
00:07:13.160 | The family would hoe a certain part of their friend's fields
00:07:15.660 | in early summer and be paid in September
00:07:18.320 | with 20, 40-pound boxes of tomatoes.
00:07:21.740 | Then came the question of the seaweed.
00:07:23.720 | "What do you figure all that fertilizer's worth?"
00:07:25.520 | the farmer asked.
00:07:26.840 | "Well, Hank," said the husband,
00:07:28.360 | "we've put so much love and labor into the weed
00:07:30.840 | that it's beyond price,
00:07:32.080 | so we'll just have to give it to you."
00:07:34.420 | The farmer pulled his beard and chuckled.
00:07:36.560 | "You know, that's exactly how I feel about my vegetables.
00:07:39.700 | So while you're here,
00:07:40.540 | you just take all the fresh vegetables you can eat."
00:07:43.160 | In this way, the land tiller got quality fertilizer
00:07:45.780 | for the farm, and the couple wound up
00:07:47.260 | with as many onions, new red potatoes, cucumbers,
00:07:50.180 | kohlrabi, and ears of sweet corn as they could eat.
00:07:53.260 | Next, while they were camped out at their friend's,
00:07:55.440 | they discovered eight damaged fruit ladders,
00:07:57.600 | ranging from eight to 18 feet,
00:07:59.860 | just lying in the grass,
00:08:01.560 | left over from the time when the farm had been an orchard.
00:08:04.380 | After a quick huddle with the farmer,
00:08:05.900 | they had another deal on their hands.
00:08:07.780 | Using the tools, scraps of lumber,
00:08:09.940 | and other odd hardware that they had on hand,
00:08:12.300 | it took the couple only a day
00:08:13.580 | to put all the ladders back into prime condition.
00:08:16.300 | Then the farmer selected four for himself,
00:08:18.580 | and the couple got the others.
00:08:20.240 | They were most useful, too, for that from that day on,
00:08:22.660 | whenever they negotiated deals
00:08:23.900 | with orchard owners to pick fruit,
00:08:25.660 | they could always say,
00:08:26.560 | "We have our own ladders and buckets,"
00:08:28.660 | and they'd get the job.
00:08:30.340 | Both families liked to dry fruits and vegetables,
00:08:33.220 | and just so happened that the farmer
00:08:34.420 | had a plastic-covered dome that warmed up fast
00:08:37.140 | when it was set out in the sun.
00:08:38.780 | So the vacationers arranged a third deal.
00:08:41.300 | Their friend would provide screening, a staple gun,
00:08:44.100 | and free access to his private junk lumber pile,
00:08:46.820 | and they would construct eight drying racks
00:08:48.900 | covered with fine fiberglass screening.
00:08:51.460 | Then everyone would share the use of these frames.
00:08:54.380 | Well, they built the racks and dried some cherries on them,
00:08:57.160 | but when all was said and done,
00:08:58.620 | the couple didn't feel that they really came out even
00:09:01.280 | on the exchange.
00:09:02.540 | As luck would have it,
00:09:03.460 | this imbalance was corrected on a later date.
00:09:06.120 | The couple and their children stayed at the farm
00:09:08.180 | for another week before moving on,
00:09:10.140 | but their swapping experiences didn't end then.
00:09:13.000 | After untold hours of work in the different orchards,
00:09:15.740 | they ended up with 1,200 pounds of cherries
00:09:17.860 | and 1,000 pounds of apricots and peaches to take home
00:09:20.860 | as a supplement to the cash wages that they were paid.
00:09:24.020 | Another time, as they were uneventfully driving along
00:09:26.480 | at three o'clock in the morning,
00:09:28.000 | the tractor-trailer truck just ahead
00:09:29.820 | began to rain 50-pound sacks of chicken feed
00:09:32.060 | along the freeway.
00:09:33.460 | They salvaged $20 worth of the sacks
00:09:36.620 | and finally located a homesteading family
00:09:38.540 | that could use the feed.
00:09:39.980 | However, the homesteader's hens weren't laying many eggs
00:09:42.540 | at the time and their goats weren't giving much milk,
00:09:44.940 | so the travelers gave them the feed anyway
00:09:46.780 | with the promise of something interesting
00:09:48.380 | in return at a later date.
00:09:50.420 | After a summer of traveling and trading,
00:09:52.300 | the family returned in mid-September to their friend's farm,
00:09:55.060 | only to find him in a bit of a quandary.
00:09:57.660 | He was burdened with a field of luscious, ripe,
00:10:00.260 | organically grown tomatoes for which he had no buyers.
00:10:03.340 | The local market was glutted,
00:10:05.140 | and those tomatoes wouldn't sell
00:10:06.540 | at even a few cents a pound.
00:10:08.340 | Yet, 200 miles away over the mountains
00:10:10.780 | lay the city of Vancouver, British Columbia,
00:10:12.860 | where people were paying 10 times as much per pound
00:10:15.540 | for tomatoes of poor quality
00:10:16.980 | shipped all the way from Mexico.
00:10:19.140 | The couple's two-ton truck was just sitting idle,
00:10:21.980 | and both they and the farmer were interested
00:10:24.120 | in turning a handsome profit.
00:10:26.020 | So, after they all spent the next three days
00:10:28.020 | picking and packing tomatoes,
00:10:29.740 | the husband started for the coast
00:10:31.180 | with nearly 4,000 pounds of perfect fruit
00:10:33.780 | and high expectations.
00:10:35.860 | 10 days later, he returned.
00:10:37.780 | It had been one of those disastrous treks
00:10:40.820 | where people don't keep all of their promises
00:10:42.940 | and containers unaccountably collapse,
00:10:45.340 | where opening hours and ferry ticket takers
00:10:47.660 | and food co-op buyers all seem to conspire against you,
00:10:51.180 | where nothing goes as planned.
00:10:53.460 | The husband had sold tomatoes, traded tomatoes,
00:10:55.940 | dumped them on friends' doorsteps,
00:10:57.460 | thrown away rotten ones,
00:10:58.580 | and he had even taken the time to return home
00:11:00.660 | and can 400 pounds of the pulpy fruit.
00:11:03.980 | When he returned, he gave the farmer enough cash
00:11:05.980 | to cover the value of the goods
00:11:07.220 | that had survived the journey.
00:11:08.860 | Still, the family had not only failed
00:11:10.860 | to make wages on the deal,
00:11:11.980 | they'd actually lost money.
00:11:13.700 | Their friend had accepted the risk of this venture
00:11:15.740 | along with them, however,
00:11:16.820 | and he compensated them for their loss
00:11:18.900 | with 800 pounds of acorn squash on the vine.
00:11:22.260 | During the husband's absence,
00:11:23.620 | the wife and children had begun drying and bottling
00:11:26.100 | the 20, 40-pound crates of tomatoes
00:11:28.300 | they received as part of their July hoeing swap.
00:11:31.320 | So, they all continued to work on the fruit
00:11:32.940 | for more than a week,
00:11:33.980 | cutting off tops and bottoms
00:11:35.420 | of the juice-filled tomatoes to cook
00:11:37.020 | and bottle as sauce,
00:11:38.260 | and slicing the meaty centers into thin wheels,
00:11:40.500 | which, after four days on the drying racks,
00:11:43.080 | became tissue-thin slivers of potent flavor.
00:11:46.780 | It was then that the drying rack swap
00:11:48.580 | finally balanced out.
00:11:50.660 | By the time they'd finished with the tomatoes,
00:11:52.500 | it was early October and grape-picking season.
00:11:55.480 | So, they bade farewell again to their friend on the farm
00:11:57.760 | and headed for a vineyard.
00:11:59.220 | They found a promising one,
00:12:00.340 | and the owner allowed them to camp on his property
00:12:02.420 | in exchange for helping them harvest grapes.
00:12:04.820 | In addition, they were allowed to keep a pound of grapes
00:12:06.940 | for every 15 pounds they harvested.
00:12:09.400 | Grape-picking is interesting work.
00:12:11.220 | You get to eat a lot of the sugary, tart little fruits,
00:12:13.660 | which slows you down.
00:12:14.980 | You quickly develop purple hands,
00:12:16.500 | and occasionally you snip your fingers with the shears
00:12:18.580 | or get bitten by one of the mice
00:12:20.440 | that seems to savor grapes, too.
00:12:23.320 | The vacationers continued to barter for things they needed.
00:12:27.100 | They discovered that the vineyard owner
00:12:28.620 | had quite a number of large, sturdy plastic crates
00:12:31.740 | designed to either stack or nest,
00:12:34.260 | and invaluable for shipping wine grapes.
00:12:36.700 | They were now cracked and useless.
00:12:39.080 | But the husband mended 10 of them with an electric drill
00:12:42.620 | and scraps of thin wire.
00:12:44.380 | The owner was so pleased that he gave them
00:12:46.300 | five of the handy containers as payment for the work.
00:12:49.300 | About this time, they decided
00:12:50.760 | that they'd picked more than enough.
00:12:52.600 | They already had more squash, bottled tomatoes,
00:12:55.460 | fresh tomatoes, corn, onions,
00:12:57.460 | cull plums, and cull apples than they knew what to do with.
00:13:00.660 | And some of the grapes they'd harvested for themselves
00:13:02.780 | were wilting.
00:13:03.940 | So they borrowed the owner's great press.
00:13:06.420 | The family pressed 500 pounds of muskets and gave the mash,
00:13:10.220 | the pulp left over from the pressing,
00:13:12.140 | to the vineyard owner for second wine.
00:13:14.820 | In the meantime, though, the family found
00:13:16.420 | that they had picked $9 worth of grapes,
00:13:18.420 | more than they'd earned, and they couldn't pay for them.
00:13:20.940 | The owner at first agreed
00:13:22.140 | that they could make this up the following year.
00:13:24.140 | But before the group left, he came beaming to their truck
00:13:27.100 | to say that the musket mash they'd given him
00:13:29.060 | was well worth the overrun.
00:13:30.980 | Thus, the accounts were balanced after all.
00:13:33.540 | As the family departed the Similkameen Valley
00:13:38.540 | in their weary and heavily burdened truck,
00:13:41.920 | they found it necessary to make another swap.
00:13:44.380 | A friend had driven their car out to the valley for them,
00:13:46.600 | but he was no longer around to drive it back.
00:13:49.020 | This meant they had two vehicles,
00:13:50.660 | the car and the two-ton truck to take home.
00:13:54.320 | But since the wife didn't drive, they had just one driver.
00:13:57.340 | Fortunately, they soon met a lady hitchhiker
00:13:59.380 | who readily agreed to drive the auto back and return
00:14:02.000 | for the free transportation.
00:14:03.880 | Yet another exchange occurred
00:14:05.180 | when they stopped overnight at a hostel.
00:14:07.220 | There, they happily traded plums, tomatoes,
00:14:09.260 | and one crate of grapes for their supper and breakfast.
00:14:12.100 | And finally, upon arriving home,
00:14:14.000 | they still had an abundance of grapes and squash
00:14:16.140 | that could be traded for other produce,
00:14:17.700 | magazines and books,
00:14:19.020 | or any number of other items or services.
00:14:21.220 | "What a summer of hard work," their friends exclaimed
00:14:24.520 | when told about the trip.
00:14:26.220 | Well, it was hard,
00:14:28.700 | but it was also a fun-filled adventure.
00:14:30.900 | They returned healthy and fit,
00:14:32.660 | and they had their children right there with them
00:14:34.380 | all that time.
00:14:35.780 | The whole family had made many friends
00:14:37.580 | and had experienced firsthand the tremendous effort
00:14:40.140 | and care that it took to produce the food they enjoyed
00:14:43.100 | in such abundance.
00:14:44.280 | Now you take that story, do with it what you will,
00:14:47.460 | but don't think that in order to take your family
00:14:50.780 | on vacation that you have to drive 1,000 miles away,
00:14:55.460 | spending $100 a night at a hotel along the way
00:14:58.420 | in order to buy tickets to Disney World for 100 bucks a day
00:15:01.820 | in order to have a vacation.
00:15:03.820 | There are other options,
00:15:05.620 | and I'll leave it to you to come up
00:15:07.500 | with the creative options that will help you.