Recording-40
00:00:00.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:03.880 | skills, insight and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while
00:00:08.160 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:10.960 | My name is Joshua Sheets.
00:00:11.960 | I am your host.
00:00:12.960 | And today I want to create for you a short episode, just a simple conversation on the
00:00:17.200 | subject of safety.
00:00:19.640 | Received a comment on the previous show where I talked about how to move to Mexico and why
00:00:23.880 | you should.
00:00:24.880 | I received a question, which I think is certainly quite widespread.
00:00:29.320 | The commenter asked, "Well, no discussion on safety?
00:00:32.480 | I'm interested in moving to Mexico, but my wife really doesn't like the sound of it."
00:00:36.800 | And of course, we hear so many difficult things about Mexico.
00:00:40.560 | And I definitely do think it deserves a conversation.
00:00:43.000 | In fact, I've already recorded an interview, which will be released in a few days, where
00:00:46.640 | we do, I do mention it with another guy who was living in San Miguel de Allende also.
00:00:51.680 | But I thought this is important enough for me to just talk with you firsthand, straightforwardly
00:00:57.080 | about the topic of safety.
00:00:59.760 | And I think it's definitely an important component of good financial planning.
00:01:06.720 | The older I get, the more important safety is to me.
00:01:10.320 | I've talked about this throughout the annals of the show.
00:01:13.000 | I've talked about the importance of safety gear.
00:01:15.800 | I did a show on just simply wearing the safety gear on how if you're going to be involved
00:01:20.300 | in something and you're going to go and do something as simple, put on a helmet, right?
00:01:23.960 | Put on a skiing helmet, put on a bicycle helmet, don't work on ladders.
00:01:29.000 | It's silly to build wealth and then wind up hurting yourself in some simple way.
00:01:36.440 | When I was younger, I did all kinds of, I worked on roofs, I re-roofed houses, et cetera.
00:01:40.720 | The older I get, the more I look at it and just say, "It's just not worth it.
00:01:43.880 | Why would it be worth it for me to go up there and expose myself to some physical danger?"
00:01:47.360 | And so I've done shows on that.
00:01:49.520 | I've talked about how it becomes more important for you to invest in safety, things like driving
00:01:56.760 | a safer car.
00:01:58.160 | I think that one of the values of having money is that you can afford a safer car and it's
00:02:03.360 | worth having.
00:02:04.880 | Driving is one of the most dangerous things that you and I probably do on a regular basis
00:02:09.480 | and having a car that has active safety features, collision avoidance systems, et cetera, and
00:02:15.280 | passive safety features, high quality airbags, high quality construction.
00:02:19.280 | To me, it's worth it.
00:02:20.280 | There was a time in my life where I drove a cheap car and then I realized that I didn't
00:02:26.080 | really want to drive my cheap car because even though it gave me a great story, "Look,
00:02:29.560 | I've got this super reliable $500 car.
00:02:33.200 | My old Toyota Corolla that I paid $500 for," I realized that it wasn't ideal for me from
00:02:38.400 | a safety perspective.
00:02:39.400 | So now that brings us to travel.
00:02:43.380 | How should you think about safety when it comes to different places in the world that
00:02:46.920 | you can go?
00:02:48.380 | My answer is I think you should think about it, but I think you should think about it
00:02:51.600 | accurately.
00:02:53.880 | One big benefit of building wealth is that you can move from an unsafe place to a safe
00:02:59.440 | place.
00:03:01.040 | And here you'll have to define what those terms mean.
00:03:04.380 | But I do often wonder, there are many places, even in the United States, there are many
00:03:08.000 | places where people go to bed at night wondering if a stray bullet is going to come through
00:03:14.400 | the walls of their house and hit one of their children in the bed while they're sleeping.
00:03:18.920 | You can hear stories of New York City back in the 1980s when people would put their children
00:03:22.720 | to sleep in a bathtub for protection through the walls.
00:03:25.900 | Now is that true or is that apocryphal?
00:03:27.960 | I don't know.
00:03:29.880 | But certainly there's a sense in which it rings true.
00:03:33.500 | You see the number of people killed every weekend in a city like Chicago and you know
00:03:39.360 | that some of them are just simply accidental deaths.
00:03:41.920 | And I've often wondered, why don't people move?
00:03:45.840 | Anybody can move.
00:03:46.840 | Anybody living in a bad neighborhood in Chicago can leave a bad neighborhood in Chicago and
00:03:51.920 | go to a place in Indiana or just in a different neighborhood in Chicago.
00:03:57.760 | Number of reasons people don't take action.
00:03:59.880 | But one reason people don't take action is economics.
00:04:03.680 | And so one big benefit of building your wealth is that it opens up to you more economic possibilities.
00:04:10.880 | You open up for yourself the ability to go from a place that is unsafe to a place that
00:04:15.440 | is safe.
00:04:17.360 | I think that this can and should be part of your personal planning even in the city where
00:04:21.580 | you live.
00:04:22.580 | I keep a list of things that over the years I've changed my mind about and things that
00:04:30.080 | I've been wrong about, things I've changed my mind about just so I can kind of have a
00:04:33.240 | good track about them.
00:04:35.000 | One of the things on that list, things that I have changed my mind about is the usefulness
00:04:41.320 | and importance of a gated neighborhood.
00:04:44.080 | Now I'm still a little bit loath to admit this one, but I certainly think a lot more
00:04:48.960 | about it, especially as I watch what happens in my home country, the United States and
00:04:54.120 | the increasing levels of violence, the increasing levels of tension, just the things that you
00:04:59.000 | see on a news program quite regularly.
00:05:02.360 | If you had asked me five years ago if I would ever live in a gated neighborhood, my answer
00:05:06.120 | would have been an unequivocal absolutely not, never, because I don't want to deal with
00:05:11.880 | the additional restrictions, the additional constraints that come with that particular
00:05:17.720 | style of living.
00:05:19.720 | However, as I watch what has happened in the United States over the last few years, I don't
00:05:24.600 | want people marching through my street right in front of my house.
00:05:27.800 | I don't want to wake up in the morning and have my house surrounded by people yelling
00:05:31.460 | at me and people blocking intersections and whatnot.
00:05:34.320 | This is one reason why people move to a gated neighborhood.
00:05:38.800 | I think there can be a substantial increase in safety by simply choosing to move to a
00:05:44.080 | gated neighborhood, and it's worth considering.
00:05:47.760 | There are expressions of this.
00:05:49.280 | Now is it necessary to do that, to be safe in a little town in the United States?
00:05:53.480 | No, it's not, but it is the kind of thing that happens.
00:05:57.240 | I think that that particular trend will grow significantly in the coming years.
00:06:01.980 | If you go to a country that is generally considered to be less safe, you will find that living
00:06:10.580 | in a gated neighborhood is basically the standard for anybody with any particular level of wealth
00:06:16.700 | because it provides you a significant level of safety and protection at a modest cost.
00:06:22.120 | Virtually everybody lives in a gated neighborhood where there's a guard at the front, a wall
00:06:25.200 | around the set of properties, and then of course sometimes you have a guard on your
00:06:29.240 | own personal property.
00:06:31.120 | I think that trend will continue to grow in the United States for people who have wealth
00:06:34.760 | as well as you see some of the increasing levels of violence and increasing levels of
00:06:40.920 | disruption in society.
00:06:43.560 | What about Mexico?
00:06:44.560 | I think when you get to safety of traveling, you get into a different world because there's
00:06:50.240 | just a different perspective on what's safe and what's not.
00:06:57.860 | Over the years, I've been on various sides of this issue.
00:07:00.560 | I'll tell you a couple of stories.
00:07:03.720 | I remember when I was just graduating from college and I wanted to take a trip somewhere,
00:07:11.280 | wanted to travel abroad, didn't have very much money.
00:07:14.720 | I sat down and I said, "Where can I fly?"
00:07:16.480 | Spirit Airlines had a flight to Haiti that was cheap and Spirit Airlines had a flight
00:07:20.960 | to Colombia that was cheap.
00:07:23.680 | I didn't know much about both places, but of course I knew that Colombia was unsafe.
00:07:27.040 | After all, it's a drug country and a terrible place to be, etc.
00:07:30.960 | I knew that Haiti was a little bit questionable, so I pulled up the U.S. State Department,
00:07:33.920 | looked at their travel advisory warnings, and they warned against traveling to Haiti.
00:07:38.120 | I said, "Well, I'll take a risk on Colombia."
00:07:40.560 | I bought a plane ticket to Colombia and showed up, didn't know much about it, went to a hostel
00:07:44.840 | and had a great trip.
00:07:47.040 | Had a wonderful time, didn't get robbed, everything was totally fine, and really enjoyed
00:07:51.400 | my time there.
00:07:52.400 | That was one time when I started to say, "Wait a second, what's going on?
00:07:56.360 | Why are there all these warnings?
00:07:58.040 | Why do I have this wrong view of Colombia?
00:08:00.640 | Why do I think that Colombia is this godforsaken hellhole, when in reality this has just been
00:08:06.360 | an awesome trip and this is a wonderful place to be?"
00:08:10.600 | It changed me.
00:08:11.600 | Earlier than that, I'll tell you another example.
00:08:13.680 | One thing I have learned throughout my life is that virtually every country that I've
00:08:17.320 | ever been to doesn't trust its own neighbors, whether they're racist towards their neighbors,
00:08:24.280 | or whether they just don't like them, or whether they have arguments against them.
00:08:27.840 | Virtually every country I've been to has a hard time with their neighbors.
00:08:32.400 | When I was in college in Costa Rica, we went to Nicaragua.
00:08:36.840 | All the Costa Ricans start warning you about Nicaragua, about how terrible Nicaragua is,
00:08:40.560 | how unsafe it is, be careful, it's just full of crime.
00:08:44.600 | Costa Ricans and Nicaraguans have a very difficult relationship.
00:08:47.280 | They don't really like each other very much.
00:08:50.600 | All you hear is just how bad Nicaragua is.
00:08:52.600 | Well, then you go to Nicaragua and it's nothing like what the Costa Ricans warned you about,
00:08:56.200 | at least your experience of it is not.
00:08:58.080 | I didn't get robbed in Nicaragua, I did get robbed in Costa Rica.
00:09:02.720 | Yet the Costa Ricans would never hear that.
00:09:06.800 | I've seen this again and again throughout my life.
00:09:10.200 | When my wife and I were on our honeymoon, we had a honeymoon in Hispaniola.
00:09:14.400 | It's not abnormal to go to the Dominican Republic, as we did and go to a resort.
00:09:19.080 | What is abnormal is we also went to Haiti.
00:09:20.800 | I remember when we told people in the Dominican Republic, "We're going to Haiti.
00:09:23.880 | It's terrible.
00:09:24.880 | The Haitians, you can't trust them.
00:09:26.520 | It's dangerous.
00:09:27.520 | Be really careful.
00:09:28.520 | It's super dangerous."
00:09:29.520 | While we did not like Haiti, which I'll talk about in a moment, I didn't find it particularly
00:09:35.400 | dangerous.
00:09:36.400 | I think there was more danger there, certainly, but we didn't get robbed, we didn't get hurt.
00:09:41.880 | We escaped.
00:09:42.880 | It's just again and again and again, almost anywhere I go, I find the same thing.
00:09:50.720 | I've come to basically distrust most of those opinions.
00:09:53.600 | What about Mexico?
00:09:55.520 | Mexico certainly has a reputation for violence and for lack of safety.
00:10:02.000 | I don't personally think that reputation is unwarranted.
00:10:05.480 | I do think it's important to pay attention to.
00:10:08.280 | I remember a number of years ago, I was listening to a presentation by a guy who was a celebrity
00:10:12.960 | bodyguard type.
00:10:15.480 | His comment was, "Don't ever go to Mexico.
00:10:18.760 | Don't ever go to Mexico.
00:10:19.760 | If you don't ever go to Mexico, you're going to be safe."
00:10:24.480 | You file that stuff away in your head and you think, "Man, that sounds really bad.
00:10:28.080 | I don't want to be dumb.
00:10:29.240 | I don't want to die.
00:10:30.240 | I don't want to be locked up in prison somewhere.
00:10:31.640 | I don't want to be robbed.
00:10:32.640 | Maybe I just won't go to Mexico."
00:10:35.120 | But in reality, I've been in Mexico for some time, traveling all around.
00:10:40.960 | I've been in Mexico City over the last week, Mexico City, Cuernavaca, San Miguel de Allende.
00:10:45.960 | I'm in Cancun, Playa del Carmen right now.
00:10:49.560 | I haven't once thought about physical safety.
00:10:52.440 | I haven't once been concerned about physical safety.
00:10:55.720 | I want the same for you.
00:10:57.400 | Let me give you my formula for how to think about physical safety.
00:11:03.960 | The first thing is you should be aware of what the statistics indicate because data
00:11:10.440 | does tell an important story.
00:11:13.020 | But data only tells an important story if you actually understand how to read the data.
00:11:17.080 | I'll give you an example from the United States.
00:11:19.560 | The United States has a much higher level of violence than many places in the world,
00:11:25.760 | a much higher level of murders, a much higher level of violence than many places in the
00:11:29.800 | world.
00:11:31.320 | The challenge is that the vast majority of that violence takes place in just a handful
00:11:35.600 | of cities, a handful of large liberal cities where there's the most violence.
00:11:41.680 | Now you notice I put the political commentary, I said liberal cities.
00:11:46.800 | You can do this because you can study this with things like gun violence.
00:11:49.240 | If you're ever looking at gun violence in the United States, one of the first things
00:11:52.540 | that you want to look at is say, "Where is this gun violence happening?"
00:11:55.920 | And the gun violence in the United States happens in large democratic cities that have
00:12:00.040 | strict gun laws, that's where all the gun violence happens.
00:12:03.320 | And people argue and argue about this, but the reality is if you take those handful of
00:12:08.240 | cities out of the United States, you take those handful of cities such as Chicago, New
00:12:13.560 | York, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., you just remove those from all the statistics, the
00:12:19.080 | United States drops to one of the safest countries in the world as long as you get rid of those
00:12:23.040 | cities.
00:12:24.240 | So let's say that somebody's planning to come to the United States.
00:12:27.140 | You can tell them and they say, "I'm concerned about violence in the United States.
00:12:30.460 | After all, there's tremendous levels of violence and I'm not sure, am I going to be safe?"
00:12:33.960 | Well, a good statistical answer would be, "Yeah, you can be safe, but don't go to Chicago,
00:12:39.560 | don't go to New York, don't go to Washington, D.C., don't go to Baltimore.
00:12:43.480 | Stay out of the big cities and you'll be fine."
00:12:46.920 | Now is that true?
00:12:48.760 | Statistically it's true, but you also know there's a whole other side to the story.
00:12:54.040 | You know that that's not all of it.
00:13:06.180 | You know that it's more important to think about what parts of those cities.
00:13:12.520 | You can go to Chicago and you can have a wonderful time and never once see any indication of
00:13:17.880 | violence anywhere in Chicago because you simply don't go to certain neighborhoods.
00:13:24.040 | You stay in the places where there's not trouble.
00:13:27.160 | Same thing in any city.
00:13:28.660 | And so I would be happy to tell a tourist to the United States, "Yeah, go to Chicago.
00:13:32.680 | Just pay attention to what the people say."
00:13:35.720 | And you know that if somebody's going to go to Chicago and they ask, "Hey, is it okay
00:13:40.320 | for me?
00:13:41.320 | I'm a visitor from England.
00:13:44.400 | Is it okay for me to go shopping in this particular district?"
00:13:47.640 | The answer is almost certainly yes.
00:13:50.720 | Almost certainly it's absolutely fine and you can definitely go and shop there in that
00:13:54.280 | district.
00:13:56.540 | So you want to pay attention to neighborhoods.
00:13:58.600 | But what's also important in terms of safety is...
00:14:02.520 | Well, let's go first just listen to people on the ground.
00:14:05.960 | Let's talk about a city like, say, Portland.
00:14:09.000 | Is Portland, Oregon known for being a particularly dangerous city?
00:14:13.520 | I would say no, it's a beautiful city.
00:14:15.640 | It's not known for being a particularly dangerous city.
00:14:18.520 | But if you were to go to Portland, Oregon today, would it be wise to talk to the concierge
00:14:23.480 | at your hotel and say, "Hey, I want to go check out the city.
00:14:27.200 | Should I do that?"
00:14:28.200 | The concierge would say, "Absolutely, you can go check out the city, but you want to
00:14:31.640 | stay away from this particular square at this particular time of day."
00:14:37.080 | Walk through at noon day around the federal government buildings where all the protests
00:14:40.480 | are.
00:14:41.480 | Absolutely, you're fine.
00:14:42.480 | Walk through at 11 o'clock at night, not so good.
00:14:44.640 | And so one of the most important things is always local knowledge.
00:14:47.480 | Virtually everywhere in the world that you go, there will be some local knowledge.
00:14:51.180 | Some local people will understand what's happening and when and where you can be in a certain
00:14:55.080 | place.
00:14:56.080 | And every type of crime differs.
00:14:58.080 | A train station in Paris is going to be an extremely high crime area for petty crime,
00:15:05.040 | for pickpocketing.
00:15:06.760 | But that's going to happen during midday, midday during the crowds.
00:15:12.200 | And so you would be very well advised to carefully protect yourself, carefully protect your pockets,
00:15:18.760 | make sure that you engage in good anti-theft measures if you're going to be going through
00:15:22.800 | a train station in Paris at midday.
00:15:25.200 | There's a different risk profile though to going through at midnight.
00:15:29.120 | And so local intelligence is what you rely on when traveling.
00:15:32.700 | And you rely on it in Portland, Oregon, in New York City, or in Mexico City, Mexico.
00:15:36.680 | You just simply talk to the local people and find out what's going on.
00:15:39.620 | Get the intelligence of what's happening in those local areas.
00:15:44.120 | So let's expand our metaphor here for a moment.
00:15:49.400 | Pardon the sniffing, I apologize.
00:15:53.120 | But as I record this, I can't pause it at the moment.
00:15:56.900 | Let's go back to our metaphor, back to our example.
00:15:59.120 | Let's say that you have a British tourist who's traveling to Chicago, staying at a normal
00:16:03.120 | hotel and talks to people and says, "Hey, is it safe for me to go and be in this certain
00:16:08.600 | neighborhood?
00:16:09.600 | Is it safe for me to go and be there?"
00:16:11.160 | And they go, "Yeah, everything's fine, everything's fine."
00:16:12.920 | But let's say that the British tourist now takes that information about safety and says,
00:16:19.280 | "Okay, well I'm safe to go to this neighborhood and I'm safe to go out at this particular
00:16:23.200 | time."
00:16:24.200 | But then they walk out of the hotel, they go to that neighborhood and they decide to
00:16:27.680 | buy some drugs.
00:16:30.200 | Does their risk profile change?
00:16:33.800 | Answer is it changes dramatically.
00:16:36.200 | The vast majority of people who are killed in Mexico or in many places are involved in
00:16:40.840 | gang activity.
00:16:42.200 | Gang activity is often drug activity, often related to it.
00:16:45.400 | You're going to be far less safe if you go to Cancun and you buy drugs and start doing
00:16:49.940 | drugs with your buddies than if you just simply go to Cancun and sit on the beach and drink
00:16:56.680 | alcohol from your hotel bar.
00:16:59.160 | Your activities make a big, big difference in your safety.
00:17:02.120 | It's not that Cancun itself is safe or unsafe, it's largely a matter of what your activities
00:17:07.480 | are.
00:17:08.480 | And so if you're going to go and you're going to engage in illegal purchases, buying drugs,
00:17:13.460 | you're going to go and get involved in a gang, you're going to do something that's going
00:17:17.720 | to bring attention to you, advocate for some political cause or something like that, then
00:17:22.320 | your safety profile changes dramatically.
00:17:25.640 | These are the factors that are the most important.
00:17:29.560 | I do think that there are places in the world that are genuinely unsafe, that you genuinely
00:17:36.200 | need to need to plan with tremendous care and caution.
00:17:42.120 | I think the handful of those places are the number of those places is extremely small.
00:17:47.720 | I could probably only name a couple in today's world.
00:17:51.200 | If I today, I'm not scared of going to Afghanistan.
00:17:55.440 | I'm not scared of going to Iraq today.
00:17:58.000 | I follow actually trip reports and whatnot of travelers who go do the visit those countries.
00:18:04.000 | Places I am concerned about Venezuela, very concerned.
00:18:08.280 | It's not impossible to travel safely in Venezuela, but it's very difficult right now.
00:18:13.560 | Somalia, right?
00:18:15.280 | I'm concerned about Somalia and just because it's difficult in some of these places, you
00:18:23.440 | have to take many more precautions.
00:18:25.480 | You have to be very thoughtful.
00:18:27.400 | Sometimes you hire security.
00:18:28.840 | Sometimes you make sure that you get the local guy who knows what's going on.
00:18:33.200 | But the risk is far lower than a lot of people think.
00:18:37.440 | Back to Mexico.
00:18:40.240 | In my travels in Mexico, I've not really ever once thought about safety.
00:18:46.520 | That's not to say that there may not be places in Mexico where I would not think about safety.
00:18:53.280 | Here's how it sounds to me.
00:18:55.240 | Imagine somebody coming to you and you live in Miami, Florida, and they're watching the
00:19:00.600 | people burning the city of Portland down.
00:19:03.400 | And they're saying to you, don't you feel unsafe living in the United States?
00:19:08.120 | You say, bro, like that's Portland.
00:19:11.200 | That's not Miami.
00:19:13.360 | And that's these riots and protests.
00:19:16.720 | That's not Miami, right?
00:19:18.280 | That's not the business district.
00:19:19.500 | That's not the W Hotel in Miami.
00:19:21.920 | That's Portland.
00:19:22.920 | And that's totally different.
00:19:23.920 | Well, at this point in time, I've come to see that that's basically the same about everywhere
00:19:27.680 | in the world.
00:19:29.200 | Mexico is not inherently unsafe.
00:19:33.200 | It's just simply not possible.
00:19:34.200 | And you do this to the numbers.
00:19:35.680 | It's just simply not.
00:19:37.940 | Maybe they have a higher statistical crime rate.
00:19:41.140 | But even that in and of itself doesn't make it inherently unsafe.
00:19:44.680 | It's all a matter of where you're going, what are you doing, and can you pay attention to
00:19:51.080 | the advice that you get, pay attention to the activities that you engage in?
00:19:55.160 | So what I have learned in my lifetime is that most of these places are simply scary because
00:20:04.940 | you don't know them.
00:20:06.420 | You don't have an idea of what they are.
00:20:08.680 | I mean, do you understand, for example, Mexico, do you understand that Mexico City is what
00:20:14.280 | is it, something like the third or fourth largest city in the world?
00:20:17.760 | Tokyo, of course, is number one.
00:20:19.480 | Delhi is number two.
00:20:20.480 | I have to recheck the data, but it's in the top 10, certainly.
00:20:24.040 | Something like nine million people in the city proper, something like 20 million people,
00:20:29.520 | I think, in the central area.
00:20:32.320 | That's a lot of people.
00:20:33.320 | And it's a huge and kind of world-class city.
00:20:36.600 | And so in the same way that you can be completely comfortable walking around downtown Manhattan,
00:20:41.880 | you can be completely comfortable walking around downtown Mexico City.
00:20:46.280 | Bogota, another world-class city.
00:20:48.800 | I think what is it?
00:20:49.800 | I can't remember the number.
00:20:50.800 | Something like six or nine million people in the central area.
00:21:00.040 | You can't let your perceptions of what a place actually is like be formed without accurate
00:21:06.400 | information.
00:21:08.120 | And so I used to worry about traveling to Mexico.
00:21:10.880 | I don't worry about it.
00:21:11.880 | I just don't see any indication.
00:21:12.880 | With the things that I do and the places I go, I don't see any indications of safety.
00:21:16.680 | I do know that there are areas where I am going to pay attention.
00:21:19.680 | So if I hear of an area that's experiencing a lot of cartel violence or something like
00:21:22.800 | that, I'm going to steer clear.
00:21:25.160 | But I'm not going to steer clear of the entire country because of that.
00:21:30.360 | My final comment, so my point there is simply this.
00:21:34.040 | Go check it out.
00:21:35.040 | Go check it out.
00:21:36.800 | And what will happen is as you check places out, you realize that your perceptions were
00:21:41.140 | very different than reality.
00:21:44.400 | Go check it out.
00:21:46.160 | The final comment I would make is this.
00:21:49.080 | When you think about safety, recognize that you can always leave.
00:21:56.920 | That is one of the tremendous privileges that you and I enjoy.
00:22:00.560 | We can always leave.
00:22:04.360 | Back to the Haiti trip.
00:22:05.360 | Remember, I told you my wife and I went to Hispaniola on our honeymoon.
00:22:10.560 | And we went to the Dominican Republic, went to Haiti.
00:22:13.840 | After a day and a half in Haiti, we were ready to leave.
00:22:17.000 | I did not enjoy Haiti.
00:22:18.240 | I had a terrible time there for a variety of reasons.
00:22:22.600 | And we were planning to be there for almost a week.
00:22:25.920 | But after a few days, I just looked at her and said, "We got to get out of here.
00:22:29.440 | I do not want to be here anymore.
00:22:30.960 | I'm not having fun.
00:22:32.280 | I don't want to be here anymore.
00:22:33.520 | I want to leave."
00:22:35.160 | And we literally booked a ticket there.
00:22:37.160 | We literally took a taxi to the airport in Port-au-Prince and tried to get out.
00:22:42.120 | Now we were trying to get back to the Dominican Republic, so we were trying to fly back there.
00:22:46.200 | But basically, I was showing up at the airport with a credit card and I was like, "Get me
00:22:48.600 | out of here."
00:22:49.920 | And I wasn't able to get out that day back to the Dominican Republic, but I got from
00:22:54.160 | Port-au-Prince and I bought a plane ticket on the spot to another place in Haiti, I think
00:22:59.360 | that was Cape Haitian.
00:23:02.120 | And we flew to Cape Haitian and had a much better, had a wonderful time in Cape Haitian
00:23:05.520 | and then took the bus back the next day back to the Dominican Republic.
00:23:09.960 | And so if you get to a place and you don't like it, you can always leave.
00:23:15.200 | And you can apply this at the local level, right?
00:23:16.680 | If you're walking down the street, walking through a market and all of a sudden you get
00:23:20.800 | that tingly feeling in the back of your head, "I'm not in the right place."
00:23:25.040 | You stop, you call a taxi, you ask for help, you book an Uber, you do something, you call
00:23:31.600 | the hotel and say, "Come get me," and you just simply leave and you get out.
00:23:36.400 | If you're in a country or a city and you don't like it and something's going wrong, then
00:23:39.920 | you leave and you get out.
00:23:43.360 | But that's only been, for me, necessary really only one time and that is in Haiti.
00:23:50.800 | And I'm not scared to go back to Haiti, I just didn't have a nice time there, I didn't
00:23:53.800 | enjoy it at all.
00:23:55.680 | And so I don't particularly want to go back to Haiti.
00:23:58.360 | So that's how I would handle the question of safety is I would simply say, "Let's go
00:24:06.600 | check it out."
00:24:08.360 | And if you are a person with at least some means, is it more risky for someone?
00:24:15.280 | In some ways it's more risky for someone who's a penniless backpacker, taking a local chicken
00:24:19.920 | bus across the country.
00:24:21.880 | But in some ways it's not because they're not necessarily a high profile.
00:24:25.280 | But if you're kind of what I would call an average, normal, middle class person, get
00:24:30.240 | on an airplane and you fly, you call up Enrique and you fly to San Miguel de Allende and you
00:24:36.320 | book an Airbnb and you walk around, I mean, there's no crime.
00:24:39.960 | I saw nothing to be concerned about in San Miguel de Allende.
00:24:43.320 | If you go to resort town, it's just not unsafe.
00:24:50.840 | It's not.
00:24:52.980 | With those caveats that I said.
00:24:55.520 | Here's something that I always think about, something that encourages me.
00:24:58.520 | Years ago, I was talking to a friend of mine who is a reporter and we were talking about
00:25:02.840 | the news and I was bemoaning to him how the news was just so full of bad things, so full
00:25:08.000 | of violence, so full of problems, et cetera.
00:25:10.120 | And he said to me this, said, Joshua, you should be thankful that the news is full of
00:25:14.880 | those things.
00:25:15.880 | You should be thankful the news is full of kidnappings and rapes and violence and whatnot.
00:25:21.600 | Because if it weren't full of those things, you would be in a worse situation than if
00:25:25.680 | the news were full of those things.
00:25:27.840 | He said it's news by definition because it's abnormal.
00:25:32.120 | Back to the classic kind of funny joke.
00:25:34.920 | Dog bites man is not news.
00:25:37.160 | Dog bite.
00:25:38.480 | Man bites dog, that's news.
00:25:40.720 | And so if the news is full of killings and rapings and kidnappings, et cetera, then recognize
00:25:46.880 | that's news because it's abnormal.
00:25:49.920 | It's if that stuff is not in the news where you need to worry or you need to be concerned.
00:25:56.400 | And so here's the basic problem with news information.
00:26:00.200 | It is usually bad and it's sensationalistic, but it's sensationalistic and bad because
00:26:05.360 | it's abnormal.
00:26:06.840 | And the fact that it's abnormal indicates that it's not something that should be statistically
00:26:12.560 | expected to happen to you.
00:26:15.040 | I'm not, even though I watch the news from Portland, Oregon, right, but I'm not unsafe
00:26:21.140 | going to Portland, Oregon.
00:26:24.120 | As long as I avoid certain times and certain situations.
00:26:27.320 | It's just that's the news because that's different and unique.
00:26:30.440 | And this is what makes it so hard in the modern world because we're exposed and subjected
00:26:34.960 | to so much news that is genuinely important.
00:26:38.800 | It is genuinely newsworthy, but it's not going to affect your life.
00:26:43.840 | So there's a bombing at some hotel.
00:26:45.240 | Well, it's probably not going to affect your life to go to that place.
00:26:49.440 | And so the news is valuable to know.
00:26:51.200 | It indicates something.
00:26:52.360 | You pay attention to it.
00:26:53.520 | You talk to local people and find out about it.
00:26:56.480 | So there's my conversation on safety.
00:26:58.800 | I would just say that what I've done is say, what's the worst that could happen?
00:27:03.040 | And let me just avoid that and go and check it out and trust your gut.
00:27:07.680 | But I don't think that I am quite confident that I can travel to Mexico.
00:27:12.640 | I'm quite confident that I can live in Mexico and be totally safe.
00:27:16.920 | I'm just going to be smart about it.
00:27:18.480 | And if the situation changes, then I'm going to be ready to change myself.
00:27:21.400 | Thank you so much for listening.
00:27:23.440 | I hope that helps you.
00:27:26.120 | The more time I spend traveling to different places,
00:27:29.600 | the more accurate understanding I have of how the world works
00:27:34.960 | and the more confidence I have in what's right for me and my family.
00:27:38.280 | And I wish that same feeling for you and yours.
00:27:41.480 | [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:27:44.120 | Are you ready to make your next pro basketball, football, hockey, concert,
00:27:47.600 | or live event unforgettable?
00:27:49.520 | Let Sweet Hop take your game to the next level.
00:27:52.160 | Sweet Hop is an online marketplace curating the best premium tickets
00:27:55.800 | at stadiums, arenas, and amphitheaters nationwide.
00:27:58.920 | Sweet Hop's online marketplace makes it easy to browse and book the best seats.
00:28:03.480 | With no hidden fees and a 100% purchase guarantee,
00:28:06.640 | you can feel confident when you book your premium LA tickets with Sweet Hop.
00:28:10.560 | Visit SUITEHOP.COM today.