Hey, parents, join the LA Kings on Saturday, November 25th for an unforgettable kids day presented by Pear Deck. Family fun giveaways and exciting Kings hockey awaits. Get your tickets now at LA Kings dot com slash promotions and create lasting memories with your little ones. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

My name is Josh Rasheeds. Today, I have a simple encouragement for you. I want to encourage you to put numbers to your goals. Think about what some goals or dreams are that you have and sit down and put some numbers to your goals. And I think if you'll do that, you'll be able to see ways of achieving certain goals that probably previously seemed totally out of sight.

I was reminded of this truth yesterday. I was sitting down and thinking about some things, and I just decided to start putting some numbers down on paper. And I was really shocked with how it transformed my perspective. I'll share the example specifically. I'm traveling right now, currently in Bogota, Colombia.

And as I was traveling, I was thinking about traveling. And when you think about traveling, I'm attracted often to people who who well, I'm attracted to the idea of setting and achieving big goals. I like to do things that other people, not very many people have done. And one of the things that I have often thought about doing in my life is traveling to every country in the world.

I've been interested in this for over a decade, reading about people who've accomplished this goal, just kind of interested in it. Never really said it as something that I really want to do, but interested in it. So recently I was watching some YouTube videos from a young lady named Alexis.

She has a YouTube channel called Lexi Limitless or Limitless Lexi, one of the two. And Alexis is the youngest person to have ever traveled to all of the countries in the world. She did it when she was 20, by the time she was 21 years old. And I was thinking about my traveling and I was thinking about my children.

I thought, I wonder if I could take my children to every country in the world and have them break the Guinness Book of World Records for the youngest person to travel in the world. I've got four children, ages one, three, five and seven. And as I was thinking about it, I thought, well, I could, I could, my one year old start, you know, start traveling.

And by what age could my one year old break that, break that travel record? And I, again, I'm not saying that I want to do it. There are a lot of downsides to doing something like that. I've never committed to this as, ah, this I want to do. I just admire it when people set big goals.

It's tough. The idea of traveling to every country in the world is tough. But what keeps people back from doing something like that? Some people like me would think about it and say, but do I really want to? Right. Is that really useful and valuable? Let's say that I did choose to take my children to every country in the world.

Well, what kind of time commitment would that be? What kind of things would you give up? You would give up a lot of of experiences. You would give up a lot of of experiences of of kind of normal day to day life and of local social, so social networks and things like that.

You would gain other experiences and maybe that would be superior. I'm not so sure. But along the way, of course, you would quickly come to money and you would say, well, how can I afford to travel to every country in the world? How can I how could I do that?

And here's where putting numbers to paper is, I think, incredibly free. And let me give you the numbers that I put down as I was thinking about what it would cost if I actually did set a goal like I'm going to travel and take my children to every country in the world.

Travel, there are lots of people who travel and those people usually track their expenses. And so I there's another travel blogger that I have watched over the years named Drew Binsky. Drew has traveled to every country in the world. He's made videos, daily videos about his work. Drew says that it costs him seven hundred dollars per country to travel, and he's tracked all the expenses along the way.

Drew's an American citizen. So, of course, he has fewer visa expenses, but his seven hundred dollar per country ticket or number includes everything. It includes visa expenses, includes transportation to and from the country. It includes lodging and accommodations while in the country and tours and things like that. So his number is seven hundred dollars.

And I think that that's probably a pretty accurate number. Some countries are very expensive. Some countries are very inexpensive, but it all evens out in the long run. So let's say you do seven hundred dollars. So I sat down and I said, OK, seven hundred dollars per country. Now I lead a family of six.

So seven hundred times six. Let's assume that there's no cost savings involved with traveling with family. There are some certainly some cost savings. You might have fewer hotel rooms. You don't necessarily have to have six hotel rooms and and transportation might in some cases be less. But let's assume there's not cost savings.

So seven hundred dollars per country times six people equals four thousand two hundred dollars per country. So that's what it would cost me for me to take my family of six to each country in the world. And to me, that feels just about right. Four thousand two hundred dollars per country based on my experience traveling to a few dozen countries.

Then how many countries are there? Well, the numbers vary. There's one hundred ninety three UN countries. There's a couple of disputed territories like Taiwan, et cetera. So a good number is about one hundred ninety five. And then some people go to two hundred. But let's just say let's use one hundred ninety five.

So four thousand two hundred times one hundred ninety five equals eight hundred nineteen thousand dollars. So let's say that I did set a goal of taking my children to every country in the world. My budget for that would be something like eight hundred nineteen thousand dollars. So let's call it 800 grand, maybe 900, who knows?

Now, in some ways, that's a big number, but in some ways it's not that big of a number. So let's add one more adjustment to change the number. How long would it take me to travel to every country in the world? Who knows? Right. There are people who have done it in a year and a little under two years.

That's under the Guinness Book of World Records. I would not want to travel that way and definitely not with children. I would want to travel much more slowly. You figure if there are one hundred ninety five countries that you're traveling to, if you did it in ten years, that would be nineteen and a half countries per year.

That's pretty fast. Now, in some cases, that's easy. Some places that's easy. Some places that's not. And that's where you start to think about, well, what style of travel would I be engaging in? Would I want to spend a month in each country? Well, if you had a month in each country, then that would be one hundred ninety five.

So if you did that as one hundred ninety five countries per year, then that would be sixteen point two five years. Well, here's what's interesting. Let's say you did do it in sixteen point two five years. Let's call it sixteen years. Eight hundred nineteen thousand dollars divided by sixteen years is an annual budget of fifty one thousand dollars.

Eight hundred and ten thousand dollars divided by sixteen years is an annual budget of my calculator is not working. Basically, fifty one thousand dollars. Quick sidebar, once you learn reverse Polish notation, you can't ever get your other calculators to work quite right. So I've used I use reverse Polish notation for years.

And now when I go to pick up the calculator on my iPhone, it just doesn't work quite right for me. So let's call it fifty two thousand dollars a year. All of a sudden, now that big, hairy, audacious goal doesn't seem quite so overwhelming. Fifty two thousand dollars a year to travel to one country per month.

That's pretty doable. And all of a sudden you realize that, wait a second, I'm already spending fifty two thousand dollars a year. And you realize that there are thousands and hundreds of thousands of people all around the world who make their living through an Internet connection and earn more than fifty two thousand dollars per year.

And now you don't all of a sudden have to have a million dollar fortune that you're going to systematically spend over the next sixteen years. You just need to earn fifty two thousand dollars a year and you could accomplish a goal like that. I find that amazingly freeing, amazingly freeing, where you take this big, scary goal take I'm going to take my kids to every country in the world and you start calculating the budget on it and you figure out, well, all I got to do is earn fifty two thousand dollars a year and I could cover my expenses enough to travel to one new country every month, twelve countries a year.

And over the next sixteen years, I could travel to all these countries. That's awesome. To repeat, I'm not setting this as a goal. I'm not. I don't think I want to do it. I don't think that's the lifestyle I want to live. I don't think that that's what I want to do with my children.

It's not a personal goal of mine. I think there are other non-financial reasons why I don't want to do it. But it's really nice to know that when you actually start digging out numbers, most goals, most goals that you and I have, even the big, scary ones are really eminently achievable.

So I encourage you, if there's a goal that you've been thinking about doing, get out a calculator and a sheet of paper and start working the actual numbers and figure out what would that actually cost me. Might be a lifestyle goal. What would it actually cost me to go here to do that?

What would it actually cost me to buy this or to engage in this other thing, to start practicing this certain thing I want to do, this hobby, this skill, to add in this certain sport? What would it actually cost me? And then break it down into a budget amount that makes sense.

And you may find that your goals are still big, they're still hard to achieve, in which case you need a better engine. But you may find that they're eminently achievable and relatively easy to do, in which case you can move past worrying about the money and you can think about the other things.

I'm not scared of the financial cost of a goal like, I'm going to take my children to every country in the world. Because I've done the math and it doesn't actually cost all that much, even for you as an individual. If we use Drew's number, $700 per country times $195, that's a $136,000 goal.

Right? If you wanted to travel every country in the world, it would cost you a hundred and something thousand dollars. You could do it cheaper, stay in fancier places, maybe it's $200,000. Not that much money in the grand scheme of things. So now, once you're free of the financial stress, you can move on to thinking about the other things and deciding, is this really a good idea?

Is this really something I want to do or not? Hope that helps you. Have a great day. With Kroger Brand products from Ralph's, you can make all your favorite things this holiday season because Kroger Brand's proven quality products come at exceptionally low prices. And with a money back quality guarantee, every dish is sure to be a favorite.

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