A quick word from our sponsor today. I love helping you answer all the toughest questions about life, money, and so much more, but sometimes it's helpful to talk to other people in your situation, which actually gets harder as you build your wealth. So I want to introduce you to today's sponsor, Longangle.

Longangle is a community of high net worth individuals with backgrounds in everything from technology, finance, medicine, to real estate, law, manufacturing, and more. I'm a member of Longangle. I've loved being a part of the community, and I've even had one of the founders, Tad Fallows, join me on all the hacks in episode 87 to talk about alternative investments.

Now, the majority of Longangle members are first generation wealth, young, highly successful individuals who join the community to share knowledge and learn from each other in a confidential, unbiased setting. On top of that, members also get access to some unique private market investment opportunities. Like I said, I'm a member and I've gotten so much value from the community because you're getting advice and feedback from people in a similar situation to you on everything from your investment portfolio, to your children's education, to finding a concierge doctor.

So many of these conversations aren't happening anywhere else online. So if you have more than 2.2 million in investable assets, which is their minimum for membership, I encourage you to check out Longangle and it's totally free to join. Just go to longangle.com to learn more. And if you choose to apply, be sure to let them know you heard about it here.

Again, that's longangle.com. Hello, and welcome to a special bonus episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel. If this is your first time joining us, you are welcome to stick around for some travel Q and A, but you might want to first check out the last episode of the show a couple of days ago.

I had a fantastic conversation with Nick Gray, where I learned not only why cocktail parties might be the best secret weapon for building relationships, but also exactly how to put them on with minimal work. Also, Nick is the founder of MuseumHack and an expert in all things museums, so we got a download on all his secret tips and deals, and I even shared a few myself.

Near the end of our conversation, Nick had a handful of really tactical questions for me about travel that were so good I wanted to share them with you, but that I didn't think quite fit in the last episode, so I'm releasing them today in a short bonus episode, and I really hope you like it.

So, without further ado, enjoy the rest of my conversation with Nick Gray. I do have some questions for you about traveling myself, whenever it's appropriate. I had some travel stuff I wanted to jump into because you have this great website where you've blogged about all these adventures. I'll let you jump in first, and let's see where it goes.

Fun fact, a friend of mine just flew back last night from Istanbul, and have you gone through their new lounge there? Have you been through the new Istanbul airport? I'm going to assume no. It's been a long time. It is the biggest airport business lounge in the whole world, and it is absolutely incredible, and he and I were just sharing stories about that.

So, I have a question for you. Is it ever cheaper to buy a round-trip plane ticket? I love to book one-way plane tickets. I think it's the greatest luxury in the world. I don't set myself a determined date to come back. I kind of love to go to places, and I'll go back when I'm bored.

Am I shooting myself in the foot and losing a lot of money? Or, as I assume, are one-ways pretty much the same price as a round-trip? I would say domestic, for the most part, that is correct. Yes. The two one-ways is equal to a round-trip. I was actually looking for flights to fly from San Francisco to Steamboat Springs, where my wife's family lives, and I actually noticed that the total cost of the round-trip was $75 less than two one-ways, but I also know that in the winter, Steamboat Springs helps subsidize the cost of flights there, and I assume that part of that deal is we're going to help subsidize the flights for touristic purposes.

Most people buying one-way tickets aren't flying for tourism. They're more flying for business or they live there. So I would say if there are places that are maybe small airports where they might be subsidized by the town for tourism reasons, you might actually still get a better deal buying round-trip.

When it comes to international, there are a lot of circumstances where one-way is much more expensive than a round-trip, or at least two one-ways is more expensive than a round-trip. The catch there is there's a few things. So one, you could buy a round-trip, set your return really far in the distant future, and you could actually look online and say, depending on the airline, what is their policy for cancellation and reusing the funds.

And in those circumstances, I would say, let's say you wanted to fly on Air France, and you weren't sure if you were going to come back, there might be a way and you got to read a lot of the terms. You could book a round-trip and change the return later, maybe book it on Delta instead of Air France.

So if you got credit, it would be on Delta, which you might use more frequently living in the States than you would use an Air France credit. And for anyone flying business class, it is often much cheaper to fly round-trip business class than two one-ways, but the fare is actually round-trip.

So I've helped a lot of people who are looking to fly one-way business class to Europe, maybe they want to go to another city and come back from there. You buy one-way to Europe in business, but you buy a round-trip and the return is in coach. I remember a circumstance where it was like the one-way ticket was $4,000, but the round-trip with the outbound in business and the return in coach was like $2,300 or so, so it was significantly cheaper if you bought a round-trip, but you didn't have to buy the return in business.

So that's another circumstance. If you're flying business, they can help. Let's say you're going in the summer, you want a one-way ticket to Europe. It might be cheaper to fly round-trip, but summer is expensive. Well, you can always look to return maybe in January or some other month where it's a much cheaper time to travel.

So I don't know if there's a hard and fast rule internationally on when it matters and when it doesn't, but I have seen that be the case. There have been times where it's a case. So I would give you the advice of check and see. And if it's the same, then I would just book the one-way, of course.

That's smart. I've never thought about that idea. What resonated the most with me is business one-way and then coach back and see how that would go to the one-way and cancel the coach flight. Because in Europe, any ticket you buy that you cancel, even if it's not refundable, you get your taxes back.

Oh, so the rule is you buy round trip business out, coach back. As soon as you fly the business leg, you cancel the ticket. You get your taxes on the coach like back. I like that, especially through airports like London Heathrow, where the taxes can be almost $200. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

OK, next question. I like having flight optionality, right? As my first question alluded. And so I love to book plane tickets where I can get a full refund very easily. For that reason, I tend to book Southwest a lot. Are there other airlines now post covid? Does everybody give you full refunds on flights or let's just assume domestic only for now?

So Southwest, if you book with points, it's like full refund. The points get redeposited. If you book with dollars, you get a Southwest travel credit. You don't get a full refund. And that credit has to be used by you. Southwest just launched this want to get away plus fare.

And the main selling perk is that credit you get back can be used by anyone. But most of the airlines have now moved to a similar model where if you cancel something, you'll get a credit back. I don't have the list off the top of my head of which ones are doing that, which ones aren't.

And when you book with miles, some of them still charge a fee to deposit those miles back if you cancel it. But many do. So I would say the most flexibility with Southwest, if I know I might need to make a change versus this is a trip I'm definitely taking, I try to book with points because they'll just refund the points instead of give you a credit.

So that's the move. But miles give you a lot of flexibility because let's say I'm booking an international trip that's tons of miles for a family of four. They might charge you even a $50 a person redeposit fee. But I'd rather pay $50 times for people to get my miles back than have a $5,000 credit on KLM or something, which is going to be really hard to use.

Yeah, super hard to use. So that leads me to my next question. I do book with Southwest and I do book with Southwest points because I just want it as easy as possible to cancel. I generally just transfer my chase points one to one to Southwest just because it's easy and it's built in.

I have a bunch of chase points. Is that stupid? Am I being stupid by just doing those one to one to Southwest or what? You're traveling and you're getting to go on trips. So I wouldn't say any of these choices are stupid, right? Like I always say, if you can use your points to go on a free trip, you're doing something right.

However, I will say that the way Southwest Airlines works is that their points are effectively worth like a dollar value. It fluctuates a little bit, but it's roughly around. I think it's like one point three, seven cents per point. That's the bar. Like, you'll never get more. You'll never get less right hovers around there.

If you use your chase points and you have a Chase Sapphire reserve card and you just book in the chase portal, you can book any flight on any carrier, probably except Southwest, because Southwest doesn't like to play with all these travel ports, but you can book any flight on any carrier and your points will be worth one point five cents.

So your points are going to go further on any other carrier booking in the chase portal than they will on Southwest. Now, that doesn't mean it's going to be as easy to cancel. If you do that, it might not be as convenient for you. But from a pure dollar value of the point, my stack rank is transferred to Southwest near the bottom because the value book in the portal.

And then I'll refer you to a few episodes when we wrap up or go in more detail. But when you take those points and you transfer them to almost any other airline, Air France United, you can get one cent. But you can also sometimes if you time it right, if you're booking last minute, if you're flying an international business class, I've gotten five cents.

I've gotten seven cents. Wow. So I would say you're getting free trips and I want you to take vacations. It makes me happy. But your points could probably be earning you more value than they are by transferring to Southwest. Speaking of international travel, what is your jet lag strategy?

So I typically try to get on the time zone like 24 hours in advance. You get on this plane and you're using your miles. You'd say you're flying in business. You're like, oh, they're going to give me this amazing meal and these free bottles of wine and I'm like, but it's about 1030 p.m.

in Tokyo, so I'm going to bed, right? I'm not drinking. I'm trying to hydrate so that I can get a good night's rest land. I try to power through as long as I can until the end of the day and go to sleep. And I'd say like 70% of the time it works every now and then.

I remember one afternoon, my wife and I were in Budapest and we were like, let's just take a nap at 2 p.m. Just a quick one. And then, you know, you wake up at 4 a.m. and you're like, oh, we just we're really screwed here. Oh, God. But for most part, I try to get on the time zone a day in advance and not worry about the plane ride and the experience as much as trying to get on the right time zone.

Yeah, I have not yet done a trip like that, changing more than a time zone or two with children. And so my anyone listening has tips there. I would absolutely love you to send me an email because we're talking about taking a trip where we'd go more than four or five time zones with two kids.

And I have no idea what that will be like. I have used an app that is called Time Shifter. Have you heard of this app? No. Time Shifter is a fascinating app. You can use it the first time for free. And then after that, I think it's nine dollars a trip.

And they use the same science that NASA uses when they send astronauts up to the International Space Station by doing exactly what you said, but just a little more strategically of trying to get you on the new time zone starting about two days in advance. What does that look like?

Each day, they'll have you wake up an hour sooner. Each day, they'll throttle back the last time you're allowed to have caffeine. They're going to do certain things to modulate your behaviors in the two days leading up to your trip. And then on the flight itself, sometimes, like you said, they feed you all this.

They try to get you drunk. They try to get you to go to sleep. But sometimes that's not what they're doing in the time zone you're flying to. And they'll tell you advice. Open up your window shade, turn your phone brightness to 100 percent. Get light in your eyes.

You need to get your body sync during the flight itself. I think that's an interesting app. I'll have to check it out. So my next question is away from travel. You mentioned a couple of times during this interview that you have an au pair. Do you feel comfortable talking about the decision process that went into as a family making that jump?

I didn't grow up with people who had au pairs. I now know friends who have them, but for some, it could feel very inaccessible. And I was just curious how you came to that family choice. So I did grow up. My parents, we had four au pairs from Norway when I was a kid.

We grew up in D.C. suburbs. D.C. is a very international place. It seemed so normal at the time. I can't actually say whether my friends had au pairs, but I thought it was so cool. I brought my au pair to show and tell in school one year. That's incredible.

And then my wife, Amy, and I, we travel differently, I guess. So we took an eight month trip backpacking and we couch surf the whole time. And before we left, we wanted to build up credibility on couch surfing the app. And so we hosted probably 50 people over the course of six months in our house.

So for us, the idea of having someone from another country around us or staying in someone else's home we don't know when we're traveling was just like something we've done, I don't know, hundreds of times. And so I love it. I think there's nothing more interesting than meeting people from different walks of life, different parts of the world, hearing their stories, having meals with them, cooking meals for them.

I remember trying to find all the ingredients I needed to make eggplant Parmesan in rural Tanzania. In this house where all we had was like a pot and a little propane stove. I remember I was so proud because I'd managed to find this international grocery store in Dar es Salaam and I found eggplant.

I found mozzarella cheese and sauce and spaghetti. I made this whole meal and I served it. And the father of the house we were staying with was like, I'm so excited for dinner. And I was like, we just ate dinner. He's like, oh, no, no, that wasn't dinner. There was no meat.

And I was like, no, that was dinner. We had eggplant Parmesan, we had spaghetti, we had some garlic bread. It was kind of garlic bread. And he was like, but there's no meat, so it couldn't have been dinner. And I was like, totally defeated. But that experience, just cooking that meal.

I might like a photo in the show notes because it was not a normal kitchen to cook this meal. And I should have gone with chicken Parmesan, to be honest. But that kind of stuff I love, my wife loves. We want our children to have experiences like that. So the idea of having someone from another country who has a different set of background, different set of experiences, come in and share that with you for a year and get to know your family and get to show them around.

We've taken our au pairs to visit family, to visit other cities and friends and show them around museums. So for me, I think it just seemed like an obvious great solution. But about half the people I talk about it with are like, you have a random person living in your house for a year like what?

For us, that just seems totally reasonable and interesting. And whatever trade off you lose, the space you lose for the room in your house. The experience I've just found, we've only had two pairs so far, but to be totally worth it, we're already on track for another one next.

So two experiences will lead to a third and we'll see what happens next. My guess is you can't imagine your life not having it. And that's what I've heard from others. Yeah, I think that when kids are in school all the time and maybe they're going to camp in the summers, I could see a world where it's less beneficial to have full time child care when kids are out more.

But right now, when they're not out more, I feel like it would be impossible for me and Amy to both work and not have child care. Yes. And the au pair experience for us is much more exciting than a nanny or daycare. But I don't knock anyone for making any of those choices.

It's just something that we love. Sure. You all know I love credit card points, so I'm excited to be partnering with Card Pointers today, which is one of my favorite tools for travel hacking. It's a free app that helps you manage all of your credit cards in one place and makes it easy to find the right card to maximize your category bonuses on every purchase.

You can also load it on your partner's phone so they always know the best cards to use. The app automatically tracks every category bonus and recurring credit from over 5000 cards, and they also track and help you use your Amex, Chase, Bank of America or Citibank offers to save even more money every day.

And with their browser extension, you can actually activate every single Amex and Chase offer in just one click. And because of that massive credit card database, you can do all of this without having to give up any personal or banking details. The app is free to download, and many of the features are free as well.

But if you want to try out the pro version, there's a free trial. And if you decide you want to sign up after the trial, which you probably will, you can go to allthehacks.com/cardpointers to get 20% off. Again, that's allthehacks.com/cardpointers. Getting the crew together isn't as easy as it used to be.

I get it. Life comes at you fast. But trust me, your friends are probably desperate for a good hang. So kick 2024 off right by finally hosting that event. Just make sure you do it the easy way and let our sponsor, Drizzly, the go-to app for drink delivery, take care of the supplies.

All you need to come up with is the excuse to get together. It doesn't even have to be a good one. It could be your dog's birthday, that the sun finally came out, or maybe you just want to celebrate that you got through another week. With Drizzly, you can make hosting easy by taking the drink run off your to-do list, which means you can entice your friends to leave their houses without ever leaving yours.

And since I know you like a good deal, Drizzly compares prices on their massive selection of beer, wine, and spirits across multiple stores. So when I really wanted to make a few cocktails while we were hosting family last week, not only could I get an Italian Amaro delivered in less than an hour, but I found it for $15 less than my local liquor store.

So whatever the occasion, download the Drizzly app or go to drizzly.com. That's D-R-I-Z-L-Y.com today. Must be 21 plus, not available in all locations. So children notwithstanding, point redemption regardless, if you could, today's Tuesday, if I could say to you, "Hey, look, there's no work on Friday. You and your wife can hop on, just go to San Francisco airport, take any flight anywhere in the world Thursday evening for a long, long weekend.

Where would you like to go to?" Just the two of us or whole family? Just the two of us. Let's assume for the moment that it's just the two of you. Am I also assuming that for some reason there's a nonstop flight anywhere in the world? That's a fantastic advanced level question.

Let's assume no, we're going to play it on hard level, not like magical level. Let's be realistic. The reason I ask is I've always wanted to go to the Canary Islands and they seem quite difficult to get to from the West Coast. And how long are we going for?

You're going for the long weekend. So you fly out on Thursday night and you'll be back either Sunday or Monday. I'm going to have to think about this one. Well, I have my answer because I prepared. Can I tell you my answer? Yeah. So I've been dying to go to Buenos Aires and here's why.

There's a direct flight for many places, probably from San Francisco, from Houston, from New York. It's in the same time zone. And so you can take the flight at like 10 p.m. and you land. It's like a 10 hour flight and you land at 10 a.m. local time. You've not missed any time.

There's no jet lag per se. To me, it seems like the most perfect like whole new world environment and it's currency arbitrage. Because right now, with not only the strong dollar, but just the rampant inflation there and all the other stuff now does open up some interesting times for the dollar traveler to get exceptional value.

We did a trip to Buenos Aires. I don't know if this is still the case. I should be prepared, but I didn't know this was coming. But at the time, there were two exchange rates. So there's the I think it was like the dollar blue, which is like the off market exchange rate.

And then the one you get, you never, at least at the time, please fact check all this at the time. You never want to pay with a credit card because they're going at the bank rate. But the other rate was like half the price. So you would basically like walk down the street and someone be like, you need currency, you need exchange.

And you'd walk into some random place. I remember at the time I was like watching YouTube videos on like how to test the currency if it's real, because everyone's buying all their currency and like back alleys. And now there's WhatsApp groups and you'd message them and they'd come to your hotel.

But I can only imagine that if inflation has gone rampant, the dollar's got more value. It's even more valuable to do this. I second that. The only thing I'd say is we went to Argentina. Buenos Aires is awesome. It's incredible. It's one of the few places in the world, maybe New Orleans is similar, where people will say, oh, you've got to check out the cemeteries, which is a strange thing to recommend.

But they're just so interesting and different than you've seen anywhere and beautiful and ornate. But there's just so much cool stuff in Argentina that I wish that you would have more time than a weekend to go there. But I did do an episode for you to listen to with the basketball player Manu Ginobili, who's from Argentina, where he talked about some of his favorite tips.

So check that out before you left. I also did a similar trip for a long weekend to Bogota, which was awesome. Even closer, same time zone, really accessible. So let me throw some ideas out of there. Is that OK? Yeah, go for it. Would you guys go to Hawaii?

We are going to Hawaii in a few months, so I feel like I would not go there this weekend if it was a surprise adventure. OK, would you go to Japan? 100 percent. But Japan is not open right now. That's right. Oh, you're right. You're right. You're right. OK, so Japan would always be the number one on the list.

If you want to go on a trip, we're always like, is Japan possible? If not, we'll look at the rest of the world. Yes. Would you go to Bangkok? Would you do anything in Southeast Asia? This is so funny. All the things you mentioned. So we're talking about taking a trip, maybe October, November for a couple of weeks with kids and au pair.

And the plan was to go to Japan. But because it's closed now, we're talking about Bali or Vietnam or Thailand because we had so much fun there. The trip, if you hadn't constrained it to a weekend, would be let's go to New Zealand. I've heard incredible things about New Zealand, nonstop flight, crazy long, way more manageable without children than with.

And that would be the place. But I just couldn't imagine going all the way there and then turning around three days later and coming back. So that would have been my go to had that not been the constraint. I love the New Zealand. Is there any place in South America or Central America that is interesting to you?

You mentioned Bogota. I went to Medellin and I have to admit I didn't feel safe there. We heard a couple of stories where there was one day I just want to go take a nap in the park. And someone's like, you're not going to take a nap in the park.

That's not a thing that we do here. And the idea to like not have your cell phone out and things like that. It became enough where I was just kind of spooked eventually and we bounced. But I heard so many great things about Medellin. I'm curious what your Bogota experience was, if there's anywhere else in Central or South America.

If I were recommending to other people, I could go on for like a great list of definitely Mexico City. Awesome weekend trip from the US. You just want to sit on the beach and relax. Cabo is a great trip from the US. Bogota was a great trip. What's up with Oaxaca?

Have you been to Oaxaca? I have not, but I've heard cool things. I haven't been. So I think one place I'd go for the long weekend, I'd go to Costa Rica. I went once before my wife and I, like, I think we'd even met. And it was awesome. And she's never been.

She's wanted to go. And now it's been 10 plus years. A lot of what we'd want to do. We looked at doing with kids and we were like, gosh, it's just not not the right place to go right now. Like, I want to go surfing. We want to go hiking in the rainforest.

They're just not the most toddler friendly activities. So to finally answer your question, if we got thrown on a plane right now this weekend, I'd say let's go to Costa Rica. It's not the most inconvenient from the West Coast, way easier from L.A. because there's direct flights. That's probably where we'd go.

All the hacks, listen or meet up in Costa Rica. Get ready with the cocktail party, with the cocktail party, with the name tags. OK, speaking of travel, this is my last and final question for you. Do you have any travel gadgets that you absolutely love? It could be as simple as, for example, I have a travel spork, this tiny little spork that I just throw in my backpack.

And maybe I only use it like once every four months. But when I get to use it, I'm like, hell, yeah, I got that spork. Some people have that long list of here's all my cool travel gear. I don't have the long travel gear list. The couple of things I'll share that I think are important.

One, we use those like stuff sacks to compress all your clothes and everything else. Those are a huge win. When my wife and I traveled for eight months, we were backpacking. So it was one carry on 30 liter backpack each. So space efficiency was important. The other one is I have this really small, like three outlet extension cord.

I wouldn't even call it extension cord, but I also wouldn't call it a surge protector because it doesn't actually have any surge protection. But it's basically like we all have like, OK, I got my iPhone charger. Maybe I've got my, you know, this charge or that charge. You got all these things to charge instead of bringing four ways to plug them into an outlet in Europe or an outlet in Japan.

I just bring like a little tiny portable travel power strip and one power converter, because usually if you're at a hotel, they'll have one or you can buy one at any street side thing for a dollar or two. And then I have the power strip so I can plug everything in.

That's probably like the one unique thing I bring. Everything else, it's just kind of like, OK, you know, I bring my passport. I bring a backpack. I don't have a crazy laundry list of cool gadgets anymore. That's a great one, because I often find that I need three plugs and there's only two or it's really hard, exactly like you said, with the power adapter.

So I like the micro mini non surge protector. That's a good one. On travel for you, there's two places you wrote about in your blog that I'd love you to kind of recommend or not. And it's Kyrgyzstan and the Azores. Is it Azores? Azores? I think locals pronounce it Azores.

So Kyrgyzstan, I went to Kyrgyzstan. I flew to Kyrgyzstan on business using United Points from Istanbul. And that's where I got to experience the lounge in Istanbul. And it was amazing. Kyrgyzstan was fantastic. It did seem like the edge of the world. It felt like no man's land. Kyrgyzstan was good.

Uzbekistan, I'm going to give a hard pass to. I found Uzbekistan to be very boring and very quiet, and maybe if you're a history nerd and you really geek out about the Silk Road and things like that. But for me, Uzbekistan was a pass. All right. For the Azores, I went there on a cruise.

I've done a bunch of cruises. Have you guys done any cruises? One like weekend cruise to the Bahamas, and that's it. I'd love your take on cruises. I'd love to talk about cruises because I do them in a really weird way. I do weird cruises. For example, I'm going on one tomorrow that goes Vancouver to Los Angeles.

I've done a lot of transatlantic cruises where they reposition the cruise. That's when I went to the Azores. The longest cruise I ever went on was from Vancouver to Tokyo. I think it was 17 days. Now, these cruises, you're not partying hard. This is not a party cruise that's going.

It's a really unique type of person who goes on this cruise. And I love it because I get to caught up on my reading. I'll read a book a day. Sometimes I get my diet dialed in. I get my gym routine. You have the opportunity to reinvent your life at sea.

And it's a really special experience. They're generally called repositioning cruises, and they're very unique. And those are the cruises that I like. But even regular cruises with friends, I love to do them. It's unique because I've been to a lot of weird places. And I think people might think like, oh, you're too good for cruises.

But environmental concerns aside, I do think that they are a neat opportunity for you to imagine how your life could be when there's no constraints. It's neat. That's cool. I think I got to give it another try. And I think cruises are more kid friendly than many other types of travel.

So they are so kid friendly. They're incredible. People rave about Disney cruises. I want to try the new Virgin cruises that are really tailored to millennials and Gen X and things like that. All right. Thank you so much for joining me for this bonus episode. In fact, I might end up doing this again next week because a similar thing happened to me on another interview.

But I also could have left the whole conversation together and made it a much longer episode. So if you have any feedback, good or bad about splitting them into two, I'd love to hear it because it is so hard to run experiments like this in podcasting where you get very little feedback.

I'm Chris at AllTheHacks.com or you can DM me on social. Thanks so much. See you next week.