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My name is Joshua Sheets. Today on the show, I wanna share with you a somewhat chatty analysis of family travel. I'm gonna share with you some of the things that we are doing right now on our global adventures, and share some lessons that I have learned in hopes that these lessons may be useful to you in the future.

I think of myself and see myself as something of a human guinea pig. I really enjoy trying new things, trying weird things, experiencing things myself so that I can understand how they work, understand what it's like to go through them, and then share those experiences with others. And so you can just think of me as your human guinea pig, somebody who's going through the hard work of doing what we're doing, which is quite simply living as a nomadic family, or a family of six.

My eldest child is seven. My youngest child is two. So we have four young children with whom we are traveling the world at the moment. We are currently in Europe. We've been on the road for a couple of months now. I'd have to go back and check the exact dates, but we've been on the road for a couple of months now.

And at this point in time, I have learned enough, and I've proven even just some of my own things, finding some things that are working, some things that are not working. And I just wanna share some of those lessons with you. So if that kind of thing sounds interesting to you, then stay tuned.

So to begin with, we are now currently in Europe. As I record this, we have just recently arrived here on the beautiful Mediterranean island of Malta. And Malta is a very interesting place. I'll come back to that in a, perhaps in future discussions. I think that little islands are very interesting places.

And what's unique about little islands is they often have to fight to survive. If you consider the benefits that you get having a large landmass, some of the things that you have from that, and then realize what you would lose if that were taken away, you kind of have the situation that a lot of little islands have.

All around the world, there are small island nations that are distinct nations, distinct peoples, but they don't have the resources that some larger, more powerful nations have. They don't have the number of residents. They don't have easy access to resources. They don't have easy transportation. A lot of times they're somewhat isolated and then they have to figure out how do we make it?

And especially in a modern economy, where it's very rare to find anybody who actually lives in a sustainable, kind of just local closed cycle, closed circle economy, these islands have to figure out what is our place in the world. In the coming years, I would like to visit as many of these little islands as I can to make sure that I understand what their place in the world is, because in the financial system, these little islands are very important.

One of the ways that islands have found to build and boost their local economy is through financial services. That's often where you get, if you think of the various tax havens and offshore banking locations and business jurisdictions, you'll often find them situated on small little islands. And because those islands have found out that they can serve effectively in the financial system.

And various of these islands have different specialties on which they compete. You'll often find that islands function as tax havens, even if they're islands that are part of larger nations. So for example, Madeira functions as kind of a tax haven, but part of Portugal. You have, what is it, Langkawi Island in Malaysia that functions as a tax, no, Labuan, which is an island that is, or a small part of Malaysia that functions as the Malaysian tax haven.

You'll see this with many of the Caribbean islands that function in the financial system. They're known for offshore services, they're known for banking, they're known for being tax-friendly jurisdictions. There's a reason why cruise ships are registered in the Bahamas, right? If you look at the large cruise ships around the world and see where they're registered on the back, it'll usually be a small island nation.

Many people's yachts, you walk through a marina with large ocean-going vessels, and you'll see that many of those nations are registered, many of those vessels are registered on a small island. In the asset protection space, in estate planning space, you have jurisdictions like the Cook Islands, which is overseen by New Zealand.

The Cook Islands is, sorry, it's a protectorate of New Zealand, I think would be the precise term. The Cook Islands is a very important space in the asset protection planning marketplace. And so these islands fascinate me, and Malta is one of those islands. And so I've come here to check it out and get a sense of what it is.

And it's also an extremely attractive vacation destination, beautiful waters, ancient architecture. It's fascinating to see how Malta has been colonialized by practically everyone out in existence. The Ottoman Empire, the Turks, attacked Malta quite famously in the 1500s. Malta has been ruled by the Arabs, it's been ruled by the British, it's been ruled by everybody, it's just because it's a strategic island right in the middle of the Mediterranean.

So it's just a very interesting place. But we'll get into Malta, so maybe some point in the future. Malta has lots of connections to radical personal finance. They've been trying to build themselves as blockchain island. It was more promising a few years ago than it has been recently. There's been some recent troubles with that adventure, but who knows, we'll see what happens in the future.

Malta famously sells citizenships, European citizenships, for people who want to quickly become an EU citizen and who have maybe a million dollars that they're willing to invest into the Maltese economy without getting it back, then they can do business with the Maltese government and potentially purchase Maltese citizenship for themselves and their family members, which can give them access to Malta specifically and to the European Union.

Malta's an interesting tax haven in the European Union. For Maltese residents, people who set up residency in Malta, it can be quite an attractive and interesting place to live, helps people to save substantially on their taxes. There's a couple of different ways that you can use Malta, but it has all the benefits of being inside of the European Union.

And so I'm just here checking it out, and that's kind of where we started our European adventure. Now, let's talk about travel more specifically. The first thing I'll address is simply the doability and the difficulty of traveling in an age of COVID, because it has been a real mixture of those two things.

First, you'll have to settle for yourself the advisability of traveling in the middle of this current coronavirus pandemic. For myself and for my family, during the beginning of the pandemic, we were quite stationary, taking all of the appropriate precautions, et cetera, just like I think most thoughtful people were seeking to do.

But along the way, as the evidence came out that coronavirus wasn't the deadly pandemic that I had feared, then we went ahead and loosened up and started traveling a good bit more. And so we've traveled a good bit even through the pandemic. But one of the things that I have tried to do is I have tried to choose destinations where travel was a little bit more doable, and I have tried to choose destinations that were a bit more livable in case we got stuck there.

And so in the first few countries of our global tour, I tried to choose countries that would be simple to travel to, would be easy for us to travel to for various reasons, and countries that would be simple to deal with the COVID restrictions. The first country on our global tour for us was Mexico.

And one of the nice things about Mexico is simply that Mexico, to my knowledge, never imposed entry restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic, which is quite unique. Most countries around the world have at some point imposed entry restrictions, but in my memory, I don't believe that Mexico ever imposed entrance restrictions.

And so when we went to Mexico, there were no requirements to demonstrate vaccination, there were no requirements to have negative COVID tests, et cetera. And so that was our first destination. We chose Mexico also because it was a fairly easy place for us to travel. I speak Spanish, I'm familiar and very comfortable in Latin America, and so it was a fairly simple place to be.

After Mexico, we traveled to Costa Rica, and Costa Rica also has an interesting story. Costa Rica is a country that did indeed close its borders quite severely for several months during the pandemic. But then they eventually opened their borders, and what Costa Rica did was they didn't impose a requirement after a while when we went there.

They didn't impose any requirements for testing upon entry. You didn't have to demonstrate negative COVID tests, there are no vaccination requirements to enter Costa Rica. What they did require you to do was of course to fill out a health locator form, which is standard practice for everyone at this point, and also to demonstrate that you have appropriate health insurance, so that if you did wind up becoming sick with the coronavirus or any other sickness, that you would have appropriate health insurance that would cover your medical expenses and not put a strain upon their nationalized health insurance program.

Following Costa Rica, we then traveled to the United States, and I spent three weeks in the United States, visiting family. We had a family reunion with our various family members, which was wonderful, enjoying the holidays. One of the lessons that I have learned from being abroad over the last few years is I miss holidays.

I really do, I really miss holidays. And I think that those are some of those things. I'm a fairly sentimental person, and I learned that I don't miss home, so to speak, most of the time. Most of the time, I don't miss being in the United States, being in Florida, but I do miss it at the holidays.

Going 4th of July or Independence Day just isn't quite the same when you're not in the United States. And I've never really been, I'm not an intensely nationalistic person, but still, you can't help but just feel that sense of unity and nationalism when you're part of a major holiday like the 4th of July.

Back in 2018, my family and I, for the 4th of July, were in this incredible little town in the middle of Kansas called Wamego, or Wamega, I think it's Wamego, Kansas, right in the middle of Kansas. And it was a wonderful experience because it was the quintessential, stereotypical U.S.-American Independence Day celebration.

We were with some friends. We had a nice barbecue during the day. We hung out in the pool. Then there's just this wonderful small-town parade that's been going on for, I don't know, 176 years, something like that, continually every single year. And I was so fun to be able to take my young children to that, and they loved the parade.

They loved the horses. They loved all of that quintessential Americana experience. It was phenomenal. But then the next year, we were gone. I missed it so much. I missed not being in the United States for Independence Day. And so it was so nice this year to be back in the United States on Independence Day to be able to enjoy that.

For Independence Day, we were in the Florida Keys, hanging out on the boat, looking at the fireworks out on the water, and that was really nice as well. The Florida Keys is a special place, and it's an interesting place to be on the 4th of July. So we really, really enjoyed that.

Going back into the United States, though, is certainly quite shocking because across at least most of the United States at this point, it feels very much like the pandemic is kind of a thing of the past. It was quite shocking after being used to being required to wear a mask everywhere.

When we were in Costa Rica, for example, it was very, very tight coronavirus restrictions. You wouldn't even dream of going maskless somewhere. You wouldn't dream of standing closer than two meters to somebody. And so to go from that back into the United States where virtually no face masks and everything is wide open, it really, it was a great experience, and it was just really nice to be back there.

I did seriously consider just simply staying in the United States. I've thought a lot about how the United States has handled the coronavirus pandemic as compared to other countries. On the one hand, the death toll in the United States is exceedingly high, especially as compared to some other places.

Now, of course, when you adjust per capita basis, it adjusts and there can be many reasons for that. But on the one hand, you could say, "Oh, the death toll is exceedingly high." On the other hand, the United States has got into the pandemic faster than anyone else and got out of the pandemic faster than anywhere else in the world.

And that's the real power of the United States, I think, in my opinion. There's an old quote, I have no idea who I could possibly attribute it to, but something like, "The Americans will always do the right thing after they've exhausted every other option." And you can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they've exhausted every other option.

But then when they do it, there's just something about our American culture, where we just get into it, right? We roll up our sleeves and make it happen. And you see that, that's fundamentally a part of the can-do spirit that infuses the United States of America. And you saw that with Operation Warp Speed in the pandemic, the development of the vaccine.

You see that in terms of just the culture is wired for action. And it's very, very hard to corral Americans. It's very, very hard to get them to move in the same direction. We fight like crazy people among ourselves, but then when there is something that needs to be done, it's pretty remarkable to see.

And so being back in the United States after quite a long time being abroad, it was just such an amazing culture shock, such an amazing sense of culture shock for me to say, "Wow, this is, look at this, like we've moved on, we're done with this whole thing." And so that's been a remarkable experience.

So I won't linger too much on the United States, but I do wanna point out that one of the things that I have been conscious of is, okay, if I get stuck somewhere again, right? Whether it's the Delta variant or the whatever, the gamma and the epsilon ends up being, if I get stuck somewhere again, if the world shuts down again, which I think is unlikely at this point in time, where do I wanna be?

And while for a time I thought, you know what? I'm quite glad to have not been in the United States during the pandemic. This point in time, I honestly said to myself, "I think this is where I'd wanna be going forward." Because it's been tough, obviously all around the world, but dealing with the lockdowns and all of the curfews and confinements, all of this stuff, and just all the restrictions, there's been a number of countries where it's become quite evident to me that I don't ever wanna be stuck in this particular country.

I don't wanna be stuck there. But then there've been a number where I say, "Okay, that would be a place that I would like to be." And so at this point in time, while I don't intend to hop on an airplane and head back to the United States, I do think that it's important to acknowledge that the US is more livable today than virtually any place that I have been in the last six months, at least with regard to the coronavirus pandemic.

And that's a neat, just it's important to acknowledge that. We left the United States on July 5, heading to Europe. And here is where kind of the dance of travel during COVID has taken place. The dance has been quite challenging. Now we worked into it, which is a strategy that I recommend, right?

When you're gonna do something, start with something that's not too difficult, start with something that's easy enough to start and then move into it. So we didn't start with trying to go to Europe with our travels. I wanted to travel in some places that were gonna be fairly simple, mostly low cost.

I wanted to go to the United States for the holidays. I wanted to be able to be there to adjust baggage and get cheap stuff if we needed to get cheap stuff to change how we were packing. But then I wanted to go to Europe and I was hoping to be here sooner, but this is the way it worked out.

I wanted to spend the summer in Europe this summer. And my major goal, number one, is to spend some time in France or a French-speaking region of Switzerland, Belgium, et cetera. But probably in France. I have, over the last year or so, worked hard to improve my own French and I've started teaching my children French this year.

It's not been as successful as I had hoped at the beginning of the year. And so I wanted just a chance to reinvigorate that project for myself, reinvigorate that project for my children. And I thought it would be neat to just spend some time in France. And there are many portions, places in France that are just dreamy locations, right?

South of France is truly an amazing place. The French Riviera, truly a remarkable place. And I really enjoy so many aspects of the French culture. And so I thought it would be really fun to be in France for the summer. But first we had to get into Europe. And as I was studying the situation, trying to figure out how do I take advantage of the airfare situation, but also consider how we could work around the COVID restrictions, it was quite challenging.

Back in the early part of the year, I think it was February, I went ahead and bought tickets. I bought tickets to Europe. And at the time, Europe was completely closed to tourists. Certainly, of course, European nationals could get into Europe, but it was completely closed to tourists. And so I didn't know when, of course we're Americans, and so I didn't know when are they gonna let us back in.

And at the time, the United States of America was on all the red lists, all the blocked lists from around the world. And so I thought, well, what do I do? Right now is the best time ever to buy tickets, airplane tickets, because things were crazy, crazy cheap, but am I gonna be able to get in or not?

So finally I decided I've got to pull the trigger, I've gotta do it. And so I was shopping around, I've become quite good at getting discounted airfares, because that's one of the biggest expenses that we face when traveling. And so I pulled the trigger on some tickets, and I was able to get tickets from Miami, Florida, to Lisbon, Portugal for $165 one way on Air France, which was, I considered a phenomenal deal.

Frequently, your tickets to Europe, especially in the summertime from the United States, are $700 and $900 from the East Coast. You feel really good about yourself if you can get a round trip ticket for 500. And so when I got my one way tickets for 165, I just felt, I was so proud of myself.

I felt, this will be great. But it was a giant risk, because I didn't know am I even gonna be able to get in. The airline softened a lot of the restrictions on date changes, change fees, et cetera, which was great. But at the end of the day, I didn't have any guarantee of that.

So I bought those tickets back in February, trying to just chart out what I could imagine. I could not imagine that Europe was going to be able to stay closed for another summer. And this has been my observations, is that how can these places that depend so heavily on tourism, how can they stay closed to tourists for two seasons in a row?

Europe lost the tourist season of last summer, and then to lose it a second season, I just thought, you know what, there's gonna be a lot of pressure. So the tickets were cheap enough that if I just wound up with a voucher or if I lost the money, no big deal.

I didn't make any other arrangements for accommodations, 'cause I figured that would be easy, but I did buy airfare. And the lesson there, I would just say is, the thing that I have learned is, one of the best things about not being broke is you can take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves to you.

I've been broke a good portion of my life, and I hated it, because I would find opportunities to buy something, get a really good deal, and I just didn't have the money to pull the trigger. I didn't have the money to make it happen. And I realized that one of the first reasons why you should build up cash reserves, just money that's yours, money to spend, is so you can take advantage of discounted buying opportunities.

Because the guy who's got money can always take advantage of a buying opportunity, and the guy who doesn't can't. Now, this begins, you've heard me talk, for example, about bulk buying, right? It's just kind of the boilerplate language that I use to say, if you drink a Pepsi every day, and you're buying your Pepsi at the convenience store, you're getting ripped off, right?

You go buy your Pepsi from the big box warehouse store and get it for a lot cheaper. Well, in order to do that, you gotta have the money enough to buy 24 of them at a time instead of just one of them at a time. And so people who are poor often get stuck in this cycle where they're paying the highest per unit cost for the things that they're buying because they don't have any more money to be able to buy something more.

And so one of the things that you can do is move yourself from the perspective of buying things daily to buying things weekly, monthly, et cetera. Now, most of my listening audience has never bought things daily, but at least half of the world's population, or maybe that's too much, but a lot of the world's population lives daily, right?

They earn daily, they earn today's wages, and then they spend daily. They earn the money today for the food that they're going to feed their family tonight, quite literally. And so to get out of that cycle of poverty, you've gotta get a little bit of money behind you. And so whether it's daily wages and daily expenses, whether it's weekly, monthly, et cetera, you gotta get a little bit of money behind you.

But then once you get more and more money behind you, things become easier and easier because then you can apply that same principle to bigger purchases. Whenever somebody is selling something, if it's a good deal, you can just buy it. For example, one of the rules that I have for myself is if I ever know of anybody who is selling a car, somebody that I know, I will always go and look at it and possibly make them an offer.

And here's my strategy. It's very simple. Cars are generally some of the bigger purchases that we make. They're some of the more expensive things that we buy. Now, of course, if you like to buy new cars and you swap out your cars every few years, there are other strategies that we could employ there.

I prefer to buy used cars when possible. I've never bought a new car, so let me just rephrase that. I prefer to buy used cars, at least at this point in my life, primarily because I don't want to destroy whatever new car we might buy. Maybe at some point I'll buy a new car, but I prefer to buy used cars.

And the single biggest risk that you face with a used car is buying something with an unknown history. You never can tell with a used car exactly what the history of that car is. You might go and buy a car from a dealer. That's great, but you don't know where that dealer got it.

You don't know why the dealer received that car. It may have been traded into the dealer because somebody was getting rid of their problem car. It just was always sucking up their money and having problems. They wanted to get rid of their problem car, and they wanted to replace it with a new vehicle.

The dealer could have bought it at auction. Most dealers, especially used car dealers, acquire their inventory at auto auctions, and they don't have any history of the car. Yeah, they have the Carfax report, but all they're doing there is checking to make sure it has a clean vehicle identification number, but they don't know anything about the background of the car.

And so by getting the car at auction, you're getting a car and then selling it to you. They don't know anything about the condition of the car. Now in today's world, cars are generally very high quality. Virtually every brand, virtually every model, high quality, probably no problems. It's very unusual in today's world to get a lemon.

It's very unusual to get something that's not working for you, but there's still that risk. And so, let's say you're buying private party in the used market. Well, again, private party, is this guy telling me the truth or not? I bought a van a few years ago and it wound up just being a terrible deal.

I thought I was getting a great deal. I got the van at a great price. I had checked out the history of the van. It was a fleet vehicle, and so I thought this is gonna be great. It's gonna be cared for. Well, it wound up being in terrible shape and I never figured out the problems.

I spent thousands of dollars and I lost money on it. And so how do you get out of that solution? How did that problem? Well, the answer is a used car that you know the history of. So what's the best way to buy a used car that you know the history of?

My answer, from somebody that you know. And so if ever I know somebody who is selling a car, I will always go and look at it and think about buying it. Because if I can buy a car from somebody that I know, that I trust, who can tell me the true history of the car, and I know they're not trying to swindle me in some way, I can potentially save myself quite a lot of hassle, quite a lot of money, potentially.

In addition, by purchasing the cars when they're available, I can get rid of my older cars before they have any trouble. I like to drive vehicles for a long time. I think that's wise. However, there is a point in time at which a vehicle is worth, it just costs you too much to keep it.

If that weren't the case, then fleet managers wouldn't continually be purchasing new vehicles. And so a vehicle can get to the point where it genuinely does absorb too much of your time and energy and money to keep it going. Then you have a problem. You have to decide, do I fix this or do I not fix this?

And generally you have to fix this and then sell it. And then if you have to fix it and then sell it, then you have to disclose, hey, this vehicle's having problems, that's why I'm getting it. You have to disclose that to the buyer. And so you're better off to buy a car, use it for a significant amount of time, and then sell it when it's still in perfectly good shape.

You don't have to conceal anything from the buyer. You don't have to change anything. You just say, hey, this car has been great. Tell them the truth about it and pass it along. And so in my mind, this is a good way to deal with car ownership. And so I always bid on cars, same thing with boats, same thing with any toys.

If anybody that I know is selling something, I'll always go and check it out and consider making them an offer. And of course, sometimes you can negotiate a better offer because you know somebody, you can negotiate a better offer because you helped them just to sell it quickly with no hassle.

It just works for both. It's a win-win for both parties in the transaction. But in order to do that, you have to have money. You have to have money when the car pops up on the marketplace or when the ski boat pops up on the marketplace and you just walk over and buy it rather than simply waiting until you've saved, et cetera.

You gotta have money for an extemporaneous purchase. Now, back to airplane tickets. The same thing has been true with airfares because the deals in the airfare market right now have been absolutely stunning. All over the world, you could fly all over the world. I was watching tickets quite literally from Florida to Japan round trip for $350 a few months ago.

Amazing, but of course, Japan is closed. So you can't get in. So there's these deals are there, but you gotta have the money to buy them, not knowing if or when you may actually be able to use them. So I've tried to balance it and purchase some airfare, but my big thing that I wanted to, with travel was to change continents.

And in my experience, especially in the wake of the budget airline revolution, you can get around most continents pretty inexpensively now. It's amazing. Again, I feel like I use this phrase all the time. We live in a golden age, but we genuinely do, especially with regard to travel. We live in a golden age of travel.

We live in a golden age of international travel right now. Most continents except Africa right now, but Africa is coming along, but most continents are very cheap to get around because of the wave of budget airlines. And I think this trend will continue to get better. I expect even markets like Africa to come along over the coming years.

So if you can get yourself to Europe, of course you can fly around Europe very inexpensively. You've got Ryanair, Wizz Air, EasyJet, Pegasus. You've got in Asia, I don't need to go through the long list of airlines, but what's still expensive usually is getting between continents. So what I've tried to do is book the intercontinental flights with deals and then just rely on ad hoc purchases of tickets for getting around the local area.

And that strategy, at least so far, has been working. And so I'm happy with that. I've flown on some budget airlines. Flew on Aeromexico into Mexico. I flew from Mexico to Costa Rica on, it escapes me, the purple guys. And then I flew from Costa Rica to the United States on Spirit.

We flew from the United States to Europe on Air France. And then flew on Air Malta to Malta so far. And so the strategy is working. So I'd share that with you, that if you wanna travel with family, you're gonna need to figure out your strategy for traveling and how you're gonna do it because that is one of those multiplicative costs that children add to your life.

I don't think much about money with regard to my children. I don't really care how much they cost me. I want to have children and I'm happy to invest in them and I don't really care whether it costs me more money or I don't really care if I have to work five extra years because I have one more baby.

I think it's silly to orient your life around money instead of around love. But still, there are costs involved and any thoughtful, responsible person recognizes those costs. For the most part, I don't find that the expenses of children are multiplicative. I don't find that managing a household of six people is six times as expensive as a household of one.

However, with airplane travel, it is. With restaurants, it frequently is. With hotels, it's not six times, but it increases with the number of beds that you need, et cetera. And so if you're gonna do family travel, you gotta think about that and make a plan for that. So let me tell you about our plans as to how we have been moderating the expenses of family travel as well as how we are doing it going forward.

The first thing that we have done is tried to severely cut down on the amount of luggage that we have. I can't evade buying six airplane tickets. For a time, I had a baby in arms. That was nice for a time, but I can't evade buying six airplane tickets.

But what I can do is I can try to keep those tickets as modestly priced as possible. And especially if you're gonna use budget airlines to get around, then your luggage is often a big, big factor. And so what we set out with a goal of doing was first of all, obviously, to go exclusively with carry-on travel.

That's important because a lot of times you can book a ticket. I think it's called a skip-lag ticket, which, for example, let's say that I had wanted to go to Paris. Well, Miami to Paris is often an expensive route, but Miami to Lisbon, which is what I flew, is not an expensive route.

Not so many people are going to Lisbon as are going to Paris, but I connected through Paris. And so what I could have done was simply booked the Miami to Lisbon ticket, Air France, Miami to Paris, Paris to Lisbon, and then gotten off the plane, left the airport in Paris, and never used the leg from Paris to Lisbon.

And there are lots of these out there, these skip-lag tickets, and booking opportunities are out there. The problem is airlines don't like them, first of all, so you do face some risk when using them. And more importantly, you cannot check luggage when you use those kinds of itineraries because if you check luggage, your luggage will wind up at the final destination.

So your first thing you need to do is go all carry-on. Now we face a challenge of how are you gonna deal with those carry-on suitcases? Because my children are so young and so small, they are not capable of taking care of their own carry-on suitcases. And so while there are six of us, I have two adults, and I have a seven-year-old and a six-year-old, who are modestly helpful as long as they don't have to physically carry something.

What's more challenging though is we have other child paraphernalia. I have a four-year-old and a two-year-old. Two-year-old isn't a great walker. Four-year-old still gets tired of walking. So how do I get the two-year-old and the four-year-old around and deal with carry-on luggage? Now all of a sudden now, those six bags that six adults, or two adults and four teenagers traveling together, those six carry-on bags that would be normally quite no big deal, now they're quite burdensome.

And then you have the challenge of what child paraphernalia do we travel with? Do we travel with a car seat or multiple car seats? I've got one in car seat, I got another in a booster. Do we travel with car seats? Do we travel with a stroller? What do you do about midnight airport, walking through the airport at midnight with a two-year-old and a four-year-old who've been woken up out of their sleep and aren't happy?

Do we cart them on arms, then how do we do it? And so you have all these challenges. And so what we try to do is our strategy was, well, let's go even smaller with the bags. And this also can help with budgets because for example, budget airlines, budget airlines are not so budget when you start adding in luggage.

So the strategy here changes. Your first strategy I think is check your bags. And when I was younger, before having children, I never checked bags. Now that I have children, I find out, wait a second, there was a whole other side of the story that is phenomenal. Checked bags are great 'cause all I gotta do is pay the bellhop at the airport to take the bag to the counter.

The bag goes through, I don't touch it till the final destination and I can just wrangle all my children through the airport and I'm good to go. And so I find checked bags now very useful in my life. But they're also more expensive and if you're doing skip lag and budget airlines, then now the cost of travel is gonna be more challenging.

So we wanted to go with entirely personal items. Now in a perfect world, we would do Ryanair personal items, but we're not there yet. What we did do, meaning they're tiny little, is it 20 centimeters by 20 centimeters by 40 centimeters, these tiny bags that Ryanair lets you bring without cost.

I could fly every weekend on Ryanair and never pay a dime for a bag, but I can't do that with children. But what we did do was we were able to get into personal item bags. And so that was our first strategy. We have at this point, we wanted to have five personal item bags plus my carry on my backpack, which is my office, but we wound up with six.

So we have six under seat personal item bags, the rolly bags that fit under the seat in front of you. And that works for the majority of airlines. It won't work for Ryanair, but it'll work for the majority of airlines as a free hand luggage. And then I have one carry on bag, which is a large backpack that I have.

And so this strategy works out that with those six bags, I can stack them. And so I have a mixture of bags. I have some spinny bags with four little spinners on the bottom. And then I have a couple of pull behind expandable bags. And so the expandable bags are nice because I can keep them at the under seat size.

But if I have more luggage allowance and I have things I need to do, then I can expand them into standard carry on size. And so that gives us more luggage space when we need to, but most of the time I keep them small. And with them being spinny bags, I can't remember, is that what they're called?

Yeah, the spinner bags. Then I can put two of them back to back. And I found that this is my best way of schlepping suitcases through an airport is to use the spinner bags, put two of them back to back, and then I can drive two of them vertical and I can stack them.

And so the way that we do it is I have a backpack that has my office in it. And at some point I'll do a YouTube video on this, go through it all. But I have a backpack that has my office in it. It's heavy. It's got two big microphones.

And I went ahead and went heavy on the gear and the equipment and the camera and laptops and such. But it's on my back. Then I have two spinner under seat bags. And then stacked on top of those spinner under seat bags, I have two more under seat bags, which allows me to cart four suitcases myself with one hand and also to have one hand free for passports and boarding passes and all the rest.

Then we have two more suitcases. And then usually I have my two eldest children pull those suitcases because they're roller bags. Then we, because they're roller bags, they can handle them. They don't have to carry weight. And then we decided to go ahead and use a baby backpack. So we've got one of the nice, I think it's Deuter, one of the nice big hiking backpack styles for our two year old.

And so in the airport, it's just a lot easier. We put the two year old on my wife's back and the baby backpack. And so that way her hands are free. She can pull the suitcase if needed. And then the backup plan is if we need to transport children, I pop off those bags off the spinner bags and I put my youngest two sitting on those bags.

Then I can trundle through the airport with two suitcases, with a child on each. And then we divide the remaining four suitcases between my wife and my two eldest. And so that's been working. It works in airports. We haven't done yet a lot of train stations. We haven't yet done a lot of bus stations and such like that, but it does work for airports.

And I think here, obviously we should also be quick to acknowledge that you just pay people and you rely on the kindness of strangers, right? Strangers will help us down the stairs. If we've got a jetway that has a stair that we disembark at, they'll help you on the buses.

There's nothing to do except rely on the kindness of strangers and or rely on the use of professional porters. But that has made travel bearable. Let me talk about car seats for a moment. One of the things that we found, and this is always hard to talk about parenting things because as a parent, you get so judged by everyone.

But if you have your kid in a car seat, you don't have the latches done right or something and someone, "Oh, this chest strap has to be higher." If you don't have your kid in a car seat, then everyone jumps on you. We learned years ago, never ever post pictures of your children and their car seats online or you will be destroyed by the car seat mob.

What we've done is we found a couple of neat solutions. One, we have a booster seat for my four-year-old who is of appropriate weight classifications. It's a folding booster seat. The brand that we went with is one called MyFold, M-I-F-O-L-D, MyFold booster seat. And it basically takes this, it takes the booster seat and it puts it down into a package that's about, let's say, eight or 10 inches long, about an inch and a half to two inches thick, and about three and a half inches wide.

And so it's a very compact package that is super easy to travel with and it works. It does exactly what a booster seat does. But instead of having padding, raising the child up so that the three-point harness is in a better solution, what it actually does is it draws the three-point harness down with a system of straps.

And so we really like that for our four-year-old. Our two-year-old does not meet the appropriate weight and height classifications for a booster seat, but we found a solution that is basically a car seat vest. The brand that we chose was a brand called Wizrider. I think it's W-I-Z-Z-R-I-D-E-R, Wizrider.

And what it is, it's a simple fabric vest that you put on the child and a strap around him. And then that vest has some anchoring points, some metal anchoring points that use the three-point harness and keep it at a proper, safe location around him. So he can just wear that vest and be properly anchored using the Extant harness in the car.

And so that's been really neat. So we take those with us wherever we go. We use them for taxi cabs, Uber, whatever. We just have them in a small diaper bag that is ready to go. And so we hop in a car seat and I do one and my wife does the other.

And sorry, we hop into a car, I do one, my wife does the other and the children are properly strapped in. And I'm pretty happy with those solutions. I think they're really good solutions for the children's safety. And they keep us from having to cart around something else. We thought a lot about a stroller, decided against a stroller, thought a lot about bringing a baby backpack, decided to go with the baby backpack.

It adds one more thing. It's actually the hardest thing that I have to fit into luggage compartments and such, but it does add a lot of range. I can carry my two-year-old a lot farther on my back than I can in my arms. And so I don't know how long we'll travel with it, but for right now, that's our luggage solution.

And I'm pretty pleased with it so far. You could get away with less luggage on any kind of short-term trip. So we are traveling for an undefined, indefinite period. So because of that, we have things like school books. We're traveling to a bunch of different destinations. So we have an entire bag, one of our entire bags is dedicated to school books, homeschooling books.

We simplified, but we still do have homeschooling books for my two elder children. And although we do use Kindle readers, we're pretty opposed to screens, and so we're not doing it. We could dump the school books and just use iPad apps, but we've chosen to cart the books around.

Also then toys, some carefully selected toys. And in addition to the toys, some masks, snorkel gear, et cetera. And so one of the bags is dedicated to that. And so basically we've got, between those, it works. So that's our luggage solution. And I would highly recommend it to you that as an experienced traveler, the less luggage you have, the happier you will be with your trip.

Luggage is not a, having a lot of luggage is not an impediment to a great single destination journey. If you're gonna get on an airplane, fly to Cancun, spend a week at a beach resort, fly back, a big suitcase really is no big deal. You check it in, they take it there for you, you give it to the porter, give it to the taxi guy, he's got plenty of space, you go to one destination and you're there.

But when you're traveling the way that we're traveling, changing hotels frequently, changing airplanes, changing airports, changing modes of transportation, getting on trains, getting off trains, et cetera, you will curse your luggage daily if you have a lot of it. And so I'd recommend to you do everything you can to minimize it.

I should also just address accommodations. I forgot, one of the things that we also travel with is we have one of those fold up sleeping pods for my youngest child. That has worked very well. So far, it generally allows us to do fine with hotel rooms when we're just passing through, not for an extended period of time, but hotel rooms with two queen beds, because what I can do is just book a standard two queen room, put the three elder children in one bed, I put my youngest child on the floor, we just take a blanket or a cushion or whatever we find, roll that up and I put down the baby sleeping pod, which folds up and fits inside one of the suitcases.

And that's allowed us to so far get by with generally booking one double bed, one two queen bed or two double bed rooms. And so that's been a good strategy as well that I'm generally happy with. How long that's gonna last? I don't know, I'm hoping a couple more years before I have to get two rooms every time.

(laughs) But we'll see. When we're someplace for longer, of course, I get a place with more rooms. And so I have been quite fortunate right now, you can hear the children in the other room, perhaps in the background, but I've got a nice three bedroom hotel room here in Malta, which has been great.

And it comes out right now, this right here is about $100 a night, which I think is within my traveling budget, et cetera. There's some other things that I could talk about, I'll tell you, I miss traveling like this makes me very much miss RV travel with children. I am convinced that RV travel, long-term RV travel is the best way to go to travel with children.

I really miss it because long-term RV travel is so comfortable because of the stuff, right? You can go where you want. And when you travel with as big of a group as we have, many of the other costs do change. So for example, oftentimes it's cheaper for me to rent a car than it is to simply take taxis, sometimes I have to multiple taxis.

Train tickets, usually people would say, oh, I wanna see Europe by train. Well, if you're one person, train is great way to go. Planes are a great way to go. When you're six people, all of a sudden, driving is often the way to go. It's just a more efficient way to get around.

We had tremendous challenge, not tremendous, that was too much. We had challenges in Lisbon with Uber because in Lisbon, the requirements, you order an Uber XL and they have the capacity of the Uber XL limited to three people. And so even though we're only six people and usually you would be able to order an Uber XL, which would be fine for us as a family of six, all of a sudden now I have to order two cars.

And so that does take some challenges. I miss RV travel. I might buy an RV here in Europe and use an RV around Europe. The reason I haven't is just simply that I don't intend to stay in Europe for months and months and months, and I'm not sure how to make it worth it.

Also some challenges of actually owning and registering an RV here in Europe. I think I have a solution. I think I'll be able to buy a car. I'm planning to buy a car here in Europe just to use for the summer. I think I have that worked out as a non-European resident.

The next few weeks will tell the story if I figured it out, but I found it quite challenging to figure out as a non-European resident, right? Just a standard American trying to figure out how do you buy a car in Europe is not easy to do. Europeans can easily go to the United States, buy a car, travel around, sell it when they're done with it.

It's a little bit, it's quite, it's a bit more involved for us here. But I think I've cracked that. Just took a lot of research and a lot of legwork to figure out, and so we'll see. Next few weeks will tell whether I've succeeded in that or not. But RV travel is really great.

If I had not done quite a bit of travel already with my family, if I hadn't done RV travel, if I hadn't test, pushed our limits, built our muscles, so to speak, to the point where we're pretty easygoing at this point, we can live well in small spaces, we're not super high maintenance, I don't think I'd be having as much fun right now as I'm having.

What we're doing now is certainly, it's not easy, and, but it's something we've worked up to because we've gotten better at it, we've gotten stronger at it. And I would remind you that I really think these things are skills. I think most things in life are skills. And traveling is simply a skill.

It's something that you do, and at first, you're not very good at it. And then over time, you get better at it. And you figure out what works for us. And in the beginning, I would just simply encourage you, don't make long-term decisions based upon short-term information, and recognize that things will change.

So for example, I try really hard to be thoughtful and thoughtful with the money that I spend. But when I'm in certain situations where I know that frugality is not an option, I just simply spend the money. Usually this involves food. When you're traveling with the little baggages we have, I don't have a lot of room for extra food.

I can bring a few snacks, but the supermarket thing and whatnot, it doesn't work sometimes. And so I just give myself permission, give myself mercy, knowing that, hey, I'll be better in the future. But for right now, it's got to spend the money and buy my children what they need so that they're covered.

The biggest challenge does continue to be what it has always been with travel, is how do you work productively from the road? And here, it's not a matter of me, in the sense that I am very pleased with my mobile office solutions. I'm very pleased with how I've got all that stuff set up that I can sit down at any table, any bed, any bench in the world and be productive.

The biggest challenge continues to be, and I knew it would be, the biggest challenge is simply, how do I make sure that my wife has what she needs to care for the children so that I can have the hours dedicated to work that I need? I'm behind on some of my work goals, which is frustrating, but I try to be not as frustrated about it.

But my answer to that solution there is kind of setting up longer term things. I don't, at this point in time, I don't try to even, I don't even try to work while traveling. Because of my responsibilities as a father, traveling is enough work as it is. What I do try to do and am trying to do is stay places for long enough that we can have the things that we need and get into that daily routine of life.

Because that daily routine is actually very good and very important for children. And so having a place where my wife has the space that she needs, the toys that she needs, the books that she needs, the activities, et cetera, where she can take care of young children, homeschool on the road, et cetera, that's really important.

And so we're trying to stay places for longer. Again, I think I'll be in France for either a month or a couple of months this summer. And I'm looking forward to that, just to being in one place stationary. We're here in Malta for two weeks and that's allowing us to go much more slowly.

And so there is real virtue and real benefit in slow travel. I think that fast travel as a family, unless you are full-time dedicated to it, you're gonna take a year off, you're not gonna be working at all, you're not gonna be trying to be productive, and you've got the money allocated where you say, okay, we're gonna spend $50,000, we're gonna spend $100,000, whatever your budget is, this year on this trip, I think that's fine.

And that'll work really well. Then you can just do tourist stuff day in, day out. But don't expect, especially if you're doing family travel, don't expect to be able to do that and work effectively with the challenges of travel with your family. Focus on slow travel and focus on spurts, right?

The other thing is set up a base in a place and take a weekend trip from there. So if I go and I set up and I get an Airbnb in France for a month, get a monthly booking, big discounts, et cetera, okay, this is where we are, but now we're gonna take the weekend trip to Paris, or we're gonna take the weekend trip to Zurich, or wherever we're going, take your weekend trips, go and see something, and then come back to your home base.

I think that strategy of having a home base and then going out for a short trip is really a better strategy. When I was younger, I despised routines. I thought, who wants to work nine to five? I wanna work a totally different schedule. I didn't care for an office setting.

Well, I have learned the error of my ways. I've learned that most routines exist for a pretty good reason, and that even though I don't need to work from nine to five, I work from nine to five 'cause it works. It works with my schedule, it works. Routines with family work.

They make things, they make life easier, and making life easier makes life better. I'll wrap up today's episode there. I'll give you one final closing charge. There are many more things that I could talk about. I could share applications that I use, tricks that I've developed, et cetera, but I'll continue to share more of those in the future.

I simply want to resolve today's show with this. We do live in a golden age of travel, and if travel is something that you aspire to, it is more doable today than it has ever been. It really is, and it's doable with so many strategies. You can pay for it, you can do points.

I've been doing quite a bit of credit card hacking myself, which has been fun 'cause I'm using the benefits, using the miles, the points, et cetera, the statuses. That's been fun. You can do it just through the simple ability to arrive in a new town and with the supercomputer in your pocket, arrange all the needs of your family.

It's amazing. I lost a flight recently. I got expelled from a flight. They wouldn't let us on 'cause we didn't have the paperwork right. And I remember just sitting there, and usually, if that had happened 15 years ago, I would have sat there and been hours on the phone and figuring out the money and the tickets and the where.

It would have just been a nightmare. As it was, it was frustrating, and it was an expensive mistake, but I pulled out my phone, I sat, I thought for a moment, okay, what's the best thing to do? Four hours later, we got on a plane, and it wasn't that big of a deal.

I went and spent four hours in the airport lounge. And so we live in a golden age of travel, this kind of thing. Sometimes you should be careful with that, right? Because if it's something you've dreamed about for many years, you might do it and find out, hey, you know what, it wasn't as awesome as I dreamed about it.

It was cool, but it came with a whole set of challenges. That's how I feel about it. I really do enjoy going places. I really do enjoy seeing new things, but I've done enough of it to know that it's not all roses. It comes with a whole lot of hard work.

But it is more doable today than it's ever been, and it's easier today than it's ever been. And so get out there and start building the skills. I'm trying to share some from my experience, but one thing you should recognize, while I'm certainly not the man with the most frequent flyer miles in the world, I am an experienced traveler.

And the things that I can do now are things that I could not have done before. I could never have traveled with four children years ago. I remember when my wife and I had one baby, and we just felt like we have no idea what we're doing. But parenting is a skill, traveling is a skill.

All of these things are skills, and that if you just stay focused, and you build the skills, be patient with yourself, be patient with the process, trust the process, over time you can genuinely build up these skills and live the lifestyle of your dreams. Thank you for listening. I will be back with you just as soon as I can find more time to work.

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