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Requires dealer contribution and leased through Stellantis Financial. Extra charge for miles over $15,000. Includes 7,500 EV cap cost reduction. Not all customers will qualify. Residency restrictions apply. Take retail delivery by 4/1. That is a registered trademark. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance. Today I want to tell you about the worst international trip that I myself have ever taken, which just so happens to have been my honeymoon, which just so happens to have been to the nation of Haiti.

And I want to draw from this trip for you some important lessons related to societies in general, economics broadly, and personal finance. Haiti has been in the news over the last, well, really months, but it really came to a boiling point over this past weekend as the nation's capital and indeed the country broadly has been wracked by violence, extreme violence for months now.

And it has boiled over to the point where over the weekend, the United States of America performed an emergency airlift to withdraw all non-essential personnel from the US embassy. The European Union has withdrawn all of its diplomats. And it's so bad that the leader of the country can't even get back into his own country because of the violence that ultimately shut down the airport.

Now all of this is ineffably sad, but none of this is surprising. My first experience with Haiti came on my honeymoon. Now before you think I'm the worst president in the world, remember that other great people have also taken their wives to Haiti for honeymoon. After all, former President Bill Clinton took Hillary Clinton to Haiti on their honeymoon.

But my story is not quite so interesting as that. When my wife and I were newly married, I was looking around trying to figure out where would be an interesting place to go for a honeymoon. And I was able to get a great deal on an all-inclusive resort in the Dominican Republic, which is, of course, part of the island of Hispaniola.

And there are two nations that share that island. You have the Dominican Republic and also the nation of Haiti. And since my wife and I both enjoy Spanish and French, I thought it would be a fun travel experience for us to spend a week in the Dominican Republic and then to go to Haiti.

So we flew into the DR, and then after a week at an all-inclusive resort, we got on a bus and went from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, to Port-au-Prince, Haiti. And on that bus ride, I began to understand that perhaps I had gotten myself in a little bit over my head.

I didn't do a lot of research on Haiti. I just knew that, "Hey, it's a French-speaking place." I knew it was fairly poor at the time. I wasn't too worried about violence. I've traveled in a lot of difficult places, and I thought, "It'll be fine. We'll figure it out." But on the bus itself, I wound up meeting some people on the bus who were quite concerned about the decision that I had made.

And in fact, there was one lady who was on the bus who had a private driver who was meeting her, and she insisted that her private driver would be the one to drive us from the bus station to our hotel. So we went to – I think it was called the Caribe Hotel in downtown Port-au-Prince for our first night.

Remarkable experience. We were there a year after the big earthquake, and actually I wound up meeting Anderson Cooper, the CNN host, who was in Haiti for basically a review of the earthquake, what was happening to Haiti a year or so after the earthquake. And we started in Port-au-Prince, and then from Port-au-Prince, we took a bus across the mountains to a city called Jacmel.

I wanted to visit the Bassin Bleu there in Jacmel, so we took a little minibus across the mountains. And that was where everything started to go awry because we did not have an enjoyable travel experience. And in fact, after getting to Jacmel and spending two days in Jacmel, I experienced the desire – and in fact, I actually chose to do something I had never done before and have not done since, which was just to leave somewhere as quickly as possible.

When we were in Jacmel, our experience was so bad that my wife and I took the first bus back to Port-au-Prince that we could get, and we went directly to the airport. And I was determined to buy the first flight out that I could get. Unfortunately, when we got to the airport, all of the international flights had gone for the day.

And so instead of taking a flight out of the country, I wound up taking an early morning flight the next day and flying to Cape Haitian, where we spent one more day visiting something called the Palace of Saint-Suzy and the Citadel, which is truly remarkable, an amazing place to visit.

We really enjoyed our time in Cape Haitian and then later wound up taking the bus early back to the Dominican Republic. But why was Haiti so bad? Well, I'll tell you, quite simply, I felt like every single person with whom I interacted in our trip in Haiti was out to cheat me in some way, shape or form.

I'm not an inexperienced traveler, but I found it quite challenging to hang on to my money, to hang on to my luggage, when every single person at every single level of society, including all of the people who are serving tourists in the tourist industry, is trying to cheat me out of my money.

And I reflected quite a lot, I spoke to a lot of Haitians trying to understand why that might be. I developed a theory. This is purely my theory, my experience from spending what wound up being three or four days in Haiti. But my theory as to why my experience in Haiti was so unpleasant is this.

Haitians refuse to cooperate with one another in any meaningful way. The experience that I had being in Haiti was that every single Haitian is out to fight against every other single Haitian on a daily basis. I don't know why that is. My opinion or my theory is that it has something to do with the history of Haiti.

One thing that's very important to understand about the Haitian nation and culture is that Haitians are extremely proud of their heritage as being the only successful black slave revolt in world history. So as many black Africans were enslaved all around the world, in Haiti, the slaves were able to rise up and defeat their masters in battle and create the only independent formerly slave nation, which is the nation of Haiti.

But as I reflected on it and thought about my own experience there, I thought this must explain at least some of the horrifically unfriendly culture. Haitians argue with one another constantly. It seems like they don't ever want to take the lower place, the place of a servant. Now I believe that the basic foundation of a functional society is the willingness that neighbors, friends, co-workers, that we all have to serve one another.

I take that primarily from Christian theology. Jesus taught that the greatest among you must be the servant of all. And I see that throughout society, especially in a free capitalist society, the man who can serve the most people in the most effective way is ultimately the man who winds up becoming the greatest.

All of the greatest entrepreneurs of our culture, the people that we lionize, became well appreciated by the public because they served the public effectively. They served their customers. And in a country where we love one another and we serve one another, we can have lots of nice things. But if we aren't willing to humble ourselves and genuinely serve one another, all of our nice things will disappear.

That's what I observed in Haiti. That's what I observe happening. Now it should be no surprise to you where Haiti is today because the situation that you see today, the horrific, awful situation that you see today is the natural outgrowth of this philosophy, this philosophy of battling with one another.

And when you bring all of the other human failings and sins into it, of corruption and all the stuff, it just exacerbates it. But that was my experience in Haiti. The other thing I want to point out to you is that you don't need a newspaper to tell you these things.

You can sense the truth for yourself. Yes, I speak a little bit of French and so I was able to have access to the Haitian culture. But I didn't even need French to access that feeling. I knew very, very quickly that something was dreadfully wrong in the society. And I got out as quickly of the country as I was able to.

Today, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people who are fleeing Haiti trying to escape to the Dominican Republic or elsewhere, trying to escape to South America, trying to get into the United States, across the border. There are many, many people who are fleeing, but it's not easy to flee today.

It's not nearly as easy as it was many years ago. So remember this other truth, that if you see a society heading in the wrong direction, if you see people arguing with one another, unwilling to submit to one another, unwilling to serve one another with a free and glad heart, make a plan.

This is one of the reasons why I built International Escape Plan, www.internationalescapeplan.com, the course that I taught on getting out. Any Haitian who got out of Haiti years ago is extremely satisfied with his choice today. You do not want to be among those who are heading last minute to the airport or heading last minute to the border, trying to bribe someone to get your way out so you and your family can make it.

Let Haiti be a lesson to you. Number one, serve your neighbor. There's a reason why when I do Q&A calls, I always say, "How can I serve you today?" I want to serve you every single day, and I want to spread the attitude of service in every cultural corner of the world that I can myself impact with my example, with my leadership.

Service is the foundation of a healthy society. And when that service is missing due to arrogant pride, ridiculous pride of your unwillingness to humble yourself and serve another human being because of the cultural baggage of what happened to your ancestors, you are never going to wind up in a good situation.

Study Haiti. If you see problems happening in your country, if you see a breakdown of society, make a plan to get out if you ever need to. InternationalSkatePlan.com if you're interested in my course. I'll be back with you very soon. Thank you.