August 21, 2024 • 53 mins
Unfortunately a LOT of us view traveling as a luxury. It’s something that isn’t necessary, and so because of that we choose to delay our vacations, which means that we’re actually not all that good at traveling when the time finally comes. It’s like any activity we perform infrequently – we probably suck at it! And to make matters worse, if we see travel as a luxury good, that also means we think it’s necessary to spend a ton of money on it as well, which our guests today have completely disproven. We’re joined by the couple behind Trip of a Lifestyle, Lauren and Steven, who are going to share how they travel on the cheap. Here’s a quick and dirty summation of some of their notable milestones: they embarked on a 45 day road trip after college, then rather than honeymooning in Hawaii for a week they stuck around for six months. Shortly after that they purchased their first home, in cash, all while making less than $100,000 combined! They’ve traveled abroad, visited every national park in the US, and they both retired from their full time jobs at age 29. Listen as we discuss everything from menu hacks while on the road, to bigger discussions around giving yourself “permission” to pursue the kind of life that excites you!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel and I am Matt,
and today we're talking dirt cheap travel with Lauren and
Stephen from Trip of a Lifestyle.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yes, I think most people they see traveling as a
luxury Joel. Right, It's something that isn't completely necessary, and
so because of that they choose to delay.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Which then means they're actually not all.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
That good at traveling. It's like working out. The more
you do it, I think, the better you get at it.
And if that same person sees travel as a luxury good,
I think that also means that they expect to spend
a ton of money on it as well, oftentimes later
in life, which our guests today have completely disproven. We're
joined by the couple behind Trip of a Lifestyle, Lauren
and Stephen, who are going to share how they travel
(01:00):
on the cheap and so here's a quick and dirty
little bio on them. They embarked on a forty five
day road trip after college, then rather than honeymooning in
Hawaii for a week, they stuck around for six months instead.
Shortly after that, they purchased their first home in cash,
and so this just goes to prove that they weren't
spending all of their money on travel, and after they
(01:22):
bought their first place, they set out on a seven
month road trip to visit every national park. Oh and
by the way, they also both retired from their full
time jobs at the age of twenty nine, so at
this point they live semi retired lives, which sounds like
the title of the third Eyeblind album. That's maybe more
in line with how we are living our lives. But
(01:43):
Lauren and Steven, thank you so much for joining us
today on the podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Thanks for having us appreciate it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Is it possible to look up to people who are
much younger than you? Matt? I don't know. I might
be looking up to Lauren Seene right now. Guys. The
first question we ask everyone who comes on the show
is what do you like to spend money on? What's
your craft beer equivalent? Because Matt and I spend a
good bit ofm on beer. Some people might think it's ridiculous.
What is that thing for you? Even though obviously you're
saving the investing, you're thinking about your future too.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Yeah, our biggest splurge area is probably coffee, where kind
of snobbish in a way. We have very particular tastes,
and if we were to go to like a random
coffee shop and try to get a cup of coffee
that we would really love, it would probably be upwards
of ten dollars.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
So we're not talking folders here, nor are you talking
about the straight shot of espresso.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
You're getting kind of like that organic fixs to go
along with it.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
I'm guessing, well, we do love espresso, just like a
lot of it, highly concentrated, highly concentrated oat milk, you know,
the works.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
And so there you go.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
That's see, that's the kind of organic stuff I'm talking
about all the other things that I skip.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
But earlier this year we purchased a four hundred dollars
espresso maker and that has brought that coffee cost that
would be like an our typical cup of coffee down
to like a dollar, I would say, And so it's
made it much more affordable to have our little luxury
cup of coffee in the morning.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Very nice. So the home baristas, I like that.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Heck yes, Steven, is this going to be your your
craft beer equivalent as well?
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Oh? Definitely a shared passion. Every every morning. Whoever wakes
up first knows they have to bress.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
You're in charge of it. I just stay under the
covers and be like a coffee. Steve was like all
the more reason for me to be a night owl
and in the morning.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
That definitely happened.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
In preparing to talk with y'all, I saw that while
y'all were in we didn't even talk about y'all road
tripping out in Australia, but that that's.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
A part of your story that hopefully we'll have time
we'll do.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
But uh, you talked about like you were somewhere where
there was like a severe Australian drought. There's like no water,
but you can still buy you could still get a
nice coffee, which you were.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
Excited about, yes, out in the middle of nowhere. Literally,
any establishment in Australia, like if they serve any kind
of food or drink, there is an espresso machine in
that establishment, whether it's a gas station or like a McDonald's,
Like it's a proper setup with whole beans that they're
grinding on the spot for you and very European.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Surprisingly, McDonald's in Australia has actually a great cup of coffee.
They call it macas out there. That's their interesting for McDonald's.
But yeah, they're serious about coffee out there.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Not to dwell on this too long, but I went
to Australia for a little while and I fell in
love with the flat white, which apparently began they started
making that beverage in Australia and it's and yeah, you
get even a cheap flat white at the seven to eleven,
it was like a dollar and it was so much
better than most flat whites you're going to get in
the States.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Sure, so all the coffee there was like amazing anywhere
you go.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Had no idea that they were so on top of
their coffee game there. Okay, Lauraen and Steven, let's talk
about personal finances before we continue to talk about Australia,
because I think I saw, if I read this quickly,
you were saving like sixty to eighty percent of your income.
This is back like starting out, back when you were
in your twenties. What was the inspiration for y'all to
go like just so stinking hard in those early years?
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Honestly, you know, we graduated college together. We moved out
to California for a little minute for me to try
out a grad school program there that I ended up
not sticking with but basically, you know, we were together
living this frugal, naturally frugal college lifestyle. Most people in
college are broke and kind of have to live frugally
(05:24):
because they have to write, and we were pretty happy
with our life, like we never felt deprived as college students.
Like a lot of people say college is the best
years of your life, right, and we definitely felt that
way too, And we weren't spending much. And then soon
after that we got real jobs and they weren't like fancy,
high paying real jobs. I My first real job out
(05:46):
of college was a public school teacher, started at thirty
eight thousand dollars a year. Lauren was making just a
little bit less than that. But weirdly, because we were
used to this college lifestyle that felt like a fortune
to us. Just paying our normal bills, we were like
left over with tons of money from every paycheck, and
(06:07):
our checking account just started to kind of fill up,
and they're like, what do we do with this money?
And that's where we kind of discovered the idea of
investing and that you can turn extra money into even
more money and perpetual income. And so you know, we
learned about investing that us even more excited about the
idea of saving large percentages of our income, and it
(06:27):
kind of just snowballed from there.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Did it ever feel like, well, we're making more money,
we should clearly start to upgrade this in that I mean,
that's the traditional American reaction to an increase in income
is to spend a good portion of it, if not
more even than you're bringing in. So, yeah, what made
you decide, now, let's keep living like college students? You said,
we were happy that that was a good way to live.
(06:51):
But what made you decide that there weren't all these
different ways that you wanted to change your life as
after you graduated and started making more.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
So pretty soon we discovered the idea of investing right
that your extra money can create income for you in
the future, passive income. We thought about, like, well, okay,
if we are reasonably happy with the material stuff we have,
like our level of like car and housing and all
the basic needs food stuff like that, you know we
(07:20):
could upgrade that stuff. Sure, that's definitely an option that's
on the table. But when you realize money can make
more money, you start to say, well, wait a sec
if I save enough if I invest enough, I could
actually stop working. Like that, that money can buy you
your freedom, the freedom to do whatever it is with
the rest of your life that you want. It could
actually buy you back forty plus years, you know, from
(07:43):
sitting in an office or whatever, or a classroom in
my case. So we got pretty excited about that idea,
and I think that helped to prevent us from undergoing
that like lifestyle inflation. But also I mean just the
fact that we were pretty happy with what we had,
but we were appreciative of the lifestyle we were already living.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Yeah, I think when you are like setting out to
create a life that you enjoy every day, then I
don't think you end up feeling deprived or in want
of anything. And that was kind of where we were at.
Like we enjoyed our life. We still like took little breaks.
We were living in Orlando, Florida at the time, and
(08:21):
so it wasn't very far to like go to the beach.
Orlando has really great bike trails. Like, we still enjoyed
our life when we weren't working. And you know, to
Steven's point about our finances, we kind of did the
math and we're when we set a savings goal, and
we started tracking our net worth every month toward this goal,
and that was really encouraging too. So we were kind
(08:42):
of seeing that number ticking up toward the goal, and
that I feel like also helped keep us on track.
It was really encouraging, like, look, how look what we
were able to do this month, Like look how much
we were able to save, Look how much we're increasing,
And you know, it was this shared goal. We were
excited about it, and I think that really helped.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
To you a specific example about the lifestyle inflation thing.
I rode my bike to work every day, yes, which
prevented us from ever buying a second vehicle. So we
shared one used car all the time, Lauren, most of
the time drove a car to work.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
Yeah, my office was further.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
And you know that helped financially in a massive, massive way.
All the money that wasn't spent on a second car
was invested, which is like, really the number one thing.
You don't undergo depreciation on the second car, You don't
have maintenance and gas and insurance on the second car
and all these things. But most people look at that
and they say, wow, you rode your bike to work
every day. That's like an ultra frugal sacrifice that you
(09:37):
made for your finances. And I never viewed it that
way because I really liked riding my bike to work.
I got free exercise, extra calories burned every day, my
health improved, I arrived to work a little more awake
and energized. Like it was just a positive on all fronts,
all upside, no downside. And a lot of our choices.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Were like that, Yeah, you're like, jokes on you. I
really like this story and that's the we're kind of reframing.
I think that's so powerful, right when we're talking about
stick toitiveness, And I think that's why, like, that's why
people they try a diet and after like a month
they give up, and it's because the desired outcome is
something less, it's not as deep, right, And I think
(10:17):
that connection to no, I'm not doing this to save
a few bucks, I'm doing this because this is the
kind of person I want to be, is so much
more powerful and it can create more of a long
lasting change, definitely.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
And then yeah, clearly had some personal discipline when it
came to scaling back and keeping some of those desires
in check. But how much did your community have an
impact on that, because oftentimes the people that we surround
ourselves with can have a positive or negative impact. Did
your friends and family react negatively to how it was that,
in this case that you were choosing to not spend
your money.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
I think in the early days, friends and family definitely
wondered like, hey, like, you have a decent job now
and everything, like why don't you drive a little bit
better car, why don't you have two cars? Or why
don't you live a little bit bigger place or whatever
it is. I'm sure there was some of that, but
over the long run, you know, when we were twenty
two and living frugally like college gyments, people are like,
(11:09):
why don't you upgrade a little bit? And then by
the time we were like late twenties or early thirties,
you know, now, I'd like to think that that influence
is kind of going the opposite direction a little bit,
because I think that in a good way, people that
we know are seeing the kind of life that we
get to live now because we did those things, you know,
(11:29):
taking six and seven month vacations on a regular basis
and not going to a job every day, that people
are starting to get curious about, like, hey, so, how
exactly did you do that? And really the answer ultimately
is all of that stuff that's just a little abnormal,
the frugal not upgrading your lifestyle stuff that you reference.
(11:49):
So I kind of think I think that influence is
starting to reverse back the other direction.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Now, Okay, so I'm thinking about how So before we
hit record, we were talking about something that y'all are
actually doing tomorrow, which is heading to a college town.
Y'all are gonna do some marketing with the a business
that you started. You've got like a tutoring company. Talk
to me about like you've retired from full time work, right,
and so y'all kind of live like this quote unquote
(12:14):
semi retired life that we kind of alluded to earlier,
but you're still working. So talk to us just about
how maybe you view work at this point in time,
because it's it's obviously not something that's necessary. Y'all are
essentially coast fire, but you are still doing this additional work.
Why is it that you continue to work in this way?
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Yeah, so, in fact, we're fully fire. I mean, we
could live one hundred percent off of our investments at
this time, and I wanted to. But we did start
a business about a year ago. It's a college too.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
Right after we came back from Australia. Actually we were
like all rested up, enjoying life, where like that was
fun and easy, and a friend approached us to talk
about this idea.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Yeah, So to give some context on that, though, about
three or four years before that, we spent basically hanging
out at home, which you know, we live at the
beach now, so hanging out at the beach a lot,
traveling about three to six months out of each one
of those years. So we were like pretty recharged from
like the career stage of our lives, because.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
You're pretty far from burnout because you opposite of burnout, right, right,
So we're thirty four now, so it's like, you know,
we had years of kind of chilling for the most part,
and so after a while, like you start to itch
for some kind of like productive thing.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Not to say we did nothing during those.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
Years, but right, we have our blog and you know,
we work on that as well, but we were.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Open to the idea of like putting in some hours
towards something that we cared about and was exciting. So
a friend of ours approached us right after our Australia trip.
We were in like a great mood because we had
just come back from this three month vacation, and he
was like, hey, you know, you know that business idea
we had always talked about because he was a former
coworker of mine from a previous employe, and we had
(14:01):
always talked about this idea is like we should do that.
I was like, all right, I mean I look at Laura,
I like, what do you think should we do it?
And you know, she didn't say no.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
I was like, oh, you know, the part that we're
in now, this part of the business a year later
is like what I was envisioning. I was like, Oh,
it'd be fun, like anytime we're traveling to like stop
in do a college and like do some marketing and
have you know, it's we end up in college towns
all the time anyway, because there's always like great food,
you know, great atmosphere stuff to do in college towns
(14:33):
when we're on road trips, and so it's like, oh,
it's like a really nice fit. But I wasn't anticipating
the like year of work that we have had to
put in thus.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Far, our last twelve months or so of life have
definitely been the opposite of retirement. I mean, I say
that we just got home from a forty two day
road trip like a few days ago. But for the
most part, for the past year, we've been working really
hard on this project and it's been rewarding. It's been cool,
it's growing. I mean, we both worked our careers for
(15:04):
the most part just as employees, you know, doing the
traditional like work at a job, get a steady paycheck
and save it and put it in the stock market, right,
And that's how we retired. But now it's like it's
like a whole new, exciting and different world to run
our own business, and so I don't regret the choice,
even though it's been a lot of work.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
Yeah, it's been fun to experience like entrepreneurship in this way.
Both of our parents have a lot of entrepreneur like background,
Like Steven's dad was a small business owner. My dad's
had a lot of different like random gigs he's done too,
and so you know, I think it's kind of in
our blood a little bit, and so it's been fun
to to really try it out risk free.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Honestly, Like that's what I was going to hone in
on Lauren is like the risk free aspect. It's so
much easier to start something and you can kind of, hey,
this is a crossover something I'm good at and passionate about,
and like, I also don't necessarily have to hit a
grand slam here. I can hit a single and and
just kind of see see what develops because you don't
have to have the income to put food on the
(16:07):
table in the same way. Did that kind of make
it a little bit easier of a decision?
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
I think that, you know, whether I would like to
admit it or not, maybe part of the reason why
I didn't jump straight into starting my own business many
years ago is because the steady paycheck is attractive, right,
I Mean, there's risk that that's involved with starting a business.
You got to pay your bills and stuff, and so
that that's not even a thought anymore, like you said,
(16:33):
which is great. And the initial cash outlay for this
business was pretty low. I mean we personally put in
like I don't know, like five thousand dollars or something
like that if I remember correctly, maybe even less than
that to get it started. So it's like, what's the
worst case scenario, Like, so, yeah, it's exactly exactly what
you said.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
I'm curious too, Like, so we've talked a lot about investments, Lauren,
I'm curious. Was there a part so Steven, it sound
like with you it maybe it was maybe more an
intellectual itch, right, Maybe it was your buddy, it was
a friend of yours I had reached out to you.
Is some of this also due to the fact that
you're trying to kind of bridge the gap, like you're
not fully retired, you're not at the quote unquote retirement
age where you're fifty nine and a half you can
(17:13):
start tapping retirement funds. How much of this is logistics
where you're kind of like, well, it'd be nice if
we made a little bit extra money here on the side,
in the here and now this year to kind of
cover some of the day to day expenses.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
And is any part of it boredom with travel too?
Speaker 4 (17:27):
I don't think that there's a boredom with travel. Yet
we keep finding new places to go and so that
makes it makes it fun and interesting and new.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Logistically speaking, there's really not an issue like in our
day to day cash flow. So for context, in our
investment portfolio or our total net worth, like about I
want to say, seventy percent or so of that is taxable,
meaning that it's not sheltered by like iras or four
oh one k's or anything like that where you can't
(17:59):
tap it until fifty nine and a half. And even
the thirty percent or so that is in those types
of accounts, there are ways to access those early, right
There's things like the Roth Conversion Ladder, and there's there's
various different tricks you can use to access that money.
So logistically speaking, it really I don't think would be
a huge problem if we wanted to like live off
(18:20):
our portfolio right now. But I mean, like you said,
it is pretty nice to just have some extra money.
And in reality, we have never actually had to withdraw
from our portfolio because we've always had some kind of
little side gigs. We've had a photography business that we've
run together since high school. And I say business lightly,
I mean it's like a side gig, you know, like
(18:42):
once in a while we'll shoot a wedding.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
Or someone recommends us and we go do a wedding.
Like we have a wedding I think in October of
this year, and we had a wedding last October, and like,
I feel like we're doing like one or two a
year at this point, or like someone's grad photos or whatever.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
And I maintained a contract with my former employer for
just a little bit of remote freelance work after I
worked there full time. Lauren has done the same thing
in the past with previous employers.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
I've done that a few times. Now. I just have
one client that I do social media for, but that's
like not very much work. And yeah, so we've had
enough income that we really haven't had to worry about
the logistics of things. However, one of the ideas I
had about this new business was, yeah, in case any
(19:29):
of those random, various income streams were to dry up,
not the stock market, but like our other little income things,
it would be cool to have like another one just
to see and we get to do this experiment in entrepreneurship.
So yeah, totally that was part of the motivation too,
I guess cool awesome.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
We have alluded to a bunch of trips you've taken.
It's just in multi month long trip, so we actually
have a bunch of questions. This is something you guys
cover a whole lot. Obviously, the name of your Instagram
and of your brand is Trip of a Lifestyle, So
we're going to talk a whole lot about travel and
saving money on travel. Get to a bunch of questions
on that right after this. All right, we are back
(20:16):
from the.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Break talking with Lauren and Stephen of Trip of a Lifestyle.
And I mean, it's the title of the episode, right
dirt Cheap Travel, So we got to talk about the
actual travel part and not just work, which is like
the opposite of travel everything that we've talked about so far.
But I want to hear not only have you saved
money like when it comes to the big ticket items
when it comes to travel, but also like just some
(20:37):
of those smaller ways that y'all have been able to
save as well.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
But I'm curious.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
I get the impression that y'all are pretty detail oriented
when it comes to tracking how much you're spending, especially
when it comes to travel. Have you found that you
have spent more or less money when it comes to
staying at home living your normal life versus being on
the road and the expenses associated with that.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
We definitely spend more money out on the road then
we do when we're living at home, but it's not
very much more so, our main mode of travel, especially
when we're at home in North America, is traveling around
in our camper van, so there's actually no lodging expense.
And then the weird thing is if we do go
(21:19):
out in our camper van, that leaves our house unoccupied, right,
And so if we're traveling for a long period of time,
we've actually rented out our house and then collected income.
So if you were to subtract that out of the
expenses of the travel, would probably be coming out ahead
in that type of situation.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
And it's not just the camper van that makes that
possible either. A lot of people are like, well, I
don't I don't want to do van life, so you know,
travel can't be cheap for me. But another example of
that is we went to Hawaii for six months for
our honeymoon, like you mentioned earlier.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
Yeah, for that trip, our lease was actually up at home,
so we just left, moved to Hawaii and got a
six month lease on an apartment there. Honestly, the was
roughly the same and we got to kind of live
our normal lifestyle now in a new place. We bought
a car while we were there, a cheap used car,
and we were able to sell it back when we
(22:11):
were done. We actually made one thousand dollars on that sale.
So our rental car costs, you could say it didn't exist.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Our negative rental car costs.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
Our hotel costs was just rent. It was the same
as it was living at home. Right, and then food,
I mean, we're living here now, so we've got a
full kitchen, refrigerator, stove, we're making our own meals, we're
buying food at Costco. Our costs monthly expenses in Hawaii,
I think we're what the same?
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Yeah, at home?
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Well you can do that because parts of Hawaii have
a Costco and Costco is the big money saver in Hawaii. Truly,
Like if you going to the other grocery, SA a
heck of a lot more in hawaiis does it they
not have all these in Hawaii? I don't think so, ye,
So Like truly it's a massive game.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Costco is a life saver. To give some numbers to this,
back then, the Hawaii trip was in twenty fifteen. Our
annual spending at home at that time was twenty two
thousand dollars a year combined for two people, like including
rent and food and like every expense you can possibly
think of. That was our bottom line total for a year,
twenty eleven thousand dollars a year per person basically, which
(23:19):
I guess is technically below the federal poverty line.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
But we never never built that way at all. Didn't
feel that as affordable.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
That is how we were able to save sixty to
eighty percent of teacher salaries, you know. But when we
moved to Hawaii, because we leased an apartment long term,
like a local wood, we bought a car and sold
it for the exact same amount, actually one thousand dollars
more than what we paid for it, and we did
all kinds of travel hacks like that, and most of
(23:48):
our entertainment was just going outside because Hawaii is pretty cool.
All you really have to do is walk out the
front door to have fun. Our annual spend rate there
was exactly equal, so we spent net about eleven thousand
dollars total in the six months we were there, So
that's the same twenty two thousand dollars a year combined.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yeah, that's one of the things too, that long long
form travel can do, right, because yeah, when you're talking
about short term travel, you're talking about hotel rooms and
not having a place to cook, or even if you're
rent an airbnb, you run it for three nights and
guess what, it's not going to be nearly as cheap
as running something for a month or six months or
something like that. And then rental cars versus kind of
what you're doing like a little hack there to actually
(24:26):
make money on the transportation you're using. I'm curious too,
a lot of people with who are super into travel, right,
they're using credit cards to help reduce the cost. But
you guys, you're less interested in paying with points. You
do like the credit card game, but you prefer to
get cash for those points instead of points, right, So
I'm just curious to know how you guys factor credit
(24:47):
cards into your travel money savings, and then why you
kind of take a different approach than a whole lot
of other people in the space.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
We travel so frugally, you know, spending instead of on hotels,
on a camper van or on an apartment lease in Hawaii,
that's you know, one fifth or less of the price
that it would be to get hotels every night, and
you can't do those things with points, so you can
(25:14):
take cash back and let's say you get let's say
you get a cash bonus on a credit card of
five hundred dollars, and you could have had seven hundred
dollars worth of hotels instead. Well, that's a little bit more,
it's two hundred dollars more. But I can get a
multiple much much better than that by just spending more
efficiently on things that can't be bought with those luxury
(25:36):
hotel and airline points and things like that. So that's
kind of the answer, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Yeah, and you mentioned the ability for y'all to basically
have a negative cost of transportation while you're in Hawaii.
You did the same thing in Australia when it came
to the car that y'all used to drive around the
entire continent.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Basically of Australia.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
That's a little trick there as to how it was
you were able to travel affordably while you got to Australia.
But what about actually getting to Australia, because that's an
expensive plane ticket. I mean, maybe that's one of the
reasons I haven't been to Australia and Joel.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Has because that loaded. But how did you say.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
When it came to finding a deal on tickets to Australia.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
Yeah, So for that I was just trying to get
a sense of you know, we're in Florida, and so
you could either go you know, across over Africa in
land and say Perth on the other side of Australia,
or you could go westward, you know, across the United States,
across the Pacific in land in Sydney. And I didn't
(26:38):
really know because you know, we have a first time
going you know, what was the most common flight, What
was the like regular route you know that might be
cheaper to do. And it looked like everyone every flight
was basically going west with stopovers in Hawaii most of
the time, like almost every plane was like stopping in Hawaii,
refueling and going on. And so I was like, well,
(27:00):
if every flight is doing that, these flights are expensive.
What if I booked instead a leg from Florida to
Hawaii separately and then like picked it up the next day,
just stay a night in Hawaii or whatever and leave
the next day to go from Hawaii to Sydney in Australia.
And so when I split up the flight instead of
booking one not direct, but one flight that goes from
(27:23):
Florida to Australia, and instead booked Florida to Hawaii Hawaii
do Australia as two separate flights. The price dropped dramatically.
I mean, what did I pay?
Speaker 3 (27:33):
I want to say it was close to half price
to do it that way.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
I think I think it was fifteen hundred for one
plane ticket one way, and then I got them for
five hundred each one way. By doing it split up
that way, you know, you got a factor in the
night that we stayed in Hawaii. We stayed at a
hotel that night, but even still, I think that hotel
was one hundred and twenty dollars.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Yeah, it wasn't too bad with.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
Airport shuttles, so it was very reasonable. And if we
wanted to, we could stayed in Hawaii longer and made
that its own little side trip too.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
And that hack that Lauren used, that's actually pretty generalizable.
It's not the first time she did that before, she's
the one who discovered it. But basically, anywhere you want
to go that's a really long flight that has like
a connection in between, it's worth taking a look on
Google flights at whatever the most common connection point is
that's usually the cheapest ticket that you can get that
(28:27):
connects you there, and then just break up that connection separately.
And another thing to remember is, like our stopover was
in Hawaii. Well, if you've never been to Hawaii before,
that stopover might not be a drawback. That might actually
be a positive for you. What if you stopped in
Hawaii and stayed for a week just because you wanted to,
that could actually be a plus tier tip. So you know,
feel free to think about it positively that way too,
(28:49):
not as an inconvenience.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
I'm curious. I want to know a little bit more
about the Campra van. You've mentioned it a few times now,
and they make some really fancy ones out there these days,
like fancy, yeah, yeah, that's all I'm here. So I
even saw the other day, like I think you guys
have a Nissan, but Nissan is actually about to re
release one of their pre made campervands like prefab on
the inside. And the starting price is it's not absurd,
(29:12):
but I want to say it's almost forty grand. You
guys did it for a heck of a lot less
than that, So talk to me about creating that Campra
van and why that makes so much sense. Why is
such a big money saver.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
So our plan with the campra van that purchase was
for going to every national park. We knew, we had
this plan. We're going to go, you know, six months
or so, you know, everywhere in the United States. We're
going to drive from Florida all the way up to Alaska.
It needs to have good gas mileage because that's one
of the big downsides to these kinds of recreational vehicles.
(29:44):
A lot of times they get terrible gas mileage and
that's really going to add up over six months of driving.
And so that was our first big line item, and
we're like, how do we decrease that cost and also
add in we get shelter, right.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
So, yeah, the we F three fifty with the with
the pole behind is going to be a heck of
a lot more money on every front.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
Exactly, And so we went with an economical choice. Our
van is a Nissan Envy two hundred. It's in the
same class as like the Transit the Ford Transit Connect.
It's a really small compact like city cargo van. It's
it's just big enough in the back if you lay
(30:25):
down to fit a full size bed. That's the size
of the cargo area. But it gets what is it,
twenty four miles to the twenty six miles to the gown.
So it's very reasonable compared to other vans that get like,
you know, nine or whatever.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
And it was a twenty thirteen we bought back in
twenty nineteen for twelve thousand, three hundred dollars and had
like something like sixty thousand miles on it. We drove
that thing to I believe it now has something like
two hundred and fifteen thousand miles on it. I really
gets more, maybe even a little more than that. I
haven't looked at the odominant a little bit. It's it's
(30:59):
a we ought to crap out on us. I'm not
gonna lie. We actually have just purchased a replacement for
that van. Uh details forthcoming on our blog all about that.
But it served us.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Really well with he got your money's worth.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Almost no maintenance for all the way too, well past
two hundred thousand miles, and it saved us literally hundreds
of nights in hotels. So we made our money back
like crazy on that thing.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
It sounds like you were able to say, but because
you didn't like outfit it so that it was like
instagram worthy, you know, like everyone's got these pictures where
they're like got the back doors opened and there's a
picture of their feet with like a pour over coffee,
which actually you guys probably actually had.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
For our van.
Speaker 4 (31:41):
Literally, like I alluded, we we have a full sized
bed in the back, and we just built a platform
on top on top of like the base of the
and our beds on top. So it's like there's cargo
storage under the bed and that's all that's back there.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
And that's enough space for y'all. Yeah, I assumed, So
how much how much cooking? Because like you've got your
you know, you can get like a couple of Marina
wool shirts and you're like, sweet, now I don't have
to do any laundry except for like once a week
to wash my one.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Shirt or something like that.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
But like there's other stuff that you need, especially if
you're looking to say that I'm thinking about food, how
does that work for y'all? Like what are some of
the ways that you've found that you're able to reduce
the cost of yeah, feeding yourselves.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Trail mix all day every day, man weeks on end.
Speaker 4 (32:21):
So we do always bring a little camp stove. It's
a little propane a burner like screws onto the top
of this little can of propane, and we bring like
a pot and some silverware and bowls, and we cook,
you know, can stuff soups and stuff that's like easy
to make that doesn't require like a lot of preparation.
(32:42):
We make a lot of sandwiches and things like that.
We just added a cooler to the mix, so now
we can have like some cold stuff, which is new.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
But in truth, we actually eat out quite a bit
when we road trip. We just tend to go to
like expensive we go to like fast food or fast
casual places like pizza. Yeah. So what we've done though
with that is we've we've picked out a few places
that are our favorites, mostly out of necessity. We're both vegans,
so we have like kind of limited options for places
(33:14):
that cater to us. But we've picked out like our
most commonplaces that are really well available nationally and even
sometimes internationally, and we've figured out some menu hacks where
you can actually order menu items exactly equivalent to what
you would get if you ordered like a number three
combo or whatever, but you order them in a strange
way where you're like putting together side items or whatever.
(33:37):
And we've actually been able to reduce the price of
certain menu items at certain restaurants by as much as
seventy five percent sometimes by doing these crazy.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Menus frank and ordering yeah yeah, h strange order number
three place like our.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Most recent one. We were just on this this forty
two day road trip to Canada just this year, and
we figured out a menu hack at A and W,
which is a burger joint very very common in Canada
basically and like every single town. And so I think
the number was something like this. The Beyond Burger, which
(34:11):
is the vegan burger that's on their menu, costs like
I want to say, nine or twelve dollars something like
that Canadian dollars. Yeah, And we figured out a menu
hack where if you order like the bun and the
patty and the toppings and things completely separately as like
line items, and then just assemble it yourself. When you
(34:31):
receive it, it's the exact same burger. And we literally
got it as well as two dollars or fifty cents
by doing it that way.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Wait, so they allow you to piecemeal order a burger.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
So she did it probably at a dozen different ANW locations,
and we never had a single problem.
Speaker 4 (34:48):
It's got to be super easy to ring in because
no one had any issue with it.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Honestly, that's fascinating.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
Yeah. Another like burger hack that kind of works anywhere
is adding a second patty to a so you get
like double the meat less bread per meat basically and
just splitting that. And so we do that a lot
of times, and that works pretty much everywhere. It's always
cheaper to like add a second patty than it is
to order a whole nother burger. And like, I don't
(35:16):
we don't need like double the fries. Like, it's fine.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
Do the same thing at your bowtlet like get one
bowl and then just get them to load you up
on the free ingredients like beans and veggies and stuff
like that.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Oh yeah, I've done that before.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Man, you can easily split one of those bowls. You'll
you'll be suffering if you actually ate that whole thing
by yourself.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
Yeah. Lace pizzas like that too. You can add as
much as you want and we'll split a pizza that
way by just having lots of toppings. On it.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
It's like literally just a mountain everest of toppings, uh, Lauren,
not to uh, not to demigrate your your your better
half for lesser half of even but I know he
gets stinky in the back of that camper van. Okay,
And I've heard you guys use Planet Fitness not even
just to pump iron, but to stay clean. Is that right?
Is that that is in Plant Fitness around the country.
(36:02):
How are you guys using the fitness chain to save
money in that regard?
Speaker 4 (36:05):
Yeah, So when we were when I was planning our
National Parks road trip, I realize like, hey, you know,
gyms all have showers because it's people want to rinse
off after they work out. And so if there's a
chain that is you know, most popular everywhere whatever, we
could just be members and show up and shower and
you know, Plant Fit that we had a Plant Fitness
(36:26):
right next to our house where where we were living
at the time, and looking into it, they actually have
I think the largest footprint when I did when I
looked at it, Bigger than YMCA, bigger than Anytime Fitness,
Bigger than La Fitness locations across the US and actually
now some in Canada and they have a second tier membership.
(36:46):
They have like a basic membership that's like everyday cheap,
but the second tier membership, the Black Card, lets you
bring a guest every visit and so you actually get
like two for the price of one that way. But
the Black Card also enabled you to go to any location,
So we both got to go to the gym on
one membership anywhere in the country. And a lot of
(37:07):
Planet fitnesses are twenty four to seven, so you can
like sometimes we didn't work out. Sometimes we literally just
showed up to shower, but you could show up at like.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
But it has been an encourager to actually go to
the gym once in a while. Around the road, it's tough.
Speaker 4 (37:19):
It's tough to show up at the gym and not
like work out, you know, like I'm already here, I'm
already going to shower, So like.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
Is that guilt factor?
Speaker 4 (37:27):
Yeah, Like there's a little bit of like am I
really just going to show up and not work out?
Like I'm already here? Like that's the biggest hurdle to overcome,
is like actually getting to the gym and like we're
already here. So it did help. It does help us
stay in better shape, I would say, especially after sitting
on long drives that you get to get out and
move and so we like it for both of those reasons.
But yeah, for sure, it's a great way to like
(37:49):
stay clean, stay active. And yeah, they're everywhere. They're in
Hawaii now. Like last time we were in Hawaii, there
were Planet Fitnesses on the Big Island and I was like,
what this is new. And even in uh Canada on
this trip that we just came back from, there were
like quite a few that was surprised to see a
lot of them. Twenty four hour two.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
That's one of the one of the perks. So so
I pay for a gym membership and that's one of
the perks. And recently Jill started working taking a shower
here at our office because water is also included, taking
advantage of the free water in our rent. It's sort
of like the free condiments where it's just like, well,
I'm gonna pay the rand no matter what, so I'm
gonna take all the showers that I was, right, But
Lord and Steven, we got more that we're gonna get to.
(38:30):
Maybe we'll talk a little bit about fire early retirement
we'll get to that more right after the break.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
We're back from the break, still talking with Lorne and
Steven talking about traveling dirt cheap, and I'm curious you
guys are. I don't know if you guys would consider
yourselves influencers, but I think in some ways you are.
You've got the blog, you've got the Instagram, and people
follow you to learn tips and tricks about how to
this fire and cheap travel lifestyle. But most of the
(39:04):
people who put a lot of effort into becoming influencers,
they do it because they want to monetize that thing, right,
And the fire movement has sometimes been criticized because early
retirees they have just actually shifted their work to doing
something else, or they're working their butts off to create content.
But I've seen that you two give all the money
that you earn from your blog and partnerships and stuff
(39:27):
like that away, So I don't know what was the
impetus behind that.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
So yeah, to address that kind of criticism, I guess,
first of all, there's nothing wrong with the starting a
blog or social media or whatever it is and having
the aim of monetizing it and making it into a business.
Whether you need that money or not. I don't think
that has anything to do with whether your retirement your
early retirement is legitimate or not. But with that said,
(39:52):
it makes sense that someone might have conflicting motives. Right, So,
if you have an affiliate link for something that's the
not necessarily the best thing for your audience, but it
pays really, really well, you might end up recommending it anyway,
even though you know of something better, right, and so
we never wanted anyone to distrust our advice because of
the presence of affiliate links. So what we decided on was,
(40:16):
we'll do the affiliate links. It seems like a waste
not to just make that money for stuff we're already
recommending anyway. And then we'll just take all the money
that comes through affiliate links and was donating one hundred
percent of it to charity. So that's what we did.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
This a nice way to pay it forward.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
I also saw over on your site that according to
y'all's calculations, it's going to cost y'all something like sixty
four million dollars. This is if you were to continue
working in your full time jobs and if you were
to bank additional raises, assuming just a basic cost of
living increase over the years, but even still you've chosen
not to take the more traditional path.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
I guess why is it still worth.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
It in your opinion to quit and for y'all to
have the freedom and to travel extensively like you have.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
At some point you have to realize what was the
point in the first place. Like if we go back
kind of to the beginning of this episode where we
talked about like what motivated us to continue to be
frugal and stuff, and the answer was freedom, right, freedom
to do with our time what we wanted to do.
And so obviously, at some point, enough money is enough money,
(41:19):
and you should just do things that you want to
do because what you can't get more of is time
on this planet. I mean, at some point, unfortunately, we're
all going to die. So yeah, that's really the ultimate
reason why you can't extend that logic of like what
would this compound to beyond a certain point? At some point,
enough money is enough money, all.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
Right, Lauren. Also the other thing, probably people are listening
to this and they're like, oh, you take six months
off here and three months off here and forty two
days off here, and that sounds like awesome, right, And
I guess it is potentially more available to people in
the work from home climate. They might be able to say, well, no,
I will to take a month and live in Colombia,
but I will I will work from there. But I
(41:59):
guess what would you say to people who hear about
the way you guys live your life and they say, yeah,
I got like two weeks from my employer. Do I
have to become fire in order to live this sort
of life? So you guys are talking about if so,
that's fifteen plus years down the road for me, even
when we're talking about saving money and doing it cheaply.
So what would you say to those people?
Speaker 4 (42:20):
So our trip to Hawaii in twenty fifteen, we had
only been at our full time jobs for like two
years at that point, like our first adult you know
jobs out of college. You know, we had saved up
quite a bit of money, but we weren't anywhere near
fire yet, you know, And so it was more that
that number that we had saved. I think we had
(42:41):
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars saved up at that point.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
So we our total network at that time was one
hundred and fifty thousand but that.
Speaker 4 (42:48):
Was like seven years of our living expenses, you.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Know, right, as we mentioned before, twenty two thousand dollars
a year is what we spent to live. So the
fact that we were so frugal and the fact that
we got our living expenses download meant that just that
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars net worth, it represents
seven years we could have taken straight off work if
we wanted to.
Speaker 4 (43:07):
Yeah, And so you know, we felt pretty confident being
able to go to our bosses, or at least in
my case because Stephen was a school teacher, so there's
a little less like negotiation, you know, with the public
school system and how flexible they are with your schedule.
But I went to my employer and I just said, hey,
I'm doing this. I'm moving to Hawaii for six months
(43:28):
and I like working here. I enjoy my work. Just
so you know, most of it can be done remotely,
and I'd be happy to do any part of what
I do currently from Hawaii. I'll wake up at what
you know, it's a five to six hour time difference
depending on the time of year. I will wake up
and I'll be available to you whenever you guys need
(43:49):
we can plan ahead, I'll make it happen. If you
would like to continue this relationship, I'd be happy to
make time for you while we're in Hawaii. And so
they ended up taking me up on that. And while
we were in Hawaii, I probably worked you know, ten
hours a week, and that was actually enough, you know,
with Stephen also doing some some freelance stuff tutoring and photography,
(44:10):
that actually allowed us to cash flow that trip. We
didn't tap our savings at all while we were in Hawaii.
That income was enough to pay you know, our our
super low you know, lifestyle type living expenses that we
had there.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
So even though we had seven years of living expenses
in the bank, we didn't go down to six point five.
By the end of the trip. We were still at
seven because we were making a little bit of money
along the way. By the way, I'll mention because Lauren
was a little modest about it, but she didn't ask
permission all right, to like, may I please employer go
(44:44):
on this trip, and will you please allow me to
do a little bit of part time work. We've actually
done that multiple times, both of us at various different.
Speaker 4 (44:52):
Pair to just quit straight up but I you know, instead,
instead I offered them, you know, to continue some kind
of relationship with them. And they were eager too, because
you know, it's hard to get employees that you should
trust and rely on, and so the fact that I
had been there for two years doing a good job,
they were like, yeah, absolutely, and then when are you
(45:12):
coming back? And I was like, I'm not sure that
I'm coming back here necessarily, and there was like that
was a very delayed conversation. But that's another story.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
It sounds like that conversation is it's even more possible
these days than it was, oh when you guys started
out than twenty years ago. Right, not only does the
technology exist, but also just that understanding from employers that
people are more likely to move to migrate somewhere else
to do something different, and yeah, if they know you already,
instead of applying for that remote position, it's like, how
(45:42):
about we make this position that's currently in person more remote?
These days, like there is, employers are so much more
open to that. So I think it's but yeah, not
begging for it, but knowing, hey, you guys know me,
I've put in the work over the years, and so
let's just change the way this looks.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
The fact too that for you to be proactive and
to make that sort of take that first step and
make that recommendation shows some like a level of initiative
that I think they're not expecting. And so then they're thinking,
well why not. Actually, they put together a nice little
package and how this is going to work. They've explained
the ends and the outs. I think that alone, right,
there can be almost enough to kind of convince them
to say, let's go ahead, give it a shot.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Make it easy for them to say yes exactly.
Speaker 4 (46:22):
I also gave them plenty of notice too. I mean
I told them months before we were planning to leave,
because if they did just want to replace me, you know,
I want them to have, right. I want to be
able to help train and that sort of thing, so
you know, leave it tomorrow, right. I was doing my
best to look out for them as well.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (46:39):
But I think there is a certain power in giving
them only two options, right, which is to say yes
to your proposal or lose you as an employee. So
I think that's different than going in and asking if
you could go on this trip? Right, They're very likely
to say no if you ask it.
Speaker 4 (46:57):
That way and to get the result you want. I
think in terms of the things that other people can repeat. Definitely,
that savings buffer gives you the confidence to negotiate for
what you want, get what you want in terms of
a longer vacation, that sort of thing, and then making
money while you're like not being opposed to making money.
(47:18):
I mean on our road trip, you know, years later,
when we were doing our National Parks road trip, I
want to say every two for every like three to
four days we were doing something fun. We had a
couple of days that we would sit in a coffee
shop for the day and just like you know, get
stuff done, and it felt really nice to have that
kind of break. You get a sense of you know,
(47:39):
you enjoy the fun a little bit more when you
have it contrasted with getting stuff done, and you feel
a little more productive, you have a little more purpose
baked into it. And so I think doing a little
bit of freelance work along the way can also make
these kinds of long term travel trips more affordable and
more palatable for folks.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Yeah, it makes that slow travel much more more possible
when you're able to do that. Lauren and Steven, thank you.
So much for talking with us at how to Money Today.
Where can folks learn more about Shaw Which'll are.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Up to you.
Speaker 3 (48:07):
So if you want some more tips on how to
travel cheaply, but also how to save a large portion
of your income by living a little more frugally, maybe
making more at side hustles, and then how to invest
all of that money and eventually retire early if that's
your goal. Our blog is Trip of a Lifestyle dot
com and our Instagram, TikTok YouTube. All those platforms is
(48:28):
at Trip of a Lifestyle except for Twitter slash x.
They got a weird character limit over there, so we're
ta lifestyle on that one.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
Awesome. Thank you guys for joining us. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (48:38):
Thank you for having us well.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
Joel, have you been bitten by the travel bug camper
van style?
Speaker 1 (48:44):
I could?
Speaker 2 (48:44):
I feel like I could see my wife and I
doing that with all the kids are gone. It's hard
to do with kids. I can't tough stage of life
that we're in right now.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
And I didn't ask them this question, but I was curious,
as a ridiculously tall dude, how might squeezing that thing
or not? I don't know, I might have to get
some a.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
Little bit bigger, maybe one that's yeah, I didn't make
XL a extra long.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
I would definitely need that.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
Well, you have a big takeaway though from our conversation today.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
At one point, Lauren said, set out to create a
life you enjoy every day, and I just think that's
like seem so basic but so true. And I think
sometimes we're living for that vacation or our lives are
out of control, packed to the gills, too busy in
our normal everyday weeks, and if we can just make
our lives a bit more enjoyable in the here and now,
(49:28):
healthy rhythms, yeah, maybe we'll feel less inclined to splurge
and spend big dollars on the getaway and maybe even
make those getaways potentially cheaper than our everyday lives.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
Totally totally agree, Yeah, that's what I would done. I
think that was like when we're talking about like lifestyle
creep and finding balance between going out on vacation, and
she's like, we don't have to really do that, We
didn't need to do that as much. If you kind
of find this healthy rhythms.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
And that's like that is so key to be able
to keep things under control, because if you like the
way you're living, if you like the lifestyle, it doesn't
matter what everyone else around you is doing or thinks,
because you're comfortable in your own exactly and you don't
mind keeping your spending as is and being the dude
who bikes to work or total the people who do
leave their jobs for six months when everyone else is
continuing to work. But you sign up for a different
(50:11):
way of living, and you did it on purpose.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
Yeah, along those lines there towards the end when we're
talking about long travel or slow travel, but she said
to have some of that purpose baked into those travels,
it allows you to switch it up. And I think
it's totally true that it would allow you to appreciate
the vacation in the spaces where you are visiting or
traveling at a level that you otherwise wouldn't. Right, Like,
imagine just going on this trip and you're just cramming
(50:35):
everything in. Certainly you're going to have a whole lot
of fun. But if you get to enjoy something and
then kind of step back and maybe do a little
bit of work and making a little bit of money,
I'm sure that doesn't hurt as well. But it just
helps to put some of that vacation in perspective. It's
less one hundred percent consumption. Emily and Selma just got
back from a trip to New York and she was saying,
oh man, it was so fun. But the tough thing
(50:55):
is when you're in a hotel and you don't have
a place to cook, it feels like you're just literally
consuming the city and everything is about what am I
going to do? What am I going to eat? And
there's something about slow travel that beholds itself, especially if
you're working a little bit here and there, to more
community oriented patterns than consumptive oriented patterns. And I think
when you go on a short trip, it's just so
(51:16):
much easier to take in a city in that way,
and I don't know, you don't feel as deep of
a connection to the place or to the culture. Totally agree, yeah,
And I think the same thing can apply too to
the overall work that you're doing. Right, And so they
talked about towards the beginning, we're talking about the business
that they're starting, the tutoring company, but the ability to
then turn to work that also has more purpose, right,
Like you're not doing it just for the sole purpose
(51:38):
of accruing more wealth. The fact that you have to
earn a paycheck in order to feed your consumption habits,
but you can do something that brings you a whole.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
Lot of fulfillment in its own right. Ultimately, I love
that a whole lot as well might pay off even
bigger in the long runer, I know, that's.
Speaker 2 (51:52):
What's so great about this, Like it frees you have
to be even more creative, right, Like they came back
from this long trip where they fell completely recharged. They
were the opposite of burned out. Yeah, and lo and behold,
there's this thing kind of just falls into their lap.
Isn't it funny how that happens?
Speaker 1 (52:03):
It's pretty cool? But all right.
Speaker 2 (52:04):
The beer you and I enjoyed today was called brew Daddy's.
This was a German style pilsner. It looks like a
collaboration between Steady Hand Beer Company as well as Mutation.
Speaker 1 (52:15):
What'd you think, well, as a daddy who likes to
drink beer like the Bruce brew Daddy myself, I enjoyed it,
But it was also I don't know that there was
anything terribly unique about this this beer. It tasted like
a slightly better version of a macro pilsner, which I'm
more inclined to pillsers these days, just because I feel
like my taste buds have been ransacked by the IPAs
(52:37):
and the barrel aged outs of this world over time,
and so it's nice to drink something that's just a
little chiller without being over the top really in anyway,
but also just didn't leave much of a mark necessarily either.
Speaker 2 (52:46):
Yeah, I'd agree with that it was tasty, but it
didn't have any overly specific or special flavor notes kind
of shining through it in its profile. But it's still
glad you and I got to enjoy it, So I mean, hey,
we still get to drink a beer know about our
favorite subject exactly, so I'm not gonna complain.
Speaker 1 (52:59):
Even a bad day at the office is a good day.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
That's right, and that's gonna be it for this episode.
You can find show notes up on the website at
how to money dot com, But buddy, that's gonna be
it for this one. So until next time, Best Friends Out,
Best Friends Out.
Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel and I am Matt,
and today we're talking dirt cheap travel with Lauren and
Stephen from Trip of a Lifestyle.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yes, I think most people they see traveling as a
luxury Joel. Right, It's something that isn't completely necessary, and
so because of that they choose to delay.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Which then means they're actually not all.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
That good at traveling. It's like working out. The more
you do it, I think, the better you get at it.
And if that same person sees travel as a luxury good,
I think that also means that they expect to spend
a ton of money on it as well, oftentimes later
in life, which our guests today have completely disproven. We're
joined by the couple behind Trip of a Lifestyle, Lauren
and Stephen, who are going to share how they travel
(01:00):
on the cheap and so here's a quick and dirty
little bio on them. They embarked on a forty five
day road trip after college, then rather than honeymooning in
Hawaii for a week, they stuck around for six months instead.
Shortly after that, they purchased their first home in cash,
and so this just goes to prove that they weren't
spending all of their money on travel, and after they
(01:22):
bought their first place, they set out on a seven
month road trip to visit every national park. Oh and
by the way, they also both retired from their full
time jobs at the age of twenty nine, so at
this point they live semi retired lives, which sounds like
the title of the third Eyeblind album. That's maybe more
in line with how we are living our lives. But
(01:43):
Lauren and Steven, thank you so much for joining us
today on the podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Thanks for having us appreciate it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Is it possible to look up to people who are
much younger than you? Matt? I don't know. I might
be looking up to Lauren Seene right now. Guys. The
first question we ask everyone who comes on the show
is what do you like to spend money on? What's
your craft beer equivalent? Because Matt and I spend a
good bit ofm on beer. Some people might think it's ridiculous.
What is that thing for you? Even though obviously you're
saving the investing, you're thinking about your future too.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Yeah, our biggest splurge area is probably coffee, where kind
of snobbish in a way. We have very particular tastes,
and if we were to go to like a random
coffee shop and try to get a cup of coffee
that we would really love, it would probably be upwards
of ten dollars.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
So we're not talking folders here, nor are you talking
about the straight shot of espresso.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
You're getting kind of like that organic fixs to go
along with it.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
I'm guessing, well, we do love espresso, just like a
lot of it, highly concentrated, highly concentrated oat milk, you know,
the works.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
And so there you go.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
That's see, that's the kind of organic stuff I'm talking
about all the other things that I skip.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
But earlier this year we purchased a four hundred dollars
espresso maker and that has brought that coffee cost that
would be like an our typical cup of coffee down
to like a dollar, I would say, And so it's
made it much more affordable to have our little luxury
cup of coffee in the morning.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Very nice. So the home baristas, I like that.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Heck yes, Steven, is this going to be your your
craft beer equivalent as well?
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Oh? Definitely a shared passion. Every every morning. Whoever wakes
up first knows they have to bress.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
You're in charge of it. I just stay under the
covers and be like a coffee. Steve was like all
the more reason for me to be a night owl
and in the morning.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
That definitely happened.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
In preparing to talk with y'all, I saw that while
y'all were in we didn't even talk about y'all road
tripping out in Australia, but that that's.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
A part of your story that hopefully we'll have time
we'll do.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
But uh, you talked about like you were somewhere where
there was like a severe Australian drought. There's like no water,
but you can still buy you could still get a
nice coffee, which you were.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
Excited about, yes, out in the middle of nowhere. Literally,
any establishment in Australia, like if they serve any kind
of food or drink, there is an espresso machine in
that establishment, whether it's a gas station or like a McDonald's,
Like it's a proper setup with whole beans that they're
grinding on the spot for you and very European.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Surprisingly, McDonald's in Australia has actually a great cup of coffee.
They call it macas out there. That's their interesting for McDonald's.
But yeah, they're serious about coffee out there.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Not to dwell on this too long, but I went
to Australia for a little while and I fell in
love with the flat white, which apparently began they started
making that beverage in Australia and it's and yeah, you
get even a cheap flat white at the seven to eleven,
it was like a dollar and it was so much
better than most flat whites you're going to get in
the States.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Sure, so all the coffee there was like amazing anywhere
you go.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Had no idea that they were so on top of
their coffee game there. Okay, Lauraen and Steven, let's talk
about personal finances before we continue to talk about Australia,
because I think I saw, if I read this quickly,
you were saving like sixty to eighty percent of your income.
This is back like starting out, back when you were
in your twenties. What was the inspiration for y'all to
go like just so stinking hard in those early years?
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Honestly, you know, we graduated college together. We moved out
to California for a little minute for me to try
out a grad school program there that I ended up
not sticking with but basically, you know, we were together
living this frugal, naturally frugal college lifestyle. Most people in
college are broke and kind of have to live frugally
(05:24):
because they have to write, and we were pretty happy
with our life, like we never felt deprived as college students.
Like a lot of people say college is the best
years of your life, right, and we definitely felt that
way too, And we weren't spending much. And then soon
after that we got real jobs and they weren't like fancy,
high paying real jobs. I My first real job out
(05:46):
of college was a public school teacher, started at thirty
eight thousand dollars a year. Lauren was making just a
little bit less than that. But weirdly, because we were
used to this college lifestyle that felt like a fortune
to us. Just paying our normal bills, we were like
left over with tons of money from every paycheck, and
(06:07):
our checking account just started to kind of fill up,
and they're like, what do we do with this money?
And that's where we kind of discovered the idea of
investing and that you can turn extra money into even
more money and perpetual income. And so you know, we
learned about investing that us even more excited about the
idea of saving large percentages of our income, and it
(06:27):
kind of just snowballed from there.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Did it ever feel like, well, we're making more money,
we should clearly start to upgrade this in that I mean,
that's the traditional American reaction to an increase in income
is to spend a good portion of it, if not
more even than you're bringing in. So, yeah, what made
you decide, now, let's keep living like college students? You said,
we were happy that that was a good way to live.
(06:51):
But what made you decide that there weren't all these
different ways that you wanted to change your life as
after you graduated and started making more.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
So pretty soon we discovered the idea of investing right
that your extra money can create income for you in
the future, passive income. We thought about, like, well, okay,
if we are reasonably happy with the material stuff we have,
like our level of like car and housing and all
the basic needs food stuff like that, you know we
(07:20):
could upgrade that stuff. Sure, that's definitely an option that's
on the table. But when you realize money can make
more money, you start to say, well, wait a sec
if I save enough if I invest enough, I could
actually stop working. Like that, that money can buy you
your freedom, the freedom to do whatever it is with
the rest of your life that you want. It could
actually buy you back forty plus years, you know, from
(07:43):
sitting in an office or whatever, or a classroom in
my case. So we got pretty excited about that idea,
and I think that helped to prevent us from undergoing
that like lifestyle inflation. But also I mean just the
fact that we were pretty happy with what we had,
but we were appreciative of the lifestyle we were already living.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
Yeah, I think when you are like setting out to
create a life that you enjoy every day, then I
don't think you end up feeling deprived or in want
of anything. And that was kind of where we were at.
Like we enjoyed our life. We still like took little breaks.
We were living in Orlando, Florida at the time, and
(08:21):
so it wasn't very far to like go to the beach.
Orlando has really great bike trails. Like, we still enjoyed
our life when we weren't working. And you know, to
Steven's point about our finances, we kind of did the
math and we're when we set a savings goal, and
we started tracking our net worth every month toward this goal,
and that was really encouraging too. So we were kind
(08:42):
of seeing that number ticking up toward the goal, and
that I feel like also helped keep us on track.
It was really encouraging, like, look, how look what we
were able to do this month, Like look how much
we were able to save, Look how much we're increasing,
And you know, it was this shared goal. We were
excited about it, and I think that really helped.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
To you a specific example about the lifestyle inflation thing.
I rode my bike to work every day, yes, which
prevented us from ever buying a second vehicle. So we
shared one used car all the time, Lauren, most of
the time drove a car to work.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
Yeah, my office was further.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
And you know that helped financially in a massive, massive way.
All the money that wasn't spent on a second car
was invested, which is like, really the number one thing.
You don't undergo depreciation on the second car, You don't
have maintenance and gas and insurance on the second car
and all these things. But most people look at that
and they say, wow, you rode your bike to work
every day. That's like an ultra frugal sacrifice that you
(09:37):
made for your finances. And I never viewed it that
way because I really liked riding my bike to work.
I got free exercise, extra calories burned every day, my
health improved, I arrived to work a little more awake
and energized. Like it was just a positive on all fronts,
all upside, no downside. And a lot of our choices.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Were like that, Yeah, you're like, jokes on you. I
really like this story and that's the we're kind of reframing.
I think that's so powerful, right when we're talking about
stick toitiveness, And I think that's why, like, that's why
people they try a diet and after like a month
they give up, and it's because the desired outcome is
something less, it's not as deep, right, And I think
(10:17):
that connection to no, I'm not doing this to save
a few bucks, I'm doing this because this is the
kind of person I want to be, is so much
more powerful and it can create more of a long
lasting change, definitely.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
And then yeah, clearly had some personal discipline when it
came to scaling back and keeping some of those desires
in check. But how much did your community have an
impact on that, because oftentimes the people that we surround
ourselves with can have a positive or negative impact. Did
your friends and family react negatively to how it was that,
in this case that you were choosing to not spend
your money.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
I think in the early days, friends and family definitely
wondered like, hey, like, you have a decent job now
and everything, like why don't you drive a little bit
better car, why don't you have two cars? Or why
don't you live a little bit bigger place or whatever
it is. I'm sure there was some of that, but
over the long run, you know, when we were twenty
two and living frugally like college gyments, people are like,
(11:09):
why don't you upgrade a little bit? And then by
the time we were like late twenties or early thirties,
you know, now, I'd like to think that that influence
is kind of going the opposite direction a little bit,
because I think that in a good way, people that
we know are seeing the kind of life that we
get to live now because we did those things, you know,
(11:29):
taking six and seven month vacations on a regular basis
and not going to a job every day, that people
are starting to get curious about, like, hey, so, how
exactly did you do that? And really the answer ultimately
is all of that stuff that's just a little abnormal,
the frugal not upgrading your lifestyle stuff that you reference.
(11:49):
So I kind of think I think that influence is
starting to reverse back the other direction.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Now, Okay, so I'm thinking about how So before we
hit record, we were talking about something that y'all are
actually doing tomorrow, which is heading to a college town.
Y'all are gonna do some marketing with the a business
that you started. You've got like a tutoring company. Talk
to me about like you've retired from full time work, right,
and so y'all kind of live like this quote unquote
(12:14):
semi retired life that we kind of alluded to earlier,
but you're still working. So talk to us just about
how maybe you view work at this point in time,
because it's it's obviously not something that's necessary. Y'all are
essentially coast fire, but you are still doing this additional work.
Why is it that you continue to work in this way?
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Yeah, so, in fact, we're fully fire. I mean, we
could live one hundred percent off of our investments at
this time, and I wanted to. But we did start
a business about a year ago. It's a college too.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
Right after we came back from Australia. Actually we were
like all rested up, enjoying life, where like that was
fun and easy, and a friend approached us to talk
about this idea.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Yeah, So to give some context on that, though, about
three or four years before that, we spent basically hanging
out at home, which you know, we live at the
beach now, so hanging out at the beach a lot,
traveling about three to six months out of each one
of those years. So we were like pretty recharged from
like the career stage of our lives, because.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
You're pretty far from burnout because you opposite of burnout, right, right,
So we're thirty four now, so it's like, you know,
we had years of kind of chilling for the most part,
and so after a while, like you start to itch
for some kind of like productive thing.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Not to say we did nothing during those.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
Years, but right, we have our blog and you know,
we work on that as well, but we were.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Open to the idea of like putting in some hours
towards something that we cared about and was exciting. So
a friend of ours approached us right after our Australia trip.
We were in like a great mood because we had
just come back from this three month vacation, and he
was like, hey, you know, you know that business idea
we had always talked about because he was a former
coworker of mine from a previous employe, and we had
(14:01):
always talked about this idea is like we should do that.
I was like, all right, I mean I look at Laura,
I like, what do you think should we do it?
And you know, she didn't say no.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
I was like, oh, you know, the part that we're
in now, this part of the business a year later
is like what I was envisioning. I was like, Oh,
it'd be fun, like anytime we're traveling to like stop
in do a college and like do some marketing and
have you know, it's we end up in college towns
all the time anyway, because there's always like great food,
you know, great atmosphere stuff to do in college towns
(14:33):
when we're on road trips, and so it's like, oh,
it's like a really nice fit. But I wasn't anticipating
the like year of work that we have had to
put in thus.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Far, our last twelve months or so of life have
definitely been the opposite of retirement. I mean, I say
that we just got home from a forty two day
road trip like a few days ago. But for the
most part, for the past year, we've been working really
hard on this project and it's been rewarding. It's been cool,
it's growing. I mean, we both worked our careers for
(15:04):
the most part just as employees, you know, doing the
traditional like work at a job, get a steady paycheck
and save it and put it in the stock market, right,
And that's how we retired. But now it's like it's
like a whole new, exciting and different world to run
our own business, and so I don't regret the choice,
even though it's been a lot of work.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
Yeah, it's been fun to experience like entrepreneurship in this way.
Both of our parents have a lot of entrepreneur like background,
Like Steven's dad was a small business owner. My dad's
had a lot of different like random gigs he's done too,
and so you know, I think it's kind of in
our blood a little bit, and so it's been fun
to to really try it out risk free.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Honestly, Like that's what I was going to hone in
on Lauren is like the risk free aspect. It's so
much easier to start something and you can kind of, hey,
this is a crossover something I'm good at and passionate about,
and like, I also don't necessarily have to hit a
grand slam here. I can hit a single and and
just kind of see see what develops because you don't
have to have the income to put food on the
(16:07):
table in the same way. Did that kind of make
it a little bit easier of a decision?
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
I think that, you know, whether I would like to
admit it or not, maybe part of the reason why
I didn't jump straight into starting my own business many
years ago is because the steady paycheck is attractive, right,
I Mean, there's risk that that's involved with starting a business.
You got to pay your bills and stuff, and so
that that's not even a thought anymore, like you said,
(16:33):
which is great. And the initial cash outlay for this
business was pretty low. I mean we personally put in
like I don't know, like five thousand dollars or something
like that if I remember correctly, maybe even less than
that to get it started. So it's like, what's the
worst case scenario, Like, so, yeah, it's exactly exactly what
you said.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
I'm curious too, Like, so we've talked a lot about investments, Lauren,
I'm curious. Was there a part so Steven, it sound
like with you it maybe it was maybe more an
intellectual itch, right, Maybe it was your buddy, it was
a friend of yours I had reached out to you.
Is some of this also due to the fact that
you're trying to kind of bridge the gap, like you're
not fully retired, you're not at the quote unquote retirement
age where you're fifty nine and a half you can
(17:13):
start tapping retirement funds. How much of this is logistics
where you're kind of like, well, it'd be nice if
we made a little bit extra money here on the side,
in the here and now this year to kind of
cover some of the day to day expenses.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
And is any part of it boredom with travel too?
Speaker 4 (17:27):
I don't think that there's a boredom with travel. Yet
we keep finding new places to go and so that
makes it makes it fun and interesting and new.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Logistically speaking, there's really not an issue like in our
day to day cash flow. So for context, in our
investment portfolio or our total net worth, like about I
want to say, seventy percent or so of that is taxable,
meaning that it's not sheltered by like iras or four
oh one k's or anything like that where you can't
(17:59):
tap it until fifty nine and a half. And even
the thirty percent or so that is in those types
of accounts, there are ways to access those early, right
There's things like the Roth Conversion Ladder, and there's there's
various different tricks you can use to access that money.
So logistically speaking, it really I don't think would be
a huge problem if we wanted to like live off
(18:20):
our portfolio right now. But I mean, like you said,
it is pretty nice to just have some extra money.
And in reality, we have never actually had to withdraw
from our portfolio because we've always had some kind of
little side gigs. We've had a photography business that we've
run together since high school. And I say business lightly,
I mean it's like a side gig, you know, like
(18:42):
once in a while we'll shoot a wedding.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
Or someone recommends us and we go do a wedding.
Like we have a wedding I think in October of
this year, and we had a wedding last October, and like,
I feel like we're doing like one or two a
year at this point, or like someone's grad photos or whatever.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
And I maintained a contract with my former employer for
just a little bit of remote freelance work after I
worked there full time. Lauren has done the same thing
in the past with previous employers.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
I've done that a few times. Now. I just have
one client that I do social media for, but that's
like not very much work. And yeah, so we've had
enough income that we really haven't had to worry about
the logistics of things. However, one of the ideas I
had about this new business was, yeah, in case any
(19:29):
of those random, various income streams were to dry up,
not the stock market, but like our other little income things,
it would be cool to have like another one just
to see and we get to do this experiment in entrepreneurship.
So yeah, totally that was part of the motivation too,
I guess cool awesome.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
We have alluded to a bunch of trips you've taken.
It's just in multi month long trip, so we actually
have a bunch of questions. This is something you guys
cover a whole lot. Obviously, the name of your Instagram
and of your brand is Trip of a Lifestyle, So
we're going to talk a whole lot about travel and
saving money on travel. Get to a bunch of questions
on that right after this. All right, we are back
(20:16):
from the.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Break talking with Lauren and Stephen of Trip of a Lifestyle.
And I mean, it's the title of the episode, right
dirt Cheap Travel, So we got to talk about the
actual travel part and not just work, which is like
the opposite of travel everything that we've talked about so far.
But I want to hear not only have you saved
money like when it comes to the big ticket items
when it comes to travel, but also like just some
(20:37):
of those smaller ways that y'all have been able to
save as well.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
But I'm curious.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
I get the impression that y'all are pretty detail oriented
when it comes to tracking how much you're spending, especially
when it comes to travel. Have you found that you
have spent more or less money when it comes to
staying at home living your normal life versus being on
the road and the expenses associated with that.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
We definitely spend more money out on the road then
we do when we're living at home, but it's not
very much more so, our main mode of travel, especially
when we're at home in North America, is traveling around
in our camper van, so there's actually no lodging expense.
And then the weird thing is if we do go
(21:19):
out in our camper van, that leaves our house unoccupied, right,
And so if we're traveling for a long period of time,
we've actually rented out our house and then collected income.
So if you were to subtract that out of the
expenses of the travel, would probably be coming out ahead
in that type of situation.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
And it's not just the camper van that makes that
possible either. A lot of people are like, well, I
don't I don't want to do van life, so you know,
travel can't be cheap for me. But another example of
that is we went to Hawaii for six months for
our honeymoon, like you mentioned earlier.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
Yeah, for that trip, our lease was actually up at home,
so we just left, moved to Hawaii and got a
six month lease on an apartment there. Honestly, the was
roughly the same and we got to kind of live
our normal lifestyle now in a new place. We bought
a car while we were there, a cheap used car,
and we were able to sell it back when we
(22:11):
were done. We actually made one thousand dollars on that sale.
So our rental car costs, you could say it didn't exist.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Our negative rental car costs.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
Our hotel costs was just rent. It was the same
as it was living at home. Right, and then food,
I mean, we're living here now, so we've got a
full kitchen, refrigerator, stove, we're making our own meals, we're
buying food at Costco. Our costs monthly expenses in Hawaii,
I think we're what the same?
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Yeah, at home?
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Well you can do that because parts of Hawaii have
a Costco and Costco is the big money saver in Hawaii. Truly,
Like if you going to the other grocery, SA a
heck of a lot more in hawaiis does it they
not have all these in Hawaii? I don't think so, ye,
So Like truly it's a massive game.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Costco is a life saver. To give some numbers to this,
back then, the Hawaii trip was in twenty fifteen. Our
annual spending at home at that time was twenty two
thousand dollars a year combined for two people, like including
rent and food and like every expense you can possibly
think of. That was our bottom line total for a year,
twenty eleven thousand dollars a year per person basically, which
(23:19):
I guess is technically below the federal poverty line.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
But we never never built that way at all. Didn't
feel that as affordable.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
That is how we were able to save sixty to
eighty percent of teacher salaries, you know. But when we
moved to Hawaii, because we leased an apartment long term,
like a local wood, we bought a car and sold
it for the exact same amount, actually one thousand dollars
more than what we paid for it, and we did
all kinds of travel hacks like that, and most of
(23:48):
our entertainment was just going outside because Hawaii is pretty cool.
All you really have to do is walk out the
front door to have fun. Our annual spend rate there
was exactly equal, so we spent net about eleven thousand
dollars total in the six months we were there, So
that's the same twenty two thousand dollars a year combined.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yeah, that's one of the things too, that long long
form travel can do, right, because yeah, when you're talking
about short term travel, you're talking about hotel rooms and
not having a place to cook, or even if you're
rent an airbnb, you run it for three nights and
guess what, it's not going to be nearly as cheap
as running something for a month or six months or
something like that. And then rental cars versus kind of
what you're doing like a little hack there to actually
(24:26):
make money on the transportation you're using. I'm curious too,
a lot of people with who are super into travel, right,
they're using credit cards to help reduce the cost. But
you guys, you're less interested in paying with points. You
do like the credit card game, but you prefer to
get cash for those points instead of points, right, So
I'm just curious to know how you guys factor credit
(24:47):
cards into your travel money savings, and then why you
kind of take a different approach than a whole lot
of other people in the space.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
We travel so frugally, you know, spending instead of on hotels,
on a camper van or on an apartment lease in Hawaii,
that's you know, one fifth or less of the price
that it would be to get hotels every night, and
you can't do those things with points, so you can
(25:14):
take cash back and let's say you get let's say
you get a cash bonus on a credit card of
five hundred dollars, and you could have had seven hundred
dollars worth of hotels instead. Well, that's a little bit more,
it's two hundred dollars more. But I can get a
multiple much much better than that by just spending more
efficiently on things that can't be bought with those luxury
(25:36):
hotel and airline points and things like that. So that's
kind of the answer, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Yeah, and you mentioned the ability for y'all to basically
have a negative cost of transportation while you're in Hawaii.
You did the same thing in Australia when it came
to the car that y'all used to drive around the
entire continent.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Basically of Australia.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
That's a little trick there as to how it was
you were able to travel affordably while you got to Australia.
But what about actually getting to Australia, because that's an
expensive plane ticket. I mean, maybe that's one of the
reasons I haven't been to Australia and Joel.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Has because that loaded. But how did you say.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
When it came to finding a deal on tickets to Australia.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
Yeah, So for that I was just trying to get
a sense of you know, we're in Florida, and so
you could either go you know, across over Africa in
land and say Perth on the other side of Australia,
or you could go westward, you know, across the United States,
across the Pacific in land in Sydney. And I didn't
(26:38):
really know because you know, we have a first time
going you know, what was the most common flight, What
was the like regular route you know that might be
cheaper to do. And it looked like everyone every flight
was basically going west with stopovers in Hawaii most of
the time, like almost every plane was like stopping in Hawaii,
refueling and going on. And so I was like, well,
(27:00):
if every flight is doing that, these flights are expensive.
What if I booked instead a leg from Florida to
Hawaii separately and then like picked it up the next day,
just stay a night in Hawaii or whatever and leave
the next day to go from Hawaii to Sydney in Australia.
And so when I split up the flight instead of
booking one not direct, but one flight that goes from
(27:23):
Florida to Australia, and instead booked Florida to Hawaii Hawaii
do Australia as two separate flights. The price dropped dramatically.
I mean, what did I pay?
Speaker 3 (27:33):
I want to say it was close to half price
to do it that way.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
I think I think it was fifteen hundred for one
plane ticket one way, and then I got them for
five hundred each one way. By doing it split up
that way, you know, you got a factor in the
night that we stayed in Hawaii. We stayed at a
hotel that night, but even still, I think that hotel
was one hundred and twenty dollars.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Yeah, it wasn't too bad with.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
Airport shuttles, so it was very reasonable. And if we
wanted to, we could stayed in Hawaii longer and made
that its own little side trip too.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
And that hack that Lauren used, that's actually pretty generalizable.
It's not the first time she did that before, she's
the one who discovered it. But basically, anywhere you want
to go that's a really long flight that has like
a connection in between, it's worth taking a look on
Google flights at whatever the most common connection point is
that's usually the cheapest ticket that you can get that
(28:27):
connects you there, and then just break up that connection separately.
And another thing to remember is, like our stopover was
in Hawaii. Well, if you've never been to Hawaii before,
that stopover might not be a drawback. That might actually
be a positive for you. What if you stopped in
Hawaii and stayed for a week just because you wanted to,
that could actually be a plus tier tip. So you know,
feel free to think about it positively that way too,
(28:49):
not as an inconvenience.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
I'm curious. I want to know a little bit more
about the Campra van. You've mentioned it a few times now,
and they make some really fancy ones out there these days,
like fancy, yeah, yeah, that's all I'm here. So I
even saw the other day, like I think you guys
have a Nissan, but Nissan is actually about to re
release one of their pre made campervands like prefab on
the inside. And the starting price is it's not absurd,
(29:12):
but I want to say it's almost forty grand. You
guys did it for a heck of a lot less
than that, So talk to me about creating that Campra
van and why that makes so much sense. Why is
such a big money saver.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
So our plan with the campra van that purchase was
for going to every national park. We knew, we had
this plan. We're going to go, you know, six months
or so, you know, everywhere in the United States. We're
going to drive from Florida all the way up to Alaska.
It needs to have good gas mileage because that's one
of the big downsides to these kinds of recreational vehicles.
(29:44):
A lot of times they get terrible gas mileage and
that's really going to add up over six months of driving.
And so that was our first big line item, and
we're like, how do we decrease that cost and also
add in we get shelter, right.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
So, yeah, the we F three fifty with the with
the pole behind is going to be a heck of
a lot more money on every front.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
Exactly, And so we went with an economical choice. Our
van is a Nissan Envy two hundred. It's in the
same class as like the Transit the Ford Transit Connect.
It's a really small compact like city cargo van. It's
it's just big enough in the back if you lay
(30:25):
down to fit a full size bed. That's the size
of the cargo area. But it gets what is it,
twenty four miles to the twenty six miles to the gown.
So it's very reasonable compared to other vans that get like,
you know, nine or whatever.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
And it was a twenty thirteen we bought back in
twenty nineteen for twelve thousand, three hundred dollars and had
like something like sixty thousand miles on it. We drove
that thing to I believe it now has something like
two hundred and fifteen thousand miles on it. I really
gets more, maybe even a little more than that. I
haven't looked at the odominant a little bit. It's it's
(30:59):
a we ought to crap out on us. I'm not
gonna lie. We actually have just purchased a replacement for
that van. Uh details forthcoming on our blog all about that.
But it served us.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Really well with he got your money's worth.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Almost no maintenance for all the way too, well past
two hundred thousand miles, and it saved us literally hundreds
of nights in hotels. So we made our money back
like crazy on that thing.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
It sounds like you were able to say, but because
you didn't like outfit it so that it was like
instagram worthy, you know, like everyone's got these pictures where
they're like got the back doors opened and there's a
picture of their feet with like a pour over coffee,
which actually you guys probably actually had.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
For our van.
Speaker 4 (31:41):
Literally, like I alluded, we we have a full sized
bed in the back, and we just built a platform
on top on top of like the base of the
and our beds on top. So it's like there's cargo
storage under the bed and that's all that's back there.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
And that's enough space for y'all. Yeah, I assumed, So
how much how much cooking? Because like you've got your
you know, you can get like a couple of Marina
wool shirts and you're like, sweet, now I don't have
to do any laundry except for like once a week
to wash my one.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Shirt or something like that.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
But like there's other stuff that you need, especially if
you're looking to say that I'm thinking about food, how
does that work for y'all? Like what are some of
the ways that you've found that you're able to reduce
the cost of yeah, feeding yourselves.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Trail mix all day every day, man weeks on end.
Speaker 4 (32:21):
So we do always bring a little camp stove. It's
a little propane a burner like screws onto the top
of this little can of propane, and we bring like
a pot and some silverware and bowls, and we cook,
you know, can stuff soups and stuff that's like easy
to make that doesn't require like a lot of preparation.
(32:42):
We make a lot of sandwiches and things like that.
We just added a cooler to the mix, so now
we can have like some cold stuff, which is new.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
But in truth, we actually eat out quite a bit
when we road trip. We just tend to go to
like expensive we go to like fast food or fast
casual places like pizza. Yeah. So what we've done though
with that is we've we've picked out a few places
that are our favorites, mostly out of necessity. We're both vegans,
so we have like kind of limited options for places
(33:14):
that cater to us. But we've picked out like our
most commonplaces that are really well available nationally and even
sometimes internationally, and we've figured out some menu hacks where
you can actually order menu items exactly equivalent to what
you would get if you ordered like a number three
combo or whatever, but you order them in a strange
way where you're like putting together side items or whatever.
(33:37):
And we've actually been able to reduce the price of
certain menu items at certain restaurants by as much as
seventy five percent sometimes by doing these crazy.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Menus frank and ordering yeah yeah, h strange order number
three place like our.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Most recent one. We were just on this this forty
two day road trip to Canada just this year, and
we figured out a menu hack at A and W,
which is a burger joint very very common in Canada
basically and like every single town. And so I think
the number was something like this. The Beyond Burger, which
(34:11):
is the vegan burger that's on their menu, costs like
I want to say, nine or twelve dollars something like
that Canadian dollars. Yeah, And we figured out a menu
hack where if you order like the bun and the
patty and the toppings and things completely separately as like
line items, and then just assemble it yourself. When you
(34:31):
receive it, it's the exact same burger. And we literally
got it as well as two dollars or fifty cents
by doing it that way.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Wait, so they allow you to piecemeal order a burger.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
So she did it probably at a dozen different ANW locations,
and we never had a single problem.
Speaker 4 (34:48):
It's got to be super easy to ring in because
no one had any issue with it.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Honestly, that's fascinating.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
Yeah. Another like burger hack that kind of works anywhere
is adding a second patty to a so you get
like double the meat less bread per meat basically and
just splitting that. And so we do that a lot
of times, and that works pretty much everywhere. It's always
cheaper to like add a second patty than it is
to order a whole nother burger. And like, I don't
(35:16):
we don't need like double the fries. Like, it's fine.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
Do the same thing at your bowtlet like get one
bowl and then just get them to load you up
on the free ingredients like beans and veggies and stuff
like that.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Oh yeah, I've done that before.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Man, you can easily split one of those bowls. You'll
you'll be suffering if you actually ate that whole thing
by yourself.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
Yeah. Lace pizzas like that too. You can add as
much as you want and we'll split a pizza that
way by just having lots of toppings. On it.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
It's like literally just a mountain everest of toppings, uh, Lauren,
not to uh, not to demigrate your your your better
half for lesser half of even but I know he
gets stinky in the back of that camper van. Okay,
And I've heard you guys use Planet Fitness not even
just to pump iron, but to stay clean. Is that right?
Is that that is in Plant Fitness around the country.
(36:02):
How are you guys using the fitness chain to save
money in that regard?
Speaker 4 (36:05):
Yeah, So when we were when I was planning our
National Parks road trip, I realize like, hey, you know,
gyms all have showers because it's people want to rinse
off after they work out. And so if there's a
chain that is you know, most popular everywhere whatever, we
could just be members and show up and shower and
you know, Plant Fit that we had a Plant Fitness
(36:26):
right next to our house where where we were living
at the time, and looking into it, they actually have
I think the largest footprint when I did when I
looked at it, Bigger than YMCA, bigger than Anytime Fitness,
Bigger than La Fitness locations across the US and actually
now some in Canada and they have a second tier membership.
(36:46):
They have like a basic membership that's like everyday cheap,
but the second tier membership, the Black Card, lets you
bring a guest every visit and so you actually get
like two for the price of one that way. But
the Black Card also enabled you to go to any location,
So we both got to go to the gym on
one membership anywhere in the country. And a lot of
(37:07):
Planet fitnesses are twenty four to seven, so you can
like sometimes we didn't work out. Sometimes we literally just
showed up to shower, but you could show up at like.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
But it has been an encourager to actually go to
the gym once in a while. Around the road, it's tough.
Speaker 4 (37:19):
It's tough to show up at the gym and not
like work out, you know, like I'm already here, I'm
already going to shower, So like.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
Is that guilt factor?
Speaker 4 (37:27):
Yeah, Like there's a little bit of like am I
really just going to show up and not work out?
Like I'm already here? Like that's the biggest hurdle to overcome,
is like actually getting to the gym and like we're
already here. So it did help. It does help us
stay in better shape, I would say, especially after sitting
on long drives that you get to get out and
move and so we like it for both of those reasons.
But yeah, for sure, it's a great way to like
(37:49):
stay clean, stay active. And yeah, they're everywhere. They're in
Hawaii now. Like last time we were in Hawaii, there
were Planet Fitnesses on the Big Island and I was like,
what this is new. And even in uh Canada on
this trip that we just came back from, there were
like quite a few that was surprised to see a
lot of them. Twenty four hour two.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
That's one of the one of the perks. So so
I pay for a gym membership and that's one of
the perks. And recently Jill started working taking a shower
here at our office because water is also included, taking
advantage of the free water in our rent. It's sort
of like the free condiments where it's just like, well,
I'm gonna pay the rand no matter what, so I'm
gonna take all the showers that I was, right, But
Lord and Steven, we got more that we're gonna get to.
(38:30):
Maybe we'll talk a little bit about fire early retirement
we'll get to that more right after the break.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
We're back from the break, still talking with Lorne and
Steven talking about traveling dirt cheap, and I'm curious you
guys are. I don't know if you guys would consider
yourselves influencers, but I think in some ways you are.
You've got the blog, you've got the Instagram, and people
follow you to learn tips and tricks about how to
this fire and cheap travel lifestyle. But most of the
(39:04):
people who put a lot of effort into becoming influencers,
they do it because they want to monetize that thing, right,
And the fire movement has sometimes been criticized because early
retirees they have just actually shifted their work to doing
something else, or they're working their butts off to create content.
But I've seen that you two give all the money
that you earn from your blog and partnerships and stuff
(39:27):
like that away, So I don't know what was the
impetus behind that.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
So yeah, to address that kind of criticism, I guess,
first of all, there's nothing wrong with the starting a
blog or social media or whatever it is and having
the aim of monetizing it and making it into a business.
Whether you need that money or not. I don't think
that has anything to do with whether your retirement your
early retirement is legitimate or not. But with that said,
(39:52):
it makes sense that someone might have conflicting motives. Right, So,
if you have an affiliate link for something that's the
not necessarily the best thing for your audience, but it
pays really, really well, you might end up recommending it anyway,
even though you know of something better, right, and so
we never wanted anyone to distrust our advice because of
the presence of affiliate links. So what we decided on was,
(40:16):
we'll do the affiliate links. It seems like a waste
not to just make that money for stuff we're already
recommending anyway. And then we'll just take all the money
that comes through affiliate links and was donating one hundred
percent of it to charity. So that's what we did.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
This a nice way to pay it forward.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
I also saw over on your site that according to
y'all's calculations, it's going to cost y'all something like sixty
four million dollars. This is if you were to continue
working in your full time jobs and if you were
to bank additional raises, assuming just a basic cost of
living increase over the years, but even still you've chosen
not to take the more traditional path.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
I guess why is it still worth.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
It in your opinion to quit and for y'all to
have the freedom and to travel extensively like you have.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
At some point you have to realize what was the
point in the first place. Like if we go back
kind of to the beginning of this episode where we
talked about like what motivated us to continue to be
frugal and stuff, and the answer was freedom, right, freedom
to do with our time what we wanted to do.
And so obviously, at some point, enough money is enough money,
(41:19):
and you should just do things that you want to
do because what you can't get more of is time
on this planet. I mean, at some point, unfortunately, we're
all going to die. So yeah, that's really the ultimate
reason why you can't extend that logic of like what
would this compound to beyond a certain point? At some point,
enough money is enough money, all.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
Right, Lauren. Also the other thing, probably people are listening
to this and they're like, oh, you take six months
off here and three months off here and forty two
days off here, and that sounds like awesome, right, And
I guess it is potentially more available to people in
the work from home climate. They might be able to say, well, no,
I will to take a month and live in Colombia,
but I will I will work from there. But I
(41:59):
guess what would you say to people who hear about
the way you guys live your life and they say, yeah,
I got like two weeks from my employer. Do I
have to become fire in order to live this sort
of life? So you guys are talking about if so,
that's fifteen plus years down the road for me, even
when we're talking about saving money and doing it cheaply.
So what would you say to those people?
Speaker 4 (42:20):
So our trip to Hawaii in twenty fifteen, we had
only been at our full time jobs for like two
years at that point, like our first adult you know
jobs out of college. You know, we had saved up
quite a bit of money, but we weren't anywhere near
fire yet, you know, And so it was more that
that number that we had saved. I think we had
(42:41):
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars saved up at that point.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
So we our total network at that time was one
hundred and fifty thousand but that.
Speaker 4 (42:48):
Was like seven years of our living expenses, you.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Know, right, as we mentioned before, twenty two thousand dollars
a year is what we spent to live. So the
fact that we were so frugal and the fact that
we got our living expenses download meant that just that
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars net worth, it represents
seven years we could have taken straight off work if
we wanted to.
Speaker 4 (43:07):
Yeah, And so you know, we felt pretty confident being
able to go to our bosses, or at least in
my case because Stephen was a school teacher, so there's
a little less like negotiation, you know, with the public
school system and how flexible they are with your schedule.
But I went to my employer and I just said, hey,
I'm doing this. I'm moving to Hawaii for six months
(43:28):
and I like working here. I enjoy my work. Just
so you know, most of it can be done remotely,
and I'd be happy to do any part of what
I do currently from Hawaii. I'll wake up at what
you know, it's a five to six hour time difference
depending on the time of year. I will wake up
and I'll be available to you whenever you guys need
(43:49):
we can plan ahead, I'll make it happen. If you
would like to continue this relationship, I'd be happy to
make time for you while we're in Hawaii. And so
they ended up taking me up on that. And while
we were in Hawaii, I probably worked you know, ten
hours a week, and that was actually enough, you know,
with Stephen also doing some some freelance stuff tutoring and photography,
(44:10):
that actually allowed us to cash flow that trip. We
didn't tap our savings at all while we were in Hawaii.
That income was enough to pay you know, our our
super low you know, lifestyle type living expenses that we
had there.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
So even though we had seven years of living expenses
in the bank, we didn't go down to six point five.
By the end of the trip. We were still at
seven because we were making a little bit of money
along the way. By the way, I'll mention because Lauren
was a little modest about it, but she didn't ask
permission all right, to like, may I please employer go
(44:44):
on this trip, and will you please allow me to
do a little bit of part time work. We've actually
done that multiple times, both of us at various different.
Speaker 4 (44:52):
Pair to just quit straight up but I you know, instead,
instead I offered them, you know, to continue some kind
of relationship with them. And they were eager too, because
you know, it's hard to get employees that you should
trust and rely on, and so the fact that I
had been there for two years doing a good job,
they were like, yeah, absolutely, and then when are you
(45:12):
coming back? And I was like, I'm not sure that
I'm coming back here necessarily, and there was like that
was a very delayed conversation. But that's another story.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
It sounds like that conversation is it's even more possible
these days than it was, oh when you guys started
out than twenty years ago. Right, not only does the
technology exist, but also just that understanding from employers that
people are more likely to move to migrate somewhere else
to do something different, and yeah, if they know you already,
instead of applying for that remote position, it's like, how
(45:42):
about we make this position that's currently in person more remote?
These days, like there is, employers are so much more
open to that. So I think it's but yeah, not
begging for it, but knowing, hey, you guys know me,
I've put in the work over the years, and so
let's just change the way this looks.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
The fact too that for you to be proactive and
to make that sort of take that first step and
make that recommendation shows some like a level of initiative
that I think they're not expecting. And so then they're thinking,
well why not. Actually, they put together a nice little
package and how this is going to work. They've explained
the ends and the outs. I think that alone, right,
there can be almost enough to kind of convince them
to say, let's go ahead, give it a shot.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Make it easy for them to say yes exactly.
Speaker 4 (46:22):
I also gave them plenty of notice too. I mean
I told them months before we were planning to leave,
because if they did just want to replace me, you know,
I want them to have, right. I want to be
able to help train and that sort of thing, so
you know, leave it tomorrow, right. I was doing my
best to look out for them as well.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (46:39):
But I think there is a certain power in giving
them only two options, right, which is to say yes
to your proposal or lose you as an employee. So
I think that's different than going in and asking if
you could go on this trip? Right, They're very likely
to say no if you ask it.
Speaker 4 (46:57):
That way and to get the result you want. I
think in terms of the things that other people can repeat. Definitely,
that savings buffer gives you the confidence to negotiate for
what you want, get what you want in terms of
a longer vacation, that sort of thing, and then making
money while you're like not being opposed to making money.
(47:18):
I mean on our road trip, you know, years later,
when we were doing our National Parks road trip, I
want to say every two for every like three to
four days we were doing something fun. We had a
couple of days that we would sit in a coffee
shop for the day and just like you know, get
stuff done, and it felt really nice to have that
kind of break. You get a sense of you know,
(47:39):
you enjoy the fun a little bit more when you
have it contrasted with getting stuff done, and you feel
a little more productive, you have a little more purpose
baked into it. And so I think doing a little
bit of freelance work along the way can also make
these kinds of long term travel trips more affordable and
more palatable for folks.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Yeah, it makes that slow travel much more more possible
when you're able to do that. Lauren and Steven, thank you.
So much for talking with us at how to Money Today.
Where can folks learn more about Shaw Which'll are.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Up to you.
Speaker 3 (48:07):
So if you want some more tips on how to
travel cheaply, but also how to save a large portion
of your income by living a little more frugally, maybe
making more at side hustles, and then how to invest
all of that money and eventually retire early if that's
your goal. Our blog is Trip of a Lifestyle dot
com and our Instagram, TikTok YouTube. All those platforms is
(48:28):
at Trip of a Lifestyle except for Twitter slash x.
They got a weird character limit over there, so we're
ta lifestyle on that one.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
Awesome. Thank you guys for joining us. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (48:38):
Thank you for having us well.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
Joel, have you been bitten by the travel bug camper
van style?
Speaker 1 (48:44):
I could?
Speaker 2 (48:44):
I feel like I could see my wife and I
doing that with all the kids are gone. It's hard
to do with kids. I can't tough stage of life
that we're in right now.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
And I didn't ask them this question, but I was curious,
as a ridiculously tall dude, how might squeezing that thing
or not? I don't know, I might have to get
some a.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
Little bit bigger, maybe one that's yeah, I didn't make
XL a extra long.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
I would definitely need that.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
Well, you have a big takeaway though from our conversation today.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
At one point, Lauren said, set out to create a
life you enjoy every day, and I just think that's
like seem so basic but so true. And I think
sometimes we're living for that vacation or our lives are
out of control, packed to the gills, too busy in
our normal everyday weeks, and if we can just make
our lives a bit more enjoyable in the here and now,
(49:28):
healthy rhythms, yeah, maybe we'll feel less inclined to splurge
and spend big dollars on the getaway and maybe even
make those getaways potentially cheaper than our everyday lives.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
Totally totally agree, Yeah, that's what I would done. I
think that was like when we're talking about like lifestyle
creep and finding balance between going out on vacation, and
she's like, we don't have to really do that, We
didn't need to do that as much. If you kind
of find this healthy rhythms.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
And that's like that is so key to be able
to keep things under control, because if you like the
way you're living, if you like the lifestyle, it doesn't
matter what everyone else around you is doing or thinks,
because you're comfortable in your own exactly and you don't
mind keeping your spending as is and being the dude
who bikes to work or total the people who do
leave their jobs for six months when everyone else is
continuing to work. But you sign up for a different
(50:11):
way of living, and you did it on purpose.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
Yeah, along those lines there towards the end when we're
talking about long travel or slow travel, but she said
to have some of that purpose baked into those travels,
it allows you to switch it up. And I think
it's totally true that it would allow you to appreciate
the vacation in the spaces where you are visiting or
traveling at a level that you otherwise wouldn't. Right, Like,
imagine just going on this trip and you're just cramming
(50:35):
everything in. Certainly you're going to have a whole lot
of fun. But if you get to enjoy something and
then kind of step back and maybe do a little
bit of work and making a little bit of money,
I'm sure that doesn't hurt as well. But it just
helps to put some of that vacation in perspective. It's
less one hundred percent consumption. Emily and Selma just got
back from a trip to New York and she was saying,
oh man, it was so fun. But the tough thing
(50:55):
is when you're in a hotel and you don't have
a place to cook, it feels like you're just literally
consuming the city and everything is about what am I
going to do? What am I going to eat? And
there's something about slow travel that beholds itself, especially if
you're working a little bit here and there, to more
community oriented patterns than consumptive oriented patterns. And I think
when you go on a short trip, it's just so
(51:16):
much easier to take in a city in that way,
and I don't know, you don't feel as deep of
a connection to the place or to the culture. Totally agree, yeah,
And I think the same thing can apply too to
the overall work that you're doing. Right, And so they
talked about towards the beginning, we're talking about the business
that they're starting, the tutoring company, but the ability to
then turn to work that also has more purpose, right,
Like you're not doing it just for the sole purpose
(51:38):
of accruing more wealth. The fact that you have to
earn a paycheck in order to feed your consumption habits,
but you can do something that brings you a whole.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
Lot of fulfillment in its own right. Ultimately, I love
that a whole lot as well might pay off even
bigger in the long runer, I know, that's.
Speaker 2 (51:52):
What's so great about this, Like it frees you have
to be even more creative, right, Like they came back
from this long trip where they fell completely recharged. They
were the opposite of burned out. Yeah, and lo and behold,
there's this thing kind of just falls into their lap.
Isn't it funny how that happens?
Speaker 1 (52:03):
It's pretty cool? But all right.
Speaker 2 (52:04):
The beer you and I enjoyed today was called brew Daddy's.
This was a German style pilsner. It looks like a
collaboration between Steady Hand Beer Company as well as Mutation.
Speaker 1 (52:15):
What'd you think, well, as a daddy who likes to
drink beer like the Bruce brew Daddy myself, I enjoyed it,
But it was also I don't know that there was
anything terribly unique about this this beer. It tasted like
a slightly better version of a macro pilsner, which I'm
more inclined to pillsers these days, just because I feel
like my taste buds have been ransacked by the IPAs
(52:37):
and the barrel aged outs of this world over time,
and so it's nice to drink something that's just a
little chiller without being over the top really in anyway,
but also just didn't leave much of a mark necessarily either.
Speaker 2 (52:46):
Yeah, I'd agree with that it was tasty, but it
didn't have any overly specific or special flavor notes kind
of shining through it in its profile. But it's still
glad you and I got to enjoy it, So I mean, hey,
we still get to drink a beer know about our
favorite subject exactly, so I'm not gonna complain.
Speaker 1 (52:59):
Even a bad day at the office is a good day.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
That's right, and that's gonna be it for this episode.
You can find show notes up on the website at
how to money dot com, But buddy, that's gonna be
it for this one. So until next time, Best Friends Out,
Best Friends Out.
Hosts And Creators
Joel Larsgaard
Matthew Altmix
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