Mindy: Welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast where we interview Matt Kepnes and talk about travel hacking and living a nomadic lifestyle. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always is my sedentary co-host Scott Trench.
Scott: Ouch, Mindy with the hostile introduction today.
Mindy: Sedentary in that you have a baby and traveling with a baby is not as much fun as not traveling with a baby. She won’t be a baby forever. Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else. to introduce you to every money story because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you’re starting.
Scott: Whether you want to retire early and travel the world or not wait until you retired early and travel the world anyways, go on to make big time investments in assets like real estate or start your own business, we’ll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards your dreams.
Mindy: Scott, I am super excited to be here and I am super excited about our new segment, which is called the Money Moment. This is where we share a money hack, tip, or trick to help you on your money journey. Today’s money moment is, get rid of your cable package. I know many companies try to use this as a bundle your internet to make it cheaper, but many streaming services actually cost less and have live TV built in. Crunch the numbers and see if you come out ahead by separating out your services. Do you have a money moment for us? Email moneymoment@biggerpockets.com. All right, Scott, today’s show we’re talking about travel and travel hacking and I have a personal question for you. Where is the most favorite place you’ve ever been?
Scott: I’ll give you three quick ones. One, um, is Maui, as I mentioned on there. We, uh, if you go between January and March, the whales breed from the Arctic, they come down there to to breed and it’s pretty amazing to see a whale jumping every couple of seconds basically, um, off the coastline. It’s a wonderful experience. Ireland was absolutely fantastic. There’s a lot of just really fun culture and, uh, stuff going on there. I really love the Irish sports as well, like the Gaelic football and hurling and it’s kind of just got a unique experience and beautiful country. Um, and the last one I’ll say is when I was graduated college, I did a Euro trip, similar to Matt, a shortened version of what Matt kind of, uh, uh, is really known for our guest today, and that was a unique lifetime experience.
Mindy: That sounds awesome. And yeah, I’ve been to Hawaii in January. Um, I got my anniversary is in January. So I have been to Hawaii several times in January. And yeah, you just sit there on the beach and all of a sudden you’re like, a look a whale, a look a whale, a look a whale. It’s they’re just jumping all the time. It’s a really cool experience. Uh, what’s your favorite place?
Mindy: My favorite place that I’ve ever traveled was Greece. I went there in, I think 2018 and it was incredibly inexpensive. For some reason, I thought a place that beautiful was going to be super expensive like Hawaii can be super expensive, but it’s also so amazingly beautiful that you kind of get over the fact that it’s so expensive. Um, Greece was overwhelmingly beautiful and then you’re like, wait, how much is it? That’s it? It’s not more? And the whole time I was there, I was shocked at how beautiful it was and how inexpensive it was all at the same time. Um, the architecture, it’s like it sounds so stupid to say but it was it’s like it’s so old that everything is so, you know, it’s Europe is just different than America. America is like 200 years old and Europe’s like 2 million years old or whatever. So everything’s just different and I I love looking at all of that architecture and stuff. Kind of a real estate nerd, Scott, I don’t know if you know that.
Scott: You really enjoy those, uh, Spartan lifestyle travels.
Mindy: Matt Kepnes runs the award-winning travel site, nomadicmat.com, which helps people travel the world on a budget. He’s the author of the New York Times bestseller, How to Travel the World on $50 a Day and the travel memoir, 10 Years a Nomad. His writings and advice have been featured in the New York Times, CNN, the Guardian, Budget Travel, BBC, Time and countless other publications. Matt Kepnes, welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast. I’m so excited to talk to you today.
Guest: Thanks for having me.
Mindy: Let’s start off with a little bit about your background and how you started nomadicmat.com.
Guest: Uh, well, you know, I was I had just come back from 18 months traveling the world. Uh, I was 26, 27 at the time. somewhere like that. Uh, 2008. Uh, and I was working temp job in health care. I was basically, uh, the assistant had gone on maternity leave and I was just there to fill space and redirect phone calls and not break anything. So, uh, it was very clear I was to do no work. Um, so I had a lot of free time on my hands and just really wanted to get back on the road. So I created the website as a way to sort of be an online resume, you know, like come hire me. Here’s where I’ve been featured online. Here’s my bylines. Uh, there’s a blog component because I’ve been blogging before, so I want, you know, show people I could write. Um, really just designed it’s like personal blog slash online resume website. you know, everyone has a website, right? Um, really, that was it. no bigger vision than that.
Mindy: And what were you hoping they would hire you for?
Guest: I want to do like freelance writing, write guide books, that whole jam. Uh, so work for Lonely Planet, fromers, you know, all the big companies or maybe, you know, CNN Travel, you know, freelance write somewhere. Um, so yeah, I started, you know, pitching myself and worked a little lot of online publications, you know, 50 bucks, 100 bucks, uh, back then. Um, just trying to build my chops. went to conferences. and then just kept blogging on the side. But, you know, I had the the fortune to be there at the right time. You know, 2008, blogging was starting to take off. Uh there wasn’t a lot of traffic blogs. You know, you had, you know, the make money online blogs, you have finance blogs, you had, you know, blog her, lots of fashion, um, the mommy blogging craze, you know, so there was like, you know, a lot of things going on at that time. And so I went to all these networking events and you know, and that kind of helped because you know, I was there at the right time. So by 2010, 2011, uh, the blog had taken off enough where I could just work on it full-time.
Scott: Feels like YouTube and TikTok today as the cory, right? Like that blogging was like the was like that environment is for a lot of these folks that are creating content in that space.
Guest: Yeah, I would say it’s a little different. Like back then, like now it’s so accepted. You know, like kids are like, I want to be a Tok star, right? You know, back then, if I was like, I want to be a blogger, people like, what the hell is a blogger?
Scott: Back, back then when you got started, where did you find the opportunities for cost effective travel and and, you know, this pneumatic lifestyle in the first place? Were there were there more of them? Was it different than it is today?
Guest: I mean, I was a backpacker, so I was just staying in hostels and doing all the backpacker things, the cheap travel. you know, um, inexpensive meals, dorm rooms, uh, local buses. I mean just backpacking around. Um, and so that’s how I kept my cost out. You know, back then you’d make money either through Google ads, um, uh, or selling links. You know, you you’d come in be like, hey, if you put my link in the sidebar for 500 bucks, I’ll give you 500 bucks. And you’d say, okay. you know, because Google was so unsophisticated back then that you could basically spam websites with links and still rank high. So that’s what, you know, between those two and just selling like ebooks on travel. I was making like $5 to $8,000 a month. Uh, I mean had a plethora of websites. So that was enough to keep me traveling while also reinvesting in the website, hiring your designers and stuff.
Mindy: So how do you get started in travel hacking? I think there’s this idea that people want to do it, but they don’t know where to start.
Guest: I mean, I you got to get a credit card. I mean, that’s what the simple thing is. You know, the credit card is the vehicle that sort of washes your spending. you want to look at it that way, right? You spend money and you turn it into points. Um, on your on your credit card. Um, you know, and you have to pay your bill off every month. Travel credit cards come with a much higher interest rate than your your average credit card, right? So if you’re not paying your bill off every month, the points you’re gaining, you’re just losing interest. And so you definitely have to be able to pay your bill off completely. Um, but you need a credit card. like without a credit card, there’s no way to travel high.
Mindy: What are some of the best apps and websites that you would recommend travelers look to snag a good deal.
Guest: Well, it depends. Uh, you know, deals are forever changing. For example, for flight, there’s never one good website. There’s never actually one good website for anything because a good deal on one website is a bad deal a month from now. But some places I really love for flights is called Sky scanner. Um, Scott’s cheap flights, which is not called going, uh has a great email where they send out like last minute flight deals and or just faiir mistakes and so like, you know, there might be a cheap faiir to Japan and uh August for 200 bucks, you know, and so that’s a great website for flights. Sky scanner is another good website for flights. Uh, for hotels, Google is actually really good because if you type in to Google hotels in let’s say New York City and whatever date you want, they’ll show you uh, hotels, let’s say in New York City and wherever date you want, and they pull in all the data from all booking websites. And so you can see which one’s offering the cheapest rate that day and just book there. Rather than go to booking.com and then hotels.com and then Trivago and you know, you just you have it all in one place. That said, generally speaking, I find better deals at on booking.com. Uh, and then when you’re in Asia, Agoda, it just has better inventory. A G O D A. Um, for activities, uh that is a very um, fractured, uh booking environment, uh but get your guide is pretty good in terms of just seeing a lot of activities around the world. Um, they’re basically like an Expedia, they’re a reseller. So it’s not as cheap as just booking direct, but it basically puts it all in one place for you.
Scott: So Matt, I’m I’m uh trying to recreate this awesome lifestyle that you have blogged about and lived for the last, you know, many years and uh, just it just seems like an exciting, awesome way to spend years or a decade of my life. How where do I start? What is like the first thing I should be doing? What’s a practical kind of set of how to’s to get going down this path to beginning my nomadic series of adventures.
Guest: Yeah, I think the first thing I always tell people to do is to really just get a handle on your spending and savings. Most people really don’t know what’s going in and what’s going out. So when they sit down to say, okay, I want to take six months off. I want to take a year off or maybe they just want to take a month off, whatever. Um, then, you know, they say, oh, I can’t travel. I’m just I can’t save, you know, I have the bill is too much. And I always ask them it’s like, okay, well, where does the money go, right? And most people don’t, they’ll be like, well, you know, I have the mortgage, I have this bill, that bill. But then where it’s like, okay, but what do you spend every day? Because there’s really two like costs you have in your life. You have your fixed costs like your your mortgage and your car insurance or, uh, health insurance, whatever those costs are. And then you have all the fun costs, going to the movies, stopping to get a drink with a friend, even buying a bottle of water, you know, on the street because you’re thirsty. So I always hope people attract their spending for a month because you’ll always you’ll always be surprised that, you know, I mean, buying a movie on Amazon, you don’t really think about that as an expense, but if you’re trying to save for a long-term trip, every dollar is going to count. So for me, my advice is always start with getting a handle on your finances. where everything’s coming in and going out. so that you can see, okay, like what could I really cut, what is, uh, absolute, I can’t cut it and what is the discretionary, you know, money. And then once you do that, you can kind of start seeing these phantom expenses, such as the things you’re the things you’re never thinking of, that movie you rented from Amazon, the bottle of water you bought on the way home because you were thirsty. All those little things, they do add up, but they’re subconscious spending, not they’re unconscious spending that we’re not really thinking of. So, tip number one is always get a handle on your finances.
Scott: Awesome. And what what what what am I expecting? Like that’s my history, that’s my current situation. Maybe I work a job in here in Denver, Colorado. I have a rent, all that kind of stuff. When I’m on this nomadic journey, what should I be expecting from an expense load?
Guest: Yeah, so then you have my book, uh, how to travel the world on $50 a day, um, pre-covid. So I’d maybe let’s call it 70 post inflation, right? Uh, but the idea here is just about traveling like you live, right? Day-to-day, you don’t spend ideally a ton of money, right? You know, you go to work, you spend stuff on food, you take the bus, the train, um, you go grocery shopping, right? You’re not out all the time just like eating out, like taking Ubers, right? You’re not just like blowing through money the way people tend to think about vacation. Right? When you go on vacation, it’s all about just like I am just going out, right? Like I am fancy dinners and tours and nice hotels. But when you’re traveling, you must kind of keep those costs lower. So you can’t always stay in five-star hotels. You can’t go for expensive meals all the time. You can’t take tours and taxis and Uber, staying in resorts. You kind of have to travel like you live, going to the grocery store, taking the bus, you know, staying at cheaper guest houses, looking at free activities, uh, you know, free attractions, just kind of being a little more conscious of your spending. And so after you sort of figured it out, okay, like if I really cut my spending, you know, I could save maximum $3,000 a month, right? Okay. So from that number, you can then work from, I want to go away for a year. Um, it’s going to cost me, you know, $25,000 to do this year-long trip. Uh, and so then you just kind of work back to how much money you need how many months it will take you to spend. And what’s great about living in this day and age is what I wanted to be traveling back in started in 2006. I started planning in 2004. Um, so I stayed for a couple of years to do this. But back then, there was no information online. how much did things cost? Everything was a rough estimate, right? I mean, I had to cut my trip short in Australia because when I planned my trip, it was 1 USD got you $1.30 Australia. By the time I got there, it was one to one. S my purchasing power was down 30%. And so like it totally screwed up my entire budget. Um, whereas nowadays, I mean, you can’t do much about exchange rates and all, um, who knows what the exchange is going to be in a year. But I had based that money I needed for Australia just on a rough estimate of what little I could find in a guide book though I was written two years before. Whereas today there’s so much information online. You know pretty accurately how much that trip is going to cost you. So it’s very easy to work from where you are now to where you need to be.
Mindy: So I want to rewind a minute. You just said you’re not going to be spending when you’re traveling like you’re spending when you’re on vacation. And I don’t know if this is like a well, of course, no kidding comment in the traveling and the travel hacking space, but that was really kind of eye opening for me when you said that. I was like, oh, yeah, you’re not on vacation for six months. You’re just living in a different location for six months. I think that’s really important to highlight. I love that comment.
Guest: Yeah, you, you are, you know, you have to make this a very limited amount of money last, right? And so when you know you’re just, you’re going away for two weeks and it’s your only vacation for six months and you’re going to have money coming in, you’re more likely to spend it. But when there’s no job, um, if you if you quit your job to travel, um, you are making different financial decisions because that money has to last, right? If you run out of money, you have to come home. Um, and so what you’re going to do overseas is going to be really different.
Mindy: And how does geographic arbitrage affect your traveling decisions and your your financial decisions? Like, uh, let me see. I want to ask you like 17 questions all in one question. But if you’re traveling and using your Australia uh example, you were in Australia and then the exchange rate changed. Do you make long-term plans? Oh, I’m going to go here and here and here and here? Or do you make shorter-term plans and then just pivot based on what’s going on in the world?
Guest: When everyone plans a trip, they create long-term plans. They’re like, I’m going to do this and that and this and that and this. The longer you go away, the more you end up just throwing your plans away. I mean, my entire original route was very different than what it ended up to be. I mean I ended up living in Thailand for about seven months. Um, that was not part of my plan. I originally planned to go to Australia and Fiji. I ended up just keeping that and going home. Um, I changed my route in Australia, changed my route in Europe. The longer you’re away, the less you start thinking about a month or two months from now, the more you just start thinking about a week or two from now. Um, and so once you start shrinking that planning, you’re a little bit more versatile if things costs shift or you overspend somewhere, you have to make it up. So like, let’s say you went to Europe and you just kind of blew through your budget. So maybe you’ll stay now longer in Southeast Asia before you go somewhere else the sort of stay in the cheaper countries just to make that difference up.
Scott: Sounds like planning is everything, but plans are useless when you’re traveling, when you’re uh, living this nomadic life. You planned for two years, but then you throw out the window, you’re pretty opportunistic about it. um, as things come up and reactive to the the way things change. So how how does what you know, is that right? Is that how someone becomes more efficient economically while they’re traveling here? Is it is it about planning to go to these cheaper places or other strategies? Is there is there a fundamental set of principles that you’re applying on this journey to make the absolute most out of the experience as economically as possible.
Guest: Right, yeah. Um, I tell people to basically just keep a a daily log of their expenses. Um, the people that go home early don’t keep track of their money, you know, and they don’t know themselves too. You know, if you are going to Australia and it’s being your dream to do all these activities, go bungee jumping, dive the Great Barrier Reef and do wine tours and etc, etc. And you get there and you spend all this money and you’re like, oh, I ran out of money. I didn’t really budget for as many activities. Well, that’s where people go wrong because they should have over budgeted, not under budgeted. You know, you go on live and it says, oh, you’ll spend an average of whatever. So you write down that average in your budget. never realizing, well, you’re not going to be the average. You’re you want more than that because it’s your bucket list thing. Um, and secondly, people just don’t write down what they’re spending. So again, going back to that thing before you go, knowing your expenses is how you can really manage this, uh, pot of gold that you have, right? And so if you’re just going out and you’re just spending money, uh, by your hostels, you buy your drinks, whatever. you know, you might have be doing it on the cheap, but are you doing it within a budget? And I so I love it when I’m in hostels, I see people, you know, with receipts, you know, keeping track of their expenses because those are the people who are going to make it to the end. It’s the people who are just like blowing through their money left and right, partying and doing activities that are always the ones that go home first.
Mindy: Yeah, that seems true in, uh, most scenarios. What are some of the best countries to stay in that’ll help you stay in your budget.
Guest: You know, Southeast Asia is a great affordable region of the world. East Eastern Europe, uh, Central America, Taiwan, South Korea is is really affordable. Um, South Africa is actually is like really affordable too as long as you’re not doing tons of safaris. um, So there’s a lot of regions around the world that are are very much affordable, cheap destinations. you know, for the for the tourist on the US dollar. Uh, and so you have this pick of your litter so to speak, you know, um, and right now the US dollar is pretty strong, so like even if you were to go to Japan, you know, it’s way more affordable than it used to be because you’re getting 140 yen to the dollar. So like it’s it’s very it’s a very good exchange rate.
Scott: And so, you know, what what what am I looking for, you know, when I’m traveling here? Am I looking for hostels? Am I looking for Airbnbs? Am I looking for hotels? Is it a similar opportunistic kind of plan or are there different regions where you’re looking for different types of accommodation because you know that’s the affordable and great experience.
Guest: So hostels are really the key to a lot of affordable travel. Um, Airbnb rooms is also great because you got to stay with uh somebody in their guest room. So it’s more affordable than just getting their own place uh completely. you know, it it really depends on where you are in the world. You can do home stays, you can do um, couch surfing, which is just staying with locals. There’s a lot of similar services. Um, there’s one for bikers called warm showers. Um, you know, there’s a thing called space, so if you’re you have a bunch of camping gear, you can set it up in people’s yards. Um, in Europe you can stay in monasteries. um, you know, Australia, New Zealand, there’s a lot of farm stays. And so it’s very unique to different parts of the world. So that’s one great thing about the information overload age we live in right now is there is you can find that information pretty easily online.
Mindy: I I don’t know what you look like in real life, Matt, but I know what Scott looks like in real life. He’s a pretty big guy and he played rugby for a lot of years. If somebody wanted to take him on, they’d get a good fight. I’m not that big. and I have always felt like staying in a hostel would be a little bit scary because you’re just in a big room with a bunch of other people, gender unspecific, right? There’s not like women’s rooms and men’s rooms. It’s just like one big room and whoever’s sleeping there is sleeping there. So how do you keep yourself safe in a situation like this?
Guest: Hostels are relatively safe. Uh, I am only 5 seven. Uh, I never played rugby. Um, you know, you’re hostels are just young travelers looking to have fun. You know, that’s not to say nothing bad ever happens. Alcohol gets involved. You know, egos get involved. You know, I mean, I’ve met creepy people in hostels. Um, I be creepy people in real life. Um, but generally hostels are very safe because there’s always people awake coming and going. Most of the issues I have I’ve heard about or seen, really revolve around, you know, somebody like stealing something. You know, grabbing something, somebody leaves a computer, their phone out and somebody grabs a phone on their way out. And so, um, that’s why hostels have lockers. and always bring your own lock kind of thing. Um, because you do have, you know, you’re in the huge room and, okay, uh 30 strangers, who’s to say one doesn’t like stealing stuff. Um, but that said like physical violence is a real rarity in the hostel scene.
Scott: There’s also the guy that will uh exchange your $100 of American currency for worthless Belarussian currency when you’re visiting the Czech Republic.
Guest: One of those people. So maybe there is a difference here in terms of how you feel about it as a a man or or or a particularly, you know, me being a larger than average man, for example, in staying in these locations that we we should acknowledge to some degree in terms of some comfort. Even though, to your point, there’s a lot of safety. But also I want to piggy back on this and ask pointedly, is this a young person’s game here? Like are in these hostels, you’re talked about young people having a good time. Is this something that I’m going to have a lot am I going to have to adopt a different strategy if I’m in my 30s or 40s and wanting to to do this either alone or with a partner, um, than somebody who’s in their early 20s in a practical sense.
Guest: You see people of all ages in hostels. I mean grant, you know, granted when you’re 42, you really want to sleep in the dorm. Uh, so you don’t see as many older people sleeping in dorms. But that hostel experience is good for all ages. I have seen 70-year-olds in hostels. And when you ask them why, they’re just like, cuz it’s fun. You know, you get to meet other travelers, you know, you stay in a hotel, interact with nobody, right? Um, and you know, and then there are are hostels that are clearly party hostels. And then there’s family hostels and ones that cater to school trips and you know, older travelers and more boutique hostels. So it really runs the gamut these days because you know, people think of hostels, especially in the states, um, the younger people less so because there’s more exposure to newer hostels. But you know, older millennials plus we think of hostels like we’ve seen in the movies, you know, these like danky, you know, 100 uh gross beds in a dorm and everyone’s loud and it’s just gross and nothing’s clean and that really doesn’t exist that much anymore. um, because hostels have really improved themselves in the last 10 years as the younger clientele has become more demanding. um and has just better expectations of amenities. Um, but you can really find hostels that for all ages and all travel types. you know, if you just don’t want to stay in a party hostel, most hostel label themselves as a party hostel these days.
Mindy: Okay, so let’s uh switch gears here and talk about activities to do when you’re traveling. You mentioned that uh you should always be on the lookout for inexpensive or free activities. What are some of the things you’ve done while you’re traveling that you can’t get in America.
Guest: Oh, I think you get everything in America. But I will say that, you know, free walking tours, every major city in the world has a free walking tour and that’s a great way to get your bearings on where you are and the history of the place and kind of just be like, okay, this is where this thing is, that thing is. And actually talk to somebody that lives there. and be like, okay, what do you do for fun? Where should I go for fun? Where do you eat? You know, what’s a non-touristy, uh, place to go, something a little bit more unique. Um, so I love free walking tours. I love going into the local tourism board and asking them, basically what’s cool to do that’s inexpensive because the people that work there, they’ve lived there their whole life, right? So at least a long time. And so they’re going to know, oh, if you really want, you know, cheap produce, like this store is where to go. If you, you know, want free activities, like go to this park, there’s always like some festival or weekend activity going on. you know, this museum is free on Thursdays. Uh, you can do free comedy in XYZ. And so, tourism boards, I think are really underutilized, um, source of information because you if travel is replicating your day-to-day life in terms of cost, these are people who live in this place and are doing the same doing that, right? Um, you know, they know like, oh, if you want like pre-made meals, go to this grocery store after 8: it’s 50% off. The same thing like you know the budget hacks in the place you live because you live there, they have the same kind of tips.
Scott: When I was, so I again, I I never traveled like you, Matt. Um, I I did, you know, six, eight weeks in Europe with two of my buddies after college and did a lot of the things you’re talking about here. but what we did was we we flew a lot of places. We didn’t take the buses and trains. We stayed in hostels, of course. and uh, you know, partied and sight seed sightseed every single day. Um, for a while. And by the end of it, I was ready to go home. I I kind of out of money, but mostly, I was burned out of traveling. I was exhausted. uh, you know, it was just it was way too much. Um, from a a sustainability point of view. Um, how do you recommend folks that are looking for this traveling lifestyle. Like how did you sustain it for a long period of time, not just financially, but mentally and avoid burnout.
Guest: You know, I just gave a talk on burnout recently. Um, everyone burns out. Um, you think of this life as like non-stop adventure, right? You’re going to do all these great things. But you never see the the missing the bus, the waiting for the delayed train, the stuck in the airport, the the guy that screws you over for money. Uh, having to find an ATM, you know, packing, uh, unpacking, meeting new friends. Like every day you’re reinventing your life. You know, like, you go through life with mental shortcuts. Otherwise, it’s impossible to like go through life, right? It’s like Steve Jobs famously wore the same outfit every day. so he didn’t have to make that one decision. because every decision you make is just mentally taxing. kind of like why when you’re driving, right? You can just kind of half your brain is driving, the other half isn’t because you’ve created all these mental shortcuts. So you know like if you’re driving on the same road every day. Um, you don’t really need to think about it, right? You just your body goes on autopilot. There’s no autopilot on the road because everywhere you go is new. So you have to figure out every day, okay, how do I get from point A to point B? How do I navigate this metro system? How do I know if this person’s trying to screw me over on a Belarusssian currency? Uh, how how do I make friends? How do I know this restaurant isn’t going to give me food poisoning? Um, you know, and so eventually your mind just kind of is like, I don’t want to do this anymore. So I was just tell people, stop, take a break. stay in one place for a little bit, get to know it and recharge your batteries. Just sit around and watch Netflix for a week, who cares, right? Like, you know, you have all the time in the world, right? You have a limited amount of money and a lot of time. you know, and so just wait it out. Travel is a battery that needs to be recharged. That’s what I always tell people, right? It’s not this unlimited wellspring of energy. Uh, you know, you eventually will get burnt out and tired and you’ll just be like, I don’t want to see another tuple. I don’t want to go to another church. I don’t want to see another art museum. Like I just want to like stay in one place and like do laundry, you know, and just like, but you know, so like, just stay in one place for a couple of weeks. Um, you know, and everyone I know who’s travels really long term, the longer they’re on the road, the more time they spend in one destination before they move on. because they just don’t want to pack and unpack their bag every other day. and it’s just tiring. Um, and so yeah, just stop. I always tell people just stop. stay if you like where you are, just stay there for a week, maybe two weeks, you know? You can always move on, you can always go back somewhere else. like, you know, if you keep if you try to push through, you’re just going to hate everywhere. and you’re just going to increase your burnout and then you’re just going to go home, which is what I did when I first went away and then you’re going to be like, why the hell did I come home? I should have just stayed in one place, recharge my battery and kept going. because then you’re home and you’re like, this kind of not where I want to be.
Scott: Well, Matt, um, thank you so much for sharing all these wonderful tips. It’s just a awesome to meet folks like Matt that have just a completely different way of going about life and a completely different set of life experiences. I mean, good for him. He’s he created an incredible lifestyle, made countless memories and different and different types of things, really kind of mastered this, um, I think, uh, aspiration that a lot of folks have for for traveling and seeing seeing the world and made a profession out of it and has helped a lot of people, I think, recreate it and it’s it’s not an out-of-reach goal. There is a tradeoff, right? You’re not going to be able to do certain types of careers if you you’re pursuing this, you’re not going to be able to make certain types of investments as easily. Um, but you know, again, we’ve read that book Die With Zero. Um the memories you make from a trip like this for a year or two, um there’s something potentially to retire on right there.
Guest: Yeah, they have, as long as you can save for it, you know, it it took me three years to save for my trip, you know. Uh, you know, there’s no time limit. If it takes you five years, you know, there you go. You got something to look forward to. Uh, a lot of people are like, oh, I can’t afford to travel. Okay, well, you can’t afford to travel now. but a little bit of money every day will eventually add up to enough.
Mindy: Awesome, Matt. Well, thank you so much for your time today and we’ll talk to you soon.
Guest: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Mindy: All right, that was Matt Kepnes. That was a fun look at nomadic travel and also a really interesting look at some travel hacking. Scott, what did you think?
Scott: I think it’s just awesome to meet folks like Matt that have just a completely different way of going about life and completely different set of life experiences. I mean, good for him. He he created an incredible lifestyle, made countless memories and different and different types of things. We really kind of mastered this, um, I think, uh, aspiration that a lot of folks have for for traveling and seeing seeing the world and made a profession out of it and has helped a lot of people, I think, recreate it and it’s it’s not an out-of-reach goal. There is a tradeoff, right? You’re not going to be able to do certain types of careers if you you’re pursuing this, you’re not going to be able to make certain types of investments as easily. Um, but you know, again, we’ve read that book Die With Zero. Um the memories you make from a trip like this for a year or two, um there’s something potentially to retire on right there.
Mindy: I got a couple of really interesting tips from him. First was the uh credit cards coming the travel cards having higher interest rates and if you don’t pay off your balance every month, it’s really not worth it to do the credit card travel hacking points thing. I do pay off my credit cards every month, but I didn’t realize that they came with higher interest rates. I think that’s a really important takeaway. Um, and also the comment about vacation versus traveling. You’re not on vacation. You’re just living in a different place. So you’re not doing all of these extravagant things and I think that that can help reframe how much this is going to cost you to do. Um, and there are less expensive places to be. Greece, I could go live in Greece for way less than I’m living right now. My friend Linda lives in Portugal and she lives there for far less than she could if she lived in America. There’s lots of places you that you can live for less. I mean, you might even be able to be fa now if you lived in a lower cost of living area and then if you live in Portugal, you just zip on over to Spain for the weekend or you zip on over to France for the weekend and have a a slightly more expensive weekend while still completely living in a totally inexpensive place and having the time of your life. Everybody should be Linda.
Scott: Yeah, you know what, it’s kind of funny that like I I, you know, and we just talked about these awesome world travels. I would love to see more of the world and I will. I plan to with it. But you know, often when I go on these travels, like or think about these trips, you know, even even my awesome Ireland trip, right, uh, uh, from a couple years ago right before COVID. You know, I I come back and I’m like, oh, like the mountains here in Colorado pretty pretty good. They’re right there. The weather, the weather’s pretty good here. I got like my car like everything’s super convenient. There’s good I know where I can get good food. I know where I can, you know, uh, you know, have my very happy day. There’s the gym and so sometimes it’s it’s kind of a good reminder of like, you know, do I like I want to travel and see the world, of course and all that. But like I also it’s also kind of important and and maybe refresher to remind me of how good how good being back home is. There’s no right answer to this game of life and game of financial freedom, only different only different, um, paths and avenues to explore and and, uh, I think everyone should go and try this this nomadic lifestyle at some point if they can in their lives and maybe you’ll love it, maybe it’ll make you appreciate what you have back home.
Mindy: You know, living in Colorado, it really is hard to be like, oh, maybe I want to go see different things. We’ve got so much right here. You are right. You know, I I drive my kids to school every morning and my route takes me uh west, which is where the mountains are. So every morning I see that big beautiful expanse of the front range. I’m like, you know,
Scott: Me too with daycare. Yeah, like
Mindy: This doesn’t suck. This view is really nice.
Scott: Uh, what a conclusion to draw from today’s episode. So, yeah, there you have it, guys. Oh, well we did have one more tip, a parting thought here. We talked with Matt in the uh aftermath of the recording. One thing we didn’t talk about was insurance. He says he always gets travel insurance. Uh and three sites uh that he recommended people check out for travel insurance are safety wing, ensure my trip and Medjet.
Mindy: Yes, because you never know what’s going to happen. Having travel insurance is a really great way to make yourself whole should something unsavory.
Scott: And and that covers, you know, things like robbery, theft, uh, uh, medical expenses and some other things as well. So something to look into. Um, however you decide to travel to.
Mindy: All right, Scott, on that parting note, should we get out of here?
Scott: Let’s do it.
Mindy: That wraps up this travel episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench and I am Mindy Jensen saying, hit the road, happy toad.
Scott: If you enjoyed today’s episode, please give us a five star review on Spotify or Apple. And if you’re looking for even more money content, feel free to visit our YouTube channel at youtube.com/biggerpocketsmoney.
Mindy: Bigger Pockets Money was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, produced by Calen Bennett, editing by Exodus Media, copywriting by Nate Winetraub. Lastly, a big thank you to the Bigger Pockets team for making the show possible.
