Travel Is Cheaper Than Divorce
"Travel is cheaper than divorce, I should know. My wife and I were at the door to it." - David Packer
In this podcast I share some of the places, experiences and moments that changed the dynamics of not only my marriage but also the relationship with my kids. Travel was a big key of growing together, becoming stronger as a family and truly saving my marriage with my wife.
I share with you, how you can gain and travel using points and other rewards programs to see and explore some of the most amazing places in the world. In this podcast I share some of the lessons both good and bad, that have guided me and my family as we have navigated the growth and expansion of a family unit.
TRAVEL IS POSSIBLE... when you do it smart. In this podcast I give the tips and tricks I have used and the secrets I teach others of using rewards & point programs to maximize the dollars you are already spending to create some unforgettable memories with your family.
Travel Is Cheaper Than Divorce
Strengthen Your Bond With Cost-Effective Trips
Can travel save your marriage? Discover how taking a break from daily routines and responsibilities can reignite the spark with your spouse. We promise you'll learn how to plan a romantic getaway that won't break the bank, offering a fresh, fun, and effective alternative to costly therapy or divorce.
Join us as we delve into the financial and emotional benefits of traveling together. We'll share our personal stories and practical tips for booking affordable trips, from selecting budget-friendly airline hubs to maximizing your travel points with programs like Southwest Airlines. By the end of this episode, you'll see how regular, affordable travel can be a valuable investment in your relationship, offering a much-needed escape from day-to-day stress.
We'll guide you through the nuts and bolts of planning an enjoyable and cost-effective trip. Learn how to filter hotel searches for the best deals, read guest feedback, and use ride-sharing services as a budget-friendly alternative to rental cars. Plus, we'll highlight the importance of flexible scheduling and making time for each other. Don’t forget to join our YouTube community at Travel Point Pros for more tips on maximizing travel points and miles, and make sure to prioritize those getaways to keep your relationship thriving.
You are listening to, travel is Cheaper than Divorce. This podcast for all those who may be struggling with their spouse or their children and the relationship with them. We help give you tips and tricks by using travel as the means to be able to help your relationships with your family. I'll provide those tricks and other ways to help travel with little or no cost, so let's get into it. So one of the things the system actually believes the system believes that you, if you're having problems in your marriage, is the thing that you should do is to get a therapist. That you need to take the story that you have with your spouse and stick it behind closed doors and talk to somebody who can just give you advice on how to think or how to talk to each other, or whatever advice on how to think or how to talk to each other or whatever. I'm not here to tell you that that doesn't have a place anywhere. It is possible that might be the route that is the best, but I'm here to tell you that there might be an alternative.
Speaker 1:Now this is part two of a two-part series, two-part episode, because the first episode, dal, talked about why it's important for you and your spouse to get away from your children, and in this episode I want to talk about the how to do it, almost like a step-by-step and in a way that is possible for you and your spouse to do that now. Because, as I alluded in the first episode if you haven't listened to that, I would do that. In the first part of this two-parter, I alluded to the fact that the system that I have built, that I keep talking about, takes time to build Not a lot of time, but still some time and you need to get away now. But you can listen down on your own. So in this episode I want to focus on the how, the step-by-step on how, because people think that they don't have the money for it. Right, we talked about that also earlier. In this way, I want to be able to teach you and tell you step-by-step how you can and how it's actually cheaper than, say, a therapist or a divorce attorney.
Speaker 1:Full disclosure I have never been to a. My wife and I have never been to a marriage counselor, marriage therapist. This is the route we ran. Instead. It's a much funner route, I would say, than sitting in an office for 12 hours a day or not 12 hours a day, sorry, so sitting in a therapist's office for an hour a week talking about your issues with each other and possibly even making it worse. I don't know what the percentages are on how much marriage therapists actually help, but this is the route that I believe. In my experiences that is better. Anyways, I spent last episode talking about that.
Speaker 1:I'm going to tell you how you can travel now, now, now, now, now, now and not worry about the system right now, because you don't have time for that, like I said in the last episode. So the first step in doing any of this is you got to find yourself a destination. But before we get there, let me just give you a quick idea of money here. Money is pretty cold, so I don't like to spend a lot of time in this podcast speaking about that. But as we are talking about a step-by-step on how to do this, I want you to understand the comparison in the numbers, as I am a numbers person. In that way, the average I would say and it might even be a little bit higher, it might be lower, but the average session, say, with a therapist, maybe $100 a session, over a quarter, most therapists once you meet with them once a week, so over a quarter. You're looking at about $1,200 in therapist fees. That's a lot of money to talk to somebody.
Speaker 1:I think Also another thing you might be aware of or may or may not be aware of and I hope you aren't aware of it because you didn't have to look into it but the average cost to hire a divorce attorney is $11,400. That's pretty expensive. Traveling is cheaper, guys. Traveling is cheaper than a therapist. Traveling is cheaper than a divorce attorney. A therapist, again, may help, but even if you're not to the point of divorce and you're just thinking about therapy, that could be a route. I'm not telling you not to do it. I'm telling you the route that I ran Because you don't have to have luxury vacations now.
Speaker 1:I want you guys to get there. That's the point of the system that I built, or I learned, and then I'm teaching. I should say I just built the education on how to do it. I want you to be able to travel now because it's important to save your marriage. So what my wife and I did is we did once a quarter. We went and traveled, even if it was just for a day or two, sometimes it was never, it was never overnight and we went back home. I don't feel like that was enough. She didn't feel like that was enough for, especially with travel, getting out of the area at least two hours away, getting out of the area at least two hours away Our shortest trip was at least two hours away. But how we did it is this way. I want you to keep in mind in your mind $1,200. That again, as I told you earlier, is the average cost for not even an average cost, just my experience cost in therapy, doing therapy for $100 a week over a three-month period or a quarter.
Speaker 1:The first thing you need to do, the number one step you need to do, is decide that you're going to do it, that's it. You need to have your spouse's buy-in, obviously, and you going to do it, that's it. You need to have your spouse's buy-in, obviously, and you need to do it. And the best way to say, oh, I'm doing it, I'm going to do it, and you just say in your mind that's not good enough. Once you get your spouse's buy-in, you schedule it. That's when you're actually doing it. You decide these are the dates, these are the dates I'm going to go, or here's the range of dates I'm going to go, and I'll tell you why that's important later, but in my experience with my spouse, if you do not schedule it, it will not happen. So first you need to have either a range of dates or just some dates picked out and you put it on your calendar. If you have specific dates, at least the next thing you do and I'm just going to teach you the cheapest way to travel, especially on a short notice is, as soon as you have those dates you want to, if you want to get out of the state even then.
Speaker 1:Now we're talking about booking airfare. Now, the first thing everybody thinks oh, airfare is expensive, is it, though? Is it or you just don't know how to book it? Now, I don't know where you live in the world right now, but certain airlines and this is what I want to teach you about real quick certain airlines have certain hubs. Now you can find those online. There's actually a list of hubs that you can find I want to teach you about real quick. Certain airlines have certain hubs. Now you can find those online. There's actually a list of hubs that you can find. Just Google airline hubs. A list of airline hubs might be a good Google search.
Speaker 1:The reason I bring that up is if you go from one hub from one airline. So let's just use Southwest as example, because the closest international airport to me and my home is Las Vegas and the only one that hubs there is Southwest. So if I take a Southwest flight from Vegas to any of their other hubs and there's a list, then that's going to be really a lot cheaper than going just randomly picking a destination. That might actually even help you pick your destination. So that's one way of doing it, or you can just, or you can again drive two hours away, whatever. But I'm teaching you that airline hubs matter if you're really trying to pinch a penny. Now.
Speaker 1:I like southwest more than like, say, a frontier or a spirit, because I don't want to worry about paying extra fees when I get on board. You can, you know you can check a bag. I never check a bag that's a different story for a different podcast episode but I never check a bag. We went on a 10 day trip to Hawaii and I didn't check a bag. I could talk about that for a while, but that's not the point of this episode. But I just don't like to deal with the airline losing bags as possibly, and there's a lot of reasons, but anyway, southwest has the opportunity for you to check two bags. So in my experience, the first thing you do is you book that flight, figure out where you're going and book that flight. Now I'm going to use the example of again Las Vegas to another one of their hubs, denver. That's a little bit away for me and I decided that I want to go to Denver.
Speaker 1:Um, that flight as of now, and I and I've just picked some random dates about a month out, the cheapest flight I can get on a Southwest flight is $89 one way. So that equals up. I'm going to do it actually right in front of you. Make sure that number is correct. Pardon me, it is $87. Pardon me. So $87 one way. So we times that by four, because we need four tickets, two tickets each way. So we're looking at $348. $348 in airfare, right, that's back and forth. Well, that sounds like a lot, right? Really, how much is that? Therapist? Again, it's not as expensive as you think it is.
Speaker 1:When you get there, you need a place to stay, great, so I did basically a trip that lasts four days. The four days, there's two travel days on each end, right? So get there, get back home, and then there's two days staying in Denver. Okay, in those four days, let me teach you something else. You need to do the next step. Essentially and this is going to be just going with the knowledge I have on the system as well I would not use sites like Expedia, hotelscom or any of these other sites that are basically travel agent sites, the reason being there's a myriad of reasons.
Speaker 1:I really don't want to get into them today. I actually have a YouTube short on that, if you can go to my YouTube channel and check that out, but a lot of it has to do with you're not earning points and you're not dealing with the hotel directly. Now I I'm going to tell you something. I know this because I've done it. It takes some work. So I I I usually search the three major hotel brands because no matter where I'm going, I'm going to find a hotel. Generally speaking speaking, the three major hotel brands are Marriott, hilton and IHG. Some people consider Hyatt in there. Hyatt's getting better, they have more of a footprint. But right now, those are the three that I search and I go to each website and I search those dates for those on those three hotel brands and really try to figure out which one's the cheapest and also a decent quality hotel.
Speaker 1:Now I'm going to give you a couple money-saving tricks that we used, and they might sound outlandish, but I mean, you're looking at a. Remember what is the goal here? The goal here is for you to be able to get away with your spouse. The goal isn't here to pretend like you are wealthy, although you can do that with the system. That's what I love about the system, but we're not. We're not talking about that. We're talking about getting away now. So so I get on to all three of the websites individual websites Marriott, hilton, ihg, and if you want to search Hyatt too, that's fine too. And I look for hotels. And now, when I'm searching for hotels because, again, money saving opportunity here I always search for hotels. They have filters. They have filters on the top Every single hotel place.
Speaker 1:Especially when I was in the situation I was that you may be in right now I always search for free breakfast. Let me tell you why my wife and I in order to save money when we traveled because, remember, the goal isn't anything but just to heal, heal as a couple and really just spend some time together, rekindle romance in a way. I remember doing this. We would go to hotels with free breakfasts and we would load up. I mean load up. Remember these free breakfasts are all you can eat and we loaded up. And why we loaded up? So we didn't have to eat lunch. We loaded up so we can avoid going out for lunch. We load it up so we can avoid going out for lunch. That's a money-saving tip. Search for the free breakfast hotels. Load up on breakfast. That will save you on meals while you're out.
Speaker 1:Here's another money-saving opportunity when you search for hotels. There are quite a few hotels and they're not that expensive overall that have kitchens, full-on kitchens, inside of their hotel rooms. You could even cook then. You could even cook then. Or if you really want to be motivated to save money, electric, electric pressure cookers bring it with you. If you're not traveling by flight, that'd be hard to do on a flight, but if you're just traveling a couple hours outside your town, bring it with you. Cook in there. All this can save money on food while you're there.
Speaker 1:But let's get back to the hotel booking. These are all things that we have done, by the way, and they worked well. But getting back to the hotel booking. You want to get those hotels with a free breakfast so you can save money on food. Now, marriott and each one of these hotels have their different thing, but Marriott has a filter that shows mid-tier hotels and luxury hotels and that kind of thing. In your guys' case, it shouldn't really ultimately matter. Usually, the Marriotts and the Hiltons of the world are pretty good.
Speaker 1:Now the next thing you want to look for is you want to filter those hotels by lowest to highest as far as cost. Now you do that next, not by distance, you do it by distance. If I put it in Denver, colorado, and I do it by distance on Marriott, I'm looking at $512 a night. That's ridiculous. I would not pay that, not in that situation. Actually, I wouldn't pay that in cash anyways, in the system I have, I pay with points. Anyways. I would not pay cash for a hotel for $512 a night. That's ridiculous. So I sort it by cost and you want to make sure you're not too far out of the city but they usually don't send you too far out when you search for hotels and you get that low-cost hotel.
Speaker 1:But the next thing you do is you don't just pick the cheapest hotel. Look at those reviews. Look at those reviews. That way you're not so you're hating your life because you picked a horrible hotel. So you look at those reviews. You get that free breakfast. Those are the filters you want to use usually. Or if you want to filter in for a full kitchen in there, you could do that too if you want to take usually. Or if you want to filter in for a full kitchen in there, you could do that too If you, if you want to take it to the next level. In my case I did that and IHG came out for those three nights because I did a Monday through Thursday trip. So those three nights came out at $385. All right, $385 for those. Those nights Total, by the way. So, that being case, the total for your trip so far is now $733 minus taxes and fees. So let's say another $100 for those. So we're after like 800 and we'll just round up, say $150.
Speaker 1:Ladies and gentlemen, that is cheaper than $1,200 for a therapist and a heck of a lot funner. A heck of a lot funner. I don't want to talk to a therapist. I mean, everybody has their thing. Again, I'm not saying as I said at the beginning, disclaimer there. I'm not saying not to go to a therapist. I'm saying that this is an alternative too. That's all I'm saying. Therapist, I'm saying that this is an alternative too. That's all I'm saying. And if you could take that money, you would spend on a therapist and you spend on a trip. It's a lot funner and, frankly, it could work better. It could. This has just been my experience.
Speaker 1:None of these are round-trip tickets. Then you've got to figure in your traveling from the airport. I would not get a rental car for cheapness purposes. Get an Uber, get a Lyft, whatever other ride-sharing opportunities there are out there. Do those. That's a lot cheaper than, say, a cab. It's a heck of a lot cheaper than a rental car. That's what I would do. And then for as activities, heck, you may not leave your hotel room. I'm not trying to be trying to get into your life, but maybe you don't even leave the hotel room a lot of the time. Or maybe you do take an Uber and get a hike done. Take an Uber to a museum. That costs very little. There's a lot of things you can do activity-wise. That still is in the range of possibilities.
Speaker 1:To have a good time with your spouse, because you got to remember what the goal is. The goal is to rekindle and re-up your marriage. The goal isn't to go to a basketball game or go to a five-star restaurant or a five-star. That's not your goal. Keep your eyes on what we're there for. Now.
Speaker 1:Every marriage is different. In my marriage, my wife likes to be more spontaneous than I do. I'm a bit of a planner. It's just how I am. So if your wife's more spontaneous, then maybe you don't plan as much Because I could plan. I used to plan our trips down to the minute and drove her insane because it gave her no flexibility and I always was really pretty strong about my schedule. But you don't have to do that. But if you guys are both planner types, do it. If you're both spontaneous, do that too. That part of it doesn't matter so much. Remember, the part that matters is getting away. That's the part that matters. So I hope that helps.
Speaker 1:I hope you can see that if you look at travel and you say, well, I can't do that, I can't afford that. Oh really, can you afford a therapist every week at a hundred dollars, a pop, or divorce attorney for $11,400 because you didn't do anything at all? You just sat down and hope that everything worked out. Okay, guys, I am lucky because I listened. I luckied because I have a very patient spouse who dealt with my crap for way too long In my opinion. I'm incredibly grateful for her patience with me. She is a light in my life and I love her to death. And we would not be where we're at if we didn't take action. And I'm just giving you an option for action Divorce, attorney, therapist, travel. Which one's funner? So here is again what I would like you to do, what I feel, what I did and what I feel like is a as a good step Again, schedule it.
Speaker 1:Schedule it now, not tomorrow. I'll get to it in a couple of weeks. You'll never get to it. Schedule it now. Now is the time to schedule it. Get it on your calendar. I'm sorry, I actually I alluded to something I didn't talk about. I don't want to forget it.
Speaker 1:If you have flexible dates, you can even go on these websites, on all of these websites, southwest, oh, by the way, if you're flexible on airline, because there's a bunch of airlines that are the hub at your the airport closest to you use a website. I use a website called kayakcom, k-a-y-a-kcom. They are where I search flights. It just doesn't search Southwest. That's why I didn't mention it, because the hub that I'm at is Southwest, so I want to make sure you mention that as well, because maybe a couple of airlines hub where you're at you and so keep that in mind too. There's websites like that, but they but they direct you to the website of the airline to book again, directly.
Speaker 1:Booking directly with a hotel and directly with the the airline is extremely important. Sorry, I want to make sure I mentioned that earlier because I talked about maybe having flexible dates. I want to make sure I mentioned that earlier because I talked about maybe having flexible dates. So, again, schedule it, schedule it now and, if you have flexible dates, find your flexible dates, find what dates are the cheapest on your hotel and your airline and then schedule it. Then Just schedule it.
Speaker 1:I would make it a goal, before you listen to my voice again on my next episode, for you to schedule a time for you and your spouse to get out, just get away, even if it avoids airlines just two hours away, whatever, just get away. You have been listening to Travel is Cheaper Than Divorce. With me, your host, david Packer, please connect with us on our YouTube channel at Travel Point Pros. There you will learn many tips and tricks on how to use points and miles to travel in luxury for little to no cost. Remember to like and subscribe and comment on any of the videos that you find helpful to you. Thank you for listening.