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
Transforming Travel Expenses into Luxury Experiences
Imagine turning your dream of visiting luxurious destinations into reality without breaking the bank. Join me as I unlock the secrets of using points and miles to slash your travel expenses. Drawing from my years in the financial industry, I'll reveal how anyone can prioritize travel by making savvy financial choices. Plus, stay tuned for a sneak peek into an upcoming hands-on retreat where I'll teach you, step-by-step, how to maximize travel rewards while you explore the hidden gems of my hometown.
Ever wondered where all your money goes each month? It's time to find out! By tracking your expenses diligently, you can identify and plug those pesky budget leaks, freeing up extra cash for your travel fund. We'll explore practical tips and heartwarming stories of how travel has strengthened family bonds and enriched marriages.
Hear from listeners who have transformed their relationships through unforgettable journeys, and get inspired to do the same. Let's make your travel dreams not just achievable but also profoundly enriching for your personal relationships.
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.
Speaker 1:Some of the things that I have talked about so far really have to do with money and finding money to be able to do the traveling In some episodes I've done. I've talked about, you know, comparing it to being in therapy, essentially. But what if you're not even planning on therapy or anything I don't know? You just want to get to traveling, but you just can't find the money in your budget. I want to tell you I come from a place where, again, I've been in the financial industry for over 15 years. I've seen. It feels like I've seen it all. Well, actually, if you take also some of my other experience, it's been nearly 20 years, if not more, that I've probably been in one area of the financial industry or another. So I've seen a lot. You absolutely can find the money for traveling. I have seen over and over again, people put a priority on something and they make it happen and, as I showed you in other episodes, it is possible on a smaller budget. You can find room in your budget for it.
Speaker 1:I'm going to give you a couple of ways to do that. One is the cash way and one is the points and miles way. I'm going to go with points and miles first, because this, in my opinion, is the most exciting way, because then you can travel for nearly. You can go to more destinations further around the world and more luxury for pretty much less cost than you paying cash to go two hours away from your house and that is to travel. Go to pay for hotel hotels, pay for rental cars, pay for hotels, rental cars, flights, sorry, and all these things with points or miles. I really lump them all into points when I talk about it, because miles are essentially points. They just call them miles because they're airline. Some airlines don't even call them that. They do call them points, but regardless, because then you don't pay hardly anything in cash. I say that because there are some fees usually to redeem these. It's usually five to six bucks. It's not in the hundreds there are. There is. From my recollection, there's one or two airlines who do charge a hundred dollar fee to do that. But you don't want to use that airline unless you're going like halfway around the world or whatever. But that is the most exciting and it is the way to travel the furthest and make your dollar stretch the farthest is by doing points and miles. Can you afford? Let's see if we'd say a $10 fee and you have six people in your family, including yourself that's my family, by the way, we have four kids $60.
Speaker 1:$60 to fly wherever I don't know. Pick a destination. I mean that literally it doesn't matter when you're redeeming points you can go from. Let's take my nearest international airport again, vegas. We take that and we say I want to go from Vegas to Auckland, new Zealand, or I want to go from Vegas to Denver or Vegas to LA. All of those cost $10. $10 in cash, cash at least.
Speaker 1:And then you have to think about miles, how much miles you're spending. This is not for this podcast particularly. That's different. That's my business side. But you want to be careful how you spend those points. You don't want to just throw them around because then you're not going to get the value for them. It's just like cash. You don't want to spend $ them around because then you're not going to get the value for them. It's just like cash. You don't want to spend $200 on a hotel that sucks. You want to be aware of where you're spending those miles and when the best time to spend them in, but that if you can't afford $60 in your budget to go fly somewhere because most hotels, when you redeem points, don't charge you anything, so there you go, zero there and 60 bucks for the flight, maybe 120 if you. We got a new round trip right. If you can't find 120 in your budget when using points of miles, then you're pretty far off from from. I mean, 120 is one night at a hotel, generally speaking. So I know you can. But that's the points and miles game. That does take some time to build, not a lot of time. People think it's going to take years. It doesn't take years, ladies and gentlemen. It takes literally less than six months. A lot of the times. Guys, this is like the most exciting thing.
Speaker 1:I really love this part of traveling. I love the part absolutely love the part of going all these places for practically no cost. It's so much fun, so much fun. I've been to so many places I could never have afforded with cash because of it. And in fact, in the next, in the next couple weeks, I'm going to be and I haven't put this out yet, but you're going to hear about it now but I'm going to be putting out an offer for people to join me in my hometown, where I sit down and over a couple of days I will teach you the entire system, nuts and bolts, all the questions you want.
Speaker 1:But it's not just that, it's not just a seminar. It's a time for me to show you all these cool areas that are around me. It's a retreat to go out and also travel at the same time, to teach and to travel, teach and to travel, teach and to experience things. It's going to be really fun. I'm limiting it to five people just so it's more intimate. Maybe six, I haven't quite decided yet. You can, you catch it up later, but I want you to. I want people to be able to understand this so they can do it, and I want them to have fun while doing it. I don't want to just sit there and lecture. But anyway, I would digress off of that point. Points and miles are a way to make that stretch further. Now, if you're not there yet, or it's not possible because of credit score and other things, then what about cash? Okay, let's talk about that again. If it's important to you, you will make it happen.
Speaker 1:I had somebody in my family recently come to me. Actually, because I've been doing this for so long, you got to understand my family's full of a very much a bunch of, a lot of a lot of prideful people. So and it's not only just that it's hard to talk to somebody who grew up about money. When you're adults, right, money is a difficult topic for you to broach with somebody, especially if you grew up with them. But I actually finally had one of my relatives. Because I don't I don't ever talk to my relatives. Because I don't ever talk to my relatives about it, I figure they can come to me if they have questions, and they did finally. But they came and broached me about the subject, about how they seem to earn all this money but it all seems to go away, even though they earn all this money and they don't need all that money, and so on and so forth. So I gave them a step-by-step on how to figure out how to find more money in your budget and that's what I'm going to go with with you today. She's only on step one still. It's been kind of early in this for them.
Speaker 1:But the step one to find money in your budget is to track your budget. First of all, let me back up for a second. I hate the word budget. I hate it. Budget has such a negative connotation to it. People hear the word budget and they run for the hills as if I told them to I don't know, I don't know, pick something negative. I can't think of something right now, but they run for the hills, run.
Speaker 1:He talked about budgeting. I'm not talking about budgeting. I'm talking about finding money in your bank account. Then, if you want, I don't care, the budget is just the more accepted word. But the first thing you need to do, the first, very first step, is to track your money.
Speaker 1:I tell you more than 50%, without having the statistic in front of me, just by my experience again, more than 50% of the people in this country and I think it's actually more above 75, let's just say 50% of the people don't even know where their money goes. They just spend it. Now, that's part of it is that we went from a generation Of writing checks, where you had to track literally everything, to a nation where we just swipe, swipe, swipe. Nobody knows where their money goes. So step one on any journey Find out where your friggin money goes, guys. That's why, if you tell me you don't have enough money to travel and it's not in your budget, I call bullshit, because you can.
Speaker 1:You just don't know where the leak is. And that's the analogy, really. If you have a bathtub and it's full of water and it's leaking on your ceiling, do you just sit there and look down and go, wow, that sucks. I wonder where that leak's coming from? I obviously don't know where it's coming from. Maybe it's the bathtub, maybe it's the shower, I don't know. Anyway, I'm just going to move on. I can't really fix it now. Bull, what are you going to do when you find that leak? You're going to frigging plug it. If you don't know where the leak is, you can't feel the plug. So, number one, the same thing I told this family member track your expenses for a month or two, possibly three, if you're really motivated. What is that going to do? It's going to tell you where the leak is.
Speaker 1:Holy crap, I spend that much on eating out and you know what a lot of people don't track it. Sometimes it's just laziness, sometimes it's just because they really don't want to know where they put their money, because it might involve some sort of change. By the way, this isn't hard to do. There are so many programs out there a lot of them that are free that you just connect your bank account and your credit cards. Keeping in mind that between my spouse and I we have probably about 35 credit cards we don't use them all, but we have that many to track at least and we have our bank accounts and a bunch of other kids' accounts and such. There are a lot of different softwares out there that track, that can just track it for you, and a lot of them are free and they just import all of your transactions in. All you have to do is label them. Literally takes you maybe, if you do it daily, maybe five minutes. I do it monthly and it probably takes me 30 minutes. Yeah, I still track my money.
Speaker 1:It drives me insane if I see a leak somewhere, so I always like to plug those leaks. When you find those leaks and I say the word leak, I mean like places in your budget where you know you're spending way too much money, like dining out, like you know, drinks on a Saturday and Sunday, whatever, yeah, uh, maybe you're spending too much money on. I'm trying to think of other streaming services. Oh, that's a big one. Back in the day, people didn't like to pay $80 a month for cable. Now people are spending a hundred dollars a month on streaming. Does that make a lot of sense to you? Doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Maybe there is a subscription you subscribe to five months ago, you don't even use and you forgot about it.
Speaker 1:Track it, plug the leaks, you track it. You don't even use and you forgot about it. Track it, plug the leaks, you track it. You plug the leaks. That might be enough into itself to have enough money for travel. You take those same things and you siphon them off. What I mean by siphon off? You get a frigging savings account and all of the money that you are saving because you canceled this or stopped spending this, you send over to that savings account and you do not touch it. That's your travel account. You don't touch it. Don't touch it.
Speaker 1:But I really want to go to McDonald's with my kids this day. Really, you'd rather go to McDonald's with your kids and take them on a trip. Come on, make priorities in your life. What's important here? Now? I know that I've said in a lot of episodes that it's important to get out with your family. Yes, and I also told you there's some free things you do.
Speaker 1:It boggles. It doesn't boggle me. I actually understand where it comes from. I shouldn't say it boggles me. It actually does make sense where it comes from, where people don't track their expenses and they don't plug the leaks. I'm just telling you that, without spending more money, you can travel. This is on the cash side, of course. I'm not talking about the points and miles side. I already went on that one. On the cash side, you can travel and have the money to travel without spending any more than you're spending now. You're just plugging leaks and redirecting money. That's it. It's just so simple that way.
Speaker 1:Again, this could take some time. Because I say you want to travel, you want to track your expenses over a two month period, because maybe one month you have an unusual expense that you know that's out there and it averages out over two months or averages out over three. If you're motivated enough. It won't go three months. I do it every month. I've done it every month for four or five months. No, I'm sorry, four or five months, four or five years, pardon me. I've been tracking my expenses literally every month. Has it been that short of a time? It might be even maybe way longer than that. I been that short of a time. It might be even maybe way longer than that. I can't, I can't remember. I've been tracking it for a very long time. I've been tracking a very long time and it really helps me. And my wife plug polls because she doesn't want to look at a monthly, which I don't blame her, she's done numbers person. She's way, way right brained. I'm way left, so I like the numbers and she doesn't care. Um, but uh, but she looks at, we look at at it often enough to say, hey, this is where we're spending. We need to plug a leak.
Speaker 1:Or maybe, as I alluded to I'm not sure if it was in this episode or another one, but that maybe you just don't take your kids to ballet, violin lessons, soccer, take your kids to ballet, violin lessons, soccer, what else? Dance Okay, I don't want to go off on a ramp. My heavens, dance is really expensive for little kids. I just don't get that personally. But anyways, I'll back off of that for a second. Maybe you only take him to one of those four or five things and take all that money and put it towards travel. Do you really need your little princess to go to all those things? I mean seriously. Again, I don't want to tell you how to parent. That's not my job here. I'm trying to tell you my experience and I want you to know. Know that you can find room in your budget if you want to pay for it with cash, if you want to do it. Points and miles that's separate. And again, I'm doing a. Very soon I'm going to put together a retreat to teach all that and to have some fun with some of you out there. Now some other episodes.
Speaker 1:I've been talking about going and traveling now with your family, now with your spouse. Get out and do it. I would love everybody who's listening to me. I would love to see pictures, or for you to tell me stories about how it's helped you and maybe it hasn't yet, maybe you just want to tell me a memory that you built. I want to know that I'm reaching you. I want to know that I'm helping you. I love pictures. They're great, or just memories or both. I would love to see these guys.
Speaker 1:So here's my big takeaway here. I want you, even if you do have money for traveling, this is just a fundamental way of doing things Track your expenses, track them, understand where your money is going. That's the big takeaway here, even if you're doing points and miles instead of using cash. I do points and miles, obviously. That's the whole thing, right, traveling and luxury for little or no cost. That's the thing. But I still track my expenses every month because it has very little to do with travel. For me, it's a budget thing, just like travel. Budget is my takeaway to you today, if anything else track your expenses, know where your money's going and plug the leaks, plug them.
Speaker 1:And then, optionally, of course, I would love to see what you guys have been doing. Travel-wise man. I would love to see it. I want to know also if you have seen, at least in your family's life, in your spouse's, your marriage or whatever, improvement because of this. I would love to hear those too. And that, ultimately, is what I'm doing this podcast for. I want you to know what has helped my spouse, my family, and I want it to help yours. 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.