Making Memory Bank Deposits: Tips for Planning Your Next Vacation

Ever notice how you never regret the vacations you take… only the ones you postpone? In this episode, Morton Wealth Advisor Kevin Rex (who also happens to be a seasoned jet-setter) joins his wife, Nicole, and their best friends, Julia and Nick Cirbo, to share real-life tips that make travel easier and more enjoyable. From concierge hacks and LAX valet tricks to non-negotiables like direct flights, scheduled transportation, and maximizing hotel time, this session is packed with tools that can immediately minimize stress and optimize your time.

Tune in if you’re interested in…

* How to travel with friends, families, and couples without tension 
* Practical tips like concierge lists, social media research, Black Friday deals, scheduled pickups, and more
* Persuading someone in your life to book a memorable trip with you. Send this episode their way!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Good morning, everybody. Thank you for being here. So excited, we get to kick off the lifestyle stage with my favorite topic, which is travel. My name's Kevin Rex. I'm one of the wealth advisors at Morton Wealth. And I'm joined not only by three travel enthusiasts, but also my beautiful wife and our best friends, who together in the last five years we've been on, we are counting more than 20 vacations. Over 20 trips. So we've learned a lot along the way, we've made some mistakes. Today our hope and goal is to share some of those tricks and tips that we've learned, help you avoid those mistakes. Most importantly, though, inspire you to want to book that next trip. Because you know, travel's brought us closer together. It inspires us to work harder, obviously overcome different challenges and those types of things. So for today, we're gonna get into it, and you're here. So hopefully you either love to travel and want to find some new trips, uh, trips or tips, or you are looking to get into it. So I think we can all agree that travel is personal and travel is really important to the three of us. So I'd love to kind of kick it off and just hear like you're all busy. Why do you prioritize travel? Why do you take the time away from your family, your job to make it happen?

SPEAKER_02 1:22

I'll start. Um I'm always the largest proponent of traveling. And I think maybe it's because um the business that I'm in, I own a life insurance agency, and I'd so often see people not take that trip and then regret it, right? And so I am always bugging these three lovely people on stage. Hey, let's just book it, let's just take that trip because we're not guaranteed our health tomorrow. We're not guaranteed tomorrow, so why not just go out and live our best lives? So I'm always the friend in the group pushing everyone here. All right, this is the next destination.

SPEAKER_03 1:59

Yeah. Um, definitely a lot of what we talk about is reconnecting with our kids. We're very busy parents, we both, and all of us have jobs that are very demanding, so it's a great time to reconnect with our small children, have fun, be carefree. And so we think it's very important to like kind of have those memories and hold on to them while we have them.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

Yes, and though we love traveling with our kids, we love traveling without them just as much. But I think for for me, in addition to these uh comments as well, there's really two things. One, it's a time to refresh and recharge. Um, we're again very busy, so it's nice to go to a place and just unplug, don't have to worry about laundry or cooking or driving kids to and from. But the second one that, at least for me personally, it's motivation. Uh, we do like to take some some good trips, which we'll talk about. Uh it's it motivates us to work harder, it gives us something to look forward to. Uh, if we go too long without a trip, we start to get antsy and feel like we're in kind of a rut, even though we live in a beautiful area. It's really fun to go explore the the world, whether it's domestically or or internationally as well. So for me, it's refreshing and relaxing and motivation.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Yeah, and I love sometimes just doing the same thing in a different location, right? We all have pools that we can float in, but when you're in a pool overlooking, you know, the beach or even in a pool with snow coming down, so experiencing culture, meeting new people. Um so travel for me is a way to see this huge, amazing world that we have. So we can all agree that travel is important. Now we're going to plan a trip. Do you plan a trip with just your your couple, two couples, a lot of couples? Because as we've seen, that can bring some complexity. Who do you invite? What happens? So when you guys, when we go to plan, let's talk a little bit about things to think through on planning that trip with other couples.

unknown 3:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:40

I mean, we've all experienced this. We've done huge, huge groups, and obviously there's a lot of complexities on what people's interests are, what they want to, where they want to eat. Um, we have found that really we have a great sympathetic like you know, just hanging out together, and our kids are about the same age, so they have a lot of the same interests. They kind of all go at the same rate too, where it's like one activity, they want some downtime, not over-exerting them, having a day off, having an excursion the following day, and really kind of have balance during our trip. So we've kind of found a good groove with all of us.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Yeah, I think for when we were talking about too, like just having two couples, you can kind of say, hey, you do that, I'll do this. When you have three or four couples, it's like who's included? Everyone kind of feels obligated to hang out together. If you do a big group at that point, then it's kind of nice because then you're like, okay, everyone's gonna do somewhat their own stuff as well. So we found that either kind of two couples or ten or more couples, that three or four couples tends to be a little bit more challenging.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

I think it's also important to really travel with people who like to play at your level as well. So for instance, I I'm known as the bougie one in the group. Um so I'm always the one who's you know looking to push us into business or first class if we can all afford it, or hey, let's stay at the nicer hotel if we can if we can actually, you know, afford it as well and make it happen. But I think it's important to make sure that when you're looking to travel with friends, like that you are picking people that can play at your level. Um but and and sometimes it doesn't need to always be at that high level, right? By understanding which trips are gonna be like your bougie trips and then which trips are gonna be more your rugged trips.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

Yeah, so there's no tension of oh yeah, I want to do this, how much does it cost? And it's not even if you have the money, it's people just prioritize spending money on different things. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

I think that's a good transition into the next point because I'm gonna talk about why I'm the budget person in the group.

SPEAKER_02 5:37

Nick Nick Nick and I get along really well.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

There's a lot of tension there. So when when we go to we we've been on, I said t over 20 trips in five years, we've learned a lot about each other, and we've kind of found that each person has their own role, and so we can kind of fit in and and use each other's strengths. So, Nick, if you don't mind talking about kind of all of our roles and how we've uh you know play together.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Yeah, so I'm my my day job, I'm a business coach, so I love roles and responsibilities, and I love efficiency. And so I think that's where I get to answer this question. But to Nicole's prior point, we do love to travel well, but for me, I can't be excited about a trip if I don't feel like we're doing it efficiently and somewhat cost effectively. So, you know, if we are gonna fly first class, it's probably a longer trip where that you know makes more sense versus a shorter one. Or if we're gonna stay at a really nice hotel, personally, I don't enjoy that at the dollar cost, but if we can get it spending credit card points, which I love, and we'll talk about a little bit later, I think that's important as well. So when we start to plan a trip, I kind of get the first stab at it because if I can get excited from a cost and a budgeting standpoint, then Nicole is the one that kind of pushes us on where we're going, how we're doing it. Um, and then Julia is so easygoing that she's like, okay, great, but then she'll plan all the activities. She's fantastic at finding what's unique in those particular areas, like Napa or the Belize photo from before, and finding the best restaurants and the best uh things for kids or not kids. Um, and so I think we've got a great kind of roles and responsibilities, starting with budget, making sure that Nicole is excited from a bougie standpoint, and then Julia helps bring it all to life with the fun activities when we get there.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

You didn't mention me. What do I fun?

SPEAKER_03 7:17

You bring the fun, you bring the fun.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

I bring the fun. Okay, so no planning responsibilities. I get to just show up, which is an amazing.

SPEAKER_02 7:23

Heaven's just the best time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

Thank you. So, okay, now we know what we got our order of operation, and now we go to travel, but I hear from a lot of people travel adds more stress. Like here, I want to get away and relax, and it's just so hard, it's complicated, I don't know where to go or what to do. What are some tips and tricks that we've learned along the way to make travel a little bit easier on us? And Nicole, have you kick it off because you love utilizing the concierge? And fun fact, when Nicole and I first met, she was a concierge opening the four seasons. We were 22 years old. So you know a little bit about that. So how do you use them to make life easier on all of us?

SPEAKER_02 7:59

Yeah, so having been a concierge in a past life of mine, I understand how uh important concierges can be, and the services that they provide are Barnun, some of the best because they truly understand like the best restaurants, best activities, because they have the restaurants in the local area calling on them, taking them out to free dinners, providing free excursions, all of the fun things, right? Um, so I always make it a point when we go out to a different city or an international town to really tap into uh the higher-end hotel concierge services because they already have a list and a really well-kept list. And it's updated frequently, by the way, of all the top restaurants, all the like hidden speakeasies to go find, or um all the great excursions you can do as adults or with your children as well. So we always tap into their list and then we kind of what Julia and I like to do is we'll go back on, like we'll take the list and then we go meet for wine or coffee one night away from our husbands, and we'll go through TikTok and Instagram and we'll kind of go through, you know, checking out all the Yelp reviews and everything, and then we pare it down into what we feel is gonna be best for our group in that town on that trip.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

So yeah, Nicole will get concierge lists from hotels we're not even staying at, and she cross-references everything. Okay, if all of them say this, great, but if only one, we'll cross that one off. So, but Nick, you gave me the best tip that's changed my travel life more than anything, and it's not that complicated. So if you can share a little bit about that, just travel with the servos. They do everything for you.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

No, in all seriousness, when we moved out here 10 years ago or so, I traveled quite a bit for work and I got introduced to me at LAX, which I don't think anybody loves to drive there to travel. Uh, there is a great valet service uh right on Sepulveda Boulevard. So we call them when we're five minutes away, tell them, hey, we're coming by, can someone jump in the car with us? And it is literally the best service. They jump in the car, they drive us right, they drive with us. I keep driving right to whatever terminal we're in at LAX, and then they take your credit card info while you're there, ask if you want a car wash or any other services, and then you hop out, walk right in the terminal, they take your car and go park it for you. And then when you land, you just text them and tell them what terminal you're at, and they come pick you right up. Don't even have to take them back, they jump in with somebody else. And from a cost standpoint, it might be a couple dollars more than parking yourself somewhere around LAX. So just from a time efficiency, it's definitely saved us because you never know what LAX traffic's gonna look like. Um, so we've had some times where we've been cutting it a little bit close, and without that service, we probably missed the flight. So back to my my pride and joy of being really efficient. This is a way to be uh as most efficient when at least having to travel out of LAX.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

Yeah, and and that for me leads into like just being consistent is something that's made us efficient. So I travel like pretty much the same way every single time when I can. I fly Delta every single time, I go to the airport valet, they drop me off at pillar 3D. I go in up the escalator, they have the electronic bag check. I know it's touchless to get in through security, the the lounge is on the right. Ten minutes before my flight, I either terminal two or three, book my my coffee at Starbucks mobile order, and it just takes the guesswork. So when you travel and you don't have to worry about where to park, what to get on, what to do, it just makes everything a little bit easier. Uh so trying to keep some of that consistency. I'm so proud of how efficient you've become. If when we travel, are there any must-haves for the three of you? Like, okay, this is something that I'm not gonna you know negotiate, I need to have this, or it kind of ruins my trip, or I need to have this to make my trip worth it.

SPEAKER_02 11:40

For me, it's scheduled travel. So making sure that when we land at the airport, that we have a car service like that's ready to pick all of us up with our children and all the skis. We are big snow skiers. So you can imagine all the luggage we have with all the big jackets and all of our skis in our boots. It's a ton of luggage. So for me, just the efficiency of having scheduled cars that pick us up from the airport, take us to our hotel. If you know we're doing rock climbing the next day or whatever the case is, white water rafting, that that car is there to pick us up right at 8:30 a.m. and get us to where we need to be. Um scheduled travel is really big and important. The larger the group, the more important that that is for us.

SPEAKER_03 12:23

And at all times, I mean, we are flexible, but I try to really look on direct flights because it just kind of brings down your stress level as far as like connecting flights, missing flights. You just want to try to take as much stress away from a possible situation as possible. So we try to do that. We had to do some puddle jumpers, but I mean, that's easy and manageable, but that's usually my non-negotiable.

SPEAKER_02 12:43

And Julia is really thoughtful because she's our friend in the group that is always thinking ahead, especially when we're traveling with the kids, like packing really good snacks and coloring books, and where I kind of miss out there as being a mom, like not thinking ahead. I'm always more like about the travel components of the trip. Julia's really thoughtful when it comes to like making sure we're all well fed and have snacks and little activities, or God forbid, you know, we're delayed. She has an activity for us.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

One of my non-negotiables is again, it it does get costly to travel. So if we're staying at a nice hotel, I want to make sure we maximize the time there. So we'll try to catch a morning flight to where we can get in at 12 or 1 o'clock and still enjoy the hotel that day because technically you're paying for it. And on the back end of the trip, we never take an early flight out because then you miss kind of the relaxing aspect of that hotel as well. So we'll try to catch a flight and maybe the later afternoon. The flo the airlines know this, so that it might be a little bit more expensive. So that's where we're constantly playing around on different flight options, trying to make sure that we are maximizing not just our time at the property, but the value for the cost of the flight and taking advantage of the hotels that we like to stay at.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

And Nick, I'd love to get into you've talked a little bit about budgeting, efficiency, credit card points. We plan ahead. You have to plan ahead, right? But there's an amount of how much to be planned and how much shouldn't. So if you don't mind talking a little bit about how you kick it off and kind of help us find destinations and those things.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

Yeah, again, I think there is there a session on credit card points too? Yeah, right after. Right after this. So I'm I'm not speaking on that one, but uh I do think that that we're all we all spend money, we all use credit cards. I think it if you can maximize that, it's a no-brainer. We went to Belize last year. Um we actually canceled our mammoth trip on a Friday. This was for spring break because there was no snow up there. By Friday night, we had already booked a flight to Belize. We had no planning. This was kind of a fun one for us. Kevin has a not so fun story to tell her momentarily on that. But we were able to jump online, find this great hotel. The pictures kind of sold me, redeem points. We show up, Nicole uses her concierge uh uh experience to get us upgraded as well. And so I think from just a point standpoint, there's so much that you can get for free at really, really nice places. We're most likely going to Costa Rica next year. There's a brand new hotel that just opened on the beach and all points. Um, so from a budget standpoint, that is super important to me to take that lead and make sure that we're all excited because we know we're gonna spend money when we get there. We want to have a good time when we're there, we want to uh enjoy the activities and the restaurants, which you can't really get discounts on those. But if we can stretch the dollar for flights or hotels, I think that that's really important. So definitely stick around for the credit card points when I I am too.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Julia, Nicole mentioned like TikTok and Instagram. Do you have anybody you can throw out there that you follow that are top of mind? I don't mean to put you on the spot.

SPEAKER_03 15:34

Oh no, I mean, there's not a particular person, but I have a 13-year-old daughter who showed me the way of Instagram and TikTok, and it actually is very valuable on just seeing where people go, what they're eating, uh, you know, what activities they're doing, and then kind of looking at on a map, like where is that in proximity of where we're staying, and how can we maximize that? And what is that, how does that filter into your day? But that's been a huge resource for me, as well as Nicole and I love certain properties, whether it's Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott, Rosewoods, and then you get on their list, and then a lot of times they'll have like Black Friday deals and they'll like push out promotional deals, and we always snag them, and our go-to is we can always cancel. So that's a good rule of thumb.

SPEAKER_02 16:14

Yeah. We love to book multiple trips at different locations, maximizing either the points or the Black Friday deal or whatever, you know, flash sale they're having, and knowing that we can cancel that trip up until typically 30 to it's either 14 or 30 days before the trip happens. So we'll always keep watching the flight prices, you know. So typically we have multiple trips booked at all at once. And then we're really diligent about booking it on our calendar. Okay, we need to cancel by this date if we're not planning on taking that trip.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

So we've had big mistakes. I'm gonna We? Well, we've all had, but I'm gonna I'm gonna turn to the ladies quickly. Julia, if you can just share like a mistake that we've made as a group that could help them maybe avoid it.

SPEAKER_03 16:59

Um God. So I mean you're talking about overbooking. Yes, overbooking. You don't want to overbook something. And again, when you're dealing with children, you know, you don't want to maximize every minute of your travel day and of course activities and really just be able to ebb and flow with whatever happens because kids get tired and cranky. So you don't want to overbook and then stress everybody out and then have to cancel things. So that's always important.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Julia's also really big of not planning anything on the last day, so you can unwind. And if we can, coming back on a Saturday, so Sunday, we can get laundry done, catch up on emails. You're not walking into a storm on Monday morning. So those are some of the things I know that you're really big on for us. We don't have time for the story, but if you want to just mention it really quickly, just check your passports, really important.

SPEAKER_02 17:43

Real really important. We Belize, my six-year-old daughter didn't have a passport, that it was expired. And so this poor man had to fly to San Francisco and go get her new passport and meet us a day late in Belize. And I've also traveled to Cabo once where my passport was expiring within six months. And who knew that's a rule as well. So just check the passports, make sure that they're still uh not a not going to be expiring within six months of your travel. And that being your return date, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Six months after your return flight, it has to be valid, which is kind of crazy. All right, we're winding down. If each of you can leave us with something motivational to get all of these fine people in the audience to book this next trip. Just book it.

SPEAKER_02 18:24

That's my saying. Just book it. You'll never regret it. They're the best memories. And again, we don't know what tomorrow holds, so just go ahead and have the fun time. Make those memories because they're so special.

unknown 18:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:34

Well, when I realized I only had 18 years with my kids and creating memories, I was like, oh gosh, it's going by so fast, and I only have five more years with my daughter. So I definitely take these trips as like cherish every moment that you have with them.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

Well, and again, being the budget guy, I'm always the one that's like, maybe not, but then when you hang out with the Rexes, they really do live life to the fullest. And as Nicole and they both say, we can't take our hard-earned money with us to the grave, right? And we have no intentions of making our kids rich at the end of their lives. Hopefully they're well prepared, but um, we want to enjoy it. And and we're only getting older, so we're never probably gonna be as healthy as we are right now. And so just trying to maximize that, I think, is super important. Um, these guys know that I I love to float, so it doesn't matter if we're in the mountains or if we're going to a beach, to me, it's got to be about the pool and the ocean. That's the only time I can truly unplug is when I'm just floating. So when I think about traveling, uh my mind can go there right now. Just what's my next float? So I challenge all of you, what is it that you're excited about? Is it hiking? Is it biking? Is it seeing museums? If your mind can mentally go there, and then you can work backwards into, you know, pushing yourself to enjoy that and go through the planning. Because as you can see, it does take some time. We enjoy it. And I think the purpose of this is not everybody enjoys the traveling or the planning aspect of it, but when you can mentally go there, when you can figure out the budget, we can you can find the people that you love to travel with, it can actually be a lot of fun and rewarding and creating the memories that we've been fortunate enough to.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Yeah, we've actually some of our best business ideas, like we go to unwind, but then when you're like everything is kind of the stress is gone, you know, if the kids are there or not, but like our deep, honest, real conversations is just people, humans, business owners, it it you're floating, having a cocktail, and you and I are just dreaming. And so it's it's amazing what happens when you escape and unwind. So I want to thank you guys for being here. We also want to, you know, hopefully you guys took away a tool or a tip that'll help you. We want to encourage you to book that next trip. Remember, it's not about having the perfect vacation because that almost doesn't exist. It's not about getting the perfect photo, it's about making memories, it's about creating stories that you're gonna share for years to come. And so the world's a big place, time is limited, and we believe that adventure is always worth it. So let's all go book that next trip and have a wonderful day today.