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Afford Anything | Make Smart Money Choices
How to Travel on $75 Per Day, with Nomadic Matt Kepnes
01:19:29
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- [00:00]
Paula Pant
If I challenged you to live on a budget of $27,375 per year, you'd probably say that I was nuts. Today's guest believes that you can live on that while traveling the world, and we're gonna see if you can prove it. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that understands you can afford anything, but not everything. Every choice carries a trade off. This show covers five pillars. Financial psychology, increasing your income, investing, real estate, and entrepreneurship. It's double I fire. I'm your host, Paula Pant. I trained in economic reporting at Columbia, and I help you understand money so you can build wealth. With us today is an esteemed travel writer by the name of Matt Kepnes, who is better known as Nomadic Matt. Welcome, Matt.
- [00:46]
Matt Kepnes
Hey, pal, thanks for having me.
- [00:47]
Paula Pant
Thanks for joining us. You say that you can travel the world on $75 per day. That's a bold claim. So we're going to hold your feet to the fire on that.
- [00:56]
Matt Kepnes
Please do.
- [00:57]
Paula Pant
Does that mean that if you're traveling at 75 bucks a day, you're staying in the type of backpacker hostels that are kind of grungy and they've got bedbugs and they're ideal for like 19 year olds?
- [01:09]
Matt Kepnes
Well, most hostels aren't as grungy anymore. They're not what you see on those old movies or TV shows. They've upscaled. Most don't have bed bugs. Most nowadays, the whole thing is like the pod.
- [01:22]
Paula Pant
Yeah.
- [01:22]
Matt Kepnes
So you have the dorms, but there's like curtains and you have your own little light. They're a lot nicer than what you think of, like your parents roughing it in, like the 70s or from the movie the beach in 2000. So they're a lot nicer. But that said, you can use points. You can use credit card points to stay in nicer digs. It's an average Europe, you'll spend more. Southeast Asia, you spend less, and then it averages to 75.
- [01:49]
Paula Pant
Okay, tell me where you got the budget of $75 a day. How did you develop that number?
- [01:55]
Matt Kepnes
That $75 a day number comes from personal experience when I traveled around the world and adjusted for inflation. So it's my trip through Europe, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, South America, what I spent on food, accommodation, mixing flights with points and non point flights and budget airlines and all that, just adjusted for inflation.
- [02:20]
Paula Pant
All right, let's unpack the costs of travel piece by piece. What elements of the traditional notions of vacationing get disrupted when we shift the conversation to Long term budget friendly travel.
- [02:36]
Matt Kepnes
The notion that travel is expensive really comes from decades of travel advertisements and the media and what we see in the movies. We're going on vacation, it's got to be a lot of money or it's not going to be fun. But yes, if you're going to go to a resort and just put it on the card and worry about it later, sure, that's going to be expensive. But I tell people to travel like they live right. In your day to day life, you're not really spending a lot of money on fancy stuff. You're grocery shopping and you're taking public transportation and you're looking for free or inexpensive things to do in your neighborhood. You go to the park, you wander around. So if you're traveling, you're doing those similar things. It's not going to kill your budget, right? It's not going to be expensive because in every city around the world, no matter how big or small, there's usually free or cheap events. You can go to museums, you can just wander and go for a walk, grocery shop, public transportation. And so when you're traveling, don't forget to do that. I think when we Americans travel, they forget the people in the destination. They're going to do the same mundane things that they do back at home and they get into this mode of like, okay, we have to uber everywhere. We go to every museum, but you don't look to see, does that museum offer free admission on one day of the week? Instead of going on your first day of the trip, can you go on the third day of the trip when it's free? We don't check in with the local tourism board to see what events are going on. We go right to a large booking website and we hit book. It's about changing your mindset and going and thinking less about the blowout vacation and more about replicating your life. When you do that in the destination you're going to, you're also going to get a sense of what life is like in your destination that you're visiting so you get a better sense of the culture anyway.
- [04:39]
Paula Pant
So what I'm hearing is that long term budget friendly travel is essentially living your life in a different location, right?
- [04:47]
Matt Kepnes
I like to say travel like you live the whole thing, travel like a local, but travel like you live. And that's going to get you more to the ground anyway. And out of the resorts in the five star hotels to really see what the culture and the people are like, isn't that the point of travel?
- [05:02]
Paula Pant
Right, exactly.
- [05:03]
Matt Kepnes
You can have an expensive steak anywhere in the world or sit in a fancy hotel anywhere. They're cookie cutter.
- [05:10]
Paula Pant
Exactly. So then let's unpack every element of that because when I hear travel like you live, the first thing, the first place my mind goes is, all right, that means I'm going to get an Airbnb for a month or two. Is that sort of what you're suggesting? Is it actually settling down in one place for a prolonged period of time such that you could make friends there?
- [05:31]
Matt Kepnes
That really depends on how much time you have. If you get two months, do it. But generally if you're kind of on the move, you want to see a lot of destinations. More about the day to day experience rather than the accommodation. It's like going out and taking public transportation. It's going to the grocery store or the market to get food rather than eating at a sit down restaurant. Every meal it's about finding the free or cheap activities. It's about wandering around, you know, getting lost in a bookstore for like three hours. Right. Sitting outside and watching a musician play. And me having lived in places around the world. The day to day rhythm of life is pretty much the same everywhere. It's just sort of like the how we do things is different, why we do things is the same. But how everything gets done makes the world interesting. Because the day to day rhythm in Hong Kong is a little bit different than New York, a little bit different than Paris, a little bit different than Austin, Texas versus rural Canada. When it comes to accommodation, I like to use a mix of things. For example, hotel room points, Airbnbs, hostels, whether that's a dorm room or a private room. Budget hotels, guest houses. So you kind of mix it up based on where you're going and how long you're staying. If I'm staying in a place for a week, I'm more likely to get a Airbnb because then I can cook myself breakfast on the night that I'm tired. I can just like make something quick. If I'm in a place for like two days and I know I'm not going to grocery shop, I might get a hostel or a hotel that's serving breakfast. And there are some hotels that have mini kitchenettes. So it really depends on what I'm doing and how I'm traveling, what my goal is. And so I encourage people to think about your accommodation type based on not only the length of time, but also like, what are you looking for? If you're in, say Iceland, you probably want a kitchen because dining out is really expensive. McDonald's is $20. But if you're in Thailand where eating amazing food is like $3, is grocery shopping really going to be one a more economical thing to do? Is it going to save you time and you're not going to probably make as good as food as that street's all pad Thai anyway.
- [08:01]
Paula Pant
Yeah. So I've some of the most memorable meals I've had have been $50 streetcart food.
- [08:07]
Matt Kepnes
Oh yeah.
- [08:08]
Paula Pant
In Thailand, same.
- [08:10]
Matt Kepnes
That food is so good.
- [08:11]
Paula Pant
Right.
- [08:12]
Matt Kepnes
You know, I encourage people like if you're in Mexico, don't go grocery shopping, just eat the tacos on the street. They're gonna blow your mind every time and they're gonna cost you 50 cents.
- [08:22]
Paula Pant
Right. You mentioned points. Both staying in hotels with points as well as of course, many people use points for booking travel. That's an area that is changing very rapidly and it always has changed rapidly. But it feels as though the changes are happening even faster these days. What are some of the big things that people should know about the points game, so to speak, in 2025?
- [08:46]
Matt Kepnes
That's a great question. Because sometimes I feel like the points and miles game, as we call it changes daily. The banks and the airlines and hotels are always changing point values and redemptions and offers and everything. So I think one of the big things people should know is that if you're going to get a point to earning credit card, make sure you can pay off your balance every month because they have the Highest interest rates, 27% APR. It's basically like mob bosses would be jealous of getting these rates. So if you can't pay off your card, you're going to one pay a ton of interest. But that's going to negate any benefit you get from the points.
- [09:30]
Paula Pant
Right.
- [09:31]
Matt Kepnes
So definitely only get one if you can pay off your balance fully. Second, you know, everyone talks about certain credit cards. The Chase Sapphire, the Amex Platinum, the Capital One Venture. Oh, those are the best ones. There's no best card. There is only the best card for your travel goals. So for example, I do not have an MX Platinum and everyone's always shocked, like, oh my God, you're a points guy and how can you not have it? It's because the perks that card offers I don't use. I'm a big Delta loyalist, so I have their credit card, so I get lounge access. I have lifetime Platinum and Hilton status, so I don't need a card that gets me that. Think about the card you're getting and the perks you're going to use because they're all going to come with fees. Are you going to use the perks more than the fee? Because I'll say like it's $700 a year, but you get $1,000 worth of, like free travel. You're really saving 300 bucks. Okay, but that's only if you use every perk. So make sure you're going to use every perk to justify the fee. Also, get the cards that help where you're going and who you fly or stay with. Personally love Hyatt. Stay in a lot of Hyatts. So I don't have like an IHG card or a Hilton card because I'm mostly in Hyatts.
- [10:53]
Paula Pant
But you said you have premier Hilton status.
- [10:55]
Matt Kepnes
Because I used to be a Hilton guy. I used to be a Marriott guy. Well, I was a Starward guy and then they merged years and years ago and now I just have that legacy status. It takes a lot of Hilton and Mario points to get a free night. I just don't find that a good value for me since I'm very rarely in hotels because I do more budget guest houses or stay at a hostel or Airbnbs or stay with friends. Again, like I said, I'm a Delta guy, so I have the Delta cards. You very rarely will find me in a United or American Airlines plane, so I don't really have their cards. But I do a lot of redemptions through United, United partners with Chase. So I have a Chase card because for me, I can use my Chase points to go either go through United and redeem through the Star alliance or transfer Chase to Hyatt, who I love anyway. So that card is really valuable to me, whereas an Amex isn't so valuable because it's like a Delta British Airways. You just got to look at the partner airlines. So I would say that when you're trying to get a card, forget some website telling you this is the best card to get. Make sure it hits your travel goals, not only for the travel partners, but the perks.
- [12:19]
Paula Pant
Now, I'm sure there are going to be some people listening to this who are thinking, I don't know what my travel goals are. They know that they generally would like to travel more. They've been sitting at a desk job for too long. They maybe have kids and they want to show their kids the world, so they want to take their whole family on a trip and they want travel to be a bigger part of their life, but they're not even at the stage yet. Where they would have travel goals or know necessarily what their preferred airline or hotel or even do they prefer hotels versus guest houses? How would a person, a beginner, figure all of that out?
- [12:57]
Matt Kepnes
If you're just starting out, I would say two things. One, what are you comfortable paying in a yearly fee? Because some of these Premium cards are 600 bucks a year. If you're just starting out, those premium cards might not be good for you unless there's a huge bonus. So the one thing I would look at is are there any crazy signup bonuses going on right now? I'm talking like 100,000 plus points as the welcome offer. Get that card. That should be your first card. Short of that, if there's nothing special, I would consider something like a Capital One Venture or the Venture X or sort of the Chase Sapphire as like good cards without high fees that have a lot of transfer partners.
- [13:43]
Paula Pant
Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve depends on.
- [13:46]
Matt Kepnes
If you want to pay the fee or the perks. The preferred is 95 bucks a year. The reserve is like 650. I generally tell people to just get the lower fee version unless you look at all the perks and you're like, I actually will use all these doordash credits and this and that and okay, then get the higher one. All things being equal. But if the Preferred has some great bonus, go with the higher bonus card because that will really jumpstart your points balance the most.
- [14:16]
Paula Pant
Many of the people who are listening are generally frugal and often what that can translate to when it comes to the points arena is turning into a points hoarder. I will say for myself, and I've had conversations with Brian Kelly, the points guy, about this, I am absolutely a points hoarder. Do you have any advice for frugal people who know that we should spend our points because it's not cash, we can't invest it and get a compounding return. So we know that. And yet it becomes difficult to part with what we've earned because of frugality is so ingrained.
- [14:53]
Matt Kepnes
You know, somebody once told me that the purpose of money was to spend it, and I thought that was very insightful. And I would say that the purpose of points is to also spend it because airlines change their redemption rules all the time. Recently, as we talk about this, in early 2025, Air France raised their redemption rates by 25%. They're always changing their rules. Don't hoard them for years. Okay, yeah, you don't have to spend them as you get them. And a lot of these Times these hotels and airlines will give you some notice, like, oh, starting on X date. So if you book before, you always see a rush of people to spend their points before the new rates kick in. Don't hoard them for years. Points are meant to be spent if you're saving for a trip in a year. Okay. But don't keep them for years because I guarantee you in a calendar year, some airline and probably multiple airlines are going to devalue their points. Where it took you 25,000 points could be 50,000 tomorrow. So don't hoard them, Paula. Spend them. Okay. It's cold in New York right now. Use those points to go to the Caribbean tomorrow.
- [16:06]
Paula Pant
Actually, about a week from the day that this episode airs, I'm going to be in Panama.
- [16:10]
Matt Kepnes
Perfect. Hopefully on points.
- [16:12]
Paula Pant
Yes, actually, yes. Business class points.
- [16:16]
Matt Kepnes
Exactly. Right. I mean, you've earned all these points. Use them, fly in style, stay in style and lower your costs. Right. There's nothing better than free if you're going to be spending because I know a lot of people who still use an ATM card and a debit card for purchases. One, credit cards come with a lot better consumer protections than a debit card. So if something goes wrong, it's a lot easier to get your money back if you're paying off your balance every month. Points are just sort of free money because there's no cost to earning them. You are going to spend that money anyway. I don't pay any credit card fees other than that yearly fee for the card. There's no interest fees, there's no late fees. I have it auto paid up. Just deducts from my bank account. Those points, they're free. I didn't do anything extra to get them. Get rewarded, go to business class.
- [17:13]
Paula Pant
Right, Exactly.
- [17:13]
Matt Kepnes
It's a lot better than middle seat economy.
- [17:15]
Paula Pant
Yeah, exactly. I pretty much insist on business class for any flight that's over six hours at this point.
- [17:20]
Matt Kepnes
Yeah. Same. The older you get, the more I just like, my back hurts, you know, and so that's where really points come in. Because six hours of business class to Europe is thousands of dollars. I'd rather spend thousands of points.
- [17:37]
Paula Pant
Right. You've been traveling for a long time. When you started Traveling, what, about 15 years ago, traveling in earnest.
- [17:45]
Matt Kepnes
19 years ago, actually. 19 years ago, I quit my job to travel the world and I left in 2006. July 26, 2006 was my departure date.
- [17:57]
Paula Pant
Right.
- [17:57]
Matt Kepnes
Said goodbye to my dad, gave me 100 bucks and I was like, sweet. More money for my trip. And off I went and I spent a year and a half traveling in one stint before I came home. Then I came home and I was like, oh, I don't like the office world again. I'm going back out. And then I started a website called Nomadic Mat, hence where the moniker comes from, as a way to maybe do some freelance writing. It's really fun. One more day. That was my 27, 28, something like that. And I didn't want to go back to corporate world. I had spent three years doing admin in a hospital and I just wanted to keep traveling just a little longer. So my goal was just enough money for one more day and by 2010 the blog could fund a full life. I was making like a real salary and I just was like, okay, I'll just keep going. And here we are, still 19 years later, still traveling and being a travel writer. One day I woke up and I was like, oh, do I have a career? Has it been like 10 years? Wait, I think this is a job for me, you know, which is incredible.
- [19:08]
Paula Pant
And it happened one day at a time. Do you know how many countries you've been to at this point?
- [19:12]
Matt Kepnes
I stopped keeping track many, many years ago. But somewhere between 100 and 110, I would have to guess.
- [19:20]
Paula Pant
Wow.
- [19:21]
Matt Kepnes
I probably don't think more than 110 because in the last few years I haven't seen a lot of new countries. Especially because Covid slowed so much travel down. But I would say somewhere between there.
- [19:38]
Paula Pant
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- [22:59]
Matt Kepnes
Post Covid travel has, I would say a. We all know it's gotten more expensive. Life has just gotten more expensive, but it's also gotten more crowded. 2024 saw more people travel than 2019 travels back and then some. But what happened during COVID is a lot of businesses went under, a lot of hotels, a lot of hostels, tour agencies, tour companies, SDA Travel, which was like the student.
- [23:30]
Paula Pant
Oh, SGA travel was huge. They're closed.
- [23:33]
Matt Kepnes
Yeah, they shut down during COVID I mean, they'd been around for like 40 years.
- [23:37]
Paula Pant
That's like learning that Blockbuster Video is out of business. I mean, that's just wow. They were huge.
- [23:44]
Matt Kepnes
They were huge. They were everywhere in the world. I mean, they had been around since the early seventies.
- [23:49]
Paula Pant
Wow.
- [23:50]
Matt Kepnes
Gone. You had SE Travel was famous for student discounts.
- [23:54]
Paula Pant
Right.
- [23:54]
Matt Kepnes
But you had all these other, like discount and reward cards that you can get at either as a backpacker or through these hostile networks or even just like travel cards in specific countries. All gone. The airlines mothballed so many planes and pilots that when travel came back, they're kind of flying full planes. And that's actually better for them because they can charge more per seat. So they're really not incentivized to bring back all these planes. Everything has just gotten more expensive and busier. And so a lot of the old ways of saving money are gone through estate travel, through networks like Couchsurfing. Couchsurfing was huge. Couchsurfing.org and it still exists, but now it's behind an entire paywall, so you can't even log into an account without paying money.
- [24:51]
Paula Pant
Wow. That's very different from the old days.
- [24:54]
Matt Kepnes
Right. And a lot of the other websites are who are like couchsurfing aren't as big. They do exist. But what has taken their place? Funny enough, Facebook groups. There is tons and tons of Facebook groups for travelers looking to meet other travelers or stay with locals. Find a travel partner is a big one. Then there's like backpack in Europe, backpack in South America. There's ones for just solo female travelers. Girls love travel is like the largest one. And so there's been a shift back to Facebook, which I found really amusing and funny because it's not just older people. You see a lot of young travelers on it and you don't think of Gen Alpha or Gen Z being like, Facebook is cool. They do use it for that, I think a part because you can also kind of verify people's identities. Covid has really changed travel in the sense that a lot of old ways of saving money or finding travelers or local deals are gone. And all these new ways have come up and there are kind of fewer options in some places for hostels or hotels or even airlines. I mean, remember, wow, Air and Norwegian were great cheap ways to go to Europe. They don't exist anymore. Now it's like Norris Air, but they don't have as many deals. Whereas, like there's new airline called zipair, which is like a low cost subsidy. Japan Airlines can get you to asia for like 400 bucks. You'll get no food and there's no TV or anything. But if you want to fly to Asia for real cheap. Here you go. Now you have an option. And so a lot of capitalism, right, things get destroyed, things get rebuilt. But in part it's just because why has it got so expensive? Is that a lot of travel operators just have a lot of debt they're trying to get rid of. And one way to do that faster is to raise prices. But everybody wanted to go travel after Covid and they were willing to pay anything.
- [26:58]
Paula Pant
Right? The pent up demand was there.
- [27:00]
Matt Kepnes
Yeah.
- [27:01]
Paula Pant
Also the price of jet fuel has gone up quite significantly. You know the stats on that. Isn't it like $6 something per gallon now? As of early 2025, yeah.
- [27:10]
Matt Kepnes
So, I mean, we don't think about that cost, but pre Covid, it was like a dollar something, two bucks, and.
- [27:16]
Paula Pant
Now it's under two dollars a gallon back then, yeah.
- [27:19]
Matt Kepnes
Now last time I checked, it's like five to six. Airlines are not charities. They're like, oh, it costs more to do this. Pass that on to the consumer. And AI runs so much of booking systems now. You think of dynamic algorithmic prices in airlines, but it's actually in hotels, it's in hostels, it's in events. Why does a concert cost so much money these days? And so you have all this dynamic pricing happening. The computer says, oh, look at all this demand. Let's raise the price until demand falls and then we'll lower it. And so that's happening at all levels of travel too. And since there's so much demand for travel, you're just seeing prices shoot through the roof. Take of hostels, for example. Right. You think of those as budget. You want to go stay at a hostel in Barcelona, peak season in July, you might pay $70, which makes no sense. And at that point just stay in a hotel. Especially if you're two or three people traveling, just share a hotel room, it's going to be cheaper. Or an Airbnb. That's simply because all these systems are dynamic pricing.
- [28:34]
Paula Pant
Now, speaking of dynamic pricing, that throws a wrench into some of the old cliches about travel. Like there's that cliche that travel is flights are always cheaper on a Tuesday. Where did that come from?
- [28:47]
Matt Kepnes
It's a myth now, but it actually comes from a true thing. So before computers were widespread and we had algorithms who can just do pricing 24, 7, we would be in the boardroom being like, everything out of LA, 25% off next month. And so me, the airline employee would then walk to the computer and manually change the prices. That usually happen on a Tuesday. And then every other airline would see, oh, Pala air is now 25% off out of LA, let's match that. Or she's doing 25%, we'll do 30%. And so we'd all change the prices. And that typically happened on a Tuesday. And so that's why it was like book on a Tuesday, because that's when deals would happen. But now that you can just have the computer constantly change prices, we still might say, we're going to run this 25% off. But we don't have to do it on a Tuesday. We can just press a button whenever we want, right? And then we can code in parameters. Hey, if competitors do X, we will do Y. And the computer just is like, okay. And so that prices are constantly changing. A plane might have up to 20 different price points. So the plane's airfare. So the computer is just like trying to get the highest price point as often as possible. So it's just changing all the time. It does not matter what day you book. Now, obviously the corollary to that is it does matter when you're going to fly because if you fly on a weekend when everyone else is flying, it's going to be more expensive. Very few people like to wake up at 4am for a 5am flight or for a 6am flight. I guess if it's 5am, you're probably waking up at 3. Hence why those flights are cheaper. If you want to go to Disney World over holidays, you and everybody else. So definitely when you fly matters way more than when you book.
- [30:48]
Paula Pant
So in the era of static and manual pricing, that's where that Tuesday myth came from. But in the era of dynamic algorithmic based pricing, it no longer applies. What's the ideal amount of time in advance to book a ticket? Is it still? You used to hear that's another popular, I don't want to say myth, but a popular saying around travel is you should book at least, what, a month out, but not more than six months. Is there validity to that?
- [31:18]
Matt Kepnes
Oh, yes, definitely. There is a lot of validity to that. There's only so many seats on the plane. And so again, the airline's goal is to tell the computer get as much money as possible per seat. And so usually around three to six months, the airline has a good idea of how that flight is selling. And then they will either raise prices or lower them based on that. And that's good for most international flights. For domestic, U.S. domestic, two months, three months is usually good if we want to go again to Disney World we're not going to decide most people. I'm not gonna decide a year in advance because what's life like? Maybe you get sick or little Jimmy takes a baseball and now you. Something's changing. And so two to three months for us domestic international, six monthish, four to six months. There's no like hard rule, it's a window because that's when people really start booking and airlines can really start to see what is the demand for this. Now we know everybody goes to Europe in the summer, right? So they know demand is going to be great. Especially post Covid those planes are pretty much full. That's why you don't see as many good advanced award redemptions. Nowadays the best award redemptions are the week before. You just got to roll the dice. They will come. But the airlines want to. Why give away a free seat when you can get someone to pay for it? So they're going to wait to the very last minute before they release a lot of their especially premium business class seats. Economy happens more often. So something for Europe, you might want to think six to nine months because it's going to sell out. So you might not see as many deals. Another thing to think about is that the airlines are still outdated when it comes to travel. Like who is a traveler in their mind, there's two types of travelers. The consumer traveler or the leisure traveler and the business traveler. And a business traveler has to go last minute and they book one ways. Hence why a last minute flight is always expensive. Because I also think if you're booking last minute, you really need it. So you need us more than we need you. So payout and a consumer, a leisure traveler who's planning the trip to Hawaii or the family vacation is going to book far in advance and they're going to book round trip. That flight will be cheaper because they know they're more price sensitive. So oftentimes if you are just booking one way, I book a lot of one ways because sometimes I'll use cash and sometimes I'll use points. And you're like, wow, it's so expensive. Make it a round trip flight and you'll probably see the price drop substantially. And even if you don't need the other leg, just don't use it.
- [34:15]
Paula Pant
I did that once on a flight from Sydney, Australia to Atlanta departing from Sydney. It was cheaper to book round trip than it was to book one way. And so even though I wasn't planning on going back to Sydney, I booked a round trip ticket just to use the one way portion. Of it, right?
- [34:35]
Matt Kepnes
I know so many leisure travelers like you and I and even families because you know, now a lot of people use points. So like people might well book one ways or they might have an open end. They're like, oh, we're going to go to Paris, but we don't really know the rest of the trip. So we haven't booked our return flight yet. We'll book it when we get there. Because we're going to be gone for weeks or months. Probably weeks for most leisure travelers. But in the airline's mind, leisure travelers don't book one ways, we book round trips. Who needs a one way ticket from Sydney to Atlanta? Probably a business traveler because, you know, hub to hub, right? It's an old logic that doesn't apply. But like you said, it will save you money, right?
- [35:18]
Paula Pant
Well, and if you book run trips, right? And so, and so to your point, thank goodness I thought to check that.
- [35:25]
Matt Kepnes
A lot of people don't, right? Sometimes even I'll forget, but I'll be like, wait, and then I'll remember my own device.
- [35:35]
Paula Pant
Is there validity to the idea that you will pay more if you use a Mac versus a PC or that you should use an Incognito browser if you've been looking for a flight for a while?
- [35:50]
Matt Kepnes
There is absolutely, positively no basis for this myth. It's one that gets talked about by bad journalists all the time and gets recycled. I see it on every TikTok in real. Do this, clear your cookies. This is not true. Here's why it's not true. First, it does make sense because we know everybody is tracking everything online. So you, you go to Delta, you don't buy the flight, suddenly you're getting ads on Instagram. Hey, you left this in your cart. We're being tracked so intuitively, it makes sense that they're tracking that and they're seeing that if we're hesitant, they might raise or lower the price. You know, oh, this guy buys a lot of flights so we can charge him more or less. And then you look and you see, okay, I'm going to open a new browser and you go to Expedia or you go to even to the website. Oh, price is different. See, they're tracking. Well, going back to what I said earlier about a plane having multiple price points, airfare only being so many seats on the plane. The computer's job is to maximum revenue. You are not the only one looking at that plane. Right? New York to Paris, maybe there's 400ish seats on that plane, right? How many people do you think are looking at that route at any given moment, especially if the plane's already mostly sold out? Let's say there's 300 seats left. There's more than 300 seats looking at that. Because don't forget that Expedia and all these other booking sites, they're allocated a chunk of the basics. You buy from Expedia, you're buying the most restrictive fare class, then you're putting it in a cart while you're browsing, and then all this stuff is really happening at once. And so it's just your coincidence, really. Many, many sites, including Scott Street Flights, which they call Going, and Airfare Watchdog, and they've run Kayak and even Google Flights, have run thousands of simulations trying to, like, prove that this myth is true. And. And no one can ever do it. Correlation is not causation. Just because you see it once doesn't mean it's true. You just happen to witness in real time other people buying cheaper seats or more expensive seats and the computer changing it. That one. Those few hundred seats are being looked at by thousands of people.
- [38:25]
Paula Pant
So essentially, if you were to run this 10,000 times, then in aggregate, you would see no correlation.
- [38:34]
Matt Kepnes
You would see no correlation because people have done this, right? Companies dedicated to finding you the cheapest fare are like, let's try to break it. And they cannot do this. And then they'll do it a year later to see if it's changed. Somebody else will do it. I've never seen an airline reporter worth their salt say this exists. Somebody who's, like, deep in the trenches, right? And they sit there and look at airfare all day. It just does not exist, right?
- [39:04]
Paula Pant
But there might be the one or two errant. If you were to repeat something 10,000 times, of course you're going to get the one or two errant anecdotal case studies, and that becomes the subject of a viral TikTok.
- [39:14]
Matt Kepnes
Yeah. Oh, look, I did this. Here's my. You know, they're like, pointing, and here's my screen share, okay? Like, while you were looking for a flight, somebody else was looking for a flight. And maybe they bought up the cheaper fare, because, again, it's all about different price buckets. Another thing is that I'm a solo traveler, right? So there might be one seat left at $300, but you're a family, and you need four seats. You don't need one seat. You need four seats. And so the next bucket up is 350. So the computer is going to spit back at you 350 each because there's only one seat at 300, not four seats at 300. And so I always also tell people search for one ticket at a time and then go two tickets and then three tickets and when that price switches go back to the one before and buy two and two and then just make sure your seats are together because again, it's different price buckets.
- [40:18]
Paula Pant
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- [41:26]
Matt Kepnes
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- [42:03]
Paula Pant
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- [43:00]
Matt Kepnes
Well, obviously social media has changed travel in both a good and bad way. The one thing I would say is that when I started traveling and planning my trip, I left in 2006. I got the idea in 2005. There's no blogs, there's no social media. There is forums. There might be a website someone created to be like, I did study abroad. Here's how much it cost me. Or predominantly you're buying guidebooks or you're reading articles in National Geographic.
- [43:31]
Paula Pant
A lonely planet.
- [43:32]
Matt Kepnes
A lonely Planet. And so there wasn't a lot of available information. You learned as you went on the road. I'd see you at a hostel and you'd be like, you gotta go to this restaurant. It's inexpensive and great. And I mark that down. Or you'd say, if you want to go to this museum, it's free on Tuesdays. Or you learned a lot as you went. Nowadays, especially since blogs have started this trend and then social media picks it up even more with video. There is no place in the world you can't find information about nothing. No place is obscure. You want to go to the the jungles of Brazil. A million blog posts have been written about every place there. Different routes, different places to stay. There's people who live there that are making tiktoks about it and reels. Everything is out there. And so that on the one hand is really good because an informed traveler is just a better traveler. You can make better decisions of where to go and what to see. And you know how much things cost. If there are deals, you can find them. If there's free things to do in a city, there's a million blog posts. Free museums, free parks, free events, free tours, whatever you want. So I think that's been really good because you can find a lot of stuff you probably wouldn't been able to find. And there's the rise of the local blogger. When I started, everybody was writing about their backpack and global trip. Now you have that. But you also have the New York City food influencer or just writer who just has a very niche blog. Back in the day, you talked about everything. And now since the mid 2010s, people have started to focus more.
- [45:24]
Paula Pant
Right. I've seen people even focus on niches like traveling with pets or road schooling their kids.
- [45:32]
Matt Kepnes
Yeah, because the riches are in the niches was what happened. And say maybe 2013, 2015, that kind of area. People were like, oh, if we get more specific, Google will reward us.
- [45:45]
Paula Pant
Right?
- [45:46]
Matt Kepnes
But one thing that's really good is now you have local food bloggers who can tell you, like, this restaurant makes the best ravioli in all the city. And you can try this stuff. So that's been really good. One might say that means you're not really allowing for serendipity to happen on the road because you've pre planned everything. And I think that's really more up to the traveler. But the downside, I guess is that a lot of travelers follow what they read on blogs and a lot of people just go to get that Instagram shot. So on the one hand, it has made random holes in the wall really popular, which is good. The economic benefit of travel should be spread out more than it is. But on the other hand, it helped increase the overtourism because everyone now goes to like that one spot in New Zealand to get that view. I was reading recently about just in Arizona, there is this really ancient, like right outside of Sedona, like Native American ruin. And everyone who lived there knew about it. Right. But there is no beaten path trail to it. It's not maintained by the park service or anyone. And a bunch of people started making tiktoks and reels about it. And so everybody went and locals were like, please don't go, please don't talk about this, keep it a secret, because we don't have the infrastructure to support this or make a trail. So people were trampling through the bush, the site walls collapsed, graffiti was there, trash was left. And so now locals are trying to petition the park service to make it part of the national lands. But even then you might have two rangers for tens of thousands of acres. Right. That's sort of the downside is that, yeah, there's a lot of information there, but a lot of people just go to the hot thing. And so it creates a lot of over tourism issues.
- [47:44]
Paula Pant
Yeah, the summit of Mount Everest has that same problem. It's over tourism. People leave trash all over Mount Everest. A lot of people die on that route because they're not prepared, they're not real mountaineers or.
- [47:57]
Matt Kepnes
I mean, I saw a picture of Mount Everest, I saw a video, and it was just basically a queue of people because you have to wait for people to come down to go up. And people just standing there, it's just like they're waiting in line to get into the movies or a show. And it's like you're on the summit of Mount Everest. I am not standing here, just hanging out. Yeah, and people die and there's trash and they should raise the price of it. Clearly I am a proponent of fees. The downside, that restricts people. But if we're going to save these sites for the future. Yeah, if they double the cost of going to Everest. Can I go? Probably not.
- [48:39]
Paula Pant
It's $60,000 to go above basecamp already.
- [48:42]
Matt Kepnes
Yeah, well, maybe they need to make it $120,000 to save the site. Restricting visitor numbers. The world was not meant for so many people to be moving around it at one go. And I think one of the downsides to blogs and social media is that on the one side of the coin, it's made people more comfortable going, which is great. I think we should all leave our home and go travel the world and learn about the people that live in it. It makes us better humans. The other side is that the world doesn't have the infrastructure to have billions of people every year roaming around it. So there needs to be a better balance between people and destinations. Some of that means just not going to places or going off season or finding new places to avoid the crowds. And some of that just means restrictions on how many visitors can go at any given time.
- [49:34]
Paula Pant
I met someone once. This is a guy who's probably late 40s, has never traveled to a non English speaking country, and he said he didn't want to because he doesn't want to be the person who just expects everybody to speak English or to gesture and point. I thought that was a bit shortsighted. I have my own reasons for thinking that. But I'm wondering A, how you would answer that and then B, how the emergence of new AI based technology that can assist with translation. You look at Google Translate or any comparable types of apps that can instantly translate and this is only rapidly improving with AI. How is all of that changing the linguistic component of travel?
- [50:19]
Matt Kepnes
Well, I would tell this guy to get over himself. Since the dawn of man, cultures have been interacting. And it's not like everybody is like they don't expect you to speak their native language and it's okay to point. It's like if people come to an English speaking country from a non English speaking country, they don't speak English, they're pointing, they're doing pidgin English, they're looking at their apps, they have their phrasebook. I mean, before there were apps, there were phrasebooks. You had a little book being like, how do I say this? When I first went to Thailand, I had a little phrase book, you know, So I can learn the language. He can also learn the language, learn a couple of basic phrases. Hi, how are you? Where's the bathroom? Check, please. But sign language is great. Once I was in Ukraine. The hostel ordered me a taxi because I had to be at the train station, like, five in the morning. And they were like, it's not safe to walk. Just we'll get you a train taxi. So they called in, and I went there, and we sat there for a minute, and I was like, oh, I guess the hustle didn't tell them where I was going. So I was like, oh, train station. And it's like, huh? I was like. Then I did the whole, like, annoying train station. And I was. He was just like, yeah. Cause, like, that works. It wasn't the words. It was the speed of the words. So I just went, choo choo. And he was like, ah, okay. Yo, da. And I got to the train station. I once had a friend cluck chicken for chicken. And it's like, charades goes a long way, and it's more fun. People want to help you if you're lost and, like, you. But you got to give them an opportunity. So this guy, he's missing out on so many things. And it's not like nobody in the world doesn't speak English. Right?
- [52:00]
Paula Pant
Right.
- [52:01]
Matt Kepnes
The second you open your mouth, they're like, all right, we'll just switch to English. Because they understand this is a language of commerce and capitalism. Back in the day, it was French. In, like, the 1700s, French was the global language of communication. Everyone spoke English and French. Heck, the original kings of England didn't even speak English. They. They spoke French. That was their language. Because they came from France, it wasn't until the late 1300s that they started actually using English as the de facto lingua franca. Anyways, history tangent. And so you can skip by, and these apps definitely make it easier. Google Translate. I use Google Translate for signs and menus, and I know a lot of people who, when they meet somebody, they pass phones back and forth. They'll type in.
- [52:50]
Paula Pant
Yeah, I've done that many times. Yeah.
- [52:52]
Matt Kepnes
And you'll be like, ah, okay. You know? And they'll communicate that way.
- [52:55]
Paula Pant
Yeah, yeah. So you type for people who are wondering what we're talking about. You type something on your phone, and it automatically gets translated. You type it into a Translate app. And so then I just hand my phone to. Obviously, you have to trust that the person's not gonna run off with your phone. I just hand my phone to someone and it's whatever I've typed is instantly translated for them. So boom.
- [53:15]
Matt Kepnes
You know, you're just basically having a text based conversation.
- [53:18]
Paula Pant
Yeah.
- [53:19]
Matt Kepnes
And it's fun because sometimes, you know, they might not know the word in English. Chances are they speak better English than you speak their native language, but they still might miss some words. And also, like, it creates for like some funny moments, especially if you're at a bar and you're like passing this back and forth while drinking. And so again, I'd go back to this guy and just be like, get over yourself. Get on a plane, go to France, go to Japan. Like, you think people in Thailand expected me to speak Thai? No. I mean, one, I obviously don't look Thai, but the fact that when I even said hello in Thai, they were like, ah, you've made such an effort. There's just like, they appreciate that. So this guy's missing out on a lot of like, really good travel experiences by not attempting to go somewhere. Imagine if no one came to the US because they didn't speak English.
- [54:11]
Paula Pant
How sad would that be, right? We live in New York, where we get visitors from all over the world. It's wonderful.
- [54:17]
Matt Kepnes
I mean, I hear every language. I was at the gym and I was hearing Swedish and I was like, yeah.
- [54:23]
Paula Pant
I was walking down the street the other day and I randomly just passed by someone who was speaking Nepali. We didn't even interact. We were walking past each other like ships passing in the night. But I was like, whoa. I've never, other than Kathmandu, never lived in a city where you can just be walking around and randomly hear that.
- [54:44]
Matt Kepnes
Yeah. I meet visitors from all parts of the world. You see the lost tourist and they're like, you need any help? And you can tell they're from somewhere else. Yeah, go that way. And they're like, thank you.
- [54:56]
Paula Pant
Yeah, exactly. And so I guess what we're sharing is both of us being New Yorkers, one of the things that we find special about New York is that this is a place where people are from around the world come here. So as Americans, when we go to other parts of the world, that's what we're also doing.
- [55:15]
Matt Kepnes
Yeah. And people, as I said, will like to help you. I have been lost in many parts of the world and somebody will scratch their head and they'll pull out their phone and they'll point at something and I'll take a photo. Cause it might be like Google Maps or something. And I'll be like, okay, I know where it is in the city. Or I might Have. Back in the day, I had my guidebook with the physical map, and they would circle. It'd be like. And then I could plot my way. So it creates a lot of micro moments with people, and it makes you realize people are just generally helpful. By him taking the easy way, he's missing out on learning that it doesn't matter what language you speak, people are good people everywhere.
- [55:59]
Paula Pant
Right. Yeah. Back in the day, I remember ripping pages out of guidebooks to make them lighter weight so they would occupy less weight in my backpack as I was traveling. So things have gotten a lot easier now, now that everything's digitized. So in the 110 countries, roughly 110 countries that you've been to, are there any that have surprised you?
- [56:22]
Matt Kepnes
So many. I love Cambodia. I went there with no expectations. There's a lot of great historical sites there. Obviously, Angkor Wat is one of them. But the people were just really nice, really upbeat for people that had such a tragic history. Recent tragic history. Taiwan, incredible place. Great food, very inexpensive tropical beaches, great hiking, lots of tea. Really blew my mind. I recently was in Peru, and that blew my mind. But everyone told me it would be great. So I don't know if it was a surprise that it was great because I expected it to be great. I really loved Ukraine, which can't really go to right now. Romania, Bulgaria, all of those countries really were, like, just a lot cooler and nicer than I had expected. Food was great. Sri Lanka, incredible place.
- [57:15]
Paula Pant
Yeah.
- [57:16]
Matt Kepnes
I really didn't know what to expect.
- [57:18]
Paula Pant
Right. The trains there. Amazing.
- [57:21]
Matt Kepnes
Yeah. And just every, like, coming from the West, I'm a white guy. When I go to a lot of, for lack of a better term, developing countries, you got a dollar sign. And especially like in Asia, where like, they're like, oh, come here. Here's a tuk tuk ride, or come to my suit shop. My defenses are really up for people just trying to scam me.
- [57:45]
Paula Pant
Yeah.
- [57:46]
Matt Kepnes
In Sri Lanka, people would come up to me. I'm like, I don't want that. And it occurred to me after first few times, no. They actually just wanted to chat. What I loved about Sri Lanka was they accepted no as an answer. And then I ended up having these beautiful conversations with people. And that was a good teaching moment, too. It was like, oh, well, sometimes people are just being friendly because I think as a traveler, especially as a Western traveler, you're often viewed as a pocketbook. So you develop this really thin, thick skin and this jaded perception that the only reason people are approaching you might Be because they're trying to either scam you or get money from you, or they won't take no for an answer. So it was a good way to step back and be like, okay, I've actually become slightly too jaded. Let's reset and not assume the worst.
- [58:35]
Paula Pant
Yeah. Myanmar was very much like that as well. Myanmar, I found to be a place where people just wanted to know me, locals wanted to know me, for me.
- [58:45]
Matt Kepnes
Yeah.
- [58:45]
Paula Pant
You know, and I could develop very authentic relationships.
- [58:48]
Matt Kepnes
I think that's why I like Cambodia. And this was first time I went to Cambodia, so that was like 2007. And in Cambodia, people were just like, hey, what's up, buddy? But I've been back to Cambodia multiple times, and it's still a pretty great place.
- [59:04]
Paula Pant
Yeah. Yeah. I love Cambodia as well. Angkor Wat and then back to Myanmar and the temples of Bagan and then kind of Yogyakarta. I'd say those three areas all remind me of each other.
- [59:15]
Matt Kepnes
Yeah. Similar architecture.
- [59:17]
Paula Pant
Yeah.
- [59:18]
Matt Kepnes
But, yeah, incredible sites.
- [59:19]
Paula Pant
Yeah, exactly. I want to wrap by coming back to our original theme, which was traveling on $75 a day, about $27,000 a year. And that means that if you let the lease on your apartment run out, you put all your stuff in storage, your actual cost of living could be $27,000 a year. If you're traveling on 75 bucks a day and you no longer have the expense of rent or mortgage back in the United States. To that end, is global travel a kind of a good way to save up some money, like, to cash up?
- [59:56]
Matt Kepnes
Yeah. I always tell people traveling isn't as expensive as you think, especially if you're doing it long term, because you don't really have as much overhead. Travel insurance is cheaper than health insurance. You don't have car payments or gas or home insurance or utility bills. All that goes out the window. You get a local SIM card wherever you go. So that's like 20 bucks versus whatever amount you're paying here in the States. I mean, I pay like a hundred bucks a month, I feel like, for cellular and Internet. Yeah. Oh, and then home Internet.
- [60:30]
Paula Pant
Right.
- [60:30]
Matt Kepnes
That's gone too. So traveling around the world, whether you're doing on $75 a day or $55 a day or $100 a day is, on average, cheaper. I wrote this book, how to Travel the world on $75 a day, to talk about a lot of what we've talked about today. One of the things I tell people is that a lot of people always say to me, matt, that's so much money. They either say it's actually too cheap because they're like, I don't want to rough it in these bedbug ridden hostels. Or the hardcore travelers are like, I can do it cheaper. Yeah, there's always someone like that. But what I say in this book is that you might not think you're spending $75 a day. I don't spend that much money. But you are. Because when we often think about how much money we spend on a daily basis, we think about how much, how often we put the credit card down or went to the atm, which is something people really do nowadays because we all put it on plastic. But your rent has a daily fee. Like if you break that down, that's a cost per day. Your Internet is a cost per day. Your food is a cost per day. Your heating is a cost per day. So your life, your car payment is a cost per day.
- [61:42]
Paula Pant
Your clothing is a cost per day. Yeah.
- [61:44]
Matt Kepnes
All that adds up to probably a lot more than 75 bucks a day. And so when you think about your cost of living, even if you don't live in an expensive New York, you can live in rural Tennessee. You are probably spending more than $30,000 a year when you add it all up.
- [62:02]
Paula Pant
Right.
- [62:02]
Matt Kepnes
So long term travel is a good way to save money and do a lot of cool stuff at the same time. And I think that regardless of your income level, you can afford anything.
- [62:13]
Paula Pant
Yeah, exactly.
- [62:15]
Matt Kepnes
Because it might take you, using the methods I talk about in the book, to save money, six months to save money, or six years. But as long as you sort of have your eyes on the prize, you can do it. It took me a year and a half to save for my trip. And that is after working for three years and having a savings. So I took my savings and I. And then I got an hourly job where I could work overtime and to get to the number I needed to get to, which at the time was $50 a day and inflation. Now we're at 75. That's how I got to. This was like I had saved up and then that's how I got to that number. It took me another year and a half of working overtime to top it up. If I didn't work so much overtime, maybe take me two years. The point is, I knew this is what I wanted to do and I was just going to work to get to that goal. And so when you have your eyes on the prize, I tell people, travel is so much about mindset than it is about Money. Because one, you can always work overseas. And if you can save a lot, well, just don't go for a long time or go to a more inexpensive, affordable place. I have interviewed travelers who worked at McDonald's who saved enough money to just get that initial flight to anywhere. And then they found a job overseas or something. It's just like, what can you do today that gets you to the next step? Wake up today and be like, yes, I'm going on this trip. How can I save $1? And you make it a game. And then you're like, oh, this week I saved a dollar a day. Next week can I save $1.50? What can I cut out of my budget? What is really unneeded expense? One thing I do like about my crazy T mobile bill is that it comes with free Netflix and Apple TV. So that's 30 bucks a month saved just from that. I'm gonna pay for my phone anyway. Right. And so another thing I love doing is I don't pay for all the streaming services at once. I pay, I binge, I cancel. I. I pay, I binge, I cancel.
- [64:22]
Paula Pant
Yep. I do the same.
- [64:23]
Matt Kepnes
Yeah. Because oftentimes I'll be like clicking through them all. I'm like, nothing's on. I've seen it all.
- [64:29]
Paula Pant
Yeah, exactly. I subscribe to exactly one at a time.
- [64:33]
Matt Kepnes
Yeah.
- [64:34]
Paula Pant
And often zero at a time.
- [64:35]
Matt Kepnes
Yeah.
- [64:37]
Paula Pant
The YouTube Premium is the one that I will never give up. If I'm going to add any additional thing to that, it'll be one at a time.
- [64:43]
Matt Kepnes
Yeah. It's got to be like, you have to watch this show. I was thinking about recently canceling my Amazon prime because I'm like, I don't really like a lot of their shows and I have issues with Amazon. But now I realized because as a Prime member, they own Whole Foods and I get discounts off my food. It's actually saving me a ton of money per year. It's like 150. But those added dollar off every avocado I get, I eat a lot of avocados. It's like half my membership right there in a year.
- [65:14]
Paula Pant
So, yes, long term travel is actually, contrary to being expensive, it's actually cheaper to go live like a local in a lot of other places around the world than it is to live your life in the United States. So particularly if you're a remote worker and you want to accelerate your savings rate, going and living abroad or just traveling full time while being a remote worker for a US Company could be a great way to keep your cost of living to $30,000 a year and then just shovel the rest into savings.
- [65:52]
Matt Kepnes
There's always a joke is that I would love to live in Europe on a US Salary because we make more than they do, but their cost of living is cheaper. So like you get all the perks of Europe with a US salary, but.
- [66:04]
Paula Pant
Well, and then accelerate that to Southeast Asia.
- [66:07]
Matt Kepnes
Oh yeah, or South America or Mexico or, you know, Sri Lanka or Taiwan. I mean, there's so many places if you're going to backpack or long term travel only in Western Europe, you're going to spend a lot more than $75 a day. But you know, this is how to travel the world. You go to Europe for a bit, you remote work in Southeast Asia, you remote work somewhere else. Like it all kind of balances out. And one thing I really wanted to emphasize, especially because it's easy to get stuck on the number or talking about long term travel is that stuff I talk about in the book and we've talked about here about how to find a cheap flight. If you're going around the world, you're going away for two months, you're going away for two weeks, we're all getting on the same plane. So the strategies and tactics for finding a cheap flight, finding free tours, finding inexpensive accommodations is the same for any traveler. So if you're listening to this, you can travel cheap even if you're going to Europe for two weeks. It's just that the longer you go away, the more you can amortize the cost of travel. That's where the real perk of going away is. And I think that was crazy thought for people pre Covid it's like, well, I just can't take four months off work. But now that so much of life is remote and you have all these digital nomads and remote work visas, that's a lot more people. And this goes to one of your questions about how has travel changed? Post Covid A lot more people are traveling because they're not chained to an office desk anymore. So they can get that new remote work visa that Japan's offering and live three months in Tokyo, they can get that one for Greece and spend six months living on in Athens while still maintaining an income. So like it's a lot easier to travel longer term now. Post Covid thanks to that shift in.
- [68:02]
Paula Pant
Work right back in what, 2012, 2013. The phrase for it used to be location independent. Right. And people don't even say that anymore because now it's just so common.
- [68:14]
Matt Kepnes
Yeah, I mean When I was starting my blog in 2008, Tim Ferriss and the Four Hour Workweek was huge. His whole, like, you got to be location independent. I mean, he started the whole phenomenon in so many ways. 2010, it's. Everyone was like a weirdo who did it and all these location independent people and bloggers and we were crazy, like, starting our online business. It's like, get a job.
- [68:40]
Paula Pant
Yeah. Yep. Yeah.
- [68:42]
Matt Kepnes
What do you mean you don't work anywhere? You work from a coffee shop. How do you get anything done? And now everyone's like, yes, screw the office. Oh, you work remote. Everybody knows what that means. No one's weird for doing it. Right.
- [68:56]
Paula Pant
It's so different. Yeah, yeah, Exactly. Whereas in 2010, everyone thought that it was a euphemism for unemployment.
- [69:02]
Matt Kepnes
Yeah. Oh, no, I work for my computer. Oh, so you're a coder? No, no, I run an online business. It was like so many question marks. Because computer work meant tech coding. No, no, I have a blog. People thought I was just unemployment deadbeat. Now it's like, oh, I want to be an influencer. That's like via a real career. We were just ahead of our time.
- [69:26]
Paula Pant
We were, yeah. It was different back in 2006.
- [69:29]
Matt Kepnes
We were trendsetters.
- [69:32]
Paula Pant
Matt, thank you for coming on the show. Where can people find you if they'd like to hear more of you?
- [69:35]
Matt Kepnes
Well, thank you for having me. I always love talking money and travel. Two of my favorite things. People can find me online@nomadicmat.com, n o m a D I C M a t t nomadicmat on any social channel. Type in instagram.com nomadicmat there I will be. And then the book how to travel the world on $75 a day. Wherever books are sold, it's available in the U.S. canada, and if you want to pay the Amazon fees, anywhere you want to ship it to.
- [70:10]
Paula Pant
Thank you, Nomadic. Matt, what are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Key takeaway number one. Long term travel can be cheaper than your current lifestyle. Most people don't realize that traveling the world can actually cost less than your normal daily expenses in the US and that happens when you factor in all of your current costs like rent, utilities, car payments, all the expenses that you have right now. If you were to travel long term, as both Matt and I have done, if you were to do that, then you would wait until the end of your lease. Or if you own a home, you would rent out your current home or sell it. You'd put all your stuff in storage and so when people hear about long term travel and they're like, how can you afford that? My question back to them is, how can you afford to live in the United States? Right. Matt suggests that you can comfortably travel the world on an average of about $75 per day, which is around $27,000 per year. And that is a lot less than many people's current cost of living.
- [71:17]
Matt Kepnes
When we often think about how much money we spend on a daily basis, we think about how often we put the credit card down or went to the atm, which is something people really do nowadays because we all put it on plastic. But your rent has a daily fee. Like if you break that down, that's a cost per day. Your Internet is a cost per day, your food is a cost per day, your heating is a cost per day, so your life, your car payment is a cost per day. All that adds up to probably a lot more than 75 bucks a day. Long term travel is a good way to save money and do a lot of cool stuff at the same time.
- [71:55]
Paula Pant
And so that is the first key takeaway. Key takeaway number two. The points game, so to speak, requires a strategic approach that is tailored to the way that you spend and to the way that you want to travel. Don't say, what's the quote, unquote, best credit card. There is no universal best. Rather than chasing the most popular credit cards, Matt suggests focusing on cards that align with your specific travel goals and your specific patterns. So what airlines do you frequently use? Is there a particular route that you fly a lot? Where do you tend to stay? What types of perks will you actually take advantage of? And what are your spending patterns? Because different cards reward spending in different.
- [72:40]
Matt Kepnes
Types of categories, everyone talks about certain credit cards. The Chase Sapphire, the Amex Platinum, the Capital One Venture, oh, those are the best ones. There's no best card. There is only the best card for your travel goals. Think about the card you're getting and the perks you're going to use, because they're all going to come with fees. Are you going to use the perks more than the fee? So make sure you're going to use every perk to justify the fee. Also get the cards that help where you're going and who you fly or stay with.
- [73:13]
Paula Pant
Finally, key takeaway number three, post pandemic travel has fundamentally changed because remote work, which was relatively rare among knowledge workers pre pandemic, is now relatively common. And remote workers used to be called, quote unquote, location independent. Back in the day, remote workers can travel longer term. So the pandemic really transformed how we approach travel and who can travel. You know, with more people now able to work remotely while living abroad. And that gives you the opportunity to geo arbitrage. So if you really want to cash up, make a US salary while living in a place where the dollar goes a lot further and then boom, you can accelerate your savings. This type of shift has made long term travel and living in different countries much, much more accessible.
- [74:02]
Matt Kepnes
This goes to one of your questions about how has travel changed post Covid A lot more people are traveling because they're not chained to an office desk anymore. So they can get that new remote work visa that Japan's offering and live three months in Tokyo. They can get that one for Greece and spend six months living in Athens while still maintaining an income. It's a lot easier to travel longer term now post Covid thanks to that shift in work.
- [74:33]
Paula Pant
Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with Nomadic Mat. Now if you're thinking hey, I'd love to travel but I need to make more money so that I can save more or I need a negotiate for more remote work with my boss or I need to switch into a job that offers remote work, if you're thinking anything related to wanting to improve your work situation, I have great news. Our course and our membership community around how to get a raise. It's called you'd Next Raise. We are officially open for enrollment right now for our second beta round. We're not in full enrollment yet. We're still under development. Back in September we let in our first round of beta testers. We had a great experience with them. They gave us amazing feedback. We incorporated all of their feedback into the course. And now having edited the videos, having restructured the way that we do our peer to peer practice sessions, having taken all of the feedback that we got from our first beta round and using that to improve our processes, we are now open to for enrollment for our second beta round. This is going to be the last second and final. It'll be the last beta round that we do before we open for full enrollment later this summer. As a special thank you to anybody who decides to join the second beta round, you will be able to access this course at a 37% discount off of the regular price. So it is a deep discount. It will only only ever be this cheap. Now like this is, the price is never going to go lower than this and it will only ever go higher. If you've been thinking about asking for a raise, but you don't know where to start. Or you've tried negotiating for remote work in the past, or you've tried negotiating for more benefits or more vacation time and you walked away with less than what you wanted. Well, this course is for you. Your next raise is not just some other course where you passively watch videos. Instead, it's a course, it's a membership community where you will be placed in a small practice pod where you'll actually implement these negotiation techniques with partners working through real world scenarios with the same asymmetric information that you would face in an actual negotiation. So the way that we structure it is for all of our peer to peer practice sessions. We give different people different sets of information. So you're going into, you're going to experience the practice of going into a negotiation with a different set of information than what your peer has, your negotiating counterpart. You'll be able to go through a practice negotiation. We do this multiple times throughout the course and then at the end of that, you can come together and see how, how close or far you came to what you could have gotten. Every day for about a month, you'll receive these bite sized video lessons that build your negotiation toolkit. Plus you'll get weekly structured practice sessions that transform that knowledge into real skill. And the members in our first beta group, some of them have already secured raises worth. One of them I know secured a $5,000 raise. Right? That happened from our first beta round. Head to afford anything.comyournextraise to enroll before this special discount. The 37% discount expires on April 4th. Again, that's affordanything.com yournextraise the last thing I'll say is the math is clear, right? The investment that you make in this course could pay for itself hundreds of times over. So don't leave that money on the table. Come join our second round of beta. Be a voice in the shaping of the course and enjoy the deep discount that will never be offered again. That's affordanything.com YourNextraise enrollment is open now through April 4th. Friday, April 4th is when we close our doors. Thank you so much for tuning in. This is the Afford Anything podcast. I'm Paula Pant and I'll meet you in the next episode.