On the season finale of Alone with Peter, Mari Escobar shares practical tips for travel, useful resources for staying safe, as a female/solo traveler, and good habits for saving money for your next trip so you can stop making excuses and learn how to prioritize travel!

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43 Stop Making Excuses. How to Prioritize Travel Now with Mari Escobar

*Transcripts may contain a few typos. With interviews ranging from 1-2 hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors.

Peter Kersting: Welcome to Alone with Peter a podcast for entrepreneurs, artists, digital nomads, and people seeking personal growth. We are back for part three of our interview with Mari Escobar and Mari's been through a lot of different accounting jobs right now. She is a financial controller for an indie record label, which I laugh cuz I, the term financial controller sounds so intense to me. but one of the things that I know Mari better for is she's really good at maximizing her travel time, even though she has a nine-to-five job. So if you were someone who was looking for some tips and tricks on how to find a way to travel more while still doing your job and still having your boss be happy with you, Mari's gonna give us some practical tips in this episode about that, about how to travel safely, if you're a female solo traveler and so on and so forth. So thanks for coming back on the show, Mari, and are you ready? Ready to jump into this masterclass?

Mari Escobar: Let's do it. My friends have been asking for it for a while.

Peter Kersting: What exactly are your friends asking about? Let's start with that.

Mari Escobar: They're like, how do you travel everywhere? And don't take that many vacation days or like, how do you do it? Like while working a regular job? So like I mentioned before, I'd say one of my biggest, it's not really a trick, but you know, you gotta take advantage of the holidays any, any day off official day off that doesn't count as vacation, do it and combine it with your vacation. Like if for example, I'm going down to Europe, I'm using Memorial day. It might be a little bit more expensive, but you get more days out of it. You go, yeah. Instead of taking four days, I mean, five days you take four days and you can leave four 10, like I said, before you go like the Friday before you come back the Sunday, midnight before and you multiply the days.

Mari Escobar: Don't spend the days sitting at home

Peter Kersting: you gotta bookend the weekends too is other thing you're saying?

Mari Escobar: Yeah. Mm-hmm sure that's very, that's very big. That's yeah. That's how you maximize the days are these business days, the weekends don't count of course. And then try to leave AF right after work. Don't always wait until the next morning, cuz I mean, those travel hours make a difference. You can be at the destination the next morning instead of like the next night.

Peter Kersting: How long are you planning a trip before you go? Cause that seems like that's a pretty key part too. You're looking out ahead. You're like, oh, Memorial day weekend is coming up. Where do I want to go? And what days? Cuz that takes time some time and effort to think through, where am I gonna go? How am I gonna budget for it? What, how is the best way to bookend it? So how far out in advance are you looking for? Where you wanna stay and when you're gonna go,

Mari Escobar: Not too far in advance I don't plan more than two, three months before or even less. But that's one thing I know all the holidays by hand and by, especially by through the different jobs, I know which holidays we have and we don't and which ones we don't have available. Most people like don't keep track of that. I'm like, I'm on top of it. I know how many vacation days I've taken. I know how many vacation days I have left and I know the holidays coming up. I'm like, okay, there's Memorial weekend then there's July 4th and labor day. And then I don't have anything until like Thanksgiving. So I kinda like split it up around that. And I that's one thing I'm always like on top of

Peter Kersting: That's amazing. And I don't know why I haven't mentioned this earlier, but you sent me right before we did this podcast interview a list of all of the countries you've been to and it is a massive list. I am going to make sure I share it somehow with the group. But in case you think, ah, I don't know how much I believe this. How many countries have you been to?

Mari Escobar: 54. I finally put it up in an app. I mean, I was writing it. I have a, a handwritten list that I did during the hurricane. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna sit down and write how many countries I've actually been to. You know, there are some technicalities, like the Vatican is a separate country, but you know, I'm gonna use it. Sure. Towards my count

Peter Kersting: Still, 54!

Mari Escobar: Yeah. And counting it's 21% of the world. It comes up on the app.

Peter Kersting: I love that 21% of the world. Do you have, what do you have a goal to get to everywhere by a certain time?

Mari Escobar: I mean, it's impossible to get everywhere. I don't have like a special, like specific number, but I wanna try to do maybe between one or three countries, like new countries maybe per year, like this year I want, so like I mentioned before, I'm going to Europe now and I wanted to squeeze in a new country. But it was getting complicated so I'm, I'm doing like a new city. But the new country was like getting into too much, but later in the year I'm like, I need to get at least one during this year/

Peter Kersting: Sure, sure, sure. I'm curious. What have been some of the repeat places for you?

Mari Escobar: Too many most of Europe is a repeat. But I just love going there. It's just like, I never wanna leave. So yeah, I, I don't do that. Like I know people who go to one place and they don't wanna repeat it because I've been there. Sure. But I've been traveling all my life and there's a place that I like. I go back to it. I do try to add new activities or new cities or, you know sure. Not always do the same thing, but in terms of country, I'm like, I try to, or even mix both. You do one old and then one new one. And that's also like right now, like I've seen most of the touristy spots in a lot of places, but I go back and I try to like, not necessarily completely avoid those, avoid those, but you know, I just wanna lik...

43 Stop Making Excuses. Learn to Prioritize Travel Now with Mari Escobar