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Ready For Retirement
They Gave Up the ‘Traditional’ Retirement to Live the Life They Always Wanted: The Retirement Travelers
00:38:39
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- [00:01]
A
Hi, John. Hi, Bev. Thank you for joining me today.
- [00:03]
B
Hi.
- [00:04]
C
Hi. Thanks for having us.
- [00:06]
A
I'm very excited for this conversation. We talk a lot. I talk a lot about retirement, and retirement not just being this thing that you go to. To give up, to settle down, to kind of just drift quietly into the night. But it should be this season of adventure, of joy, of purpose, of doing everything that you want to be able to do. And you two are excellent examples of that. You are the retirement travelers. You have a wonderful YouTube channel. You got tons of resources which we're going to touch upon in a little bit. I'm going to link to them in the show notes below. But do you mind just sharing a bit about your journey? How did you come to be known as or become the retirement travelers that you are today?
- [00:42]
C
Well, it has been quite a journey, I would say. Let's see. Let's go back. I retired at the end of 2019, and we hadn't really thought about retirement travelers at that point. We knew we wanted to travel some. And at that time, Bev said, you know, let's. While we travel, I could probably blog and, you know, write some blogs as we travel. We weren't thinking full time, maybe a couple months, a year kind of thing. And I said naively, why not just start a YouTube channel? How hard could that be? Famous last words. And she came up with the name retirement travelers. And that was how it was kind of started back at the beginning of 2020 again before COVID So that's where the idea was started.
- [01:31]
B
Yeah, yeah, it was. It was that simple. And, you know, after, you know, after we got started with it, I mean, we can get into that. But yeah, the idea was never. We never had the plan to be world travelers. We never had the. Well, we always wanted to travel, but we never had the plan to be YouTubers. I mean, the idea of that was just so foreign. And, you know, we didn't really know anybody that did anything like this. And yeah, when.
- [01:59]
C
And then we had a trip to Europe planned for March of 2020, and we were going to go for a couple months and, and do some blogging and just kind of feel our way through. We did. Had no idea what we were doing. And then Covet hit. And that was a. That was a. Something that. That has really impacted our lives, everyone. But she said, hey, I don't want to just sit here during COVID Why don't we buy an Airstream and at least go see our country while we can't travel internationally? So within a Week of COVID shutting everything down, we were up in Tampa. We bought an Airstream. We already had a truck. And we hit the road in May with a goal of. We didn't know how long Covid would last, but we said, let's just go see all 50 states and all the national parks in the lower 48. And we took off. And that's what we did. And that was kind of the birth of retirement travelers. We did a little bit of.
- [02:55]
B
We started YouTubing. I started blogging at the same time. And we realized that we were really bad at it. We were bad at all of it. We didn't know anything. We were so, so green and just didn't have any clue. But it was really good because as we. As we kind of got our bearings, I mean, it really took us two years to kind of get a footing for really what was going on. We weren't very consistent on our channel, but at least it taught us some things. And we started learning that we were way over our heads. So we backed off of the blog and decided, let's just very. Let's just focus on YouTube later on, after we started traveling abroad, I looked at John one day and I said, you know, this wasn't my dream to be a YouTube editor. It was my dream to be a blogger. So we put the YouTube on hold for about eight months. We just didn't film anything. And we worked on our website to try to create a blog. And then we went back to Asia the next trip, and John said, you know, let's just give it one more go. And the one more go was what we needed. And that just kind of started us going in the right direction. So we still blog, but it. It is kind of a little bit of a backseat. We wanted it to be bigger, but with AI and all of Google changes, we don't really see a future for blogging like we see with YouTube.
- [04:23]
C
The other funny thing that happened while we were gone, you know, we were still paying, you know, our HOA fees and everything in our neighborhood while we were in this Airstream, which was about maybe 220 square feet, we realized that we did not need a big house, that we were quite happy, you know, out there exploring the world together. We didn't. We didn't need a big home and lots of stuff. And. And that first year on the road, we had. First of all, we had never even spent a single night in an RV before. We just jumped into it. And by the end of that year, we began thinking, you know, what we we could do this. We don't need a home. Let's go out and explore the world for 10 years. You know, we, we retired at 55 and the average age in our community was 70 or 75 or 75. And we said, why, why spend the next, you know, 35, 40 years doing this? Why not go see the world? We can always come back here in 10 years. So that kind of got the ball rolling that, you know, let's, let's just sell it all and go, will you.
- [05:23]
A
Paint that picture for us? Because, you know, it's not just we got an airstreaming and traveled the lower 48 and came home and took a couple trips a year. What does, what has travel looked like for the two of you the last five years in terms of frequency where you've gone?
- [05:38]
B
We have traveled mostly full time. We do come home for a couple months at a time. When we're home, sometimes it's six weeks. Now we're trying to get to a better pattern and a better consistency because our grandkids are growing up and we still want to be a part of their lives. So balancing family with travel has been something that we've learned that we can do, but that has, that has taken a little bit of an adjustment period for us. So. But we travel mostly. We're trying to see it all. I mean, we really are trying to see it all. One of the things that. And we back up again. One of the things that happened to us is that when I was around 40 years old, maybe a little younger than 40, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. And with a diagnosis like that, and I'm doing very well, but with a diagnosis like that, it makes you reevaluate everything about your life. And I don't know that tomorrow I will walk. So, you know, there, there is some urgency to our method of madness. Let's go see as much as we can while we're the healthiest, we really are in our go go years. You know, when you retire, you have go go years, slow go years and no go years. And we are in our go go years. We're the healthiest we will ever be. We know that 10, 20 years from now, we will not be as healthy as we are now. And there's no magic cure out there that's going to change that fact. So right now is the time for us to go and go big and do as much as we can. And so that has been, that has played into our life as well.
- [07:21]
C
So we've been to 107 countries so far in all 50 states. So, you know, we, we are very aggressive with, you know, this sense of urgency that she talked about not only with travel, but with, with our YouTube, with, with downsizing. You know, we, we don't want to have regrets. That said, we were procrastinating. You know, we see that a lot actually with, with viewers that write to us in that they're, they're a little tentative with wanting to, you know, take that step of downsizing or take the step of travel or they're, they're there. I don't know if I can do it on my own, that kind of thing. So we, we try to encourage people and give them confidence that they can, you know, downsize or travel or dream bigger in retirement.
- [08:07]
B
And you know, our motto is the CS list quote, you're never too old to set a new goal or dream a new dream. And we truly believe that retirement travelers for us was a new dream. John was, had a great career and he was, he was amazing at his career. And I was a stay at home mom to five kids. So as we, as we age. And then when, when he called me and I think you were in New York or Pittsburgh at the time, and he called me and he said, you know what? They're offering me a package. What do you think about retiring? And I'm like, let's do it. And, and, and before he got home, I had a trip planned. So it was that much that, that excited. But one of the things that we've, we've kind of seen in our, in our plan is that, you know, I was a stay at home mom all those years. I still had a dream. Someone said to us in our neighborhood, well, Bev, the corporate world missed out on you. And you know, I, they didn't miss out on me, but my kids benefited by me being around. But at the same time, I still.
- [09:10]
C
Had a dream and I benefited.
- [09:11]
B
You, you did benefit, but we had, I had a dream. So when I said let's, let's vlog, I didn't imagine YouTube, but it's still the same thing. And it's still a goal. It is still learning. It is. You were overwhelmed sometimes with the amount of learning that we've had to do. But at the same time, you know, our roles have kind of switched and I'm, I'm the creative behind the brand and John is the workhorse.
- [09:39]
C
You know, throughout my career, she was, she was my rock and did everything at home and supported my career, which was, you know, very beneficial to Our family, we were very aligned, and now the roles have kind of switched. She's. She's the creative genius of retirement Retirement Travelers. And, and I, I support her. And. But we're very aligned in what we do.
- [10:00]
B
We're a team.
- [10:00]
C
We are, we are the ultimate team. And, you know, it's kind of sad for us. We hear from so many viewers that, you know, one wants to travel and one doesn't. One wants to do this and the other doesn't. And that misalignment, you know, for couples in retirement is, is a big issue. So we feel very blessed that we're, we're fully aligned with what we're doing.
- [10:20]
A
I love, I'd love to dig deeper on that. And real quick, before I do, everyone should go check out retirement travels travelers.com. i'm looking at your site right now. Everything from trip planning strategies, cheap business class tickets, our travel costs, how to pack travel, health insurance money, and so everything that you could possibly need to know. Go to RetirementTravelers.com, go to the Retirement Travelers YouTube channel. There's a hundred videos that we could take a deep dive on. But go check that out for yourself because it is pretty incredible to see what the two of you have done. I want to talk about a couple of things. One was that you touched upon this sense of urgency. I think that so often people, even once they retire, maybe they're not retiring as young as you did, but at 60, at 65, there's this sense that I've got 20 more years, I've got 30 more years. But what you said was so important of not all those years are created equal. You're never going to be as healthy, you're never going to have as much energy. You're never going to have the vitality that you have today. So how do you. How one, how can people create that sense of urgency? And then number two, traveling is an amazing goal. And for some people, that's exactly what they want to do. And it sounds like that was you. How did you learn that? Knowing that. That it won't always be travel for everyone. It will be other things for other people. But what was the point at which you two felt like, this is what we want to do with our retirement years once we're there?
- [11:42]
B
I think for us, it started when we were children. We were both. We both had very different upbringings. I mean, not really that different upbringings, but I grew up in Arkansas and John grew up in West Virginia. I grew up in our family, had a. Had what we called a farm. We really didn't have any animals, just a few donkeys. But my family, we. We. My dad decided when we were. I mean, I was seven years old, that we didn't need a television. And he threw away the television and said, we have all this land out here, and you guys need to get out and go do it. So I think that played a really big part in who I am today, with creativity and with. And with just the dream of having a dream. I couldn't see someone else living a dream. I had to dream myself. And one of the side effects of that was that my brother and my sisters, we read everything we could get our hands on. And we lived in this little community, had no library. My parents. The only lie I ever heard my mother tell was to the librarian in the nearby town that we lived there so we could get a library card. We. We just didn't have a library back then in that area. And so my parents filled our world with books and I heard wonderful stories. And so John's family brought in, you know, exchange students.
- [13:08]
C
Yeah, we. My older brother and sister were both foreign exchange students, and we had a girl from Brazil and a boy from Mexico live with us. You know, when I was growing up for six months at a time, and my mom actually took me out of school in fifth grade and took me to the most dangerous city in the world at the time, Medellin, Colombia. And we spent a month with my sister who was down there. And it kind of. My parents really stressed education and, you know, it's a big world out there. Even growing up in a small rural town in West Virginia, you know, they had that vision and, you know, for their kids. So that kind of got me started, you know, wanting to travel. And I've always enjoyed travel. It's just as you're raising a family and working, that. That cuts into your travel time a little bit. But, yeah, we've always had that passion for travel.
- [14:01]
A
So that passion's always been. There was. Was there a fear of, you know, you. You went, for lack of a better word, all in. You sold your home. You've seen 100 plus countries, you've seen all the states. Was there a fear of doing that before you?
- [14:14]
B
Actually, here's. Here's kind of how this transpired for us when. When we retired and after we had gone one year around the country and with the Airstream, it. We had planned to. One to do an interior loop and one to do an outer loop of the country, which is a good route to take if you're looking for national parks. And so we had done the first loop that. The first. After we got back, then we started thinking, well, what could we, you know, how could we travel? We had gone to our financial planner, and when we had set up our retirement plan and we had. We had a discussion about, how much travel do you want to do? It was something that we did. And in. In that planning, we said to ourselves and to them, we think two months is kind of a rational idea of keeping the lifestyle that we had and still giving ourselves a couple of months to travel a year. But then we kind of started thinking after that first year of travel and realizing that we could live with a lot less, that we. We might could go travel more, but we couldn't stay in the home that we were in. And it wasn't that we couldn't, but it was that we. It would have been silly and it would have been a waste. Waste of money for us to stay there because it was an expensive neighborhood and, and had club dues and things like that. So we decided, you know, I sat down one day and I just figured up, how much does it cost us to live here every single day? And even my friends in the neighborhood, when I told them, you know, it costs us this much to live here and to live in this home. And. And they're like, I never even sat down and figured up what our daily cost is. So when we figured that daily cost, I said to John, I said, look, we can, we can go travel the world on this amount. We can always come back. A house is a house. And, you know, we. It wasn't like we had raised our family there. So when we looked at that number and we said we could sell it, we could come back in 10 years or whatever, and we could buy again.
- [16:17]
C
And the other thing we realized was how much of not not only cost, but our mental, you know, mental and emotional energy was spent on, oh, is a hurricane going to come? What do we got to do with this boat or our house insurance? All these things that end up, you know, hoa, you know, stuff. All the things that occupy our minds wasn't necessarily, we thought the best thing we could be doing in our retirement.
- [16:46]
B
It wasn't the healthy, it wasn't the.
- [16:47]
C
Healthiest thing versus, you know, what other cultures could we go, you know, experience around the world. And what could we learn? We've learned so much by traveling to all these countries. And, you know, we tell people. People ask us questions now because we're doing our China series, but My goodness, we've learned so much. We did a 3,000 mile train journey through China and the learnings that we had on that, there's no way we could have learned just living in our golf community. So we enjoy the learning aspect of it.
- [17:19]
A
I think that this is an important thing to touch upon, is this wasn't just a reckless throw everything to the wind and hop on the next plane out. There was. When I say a financial plan, I don't just mean what do you do with your money? I mean how do you allocate your time, how do you allocate your emotional energy? How do you alloc the skills, the talents that you have? And you took a lot of time, it sounds like, to really think through how do we do this in a very, not just financially responsible way, but also in a way that we're not going to look back with regret one day. We can always get another home. We can always get the other. You fill in the blank. We're not always going to be able to get these years back. So let's move forward and take advantage of that.
- [18:00]
B
I think it starts with knowing that you have a great partner. And for John and I, you know, we very much love each other and, and there are times when I'm like, get out. Just, you know, he's like, get away from me. Because we're together all the time, but for the most part we have a very loving relationship and I trust that he's going to have my back and he, I have his back. And whether we're, we're traveling or whether we're home, whatever, I think that's where I think when we sat down together and said, you know, we could do this, I knew I could trust him to be a big part of it or be all in. When he said, I'm ready, let's do it, it took him about a week to decide. Oh, when I said let's just sell it all, that was definitely my idea. And it took him about a week of thinking.
- [18:49]
C
It wasn't immediate. It took, it took a few days, but then we jumped for a decision.
- [18:53]
B
Like that and then we did it.
- [18:56]
C
Our style is to think about it. We are thoughtful about things, but we don't, we don't hesitate after that. Once we make a decision, we go forward and then we're all in.
- [19:06]
B
But we have good basis, our foundation is strong and so that, that with. We worked really hard to earn that money and we didn't want to, we don't want to ruin our retirement. We're not being careless. We, in fact, selling our home was the smartest thing we did because it freed up, besides mentally a home. It freed up not the money from the home to spend because we set that aside to invest so we could come back to it. And it was our safety net. But it was the being out of debt before retirement was so important. We could not have done this if we had a mortgage. We couldn't do this if we were reckless and we were overextended on things. We were completely out of debt a few years before retirement and we worked really hard on that. So our decision to go was always founded in keeping our financial future sound.
- [20:02]
C
Yeah.
- [20:05]
A
Go ahead, John.
- [20:07]
C
I mean, and playing. That's why we, you know, we met up with our financial advisors. We wanted a long term strategy. None of this was short term. You know, we were aggressive with urgency to go see and do things, but we always had a long term plan financially that we felt very good about and, and, and run ideas through them so that we, we didn't do anything silly.
- [20:30]
B
Yeah.
- [20:31]
A
Yeah. One of the things that I would encourage listeners to do that I'm hearing that you did is that sense of approach retirement from the blank slate mindset of the thought of not having a home in retirement. You work your whole life to pay off a home and then you just sell it.
- [20:45]
B
Yeah. Give us a dream home. It was, it was our dream home. It was the one thing we had worked so, so hard.
- [20:52]
C
It had a perfect view on a river, you know, on a golf course community. And, and we loved it. I mean, it was a, it was a, we, we called it Disney World for adults. It was a great neighborhood.
- [21:02]
B
Yeah.
- [21:02]
C
But it was, it was expensive and, and it wasn't necessarily challenging us the way that we, you know, we wanted to do in, in life. So, you know, people, people now ask us about, you know, are you, you giving up time with your kids? What we really gave up with was we, we gave up our golf community in Florida and we're still spending as much time with our kids and grandkids, probably more now than when we were living in a golf community in Florida because our kids aren't near there.
- [21:31]
B
Right.
- [21:32]
A
Yeah. So you, you put the time and thought into what is actually most important to us. And we have a finite amount of attention and time that we can give to family, to travels to the golf community and all are great, but maybe the golf community is the, the bottom of the list in terms of the priorities we look at there.
- [21:51]
B
It was the right decision. Yeah, I, I've played golf since I was a child, so I am passionate about golf. And, you know, that was a big part of my life throughout my entire life. And, you know, but I also had a dream, so, you know, was the dream to be a YouTuber? No, not really. But I mean, the dream is to. To live a great life. And I feel like that we're doing that. I mean, it's not all easy. Everything that we come across isn't just rosy and perfect. And, you know, we're in countries sometimes where there it's very challenging to travel in and. But it always makes me think, I thank the good Lord for all that we have and, and that we have each other and we have a great family, and that's our core.
- [22:36]
C
Yeah.
- [22:37]
A
Yeah. I'm gonna once again redirect people to your YouTube channel, to your website to understand kind of the how to. In the where, where to travel, how to travel. Some of the tips and tactics. What I want to spend a bit of time on now is lessons learned. You know, as you look back on this, having spent a few years doing this, are there lessons that you would share with your younger selves? Are there lessons that you would share with people who are kind of on the fence of I kind of want to do this. It doesn't even have to be travel specific. But just to what you said, Bev, of living a big life, living, living fully, what would you share?
- [23:10]
B
Biggest lesson for us, probably into our younger selves, is that stuff doesn't matter. And I look back on our lives and we have a big regret. And that big regret is that we did not take our children and travel more. And, you know, that's one thing we want to do with our grandchildren. That's kind of our legacy plan is to take our grandchildren and show them the world. But had we been at 40, 45 years old, even 50, if John had been able to take a year off and take the kids on a big, long trip, I think it would have been really good for all of us and for them. So when we meet young people out on the road and they say to us, how want to be like you when I grow up, what do I need to do? And our. Our answer is always live small so you can live big and, you know, don't let lifestyle creep come in. We bought houses. Every time we moved, John got transferred, we bought a bigger house. Even after the kids left home, we would. He would get a transfer or promotion. And when we moved, we always bought a bigger house. And we should have gone down in size. And we look back on that and that was, we, we would be even, you know, that would have changed a lot had we done that. So that's our youngest.
- [24:32]
C
Yeah. The bigger, the bigger houses we didn't need. And then the whole thought of the snowbirding, it just was a, It's a fine, it's. I wish we could just. It's a fun lifestyle, but it's financial. If you can afford it, great. But it is not a, we don't think it's a, a great financial decision to, to have two of everything and, and, and be paying for stuff that, you know, you're not living there. So we're, we're just too, we're too frugal to do that kind of the living. It sounded great, you know, and at the time it sounded great. But we know now that that's just not, not for us.
- [25:09]
B
The other lesson that we've learned, and this is probably one of the biggest lessons outside of the travel, was the importance of downsizing your life. And when we think back about the impactful things we did besides being out of debt and being financially secure before we made this big decision, before we retired, it's the downsizing. I cannot, I've done a couple, we've done a couple of videos on downsizing and I recently did one on the channel about the difficulties of downsizing. But one of the things that I've learned through this process is that people don't take the time to do this. They plan for their future. They, they say, oh, I've got my will in place, I have my trust set up. I have all of that done at the attorney. I've gone to my financial planner, I have planned my retirement and they have all of that set up. But what they have not thought about is the importance of downsizing. Even if you're not going to go travel, when one spouse dies, the other spouse gets the entire job to themselves. And if that spouse cannot handle the process because almost every, everyone downsizes. And if they don't downsize, they leave it to their children. And we have heard from so many, especially women, because daughters are usually the ones that deal with this, whether it's daughters or daughter in laws. But downsizing your things and going through a house full of stuff is a burden you do not want to leave on your spouse and you don't want to leave it to your children. And having gone through that process of downsizing, we know what it's done for us, but we see what it does for other people and that's our big lesson.
- [26:53]
C
Yeah. And we, we went through a process. I don't know if you've heard of Swedish death cleaning, but it's a, it's basically, it's preparing all, all of your, your assets and, and, and documentation and everything so that your children don't have a big burden. It's, it's preparing. And, you know, our advice is to do that earlier rather than later. You know, we, it's, it's part of simplification. We wanted to simplify everything. So if, if we get hit by a bus tomorrow, our children. It's basically one phone call. Everything is digitized, everything is in order. There's not going to be. Yeah, yes. There's the emotional grief of losing your parents, but there's not the, I've got to go clean out a house. I don't know what their, their financial situation is. We, we have taken care of all of that and we feel it's kind of a, it's, it's our gift to our children to not leave that burden to them.
- [27:46]
B
It's truly our love letter to them.
- [27:48]
C
Yeah.
- [27:49]
B
And our daughters have said to us, you can't imagine what this has done for us to know we'll never have to do that.
- [27:56]
A
I'm glad you say this, because from the outside it looks like, wow, John and Bev, they're doing so much. That's. How do you manage the mental burden of all that? All. And, and what you're saying is the mental burden was having to deal with the what ifs of the hurricanes and the insurances and the big house. And, and by simplifying this, it's allowing you to be fully present and do what you want to do.
- [28:16]
B
That's right.
- [28:16]
A
That's not to say there's not a lot you're still doing. You're. You're running a YouTube channel, a blog, you're traveling all over the place. You have family in different parts of the country. But the burden of that is lesson or is less than it would have been with the quote, unquote, traditional path.
- [28:30]
B
I mean, retirees have different goals and a lot of retirees have no desire to go travel. But even outside of that, you can get your life in order. And, you know, it's very famous that people leave their, you know, they don't get their will in place and they don't take care of their finance. You know, they don't do that part of life. But downsizing just. We know John's mom has gone to assisted living and the family had to downsize for that. And, you know, and his dad died young, and so those kinds of things happen, and you need to be prepared for them.
- [29:07]
A
Yeah. So I'm curious to hear what's next. You spent the last five, six years traveling all over. Has that. Does the travel bug get out of your system at a certain point, or is it more alive than ever? And what's next for the two of you?
- [29:21]
B
More alive than ever. I mean, I can't even believe that because, I mean, certainly we are used to travel. So we don't land at an airport anymore and say, oh, no, we better. We better line up this. And we better have a map to the. To the subway station and we better go. We better have every duck in order. We. But we still just love it. I mean, the key to good travel is being organized. And one of the things we did a couple of last year is that we created a series called Travel School, Retirement Travel School. And the very first lesson is organizing all of the details. And for us, we don't just travel, you know, a couple of weeks out of the year where we can keep all of our things in a folder. We're. We're planning a trip every week of the year. Even when we're home, we're planning a trip. So we are. We have a lot of details to keep track of. So organization is really important. So.
- [30:24]
C
And, you know, again, down, simplifying. We. All we have is two backpacks. We have. We tease people. We have two backpacks, seven shirts. Seven shirts and. And our golf clubs because we're not crazy. And that's it. I mean, that's literally all we have. We. Last year we bought a used car, but we went three years with no car, and people just find that, how did you. How did you do that? And. But wasn't that. Wasn't that difficult, you know, makes you think differently? So.
- [30:52]
B
Yeah, no, but we really are excited. What's next for us is that we are going to continue to travel. But. But in terms of YouTube and what we. What's next for us here is we are vlogging. Kind of went back to vlogging. We feel like we've said how to pack. We feel like we've given you all the tips and. And all of our thoughts on that. So we're really. We're really traveling and we're really vlogging. We want people to see us go through a subway station in Korea and say to them themselves, South Korea, by the way. We want them to say, well, if they can go through a subway system and get where they are going. I have the confidence that I can at least get a taxi and get to my hotel. So we are excited that we can share our, you know, if we can share, give you confidence that you can do the same thing. That's kind of our.
- [31:44]
C
We also want to encourage people. You know, we talk to so many people our age that it's either they go on a cruise or they go to London, Paris or Rome. And we're trying to tell people there's, there's a lot more to the world than just big touristy places. In fact, we kind of enjoy the non touristy places so much better. You know, being in a city where we're probably the only Americans there, we like that and really enjoy interacting with, with local people there. And you know, that's what we enjoy and that's what we're going to do.
- [32:17]
B
More of in the future that, that. So for us, when we look at what's ahead for the retirement travelers, we are vlogging, but we also have realized that one of the biggest things that we really feed off of is our community. And so we started a Facebook community because we' given advice and how we do things, but we haven't provided our viewers an opportunity to ask questions except in the comments. So we created a Facebook community called Retirement Traveler Senior Travel Community on Facebook and you can go there and share your pictures, you can ask questions. There are so many people that are on that, on the platform that can, that are good travelers and they will lend their advice to that. And so that's a big part of our, of our effort today. We've kind of niched down to community, our vlog, and then group travel. We are planning our first group trip with our community to Victoria Falls in April. And we have a few spots left.
- [33:21]
C
Very, very excited about that. You know, a lot of people have asked us and that's, it's new for us, but we think that's part of our future. You say what's next? And travel community, as Bev said, and.
- [33:32]
B
We want to meet you. We want to meet people that are out there who want to go travel, but maybe not have the confidence to go to Victoria Falls on their own. It's one of the most beautiful places in the world and we have rented out the entire boutique hotel and we have activities planned and it is just going to be so exciting. We've actually met some of the viewers who are coming. We were in China, we met four who are actually going to be there. And you Know, we're so excited about that.
- [34:00]
C
So that part's going to be a lot of fun for us.
- [34:03]
B
Yeah. Yeah.
- [34:05]
A
I love it. You're doing some very cool. You're not just traveling. You're doing a lot of cool stuff beyond that, enabling others to do that, supporting others to do that. Before we wrap, what the people that are on the edge, the people that want this so badly but are maybe suffering from that or paralyzed by that. The what if? The fears, the questions. Any final pieces of advice that you would share with those people?
- [34:25]
C
I just. You gotta. You gotta do it. I mean, we. We were in New Zealand, and I had been teetering back and forth, should I go bungee jumping? And I. I don't love heights, but I. I said, you know, what? If I don't go bungee jumping at the birthplace of bungee, I will regret it for the rest of my life. And so I ended up doing it, and it was an exhilarating experience.
- [34:51]
B
He had a high for, like, five days.
- [34:55]
C
It was really. It was. You know, sometimes you got to get out of your comfort zone, and it's easy to say, no, I don't want to downsize. I want the security of not jumping off a bridge or not selling my home. But in the end, you know, take. Take the leap of faith, you know, and go for it. Life is short, and, you know, you don't know how many good years you have. You know, whatever your dream is, pursue it aggressively.
- [35:21]
B
Yeah, we've. One of the things we didn't touch on today but was the amount of learning that we're doing, you know, just at every turn, at every day. We're never walking down the same street. We are. I think that's a thing for retirees. They oftentimes, you know, you finished your career, you've lost a lot of your friends because they're not in your work. You're not in your work life anymore. And sometimes you can get depressed with, is this all my life will ever be? And I. We're showing it's not all that your life has to be. You know, changing your environment is one of the best ways that you can change your outlook. And, you know, they say, just rearrange your furniture, but goodness, you can also go travel, and that gives you a different perspective. It certainly makes you feel grateful and. And, you know, blessed and. And just all of the good things for travel. You meet people, you just.
- [36:16]
C
Yeah, we. I mean, we miss some of our friends from our old neighborhood and. And, you know, hanging out with them. We have Met so many people online as, you know, with the YouTube channel, that new relationships and new learning and things that we never even dreamed of. So, you know, the sky's the limit on where we could go from here.
- [36:37]
A
Yeah. It reminds me of something I think about a lot, which is there's never an option that is without risk. You know, yes, doing this, there's risk. There's risk that you go somewhere and you need to learn something and you have hiccups along the way. But the risk of not doing it is the risk of regret and the risk of a life where you look back and feel like that profound weight of, I can never go back and do that again.
- [37:00]
B
I don't think we have any regrets. No, there's no regret. I, I, if I died tomorrow, I would have no regrets.
- [37:07]
A
Yeah, I love it. Well, you have so many resources. Do you mind sharing with the listeners again? I'll put all these in the show notes. But where can people find more if this is something that they really want?
- [37:16]
B
Well, we really want them to hit subscribers, subscribe and follow along on our journey. You know, send us notes and tell us where you're from and, and be a part of our community on Facebook. Those are those two things. And then join us on a trip.
- [37:30]
C
Yeah, YouTube, Facebook, and join us on a trip. Or just reach out to us. We, you know, one of the things that we try to do as much as possible is we answer every, every comment if you send something to us on Facebook or YouTube. We believe if, if you've taken the time to write us a note, then you deserve a response. So we do our very best to, to reach back out. So if you send us an email or reach out to us on our website, we will do our best to get back to you.
- [38:00]
A
I love it. Well, John Bev, thank you so much. This has been great. So many cool. This is beyond this travel. What you're doing is very cool to see. And thank you for joining me today.
- [38:08]
B
Thank you.
- [38:09]
C
Thanks.
- [38:19]
A
Once again. I'm James Knoll, founder of Root Financial, and if you're interested in seeing how we help our clients at Root Financial get the most out of life with their money, be sure to Visit us at www.rootfinancialpartners.