As long time viewers and supporters of your channel, we were thrilled when we were able to coordinate a meetup in Colmar, France this past summer er. Folks when they say if they can make it work they will, they really do mean it. It was such a delight spending time with you guys in person.
Hi Rebecca, It was something we enjoyed immensely and we are so, so glad we could make it work. We truly enjoyed getting to spend time with you and Rick! Plus we got to visit places (Lyon and Colmar and even the detour to Paris) that wouldn't have been on our list to visit in 2024. It was a huge win for us as well. -Judy
Thanks so much for watching and for sharing your perspective, @anthonypeter8652. People can definitely travel more cheaply than we do, but for us we're wiling to continue to earn some money so that we can travel the way we want to! We'll be sharing our numbers next week! -Judy
Nice video. The description of traveling with a budget but not being budget travelers and also not being luxury travelers is how I would describe myself as well. I don't obsess over every penny because this is what retirement is about...enjoying that hard-earned money in the way that brings you joy. Don't overdo it with the spending, but also don't stress about spending more on occasion to enjoy the things you want to experience. And use geographic arbitrage to enjoy both the expensive and less expensive places that you've always wanted to see and experience. That's how to make it work and live the life you deserve. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you so much for watching, Jim! Thanks for sharing the type of traveler you are as well. We know that there are people who travel less expensively than we do, so we hoped that if we put all of our caveats and priorities up front first, then understanding our budget will be much easier next week! We appreciate your support and kind words! -Judy
You two are truly inspirational! We are also a full-time travel couple so this video was very helpful. Thank you for your perspectives and tips. We relate with your travel style. Can’t wait to see more of your videos!
Hi Noelle and Jonathan, Thank you for watching! Our budget is a good deal higher than yours, but I think people will be curious to know how you can afford to travel on the budget you have. For us, we do have investment money we rely on and now RUclips is helping as well. When we first got started, RUclips was bringing in zero dollars. Best of luck to you both; we wish we had known something like this was an option for us when we were young. It would have made such a difference in our lives. Instead, we thought we needed to have a home, big corporate jobs, and all of the other trappings. It created a prison for us. Kevin was entrepreneurial minded, so it created its own challenges, but eventually I appreciated it. Now I wish more people understood that living the way we do is a brilliant plan! Do you have a timeline for how long you plan to live this way? -Judy 🎥 How we thought unconventionally to retire early: ruclips.net/video/ttyh4NXrbfs/видео.html 🎥 Why We'll Never Live in the US Again: ruclips.net/video/xeTdMPRgkWM/видео.html
@@FindingGinaMarie Hi Judy, We are happy to watch your videos and learn more! We subscribed and are excited to follow your journey. You both inspire us that you could change your lifestyle around so drastically after living with corporate jobs, a home, etc. for many years. After graduating from college during the pandemic, we saw our future opportunities to be different than before. We took advantage of remote freelance work and other forms of income that wouldn’t tie us down to one location/schedule. We value flexibility in our plans. Life is always changing. An entrepreneurial mindset is important to see other options in life. We completely agree that this way of living is amazing! We honestly plan to slow travel indefinitely. We can always adjust as life changes, but we enjoy this life so much that we will continue it as long as it’s the best option for us. :)
Thanks, Deb & Mike. We know there are plenty of people who travel more cheaply than we do and also spend a lot more. But for the people who are considering full-time travel, we at least want people to know that our priorities and values may not be theirs, and there's definitely a way to do this more cheaply than we do. We'll be sharing our numbers next week! -Judy
Hi @AbiTheEngineer, If we would have found a $40/night Airbnb in Seoul, we would have snagged it up. Although maybe not if it would have been in a very residential area or someplace farther away from the action. We learned in Vienna that we're willing to pay a little more to enjoy the beauty of a city versus the suburbs or residential areas. -Judy
I completely agree with all of the points you made, and I think we have very similar ways that we travel. One thing I have been guilty of in the past is feeling like I need to see everything on that particular trip. I don’t put that pressure on myself anymore and I realize that this is my lifestyle for the rest of my life and it just might have to wait till the next time I visit. I also understand with the double dipping on the accommodations because while I have an apartment that I pay for for the month, where I’m at right now when I on my next trip for 10 days, I will be having to pay for that accommodation as well so I do try to keep it both of them as reasonable as I can. Both of those combined still less than the US. I’m going to be traveling next week when your video comes out so I’m gonna save it for when I get back, but that will leave me something to look forward to. Hugs to both of you and safe travels!
Thanks so much for sharing how you live and travel, @bw5911. We don't want people to think they need to spend as much as we do in order to travel full time. But there are some things we choose not to compromise on (and thus make sacrifices elsewhere). We wanted to go through our caveats now so that when we share our numbers, people will have an understanding of our priorities. Safe travels and have a great time! -Judy
Great material! I really enjoy your tips and suggestions. I’m 53 and I’ve started planning my retirement and started downsizing now. I’m giving myself about 7-8 years to really get rid of lots of stuff I’ve accumulated over the years so that last year will be easy. I also decided to start creating a list of countries that I want to go visit along with some of the major things I want to see in each country. I’m hoping that all of this planning will prove useful in the future.
@cindybeasley6706, Thank you so much for watching and for your very kind comment! Hooray you for beginning the planning process so much sooner than we did! In retrospect, if we had started downsizing years earlier, our spending trajectory would have been significantly different and we could have saved so much more than we did over the last few years. I'm not sure if you've watched our downsizing series, but I'll link those episodes and our checklist below just in case. Have you seen our travel planning checklist? I'm not sure if the version we have on our website includes a tab that we have used, but we have one tab that we've pre-tabbed for ourselves. It has the country, the places within it we consider (and we add to them whenever someone offers us suggestions there), whether it's Schengen, what area of the world it is, our priority for seeing it and then separate columns for each month of the year so that we know the time of year that those areas are best to visit. We may update our travel planning spreadsheet to include this info, but you don't have to wait for it if that's something you think might help you. It absolutely will be a huge help for you. The downside is that you-like us-will be left with a long list of places you want to see and never enough time to see them all! But that's also a fun problem to have! -Judy 🎥 How we thought unconventionally to retire early: ruclips.net/video/ttyh4NXrbfs/видео.html 🎥 Downsizing for Retirement or Full-Time Travel Series: ruclips.net/p/PLNT98lWfwdF2xRusfMEQvN-5LZZqdnQIf ✅ Downsizing Prep Worksheet: findingginamarie.com/request-downsizing-prep-worksheet ✅ Travel Planning Checklist for long-stay or full time travelers: findingginamarie.com/request-planner
Hi guys, as always, really enjoyed this video! I’m a long term solo traveller and as a senior female, I consider myself lucky to have had the varied range of travel experiences that I’ve had. I have been interested in your travel tips since I found your channel and on my current four month trip around Europe and Morocco, I’ve finally embraced your tip re taking no paper copies of your travel plans and bookings etc. It certainly was a bit of a mental hurdle, not having that back up of paper copies in hand, but it certainly frees up some valuable space, especially when you aim to travel light like I do. Safe travels guys! Cheers from an Aussie
Hi Marg, Thank you so much for watching and for these very kind words! We are so glad to hear that lessening your load of paper has been working for you. There has not been one occasion in the two years that we've traveled where we've needed paper copies for anything, so I'm glad it is working out for you, too. Of course, backups are nice, but we don't have backups or even just-in-case for almost anything we carry. And finding a printer while you're traveling. While it can be done, it's way more time consuming than it's worth! We hope you had a great time in Morocco and are enjoying all of your travels as well. We'd love to hear what you enjoyed the most overall. We're always eager to hear others' recommendations! -Judy
@ Hi Gina, lovely to hear from you. My latest discovery has been Poland, which I explored for the first time last year, so just had to go back again before it gets too well known, hence why I started my trip there from Australia this year. I then wanted to go back to Plitvice Lakes in Croatia which I have been to once before and loved, but this time I wanted to photograph it in autumn. It was AMAZING! I then found an incredible former palace in the middle of nowhere in Hungary which was breathtakingly beautiful as well and hiking there was fabulous too. Then on to Rovinj which was great, Piran then Trieste, Genoa, Marseille, Zaragoza, Cordoba, Malaga, Alicante and now I’m in Palermo. Morocco is not til after Christmas, then finishing off in Nice. So far, Zaragoza, Cordoba and Rovinj have been my most favourite, for very different reasons of course. It’s great having a mix of totally new places and revisiting others but perhaps staying in a different neighbourhood or area. History, architecture, culture, nature, photo opportunities and cappuccino cafes with loads of character are my buzz! Safe travels. Enjoy! Cheers
Wow, this sounds like a fabulous trip! We loved our time in Krakòw in 2023 and are contemplating visiting another city there in 2025. Thanks for these great suggestions. We've been to a few, but we'll need to look into the rest! We are with you on the cappuccino cafes and everything in that sentence! -Judy
@ Hi Gina, I can highly recommend Gdansk in Poland- it is THE most beautiful city for architecture I’ve EVER been to and Wroclaw is a pretty close second, and I’ve been lucky enough to travel a lot. The former palace hotel is in Lillafured, Hungary and Plitvice Lakes is not far from stunning Ljubljana and Lake Bled and is the most stunning national park I’ve been to, closely followed by the two outside Prague. Hope you get to experience all these places too! Cheers
@margsangster8994 Gdansk was one of the places we were strongly considering, so it's great to hear this feedback. Ditto for Slovenia! Croatia is very interesting, but it keeps moving down on the list due to how expensive it is. We tried to squeeze it in for November 2024, but we ended up heading to South America early.
You are so kind, Enrique! We are so blessed to have each other! And you are right. Together there's not much that can stop us! We shared this video because we know that people can travel more cheaply than we do but we want to lay the groundwork of our priorities before we share our numbers next week. Thank you so much for being part of our community here! -Judy
Thank you so much for saying so! This means a tremendous amount to us. We really do try to help people understand who we are and our approach to things, especially money in this case. We didn't want to share our budget in a vacuum because so much of this informs how we spend our money. -Judy 🎥 HOW MUCH DID WE SPEND to travel the world in 2024? 💸 ruclips.net/video/gjDwaTYrB3I/видео.html
Hi @sherrlynntreanor-v3w, Thanks so much for watching. We know we won't be able to travel like this forever, so we are doing what we can now to enjoy it as much as possible! -Judy
You two are great. I’ve been binge watching while packing from a month-long AirBnb in Chiang Mai preparing for a month or two in Vietnam. We are still learning the planning part, but getting better. And the occasional splurges are fun, such as 3 nights in Corfu, Greece while staying in Sarande, Albania.
Thanks so much for the kind words, Nick! We know you will have a great time in Southeast Asia! The planning process is a work in progress and everyone does it a little different. We like to plan far in advance compared to others. Our video coming up this Saturday will walk you through all of our 2025 plans, how we made our decisions and why, and we'll be sharing our estimated budget as well. If you saw our 2024 planning process, it will be similar, but more of a forecast versus a retrospective. it will be interesting for us to see what the end of it looks like next November and how it all ends up fleshing out at the end. We have yet to visit Sarande, but we've heard it's lovely (it's significantly more desolate in the off season, however). We talked about Corfu for 2025 ourselves, but we made a different plan. We'd love to hear how it goes! In case you missed it, we downsized significantly a few months back from what we carried at the beginning of 2024 in Cambodia and even more from 2023. I've linked those below if you need any incentive or motivation to pack a little less! -Judy 🎥 Avoid Airline Carry-On Fees | What We Pack for World Travel 2025: ruclips.net/video/UiPkHF6jzWo/видео.html 🎥 What we're Packing in 2024: ruclips.net/video/yD-45hCjQl0/видео.html
Thank you for watching, Shannon and Allen! We're looking forward to sharing our spending information with you. It took some work to pull it together, but hopefully it will be in a digestible format for what our viewers are looking for! -Judy
Not sure if you meant that as a compliment or not, but thank you. Our full breakdown of our 2024 spending is linked below. -Judy 🎥 HOW MUCH DID WE SPEND to travel the world in 2024? 💸 ruclips.net/video/gjDwaTYrB3I/видео.html
Thank you so much, Erin! We really wanted to share our numbers this week, but we had so many caveats and explanations for how and why we spend what we do that it just made sense to cover it all in one video so that we could more easily drill into the numbers next week. Your support and encouragement means so much to us! -Judy
Thank you so much for your comment, Danielle, and for watching! We're eager to share our numbers next week, but we wanted people to have some context for them. It's possible to travel more cheaply than we do, so we'd never want someone to think that they have to have our budget in order to travel this way. And of course, the people who have more money definitely can have more luxury experiences than we do. -Judy
@FindingGinaMarie I can't wait for your video next week. So many people think that traveling is out of reach for them. With a little planning and research, it is possible to travel either inexpensively or extravagantly. We are definitely in the mid range.
@daniellebarron9181 Thank you so much for letting us know you get this! Thank you so much for all your support. We appreciate it more than you know. -Judy
I’d love to hear how to track your budget to make sure things even out over the months. I’m having trouble knowing when we need to pull back and when we can splurge.
We'll be completely honest with you, @Every_State_Park, when we tell you that we are still learning that as well. We'll put together a video about this, but a lot of it is by feel, but we're realizing there also is some serious intentionality or it can go off the rails. We're looking at what we spent in 2024 and taking an initial cut of about 20% off our non-recurring expenses. We're excluding our truly expensive vacation-style travel off of our averages to give us a more honest understanding of what our true average spending is. From there we'll keep those averages as part of our high travel months (1/3 of the year), take 1/3 off those prices for our medium cost destinations (also 1/3 of the year), and then set goals for spending in our low-cost destinations for the last 1/3 of the year. When we're eating breakfast and getting cappuccino every day, we get a good sense of how expensive things will be in other areas of our visit. If breakfast is pricey, tours often will be as well. It's not a perfect corollary, but it is something to notice. If we see that prices for excursions are high, we really need to weigh if we need to do one where we are or if we can sightsee successfully on our own. Some places make sense to hire a guide or book a tour (we typically will do small group tours versus private tours for the most part). Also, as full-time travelers, there are places like Tirana that are comfortable to visit, but it wasn't a bucket list destination and we didn't have a long list of expensive guided tours we needed to factor in. We saved that for our Sahara Desert experience (and we know that there is a limited number of those we can support!). It's also a good idea to try to offset some expensive excursions or flights or accommodations at cheaper times of the year so you aren't hit with all those expenses at once. Hopefully this gives you a little bit of food for thought. -Judy
@@FindingGinaMarie thanks. We need to do a better job of planning, I tend to just wing it. We did okay for Jan - Oct, but Nov and Dec have been way over budget because I booked some cruises last minute without really planning much. That then led to a poor choice in hotel in Rome since it wasn't near anything for groceries/transportation. Then I didn't factor in tips/excursions/wifi in the prices of the cruises. We'll have to make up for it next year by doing a lot of RVing in the US (which is very cheap for us). I'm curious in the mechanics of how you track your budget too. I just started using Google Sheets but it feels a bit clunky. I might go back to using TravelSpend.
Many moons ago Kevin wrote an app called Moneywell that he sold to someone when he started working for Apple. It's needed a lot of renewed love over the years after a period of some neglect by the person who originally bought it and is just now getting back in form. We use that along with a spreadsheet. There may be a pet project in the works if we can find any breathing room for it! -Judy
@@FindingGinaMarie Wait, wait, he's that Kevin? I bought MoneyWell 1.0 a long, long time ago. I even emailed him a few times when I was building Mac/iPhone apps about what servers he used and other things. I can't believe I didn't recognize him or his voice.
What a small, small world! And if you had hung on long enough, I voiced the tutorials for it! Apple doesn't allow indie developers to have their own side businesses or apps, so he had to sell it off to someone in 2014.. It's in the hands of a friend of ours whose company is giving it a little bit of love. That is just too freaky!!! -Judy
We are really eager to share it with you. But when we started to record it, we had all these caveats and finally decided to just do that video first so we could jump right into the numbers with less explanation. Thanks so much for watching! -Judy
Here's a deep dive question How much would want need to have in retirement if one were to adventure off similar to what you guys are currently doing? >500K > 1M >2M >3M
Hi @tcmazz, We don't have more than $1 million. We won't always travel the way we do, but for now it is working for us. We don't plan to live in the US when we're ready to slow down, so that helps to extend our budget. And we are working on RUclips to help extend our runway during these "go" years. We are traveling a bit fast half of the time, but you could prioritize more low-cost countries and slower travel to keep costs down. Here are some videos that might help. Let us know if you have questions-Judy 🎥 How we thought unconventionally to retire early: ruclips.net/video/ttyh4NXrbfs/видео.html 🎥 You don’t have to be an EXPAT to leave the US!: ruclips.net/video/ZeKxy_zxbZE/видео.html 🎥 Health versus Wealth: ruclips.net/video/6avQGFbXa2I/видео.html 🎥 Life is Short...An Emotional Pause: ruclips.net/video/YiEFHz1WWHI/видео.html 🎥 HOW MUCH DID WE SPEND to travel the world in 2024? 💸 ruclips.net/video/gjDwaTYrB3I/видео.html
Thanks so much for watching, @berg8970! We really wanted to visit El Calafate to have an excursion on the Perito Moreno Glacier (and had tickets!). But after our flight got canceled, we entered high season and everything got too costly. We were planning to head to El Chaltàn for some hiking as well, but the trips were tied together. We also had plans to visit Cusco in Peru and also Machu Picchu. We also wanted to visit Torres del Paine National Park in Chile and spend some time around Puerto Natales. We knew that it would be expensive, but if there was a way to swing by the Galápagos Islands, we would have loved to do that as well. That was more aspirational than the others, which all were on our draft itinerary that we had to scrap after crunching the numbers. It would have been different if we could have flown into a main location and moved from there, but they all required a flight to somewhere in the country and then another hop to the excursion we wanted to experience (e.g., Lima and then a jump to Cusco). We were happy that we could rework our Iguazu Falls trip, despite that flight getting canceled on us as well. We lucked out because we hadn't booked anything after our trip to Buenos Aires so we could add it afterwards. It was originally scheduled after our El Calafate trip, but that flight also ended up getting canceled-when we were at the airport! -Judy
Hi @grantcanfield422, We typically use ATMs, but in Morocco we used Western Union towards the middle of our stay, which actually can be a wise choice since ATM fees were getting quite expensive. We recommend Charles Schwab checking, which will refund your out-of-network ATM fees. There are some countries that we've needed to have zero cash because we can use credit cards for everything, which is absolutely our ideal. There are some occasions where we have some foreign currency we end up bringing along with us, but we try to do our best to make good guesses on how much we'll need. And there's always coffee or lunch we can buy in an airport if we need to. We've even heard of people using their leftover money to buy a gift card at Starbucks, which often can be used anywhere (even if you're not their biggest fan, it's a way to not have to carry foreign currency if you want to avoid that). Thanks so much for watching. -Judy
Thank you. Never have used WU but will look into how it works. Sandy (wife) would love to know (if it’s no too personal) if you are on Social Security, yet. You both look too young. Grant.
@grantcanfield422 I turned 60 this fall, and Kevin was 62 in May. He started collecting SS this year, in part because we have no idea what the future of it will look like. Of course, the longer you wait to collect the more per month you get, but as with everything in life, there are no guarantees that waiting means you’ll be alive to use it. Just to be clear, we used Western Union in Morocco because the ATMs limited how much you could take out of them each time; it is a country that required a lot of cash-our Riyadh accommodations in Fes and our Sahara, desert excursion both required us to pay in cash-and the fees for each time you took money out came to be prohibitive. People also recommend using Western Union in Argentina, and we are finding the fees for withdrawing money here to be high as well. We haven’t needed to use as much cash so we’ve exchanged money from other currencies and we’ve only had to get cash twice, mostly for tips. Again, ATMs limit how much you can withdraw at any time, and the amount is small. There is something called the blue rate which benefits by using Western Union, but we’re also finding that using credit cards helps with the exchange rate too.
New subscriber and recently retired I am looking for realistic dollar amounts for a travel budget I understand there are huge differences between countries But I will have a limited budget Are you able to share general numbers? Asia cost for 1 month etc
Hi Wade, congratulations on your retirement. We aren't budget travelers even though we have a budget. We did this video first so you could understand how we approach money and spending, but we also did a video where we tell you everything we spent to travel in 2024. The link is below. However, we strongly suggest you watch through the entire video because we talk about where we overspent and why. We don't think people need to have our budget to still learn how to be a full-time traveler. We talk through why some of our costs were higher and you can learn about where to shave money based on what we did that you might not need to do. Let us know if you have questions because we truly believe that nearly every budget can travel full time (you just might have to approach some things differently like moving slower or prioritizing more budget-friendly locations). For instance we could easily have shaved $20K off of our budget and you can live and travel in Southeast Asia much more cheaply than we did. -Judy 🎥 HOW MUCH DID WE SPEND to travel the world in 2024? 💸 ruclips.net/video/gjDwaTYrB3I/видео.html
As a F.T. traveler, I make my hard plans (reservations) about 2 months out (with tentative plans 4-6 months out). I tend to get antsy so typically stay in a location for roughly 2-5 weeks (sometimes shorter). Sorry your Patagonia/Machu Picchu plans won’t work (mine are set for January for both). Maybe I’ll bump into you here in BA.
We'd truly love it if our paths could cross, @dotted8. We will have to live vicariously through you. Hopefully you don't have Flybondi as your airline because they really are as bad as everyone says. We spent a lot of time here in Buenos Aires trip planning to tide us over through early June. I'm not sure why I want to know where we're going to be a year into the future when we still give ourselves room to make adjustments. Perhaps because holistically I'm excited to see us get to some of our bucket list places and know they are just on the horizon versus someday in the nebulous future. We'll be in Iguazu Falls until Dec. 6, then two weeks in Uruguay, and then 21 days in Rio de Janeiro (over Christmas). We opted to fast travel through much of South America so we could get exposed to it without being stuck anywhere too long. We'd been hearing that places like Santiago weren't safe since the pandemic and Equador had some unrest and some of the places on our list started to shake out. We at least want to be exposed to South America and then the next time we visit we can be more intentional about what we want to see more of. Thanks so much for watching and for sharing how you plan and travel. -Judy
Hi @rjh2772, Yes, it's certainly possible. There's a lot more planning you'll need to do to find transportation and accommodations for them and it all will cost more money, but if that's your priority, there's a way to do that! Here's a channel that might be helpful for you. These two women ("Our Freedom Years") now have a home base, but they traveled with their two dogs for several years. -Judy 🐕 Everything You Need to Know About Traveling with a Dog: ruclips.net/video/0dV2kj-WPEM/видео.htmlsi=AKoY_D24LMD2ehkj
BW!!!! No one in the history of this channel has even had that as a life goal. You flatter us too much! We are thrilled to see you here as our first comment. Hopefully this video helps set the stage for sharing the details of our numbers next week. -Judy
@ They probably have, but they haven’t been first yet to tell you how excited they are. Just wait you will see how many others like me get just as excited!,,
Hi Diana, we had a flight to El Calafate booked to see the Perito Moreno Glacier and from there we were headed to El Chaltàn, but there was an airline strike and when the flights finally were available, we entered high season and prices skyrocketed. Our flight got canceled for Iguazu Falls, but we were able to tack it on at the end of our time in Argentina. And then we had sketched out plans to visit Torres del Paine National Park in Chile and Machu Picchu in Cusco, but when we were booking flights, we could see that costs to get to all these side places were budget busting. We expect that when we are in Europe, but this caught us a bit off guard. It's fine, but we just had to make some compromises. Overall, we're still very happy with what we booked, but not some of the bucket list excursions we hoped to have. That's okay. We are looking forward to our upcoming travels, and it's going to be faster travel than we typically do. We won't have a month somewhere until we get to Malta in April! Thanks so much for asking! Did you decide what you're doing in Feb, March, April? -Judy
@ no we haven’t decided yet. Wow! Your plans got derailed in the sky! 😞 strikes every where. What a nightmare, but you figured it out. Love watching your videos ❤️
@@dianamartin9558 Thank you for your encouragement! Sometimes those derailed plans end up being gifts in disguise. We did end up scheduling a trip to Costa Rica, which has been on our bucket list since when our kids were little. I think we'll be happy with our changes, and it will give our budget a little extra padding for the latter part of the year, which actually we'll be happy about later! -Judy
I wish your carbon footprint with all this flying was part of your travel decision. Flying is horrible and I watch so many travelers now jetting around the globe just talking bucket lists, deals and how many places they've been, nothing about the environmental impact of their lifestyles. this planet is doomed.
Hi Linda, You might want to understand the bigger picture of what we are doing. Yes we fly around the world, BUT we don't own a car and walk literally everywhere except when we are going to and from an airport. We don't have a home base so we aren't maintaining property or running any utilities. We carry one backpack and a carry-on suitcase apiece and don't buy anything. We consume almost nothing except our sustainable clothes and food. I think our environmental impact is significantly better than people who drive gas guzzling vehicles everywhere, use a ton of air conditioning, and buy boxes and boxes of items on Amazon that require delivery trucks and cardboard and all sorts of packaging waste. We don't send things to landfills and we have almost nothing besides our phones and watches that require batteries. Thanks for watching. -Judy
As long time viewers and supporters of your channel, we were thrilled when we were able to coordinate a meetup in Colmar, France this past summer er. Folks when they say if they can make it work they will, they really do mean it. It was such a delight spending time with you guys in person.
Hi Rebecca, It was something we enjoyed immensely and we are so, so glad we could make it work. We truly enjoyed getting to spend time with you and Rick! Plus we got to visit places (Lyon and Colmar and even the detour to Paris) that wouldn't have been on our list to visit in 2024. It was a huge win for us as well. -Judy
I love this! My husband and I have a similar philosophy around budgeting. Save when you can, but always remembering that life is short.
Thanks so much for watching and for sharing your perspective, @anthonypeter8652. People can definitely travel more cheaply than we do, but for us we're wiling to continue to earn some money so that we can travel the way we want to! We'll be sharing our numbers next week! -Judy
Nice video. The description of traveling with a budget but not being budget travelers and also not being luxury travelers is how I would describe myself as well. I don't obsess over every penny because this is what retirement is about...enjoying that hard-earned money in the way that brings you joy. Don't overdo it with the spending, but also don't stress about spending more on occasion to enjoy the things you want to experience. And use geographic arbitrage to enjoy both the expensive and less expensive places that you've always wanted to see and experience. That's how to make it work and live the life you deserve. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you so much for watching, Jim! Thanks for sharing the type of traveler you are as well. We know that there are people who travel less expensively than we do, so we hoped that if we put all of our caveats and priorities up front first, then understanding our budget will be much easier next week! We appreciate your support and kind words! -Judy
You two are truly inspirational! We are also a full-time travel couple so this video was very helpful. Thank you for your perspectives and tips. We relate with your travel style. Can’t wait to see more of your videos!
Hi Noelle and Jonathan, Thank you for watching! Our budget is a good deal higher than yours, but I think people will be curious to know how you can afford to travel on the budget you have. For us, we do have investment money we rely on and now RUclips is helping as well. When we first got started, RUclips was bringing in zero dollars. Best of luck to you both; we wish we had known something like this was an option for us when we were young. It would have made such a difference in our lives. Instead, we thought we needed to have a home, big corporate jobs, and all of the other trappings. It created a prison for us. Kevin was entrepreneurial minded, so it created its own challenges, but eventually I appreciated it. Now I wish more people understood that living the way we do is a brilliant plan! Do you have a timeline for how long you plan to live this way? -Judy
🎥 How we thought unconventionally to retire early: ruclips.net/video/ttyh4NXrbfs/видео.html
🎥 Why We'll Never Live in the US Again: ruclips.net/video/xeTdMPRgkWM/видео.html
@@FindingGinaMarie Hi Judy, We are happy to watch your videos and learn more! We subscribed and are excited to follow your journey. You both inspire us that you could change your lifestyle around so drastically after living with corporate jobs, a home, etc. for many years. After graduating from college during the pandemic, we saw our future opportunities to be different than before. We took advantage of remote freelance work and other forms of income that wouldn’t tie us down to one location/schedule. We value flexibility in our plans. Life is always changing. An entrepreneurial mindset is important to see other options in life. We completely agree that this way of living is amazing! We honestly plan to slow travel indefinitely. We can always adjust as life changes, but we enjoy this life so much that we will continue it as long as it’s the best option for us. :)
We wish you both much success! You have a great attitude. -Judy
Thank you very much! We hope the same for you two as well 😊
Excellent points that make a person think. Thanks.
Thanks, Deb & Mike. We know there are plenty of people who travel more cheaply than we do and also spend a lot more. But for the people who are considering full-time travel, we at least want people to know that our priorities and values may not be theirs, and there's definitely a way to do this more cheaply than we do. We'll be sharing our numbers next week! -Judy
Seoul is definitely more expensive than Busan but I have stayed at airbnbs where it was $40 a day! You just have to shop around :D
Hi @AbiTheEngineer, If we would have found a $40/night Airbnb in Seoul, we would have snagged it up. Although maybe not if it would have been in a very residential area or someplace farther away from the action. We learned in Vienna that we're willing to pay a little more to enjoy the beauty of a city versus the suburbs or residential areas. -Judy
I completely agree with all of the points you made, and I think we have very similar ways that we travel. One thing I have been guilty of in the past is feeling like I need to see everything on that particular trip. I don’t put that pressure on myself anymore and I realize that this is my lifestyle for the rest of my life and it just might have to wait till the next time I visit. I also understand with the double dipping on the accommodations because while I have an apartment that I pay for for the month, where I’m at right now when I on my next trip for 10 days, I will be having to pay for that accommodation as well so I do try to keep it both of them as reasonable as I can. Both of those combined still less than the US. I’m going to be traveling next week when your video comes out so I’m gonna save it for when I get back, but that will leave me something to look forward to. Hugs to both of you and safe travels!
Thanks so much for sharing how you live and travel, @bw5911. We don't want people to think they need to spend as much as we do in order to travel full time. But there are some things we choose not to compromise on (and thus make sacrifices elsewhere). We wanted to go through our caveats now so that when we share our numbers, people will have an understanding of our priorities. Safe travels and have a great time! -Judy
Great material! I really enjoy your tips and suggestions. I’m 53 and I’ve started planning my retirement and started downsizing now. I’m giving myself about 7-8 years to really get rid of lots of stuff I’ve accumulated over the years so that last year will be easy. I also decided to start creating a list of countries that I want to go visit along with some of the major things I want to see in each country. I’m hoping that all of this planning will prove useful in the future.
@cindybeasley6706, Thank you so much for watching and for your very kind comment! Hooray you for beginning the planning process so much sooner than we did! In retrospect, if we had started downsizing years earlier, our spending trajectory would have been significantly different and we could have saved so much more than we did over the last few years. I'm not sure if you've watched our downsizing series, but I'll link those episodes and our checklist below just in case. Have you seen our travel planning checklist? I'm not sure if the version we have on our website includes a tab that we have used, but we have one tab that we've pre-tabbed for ourselves. It has the country, the places within it we consider (and we add to them whenever someone offers us suggestions there), whether it's Schengen, what area of the world it is, our priority for seeing it and then separate columns for each month of the year so that we know the time of year that those areas are best to visit. We may update our travel planning spreadsheet to include this info, but you don't have to wait for it if that's something you think might help you. It absolutely will be a huge help for you. The downside is that you-like us-will be left with a long list of places you want to see and never enough time to see them all! But that's also a fun problem to have! -Judy
🎥 How we thought unconventionally to retire early: ruclips.net/video/ttyh4NXrbfs/видео.html
🎥 Downsizing for Retirement or Full-Time Travel Series: ruclips.net/p/PLNT98lWfwdF2xRusfMEQvN-5LZZqdnQIf
✅ Downsizing Prep Worksheet: findingginamarie.com/request-downsizing-prep-worksheet
✅ Travel Planning Checklist for long-stay or full time travelers: findingginamarie.com/request-planner
Hi guys, as always, really enjoyed this video! I’m a long term solo traveller and as a senior female, I consider myself lucky to have had the varied range of travel experiences that I’ve had. I have been interested in your travel tips since I found your channel and on my current four month trip around Europe and Morocco, I’ve finally embraced your tip re taking no paper copies of your travel plans and bookings etc. It certainly was a bit of a mental hurdle, not having that back up of paper copies in hand, but it certainly frees up some valuable space, especially when you aim to travel light like I do. Safe travels guys! Cheers from an Aussie
Hi Marg, Thank you so much for watching and for these very kind words! We are so glad to hear that lessening your load of paper has been working for you. There has not been one occasion in the two years that we've traveled where we've needed paper copies for anything, so I'm glad it is working out for you, too. Of course, backups are nice, but we don't have backups or even just-in-case for almost anything we carry. And finding a printer while you're traveling. While it can be done, it's way more time consuming than it's worth! We hope you had a great time in Morocco and are enjoying all of your travels as well. We'd love to hear what you enjoyed the most overall. We're always eager to hear others' recommendations! -Judy
@ Hi Gina, lovely to hear from you. My latest discovery has been Poland, which I explored for the first time last year, so just had to go back again before it gets too well known, hence why I started my trip there from Australia this year. I then wanted to go back to Plitvice Lakes in Croatia which I have been to once before and loved, but this time I wanted to photograph it in autumn. It was AMAZING! I then found an incredible former palace in the middle of nowhere in Hungary which was breathtakingly beautiful as well and hiking there was fabulous too. Then on to Rovinj which was great, Piran then Trieste, Genoa, Marseille, Zaragoza, Cordoba, Malaga, Alicante and now I’m in Palermo. Morocco is not til after Christmas, then finishing off in Nice. So far, Zaragoza, Cordoba and Rovinj have been my most favourite, for very different reasons of course. It’s great having a mix of totally new places and revisiting others but perhaps staying in a different neighbourhood or area. History, architecture, culture, nature, photo opportunities and cappuccino cafes with loads of character are my buzz! Safe travels. Enjoy! Cheers
Wow, this sounds like a fabulous trip! We loved our time in Krakòw in 2023 and are contemplating visiting another city there in 2025. Thanks for these great suggestions. We've been to a few, but we'll need to look into the rest! We are with you on the cappuccino cafes and everything in that sentence! -Judy
@ Hi Gina,
I can highly recommend Gdansk in Poland- it is THE most beautiful city for architecture I’ve EVER been to and Wroclaw is a pretty close second, and I’ve been lucky enough to travel a lot. The former palace hotel is in Lillafured, Hungary and Plitvice Lakes is not far from stunning Ljubljana and Lake Bled and is the most stunning national park I’ve been to, closely followed by the two outside Prague. Hope you get to experience all these places too! Cheers
@margsangster8994 Gdansk was one of the places we were strongly considering, so it's great to hear this feedback. Ditto for Slovenia! Croatia is very interesting, but it keeps moving down on the list due to how expensive it is. We tried to squeeze it in for November 2024, but we ended up heading to South America early.
😉🤩Judy, Kevin: TWO SMART PEOPLE can work anything out! ♥♥♥♥
You are so kind, Enrique! We are so blessed to have each other! And you are right. Together there's not much that can stop us! We shared this video because we know that people can travel more cheaply than we do but we want to lay the groundwork of our priorities before we share our numbers next week. Thank you so much for being part of our community here! -Judy
You’re a great teacher, this was one of your best videos yet.
Thank you so much for saying so! This means a tremendous amount to us. We really do try to help people understand who we are and our approach to things, especially money in this case. We didn't want to share our budget in a vacuum because so much of this informs how we spend our money. -Judy
🎥 HOW MUCH DID WE SPEND to travel the world in 2024? 💸 ruclips.net/video/gjDwaTYrB3I/видео.html
You guys are really inspiring getting close to retirement so viewing you guys seeing what great places you is just a wow👏
Hi @sherrlynntreanor-v3w, Thanks so much for watching. We know we won't be able to travel like this forever, so we are doing what we can now to enjoy it as much as possible! -Judy
You two are great. I’ve been binge watching while packing from a month-long AirBnb in Chiang Mai preparing for a month or two in Vietnam. We are still learning the planning part, but getting better. And the occasional splurges are fun, such as 3 nights in Corfu, Greece while staying in Sarande, Albania.
Thanks so much for the kind words, Nick! We know you will have a great time in Southeast Asia! The planning process is a work in progress and everyone does it a little different. We like to plan far in advance compared to others. Our video coming up this Saturday will walk you through all of our 2025 plans, how we made our decisions and why, and we'll be sharing our estimated budget as well. If you saw our 2024 planning process, it will be similar, but more of a forecast versus a retrospective. it will be interesting for us to see what the end of it looks like next November and how it all ends up fleshing out at the end. We have yet to visit Sarande, but we've heard it's lovely (it's significantly more desolate in the off season, however). We talked about Corfu for 2025 ourselves, but we made a different plan. We'd love to hear how it goes! In case you missed it, we downsized significantly a few months back from what we carried at the beginning of 2024 in Cambodia and even more from 2023. I've linked those below if you need any incentive or motivation to pack a little less! -Judy
🎥 Avoid Airline Carry-On Fees | What We Pack for World Travel 2025: ruclips.net/video/UiPkHF6jzWo/видео.html
🎥 What we're Packing in 2024: ruclips.net/video/yD-45hCjQl0/видео.html
Lots of great practical information, thanks for taking the time. Can't wait to hear more about the budget in the next video.
Thank you for watching, Shannon and Allen! We're looking forward to sharing our spending information with you. It took some work to pull it together, but hopefully it will be in a digestible format for what our viewers are looking for! -Judy
This video saved me so much time, thank you.
Not sure if you meant that as a compliment or not, but thank you. Our full breakdown of our 2024 spending is linked below. -Judy
🎥 HOW MUCH DID WE SPEND to travel the world in 2024? 💸 ruclips.net/video/gjDwaTYrB3I/видео.html
Your candor is so appreciated. You’re making it work and doing it so well. Thank you for the high quality content!
Thank you so much, Erin! We really wanted to share our numbers this week, but we had so many caveats and explanations for how and why we spend what we do that it just made sense to cover it all in one video so that we could more easily drill into the numbers next week. Your support and encouragement means so much to us! -Judy
@@FindingGinaMarie I’m looking forward to next week!
Very informative and top notch (as usual)!
Hi @diannellel2417 Thank you so, so much for watching and for your kind comment. We appreciate it a ton! -Judy
Love your vlogs! So helpful and insightful. Your channel is one of my favorites.
Thank you so much for your comment, Danielle, and for watching! We're eager to share our numbers next week, but we wanted people to have some context for them. It's possible to travel more cheaply than we do, so we'd never want someone to think that they have to have our budget in order to travel this way. And of course, the people who have more money definitely can have more luxury experiences than we do. -Judy
@FindingGinaMarie I can't wait for your video next week. So many people think that traveling is out of reach for them. With a little planning and research, it is possible to travel either inexpensively or extravagantly. We are definitely in the mid range.
@daniellebarron9181 Thank you so much for letting us know you get this! Thank you so much for all your support. We appreciate it more than you know. -Judy
I’d love to hear how to track your budget to make sure things even out over the months. I’m having trouble knowing when we need to pull back and when we can splurge.
We'll be completely honest with you, @Every_State_Park, when we tell you that we are still learning that as well. We'll put together a video about this, but a lot of it is by feel, but we're realizing there also is some serious intentionality or it can go off the rails. We're looking at what we spent in 2024 and taking an initial cut of about 20% off our non-recurring expenses. We're excluding our truly expensive vacation-style travel off of our averages to give us a more honest understanding of what our true average spending is. From there we'll keep those averages as part of our high travel months (1/3 of the year), take 1/3 off those prices for our medium cost destinations (also 1/3 of the year), and then set goals for spending in our low-cost destinations for the last 1/3 of the year.
When we're eating breakfast and getting cappuccino every day, we get a good sense of how expensive things will be in other areas of our visit. If breakfast is pricey, tours often will be as well. It's not a perfect corollary, but it is something to notice. If we see that prices for excursions are high, we really need to weigh if we need to do one where we are or if we can sightsee successfully on our own. Some places make sense to hire a guide or book a tour (we typically will do small group tours versus private tours for the most part). Also, as full-time travelers, there are places like Tirana that are comfortable to visit, but it wasn't a bucket list destination and we didn't have a long list of expensive guided tours we needed to factor in. We saved that for our Sahara Desert experience (and we know that there is a limited number of those we can support!). It's also a good idea to try to offset some expensive excursions or flights or accommodations at cheaper times of the year so you aren't hit with all those expenses at once. Hopefully this gives you a little bit of food for thought. -Judy
@@FindingGinaMarie thanks. We need to do a better job of planning, I tend to just wing it. We did okay for Jan - Oct, but Nov and Dec have been way over budget because I booked some cruises last minute without really planning much. That then led to a poor choice in hotel in Rome since it wasn't near anything for groceries/transportation. Then I didn't factor in tips/excursions/wifi in the prices of the cruises. We'll have to make up for it next year by doing a lot of RVing in the US (which is very cheap for us).
I'm curious in the mechanics of how you track your budget too. I just started using Google Sheets but it feels a bit clunky. I might go back to using TravelSpend.
Many moons ago Kevin wrote an app called Moneywell that he sold to someone when he started working for Apple. It's needed a lot of renewed love over the years after a period of some neglect by the person who originally bought it and is just now getting back in form. We use that along with a spreadsheet. There may be a pet project in the works if we can find any breathing room for it! -Judy
@@FindingGinaMarie Wait, wait, he's that Kevin? I bought MoneyWell 1.0 a long, long time ago. I even emailed him a few times when I was building Mac/iPhone apps about what servers he used and other things. I can't believe I didn't recognize him or his voice.
What a small, small world! And if you had hung on long enough, I voiced the tutorials for it! Apple doesn't allow indie developers to have their own side businesses or apps, so he had to sell it off to someone in 2014.. It's in the hands of a friend of ours whose company is giving it a little bit of love. That is just too freaky!!! -Judy
Can’t wait for the next episode!
😂😂
❤❤
We are really eager to share it with you. But when we started to record it, we had all these caveats and finally decided to just do that video first so we could jump right into the numbers with less explanation. Thanks so much for watching! -Judy
Here's a deep dive question
How much would want need to have in retirement if one were to adventure off similar to what you guys are currently doing?
>500K
> 1M
>2M
>3M
Hi @tcmazz, We don't have more than $1 million. We won't always travel the way we do, but for now it is working for us. We don't plan to live in the US when we're ready to slow down, so that helps to extend our budget. And we are working on RUclips to help extend our runway during these "go" years. We are traveling a bit fast half of the time, but you could prioritize more low-cost countries and slower travel to keep costs down. Here are some videos that might help. Let us know if you have questions-Judy
🎥 How we thought unconventionally to retire early: ruclips.net/video/ttyh4NXrbfs/видео.html
🎥 You don’t have to be an EXPAT to leave the US!: ruclips.net/video/ZeKxy_zxbZE/видео.html
🎥 Health versus Wealth: ruclips.net/video/6avQGFbXa2I/видео.html
🎥 Life is Short...An Emotional Pause: ruclips.net/video/YiEFHz1WWHI/видео.html
🎥 HOW MUCH DID WE SPEND to travel the world in 2024? 💸 ruclips.net/video/gjDwaTYrB3I/видео.html
Ok, now I'm curious, what didn't you get to see while in South America? Thanks for another great video.
Thanks so much for watching, @berg8970! We really wanted to visit El Calafate to have an excursion on the Perito Moreno Glacier (and had tickets!). But after our flight got canceled, we entered high season and everything got too costly. We were planning to head to El Chaltàn for some hiking as well, but the trips were tied together. We also had plans to visit Cusco in Peru and also Machu Picchu. We also wanted to visit Torres del Paine National Park in Chile and spend some time around Puerto Natales. We knew that it would be expensive, but if there was a way to swing by the Galápagos Islands, we would have loved to do that as well. That was more aspirational than the others, which all were on our draft itinerary that we had to scrap after crunching the numbers. It would have been different if we could have flown into a main location and moved from there, but they all required a flight to somewhere in the country and then another hop to the excursion we wanted to experience (e.g., Lima and then a jump to Cusco). We were happy that we could rework our Iguazu Falls trip, despite that flight getting canceled on us as well. We lucked out because we hadn't booked anything after our trip to Buenos Aires so we could add it afterwards. It was originally scheduled after our El Calafate trip, but that flight also ended up getting canceled-when we were at the airport! -Judy
@@berg8970 you can read her post to me. I also asked.
How do you get country specific cash and how do you deal with shortages or excesses toward the end of that country’s stay?
Hi @grantcanfield422, We typically use ATMs, but in Morocco we used Western Union towards the middle of our stay, which actually can be a wise choice since ATM fees were getting quite expensive. We recommend Charles Schwab checking, which will refund your out-of-network ATM fees. There are some countries that we've needed to have zero cash because we can use credit cards for everything, which is absolutely our ideal. There are some occasions where we have some foreign currency we end up bringing along with us, but we try to do our best to make good guesses on how much we'll need. And there's always coffee or lunch we can buy in an airport if we need to. We've even heard of people using their leftover money to buy a gift card at Starbucks, which often can be used anywhere (even if you're not their biggest fan, it's a way to not have to carry foreign currency if you want to avoid that). Thanks so much for watching. -Judy
Thank you. Never have used WU but will look into how it works. Sandy (wife) would love to know (if it’s no too personal) if you are on Social Security, yet. You both look too young. Grant.
@grantcanfield422 I turned 60 this fall, and Kevin was 62 in May. He started collecting SS this year, in part because we have no idea what the future of it will look like. Of course, the longer you wait to collect the more per month you get, but as with everything in life, there are no guarantees that waiting means you’ll be alive to use it.
Just to be clear, we used Western Union in Morocco because the ATMs limited how much you could take out of them each time; it is a country that required a lot of cash-our Riyadh accommodations in Fes and our Sahara, desert excursion both required us to pay in cash-and the fees for each time you took money out came to be prohibitive.
People also recommend using Western Union in Argentina, and we are finding the fees for withdrawing money here to be high as well. We haven’t needed to use as much cash so we’ve exchanged money from other currencies and we’ve only had to get cash twice, mostly for tips. Again, ATMs limit how much you can withdraw at any time, and the amount is small. There is something called the blue rate which benefits by using Western Union, but we’re also finding that using credit cards helps with the exchange rate too.
New subscriber and recently retired
I am looking for realistic dollar amounts for a travel budget
I understand there are huge differences between countries
But I will have a limited budget
Are you able to share general numbers?
Asia cost for 1 month etc
Hi Wade, congratulations on your retirement. We aren't budget travelers even though we have a budget. We did this video first so you could understand how we approach money and spending, but we also did a video where we tell you everything we spent to travel in 2024. The link is below. However, we strongly suggest you watch through the entire video because we talk about where we overspent and why. We don't think people need to have our budget to still learn how to be a full-time traveler. We talk through why some of our costs were higher and you can learn about where to shave money based on what we did that you might not need to do. Let us know if you have questions because we truly believe that nearly every budget can travel full time (you just might have to approach some things differently like moving slower or prioritizing more budget-friendly locations). For instance we could easily have shaved $20K off of our budget and you can live and travel in Southeast Asia much more cheaply than we did. -Judy
🎥 HOW MUCH DID WE SPEND to travel the world in 2024? 💸 ruclips.net/video/gjDwaTYrB3I/видео.html
As a F.T. traveler, I make my hard plans (reservations) about 2 months out (with tentative plans 4-6 months out). I tend to get antsy so typically stay in a location for roughly 2-5 weeks (sometimes shorter). Sorry your Patagonia/Machu Picchu plans won’t work (mine are set for January for both). Maybe I’ll bump into you here in BA.
We'd truly love it if our paths could cross, @dotted8. We will have to live vicariously through you. Hopefully you don't have Flybondi as your airline because they really are as bad as everyone says. We spent a lot of time here in Buenos Aires trip planning to tide us over through early June. I'm not sure why I want to know where we're going to be a year into the future when we still give ourselves room to make adjustments. Perhaps because holistically I'm excited to see us get to some of our bucket list places and know they are just on the horizon versus someday in the nebulous future. We'll be in Iguazu Falls until Dec. 6, then two weeks in Uruguay, and then 21 days in Rio de Janeiro (over Christmas). We opted to fast travel through much of South America so we could get exposed to it without being stuck anywhere too long. We'd been hearing that places like Santiago weren't safe since the pandemic and Equador had some unrest and some of the places on our list started to shake out. We at least want to be exposed to South America and then the next time we visit we can be more intentional about what we want to see more of. Thanks so much for watching and for sharing how you plan and travel. -Judy
is it possible to be a full-time traveler through Europe with our dogs?
Hi @rjh2772, Yes, it's certainly possible. There's a lot more planning you'll need to do to find transportation and accommodations for them and it all will cost more money, but if that's your priority, there's a way to do that! Here's a channel that might be helpful for you. These two women ("Our Freedom Years") now have a home base, but they traveled with their two dogs for several years. -Judy
🐕 Everything You Need to Know About Traveling with a Dog: ruclips.net/video/0dV2kj-WPEM/видео.htmlsi=AKoY_D24LMD2ehkj
สวัสดีคำอธิบายที่ดียอดเยี่ยมมากขอให้ประสบความสำเร็จมีความสุขครับ👍👍👍
Thank you so much for watching and for your kind words! -Judy
Hi kids! I finally made it to comment first.
BW!!!! No one in the history of this channel has even had that as a life goal. You flatter us too much! We are thrilled to see you here as our first comment. Hopefully this video helps set the stage for sharing the details of our numbers next week. -Judy
@ They probably have, but they haven’t been first yet to tell you how excited they are. Just wait you will see how many others like me get just as excited!,,
@@bw5911 Awww. How extremely kind and generous of you to say this! Honestly, your encouragement and support has meant so much! -Judy
Oh friends, what happened to your plans? Where did it go wrong? More info. So sorry.
Hi Diana, we had a flight to El Calafate booked to see the Perito Moreno Glacier and from there we were headed to El Chaltàn, but there was an airline strike and when the flights finally were available, we entered high season and prices skyrocketed. Our flight got canceled for Iguazu Falls, but we were able to tack it on at the end of our time in Argentina. And then we had sketched out plans to visit Torres del Paine National Park in Chile and Machu Picchu in Cusco, but when we were booking flights, we could see that costs to get to all these side places were budget busting. We expect that when we are in Europe, but this caught us a bit off guard. It's fine, but we just had to make some compromises. Overall, we're still very happy with what we booked, but not some of the bucket list excursions we hoped to have. That's okay. We are looking forward to our upcoming travels, and it's going to be faster travel than we typically do. We won't have a month somewhere until we get to Malta in April! Thanks so much for asking! Did you decide what you're doing in Feb, March, April? -Judy
@ no we haven’t decided yet. Wow! Your plans got derailed in the sky! 😞 strikes every where. What a nightmare, but you figured it out. Love watching your videos ❤️
@@dianamartin9558 Thank you for your encouragement! Sometimes those derailed plans end up being gifts in disguise. We did end up scheduling a trip to Costa Rica, which has been on our bucket list since when our kids were little. I think we'll be happy with our changes, and it will give our budget a little extra padding for the latter part of the year, which actually we'll be happy about later! -Judy
I wish your carbon footprint with all this flying was part of your travel decision. Flying is horrible and I watch so many travelers now jetting around the globe just talking bucket lists, deals and how many places they've been, nothing about the environmental impact of their lifestyles. this planet is doomed.
Hi Linda, You might want to understand the bigger picture of what we are doing. Yes we fly around the world, BUT we don't own a car and walk literally everywhere except when we are going to and from an airport. We don't have a home base so we aren't maintaining property or running any utilities. We carry one backpack and a carry-on suitcase apiece and don't buy anything. We consume almost nothing except our sustainable clothes and food. I think our environmental impact is significantly better than people who drive gas guzzling vehicles everywhere, use a ton of air conditioning, and buy boxes and boxes of items on Amazon that require delivery trucks and cardboard and all sorts of packaging waste. We don't send things to landfills and we have almost nothing besides our phones and watches that require batteries. Thanks for watching. -Judy