Travel More, Stress Less: How to Build a Financial Plan That Funds Your Adventures

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I'm going on sabbatical in a couple of weeks, and it's crazy how much planning went into all of it.

You mean planning a multi-week-long trip?

Well, that and figuring out how to pay for it.

Ooh, it sounds like you need to talk to a financial planner.

Well, Sally, I did, and we're going to walk everyone through some of the best ways to plan for travel and your budget.

Welcome to Smart Travel, a deep dive into the tips, tools, and tactics to maximize your travel dollars.

I'm Megan Coyle.

And I'm Sally French.

And we're the travel nerds ready to help you plan your next big trip.

That often means budgeting for travel.

Whether you are trying to take one dream trip or have enough money to do several trips per year, you need to have a good financial plan in place.

That's why I invited James Bashal of NerdWallet Wealth Partners on the show today.

And he's taken not one, but two sabbaticals to travel.

Whoa, lucky guy.

But before we get to James, our disclaimer, and that's that we'll talk about a few credit card companies that are NerdWallet Partners in this episode, but that does not influence how we discuss them.

The benefits, terms, and fees mentioned were accurate at the time of posting, but things can change.

Some offers may have expired by the time you're listening.

So for the latest details, follow the links in the episode description.

Now, Megan, I love to work on the airplane, free from distractions.

So you know I am excited about our first news item, which is that United Airlines is rolling out Starlink Wi-Fi to its Boeing jets.

Yes.

So the first mainline flight was Starlink Wi-Fi, which was a Boeing 737-800 airplane.

took flight on October 15th when it flew from Newark, New Jersey to Houston.

And they did a cutesy thing where they gave it the flight number 2940.

That's the same as the approximate number of antennas United expects to install across its entire fleet.

Okay, I can't tell if that's cute or cringe, but anyway, someone in marketing is very proud of themselves for that one.

Now, I will say, if some of you are like Starlink on United, I have had that already.

You might have, but until now, the Starlink rollout has been limited to smaller planes in the United Express regional fleet.

Basically, now we're getting the rollout to its mainline fleet as well.

Which are kind of the larger airplanes.

It is something of a slow rollout, though, so don't expect guaranteed Starlink on all future United flights.

The good news, though, is that Starlink Wi-Fi is available for free to all United Mileage Plus members.

Since it's free to join, you might as well hand over your email and make an account so you can get that free Wi-Fi.

And in other airline news, there is also a new American Airlines card, the City A Advantage Globe MasterCard.

This is kind of a mid-tier card, so it is not like their $99 annual fee entry-level card.

It is also not that $595 annual fee premium card.

That would be the City A Advantage Executive World Elite card.

This one is that Maybe Goldilocks one.

It has a $350 annual fee.

I like American Airlines for many reasons, but the names of their credit cards is not one of them.

They're all so confusing.

They all kind of sound the same.

Well, and then even you and I are like, is it A Advantage?

Is it Advantage?

What do we even call this?

Advantage.

I don't even know.

Okay, let's talk about some of the benefits on this card.

I will start out with one of my favorites.

That is four Admirals Club Globe Passes, which are valid for 24 hours.

This is interesting because many club passes are only allowed for three hours before your flight.

So with this, I feel like you could really be strategic and hit up multiple lounges in one day.

That's kind of cool, especially if you have a bunch of layovers or something, a really long flight.

Four passes isn't a ton, though.

And then they have all these statement credits for other things, like in-flight purchases.

I'm like, eh.

You know, if you want to buy that sad airline sandwich right on the flight.

Exactly.

And then they do have a companion pass, which I think is really similar to the companion pass on the Alaska card, but the American card has a much higher annual fee.

So the companion pass is $99 plus taxes and fees on a single round trip domestic itinerary in main cabin.

And these are great benefits because you can really knock out a large portion of your annual fee, like if you use this wisely.

I get stressed about trying to use this for maximum value.

Yeah, and I think especially with something like the companion pass, people are trying to save it for the best possible flight and then just never end up using it.

But, you know, really, if you are doing a cross-country flight during, let's say, Thanksgiving week, you are not getting that flight for anywhere near $99.

That to me seems like a really good deal.

But if you are doing these shorter American flights or you're not really doing expensive flights, then I do agree with you.

It can be stressful to use this pass and justify the annual fee on top of it.

I will say one thing I am kind of curious about is the 2x earning on rides and rails which is apparently ride shares taxis and public transit shout out trains since a bunch of premium travel cards have cut the earning rates on those types of travel i like that this one is trying to give you some bonus for it so it sounds like it has some good benefits megan you might be a little sour on it but see for yourself you can follow the link in the episode description for nerd wallet's full card review moving on to other airline news jet blue announced some changes to its elite status program first they're extending how long you can use the benefits.

So instead of your current perks and status expiring on December 31st, you can actually enjoy them through January 31st of the next year.

Love it.

JetBlue making their own calendar.

Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines Atmos Rewards program also made this change recently this year.

So everyone's on their own calendar.

Right after New Year's is a great time to travel too.

So good that you get to enjoy those benefits a little longer if you're going on, say, a ski trip.

Maybe some incentive to not travel during Christmas week and then just save it for January when it's less crowded.

Also right after that on February 1st, 2026, JetBlue is launching what is called Family Tiles.

This means that your kids' tiles and kids' means 12 and under in JetBlue land can count towards perks and mosaic status for you.

The kids do have to be enrolled in this program called Family Tiles, and then you have to link that to the parent or guardian on the TrueBlue account.

That's a first for a U.S.

airline and a pretty good perk for families.

Yes, we have outlined a lot more that you need to know about these programs on NerdWorld's website.

Again, we will link to that in the episode description.

All right, moving along to another news item, Megan, I know you love Built, and I have always felt like the appeal is for renters.

You know, I'm a homeowner, so I've never really been that interested in Built, but now it seems like Built is coming for homeowners too.

So Built began teasing the ability to earn points on mortgage payments earlier this year, and they've just announced starting in early 2026, customers who have a mortgage with United Wholesale Mortgage will be able to earn Built points on each on-time payment.

Ah, so it's not all homeowners, just those with a mortgage through UWM.

That is the largest mortgage lender in the U.S.

that is ahead of other mortgage lenders like Rocket Mortgage, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo.

So this is applicable to a lot of people.

It is not applicable to me yet.

Almost.

Definitely consider it, though, if you do have a mortgage through UWM.

Mortgage payments are major monthly expenses that typically don't earn points, and bill points can be super valuable.

I like transfer partners like World of Hyatt and Alaska Airlines.

Okay, let's wrap this up with some hotel news.

Wyndham Rewards just introduced a $95 per year subscription subscription that offers a way to buy some travel perks.

It is called Wyndham Rewards Insider.

And when you pay this $95 a year fee, you get benefits like elite status, accelerated points earnings, discounts on flights, cruises, rental cars, theme parks.

These discounts are 5% to 15% off.

So not amazing, but could be intriguing if you spend in these areas.

Insiders also earn Wyndham Rewards points on all their travel spend with flights, cruises, and rental cars.

So you can earn both Wyndham Rewards points and those partner points are miles like on the airline or on the cruise.

So it basically lets you double dip.

I'm also intrigued because there is an intro offer for this program.

When you sign up this year, you will receive 14 months of membership for the price of 12.

And then they also throw in a bonus 7,500 Wyndham rewards points.

And what does that actually get you, you ask?

Good question.

That is enough for a free night at some of their lower tier hotels, but they say there are thousands that qualify.

So maybe something to look into.

This is pretty unique.

There are some other hotel travel subscriptions out there, like Citizen M.

Ooh, I love Citizen M.

You've stayed there, right?

Oh my gosh, I stayed at one in Miami.

I was like, whoever did their interior design, can I hire you to do my house, please?

It's gorgeous.

Yeah, they're super like modern and they're usually in cities.

They feel very young.

So I really like that brand.

And they have a subscription where you pay $120 a year and then you actually get Marriott Bonvoy gold elite status because they're now part of the Marriott family.

It is a way that hotels are trying to build loyalty, but also make some extra money from people who are willing to pay more for this perks and don't necessarily want to open a credit card.

We will be watching out for this trend because I suspect Wyndham is not the only one to be doing this.

I mean, not everyone can get a travel credit card.

So this is another option.

All right, on to the main event, your interview with James.

James Fishal is a financial advisor at Nerd Wallet Wealth Partners.

And that sounds like a lot of boring finance words, but this guy is the real deal.

I think you're really going to like him, Sally.

Okay, yeah.

He's a huge traveler, and I was definitely asking him a lot of questions to validate the planning I did for my own sabbatical.

I think I feel validated.

I think I did all the right things.

Okay, let's give it a listen.

But before we get to that interview, I'm so excited to hear it.

Our lawyers want us to say that Nerdwallet Wealth Partners LLC is an affiliate of NerdWallet Inc.

Hi, James.

Welcome to Smart Travel.

Hey, Megan.

Thanks for having me.

So James, you're a financial advisor.

What is the first thing you ask about or look at when someone tells you they want to be able to afford travel?

Yeah, it's a really good question because, you know, I'm a huge traveler and I really want people to be able to travel because that's really putting your money to work and living a good life, which is why we make money.

But ultimately, travel is a luxury.

So we need to ensure that money spent in travel isn't somehow setting you back somewhere else.

And everything's a trade-off.

I mean, we always say to clients, you can have anything, but you can't have everything.

Everything needs to be relative to everything else.

So the first thing we really look at is what is the travel budget relative to the rest of your budget?

How much are you planning on saving?

And where does that put you in terms of your retirement goals or your financial independence goals?

And make sure that it always makes sense in that bigger picture.

Travel can be done on almost any budget.

And so it's really important that when someone does want to travel and they look to afford to travel, it's within the bounds of the rest of their goals.

So you're saying it comes after making sure things like you have an emergency fund or you're putting a little bit away towards retirement.

Are there any other parts of the budget that need to be secured before you start thinking about how to budget for travel?

Yeah, I would always think about it as bottom-up.

So when you think about any kind of financial strategy, the very first thing should be an emergency fund.

And I mean, I guess emergency fund even comes after credit card debt.

Like I'm assuming someone doesn't have any big high interest debt.

Once you clear that out, you should not be traveling if you have.

a negative credit card balance that you can't pay off monthly.

Like that needs to be a number one priority.

Once you've got that, you need to to have an emergency fund because that's absolutely fundamental.

We do not control so much of our lives and the emergency fund ensures that we're going to be okay.

Once you've got that, we now need to balance the present and the future.

The present being living your life and, you know, going out and doing things that are important to your values, one of which is travel.

And the future being you're saving and investing for some kind of financial independence in the future.

And what's really important there is it looks different at different ages.

If you're in your 20s, you're going to have less of a focus in the future, maybe, and potentially more of a focus in the present because the opportunity cost isn't as big.

But if you get into your, say, late 30s, 40s, 50s, financial independence is coming pretty quick.

And we need to make sure that any travel spend is very carefully balanced with how much you're putting away for the future.

I'm glad you brought up age because I feel like when I'm thinking about travel budgeting, I'm thinking about it in the most simple terms, like the income, money coming in, money going out, what I'm spending.

And I don't think about the age portion of it too hard, especially when it comes to like, what am I saving for travel for the next year or whatever.

But can you tell me how that age that you retire at is actually part of this mental math you have to do about how much you can spend on travel?

It's mental math, but it's also.

math math.

You know, we run.

You could do it on paper, yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

So like in the ideal world, you have a fully fledged financial plan that literally runs a statistical evaluation of what the future will look like running you know best case worst case scenario but the math that underpins that is really balancing three key elements so the first is what you spend relative to what you earn because the inverse of that is what you save and when i say save i'm talking about the long-term saving like for your financial independence the second thing is then when you retire and the third is what you expect to spend in retirement and importantly they're all related let's say you want to retire when you're 95 okay oh no that's a long time from now it's a long time from now but the good news is you don't have to save a lot because you're probably not going to be in retirement for very long

okay like on the other side it's someone who wants to retire in their early 50s okay they're going to be retired for a really long time So they either need to aim to spend less in retirement or save more today.

And some combination of the two is going to get them where they want to get to.

So when we figure out, you know, what is your travel budget today?

It's got to be relative to those goals because what you spend on travel today, you aren't saving for the future.

And that has a direct impact on A, when you can retire and B, how much you can actually spend in that retirement.

That makes sense.

So let's say someone is wanting to spend on travel in the more immediate future, and they just simply do not have enough savings to be able to take the types of trips they want to take.

What are some categories that you often recommend people look at to maybe reduce their spending in?

That's a really good question because we really like the principle of spending in line with your values.

And that sounds so obvious and it sounds so cliched, but at the end of the day, everyone wants your money.

You open any app, you watch TV, you walk down the street, there's advertising at you at all times.

Everyone's selling you something.

Everyone's selling you something.

And my partner Ryan actually wrote a book called You're Making Other People Rich.

The idea of which being like every dollar you spend is dollar out of your pocket into someone else's pocket.

Now, provided you're spending those dollars and things that match your value set,

Those are dollars well sent, well spent.

That's why you make money.

It's making you happy.

It's in line with your life.

However, to the extent that you spend money just because someone else was in that place at that time that took your money from you that's wasted money now where travel fits into the values is really important for most people that we speak to anyway travel is really important to them like it's a part of life experience it's a part of a holistic existence you know that it is your life narrative that you get cultural diverse experiences and really fun you know memories that you make that's a high level priority in spending, which tends to be a bit higher than things like going out with your friends on like a random Tuesday night.

Right.

And those can be really expensive, particularly if you live in big cities.

You know, a night out can end up costing you literally hundreds of dollars.

And, you know, my math is always airplane math.

It's like, well, how many, how many tickets did that cost?

Like, where could I have gone for the same price of that experience?

And so when you start cutting costs, you can't cut, for example, your food bill beyond a healthy limit.

Right.

And when I say healthy, like you don't starve yourself, that's important too.

But you can cut things like going out or weekends away that make no sense.

Or my favorite is the saying no to the peripheral friends bachelor or bachelorette party in Europe.

It's like, that's not money well spent.

And try and reallocate it to what matters to you.

And if travel is one of those things, that's where the budget should come from.

I like that idea of thinking about your money spent in terms of trips because a lot of people think about it in terms of maybe how much money they make on an hourly basis or something like that.

But man, when you put it like that and the fact that I maybe spent a whole flight's worth of fun on a concert, then I'm like, uh-oh, did I really need to go to that concert?

with people I only kind of know, you know what I mean?

Yeah, and if it's a once-in-a-lifetime, you know, if you're a massive U2 fan and U2 is in town, like, go.

How long is YouTube going to be around for?

However, just because Cole Player's in in town and you've heard one of their albums once and like it's a buzzy thing to do doesn't mean it's the right thing for you to do it has to align with your values going back to that

so should people be budgeting for travel as more of a short-term goal like you want to consistently have a travel budget and you're saving for it every month let's say or should people think about budgeting for travel as like the sort of long-term goal and you're maybe you should invest your money to be able to save a lot of money to be able to take these big trips further down the line in your life.

How do you think about that in terms of whether it's a short-term or long-term goal?

I think travel, that's a question of, is travel a goal now or is a travel a goal in the future?

So if you want to travel every year, that's a very short-term goal.

Like you're not going to be investing the money.

So, you know, if it's less than at the minimum of five-year goal, That's money that's really like saving now for a short-term goal.

However, I think it's particularly younger people and you're like 20s or early 30s and you're able to travel in one capacity, but you want to really upgrade that in the future.

Say you're currently in the price range of affording the most budget hostel and the cheapest travel destination and you're like, you know what?

I want to go like stay in a nice hotel in Iceland.

Now that's something that's like, okay, that's aspirational.

That's more of a medium-term goal.

That's going to cost, you know, multiple years of savings to get there.

To the extent that that's the case, you are now saving for individual experiences as opposed to continual experiences.

So in most of the financial plans we build, travel is an annual goal.

Every year, people want to be able to provide for travel, but it's the first goal that gets cut if the other goals have not been met.

Okay.

It's the nicest to have, right?

You're not going to not pay your mortgage payments so that you can go overseas.

And that's really important, is it's a priority level.

Okay, well, we are going to chat more about budgeting for travel, including budgeting for that dream sabbatical.

Stay with us.

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All right, James.

You took a sabbatical of sorts.

Tell us about that trip.

How old were you?

How much did you save for it?

Where did you go?

Embarrassed to me.

I've actually done two.

So

the first one was, you probably hear my accent.

I'm not from the U.S.

So I'm from South Africa.

And in South Africa, there is a classic business qualification that is what's called a chartered accountant, which is very similar to a CPA, but it's a much longer, more intense, more rigorous process.

And it takes about eight years end-to-end to qualify.

So you leave high school, 18, you get out at 25, 26.

Once you've done that, you have largely set up your career, like you've de-risked yourself.

You always know you've got a job, you've got an upward trajectory.

However, it takes a lot out of you.

So after my first sort of, as I qualified, I'd been working then for the last three years of practical training.

And you get paid some.

And I squirreled away everything I could for three years.

And at the age of 26,

I took eight months off.

Whoa, nice.

Yeah.

So I'd literally saved everything I could.

And then I took everything I had.

I figured out how long would it take me to get a job?

once I was back home.

And I said, how much do I need to survive that long until I get my first paycheck?

And I knew that was what I needed to have at the end of the trip.

That was like, that's how much money I needed to leave the trip with.

I took the difference between that amount of money and the amount of money I had in my bank account, and I divided it by the number of days that I had, and that was my budget.

And I traveled from New York to Patagonia largely by public transport, just like buses and trains.

And there was a boat involved because you can't go through the Darian Gap in the North Columbia.

And yeah, it was incredible.

Just to be clear, you kind of budgeted for like a budget month.

How long did you think it was going to take to get a job when you came back from that?

Yeah, I gave myself, I think, two months when I came back.

So I had two months and I knew I could do it really cheap, right?

I was 26.

So I was like, I'll move back home.

I'll just live really cheap.

I was lucky.

My parents lived in a big city.

So I didn't have to like go to a rural place, but I could interview and live really cheap.

The second one was more complicated.

Okay.

So when you're 26, you don't have a lot to lose, right?

You don't have a lot of savings.

There's not a lot of opportunity costs.

The second one, I was in my early 30s.

My wife and I were sort of sitting around Christmas and we thought, you know, we're of an age where we need to stop making real decisions.

And we neither of us have been to Asia.

And Asia is far.

We live in New York City.

Asia is a long way away.

And we really wanted to do it properly.

However, we're not super rich people.

So we need to do it smart.

So we figured, well, if we take three months, we can probably do it much cheaper than if we did it in five separate chips.

So the way we budgeted for that one was very different because now you're dipping into longer-term savings.

And in that case, it was, you know, really between jobs, not like, hey, I've just finished a trading contract.

I'm going into a first job after that.

It was, you know, you're taking a career break to afford that sabbatical.

So the math on that was the same sort of math of how long is it going to take me to get a a job when I get back.

But secondarily, it was, okay, I have X amount in long-term savings.

How long is it going to take me to replenish the amount I need per month?

And that's how many months I can afford to travel.

So I kind of did this math of, okay, cool.

I want to travel for three months.

That's going to cost me here in Southeast Asia.

let's say it's $100 a night.

Then you put travel on top of that.

I calculated a budget and I said, how quickly can I get that back in savings through the next job I'm going to get?

And, you know, I said, great, I can get that back in, let's say it was six months.

And then I asked myself, okay, cool.

What if I did four months and not three?

Well, now it's going to take me like nine months.

Do I want to set myself back, in essence, a year, being the nine months of recuperating what you spend plus the time you spend not working?

And I found the sweet spot and the sweet spot was three months.

So it was, you know, very back of the envelope math.

But ultimately, this is a really long-term big decision.

It wasn't a just going to show up.

The second thing I did was: so, double back, I have my own financial advisor.

And as a financial advisor, most advisors have their own advisors because we make bad decisions with our own money.

We're good with other people's money, but no one's good with their own money because of, you know, there's a whole field of behavioral finance around this.

And I spoke to my financial advisor and I said, Hey, if I do this, what is the impact of it?

And what we calculated was giving up three months of earnings and spending for those three months would put on about a year to my expected retirement date.

So now I was going to retire at 61 instead of 60.

And my wife and I looked at each other and we said, is it worth one more year of work at the age of 60 to get three months backpacking through Southeast Asia in our early 30s?

And like, yeah, 100%.

So we were able to quantify the cost in terms of that long term, but obviously that's because we had a financial plan.

We're able to like do the math relative to that plan.

How were you saving for,

let's say, the first trip when you were just a young person, you were studying.

Were there any steps, major steps you took to have a big enough chunk of money to be able to go on that sabbatical?

Yeah, so the sort of, let's call it the mid-20s sabbatical.

For that one, the goal there was, I don't need long-term savings right now.

I think we all know, you know, your first job, you're lucky if you're saving anything.

You look at yourself in 10 years' time and you go, I sincerely hope I'm earning a multiple of what I'm earning in my 20s.

You know, every dollar I save today is going to be like five minutes of work in my mid-30s.

Like, you know, I'm not going to overly sweat about the long-term consequences.

So the way I looked at it was every cent I could squirrel away was travel budget.

And this is a values thing.

So the way I said about it was when you're young in a big city, there's a huge social scene and people spend all of their money on that.

And I just opted out.

It's like, you know what?

It's more important to me to go and have a huge social scene in South America than it is in the town that I grew up in with the same people I grew up with.

And it was.

But that was my values.

That's what's really important there is that was just in line with my values.

I squirreled every cent I could away.

I worked as much overtime as I could in my job.

Fortunately, I got paid for overtime, which was really good.

So it kind of leads into the idea of it's much easier to earn more than to cut expenses.

And so I really focused on that.

Like, how do I maximize my income and then spend as little as possible and just save as much as I can for the travel that I hope to do?

When you were on that trip, were you constantly thinking about how I can spend less one day just in case something happens the next day and you might need to spend more for a bus that didn't come or something like that?

What were the in-the-moment decisions you were making about your travel budget on the trip?

On the whole, I'm a huge believer of living within your means.

So if I gave myself a, let's say I gave myself a $50 a day budget, I would always aim to spend $40.

So although I knew I could afford the $50, I was permanently padding the budget with some kind of margin that I could live within because you're totally right.

You miss a bus or you arrive in a town really late at night and like everything's dodgy.

So you end up spending more on your accommodation than you hoped you would.

That's inevitable.

And living within your means, that's just a principle we try and help people figure out across the board.

We should always be living within our means because of that uncertainty.

Were there any moments from your trip that you're like, oh man, I really did have to splurge on that or spend more money than I thought?

I think the flights always shocked me.

So there was a moment I was in the north of Chile.

So you come through from Bolivia into Chile, you go through, you know, the salt flats and it's all by bus and everything.

And you get into the Atacama Desert, and it's huge.

There's just desert for days.

You can catch a bus.

It's going to be like a three-day bus down to the middle of the country.

And so we flew.

And I was like, wow, that's like three days of budget into one flight.

But then you get that really interesting math of like time versus money.

You know, what's three days worth?

There's another good example was when I was in Southeast Asia, my budget was slightly bigger, but we could get a bus from Laos into Vietnam that would take 24 hours.

Okay, a 24-hour bus ride, or it could be an hour and 20-minute flight.

Oh my gosh.

The flight was like 20 times the price of the bus.

Now, I'm a very numerical person.

I mean, it's my job.

That trade-off was really hard to understand.

But because we had padded the budget the whole time, it was a no-brainer to do that.

The time element was so important, much more than the money element.

Speaking of that time element, once you got back, How did you feel?

Did you feel like all that money was so worth it?

And working harder, saving more once you got back?

You were happy you made that trade-off?

I mean, it's a travel podcast, right?

We're preaching to the choir, but money is a means to an end, but not an end in itself.

And the end we're talking about is your values, like living the life you want to live and being really intentional as to how you spend that money to give you the best life you can live.

That's what we're after.

And so whenever I've come back from big trips, those two kind of mini sabbaticals, we can call them like, it's been this, this sense of, okay, I've got my work cut off me, I've got to fill in the hole that I've just created.

However, I did the thing that really mattered to me when we did the projection to my retirement age, for example.

Is it worth one year more?

I always ask myself the question, you know, when I'm 65, say,

and I'm looking back at my life, am I going to think, man, I could have retired a year earlier if I hadn't had all those amazing experiences through South America or Southeast Asia or through Central Africa.

Like, no,

of course that time was well spent.

However, I'm having that thought process at 65.

I'm not having it at 85.

And I'm still like, you know, trying to work a job that's breaking me.

So there's a balance, right?

So for me, it was always worthwhile, but it was within the bounds of what I was willing to give up to have those experiences.

And I know this is going to be so hard, but are there any favorite moments from those sabbaticals?

I want to hear the fun stuff that happened on this trip you planned so hard for.

I mean, you say plan.

I didn't plan anything.

I planned the saving and then I would just wake up and decide or I was going to go.

Yeah, I mean, look, I'm sitting here in New York City and the reason I'm in New York City and not in South Africa was because I met my wife in Ecuador.

Like we sat down next to each other at a hostel in our mid-20s and six or seven years later, we got married.

So that's definitely the highlight of my travels.

And I think ultimately it often comes down to people.

The travel piece is just about meeting amazing people and hearing different life experiences and different views and values.

And it really challenges everything.

I mean, like, I've done the swing from like absolute hippie to pragmatic capitalist so many times because of travel.

And I think that's really healthy and re-underwriting where your values lie and re-underwriting.

how you plan to live your life and what you expect to do with your life and being really intentional because we deal with it every day, but you know, life's really short and you need to max out given what matters to you.

Did you and your future wife end up traveling together on that trip for a bit?

No, it is such a random story.

But ultimately, we sat next to each other in a hostel in Ecuador.

And it turns out I tried to skip that town, town called Banyos in Ecuador.

And it's like the adventure, extreme sports capital of South America.

And I don't know, I was a bit sort of like a cocky 25-year-old.

I was like, well, I'm from South Africa.

Like, we know extreme sports.

Like, I don't need to go and do the Ecuadorian equivalent.

So I was going to skip the the town, but I had in my time, I just had an extra two or three days.

So, I ended up going there and it was beautiful and amazing.

And then I sat next to, as I said, my wife.

My wife got on the wrong bus.

She was trying to go to a completely different town.

Oh, no.

And she got on the wrong bus and ended up in Banyos.

And I was like, well, I guess I'm staying here.

And she met me.

And so we traveled for two days together.

We just got on really well, big group of people, like just friends.

And three years later, this is, I guess, the extended story: is three years later, we were then, I just been living in Ireland, and she had been working and she had a gap, and she was taking her mom to Ireland.

She said, You know, where would you advise I go?

And we hadn't spoken in a while.

I was like, Oh, you should go to all these places.

What are you doing after you're in Ireland?

She said, I'm going to Eastern Europe.

And I was like, Oh, I'm between jobs, and I'm going to be in Bulgaria.

Any chance you'll be anywhere near Bulgaria?

And she was like, Yeah, I'll be in Romania.

Should we meet up?

And so, that's how we ended up getting together was three years later, we ended up in the same Eastern European city.

And then we traveled together for two or three days and realized, oh, that's why we liked each other so much.

We actually needed to be together.

So yeah, that's that story.

It was serendipity.

I love it.

And then you learn that your values are similar because you were traveling together.

I think that's something that's so interesting.

And this is so non-financial, but as a traveler, I think it's your truest self when you're traveling.

It's like your most authentic person.

And as a result, when you meet people, it's on a much more level playing field than when you meet them, say in a big city, when you're kind of playing a role that's expected of you to some extent.

And everyone's kind of playing games.

No one's playing games when you travel.

You're just who you are.

There are enough people.

You don't need people to like you.

You don't know anyone.

Yeah.

Exactly.

And because you are that raw, authentic version of yourself, I think I've got so many friends who have met their partners traveling, which is really cool.

And we've got a friend, he's actually a client of ours who lives in Paraguay.

and he met his wife traveling as well.

And now he's like grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa, speaking English.

And now he speaks Spanish at work because he lives with his wife in Paraguay.

So cool.

One of the things I want to touch on before I let you go is you and I have talked about planning for this life after travel.

And one thing that I thought was really interesting is you talk about needing to maximize your life for flexibility, especially when you get back from some of of those big trips, because you want to have the best chance at getting another job when you come back from a sabbatical, or you want to have other ways of making money so you can save all that money that you just spent on travel.

Talk about why people need to build flexibility into their life when it comes to their financial plan.

Flexibility, it comes in so many forms, but I think the context we kind of spoke about this previously was career pivots are a good example.

So

when you are in a career, let's say you're a corporate, like you're a lawyer, right, in a law firm, and you're working 80 hours a week and you love the grind and it's really fun and you're earning north of $500,000 a year and you go, well, like this is my life.

And you buy a huge house in the suburbs and you have this future that you expect and you start building your life around that future.

Then you realize.

Actually,

I really am passionate about human rights law.

Okay, the corporate world doesn't work anymore.

You drop your salary from $500,000 a year to $100,000 a year, but you have this really meaningful situation.

Without flexibility, you can't make that pivot.

And what does flexibility look like?

If you've bought the house in the suburbs, you've put the kids in private schools,

you've basically made yourself dependent on your job, you can't then pivot.

And that's what flexibility allows you to do is it allows you to move your life around as your life changes and as your views change and as your interests change and having that freedom allows you to make choices that are more authentic to you and are more in line with what you actually want to do with your life as opposed to what life wants to do with you if you want to be able to travel you need to have flexibility within your budget to be able to save up for that travel if you're living right up to the maximum as we we often get clients as we meet them and they're like, hey, I earned all this money and I have no idea where it's going.

It's like, well, you've kind of boxed yourself into that job or that lifestyle.

If something amazing comes across your path and you have to take half a step back, you have to say no.

And that's really where that flexibility comes in.

And that's on the upside, right?

That flexibility.

On the downside, we also need flexibility in that emergency situation.

So we spoke previously about the emergency fund.

You know, that is flexibility.

That's freedom to be able to say, you know what?

I lost my job.

I don't need to go and get a job tomorrow.

I can wait for a really good job as my next job.

Because often losing a job is a blessing in that you now have the opportunity to re-evaluate your whole career and where you want to go and how you want to get there.

Having more time to figure that out is always going to be better than having to be forced to make a really quick decision and get boxed into a situation you don't want to be in.

There are so many ways that also applies to travel as well.

I think paying for the main cabin fare, because that one is more flexible.

You'll get your money back if you decide to change your plans.

Building into your travel budget as well, the flexibility, even having an emergency fund for your travel, that's something that Sally and I have talked about before.

Is like, yeah, that's ultimately what the pattern the budget is, right?

Yeah, building an emergency fund for your travel.

Exactly.

So that flexibility is super important.

And on the point side, like having credit card rewards that are flexible that you can use with many different types of travel companies, hotels, airlines, and not just one brand.

That also adds flexibility and gives you the opportunity to choose what kind of travel you want.

You want to be the master of the destiny that is in front of you, not United Airlines is going to tell you what to do.

Absolutely.

Okay, James, before I let you go, we always ask our guests for a travel hot take.

It can be reasonable or totally impossible.

What do you have?

Gosh, you put me on the spot.

I think more is more, but not always more.

And I'll expand on that.

Okay.

In parts of my life, I have just wanted to aggregate the number of countries I'm into.

So I don't know what the number is now, but it's like well over 50 countries around the world.

Like, it was just more.

Like, I need the numbers.

But it turns out the US is one country and every state is basically its own country.

And so make sure you're measuring your travel correctly and measuring your like travel always feels a little bit like an achievement, but measure that achievement correctly.

You know, don't like, don't just chase after more countries because there are multiple countries within countries and multiple experiences within places.

And going back to places is not always bad.

I always thought it was bad forever, but I guess I'm learning that in my old age.

There you go.

That's a great one.

James, thank you so much for joining us today.

Super fun.

Thanks, Megan.

Wow, Megan, you were right.

I want this guy to be my financial advisor.

Literally, he gets it.

I'm never giving up travel.

So just got to make it work with the money I have or possibly will earn in the future.

I'm still in the camp of travel while you're young, though.

Make those good memories, gain those life experiences, and you do not need a huge budget to travel.

I agree.

And by the way, if you want to learn more about working with a financial advisor, you can check out NerdWallet Wealth Partners at nerdwalletwealthpartners.com/slash smart.

We'll also put the link in today's episode description.

Okay, let's do a listener question.

All right, I've got one from Julia in Seattle.

Just like every good Seattlean, she holds the Atmos Rewards Ascent credit card that is formerly the Alaska Airlines visa signature.

She says, I'm grandfathered into the legacy companion fare benefit.

Now that we have the details about the new Atmos Rewards Summit, I'd love your take on whether it makes sense for me to upgrade my card or keep it and apply for the new premium card separately.

Two cards.

Can I even have two Alaska credit cards?

She asks.

I'm a loyal Alaska flyer and qualify for elite status every year.

I do quite a bit of solo travel, but when my partner flies, it is usually with me.

What do you say to Julia, Megan?

Well, first, hi, Julia.

And thank you so much for giving us so much context.

I feel like anytime anyone asks us for credit card recommendations, we're like, we need more info.

When they're like, I have the Capital One card.

And you're like, oh no, which one?

And do you travel?

Do you go anywhere?

So she gives a lot of good details.

I did confirm with Bank of America that you are allowed to have two Alaska cards.

So that means she could apply for the new Atmost Rewards Summit Visa Infinite card.

That one has a $395 annual fee, even though she already has the Atmos Reward Ascent visa signature card, which has a $95 annual fee.

I mean, I'm in it just to apply, earn that sign-up bonus after meeting the spending requirement.

And then you just get a whole bunch of more miles anyway.

She also seems to fly Alaska a lot if she's got elite status.

So I think she'd be able to make use of two companion passes per year with her partner.

Plus, I think what's really compelling is that you are grandfathered in to the old version of that card.

So for cardholders who applied after January 2023, they need to spend $6,000 on the card every year to get the companion pass perk.

But...

Because you, Julia, applied before then, you are grandfathered into the old version of the benefit, which means you get the companion pass every anniversary without needing to meet any sort of minimum spending requirement.

So I would just say hold on to that card.

Don't necessarily feel like you have to put spending on it.

And then you still get that companion pass.

And since you are traveling with someone else, it sounds like then that companion pass will be really beneficial.

The new card, the Atmost Rewards Summit credit card, that comes with a different type of companion award.

So that's a global companion award and it's worth up to 25,000 points.

And that one can be redeemed for any class of service on any flight in Alaska's full network, including international partners.

So along with the signup bonus and other perks, I think this benefit can make that new card especially valuable on top of the old cards you have.

Thank you so much, Julia, for the question.

I love it.

If you have a question, you can email us, travel at nerdballet.com.

You can also hit up Megan and myself on social media.

I am on Instagram at Save with Sally.

Also TikTok, Save with Sally.

And Megan, where can they find you?

I'm Miles with Megan Co.

on TikTok and Instagram.

And make sure to follow Smart Travel on your favorite podcast app.

That includes Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio.

Automatically download new episodes when you subscribe.

So make sure you do that.

And if you listen on Spotify, did you know this?

You can drop a comment on each episode right in the app.

Tess Viglund is our producer.

We love her.

Nick Chrisme edits our audio.

Claire Society and Hilary Georgie help with fact-checking.

And of course, our brief disclaimer: although we had a financial advisor on this show, Megan and I are not financial or investment advisors.

This info is provided for general education and entertainment purposes.

It may not apply to your specific circumstances.

We hope you're inspired to keep your passport full and your wallet even fuller.

Thanks, everyone.

See you next time.

In January of 1915, Ernest Shackleton's ship, Endurance, became encased in the ice in the Weddell Sea.

Through determination, grit, and savvy, Shackleton would lead his men through a brutal winter, then over hundreds of miles of Antarctic ice, followed by 800 miles across some of the roughest waters in the world.

It is one of the most extraordinary and inspirational journeys in the history of exploration.

Find this story and many others at the Explorers Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts or at explorerspodcast.com.