Memorial Day weekend is here, which means it’s officially time to break out the grill, the beach bag… and maybe that travel budget spreadsheet. But don’t worry—this isn’t a guide from travel influencers who hike barefoot with artisanal backpacks. Nope. This episode is brought to you by your favorite money geeks in Joe’s mom’s basement.
Joe Saul-Sehy, OG, Jesse Cramer, Crystal Hammond, and Doug gather ’round the card table to share their best budget-friendly travel strategies, hilarious vacation stories, and maybe one or two travel fails. From choosing the right travel companion to navigating airports like a boss, this crew drops loads of practical wisdom for making your summer adventures awesome and affordable.
You’ll learn why credit card points can be your best friend, how to pick lodging that won’t make you cry (or bankrupt you), and why packing a toothbrush is a good idea… even if Doug’s trivia makes you question the timing.
This isn’t expert advice. These are the musings of people who spend more time optimizing their wallets than their luggage. And that’s exactly why you’ll leave feeling better prepared to tackle your own summer travel—without the jet-setter guilt trip.
- Kicking off summer with a Stacking Benjamins travel roundtable
- Real-life travel hacks from people who care more about budgeting than boarding groups
- Credit card point strategies that actually work
- Hot takes on hotels, Airbnbs, and airport snacks
- Why picking the right travel buddy can make or break your trip
- The one item Doug thinks was more important than nylon (it’s… something)
Whether you’re headed to the lake, the mountains, or just your backyard with a cold drink, join the crew for a hilarious and practical celebration of summer travel.
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.StackingBenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Topic:
How to Plan a Vacation: 12 Tips for Planning the Perfect Trip (Next Vacay)
During our conversation, you’ll hear us mention:
- Affordable summer travel
- Budget-friendly getaways
- Local tourism tips
- Use travel points
- Choose travel companions
- Day trip planning
- Last-minute flexibility
- Theme park strategies
- Avoid peak crowds
- Save on lodging
- Pack light essentials
- Prioritize experiences
- Staycation ideas
- Travel credit cards
- Point redemption timing
- Travel insurance importance
- Misconceptions about travel
- Outdoor adventure options
- Booking in advance
- Cheap flight alerts
- Set travel budgets
- Combine work trips
- Use public transportation
- Be destination flexible
- Avoid overplanning
- Solo travel benefits
- Airport stress tips
- Test travel compatibility
- Road trip planning
- Cultural travel experiences
Our Contributors
A big thanks to our contributors! You can check out more links for our guests below.
Crystal Hammond
Another thanks to Crystal Hammond for joining our contributors this week! Hear more from Crystal on her show, (our sister podcast) Stacking Adventures: Every Traveler Has a Story at Stacking Adventures: Every Traveler Has a Story – Podcast – Apple Podcasts.
Jesse Cramer
Another thanks to Jesse Cramerfor joining our contributors this week! Hear more from Jesse on his show, Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors – The Best Interest at Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors – The Best Interest – Podcast – Apple Podcasts.
Learn how you can work with Jesse by visiting The Best Interest – Invest in Knowledge.
OG
For more on OG and his firm’s page, click here.
Doug’s Game Show Trivia
- How many bristles are in the average toothbrush?
Mentioned in today’s show
Join Us on Monday!
Tune in on Monday when we’re joined by two mentors: former Vice Chairwoman of NBC Universal who’s here to teach us about the lies we’re told at work, Bonnie Hammer. And in the second half, with results of a study that shows half of Americans don’t trust themselves managing finance…from Beyond Finance, Dr. Erika Rasure.
Miss our last show? Check it out here: The Simple Path To Contentment (with JL Collins) SB1685
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Episode transcript
STACK 05-23 Summer Travel -steve
[00:00:00] bit: Can you fly this plane and land it? Surely you can’t be serious. I am seriousand don’t call me Shirley.
[00:00:12] Doug: Live from the basement of the YouTube headquarters. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and you may not realize it, but I’m the Punka Tony Phil of Memorial Day because I get to today, this is the unofficial start of summer Memorial Day weekend, baby. And so you don’t break the bank this summer, and so you make the most memories while on the road. Today we are chatting with our round table about what makes an affordable and memorable vacation.
And now a guy who always reminds OG that camping can actually be fun. It’s Joe.
[00:01:01] Joe: It can be og, it can be fun. Hey everybody, welcome to Friday and Memorial Day weekend. You made it here. Even if you gotta work today, I mean, it’s pretty darn close to a holiday, so I’m sure you basically, you haven’t worked since Tuesday this week. [00:01:18] OG: Nobody has [00:01:19] Joe: Which week? Tuesday. Of which week? Yeah. Well, we’ve got a great show.We’ve got a fantastic crew today. Let’s meet them. Let’s begin with the guy across the card table from me. Mr. OG is here. How are you brother? I’m just happy to be here. Where are you traveling to this summer? Since we’re gonna be talking, traveling,
[00:01:36] OG: uh, let’s see. I’m going to Nashville. Awesome. Uh, I’m going to Tony Pacos in Toledo, Ohio.Toledo. Ohio. Tony Pacos. What’s wrong with Tony Paco? That’s good. No, it’s going to, theres nothing wrong
[00:01:48] Doug: with it, but the fact that that’s your destination, that’s a little bit, [00:01:51] OG: um, I’m going to see family and I will also eat a hot dog. Then we’re gonna go to stomping grounds up North Houghton Lake, Michigan.Uh, we got orientation in College Station, a work trip to Chicago, Illinois, and, uh, probably some afterschool activities and other places across the Great United States. So
[00:02:11] Joe: a lot of [00:02:12] OG: Midwest [00:02:12] Joe: and College Station is what I heard, which is basically the same. That’s it. And speaking of hot dog, Jesse Kramer’s here.How are you man?
[00:02:21] Jesse: Hey, uh, I’m good. I’m, I’m more of a hamburger guy, but I’ll take a hot dog. Speaking of choking down a hot dog. Hey, what’s [00:02:29] Joe: the, uh, what, what is, what’s that now? The, uh, moving on. What is, what’s your travel schedule look like this summer, Jesse? [00:02:39] Jesse: I think we have a, a wedding in DC We got some local trips to the Finger Lakes.I’m going on a big hike up in the Adirondacks, and there’s a slim chance before summer is out. I might go to Portland for FinCon, but that’s still up in the air.
[00:02:52] Joe: Oh, you gotta come to Portland. Yeah, but to Portland, to Port Con. I won’t. I’m just gonna combine Portland and think on. Why wouldn’t you go to FinCon?You gotta go. It’s,
[00:03:01] Jesse: it’s, I know. It’s just a matter of, you know, we, we’ve got the baby at home, we’re trying to figure out schedules, trying to figure out, got a lot of moving pieces. That’s all, that’s all want to go. It’s just about getting the pieces lined up. [00:03:10] Joe: Isn’t it wild how the baby changes everything? [00:03:13] Jesse: Just a little bit. [00:03:14] Joe: Right? It does. [00:03:15] Jesse: Just a, just a, just a few things. [00:03:16] Joe: It does. And the woman who changes everything on our sister podcast you like, like where we have that smooth transition wasn’t at all [00:03:27] Crystal: from the Stacking [00:03:27] Joe: Adventure Show. Crystal Hammond’s here. How are you? [00:03:30] Crystal: Welcome, welcome. I’m welcoming myself.Good. How are you guys?
[00:03:35] Joe: We are good. We’re better now that you’re with us. You and I host a show that some people might not know about, which is about travel, which is why you’re here with us today. So tell everybody about the Stacking Adventures podcast. [00:03:47] Crystal: We talk about adventuring. Every adventure, every traveler has a story.So we share our stories. But my most fun part is sharing your stories too. So we have an episode after we’ll cover someplace that we’ve been with our budget friendly tips and all the other tips and the things you wouldn’t expect and the things you would expect. We hear from our lovely listeners and they tell us, Hey, you got it all wrong.
This is when you should go, or this is what you should do. So it’s really fun.
[00:04:14] Doug: So budget friendly. So OGs never been on the show? Clearly? [00:04:20] Joe: Not yet. Although we opened [00:04:22] Crystal: it with Doug. That was like our best show. We sure did. [00:04:25] Joe: And Jesse told us his story about Thailand and a trip to a doctor’s office. Thailand?Yes, Thailand.
[00:04:32] Jesse: Wow. On the PPP Islands. [00:04:35] Joe: You haven’t lived until you’ve been to a doctor in the PPP Islands. That’s true. Yeah. Is true. Crystal. You think Texarkana is not a real place? P. P Island though, is [00:04:44] Crystal: fine. I believe that one. But Texarkana, what is it? The ducan of the Midwest or wherever it is. Uck. That’s [00:04:51] Joe: fantastic.Of the south. Maybe. I don’t know. Well, we’re gonna have a lot of fun, as you can hear already.
[00:04:58] Jesse: Can I tell a teaser, Joe, to get people to go listen to that episode of Stacking adventures? Yes. Just from my story, all I’ll say is that when the tie doctor on the PP Islands looked inside my ear, he recoiled instantly and said, there’s so much blood.That’s, that’s the only part of the story I’ll tell. You’ll have to go listen to the episode for the rest of it.
[00:05:17] Joe: The drama teaser suspend. See, he should be on every episode with this crystal, the way he could tease stuff. I [00:05:22] Crystal: liked it. [00:05:22] Joe: The adventures [00:05:23] Crystal: of true crime. [00:05:25] Jesse: Part of being a hotdog man. You gotta be a bit of a teaser, you know? [00:05:28] Joe: That is. All right. We’re gonna talk travel today. What are your best travel tips? How do you play? Effectively for travel, so you don’t break the bank, you end up making travel worth the money. We started this week with Robert Niles, a theme park insider. He did that for theme parks. We’re just gonna do it for travel in general.So let’s get the party started after we hear from a couple of our sponsors who make sure that we can do this for free for you, and you don’t have to pay a dime, we’ll hear from them. And then we’re talking travel with Crystal, Jesse, and og.
All right, we’re gonna kinda riff off of a piece I found from next vacay.com. Doug calls it Vacay all the time, I’m sure, don’t you, vacay?
[00:06:15] Doug: That’s all the cool kids say. [00:06:17] Joe: Yeah, vacay kay. Uh, ’cause the word vacation is so long. Uh, but next vacay.com, how to plan a vacation. 12 tips for planning the perfect Trip.Crystal, let’s start with you when you’re planning that perfect trip. What’s first on the list? Is it I wanna go to X place, or I have Y amount of money? Let’s see how far that’ll take me.
[00:06:39] Crystal: Well, it’s both. I have a list of places that I wanna go. That’s what sucks about having the stacking Adventure show.’cause after every single call, I am ready to immediately go to every place we just talked about. So that makes it hard. But I do, I do have a list of places that are on my list, and then when they go on sale, that’s when I start planning.
[00:07:00] Joe: We’ll talk about where you look for the sales later, but what’s kind of top of your list right now of those dream bucket list places? [00:07:07] Crystal: The top of the list. Paris. I need a Paris Do over. I also wanna see if I can do it for cheaper and do different activities. [00:07:15] Joe: Oh, you didn’t have a good time in Paris last time? [00:07:17] Crystal: No. Oh, I did not. Well, I did. I went by myself too. But now I know. I learned a lot about going by myself and I, I. I could have used this show of all the stuff we’re about to talk about on the planning front.You kind of did it wrong. I did it completely backwards.
[00:07:34] Joe: Uh, Paris is one of my favorite cities. Me too. I can’t wait to go back. Fantastic. Og, where do you start at? Or does Mrs. OG go, here’s where we’re going next. [00:07:44] OG: In the hierarchy of budget or location, we would pick location first. Okay. Yeah. We would say, this is what’s on the list.This is where we wanna go. As a matter of fact, I just started a list of places where I would think about, where I’d see, you know, read an article about something that seemed pretty cool. And, you know, you just, that stuff goes in, in one ear and out the other. So I, so I actually just started keeping a list of, of, uh, vacation ideas.
So we kind of tend to go to the same things over and over again. Generically speaking, we go to the beach, go to the mountains. That’s funny. Might, that might change, like which mountain we go to or which beach we go to. But generally speaking, it’s kind of the same.
[00:08:21] Joe: And that I think is different person to person because my spouse is allergic to going back to the same place.I would love to go back. Mm-hmm. To some of these places. I’m like, let’s do this. And she’s like, there’s so many other places to see. We did it crew. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:08:33] Crystal: I like that. [00:08:34] Joe: And I like, but once I’ve been once now I can just go and be comfortable and have some fun knowing some, you know, revisit some of the cool places I went to.Jesse, where do you start? Do you start with budget or with destination?
[00:08:47] Jesse: I think we start with itinerary. We definitely start with itinerary, which is right destination. Once we know that though, then some budget conscious thoughts kick in. But I always envy those people. Like I know a couple people who, they start with very much budget first and they’ll be like, yeah, found a super cheap flight to, uh.To Denver this weekend. I’ve never been to Denver. And so on a whim on Thursday night, I decided I’m taking a Friday noon flight to Denver and just gonna go spend the weekend there. And I’m like, that’s kind of cool. That’s a cool way to live. It’s hard to do that with a baby though. Oh, correct. Correct.
Yeah. Okay. It’ll, it’ll be a while until we can do that, but I think that’s a really cool way if, if, especially, you know, if you’re the kind of person where either maybe you’re a points maximizer, you just, you, you like the idea of going to the airport, getting on a plane of just saying like, I don’t really care where I go, I’m just gonna go somewhere new and do it cheaply.
And that goes back to what OG said, we’re definitely, uh, new place people, especially if it’s like a big trip. Uh, if it’s just a weekend, like I, I mentioned earlier, you know, we’ve got our weekend destinations here in upstate New York of the Finger Lakes and the Adirondacks, whatever, Toronto. But for the big trips, we usually try to do something new every time.
[00:09:51] Joe: Finger Lakes pretty easy for you. Just a hop, skip and jump away. Super. [00:09:54] Jesse: Yeah. Really [00:09:55] Joe: nice. It’s interesting. When we were younger, I think we, we started with budget. I mean, we always started with, we’ve got X amount of money, and so what’s inside the sphere of that money? The older I get, it’s more how can I afford to do this big thing that I’d like to do next?So, Scandinavia is on my list, but because my spouse’s list, uh, supersedes mine, that is three years away, we’ve determined that Joe can, the next thing if he lives. Three more years, we can go to Scandinavia. Second on their list is, so they start off on this piece. The reason I wanted to start there was they say, choose your destination is first, and once you do that, then it’s easy to do the budget.
I wanna highlight something, Jesse, that you talked about, which was, have you guys ever done that? The spontaneous, Hey, I found a cheap flight. Oh gee, have you ever done that? You know, you get the last minute online deal on a Tuesday, so on Thursday you’re packing up and going to X place. I’ve never done that.
[00:10:53] OG: I tend to do the exact opposite of that, which is the I. Oh crap. Uh, I thought we were supposed to leave on Thursday. Who bought tickets? Nobody yet. Oh, great. Oh. [00:11:04] Joe: Oh. I tend to over, I did that for Strategic Coach meeting once. [00:11:08] OG: Yeah, I mean, I would say our spontaneous stuff is more around something that is time sensitive, and I’m just thinking of one, when we were in spring break this year, both Michigan and Texas a and m played basketball in Denver for the basketball NCAA championships.We were in Colorado skiing. It was an hour and a half driver, like, let’s go. You don’t get the best deal on tickets. We had, we got, we drove, we didn’t fly, of course, but you know what I mean? Like, that would be more of our spontaneous type of trip, a lot less. Um, let me just play the, the roll the dice thing.
Although I will say when my son was interested at TCU, they have, their freshman orientation is called Frog Camp. Makes sense. But they have different places that you can go to Frog Camp at some locals, some you know, regional, but then they have one. Choose your own adventure type of thing where you like literally show up at the airport with your passport and your bag.
They tell you we’re going someplace warm, pack warm clothes, we’re going someplace cold pack cold and you just show up and it’s all TCU freshmen. I thought for somebody who never would do that in a million years, I thought that would be kind of fun. That does sound fun. I would do that, but it’s already organized.
It’s not like I had to like, it’s Tuesday. Oh my God, we’re going to Portland a Thursday. Oh yeah. Somebody else is organizing it. But uh, that’s
[00:12:21] Crystal: my other way to plan a trip is let someone else do it and just show up. Sign me up for that every single time. Yeah. [00:12:28] Joe: I gotta tell you, the older I get, the more those organized tours, the ones I’ve done through Disney have been.Just amazing. Phenomenal. Yeah. I mean, we’re getting ready to go to Greece. I’m practicing a few Greek words that don’t ask me for any, ’cause I’m not good enough to say any of them yet. More beer, please. Yes. That’s gonna be the key phrase, Encore, right? Uh, that was my favorite phrase. First time I went to Paris, I realized Encore was just a French word.
Who knew? I didn’t know a lot of people, but it was, it was pretty amazing. The dude looks at me and goes, Encore. I’m like, oh, there’s my word. Sure. You stand up and you just start clapping.
Second on the list here is pick your travel partners. And it’s interesting, crystal, ’cause you talked about going to Paris alone. And I don’t know, you and I have told some stories where it seems like you’ve had some great travel partners and some horrible travel partners. What are you looking for in the perfect person to go travel with?
[00:13:23] Crystal: Well, I am my favorite travel partner, I must say. I live alone. And it’s so hard. It is so hard to give up that independence because if someone else is late, oh my goodness, I hate being late. I hate waiting for people. Or it’s just, oh man, my foot hurts. What do you mean your foot hurts? Kenya? You who told you to come on this trip?If your foot hurt? You know? So there’s all these different things you have to deal with, but then you have other extremes. ’cause I went to Hawaii with this spreadsheet of activities, friend, and it’s like, okay, that’s an over planner. You’re gonna be exhausted the whole way. But then there’s the other, like the lazy, you know, I don’t wanna do anything.
I just, I could sit on the beach and read my book all day. It’s like, but don’t you wanna get steps? So think about the people you hang around with anyway, and then that’s when you decide. Okay. Who would I get along with? Because even one time we, there were four of us in one hotel room that did not go well.
Big surprise. But hey, we, we learned something from that experience. Should never do it again.
[00:14:19] Doug: Joe. Joe, have we talked much about my trip with OG to skiing this winter? Speaking of that, it [00:14:26] OG: was awesome. [00:14:27] Doug: Fell us in. I think we did talk [00:14:30] Joe: about [00:14:30] Doug: that slightly. Something. I’m not sure, I can’t put my finger on it, but something Crystal just said made me think of that trip.So Doug, who is your perfect travel partner besides OG and a sleeping bag? Actually OG was a blast to travel with. Thank you. Because you know, he just, he’ll, he’ll do anything. He just, you know, yeah, you want to go eat there? Fine, let’s go eat there. What? You know. No, that was all good. But my preferred travel partner, you, you find people, to your point, crystal, you find people that you’re just sort of in sync with, whether it’s the pace.
Of how, you know, what time you like to leave in the morning and get outta bed and get rolling, or the types of activities you wanna do. My oldest son and I are just, we just travel the same way and it’s just like, we’re like the perfect adventure buddies.
[00:15:17] Joe: That’s a big one for me. We were traveling to the Lake District in England with a family we knew who lived in Manchester.And so the next day we’re going to the Lake District. I know it’s gonna be about a two and a half hour ride there from Manchester. I believe it was about two and a half hours. Cheryl and the kids, we are ready at like 7:00 AM thinking that, you know, that gives us, then it’s nine 30 and we can start hiking around the beautiful Lake District and see Beat’s Potter’s house and, uh, who else is there?
Wordsworth house? I, I think, uh, just some beautiful and beautiful state. Abraham Lincoln, I think. Do you know what time he had a summer house there? Oh my goodness. True story. Yeah. I think right next to Grant Cardone’s house. Right, right. But the people we were traveling with. Didn’t get ready to go till almost 11:00 AM Oh God.
Oh my goodness. It was horrible. I was like, why do we leave it? Oh, we just gotta do a couple more things. We just gotta do a couple more things. Mm-hmm. And then we got there and we literally made a beeline for Beatrix Potter’s Place. And, and Cheryl’s like, uh, so you want to do hiking? Oh, I think we need to get back.
I think it’s time to get back. Ah, we spent as much time on the road as we spent in the Lake District. I can’t wait to go back to the Lake District. ’cause we didn’t hardly see any of them. So frustrating without them. Yeah. Yeah. Jesse, are you sitting on the beach? Well, no, I, I don’t think you are sitting on the beach person.
[00:16:35] Jesse: No, but I loved that Crystal brought this up ’cause it’s something I thought about independently, but it, it totally makes sense that it occurs for most travelers. My wife, she’s a huge activity person. If we are gonna go fly to X country, we are going to jam pack our schedule with lots of activities. And I, I totally get that mindset.I’m just like one or two steps removed from that. You know, I don’t mind having a, uh, day filled with 10 hours of activities as long as, you know, the end of the day we’re gonna kind of relax for a couple hours and chill out. I need a little bit of chill time where she’s more of like, no, no, we still have four things to do.
Like, I, I know we’ve been going all day, but we gotta go. And that’s where we get some friction in our travel because I’m just, I’m not quite all the way at that end of the spectrum. But wouldn’t it be nice if it’s like, uh, just hearing your stories and, and seeing some of the comments come in from YouTube about.
Picking your traveling partner is a, a huge part of the experience. Yeah. If you’re going to travel with people. ’cause those misaligned expectations are just a, a recipe for disaster.
[00:17:31] Joe: Yeah. That’s Andrea, uh, uh, mentioned that in the chat. Pick your travel partner and not at all should be first on the list.Yep. What’s interesting about choosing your travel partner too, is that. You know, I’ve been researching what the happiest retirees know. The happiest retirees actually travel once a year with people. They’re not related to people that aren’t immediate family with some friends.
Yeah.
[00:17:51] Joe: Throughout my life I’ve been allergic to that kind of, for the reasons that we talked about.We have different expectations of what we’re gonna do. We have one friend who is that spreadsheet person, crystal, that you talked about, and Jesse sounds like your spouse kind of is to some degree. And we used to be that. We used to be that, and we kind of have traveled enough now where we’re like, you know what?
We’re gonna plan two big things a day. And then the rest of it is serendipity. Like, whatever happens, we’re just gonna go to an area and maybe we do nothing. Maybe we do something, we’re just gonna leave it up to how we feel, uh, spur of the moment. What I also found though, was important was having, even we travel people who aren’t immediate family members Having me time, you know?
Yeah. Where it’s okay that we’re traveling together, but you know what? Cheryl and I are gonna go do dinner by ourself tonight. We’re just gonna go do the thing. Og do you travel with people outside the immediate family?
[00:18:43] OG: Uh, I mean, other than Doug, let me just think. Um, Doug’s family, I mean, come on. I mean, he almost got kicked out.We certainly bickered like brothers out of the family. Yeah. You, you didn’t tell me where you were going young man. Um, let’s see. I don’t think that I can, I can place a trip other than an afterschool activity thing. I, I, no, nothing that, uh, well I do my annual golf thing with all my, uh, mastermind group.
Nice. That’s all nice. None of that is family. That’s seven other guys. And, you know, we play golf and do some work and some kind of coaching type thing, but is it
[00:19:18] Joe: structured enough that everybody has the same expectation or do you run into some of the problems of different expectations with these people?Um,
[00:19:27] OG: that’s kind of loaded. Um, we play a lot of golf. I think that’s the only thing, you know. ’cause tee times are tee times, right? So it’s like, hey, the tee times at eight, the car’s leaving at seven. I can think of one trip where half the group did something and half the group did something different. You know, ’cause travel schedule’s upcoming or something.It’s like, well, you know, I’ve got an early flight. I need to do this instead of that type of thing. Yeah. Other than that, no, it’s all family or extended family, which is a whole nother world.
[00:19:54] Joe: Let’s talk about resources. Crystal. You brought up, uh, finding deals before Jesse. It sounds like your wife is a planner.Let’s start with you. What resources do you use when you’re researching a new place that you go to?
[00:20:07] Jesse: Uh, that’s a great question. Uh, I, I, I have to admit, I, I don’t do a lot of that myself. I mean, I’ll do some Googling, I guess Google and, and listicles and those kind of things are a lot of my top resources and reviews that other people have written.I mean, my wife goes really deep, whether it’s like guidebooks.
[00:20:25] Joe: Yeah. She, she buys the, that’s Cheryl Cheryl’s a guidebook addict. Exactly. She tends to prefer the lonely planet guidebooks. Okay. Yeah. Um, likes those, Rick Steve’s guidebooks are pretty good. Uh, fo I would say is third. Is that, who pronounce that word?Fo. Fodders Fo. Anybody know? FODR? I’ve always said Fo doors. Fo doors fo. What are your guys thoughts? Doors down on,
[00:20:49] Jesse: it’s in between three and five fo doors. What are your guys’ thoughts on, like, when you guys travel, do you do the things that are kind of like the must dos if you’re gonna be in Dublin, you must see Temple Bar, or are you like off the beaten path?You, you’re looking for things that I go
[00:21:03] Doug: out of my way to avoid the temple bars or any of those things. [00:21:07] Jesse: Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hate it. Is that you two, Jesse, you avoid them? That’s my preference. That’s my preference. I would much rather go to like. A hole in the wall, like a place that has good local culture, but that is not the tourist destination.That’s what I wanna find.
[00:21:22] Joe: Crystal, how about for you? [00:21:24] Crystal: Well, it depends. Going back to even looking for the deals, I have been on a few Groupon trips where the itinerary was already planned, so I already knew what I was getting into. But I also loved having that tour guide where we hit the classic leaning thing.Yeah, the big leaning Buddha in Japan and Thailand. They knew what time we needed to go to see it without all the other people being there. And then they also knew to tell us, Hey, this is where we eat. You know? Like this is what the locals do, this is where there is. So that’s what I liked about that Groupon, those two, and they were through the tour group.
So Gate One is a popular one, affordable Asia. I think they might have a different name now, but they were the tour group that ran the trip just to see their itineraries and then try to recreate theirs. That’s what I end up doing also.
[00:22:10] Joe: Affordable Asia. Now, I believe from our story about that a few weeks ago on stacking adventures as part of just affordable world. [00:22:17] Crystal: Right? [00:22:17] Joe: That’s what it was. Yeah. [00:22:18] OG: Og, how about for you on the doing this stuff versus off the beaten path? I don’t think we’ve done anything adventurous enough to have an opinion about this. I would like to think that if I was going somewhere that is some special, like if you’re going to Paris as an example, I wanna see the Eiffel Tower.I don’t necessarily need to go in it and go up it and whatever. It’s like, okay, I don’t care about that. But if you were like, oh, everybody sees the Eiffel Tower, we don’t need to go see it. I’d be like, well, I’m here. I should probably at least see it. You know? Yeah. Or it’s like everybody, everybody wants to see the Mona Lisa.
It’s like, I know. Well, there’s a reason for that I suspect. Right? So let’s, can I at least just check that box off? I don’t have to hang out there forever. So I think I’d probably lean toward wanting to do more of the known knowns, at least on the first kind of go around and then on travel deals. That’s, uh, that I’m not the guy to ask on that.
[00:23:10] Joe: We use TripAdvisor a lot. Viader? Viader. I think Crystal, we still can’t pronounce that word. How do you [00:23:16] Crystal: say it? I don’t know. Say it both ways. Never heard of [00:23:18] OG: any of these places. Yeah, [00:23:20] Crystal: well they’re the booking people. But I did hear that early on when I was in my travel planning. Is that TripAdvisor? You’re gonna get good sound advice from TripAdvisors.So it’s like check them for their reviews ’cause they have the most dependable and reliable reviews. Yeah, we’ve had,
[00:23:35] Joe: we’ve had great luck there and we’re trying to book a cheap but good tour of the, like a walking tour of the downtown area to see kind of what to look at. We’ve had great luck with theater.Viader v Dunno, whatever, both. Whichever it is.
[00:23:50] Crystal: Tomato and tomato. Yes. [00:23:51] Joe: We’re gonna talk about the budget, the spreadsheet, we’re gonna talk about points, programs. We got all that in the second half of today’s show, but at the halfway point, we put on the brakes for a moment because we have a year long competition between og Jesse and Paula.And today, crystal, you’re team Paula, and that means I’ve got some good news for you, Hammond, and some bad news. Which one would you like? The news, right? Well, the, the good news is Paula, who’s normally in last place, is not in last place. That honor goes to Mr. Jesse Kramer. Right now he is three and a half.
Awesome. Paula has four and a half points, and OG pulled a little bit further ahead last time with six, after Jesse and Paula were reeling him in. So today you’ve got an opportunity to put some heat on og, which is what we’re all looking for. Crystal, this is difficult. Jesse will guess last, uh, crystal, you’ll guess in the middle.
OG goes first. Oh, for all that. We need a question to kick off this holiday weekend. Doug, what are we gonna talk about today?
[00:24:55] Doug: Well, hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and I’ve been so excited for today’s celebration. That’s because on today’s date, way back in 1896, the father of wait for it nylon was born. Wallace Caruthers. Was working for DuPont when he realized that women’s dresses were entirely too long. And what if he thought, what if he could invent something that would make them wanna raise those hem lines?So he created nylon stockings, I’m sure. No, you don’t think that’s, you don’t think that’s how it happened. Well, consider this fan fiction then, because I’m a huge fan and I’m wearing nylons right now. I mean, you know, because they improve your circulation. Speaking of nylon, and being a fan, I’m also a fan of brushing your teeth.
Hold on, edit that. I’m a fan of brushing my teeth. I’m not brushing your teeth. And DuPont actually began making nylon to use in toothbrushes, beginning in 1938. The stockings not on sale until 1939. So here’s a nylon inspired question to celebrate all Wallace’s Big B Day. How many I, I know you see this coming a mile away, but I just gotta say it out loud.
How many bristles are in the average toothbrush? I’ll be back right after I finish counting. 1, 2, 3. Oh crap. I lost count one, two.
[00:26:19] Joe: It’s gonna be here all day. Counting the bristles of the toothbrush, nylon and toothbrushes. You’re going first. Oji, how many bristles in the average toothbrush? [00:26:32] OG: I brush my teeth no less than twice a week, 12 times a year.So, um, I should have a pretty good sense of this. See, I’m just trying to pictures about Yay big. And you’re talking about each strand of nylon is, is a bristle, correct?
Yes.
[00:26:49] OG: As it were. Um, I’m just gonna pick a nice round number and say a thousand, [00:26:55] Joe: a thousand bristles. What do you think of that, crystal? [00:27:00] Crystal: I am gonna say, [00:27:02] Joe: hmm. [00:27:04] Crystal: I’m gonna say 1500. [00:27:06] Joe: 1500 thinks there’s even more than a thousand bristles. Uh, Jesse, you got a 1,015 hundred to the uprights. Mm-hmm. [00:27:17] Jesse: I wrote down on my notepad here, 40 pods and then 50 bristles per pod. My guess in the blind was gonna be 2000. Oh, so I’m gonna go 1501. Ah, fifth crystal. [00:27:33] Joe: Oh one for Jesse. What does it have [00:27:34] Crystal: to do with pantyhose again? Nylon bristles. Pantyhose, [00:27:39] Joe: uh, everything in Doug’s world revolves around pantyhose. Great connection. Everything. Yes. Doug loves pantyhose. Well, he heard about nylon being created on today’s date in history. So we got 1,015 hundred and what was it was gonna be 2000.It was 1501. Who’s right? We’ll be right back. Og you opened this up by saying a thousand bristles, and both Crystal and Jesse thought that’s not enough bristles. What do you think?
Hmm.
[00:28:06] OG: Yeah. I, I, uh, honestly haven’t studied it enough. I should brush more. Crystal. [00:28:12] Joe: Crystal, you’ve got, uh, from 1,251 to 1500, so you’re feeling good now that Jesse, uh, capped you? [00:28:19] Crystal: Wait, yeah, I think he’s gonna be over by one bristle. [00:28:27] Joe: There’s some confidence, Jesse. How you feeling? You like your 2000 number still? [00:28:32] Jesse: Yeah, I’m feeling okay. I’m feeling okay. There’s a lot of little Bri. They’re really small, you know [00:28:36] Joe: They are. They’re small. They’re Doug, I believe you made it up to seven in your count, so we know it’s more than seven. [00:28:42] Doug: Yeah. And Joe, I just wanna, I just listening to you play it back.I wrote down different answers than I just heard you say out loud. So I’ve got OG at a thousand and I thought I just heard you say 1250. ’cause you said no. I said Crystal has from
[00:28:55] Joe: 1251. Oh, it got up to 1500. She’ll be the winner. [00:28:59] Doug: Got it. Okay. And then Jesse didn’t guess 2000. Jesse guessed. 15. 1501. 1501. He guessed.Yeah.
[00:29:05] Joe: Even though his thought B guessed, I think is the way we say that. Right. [00:29:09] Crystal: Okay. Were you listening With your eyes closed again, Doug? Maybe that’s what it was. [00:29:14] Joe: Alright. Who’s gonna win this thing? Og? Pull him further ahead. Crystal, getting Paula closer to og or is Jesse gonna move into second? Doug, who’s the winner? [00:29:28] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m guy who loves popcorn and flossing. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Ah, the toothbrush. Apparently this device wasn’t well received at first because if it were, we may have called it a teeth brush. It’s like people only have like one tooth, and luckily they got to it before that last one was gone though.Just saved by the day. So today’s question, how many nylon bristles are there in the average toothbrush? I’m not gonna tell you the answer I’m gonna do OGs favorite part. I will tell you the answer is 1,500 more bristles than OG guessed a thousand more bristles than Paula slash Crystal guest 999 more than Jesse guessed, because the correct answer is 2,500 in the average toothbrush making Jesse our winner.
Aw, congratulations
[00:30:18] Crystal: Mr. Kramer. Oh, [00:30:20] Jesse: thank you guys. Thank you. He was due, [00:30:21] Crystal: well, you would’ve been the closest with your 2K answer. [00:30:25] Joe: He would’ve, yes. You couldn’t get it either way. Very, very close. [00:30:29] Crystal: Huh? There’s a [00:30:29] Joe: lot of bristles. That’s a ton of bristles. You look at that little, it just doesn’t, I don’t know how they put 2,500 on that. [00:30:36] Crystal: Also. Congrats. Whoever guessed right, you still lose. ’cause who? Who knows that? [00:30:42] Joe: Well, now you got something to tell your friends all weekend, crystal. Guess what? I know. Yeah, right. All right. Let’s talk about the credit card points game because Jesse, this can be a minefield for people, right? Mm-hmm. They hear people successfully doing it.Next thing you know, they got a bunch of credit card debt and these points that are probably not worth the 30% interest they’re paying on the credit card. Do you pay? Do you play the points game?
[00:31:08] Jesse: So we do play the game, but, but I guess maybe we don’t. We have essentially two cards. One that is like very generic, but has a pretty decent, it’s like a pretty decent reward on anything you can buy.And then one that’s specific. And I, I heard from a couple people I respect who play the points game really hard. The two responses I’ve heard the most are either you get one credit card that’s just generically good no matter what you spend on, or you get one thing that’s like great on groceries and gas, and then a second thing that’s just generically good.
That’s our approach, and I know it’s not maximized, but this is just one aspect of my financial life that I’m happy I’m okay not being maximized.
[00:31:49] Joe: Wh why is that? Do you fear that you would get into credit card debt or it’s just too much management for too little squeeze? Yeah. [00:31:55] Jesse: It’s the same reason why I don’t clip coupons, Joe.I mean, I think at the end of the day it’s juice for the squeeze. I. I don’t know. At some point for the credit card game, I think people are probably squeezing really hard and not getting that much juice left. And it’s just, it’s where you choose to draw that line personally or it’s like portfolios, you know, like, you know, you’ve been talking, you’ve been doing some really cool stuff recently, Joe, on what?
The Merriman, like the 10 fund Merriman portfolio.
[00:32:18] Joe: Yeah. [00:32:18] Jesse: I think that’s really cool. I think other people though in this world are like, just give me one stock fund and one bond fund and I’ll leave the excess return for the birds. It’s just different strokes for different folks. Shoot [00:32:29] Joe: me now. Shoot man.Those people be wrong, Jesse. They would be way wrong.
[00:32:33] Jesse: I know, I know [00:32:35] Joe: Nick Clements, who’s in the credit card industry, used to advise this before he retired and Nick said if you’ve got a cashback credit card that pays you 2% or better, uh, that’s a great place to be. So Jesse, if, if yours is a cashback card and gives you 2%, I think you’re right Doug, you use cashback rewards.It’s all I use.
[00:32:54] Doug: Yeah, I don’t do any travel stuff ’cause I don’t travel to all the cool places you guys do. So traveling isn’t as much of a priority for me. I wouldn’t use them fast enough. And the inflation or deflation, what’s the right word on how the, the value of the points goes down so often that uh, I just don’t think I would be getting the most value out of whatever the percent back is. [00:33:16] Joe: Crystal, you play the points game to some degree. [00:33:19] Crystal: I do, but it is a simple, I play the simple game. I have the one card that I pay off every month, and that’s what people get and they, that’s where people get into trouble. They’re trying to do something that they don’t understand or chase points that they don’t understand.And like you said earlier, Joe, they end up paying that 30% interest on something where just like what Doug mentioned, that the points get devalued. I do follow a couple people that post every month, Hey, if you transfer your points here, it’s a 30%, you know, sale for this airline for this month. I’ve gotten into a habit of checking those, but I have not done it yet.
I always book through my portal, which you definitely give up a little bit of edge when you book on your, your credit card company’s portal. But I went to Thailand on all points, so I hoard my points, I pay off my cards, and then I’m slowly venturing out. Thanks. So you don’t listen to the people you’ve had on the show to say, Hey, you can just transfer your points here and you’ll get 30% more.
For if you’re going to this place and you book this way or you travel, ’cause I think it’s either hotel or flight is where you can transfer your points and you get to save. So I’ll, I’ll look and see. As long as it doesn’t take too much time.
[00:34:31] Joe: Oh gee, how complicated do you play the points game? [00:34:34] OG: I do not pay any lick of attention in any way, shape or form to anything that is optimized.We use credit cards like it’s cotton candy, and um, I have so many points and so many buckets I can’t keep track of it all. When’s the last time you ate cotton candy?
Yeah,
[00:34:50] OG: now my kids have, they bring it home on occasion. I will on occasion, if I know there’s gonna be a large purchase, right? Like if I know I’m gonna, you know, I’ve got something to do that’s gonna be a big number.I might glance and see like, is there an offer somewhere? Or, you know, is it better to use the American Airlines card because I’ve got a flight that I could book right on the heels of this to get the points? Or, you know, is this gonna put me in another tier or is it better to be on the Amex or something?
So I will glance at it, but generally speaking, it’s honestly whatever, whatever pops up on my phone when I go to pay is what I use.
[00:35:25] Joe: Because I’ve been spending so much time at, uh, the like, uh, campfire and with people that do this really well, we’ve started transferring our cards toward the programs that are more flexible.So the Chase Sapphire card, which is very flexible point Program, capital One has a very flexible program, and I had a Capital One card, didn’t use it hardly at all. Now I’ve switched over to using that Capital One venture more, and the, uh, Joe, because of the flexibility. Yeah. Doug,
[00:35:52] Doug: when you say you transfer, does that mean you transfer the balances onto the card?That is a better travel card, or you just No, I’ve shut down it more.
[00:36:00] Joe: Yeah, I used it more. Okay. And as an example, hotel points stopped using Marriott, which was, I was all Marriott all the time. Started using, now Hyatt, if there’s a Hyatt, I’ll go to Hyatt first. And I found that I can score, uh, if there is a Hyatt, I will score much, much more quickly free rooms at a Hyatt than I was through Marriott.But to your point, I don’t obsess about it a ton. I was talking to our friend, I think we’re all friends with Chris Hutchins talking to Chris and talk about spreadsheet. Holy cow. Like the amount of work he does, but he travels for free. Yeah. All the time goes first class travel for free. So I don’t know, have you ever thought about that, Jesse?
About getting more into it to be able to just go for free whenever you want.
[00:36:41] Jesse: I thought about it. Thought about, yeah. No, I’ve talked to Chris about it too. Chris. He’s got a baby. He can’t think about what’s [00:36:46] OG: for dinner. Yeah. [00:36:48] Joe: Yeah. Well, og have you thought about it then? [00:36:52] OG: No, no. I mean, this isn’t a weird flex of any kind.It’s just there’s so many in so many places. Like I could just look and go like, oh, got a capital, some Capital One points. I’ll just use those to fly mom down here for vacation, you know, or whatever. It’s like booking something on the Amex website, because that’s the one I happen to click on. Oh, I got points there.
I’ll just use those points. I don’t, I’ve, I, again, very rarely pay attention to the. You know, oh my gosh. You got 1.7 points cents per point. You should get 2.1. You’re leaving money on the, I don’t care. It’s, you know, I turned in a bunch of points and got $2,000 worth of Amazon gift cards not too long ago.
[00:37:31] Doug: Yeah. Trying to play that whole game is almost as complicated as playing one of Joe’s board games. Oh yeah, it is. [00:37:35] OG: Makes sense. It’s like a second job instructions. Who has that? Well, and then halfway through the game you get a different set of rules. Like, oh no, no. You know that character can’t move those spaces, they can only move these space.You’re like, since when? Well, since I’m losing and I wanna make the rules different.
[00:37:50] Joe: Next on our list is decide when you’ll go Crystal. You prefer to go during shoulder seasons when it’s not so busy? Or do you go for the, you know, there’s a picture here in Japan. Do you go when the cherry blossoms are out? [00:38:04] Crystal: Yeah, I would avoid the touristy seasons. Like I don’t wanna do carnival anywhere, don’t wanna go cherry blossom season. ’cause I wanna get great service. I don’t wanna be trampled, I don’t wanna have to wait too long to experience things. I’m going when there’s no one else there. So, shoulder season, that is, I guess when the kids are in school, just be careful of when you’re going because you don’t wanna go when, like certain countries, they go on holiday for the whole month and you’re there wondering why is everything closed?It’s ’cause the country takes a holiday or, um, bad weather don’t go to places during hurricane season. So it helps to, you know, reach out to people to know when you wanna go places. And
[00:38:45] Joe: we found that out after we had our trip to Chile scheduled that that country does nothing on their Independence day.And we didn’t realize when we booked everything that we were gonna be there on Independence Day. So we ended up with. Being like the only people at this hotel we were staying at, everything was closed around town. We actually booked a tour with a guy, and this was a horrible tour. The Tube was like, I can’t take you anything ’cause nothing is closed.
I’m like, well, like, give us your money back. Oh, he wanted to make the money. So we went around and saw a bunch of closed places. It was a horrible, horrible. Now the thing that was cool was he introduced us to this idea called a Fonda, which is the celebrations around town that locals go to. And we ended up being, as far as I could tell, the only obviously Nch Chilean people at the Chilean Independence Festival.
And it was a blast. It was cool seeing what people do during that. But it’s, it’s kinda like a carnival though. Uh, you don’t wanna go to carnival.
[00:39:40] Crystal: No way, Jose. Yeah. Too many people, [00:39:42] Joe: Jesse shoulder season or go during the time that, uh, the good stuff’s happening. [00:39:47] Jesse: Definitely shoulder season. I’m, I’m not a big crowds person anyway.I’d rather Yeah, definitely rather avoid the crowds of other tourists, especially I. Tourism’s a double-edged sword for a lot of these localities where it’s like, on the one hand it’s the lifeblood, or it’s one of the, you know, main drivers of their economy, but then they’re kind of losing their local culture because they’re overrun by tourists.
And so, you know, I’d rather not, uh, just be, be just another tourist during the busiest tourist season. But then also just for all these other reasons we’re talking about today, it’s like, you know, oh, so you’re looking to save money on travel? Like that’s a big thing we’ve been talking about today. Well, are you gonna save money just so that you can go and be really inefficient on your trip?
Because it’s the busiest time of the year there. Like, no, I’d rather be efficient on my trip, and kind of save money implicitly that way too. So definitely more. Yeah. And it’s
[00:40:34] Joe: also about, but there’s the other side of that too though, Jesse, which is, you know, you can go to the beach in the winter and it’s gonna be, you know, you, you’re not gonna be able to sit out on the beach or you go in the summer when it’s packed, but you get that beach experience that everybody wants. [00:40:49] Jesse: Yeah. You know, obviously there’s definitely an on season and an off season. I’m not saying that. Mm-hmm. But I just think there are some things where. They’re just, no matter where you go, there’s gonna be an example of, right. Carnival is a great one. Cherry Blossoms is a great one. Yeah. If the sole reason you’re going is cherry blossoms, then like you gotta go during cherry blossom season, you gotta then season. [00:41:05] Joe: Well, that’s what I was gonna ask og, some of the big events, Indy 500, let’s say, do you go to Indianapolis for the Indy 500 or do you skip it because there’s a crowd of people? Do you go to Pam for the running of the bulls or do you skip it because you don’t want to get trampled by all the people, not necessarily the bulls. [00:41:22] OG: Well, like Jesse said, if you’re going to the Indy 500 because you want tickets to the Indy 500, you are going, yeah. During the Indy 500, we went to the Rose Bowl and the college Football National Championship a couple years ago, and it was the absolute worst time to drive to Houston from Dallas. It was, it was the worst weather imaginable and pouring rain and just everything about it was awful.That was the ticket. Use that or stay at home and watch the game. So, you know, you travel when you’re, when you’re, you’re doing it. I was just talking to, um, I said something to my wife yesterday. I said, oh, when the kids are gone, we can finally do this trip. And there was a trip that I saw revolved around a bunch of airplane pilots that had a kind of a, it’s like a guided tour.
A flying from Seattle, Seattle up through Alaska and Oh, beautiful. And the fjords and stuff like that. Wow. And I was like, that would be cool. It’s in late August, which is a great time to be in Alaska apparently, but a really bad time to be doing anything if you have children because yeah, you’re in school.
And so we don’t have the luxury. I was talking to a client one time and I said, said something about, uh, I said, oh, don’t you guys usually go to Europe? You go in the summer. He goes, we don’t go to Europe in the summer. I said, oh, I thought you guys always go to Europe. He said, we go in September when all you idiots, you know, are in school.
You, you guys go in September or you guys go in the summertime? Not us. We’re, we’re, we’re past summer travel, you know, so
[00:42:40] Crystal: nice. [00:42:41] OG: I would do that if I could. I wanna do little monsters. [00:42:44] Joe: Yeah. I wanna do two more things here. One is, uh, where do you stay? Uh, do you prefer Airbnb trying to find friends in the area if possible?Or is that, you know, cramping their style and you go for the hotel Airbnb friends, or the hotel? Crystal, how about you?
[00:43:03] Crystal: Again, it depends. ’cause Switzerland, we stayed with friends, but then when there was a group of us back in the ski con days, there were 35 of us and we stayed in this huge Airbnb. That was amazing.But then solo trips, I’m definitely staying at a hotel where there’s eyes on me, you know, and cameras everywhere. And I like the people to clean up every day. Oh, I’ve heard to
[00:43:22] Joe: Airbnbs. They have cameras everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. [00:43:25] Crystal: They’re not looking close enough. Ouch. But it does depend though, like with the big, big group, I would usually, someone else has the count, but big group, definitely Airbnb, but like smaller.Definitely prefer a hotel.
[00:43:39] Jesse: Yeah. Jesse. It depends on the place. When we were in Chiang Mai, Thailand, it’s like you could stay at one of the nicer hotels there for, for $50 a day, or you could go get, you know, an okay Airbnb for $30 a day. Or there’s some places where it’s like, well, the difference between the nicest place and the mediocre place mm-hmm.Might be hundreds of dollars a night. And maybe that’s the place where we’ll settle on the, the more mediocre place to save some money.
[00:44:05] OG: Og, how about you? Yeah, we’ve done all of the things. We, um, our ski trip recently where we went spring break with the kids, we’ve always stayed in a hotel and gotten to adjoining hotel rooms and you know, that’s plenty of space for everybody, but you’re kind of beholden to the hotel.Yeah. Here’s when food is, here’s what the restaurant’s open, here’s you gotta make reservations. This year we rented a condo a little further up the slope from where the hotel was. And I don’t think anybody would do that. I don’t think we’d ever go back to the hotel. I. Never Uhhuh, um, with, with the family.
Yeah, because we went to the grocery store, we got to eat when we wanted. Everybody had way, you know, 50 times the room, you know, versus the little hotel rooms. We had a, you know, nice condo. So that’s helpful. I, I’ve also done, you know, we’ve done the big giant houses like Crystal was talking about with all the friends.
And again, as long as you’re kind of all on the same schedule or there’s enough space where if you’re not, you can be like, you know, OGs gonna bed, it’s 10 o’clock, so I’ll see y’all tomorrow. Like, you can go do your thing. That’s okay. But if you, if you try to mix those things right? Yeah. Like I think, I think we’ve all done this where you go, it would be a great idea if we all slept in the same hotel room and then you realize about halfway through night one that uh, Nope.
It was a terrible idea. Yeah. You would pay any amount of money to not do that again. Oh, yes. Been there. So you gotta choose your own adventure there. Carefully. But
[00:45:22] Joe: yeah, I think they’re definitely for that big group, I do like the Airbnb and that communal activity, the fact that we have our own, yep. Mm-hmm Our own space.We did that for my nephew’s graduation. Uh, recently we did for my son’s graduation, where we had a seven bedroom house in Austin, which really made it nice. But to your point, og, you just gotta have enough room. It’s gotta be big up place. That’s right. Yeah. I wanna ask about travel insurance. Krista, where do you draw the line on travel insurance?
[00:45:47] Crystal: I usually get it like when you’re booking for the flight cancellations, just because I’ve had flights cancel a couple times and it’s become more common. There was a time where I would never even think about it, but now I do second guess it just because, and I don’t wanna be stuck anywhere. And I want my money.I want my freaking money back. Um, healthwise, my, my insurance is pretty much covered everywhere. Um, and I’ve had to go to a hospital, well, I was sick. They didn’t believe me that I was sick, but my friend was pretending like he was sick and he, they gave him IV and everything, so I thought that was hilarious.
But Well, you were, were sick and he wasn’t. Yeah, I was and he was not. It was pretty funny. Why was he pretending to be safe? I was just gonna say, why
[00:46:29] Doug: did [00:46:30] Crystal: I miss something? Why was he pretending? Extra vacation. Extra vacation days from, I don’t know where he worked, but it was extra vacation time from work.Oh,
[00:46:37] Doug: I thought you were gonna say he was looking for a free night stay at the hospital. Oh, that’s funny. No, I hope no one goes. The travel hack goes [00:46:43] Crystal: length. Yeah, but then also your credit card too. ’cause the chase, the Sapphire Reserve, they have very good protections. ’cause one time, well, both times I went to Vegas, my luggage didn’t arrive after I did.So I did end up getting money for to buy new stuff and that was pretty
[00:47:00] Joe: cool. That’s cool. That’s great. Know what your credit card offers and what it doesn’t. Jesse, what do you do about travel insurance? Do it. Don’t do it. [00:47:07] Jesse: I think on the big trips we’ve usually done it and on smaller trips we won’t. If it’s like a long weekend, domestically we won’t, we won’t get it.But for the big like week long, 10 day, two week trips internationally, we will, for the same reasons Crystal said is like, at some point you’re just like, the risk of something going wrong and we’re gonna be thousands and thousands of dollars out of pocket here is just pony up for the a hundred dollars of travel insurance, knowing that it probably won’t pay off, but you’re covered just in case it matters.
[00:47:35] Joe: That’s funny. It’s like any other insurance decision. It’s a magnitude and probability, and while probability might not be high, that magnitude gets high enough. When I travel internationally, I get it. So of course I only buy it when it’s really expensive. When it’s really cheap. Yeah. I don’t, I don’t worry about it.Oh gee, how about you?
[00:47:52] OG: Uh, no, but what we do, uh, we don’t buy it individually, but what we do is we have a contract, an annual contract with Allianz. It covers everything. It’s just a once a year premium. I. It’s cool and I have to look up how much it is. But it’s [00:48:05] Doug: specifically for travel though. [00:48:06] OG: Yeah, it’s for travel.You know how like when you book your trip on the flight or the hotel or whatever, it always gives you this, like, what state are you in? And you can, it’s all covered, but then you also, it’s kind of double dipping I should say. We’ve done it in the past. I don’t have it actively right now, but I’ve done the done the annual thing before.
And then you also have to know like how your credit card works. Like, uh, like Crystal was saying, there’s a lot of, a lot of benefits coverage on your travel cards now,
[00:48:32] Doug: Doug? I’ll say that I’ve only tried to take advantage of the insurance provided by the credit card one time, and we ended up not being able to use it or get the benefit of it, not because of the credit card, but because they required some proof of some things.And my son had gone on a package, you know, vacation, it was a spring break thing in college down to Mexico and they needed us to get the, the credit card. Needed us to get proof from the company that organized the whole thing and that company wouldn’t give us what we needed. And I spent so much time trying to deal with that.
I just gave up Eventually we just ate the cost. So that sucks. It’s, yeah. So it’s, it’s not, I mean, every time I book anything now I think I’m not paying for the extra insurance. I’ve got it. But it might not be the credit card company that throws the hurdles up in front of you. It might be
mm-hmm.
[00:49:24] Doug: The requirements you have to satisfy the people have to provide that to you.The, the Airbnb host or something like that.
[00:49:30] Crystal: That’s why I do, yeah. I don’t like booking through Expedia and those others. For that reason too is I like to have my flight booked through the airline and I like to have my hotel booked with my card for my own safeguarding. [00:49:44] OG: Yep. I prefer that as well for that exact reason.’cause it is such a pain to unravel, you know, something I. Via the travel agent, whether the travel agent is the Capital One portal or the Amex travel portal or whatever. It’s just, yeah.
[00:49:59] Joe: And they’ll send you there in a hurry. They’ll go, oh, look. Not my problem. Yes, not my problem. Yeah. Contact your travel agent immediately.Yeah. Yeah. Uh, last thing, when you’re flying pre-check clear, Jesse, do you do pre-check? Do you do clear? Yeah, you’re
[00:50:11] Jesse: nodding. We, we have TSA precheck, which in some airports, it’s funny. In our local airport, it’s so small that it probably doesn’t save us that much time. But there’s some places where, man, it saves you an hour.It just makes things so much smoother, so much easier. You get to keep your clothes on or whatever, and again, better getting naked.
[00:50:30] Crystal: Why would you do that? [00:50:31] Jesse: Well, yeah, you guys don, don’t put [00:50:32] Crystal: your pants back on. [00:50:33] Jesse: You guys don’t get randomly selected every time you go to the airport. Must be [00:50:37] Crystal: a to take your clothes off apparently. [00:50:39] OG: I’m not hiding what you’re hiding, Jesse. [00:50:44] Jesse: Going back to the hot dog joke, [00:50:46] Joe: Jesse [00:50:47] Doug: finds out the hard way that you don’t have to take off your pants. I mean, they tell you to take off your belt and your shoes. I can see where this is going. Skip to the end. I’m saving everybody some time. [00:50:59] Jesse: But yes, TSA precheck is, uh, well worth it.Well worth it, in my opinion. That’s
[00:51:03] Joe: funny. Your airport Jesse’s a lot like ours in Texarkana. I feel like I’m paying that fee just to make sure I don’t take off my shoes. Like, that’s, that’s why. Mm-hmm. Because there’s never more than three people in front of me in the line. And Dallas is pretty good too.Og I mean, the Dallas Airport has so many portals that, those lines, I think I’ve been in line one time, og that was a little long.
[00:51:22] OG: I can think of one time where I was, you know, we always play the game of like, how close can we make it? Yeah. You know? And they tell you be to the airport three hours. Not fun.Yeah. No, more like six minutes before boarding. But I remember one time I pulled in, parked, walked into the terminal and saw the line and walked all the way down to where the line was. And kind of did the mental math of like, okay, yeah, this ain’t happening. Went back outside, got in my car, drove to a different terminal, walked in, went through security, got on the train all the way back to sea, got off the train, and then they were boarding.
And I was like, oh. So that worked out perfectly. Wow. Yeah. But I would’ve never made it. Is this O’Hare? No, this a Dallas. Oh, oh, it’s Dallas.
[00:51:58] Joe: Yeah. [00:51:59] OG: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that, and we have all of the things, clear precheck global entry. $50 bill, like whatever it takes. [00:52:07] Crystal: Oh, I didn’t know that one. Wait, a [00:52:08] OG: $50 bill.I almost missed that one $50 bill to the dude to just let you through. Yeah, just slide. Let’s like, you know, there’s a stack of ’em, so you just go, can I cut in front of you for 50? Make a rain club. Let’s come cut in front of for 50. Can I cut in front of you for 50? You just, you’re like handing out money just to get to the front of the line.
[00:52:21] Joe: Nothing better than getting caught bribing. A-A-T-S-A [00:52:25] OG: person, all the people in the universe to bribe just the TSA guy’s like you realize this is, uh, like Jesse would say, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze here. [00:52:35] Joe: Thanks. A guy OG that you and I know by BMWs and he picked one up in Germany, which you can do, and then drive it to the Netherlands and the price discount you get almost pays for the trip.Oh, so he’s
[00:52:49] Joe: tooling around Europe and he’s in the Czech Republic when he goes speeding through this little village and uh, this cop pulls him over and the cop walks up to his window and this, this. Guy that we know says, uh, he goes, um, you know, I’m just wondering how much to make this just go away. Oh. And the, the police officer said, are you trying to bribe me Because Uhoh, because that’s a stay in jail.And he throws his hands up right away. I said, no, no, no, no. I just, I don’t know how it works. I’m, I’m American. I got no idea. No, no, no way am I trying to bribe you. Not at all. What if
[00:53:24] OG: I was exactly how many pesos does it take? [00:53:29] Joe: The cop goes back to the car and then comes back up to the window and goes, 120 Euros and it goes away.It was amazing.
[00:53:38] Crystal: Oh [00:53:38] Joe: my goodness. How fast he made it go away. Reminds me that scene from, uh, we are the Millers [00:53:41] Crystal: turned him into a criminal. He did. He did. [00:53:44] Joe: And then the cop, the cop’s life then took a whole different trajectory. [00:53:48] OG: Yeah. OG you were saying. Oh, no, I just said it sounds like that scene from We are the millers. [00:53:56] Joe: I don’t even remember the scene. [00:53:57] OG: Oh, where they’re leaving the drug compound and they get pulled over by the cop who needs the bribe to keep going. Gotta have the bribe. Yeah. That movie [00:54:07] Joe: Crystal pre-check. [00:54:08] Crystal: Oh yeah. I have Global entry, which comes with pre-check. And that was a credit card benefit. Mm-hmm. [00:54:13] Joe: Yeah. Check your [00:54:14] OG: credit [00:54:14] Crystal: card. And I have clear too, thanks to Atlanta Airport, I have clear [00:54:17] OG: Yeah. Oh yeah. Used clear one time and you go, I can see why this needs to be in my back pocket. Yeah. [00:54:22] Joe: Yep. Are there airports that worry you more than others? Uh, the two that I always worry about is Orlando is horrible.MCO. Yep. Heathrow is horrible. I’ve heard that too. LAX? Yeah. LAX. Luckily I arrived for my flight a couple weeks ago, like at 4:00 AM so I was good. Oh, perfect Time for all the rush hour
[00:54:42] OG: traffic. [00:54:42] Joe: Yeah. Any issues? There’s just so [00:54:43] OG: much construction going on right now with the Olympic stuff. It’s very well, the last time I was there anyway was just a ton of construction, so the traffic’s all jacked up and yeah, LAX scares me.MCO is bad. I think Chicago, Dallas, JFK, LaGuardia’s. Great. Now I think LaGuardia
[00:55:00] Joe: went from horrible to fantastic. Totally different. [00:55:02] OG: Yeah. DCA was good last time. Detroit’s fine.Yeah, they’re good.
[00:55:06] OG: Yeah. I think not bad. Jesse, any airports you’re afraid [00:55:09] Joe: of besides those? [00:55:09] OG: Rochester? [00:55:11] Jesse: Rochester. Rochester. Uh, I’ve had some issues transferring through.Been rough a couple times. Denver’s got all those conspiracy theories about it. Still a good airport, but a lot of conspiracy theories there. Oh, Denver, you’re right. Denver sucks. Toronto. The traffic around Toronto is rough. I’ll say that. If you’ve ever flown in or out of Toronto, that’s a tough one to get to.
[00:55:30] Joe: I have not. Never have. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, uh, you know what stackers give us yours. What airports were you? Uh, what are your best travel tips? Either put those online on social media, hit us up or in our basement Facebook group. We’d love to bring you in on this conversation. Let’s help each other travel better this summer.Alright, that’s going to wrap it for today. Let’s find out what all of you are working on. Crystal, thanks a ton for coming over and helping us out. What’s coming up on stacking adventures.
[00:56:01] Crystal: We’ve got some really, really cool trips coming up that you will hear about. We got Belize on the map. We’ve got, well, I can’t wait to hear Joe’s side of Greece when he gets back.That’s also gonna be fun. We’ve got theme parks. What else do we have? We have a lot of fun stuff coming up.
[00:56:18] Joe: So we’re, we’re gonna talk a little bit about Route 66. [00:56:21] Crystal: Yes. [00:56:22] Joe: Next year’s the hundredth anniversary. Route 66. Not [00:56:24] Crystal: route. It’s Root 66. Yeah. [00:56:27] Joe: We can’t pronounce any the other words, but we get that one right Crystal.And that’s it. Uh, yes, we do the Stacking of Ventures where Finer podcast are. Uh, Jesse, what’s happening on the personal Finance for Long-Term Investors Podcast?
[00:56:40] Jesse: What is happening? We released an episode recently where I took a deep dive on. I think it’s called the ready for retirement study from Fritz Gilbert, which is a cool study about kind of retiree and pre-retiree expectations.And the way I think of this study is, you know, a lot of people before retirement are worried about X but then once they retire they realize they should have been worrying about y And I think there are a lot of really cool lessons that we can all take away from that kind of no matter where we are on our financial journey.
But, uh, so I took a deep dive into that in a recent episode. It was, came out pretty well.
[00:57:09] Joe: We’re gonna also dive into that, but I’d love to hear that episode and that’s it. Uh, personal finance for long term investors where Finer podcast are og what you got going on this Memorial Day weekend besides, you know, watching the Indie 500? [00:57:22] OG: No, I don’t even know that. We’ll get that in. Honestly. This is, uh, graduation weekend, so everybody is here. It is a packed house, although it’s not. ’cause we made everybody stay at hotels. But, um, graduation tomorrow and, uh, Caroline’s birthday on Sunday, right?Sunday. Sunday. It’s wonderful.
[00:57:41] Joe: Yes. So. Fantastic holiday weekend at the OG residence.Yeah,
[00:57:46] OG: come on over. We’re a barbecue and pool party and. Whatever, that’s, it’s basically a nonstop, uh, party from four days ago till next Tuesday. Sounds fabulous. [00:57:58] Joe: Let’s do it, Doug. We’re all invited. I know. Let’s get outta here so we can go over to OGs house. What are our big takeaways today? [00:58:04] Doug: Well, Joe, here’s what’s stacked up on our to-do list today.First, take some advice from the co-host of Stacking adventures, crystal Hammond. Crystal says, choose your travel partners wisely. Hint, it’s definitely probably not your spouse. Is that right? Crystal? Is that pretty much what you said? What spouse? Okay. Second. Jesse told us the best way to get the most out of your trip planning is to play the credit card point game.
Let’s pretty much summarize it, Jesse.
[00:58:34] Jesse: I think we should pick a couple cards and not chase after the rest of ’em. ’cause sometimes the juice is not worth the squeeze. [00:58:41] Doug: There’s the phrase I was looking for, but the big lesson, it always makes sense to take a day hike with someone you haven’t traveled with before you go on vacation with them.’cause if you don’t, OG will yell at you. This is how fast I walk. What’s your damn rush?
[00:58:59] OG: It’s not not true. [00:59:00] Doug: That’s spoken like you might have [00:59:01] Joe: experienced that before. Yeah. [00:59:03] Doug: Ask me how I know.Thanks to Jesse Kramer for joining us. You’ll find his podcast, personal Finance for Long-Term Investors wherever you are listening to us now. We’ll also include links in our show [email protected]. It’s not not true. Thanks to Crystal Hammond for hanging out with us as well. You’ll find her fabulous podcast, stacking Adventures.
Oh, it’s hers now. Wherever you listen to finer podcasts, everybody knows it’s hers. She’s pushing you out. Joe, thanks also to OG for joining us today. Be sure to listen to his podcast, stacking Benjamin’s. He can also get on his financial planning [email protected] slash og. This show is the property of SP podcasts LC copyright 2025 and is created by Joe Sal Sea.
Hi, Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome [email protected], along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. Oh yeah, and before I go. Not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know.
This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Mom’s neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.
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