Afford Anything - How to Travel on $75 Per Day, with Nomadic Matt Kepnes

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

#594: Ever wonder if you could afford to travel for months at a time? According to Nomadic Matt, who's visited more than 100 countries over the last 19 years, you can see the world on just $75 a day. That's about $27,375 per year, less than many people's current cost of living. Matt Kepnes, better known as Nomadic Matt, joins us to challenge common assumptions about travel costs. He explains that long-term travel can actually be cheaper than staying home. When you're traveling, you shed many regular expenses that eat into your budget back home, like car payments, home insurance, and utility bills. The key is to "travel like you live," as Nomadic Matt puts it. This means using public transportation instead of taxis, shopping at local markets, and seeking out free activities — just like you might do in your hometown. It's not about staying at five-star resorts, but experiencing destinations authentically while keeping costs reasonable. Nomadic Matt also breaks down several travel myths. The old advice about booking flights on Tuesdays? Outdated in today's algorithmic pricing world. Using incognito mode to get better flight prices? No evidence supports this idea. He does confirm that booking round-trip flights often costs less than one-way tickets, even if you don't use the return portion. For those interested in credit card points, Nomadic Matt recommends choosing cards based on your specific travel goals rather than chasing the most popular options. Consider which airlines you use most and what perks you'll actually take advantage of. The pandemic has transformed travel in significant ways. While prices have increased and some budget travel services have disappeared, new opportunities have emerged — especially for remote workers who can now take advantage of digital nomad visas to live abroad while maintaining their income. Whether you're planning a two-week vacation or dreaming of becoming location-independent, Nomadic Matt's practical advice shows how international travel is more accessible than you might have thought. Timestamps: Note: Timestamps will vary on individual listening devices based on dynamic advertising run times. The provided timestamps are approximate and may be several minutes off due to changing ad lengths. (0:00) Intro to Nomadic Matt and $75/day budget (1:00) Modern hostels aren't grungy anymore (3:00) Origins of the $75/day travel budget (5:00) "Travel like you live" approach saves money (8:50) Mix accommodations based on trip needs (9:40) Choose travel cards matching your specific goals (16:40) Use points before devaluation happens (20:00) Best booking times for flights (37:00) Social media's impact on global travel (42:00) Overcoming language barriers easily (48:30) Post-COVID travel costs and changes (56:20) Remote work visas for long-term travelers (1:02:40) Why travel costs less than staying home (1:05:50) How location independence evolved from unusual to mainstream For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode594 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If I challenged you to live on a budget of $27,375 per year, you'd probably say that I was nuts. Today's guest believes that you can live on that while traveling the world, and we're going to see if you can prove it. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that understands you can afford anything, but not everything. Every choice carries a trade-off. This show covers five pillars. Financial Psychology, Increasing Your Income, Investing, Real Estate, and Entrepreneurship. It's Double Eye Fire. I'm your host, Paula Pant.

I trained in economic reporting at Columbia, and I help you understand money so you can build wealth. With us today is an esteemed travel writer by the name of Matt Kepniz, who is better known as Nomadic Matt. Welcome, Matt. Hey, Paula. Thanks for having me. Thanks for joining us. You say that you can travel the world on $75 per day. That's a bold claim, so we're going to hold your feet to the fire on that.

Please do. Does that mean that if you're traveling... traveling at 75 bucks a day, you're staying in the type of backpacker hostels that are kind of grungy and they've got bed bugs and they're ideal for like 19-year-olds. Well, most hostels aren't as grungy anymore. They're not what you see on those old movies or TV shows. They've upscaled. Most don't have bedbugs.

Most. Nowadays, the whole thing is like the pod. Yeah. So you have the dorms, but there's like curtains and you have your own little light. They're a lot nicer than what you think of. of like your parents roughing it in like the 70s or from the movie The Beach in 2000. So they're not nicer. But that said, you can use points.

You can use credit card points to stay in nicer digs. It's an average. Europe, you'll spend more. Southeast Asia, you spend less. And then it averages to 75. Okay. Tell me where you got the budget of $75 a day. How did you develop that number?

That's $75 a day. Number comes from personal experience when I traveled around. the world and adjusted for inflation. So it's my trip through Europe, South Asia, Australia, New Zealand, South America, what I spent on food accommodation, mixing flights with points and non-point flights and budget airlines and all that, just adjusted for inflation. All right. Let's unpack the costs of travel piece by piece. What elements of the traditional notions of vacationing get disrupted when we shift the conversation to long-term budget-friendly travel? The notion that travel is expensive really comes from, you know, decades of travel

advertisements and the media and what we've seen in the movies. We're going on vacation. It's got to be a lot of money or it's not going to be fun. But yes, if you're going to go to a resort and just put it on the car and worry about it later, sure, that's going to be expensive. but I tell people to travel like they live, right? In your day-to-day life, you're not really spending a lot of money on fancy stuff. You're grocery shopping and you're taking public transportation and you're looking for free or inexpensive things to do in your neighborhood. You go to the park, you wander around.

So if you're traveling, you're doing those similar things. It's not going to kill your budget, right? It's not going to be expensive because in every city, around the world, no matter how big or small, there's usually free or cheap events you can go to, museums, can just wander and go for a walk, grocery shop, public transportation. And so when you're traveling, don't forget to do that. I think when we Americans travel, they forget the people in the destination they're going to do the same mundane things that they do back at home. And they get into this mode of like, okay, we have to Uber everywhere. We go to every museum, but you don't look to

see, does that museum offer free admission on one day of the week? Instead of going on your first day of the trip, can you go on the third day of the trip when it's free? We don't check in with the local tourism board to see what events are going on. We go right to a large booking website, and we hit book, it's about changing your mindset and going and thinking less about the blowout vacation and more about replicating your life. When you do that in the destination you're going to, you're also going to get a sense of what life is like in your destination that you're visiting. So you get a better sense of the culture anyway. So what I'm hearing is that long-term budget-friendly travel is essentially living your life in a different location. Right. I like to say travel like

you live. The whole thing travel like a local, but travel like you live. And that's going to get you more to the ground anyway and out of the resorts in the five-star hotels to really see what the culture and the people are like. Isn't that the point of travel? Right. Exactly. You can have an expensive stake anywhere in the world or sit in a fancy hotel anywhere. They're cookie cutter. Exactly. So then And let's unpack every element of that. Because when I hear travel like you live, the first thing, the first place my mind goes is, all right, that means I'm going to get an Airbnb for a month or two. Is that sort of what you're suggesting? Is it actually settling down in one place for a prolonged period of time such that you could make friends there? That really depends on how much time you have.

If you get two months, do it. But generally, if you're kind of on the move, you want to see a lot of destination. It's more about the day-to-day experience rather than the accommodation. It's like going out and taking public transportation. It's going to the grocery store or the market to get food rather than eating at a sit-down restaurant, every meal. It's about finding the free or cheap activities. It's about wandering around, you know, getting lost in a bookstore for like three hours, right? Sitting outside and watching a musician play. And me having lived in places, around the world. The day-to-day rhythm of life is pretty much the same everywhere. It's just sort of like the how we do things is different. Why we do things is the same. But how everything gets done

makes the world interesting because the day-to-day rhythm in Hong Kong is a little bit different than New York, a little bit different than Paris, a little bit different than Austin, Texas, versus rural Canada. When it comes to accommodation, I like to use a mix of things, for example. points, Airbnbs, hostels, whether that's a dorm room or a private room, budget hotels, guest houses. So you kind of mix it up based on where you're going and how long you're staying. If I'm staying in a place for a week, I'm more likely to get a Airbnb because then I can cook myself breakfast. On the night that I'm tired, I can just like make something quick. If I'm in a place for like two days and I know I'm not going to grocery shop,

I might get a hostel or a hotel that's serving breakfast. And there are some hotels that have mini kitchenettes. So it really depends on what I'm doing and how I'm traveling, what my goal is. And so I encourage people to think about your accommodation type based on not only the length of time, but also like, what are you looking for? If you're in, say, Iceland, you probably want a kitchen because dining out is really expensive. McDonald's is $20. But if you're in Thailand where eating amazing food is like $3, is grocery shopping really going to be one of a more economical thing to do?

Is it going to save you time? And you're not going to probably make as good as food as that street stall pat-tai anyway. Yeah. Some of the most memorable meals I've had have been $1.50 street cart food in downtown. Island. Same. That food is so good. Right. I encourage people like, if you're in Mexico, don't go grocery shopping. Just eat the tacos on the street. They're going to blow your mind every time. And they're going to cost you a 50 cents. Right. You mentioned points, both staying in hotels with points as well as, of course, many people use points for booking travel. That's an area that is

changing very rapidly. And it always has changed rapidly, but it feels as though the changes are happening even faster these days. What are some of the big things that people should know about the points game, so to speak, in 2025? That's a great question because sometimes I feel like the points of miles game, as we call it, changes daily. The banks and the airlines and hotels are always changing point values and redemptions and offers and everything. So I think one of the big things people should know is that if you're going to get a points earning credit card, make sure you can pay off your balance every month because they have the highest interest rates.

27% APR. It's basically like mob bosses would be jealous at getting these rates. So if you can't pay off your card, you're going to, one, pay a ton of interest, but that's going to negate any benefit you get from the points. Right. So definitely only get one if you can pay off your balance. fully. Second, you know, everyone talks about certain credit cards, the Chase Sapphire, the

MX Platinum, the Capital One Venture, oh, those are the best ones. There's no best card. There's only the best card for your travel goals. So, for example, I do not have an MX platinum. Everyone's always shocked. Like, oh, my God, you're a points guy and how can you not have it? It's because the perks that card offers, I don't use. I'm a big Delta lawyer. list. So I have their credit card. So I get lounge access. I have lifetime platinum and Hilton status. So I don't need a card that gets me that. Think about the card you're getting and the perks you're going to use because we're all going to come with fees. Are you going to use the perks more than the fee? Because I'll say like it's $700 a year, but you get $1,000 worth of like free travels. You're really

saving $300. Okay, but that's only if you use every perk. So make sure you're going to use every perk to justify the fee. Also, get the cards that help where you're going and who you fly or stay with. Personally, love Hyatt. Staying a lot of Hyattes. So I don't have, like, an IHG card or a Hilton card because I'm mostly in Hyattes. But you said you have Premier Hilton status.

Because I used to be a Hilton guy. I used to be a Marriott guy. Well, I was a Starward guy. And then they merged years and years ago, and now I just have that legacy status. It takes a lot of Hilton and Marrier points to get a free night. I just don't find that a good value for me, since I'm very rarely in hotels because I do more budget guest houses or stand-a-hostel or Airbnbs or stay with friends. Again, like I said, I'm a Delta guy. So I have the Delta Cards.

you very rarely will find me in a United or American Airlines plane. So I don't really have their cards. But I do a lot of redemptions through United, United partners with Chase. So I have a Chase card because for me, I can use my chase points to either go through United and redeem through the Star Alliance or transfer Chase to Hyatt, who I love anyway. So that card is really valuable to me. Whereas an Amex isn't so valuable because it's like a Delta, British Airways. You're just going to look at the partner airlines.

So I would say that when you're trying to get a card, forget some website telling you this is the best card to get. Make sure it hits your travel goals, not only for the travel partners, but the perks. Now, I'm sure there are going to be some people listening to this who are thinking, I don't know what my travel goals are. They know that they generally would like to travel more. They've been sitting at a desk job for too long. They maybe have kids and they want to show their kids the world. So they want to take their whole family on a trip. And they want travel to be a bigger part of their life.

But they're not even at the stage yet where they would have travel goals or know necessarily what their preferred airline or hotel or even do they prefer hotels versus guest houses. how would a person, a beginner, figure all of that out? If you're just starting out, I would say two things. One, what are you comfortable paying in a yearly fee? Because some of these premium cards are $600 a year. If you're just starting out, those premium cards might not be good for you unless there's a huge bonus. So the one thing I would look at is, are there any crazy sign-up bonuses going on right now?

I'm talking like 100,000 plus points as the welcome offer. Get that card. That should be your first card. Short of that, if there's nothing like special, I would consider something like the Capital One Venture or the Venture X or sort of the Chase Sapphire as like good cards without high fees that have a lot of transfer partners. Sapphire preferred or Sapphire Reserve? Depends on if you want to pay the fee or the perks. the preferred is $95 a year.

The reserve is like $6.50. I generally tell people to just get the lower fee version unless you look at all the perks and you're like, I actually will use all these door dash credits and this and that. Okay, then get the higher one, all things being equal. But if the preferred has some great bonus, go with the hires bonus card. Because that will really jumpstart your points balance the most.

many of the people who are listening are generally frugal and often what that can translate to when it comes to the points arena is turning into a points hoarder. I will say for myself, and I've had conversations with Brian Kelly, the points guy about this, I am absolutely a points hoarder. Do you have any advice for frugal people who know that we should spend our points because it's not cash? We can't invest it and get a compounding return. So, We know that, and yet it becomes difficult to part with what we've earned because of frugality is so ingrained. You know, somebody once told me that the purpose of money was to spend it, and I thought that I was very insightful. And I would say that the purpose of points is to also spend it.

Because airlines change their redemption rules all the time. Recently, as we talk about this in early 2025, Air France raised their redemption rates by 25%. They're always changing their rules. Don't hoard them for years. Okay, yeah, you don't have to spend them as you get them. And a lot of these times, these hotels and airlines will give you some notice, like, oh, starting on X date. So if you book before, you always see a rush of people to spend their points before the new rates click in. Don't hoard them for years.

Points are meant to be spent. If you're saving for a trip in a year, okay. But don't keep them for years. because I guarantee you in a calendar year, some airline and probably multiple airlines are going to devalue their points. Where it took you 25,000 points could be 50,000 tomorrow. So don't hoard them, Paula. Spend them. Okay.

It's cold in New York right now. Use those points to go to the Caribbean tomorrow. Actually, about a week from the day that this episode airs, I'm going to be in Panama. Perfect. Hopefully on points. Yes, actually. Yes, business class points. Exactly, right?

I mean, you've earned all these points. Use them. Fly in style, stay in style, and lower your costs, right? There's nothing better than free. If you're going to be spending, because I know a lot of people who still use an ATM card in a debit card for purchases. One, credit courts come with a lot better consumer protections

than a debit card. So if something goes wrong, it's a lot easier to get your money back. If you're paying off your balance every month, points are just sort of free money because there's no cost to earning them. You are going to spend that money anyway. I don't pay any credit card fees other than that yearly fee for the card. There's no interest fees. There's no late fees.

I have an auto paid up. Just deducts from my bank account. Those points, they're free. I didn't do anything extra to get them. Get rewarded. Go to business class. Right. It's a lot better than middle-seat economy.

Yeah, exactly. I pretty much insist on business class for any flight that's over six hours at this point. Yeah, same. The older you get, the more I just like, my back hurts, you know. And so that's where really points come in because six hours of business class to Europe is thousands of dollars. I'd rather spend thousands of points. Right. You've been traveling for a long time.

When you started traveling, what, about 15 years. ago, traveling in earnest? 19 years ago, actually. 19 years ago. I quit my job to travel the world, and I left in 2006. July 26, 2006 was my departure date. Right. So goodbye to my dad, gave me 100 bucks, and I was like, sweet, more money for my trip.

And off I went, and I spent a year and a half traveling in one stint before I came home. Then I came home, and it was like, ooh, I don't like the office world. I'm going back out. And then I started a website called Nomadic Matt. It's where the moniker comes from. As a way to maybe do some freelance writing, it's a really fun, one more day. That was my 27, 28, something like that. And I didn't want to go back to corporate world.

I had spent three years doing admin in a hospital, and I just wanted to keep traveling just a little longer. So my goal was just enough money for one more day. and by 2010, the blog could fund a full life. I was making like a real salary. And I just like was like, okay, I'll just keep going. And here we are. 19 years later.

Still traveling and being a travel writer. One day I woke up and I was like, oh, do I have a career? Has it been like 10 years? Wait, I think this is a job for me, you know. Which is incredible. and it happened one day at a time. Do you know how many countries you've been to at this point? I stopped keeping track many, many years ago, but somewhere between 100 and 110, I would have to guess. Wow.

I probably don't think more than 110 because in the last few years, I haven't seen a lot of new countries, especially because COVID slowed so much to travel down. But I would say somewhere between there. Fifth Third Bank's commercial payments are fast and efficient, but they're not just fast and efficient. They're also powered by the latest in payments technology built to evolve with your business. Fifth Third Bank has the big bank muscle to handle payments for businesses of any size. But they also have the FinTech Hustle that got them named one of America's most innovative companies by Fortune magazine. That's what being a fifth third better is all about.

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Life has just gotten more expensive, but it's also gotten more crowded. In 2020, sorry, more people traveled in 2019. Travels back. And then some. But what happened during COVID is a lot of businesses went under. A lot of hotels, a lot of hostels, tour agencies, tour companies, SDA travel, which was like the student. Oh, STA travel was huge. They're closed?

Yeah, they shut down during COVID. I mean, they'd been around for like 40 years. That's like learning that Blockbuster video is out of business. I mean, that's just, wow, they were huge. They were huge. They were everywhere in the world. I mean, they had been around since the early 70s. Wow.

Gone. You had, I see travel was famous for student discounts. Right. But you had all these other, like, discount and reward cards that you can get, either as a backpacker or through these hostile networks or even just like travel cards in specific countries. All gone. The airlines mothballed so many planes and pilots that when travel came back, they're kind of flying full planes, and that's actually better for them because they can charge

more per seat. So they're really not incentivized to bring back all these planes. Everything has gotten more expensive and busier. And so a lot of the old ways of saving money are gone through state travel through networks like couch surfing. Couchsurfing was huge. Couchsurfing.org. And it still exists, but now it's behind an entire paywall. So you can't even log into an account without paying money. Wow. That's very different from the old days. Right. And a lot of the other websites that are, who are like couch surfing aren't as big. They do exist. But what has taken their place, funny enough, Facebook groups. There are tons and tons of Facebook groups for travelers looking to meet other travelers or stay with locals.

Find a travel partner is a big one. Then there's like backpacking Europe, backpacking South America. There's ones for just solo female travelers. Girls love travel is like the largest one. And so like there's been a shift back to Facebook, which I find really amusing and funny. Because it's not just older people. You see a lot of young travelers on it. You don't think of like Gen Alpha or Gen Z.

being like Facebook is cool. They do use it for that. I think apart because you can also kind of verify people's identities. COVID has really changed travel in the sense that a lot of old ways of saving money or finding travelers or local deals are gone and all these new ways have come up. And there are kind of fewer options in some places for hostels or hotels or even airlines, you know, I mean, we remember Wow Air, right? And Norwegian were great cheap ways to go to Europe.

They don't exist anymore. Now it's like Norse Air, but they don't have as many deals. Whereas like there's new airline called Zip Air, which is like a low-cost subsidy. Japan Airlines can get you to Asia for like $400. You'll get no food and there's no TV or anything. But if you want to fly to Asia for real cheap, here you go. have an option. And so a lot of capitalism, right? Things get destroyed. Things get rebuilt. But in part, it's just because why has it gotten so expensive is that a lot of travel operators

just have a lot of debt. They're trying to get rid of. And one way to do that faster is to raise prices. But everybody wanted to go travel after COVID, and they were willing to pay anything. Right. The pent-up demand was there. Yeah. Also, the price of jet fuel has gone up quite significantly. You know the stats on that, isn't it like $6 something per gallon now as of early 2025? Yeah. So, I mean, we don't think about that cost. But pre-COVID, it was like $1 something, $2. And now it's under $2 a gallon back then.

Yeah. Now the last time I checked is like five to six airlines are not charities. They're like, oh, it costs more to do this. Pass that on to the consumer. and AI runs so much of booking systems now. You think of dynamic algorithmic prices in airlines, but it's actually in hotels, it's in hostels, it's in events. Why has a concert cost so much money these days?

And so you have all this dynamic pricing happening. The computer says, oh, look at all this demand. Let's raise the price until demand falls, and then we'll lower it. And so that's happening at all levels of travel, too. And since there's so much demand for travel, you're just seeing prices shoot through the roof. Take a hostels, for example, right? You think of those as budget. You want to go stay at a hostel in Barcelona, peak season in July, you might pay $70, which makes no sense.

And at that point, just stay in a hotel. Especially if you're two or three people traveling, just share a hotel room. It's going to be cheaper. Or an Airbnb. That's simply because all these systems are dynamic pricing now. Speaking of dynamic pricing, that throws a wrench into some of the old cliches about travel. Like there's that cliche that travel is flights are always cheaper on a Tuesday. Where did that come from?

It's a myth now. But it actually comes from a true thing. So before computers were widespread and we had algorithms who can just do pricing 24-7, we would be in the boardroom being like, everything out of LA, 25% off next month. And so me, the airline employee, would then walk to the computer and manually change the prices. That usually happened on a Tuesday. And then every other airline would see, oh, Paula Air is now 25% off out of LA. Let's match that.

Or she's doing 25%, we'll do 30%. And so we'd all change the prices. And that typically happened on a Tuesday. And so that's why it was like, book on a Tuesday. Because that's when deals would happen. But now that you can just have the computer constantly change prices, we still might say we're going to run this 25% off, but we don't have to do it on a Tuesday. We can just press a button whenever we want.

Right. And then we can code in parameters, hey, if competitors do X, we will do Y. And the computer just is like, okay. and so that's prices are constantly changing a plane might have up to 20 different price points and so the plane's airfare so the computer is just like trying to get the highest price point as often as possible so it's just changing all the time it does not matter what day you book now obviously the corollary to that is it does matter when you're going to fly because if you fly on a weekend when everyone else is flying, it's going to be more expensive. Very few people like to wake up at 4 a.m.

for a 5 a.m. flight or for a 6 a.m. I guess if it's 5 a.m., you're probably waking up at 3. Right. Hence why those flights are cheaper. If you want to go to Disney World over holidays, you and everybody else. So definitely when you fly matters way more than when you book. So in the era of static and manual pricing, that's where that Tuesday myth came from. But in the era of dynamic algorithmic-based pricing, no longer applies. What's the ideal amount of time in advance to book a ticket? Is it still, you used to hear that's another popular, I don't want to say myth, but a popular saying around travel is you should book at least what a month out, but not more than six months. Is there validity to that? Oh, yes. Definitely. There is a lot of validity to that. There's only so many

seats on the plane. And so, again, the airline's goal is to tell the computer, get as much money as possible per seat. And so usually around three to six months, the airline has a good idea of how that flight is selling. And then they will either raise prices or lower them based on that. And that's good for most international flights. For domestic, U.S. domestic, two months, three months is usually good. If we want to go again to Disney, world, we're not going to decide most people. I'm not going to decide a year in advance. Because what's life like. Maybe you get sick or little Jimmy takes a baseball and now you something's changing. And so two or three months for U.S. domestic international, six

monthish, four to six months. There's no like hard rule. It's a window. Because that's when people really start booking and airlines can really start to see what is the development. for this. Now, we know everybody goes to Europe in the summer, right? So they know demand is going to be great, especially post-COVID. Those planes are pretty much full. It's why you don't see as many good, advanced award redemptions. Nowadays, the best award redemptions are the week before. She's got to roll the dice. They will come, but the airlines want to say, why give away a free seat when you can get someone to pay for it? So they're going to wait to the very last minute before they release a lot of their, especially premium business class seats.

Economy happens more often. So something for, like, Europe, you might want to think six and nine months because it's going to sell out. So you might not see as many deals. Another thing to think about is that the airlines are still outdated when it comes to travel, like, who is a traveler? In their mind, there's two types of travelers. The consumer traveler and, or the leisure travel,

traveler and the business traveler. And a business traveler has to go last minute and they book one ways. Hence why a last minute flight is always expensive. Because I also think if you're booking last minute, you really need it. So you need us more than we need you. So pay up. And a consumer, a leisure traveler who is planning the trip to Hawaii or the family vacation is going to book far in advance. And they're going to book round trip. That flight will be cheaper because they know they're more price sensitive. So oftentimes, if you are just booking one ways, like I book a lot of one ways, because sometimes I'll use cash and sometimes I'll use points, and you're like, wow, it's so expensive. Make it a round-trip flight, and you'll probably see the price drop substantially.

And even if you don't need the other leg, just don't use it. I did that once on a flight from Sydney, Australia to Atlanta, departing from Sydney, It was cheaper to book round trip than it was to book one way. And so even though I wasn't planning on going back to Sydney, I booked a round trip ticket just to use the one-way portion of it. Right. I know so many leisure travelers, like you and I, and even families, because now a lot of people use points.

So, like, people might well book one ways. Or they might have an open end. They're like, oh, we're going to go to Paris, but we don't really know the rest of the trip. So we haven't booked our return flight. yet. We'll book it when we get there because we're going to be gone for weeks or months, probably weeks for most leisure travelers. But in the airlines' mind, leisure travelers don't book one ways. We book round trips. Who needs a one-way ticket from Sydney to Atlanta? Probably a business traveler

because, you know, hub to hub, right? It's an old logic that doesn't apply, but like you said, it will save you money. Right. If you book run trips. Right. And so to your point, thank goodness I thought to check that. A lot of people don't. Right. Sometimes even I'll forget. I'll be like, wait, and I'll remember my own device. Is there validity to the idea that you will pay more if you use a Mac versus a PC or that you should use an incognito browser if you've been looking for a flight for a while?

There is absolutely, positively, no basis for this myth. It's one that gets talked about by bad journalists all the time and gets recycled. I see it on every TikTok in real. Do this. Clear your cookies. It's not true. Here's why it's not true. First, it does make sense because we know everybody's tracking everything online.

So you go to Delta, you don't buy the flight, suddenly you're getting ads on Instagram. Hey, you left this in your cart. We're being tracked. So intuitively, it makes sense that they're tracking that. And they're seeing that if we're hesitant, they might raise or lower the price. You know, oh, this guy buys a lot of flights. So we can charge him more or less. And then you look and you see, okay, I'm going to open a new browser.

And you go to Expedia or you go even to the website. Oh, price is different. See? They're tracking. Well, going back to what I said earlier about a plane having multiple price points, airfare only being so many seats on the plane, the computer's job is to maximum revenue. You are not the only one looking at that plane, right?

New York to Paris. Maybe there's 400-ish seats on that plane, right? how many people do you think are looking at that route at any given moment, especially if the plane's already mostly sold out? Let's say there's 300 seats left. There's more than 300 seats looking at that because don't forget that Expedia and all these other book and sites, they're allocated a chunk of, like, the basics. You buy from Expedia, you're buying the most restrictive fare class. Then you're putting it in a cart while you're browsing. And then all this stuff is really happening at once. And so it's just your coincidence really.

Many, many sites, including Scotty flights, which are called Going, an airfare watchdog, and they've run kayak, and even Google flights have run thousands of simulations trying to prove that this myth is true and no one can ever do it. Correlation is not causation. Just because you see it once doesn't mean it's true.

You just happen to witness in real time other people buying cheaper seats or more expensive seats and the computer changing it. That one, those few hundred seats are being looked at by thousands of people. So essentially, if you were to run this 10,000 times, then in aggregate you would see no correlation. You would see no correlation. Because people have done this, right? Companies dedicated to finding you the cheapest fare are like, let's try to break it and they

cannot do this. And then they'll do it a year later to see if it's changed. Somebody else will do it. I've never seen an airline reporter worth their assault say this exists. Somebody who's, like, deep in the trenches. Right. And they sit there and look at airfare all day. It just does not exist.

Right. But there might be the one or two errant. If you were to repeat something 10,000 times, of course you're going to get the one or two errant anecdotal case studies. And that becomes the subject of a viral take. Yeah, oh, look, I did this. Here's my, you know, they're like pointing and here's my screen share. Okay, like while you were looking for a flight, somebody else was looking for a flight and maybe they bought up the cheaper fare because, again, it's all about different price buckets.

Another thing is that I'm a solo traveler, right? So there might be one seat left at $300. But you're a family and you need four seats. You don't need one seat, you need four seats. And so the next bucket up is 350. So the computer is going to spit back at you 350 each because there's only one seat at 300, not four seats at 300. And so I always also tell people, search for one ticket at a time and then go two tickets

and then three tickets. And when that price switches, go back to the one before and buy two and two. And then just make sure your seats are together because, again, it's different price buckets. We've been talking a lot about strategies for booking predominantly flights, a little bit of hotels as well, and accommodation. One thing I'm curious about, over 19 years of travel in 110 countries, how have you seen the rise of social media influence the world of travel, both for better and for worse? Well, obviously, social media has changed travel in both a good and bad way. The one thing I would say is that when I started traveling,

in planning my trip. I left in 2006. I got the idea in 2005. There's no blogs. There's no social media. There's forums. There might be a website someone created to be like, I did study abroad.

Here's how much it cost me. But predominantly you're buying guidebooks or you're reading articles in National Geographic. A lonely planet. A lonely planet. And so there wasn't a lot of available information. You learned as you went on the I'd see you at a hostel and you'd be like, you gotta go to this restaurant.

It's inexpensive and great, and I'd mark that down. Or you'd say, if you want to go to this museum, it's free on Tuesdays. Or you learned a lot as you went. Nowadays, especially since blogs have started this trend and then social media picks it up even more with video, there is no place in the world you can't find information about. Nothing. No place is obscure. You want to go to the jungles of Brazil. A million blog posts have been written about every place there, different routes, different places to stay. There's people who live there that are making TikToks about it and reels. Everything is out there. And so that,

the one hand, is really good because an informed traveler is just a better traveler. You can make better decisions on where to go and what to see, and you know how much things cost. If there are deals, you can find them. If there's free things to do in a city, there's a million blog posts, free museums, free parks, free events, free tours, whatever you want. So I think that's been really good because you can find a lot of stuff you probably weren't been able to find. And there's the rise of the local blogger.

When I started, everybody was writing about their backpacking global trip. Now you have that, but you also have the New York City food influencer or just writer who just has a very niche blog. Back in the day, you talked about everything. And now since the mid-2010s, people have started to focus more. Right. And so. I've seen people even focus on niches like traveling with pets or road schooling their kids. Yeah, because the riches are in the niches was what happened.

and say maybe 2013, 2015, that kind of area. People who are like, oh, if we get more specific, Google will reward us. Right. But one thing that's really good is now you have local food bloggers who can tell you, like, this restaurant makes the best ravioli in all the city, and you can try this stuff. So that's been really good. One might say that means you're not really allowing for serendipity to happen on the road because you've pre-planned everything.

And I think that's really more up to the traveler. But the downside, I guess, is that a lot of travelers follow what they read on blogs, and a lot of people just go to get that Instagram shot. So on the one hand, it has made random holes in the wall really popular, which is good. The economic benefit of travel should be spread out more than it is. But on the other hand, it helped increase the overtourism because everyone now goes to that one spot in New Zealand to get that view. I was reading recently about just in Arizona. There is this really ancient, like right outside Sedona, like Native American ruin. And everyone who lived there knew about it, right?

But there's no beaten path trail to it. It's not maintained by the park service or anyone. And a bunch of people started making TikToks and reels about it. And so everybody went. And locals were like, please don't go. Please don't talk about this. Keep it a secret because we don't have the infrastructure to support this or make a trail. So people were trampling through the bush, the site, walls collapsed, graffiti was there, trash was left.

And so now locals are trying to petition the Park Service to make a part of the national lands. But even then, you might have two rangers for tens of thousands of acres, right? that's sort of the downside is that yeah there's a lot of information there but a lot of people just go to the hot thing and so it creates a lot of overtourism issues yeah the summit of mount everest has that same problem the it's over tourism people leave trash all over mount everest a lot of people die on that route because they're not prepared they're not real mountaineers i mean i saw a picture of monteveris i saw a video and it was just basically a cue of people because you have to wait for people to come down to go up.

And people are just standing there. It's just like they're waiting in line to get into the movies or show. And it's like, you're on the summon of them on Everest. I am not standing here just hanging out. Yeah. Yeah. And people die and there's trash. And I should raise the price of it. Clearly, I am a proponent of fees.

The downside that restricts people. But if we're going to save these sites for the future, Yeah. Yeah, if they double the cost of going to Everest, like, can I go? Probably not. It's $60,000 to go above base camp already. Yeah, well, maybe they need to make it $120,000 to save the site. Restricting visitor numbers, the world was not meant for so many people to be moving around it at one go. And I think one of the downsides to blogs and social media is that on the one side of the coin, it's made people more comfortable going. which is great. I think we should all leave our home and go travel the world and learn about the people that live in it. It makes us better humans. The other side is that the world

doesn't have the infrastructure to have billions of people every year roaming around it. So there needs to be a better balance between people and destinations. Some of that means just not going to places or going off season or finding new places to avoid the crowds. And some of that just means restrictions on how many visitors can go at any given time? I met someone once. This is a guy who's probably late 40s, has never traveled to a non-English speaking country. And he said he didn't want to because he doesn't want to be the person who just expects everybody to speak English or to gesture and point.

I thought that was a bit short-sighted. I have my own reasons for thinking that. But I'm wondering, A, how you would answer that. and then B, how the emergence of new AI-based technology that can assist with translation, you look at Google Translate or any comparable types of apps that can instantly translate, and this is only rapidly improving with AI, how is all of that changing the linguistic component of travel? Well, I would tell this guy to get over himself.

Since the dawn of man, cultures have been interacting, and it's not like everybody is like, They don't expect you to speak their native language, and it's okay to point. It's like if people come to an English-speaking country from a non-English-speaking country, they don't speak English. They're pointing. They're doing pitch English. They're looking at their apps. They have their phrasebook.

I mean, before there were apps, there were phrase books. You had a little book being like, how do I say this? My first point to Thailand, I had a little phrase book, you know, so I can learn the language. He can also learn the language. learn a couple of basic phrases. Hi, how are you? Where's the bathroom? Check please.

Sign language is great. Once I was in Ukraine, the hostel ordered me a taxi because I had to be at the train station like five in the morning. And they were like, it's not safe to walk. Just we'll get you a train taxi. So they called it and I went there and we sat there for a minute. And I was like, oh, I guess the hustle didn't tell him where I was going. So I was like, oh, train station.

And it's like, huh? Then I did the whole like annoying train station. And I was, he was just like, yeah, because like, that works. It wasn't the words. It was the speed of the words. So I just went, chew, chew. And he was like, oh, okay. You know, da.

And I got to the train station. I once had a friend clock chicken for chicken. And it's like charades goes a long way. And it's more fun. People want to help you if you're lost. And like, but you got to give him an opportunity. So this guy, he's missing out on so many things. And it's not like,

nobody in the world doesn't speak English, right? Right. The second you open your mouth, they're like, all right, we'll just switch to English. Because, like, they understand, like, this is a language of commerce in capitalism. Back in the day, it was French. In, like, the 17, 1800s, French was the global language of communication. Everyone spoke English and French. Heck, the original kings of England didn't even speak English.

They spoke French. That was the third language because they came from France. It wasn't until the late 1300s that they started actually using English as the de facto Anglo-Franqua. Anyways, history tangent. And so you can skip by. And these apps definitely make it easier. Google Translate, I use Google Translate for signs and menus.

And I know a lot of people who, when they meet somebody, they pass phones back and forth. They'll type in. Yeah, I've done that many times. Yeah. And they'll be like, oh, okay. You know, it'll communicate that way. Yeah, yeah. So you type for people who are wondering what we're talking about.

type something on your phone and it automatically gets translated. You type it into a translate app. And so then I just hand my phone to, obviously you have to trust that the person's not going to run off with your phone. I just hand my phone to someone. And it's whatever I've typed is instantly translated for them. So boom. Yeah. You're just basically having a text-based conversation. Yeah. And it's fun because sometimes you don't, they might not know the word in English. Chairs are they speak better English than you speak their native language, but they still might miss some words. And also, like, it creates for like some funny moments, you know, especially if you're at a bar and you're like passing this back and forth while drinking. And so, again, I'd go back to this guy and just be like, get over yourself.

Get on a plane. Go to France. Go to Japan. Like, do you think people in Thailand expecting me to speak Thai? No. I mean, one, I obviously don't look Thai. But the fact that when I even said hello in Thai, they were like, ah. You've made such an effort.

There's just like... Saadika. Saudi Ka. They appreciate that. So this guy's missing on a lot of like really good travel experiences by not attempting to go somewhere. Imagine if no one came to the U.S. because they didn't speak English. That's how would that be.

Right. We live in New York where we get visitors from all over the world. It's wonderful. I mean, I hear every language and, you know, I was at the gym and I was hearing Swedish. And I was like, yeah. I was walking down the street the other day, and I randomly just passed by someone who was speaking Nepali. We didn't even interact. We were walking past each other, like ships passing in the night.

But I was like, whoa, I've never, other than Kathmandu, never lived in a city where you can just be walking around and randomly hear that. Yeah. I meet visitors from all parts of the world. You see the last tourist, and they're like, you know any help? And you can tell, like, they're from somewhere else. Yeah. Go that way. I'm like, thank you.

Yeah, exactly. And so I guess what we're sharing is both of us being New Yorkers, one of the things that we find special about New York is that this is a place where people are from around the world come here. So as Americans, when we go to other parts of the world, that's what we're also doing. Yeah. And people, as I said, will like to help you. I have been lost in many parts of the world.

world and somebody will scratch their head and they'll pull out their phone and they'll point at something and I'll take a photo because it might be like Google Maps or something and I'll be like, okay, I know where it is in the city or I might have back in the day, you know, I had my guidebook with a physical map and they would like circle and then I could plot my way. So it creates a lot of like micro moments with people and it makes you realize people are just generally helping. By him taking the easy way, he's missing out on learning that, like, it doesn't matter what language you speak. People are good people everywhere. Right.

Yeah, back in the day, I remember ripping pages out of guidebooks to make them lighter weight. So they would occupy less weight in my backpack as I was traveling. So things have gotten a lot easier now, now that everything's digitized. So in the 110 countries, roughly 110 countries that you've been to, are there any that have supported? surprised you. So many. I love Cambodia. I went there with no expectations. There's a lot of great historical sites there. Obviously, Anchor Wat is one of them. But the people were just really nice, really upbeat for people that had such a tragic history, recent tragic history. Taiwan, incredible place. Great food, very inexpensive, tropical beaches, great hiking, lots of tea. Really blew my mind.

I recently was in Peru and that blew my mind, but everyone told me it would be great. So I don't know if it was a surprise that it was great because I expected it to be great. I really loved Ukraine, which a lot of people can't really go to right now. Romania, Bulgaria. All of those countries really were like just a lot cooler and nicer than I had expected. Food was great. Sri Lanka, incredible place. Yeah.

I really didn't know what to expect. Right. The trains there? Amazing. Yeah. And just every, like, coming from the West, I'm a white guy. When I go to a lot of, for lack of a better term, developing countries, you got a dollar sign. And especially, like, in Asia where, like, they're like, oh, come here, here's a took-tock ride or come to my suit shop. My defenses are really up for, like, people just trying to, like, scam me. Yeah. In Sri Lanka, people would come up to me and like, I don't want that.

And it occurred to me after like first few times, no, they actually just want to chat. What I loved about Sri Lanka was they accept to know as an answer. And I ended up having these beautiful conversations with people. And that was a good teaching moment, too. It was like, oh, well, sometimes people are just being friendly. Because I think as a traveler, especially as a Western traveler, you are often viewed as a pocketbook. So you develop this really thick skin. And this jaded perception that the only reason people are approaching you might be because they're trying to either scam you or get money from you or they won't take no for an answer.

So it was a good way to step back and be like, okay, I'm actually become slightly too jaded. Let's reset and not assume the worst. Yeah. Myanmar was very much like that as well. Myanmar I found to be a place where people just wanted to know me. Locals wanted to know me for me. Yeah. You know, and I could develop very authentic relationships.

I think that's why I like Cambodia. And this was the first time I went to Cambodia. So that was like 2007. And in Cambodia, people were just like, hey, what's up, buddy? But I've been back to Cambodia multiple times, and it's still a pretty great place. Yeah. Yeah, I loved Cambodia as well. Ankorwa and then back to Myanmar in the temples of Bagan.

And then kind of Yogyakarta, I'd say those three areas, I'll remind me of each other. Yeah, similar architecture. Yeah. But yeah, credible sites. Yeah, exactly. I want to wrap by coming back to our original theme, which is traveling on $75 a day, about $27,000 a year. And that means that if you let the lease on your apartment run out, you put all your stuff in storage, your actual cost of living could be $27,000 a year if you're traveling on $75 a day and you no longer have, you, no longer have the expense of rent or mortgage back in the United States, to that end, is global travel a kind of a good way to save up some money, like to cash up? Yeah, I always tell people, traveling isn't that expensive as you think, especially if you're doing it long term, because you don't really have as much overhead. Travel insurance is cheaper than health insurance. You don't have car payments or gas or home insurance or utility bills. All that goes out the window.

You get a local SIM card wherever you go. So that's like $20 for whatever amount you're paying here in the States. I mean, I pay like $100 a month, I feel like. For cellular and Internet? Yeah. Oh, and then, you know, home Internet. Right. That's gone too.

So traveling around the world, whether you're doing on $75 a day or $55 a day or $100 a day, is on average cheaper. I wrote this book, How to Travel the World on $75 a day. to, you know, talks about a lot of what we've talked about today. One of the things I tell people is that a lot of people always say to me, Matt, that's so much money. They either say it's actually too cheap because they're like, I don't want to like rough it in these bed buggerning hostels or like the hardcore travels are like, I can do it cheaper. Yeah. There's always someone like that.

But what I say in this book is that you might not think you're spending $75 a day. I don't spend that much money, but you are. Because when we often think about how much money we spend on a daily basis, we think about how often we put the credit card down or went to the ATM, which is something people really do nowadays is because we all put it on plastic. But your rent has a daily fee. If you break that down, that's a cost per day. Your internet is a cost per day.

Your food is a cost per day. Your heating is a cost per day. So your life, your car payment is a cost per day. Your clothing is a cost per day. Your clothing is cost per day. Yeah. All that adds up to probably a lot more than $75 a day. Mm-hmm.

And so when you think about your cost of living, even if you don't live in expensive New York, you can live in rural Tennessee. You're probably spending more than $30,000 a year when you add it all up. Right. So long-term travel is a good way to save money and do a lot of cool stuff at the same time. And I think that regardless of your income level, you can, afford anything. Yeah, exactly. Because it might take you using the methods I talk about in the book to save money, six months to save money or six years. But as long as you're sort of have your eyes on

the prize, you can do it. It took me a year and a half to save for my trip. And that is after working for three years and having a savings. So I took my savings and then I got an hourly job where I could work overtime and to get to the number I needed to get to, which at the time was $50 a day and inflation, an hour at 75, that's now how I got to this was like I had saved up and then that's how I got to that number. It took me another year and a half of working overtime to top it up. If I didn't work so much overtime, maybe take me two years. The point is, I knew this is what I wanted to do and I was just going to work to get to that goal. And so when you have your eyes on the prize. I tell people, travel is so much about mindset than it is about money. Because one, you

can always work overseas. And if you can't save a lot, well, just don't go for a long time or go to a more inexpensive, affordable place. I have interviewed travelers who worked at McDonald's, who saved enough money to just get that initial flight to anywhere and then they found like a job overseas or something. It's just like, what can you do today that gets you to the next step? Wake up today and be like, yes, I'm going on this trip. How can I save $1? And you make it a game. And then you're like, oh, this week I saved a dollar a day. Next week, can I save $1.50? What can I cut out of my budget? What is like really a needed expense? One thing I do like about my crazy T-Mobile bill is that it comes with free Netflix and Apple TV. So, like,

like that's 30 bucks a month. Saved just from that. I'm going to pay for my phone anyway, right? And so another thing I love doing is I don't pay for all the streaming services at once. I pay, I binge, I cancel. I pay, I binge, I cancel. Yep, I do the same. Yeah.

Because oftentimes I'll be like clicking through them all. I'm like, nothing's on. I've seen it all. Yeah, exactly. I subscribe to exactly one at a time. Yeah. And often zero at a time. Yeah.

the YouTube premium is the one that I will never give up. If I'm going to add any additional thing to that, it'll be one at a time. It's got to be like, you have to watch this show. I was thinking about recently canceling my Amazon Prime, because I'm like, I don't really like a lot of their shows, and I have issues with Amazon. But now I realize because I was a Prime member, they own Whole Foods, and I get discounts off my food,

it's actually saving me a ton of money per year. It's like 150, but those. added dollar off every avocado I get. I eat a lot of avocados. It's like half my membership right there in a year. So yes, long-term travel is actually, contrary to being expensive, it's actually cheaper to go live like a local in a lot of other places around the world than it is to live your life in the United States. So particularly if you're a remote worker and you want to accelerate your savings rate, going and living abroad or just traveling full-time while being a remote worker for a U.S. company could be a great way to keep your cost of living

to $30,000 a year and then just shovel the rest into savings. There's always a joke is that I would love to live in Europe on a U.S. salary because we make more than they do, but their cost of living is cheaper. So, like, you get all the perks of Europe with a U.S. salary. Well, and then accelerate that to Southeast Asia. Oh, yeah. Or South America or Mexico or, you know, Sri Lanka or Taiwan. I mean, there's so many places.

If you're going to backpack or long-term travel only in Western Europe, you're going to spend a lot more than $75 a day. But, you know, this is how to travel the world. You go to Europe for a bit. You remote work in Southeast Asia. You remote work somewhere else. like it all kind of balances out. And one thing I really want to emphasize, especially because it's easy to get stuck on the number, is that, or talking about long-term travel, is that stuff I talk about in the book

and we've talked about here about how to find a cheap flight, if you're going around the world, you're going away for two months, you're going away for two weeks. We're all getting on the same plane. So the strategies and tactics for finding a cheap flight, finding free tours, finding inexpensive accommodations is the same. for any traveler. So if you're listening to this, you can travel cheap, even if you're going to year for two weeks.

It's just the longer you go away, the more you can amortize the cost of travel. That's where the real perk of going away is. And I think that was crazy thought for people pre-COVID. It's like, well, I just can't take four months off work. But now that so much of life is remote, and you have all these digital nomads and remote work visas, It's a lot more people, and this goes to one of your questions about how has travel changed post-COVID,

is a lot more people are traveling because they're not chained to an office desk anymore. So they can get that new remote work visa that Japan's offering and live three months in Tokyo. They can get that one for Greece and spend six months living in Athens while still maintaining an income. So it's a lot easier to travel longer. term now post-COVID, thanks to that shift in work. Right. Back in, what, 2012, 2013, the phrase for it used to be location independent, right? And people don't even say that anymore because now it's just so common. Yeah, I mean, when I was starting my blog in 2008, Tim Ferriss and the four-hour work week was huge.

His whole, like, you got to be location independent. I mean, he started the whole phenomenon in so many In 2010, everyone was like a weirdo who did. And all these location independent people and bloggers and we were crazy, like starting our online business that's like, get a job. Yeah, yeah. You mean you don't work anywhere. You work from a coffee shop? How do you get anything done?

And now everyone's like, yeah, screw the office. Oh, you work for you know, everybody knows what that means. No one's weird for doing it. Right. It's so different. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Whereas in 2010, everyone thought that it was a euphemism for unemployment. Yeah. Oh, no, I work for my computer. Oh, so you're a coder? No, no. I run an online business with, you know, it was like so many question marks. Because computer work meant tech, coding. No, no, I have a blog. People thought I was just unemployed. Deadbeat. Now it's like, oh, I want to be an influencer, you know. That's like, Vita is a real career. We were just ahead of our time. We were. Yeah, it was different back in 2006. We were trendsetters.

Matt, thank you for coming on the show. Where can people find you if they'd like to hear more of you? Well, thank you for having me. I always love talking money and travel. Two of my favorite things. People can find me online at nomadic mat.com, N-O-M-A-D-I-C-M-A-T. Nomadic mat on any social channel,

type in Instagram.com backslash nomadic mat. There I will be. And then the book, How to Travel the World in $75 a Day, wherever books are sold. It's available in the U.S., Canada. And if you want to pay the Amazon fees, anywhere you want to ship it to. Thank you, Nomadic Matt. What are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Key takeaway number one, long-term travel can be cheaper than your current lifestyle.

Most people don't realize that traveling the world can actually cost less than your normal daily expenses in the U.S. And that happens when you factor in all of your current costs like rent, utilities, car payments, all the expenses that you have right now. If you were to travel long term, as both Matt and I have done, if you were to do that, then you would wait until the end of your lease. Or if you own a home, you would rent out your current home or sell it. you'd put all your stuff in storage. And so when people hear about long-term travel and they're like, how can you afford that? My question back to them is how can you afford to live in the United States, right? Matt suggests that you can comfortably travel the world on an average of about $75 per day,

which is around $27,000 per year. And that is a lot less than many people's current cost of living. When we often think about how much money we spend on a daily basis, we think about how often we put the credit card down or went to the ATM, which is something people really do nowadays because we all put it on plastic. But your rent has a daily fee. If you break that down, that's a cost per day. Your internet is a cost per day. Your food is a cost per day. Your heating is a cost per day.

So your life, your car payment is a cost per day. All that adds up to probably a lot. lot more than $75 a day. Long-term travel is a good way to save money and do a lot of cool stuff at the same time. And so that is the first key takeaway. Key takeaway number two. The points game, so to speak, requires a strategic approach that is tailored to the way that you spend and to the way that you want to travel.

Don't say what's the quote unquote best credit card. There is no universal best. Rather than chasing the most popular credit cards, Matt suggests focusing on cards that align with your specific travel goals and your specific patterns. So what airlines do you frequently use? Is there a particular route that you fly a lot? Where do you tend to stay? What types of perks will you actually take advantage of? And what are your spending patterns? Because different cards reward spending in different types of categories. Everyone talks about certain credit cards to chase that file. the MX Platinum, the Capital One Venture, oh, those are the best ones.

There's no best card. There is only the best card for your travel goals. Think about the card you're getting and the perks you're going to use, because they're all going to come with fees. Are you going to use the perks more than the fee? So make sure you're going to use every perk to justify the fee. Also, get the cards that help where you're going and who you fly or stay with. Finally, key takeaway number three, post-pandemic travel has fundamentally changed because remote work, which was relatively rare among knowledge workers pre-pandemic, is now relatively common.

And remote workers used to be called quote-unquote location independent back in the day. Remote workers can travel longer term. So the pandemic really transformed how we approach travel and who can travel, you know, with more people now able to work remotely, while living abroad. And that gives you the opportunity to geo-arbitrage. So if you really want to cash up, make a U.S. salary while living in a place where the dollar goes a lot further and then, boom, you can accelerate your savings. This type of shift has made long-term travel and living in different countries much,

much more accessible. This goes to one of your questions about how has travel changed post-COVID. A lot more people are traveling because they're not chained to an office desk anymore. So they can get that new remote work visa that Japan's offering and live three months in Tokyo. They can get that one for Greece and spend six months living in Athens while still maintaining an income. It's a lot easier to travel longer term now post-COVID, thanks to that shift in work. Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with Nomadic Matt. Thank you so much for tuning in.

This is the Afford Anything podcast. I'm Paula Pamp. and I'll meet you in the next episode.