Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - 10 Pro-Tips to Save Money and Fulfill Your Travel Dreams (Plus bonus tips)

Episode Date: February 7, 2019

Anna Mazurek recently published the book Good with Money, in which she shares how she “maximizes her savings to travel the world with no debt, all on an average income of $30,000.”   Not only do we talk about actions we can take to make better financial decisions, Anna also shares the best credit card for travelers; her favorite bank, which refunds any ATM fee you incur on your travels; the vagabond’s guide to hacking the U.S. Healthcare system, and more. (find links at postcardacademy.co)   Anna is also a professional photographer who’s been globetrotting for all sorts of magazines, including Travel + Leisure and Rolling Stone and she runs photo trips for National Geographic’s Student Expeditions.    Special shout out to listener Mickiezada, who left the following iTunes review recently:    “Sarah has an inviting and calming voice as she discusses facts and personal considerations and interviews people from around the world. I’m a new listener, and a podcaster myself. I have subscribed to this one! Love, love, love the interviews and information. “ Mickiezada, you little peach!    Here’s how to leave a review on iTunes, if you’re in a generous spirit :)   I’m your host, Sarah Mikutel. Ready to travel? Sign up for my newsletter and get your free guide to cheap airfare.    Thank you so much for listening to this show. I know you’re busy and have many listening options, so it means a lot to me that you’re here. You are the best (I made you a Spotify playlist) https://open.spotify.com/user/r5nnb86agxqox07vhx8bcz4gy/playlist/67KtZnALpBwUZmB0Gi6o6l?si=OAxgDI8iS4mNMIIbhJlWFg   This podcast is brought to you by Audible. Not a member yet? Postcard Academy listeners can get a FREE audiobook and a 30-day free trial if you sign up via audibletrial.com/postcard   This podcast is also brought to you by World Nomads. Need simple and flexible travel insurance? Get a cost estimate from World Nomads using their handy calculator at postcardacademy.co/insuranceDo you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

Welcome to the Postcard Academy. I'm your host, Sarah Mike Catell, and I would love to start off today's episode by recognizing my latest iTunes reviewer, Mickey Zada, who said, Sarah has an inviting and calming voice as she discusses facts and personal considerations and interviews people from around the world. I'm a new listener and a podcaster myself. I have subscribed to this one. Love, love, love the interviews and information. Mickey Zada, please let me know the name of your podcast. I would love to check it out. And thank you so much for taking the time to write a review. You have really warmed my heart, which I especially appreciate because the drafty English flat I just moved into in Fokston is absolutely freezing. But it is right on the ocean. I'm renting a room from a random Sri Lankan family I met online, and this is saving us both money, which is the theme of today's episode.

My guest today is Anna Mizzuric, a professional photographer who shoots for all sorts of magazines like Travel and Leisure and Rolling Stone, and she runs photo trips for National Geographic Student Expeditions. And she's also recently published the book Good With Money, in which she shares how she maximizes her savings to travel the world with no debt, all on an average income of $30,000 a year. Not only do we talk about actions we can take to make better financial decisions, Anna also shares the best credit cards for travelers, her favorite bank, which refunds any ATM

fees you incur on your travels, the Vagabonds Guide to Hacking the U.S. healthcare system, and more. I hope you enjoy the show. Welcome, Anna. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. Hello, thank you for having me, Sarah. So you have been to more than 50 countries, I believe, and you have lived in, I think, five. Where did you grow up?

Yes, I have been told of the first. I have been to all of those places. I actually grew up on a farm in South Carolina, of all places, and spent all of my life wanting to travel. What was your first trip abroad without your parents? I don't think this counts, but technically I did a cruise to the Bahamas with my cousins when I graduated from high school when I was 18. But my first proper trip abroad was actually to study abroad in England, where you are now, in college, it was my junior year of college, and I studied abroad. I went by myself because nobody wanted to join me. And it was one of the most, it was one of the scariest things that I've ever done, but it was also the most amazing. And it sort of put me on the

path that I'm currently on. And one of the craziest things about the whole process of studying abroad was that I was applying in 2000. It was right before September 11th, I was going through the process of applying. And September 11th happened during the process. And the idea of not, and I wasn't sure if I was going to do it or not, I was kind of scared because nobody wanted to go with me. And then the thought of like just not being able to go, that the idea of that just scared me more than the thought of going. And that's when I knew I had to do it. So the following spring, I actually studied abroad. So it was kind of an interesting way to kind of, that sort of framed my mindset on travel and everything. He's like, well, I'm not going to not go. So I have to go.

And the first day was rough, but it was literally one of the best travel experiences in my life. Were you in London? No, it's actually in the north, this town called Middlesbrough. And anyone who's lived in England is like, why would they send an exchange student to Middlesborough? It's an industrial town. It's in Yorkshire. It's between York and Newcastle. But I met a lot of amazing people. My housemates were from all different parts of England. And I have some amazing friends that I'm still friends with today. And I'm actually going to see one of them actually in Sydney and Australia in a few days. And I was actually just back to visit friends in actually July of last year. So it's a big part of my life. Yeah, I have to say, most, I did study. I did study.

abroad in England to my junior year as well. But I think a typical American experience is you go over with students from your university and then you kind of just stick with the Americans. And I think American students would want the experience of meeting other people from around the world, but just the way the system is set up, they're kind of don't have as much of that introduction. So I think what you did was great. So you didn't go with your whole, like people from your university. you went on your own, is that it? It was through the university. There was one other girl that went.

I didn't know her beforehand, and I would see her on occasion, but most of the time I was hanging out with my housemates, the people that I lived with, and then I would hang out with some of the other international students, but mostly locals because my housemates were amazing, and I met an amazing friend group my first night in town, and it was probably one of the best experiences that I could have had. I mean, travel is not always that good,

but it was a good sort of introduction there and such a great group of friends. But I think that going to an untraditional sort of not to a university where there's a huge group, but going kind of, it was just one other person. And I think there was maybe three Americans in the whole university at the time. So that also made it easier to sort of branch out and meet the locals and kind of just come up, you know, and understand the culture. And I traveled a lot. I went all over England. It was wonderful.

So I got a really good idea of what it was like to live there. And I really miss it. Yeah. Not this time of year. But I love that. Yeah. And I'm sure you, people were more. interested in you there because they don't get as many Americans as in a place like London.

That's true. I suppose I was a bit of a novelty. And so where are you now? I'm currently in Singapore. I'm actually at staying in a friend's apartment for a couple days. I'm in the middle of a sort of five-month Asia trip and I actually head to Australia on, actually tomorrow night to Sydney. I lived in Australia for a year and it's been actually 10 years since I live there. And so I'm going back to see a bunch of friends. And I've actually never been to Tasmania, so I'm adding Tasmania to my list. You're traveling for five months throughout Asia. How do you, I guess, usually live your life?

Is this a usual thing for you to travel for a few months at a time? And how do you pick where you want to go? Okay. So normally I prefer long-term travel. That's something I've always been interested in. I started sort of my big long-term travel started in 2008. I was working full-time as a photographer, freelancing, and life was great. I'd been out of graduate school about a year and a half.

I have my master's in photojournalism from the University of Missouri, so I've always been into photography and journalism and writing. And basically what happened is the economy tanked, and all of my work was disappearing. And I had wanted to move abroad. In Australia, he had just announced their working holiday visa for Americans. And when my lease ended at my apartment, I was like, okay, I'm going to do this. And I basically quit what work I had left after the economy crash. I moved to Sydney. I didn't know anyone. And it was one of the best decisions that I've also made,

kind of going back to that England experience is another sort of pivotal moment in my life. Because in a lot of ways, the recession sort of defined who I was and made travel a big part of my life. And I really haven't sat still since then because once I got back from studying abroad, I was still in school and I couldn't travel the way that I wanted to. But in a lot of ways, the recession was a good teacher. It taught me a lot and sort of made me the traveler that I am today. but I moved to Sydney for a year, and then I got a job actually running photo trips in Southeast Asia for high school students. And I did that for five years. And so I would be in Asia for that for a few. I'd work for about two months.

And the job is great because I could stay as long as I wanted and they would pay for the return flight. So I'd be in Asia four to six months a year. And that sort of started the long-term travel. But then the longest trip I've been on was 13 months with Australia and Asia that first time. And then I did a seven-month South America, Latin America, in 2014, 2015. And then I prefer, and then I was, I've been on the road most of 2018. I was on the road most of the year.

I freelance full time. So I was back and forth in the U.S. for different projects. There are certain things I can do remotely. And there's certain things, obviously, with photography that I can't do remotely. So I was in South America for the first four months of last year. And then I was in the U.S. for stuff. I was in Europe for the month of July. And then I've been in Asia since the middle of October.

I do prefer long-term trips. They like to travel slower because you get to really get a fuel. for a place. You could actually relax and sort of feel like you're part of it and really get a deeper understanding of the culture. And it helps you make friends and things like that. And it's so cheap in Asia to kind of pop around that it makes it really easy as well. But I've always been a big fan of long-term travel. And to answer the second part of your question about how I decide where to go, I don't like winter. I think that winter is a choice and I choose to not be in winter. So I came where it was warm. And so that's usually my travels are revolved around escaping winter.

because when I moved to Australia, I left winter, and I left Australia when it got cold there, I went to Asia. So I've always sort of avoided cold weather because I'm just not a fan. But that's basically what this trip is about is avoiding winter. And I don't really have, it's usually a slower time of year for me work-wise and things start to pick up in the spring, which is fine. It kind of works out well.

But that's essentially why I'm here. And then the weather was kind of dreary in Vietnam, where I just came from and it was rainy. And so I was like, well, what's good this time of year? Because the monsoon's kind of hitting Bali where I wanted to go. I was like, well, I'll go to see my friends in Australia. It'll still be warm. So you've said in your book, Good With Money, that your entire life is based on freedom.

And so I guess that was a good explanation of what you meant by that. You want to have a job that lets you go where you want to, when you want to. Could you speak a little bit more about that? Yeah. So I freelance full time at different points in my life. I'm currently freelancing full time now. And I've kind of gone back and forth. It's always a work in progress.

It still is. When I was younger, I would definitely, you know, I'd do as much photo work as I can. I've worked every random job that you can. I've waited tables. I've worked at the mall. Essentially anything that you can do I have done. And, you know, there were certain part-time jobs that I had that would give me health insurance in the U.S., which is a huge issue for Americans that I would do in between.

So I did a lot of that. But what I would do is I would save a lot of money and I would go travel. And aside from the job where I was actually running photo trips, I would not be working. I would just be traveling, but I had this bad habit of traveling and spending all my money and going home broke. Or then I got smarter and I would go home with enough money to, you know, cover my expenses to kind of get me going.

You know, I'd go home with a little savings. And then, you know, I wanted to end that cycle. So what I did was I saved a ridiculous amount of money so that I knew I could live for two years on that if photo work didn't go well. Purposely to give myself the ability to focus on work and not be stressing out about money and give myself time to find other projects and things like that. So I wasn't having to rush to some random job just to get by. So that is sort of given me a lot of freedom as well. Last year wasn't a good year for me financially. I wrote this in a blog post that I think I

made like $15,000 just because a lot of projects fell through due to things that I couldn't control. It was in a, I just did an end of the year blog post where I talked about that. But things are good for this year. I've got a lot of projects going on. So it's just a, with freelance, it is up and down and up and down. I try to find as much stability as I can with having consistent clients with certain things, which is getting better and becoming more consistent this year as well. So that's been good. But that's essentially how I manage the freelancing. But now I'm just at a point where I've got a good amount of savings. So I have that if I need that. But then I'm still making with the products that I've lined up for the year, I'm making enough money to live on

and still save. Well, that's fantastic. And so, yeah, a lot of people think would look at your lifestyle and think, wow, she's in Singapore. She's in Australia. She must have so much money. But you make it work on $15,000 to $30,000 a year and are still saving money. So in your book, you talk about the difference between being cheap and being frugal. So what is the difference? So when it comes to cheap and frugal, frugal, it comes down to sort of value. That's one of the big things to kind of keep in mind in those situations. Because if $10 is going to make your life a lot easier, then And you definitely can do that. So essentially, an analogy that I like to use is that, you know, frugal people are more

focused on value and cheap people just make decisions completely based on price alone for everything. So you kind of comes down to value. Like I always say that cheap people buy the type of toilet paper that feels like sandpaper, but frugal people buy nice toilet paper on sale. No, so it's like stuff like that. So it really comes down to that. So, you know, and you just have to make a conscious choice to spend money on things that you love, but you have to cut your spending on things that you value less.

That's where frugality really comes in. It's not about being cheap and doing bottom the line for everything, because that's something that I've learned the older I've gotten, especially the more I travel to there's certain things I need to invest on. Like I always invest in good quality camera gear and electronics. I'm not going to cut costs there. I also travel with a lot of camera gear, which is a huge issue now with all these budget airlines and flying,

it costs me more to check bags. And honestly, a lot of the budget airlines aren't worth it for me, especially in Asia. There's certain ones that are that I'll just pay the money for the just for the ease of mind I know my equipment's going to be safe. I know they're not going to make me check it last minute.

I'm not going to have a hassle. So for me, in that sort of situation, it's worth it for me because I know my equipment's safe and that type of thing. I also invest in good quality, like hiking gear and things like that that I didn't do when I was younger and I definitely learned that lesson the hard way.

So it kind of comes to that. It's all about sort of value and putting investing money and the things that are important while I cut my spending on things that I value less to make up for that. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes total sense.

Who inspires? your frugality? A lot of it came from my dad. So my dad's very, very frugal. He, the story of my family is very interesting. So my grandparents and my dad, they immigrated to the U.S., and my dad was eight years old. My grandparents were Polish. They were taken to Germany by the Nazis. They were Polish Catholics, and they spent four years in concentration camps. And then they were living in East Berlin after the war, and they snuck out from the east. And then they came to the U.S. And so my dad grew up very poor, but he sort of kept that frugality mindset. Now he actually makes 18th century furniture for a living, which sort of inspired my,

I'm like, well, if my dad can make furniture for a living, then I can be a photographer. It's where a lot of my inspiration came from. But he is so, he's just so good with money. And he is so positive. And he invests money in the things that matter when it comes to work. But he has two pairs of shoes. He's not frivolous in any way. So it's very, very interesting.

It's kind of going up from that mindset. So a lot of it came from him. And then also it got to a point. where I was getting older, I was like, well, you know, how am I going to pay for my traveling? This is something that I want to do. And it just, that became my top priority. I'm like, what can I rearrange in my life to make it so that I can travel and still afford and still save money? Americans, I think, often think of the pursuit of happiness as like the pursuit of money. And then that money is the end goal that will make us happy. But I think that's definitely not the case.

I think I read in your book that your dad is quite a happy person. even though his life doesn't revolve around, you know, exactly. He's very minimalistic. He cannot stand being wasteful and he avoids debt. He even saves, like, scraps from some of the furniture products that he makes to make, like, small side tables and other things. And when he does this, he's, like, cutting down on his costs and he's, like, not wasting

anything. But I think a lot of his happiness comes from the fact that his priorities are directly associated with growing up poor. And his observation, basically, his philosophy on life is sort of shape everything that I've done. He only buys what he needs, nothing frivolous. Everything he spends money on is aligned with his goals. And I think a lot of that comes into that as well. It's just making sure your money is being spent in the things that you care about, your priorities. I mean, a lot of my financial philosophy comes around my priorities, which are traveling and saving money. And so I adjust my life

and every other aspect to focus on that. So that's one of the things that I've always sort of done. But a lot of it, and I think that when you come from a background like my dad did, it's one of those things where you don't you don't kind of there's a lot of materialism in America but when you come from that mindset you're able to like I know he takes advantage of all the good things about America but he doesn't really fall victim to the vices like some of us might tend to do be more successful too yeah he knows what's important so you mentioned travel is one of your top priorities and I think you said eating good food as well in your book I do like to eat I'm not a huge foodie I'm not going to drop several hundred dollars in a restaurant that's not my thing

can eat well for cheap. I find the older that I get more travel. I spend more money on food than anything. It's the little things. I've always been in experiences, not things girl, myself as well. Exactly. Exactly. I would love to talk a little bit more about saving money while we're traveling and, you know, sort of building those kind of freebies if you're paying off all of your credit cards. So what credit card do you use? Okay. And the credit card suggestions I have, just to preface, are for Americans, because that's my experiences with, obviously, being an American, my experience is only with the, I'm not had any foreign credit cards or foreign bank accounts that I know for travel.

But in the U.S., I definitely recommend the Chase Sapphire Reserve. That's the current card that I have. It's the highest, it's the best reward card on the market right now. You get three points per dollar for travel and dining and one point on everything else. It does have a hefty fee. The fee is $450 per year, but they give you a $300 travel credit. So if you book a flight, you just get the $3 credit back. So it's technically only charging you $150 per year.

But you also get free global entry and TSA precheck in the U.S., which is $100 value. So essentially the first year, it only costs you $50. And for any Americans out there, global entry is literally the greatest thing in the world. Next to the other benefit from the credit card, which is Priority Pass. And Priority Pass gets you into airport lounges for free anywhere in the world. And this and global entry have completely transformed my life in the last two years. Because when I'm in an airport, I get to go sit in a fancy lounge. I have good Wi-Fi that's free.

It's a calm environment. There's usually free food. Sometimes there's free alcohol. But I'm all about the food. Usually the U.S. And the ones in England, there's a good one in Heathrow. It gives you like fresh scones and stuff like that that are amazing. The food is usually really, really good.

And then I'm not wasting any money on airport food. And I have a nice calm place to be. And you get free water and stuff like that. which is really helpful when you're in a place where you can't drink the tap water. Oh, my gosh. That sounds worth it just for the lounges. Oh, it is. It's like literally, and you can take friends with you.

And you go to as many lounges as you want in a year. And they're all, every airport, pretty much every single airport in the world, no matter how random. Even in Easter Island where I went last year, there was a lounge for the priority pass. And the other great thing about the priority pass is that if you're in an airport like Miami, where I was, And if you're in a terminal that doesn't have a lounge, there will usually be a restaurant that has a deal with priority pass where you can go and eat a meal, usually a $30 value for free just showing your priority pass card. That is so brilliant. And so that that's amazing. But I would only recommend that card if people are traveling a lot.

It's really not worth paying that fee and everything. If you're not traveling a lot and you're not redeeming the miles and that type of thing. They do have a lower tiered card that through Chase, it's two points for travel and dining. there's a $95 fee per year and you still get priority pass in the global entry, I believe. But you just aren't getting as many points. And also the sign-up bonus is going to be less, obviously. What is global entry for people who haven't used it before? So global entry is basically like fast-track access into the U.S.

You skip the line, you just basically go through. You have to go through an interview process and a background check. And then you essentially just walk into the U.S. You go up to a kiosk and scan everything. And then you just hand a piece of paper to a guy and you let you through when you're through in like literally three minutes. And everybody else is in line for two hours. Because last summer I was running a student trip.

And I had to go through the normal line with the students. And it took like an hour and a half. And I wanted to shoot myself. And I was like, I never want to do this again. So global entry is definitely the way to go. How can we avoid bank fees when we're traveling? Having the right kind of accounts can help. Now, Americans do have the advantage here because I was just talking to

a lot of people, especially some Canadians, they don't really have the most travel-friendly bank accounts there. But in the U.S., there are a lot of great ones. With credit cards, you want to have ones that don't charge you a foreign transaction fee. And a foreign transaction fee for people that aren't familiar is a 1 to 3% fee that you get charged to convert the currency. Now, the Chase Sapphire card that I mentioned does not charge you that. No Capital One cards, and most airline credit cards in the U.S. will not charge you the foreign transaction fee. So you want to avoid that fee. And you also want to avoid ATM fees. So I have a Charles Schwab high yield investor checking account, which is literally the greatest thing in the banking world. There's no foreign transaction

fee. There's no minimums on the account or anything like that. They do not charge you ATM fees. And if an ATM charges you a fee, for example, in South America last year in Argentina, the ATM charges you $10 every time you take money out. They refund that fee to me at the end of the month. I got $40 back last month. I mean, it is amazing what they do. And it's free. It takes a bit to set up. You have to sign up for one of their free brokerage accounts, which is also free to get the checking account.

But I love them. They're my main bank now, and they're super nice when you call. And so they're amazing. And then some credit unions have lower ATM fees as well. That's another way to get around it. Those are the best things I would say. I've not found an account that is as good as Charles Schwab when it comes to refunding everything.

Some will do that, but they give you a limit per month. But Charles Schwab has just been amazing. and I sing their praises all the time. They sound fantastic. And I make all of my friends. The one thing that I also recommend another pro tip is that I've had my wallet stolen a couple times, which is a long, long, long, crazy stories. But I always have two Charles Schwab's accounts that are connected.

And if someone steals one of my debit cards, I have one hidden elsewhere that I can just transfer my money to and obviously close the one that was stolen and not be without a card. Experience has taught me that that makes it easier. So definitely would recommend that. And so obviously they let you do that open to different accounts. Okay. Yes, yes. They're okay with that.

I mean, it takes a little bit to set up and, you know, and everything. I mean, I keep like $5 in the other account. You know, it's not like. That's awful. So what did you do when your wallet was stolen? What happened? It was just the short version is that I just wasn't paying attention. Once is Barcelona.

And if you go to Barcelona, your stuff will get stolen. They just are one. And one of them was Thailand when I was younger. And again, just not paying attention on a beach. my purse was there and there was both times on beaches. I just stopped carrying my purse to beaches now. But essentially the first time, I found myself living in a Western Union commercial, calling my parents at 5 a.m. to transfer me money because I had had all my cards in my wallet.

Again, I was very young at the time. And they'd all been stolen except for my American Express card, which they claimed to be everywhere you want to be, but they were not in Cambodia. And it was a pretty funny situation in the end because I saw my money in my bank account, but you can't Western Union money to yourself, which I tried to do because I didn't want to call my parents at 5 a.m., which I ended up having to do. The second time it happened, I was smarter because I'd learned from that first experience, and I obviously don't always have all my cards with me. I have them in different places, only go out with what I need. If I'm going out at night in a place that's a high theft area, then I don't take my credit cards.

I only take the cash that I need. Like in Buenos Aires, in some places in South America when I'm out late at night, I just take the cash that I need. for the night. I don't take cards or anything like that. So if stuff gets stolen, I don't lose as much. And in Barcelona, they got my debit card, but I had a backup debit card. And I think they got like less than $20 cash. So it's not like I didn't lose as much card wise. I wasn't stranded in the Western Union commercial. I did lose. Yeah. But that I've just learned and I've learned the way that I pack. So if someone does, unless they take all my bags, then I guess I'm out of luck. But other than that, like if they just take my purse or something, then I've got backups and it's not a big deal. And

I've been through the situation. It's a good story now, but I hope that people can learn from my mistakes and just be careful with your purses. If you're in Barcelona, your stuff is just going to get stolen. You just need to accept it. Don't take your phone out at night. Just take the money that you need. Excellent tips, yes.

The one other thing I will mention is that if you don't have access to any of these American accounts, is just to figure out which bank in your country or wherever you live has the lowest amount of fees or credit cards. And they also have something, you know, like partner banks. I think like Bank of America and like Barclays or California. connected and you can go to Barclays ATM in England and like you pay less of a fee. And the same thing like I think Westpac in Australia was in one time connected with them. And you would get you'd pay less fees and you just have to seek out those specific ATMs.

So that's a way to kind of get around it. Another big tip is if you're if you're not traveling full time like I am, if you just go on a big trip and you rack up a lot of ATM fees, you can call your bank nicely and be like, hey, I was on this trip, this one time trip. There's a lot of fees. Can you help me out? Could you refund some of these? I had Bank of America

for like two summers in a row when I was working in Asia refund all of my ATM fees because I was like listen I'm here for my job I really don't know where they're going to send me next for these trips and I'm running a lot of it's last minute

and they were actually really nice about it because I was like you know you don't have partner banks here I don't know what else I can do you know I'm running trips and they put me in a different trip every week these student trips I was running at the time and so I really don't know where I'm going for sometimes until two days before

and so I can't you know I don't know what else to do and they were actually really nice about the time I stopped using Bank of America because they stopped being less friendly about it. But you never know if you're just nice to people. And you're like, hey, this is a situation. Can you help me out? You can actually, people can be really helpful to give you at least some of the money back.

I mean, you can't do this all the time. But if you're just on a specific trip, if the fees were very high, they might be able to help you out. Yeah, that's a great idea. And then one other thing that I wanted to mention is if you're buying something in a shop abroad, they're probably going to say, do you want to pay in the local currency or in your currency? And you always want to pay in the local currency. Yes, always, because usually you're paying three to five percent more if you pay in your home currency. They always try to get you that way.

The only exception to that rule would be like, for example, when I was in Easter Island, the place that I was staying, the accommodation rates were listed whatever it was in Chile and pesos and then the U.S. dollar pay rate. But I think I saved like, it's like $20 or $30 by paying. Because I guess they just hadn't updated it when the exchange rate had changed. And so I made, I basically paying in the local currency was like $30 cheaper than paying in U.S. Or one or vice versa. But basically it helped me out by doing the opposite essentially. So it's just like if you pay attention to that, if there's posted prices on the wall, check the conversion rate to see which is the better deal for you.

I usually carry a little bit of U.S. dollars with me just in case in countries like that where I know the dollar can be accepted because that can really save you some money, especially in Asia when you're paying for visas. It's usually cheaper to pay in U.S. dollars and it is to pay in the local currency. So it can be back and forth. You just have to be very vigilant. But if you're in a shop and they hand you the credit card machine and it says local currency or U.S. dollars, you always do local currency. But if it's like a posted sign that says one or the other, that's when you need to break

out the XE currency converter app, which is my favorite currency app and see what the better deal is. And you should usually get your money out of the ATM and not through like a currency exchange on the street. Exactly. That is correct. you're going to get a better rate. Airport currency exchanges have the highest rates. You're losing money there.

The one thing I will say is if you're stuck with extra money when you go to leave the country, ideally you'd want to exchange it before you got to the airport because you'll get a better rate. But if you're in a country where you have coins, I think the pound would be different because people will take pound coins outside of that country. But a lot of times when you leave a country,

the coins will not be taken elsewhere. So you'll be stuck with all these coins. Then I would try to get that exchange. before you left the country because otherwise you might be stuck with all of them. Yeah, and always tell your bank that you're traveling because if you pop up in a new country, they might block your card and then you're like, what do I do? And then your first hour or two in the country is wasted on the phone with your bank trying to get it unlocked.

And the best thing is they let you do that online now so you can just tell them where you're going online and it takes two seconds. Yes, so don't forget to do that. So your financial philosophy you've said is rooted in Buddhist ideals. Can you talk to me a little bit more about that? So I spent a lot of time in Asia running photo trips. So I got really intrigued by Buddhism and the philosophy. So essentially, it comes from the idea of focusing on a larger goal instead of short-term comfort. In the finance world, they often sort of refer to this as like conscious spending, which is the idea that you

indulge in things that you love and relentlessly just cut your spinning elsewhere. Travel has always been my number one goal in life, and it's always sort of come before everything. All I've ever wanted to do my whole life for as long as I can remember is travel. And so I've made it basically I've revolved my whole life around it now. So you are much better with money than anyone I know, definitely more than me. Even if people have money, sometimes we're just still afraid to deal with it or I don't know. I don't know if it bores us or what, but we don't pay enough attention to bills or like our credit card statements. How can we get into a more responsible mindset? And are Are there any sort of habits where I think, you know, people say, oh, on Sunday night, I'm going

to check my credit card statements and see if there's any like fraud or subscriptions I don't need. And then we now do it. And then, you know, we get whacked later on. Well, I'm a very analytical person to begin with. And the more you sort of understand your money and where it's going, the better grasp you'll have on it. So for me, it's just once you can have an idea of, you know, how much you're making, where

things are going, how much things cost. And you just, you know, if you buy the same thing at the grocery store every week, have a rough idea of what it costs. It's just being aware of those small details. Like, you know what your cell phone bill should be every month roughly. So if it's off by a good amount, like you're going to notice. So just being really aware of those things and kind of sitting down. And, I mean, it's not fun to do this.

I know that. But if you do it once and you get an idea of everything, then it's really going to help you in the end. So the big thing I tell people is just write down a list of your top priorities. Like physically write them down. Like put them on your bathroom mirror somewhere that you see them. And then, like, you need to sort of figure out how to find a, find funding for those things that you want to do and eliminate anything that gets in the way. And then sometimes this is saying no to things you don't, you know, that you want to do,

but a lot of it's just sort of framing saying, hey, you know, I can't go to dinner with a friend because I need to work on this project or I need to save money. We need to maybe we cook or something like that instead. One thing that I would say for people that are trying to get their finances in order, or even just even if they have money, like, just sort of giving an idea where their money is going. So literally like look at your bank statements, just sit down, figure out how much you're making, look at your pay stub or tax return. It doesn't have to be complicated. See if everything's going, like look at a credit card statement. A lot of bank statements and credit card statements will

itemize, sort of and categorize for you where your money is going. So that gives you a really good idea. Something that I recommend, this is a very tedious thing, but it really, if you do this, and you sit there and you track every penny you spend for a month. If a month is too much, you can do a few weeks. That really gives you a great idea of where your money is going. There are several apps that can do this, but if you sit there and write down every single time you spend money, then you really, nothing will give you a better idea of where your money is going than this. And you don't have to necessarily keep doing this. This is just something that you do once as an eye-opener to be like, okay, this is where my money is going with. I don't do that in my daily life. I do it when I travel,

probably to keep myself on track. And also, because I tend to write on my travel blog. I have a lot of different posts where I say, hey, this is how much I spent. One of the biggest ones I did was I tracked everything I spent on a seven-month trip in Latin America, and I made pie charts, and I itemized sort of everything and explained where all the money went. And so I do that to kind of show people that travel is not as expensive as you think. So I think that once you kind of get an idea overall, like looking how much money you have coming in and where it's going, then that gives you an idea of what you can do. And, you know, maybe you said a day of the week that you sit down and you're like, hey,

on Sundays or every other Sunday I'm going to sit down and do this. And I talk about in the book as well that I have a certain amount of money that I'm willing to spend on certain things. Like $20 is usually my rule for certain things. Like when I'm buying clothing, if it's not like a winter jacket or shoes, like $20 is my limit. I like to spend under that. I mean, sometimes I break that.

But usually with sales and stuff, I'm also not a big fashionista. So I'm not super trendy or anything like that. I'm just very much a jeans and a t-shirt type of person. So you can usually get things for fairly cheap under $20. So I tend to have that. Like that's my like number that I have in my head. And when I go out to eat with my friends, ideally I like to. standard $20.

So that's something that I just always have in my head. And I think if you have a certain amount set in your head for what you can spend or what things should cost, that can also help you. Yeah. So you mentioned some apps that could help us get organized. Could you mention some of these? Like should we be scanning receipts to help track? It depends on what your goal is.

It all kind of revolves around what your goal is. So essentially, I keep my receipts and then I have a spreadsheet for myself. I have spreadsheets that I've made that I do in Excel for my banking. for business things and I enter everything in there. The only receipts that I keep are ones for business expenses. But for apps, Dollar Bird is one that I use to track my spending when I travel. It lets you customize categories and you can export everything in there as a spreadsheet. You can also track your income in this.

I only use it to track expenses. It's something I'm currently using it now. I actually am a couple days behind and entering my expenses, but I've got all my receipts to do. That's all my to-do list today. So that's essentially that. Mint.com is another free one. I have one of my best friends swears by the You Need a Budget app. It's Wineab. It's a program you can buy. It's a paid thing. But he loves it. It keeps him in check.

And it really kind of lets you know where your money is and where it's going. And there's all these different buckets. So those are a couple that I would recommend. The Dollar Bird one that I mentioned is free. They do have a paid version. But the free version works fine for me. And I just export it to Dropbox to back it up. Can you tell me again the name of the one that your friend recommends? It's called You Need a Budget is the name of it. But I think it goes by the acronym. N-N-A-B. Okay. And you mentioned Mint.

And so I think this is a platform that helps you see where all of your money is. So we switch jobs, you know, for Americans, they'll have 401Ks at certain jobs. So I think stock, so it can help, like, track all the different parts in your life where you have money that you may have even forgotten about. Is that right? That's true. And so, and it depends on your goals and where you have things set up. personally a spreadsheet works for me so I can see that. But a lot of it's just also spending,

like to track your spending. So it depends on your goal there. But there are a lot of them out there. I like Dollarbird. You have to enter everything yourself. But I think Mint.com will bring in stuff for you. I have not used that. I've just heard good things about it. And again, my friend loves the you need a budget app. He just raves about it. And they have a podcast that I've listened to that's got some good tips on it as well. Yeah. You mentioned goals. Can we talk about that a little bit? Because I think a lot of us probably don't even have financial goals. We just don't know what's even going on with their money. We're just sort of like living day to day,

but it probably is a good idea to have some goals. And I guess that would be tied to the priorities that you mentioned, where you have to pick like two or three top financial priorities. So what are, I guess, your goals and some goals that people might want to have to attain their priorities? So for me, my personal goals, obviously, are traveling. And my second goal is now just saving money, saving for retirement, and having a long-term savings sort of goal in mind and mindset,

which is something I didn't have when I was younger. So I've been really focusing on that and trying to learn a lot more about investing in ways that I can sort of grow my money. Again, I don't want to go back to my vicious cycle of saving money and spending it and going back and forth that I did a lot in my 20s. So I'm sort of focused on long-term savings now. For other people, I definitely recommend again writing down your priorities. What are your priorities?

Are you trying to save for retirement? Do you want to save for a specific trip? Like, you can be as specific as you want. And I think once you kind of have your priorities written down in an order, like if you're trying to say, let's say you want to go do Montu Picchu or you want to go to Antarctica or something like that, you can do the research to figure out roughly what the cost of that trip is. So you can kind of figure out what your goal would be based on that. Because you can, I mean, the entry feed to Montu Picchu is not going to change like Antarctica trips run around the same very expensive amount of money, which is why I haven't gone yet. So there's different things like that. So you can do the research to figure out how much you need. So I think really writing down your project, you're saying, hey, what do I need to do? Maybe you have, maybe people have kids and they want to send them to college or people are saving for their own college or maybe they're trying to buy a car. But we just need to sort of have a very, very specific priority in mind. Are you just trying to save to travel? Are you trying to save overall? And once you have that sort of, you have those top three priorities, essentially in order, you want to do the research to figure out how much money you need, you know, to attain them. Like, how much is it going to cost for this car? How much is it going to cost if you're paying for tuition? You know, it's different things like that. So once you understand that, that gives you very, very defined goals. And then you can kind of look at your spending and figure out, hey, where can you find that money? What is the 50-30-20 rule? Okay, so the 50-30-20 rule, it's a basic rule of finance.

So essentially, 50% of your income needs to go to your needs. And your needs are going to be rent, your groceries, gas, things like that. And they also say that no more than 25% of the amount of money you make each month should go to your rent. If people live in New York City and big cities like that, they might be laughing at that number. I've told that to friends and they've said the same. Because essentially the U.S. government says that if you spend more than, if you spend 30% or more, around 30% of your income on your rent, then you're considered rent burdened where it can cause, it can be difficult for you to pay for other things because you're having to spend so much on rent. So the 30 of the 50, 30, 30, 20 rule, 30% of your income is supposed to go to your wants, like things you can live without like shopping sprees or going to a movie. And then 20% of your income is supposed to go to savings and debt reduction.

And this would include something called an emergency fund, which I definitely recommend, which is three to six months of regular living expenses. This is like if, for example, something happens with your car, you need to fix your car. If you get laid off from your job, you do have that. Or if you get sick, you do have something to live on. And essentially, I have this giant emergency fund now that I could live on for a couple of years in Asia. I could live on in Asia for a couple years planning on the U.S. That kind of helps me through if work gets slow for me, so I'm not having to freak out about money. So essentially that is what the 50, 30, 20 rule is.

There is some leeway in that. I would say in the debt reduction is the 20% is supposed to be going toward credit cards as well. Ideally, you would want to save 20% of your income a month. I know a lot of people can't do that. That's an ideal world. I'm very extreme. I try to save 50% if I can just depends on my – I didn't do that last year because it wasn't the best year financially.

So it just kind of depends on your situation. But that's the basic rule. And you want to kind of stay within those parameters. I definitely recommend that for rent. I lived in California briefly at one time. And that really Southern California and Santa Barbara, and that really kind of put this rule into play because I'm so good with money. And I was just like, I can only afford to go out to eat once every two weeks.

Like I just had no money left over. I couldn't save anything. And that's why I didn't live there very long for that type of situation, even having no debt and, you know, it was still causing an issue. That's a great example. So to track the 50, 30, 20, I guess you would just look at what you're paying in rent, track your spending for, I don't know, a month. And then I'm just trying to figure out the best way to do to figure all of the set.

Just sort of look at your pay stuff and see how much you're making each month. And then you know what your rent is and just do the percentage there to see where you fall within that. And then you can also look at like a credit card statement. I tend to buy everything on credit cards because I pay my credit cards off every month. I wouldn't necessarily recommend that if you're not paying it off. But that way I'm getting the miles and the points. But then it's easy to just look at what I've spent, not having to keep receipts. You can also look at what's there.

Obviously, you have to keep receipts for business expenses. But just in general for gas and groceries, you can see when you went to like the Exxon or the Shell Station or what grocery store, what grocery store, what you can add that up to kind of see where you were there. That gives you an idea of where you were there. So you can just kind of briefly look at that. You can even search your bank statement for the name of the local grocery store where you live to see how many times you shop there last month. And that you can add that up to kind of see where you're at. But and odds are you know what you're spending money on if you're going out too much and eating out too much and buying too many clothes and shoes And you kind of know that that's more than 30% of your income and if you're not really saving any money then like that it's one of those things that once you kind of

You can have an idea of where it's going people should kind of have a rough idea. I feel like I mean we all kind of know what we spend too much money on like I've been spending too much money on food At times on this trip. So you know, I make up for it in other ways, but that's something that you kind of you should most people have a rough idea but sitting down and really kind of going through it with like a A fine tube cone would really help if you really want to get control of it. I would love to talk to you about health care and insurance. How do you protect yourself when you're in the States versus when you're traveling long-term? So I wrote a whole section in the book about how to hack the U.S. health care system. So part of the reason that I'm on the road now is just healthcare in the U.S. is so expensive. I don't like winter and I don't want to pay $500 a month for health insurance.

So essentially what I do when I travel is I'm always insured. I never am not insured. So I always have travel insurance when I travel. I currently use I am global or world nomads. I'm global is what I have now. I always do a zero deductible policy. It's usually $40 a month. World nomads tends to be a little more expensive than I am global,

but they will cover you in more extreme conditions. Like I had to use them for Kilimanjaro. I am global won't cover you in the U.S., but world nomads will cover you 100 miles from your home. So you can choose for what you're doing there. So I always have that when I travel. thing that I do is the U.S. healthcare system is a bit of a mess, especially when you're self-employed. It makes life a lot harder and a lot more expensive. For a really long time, I worked a part-time job

in the U.S. just for the health insurance because it was $70 a month. It was amazing coverage, the best I've ever had. But when I transitioned to freelance, I went on to one of the Affordable Care Act plans, like a middle grade plan. And it's pointless to have any plan in the U.S. when you travel because they rarely cover you abroad. And if they do, then you're going to have to pay for it first and they reimburse you and it's very limited what they pay for. So if you're someone in the U.S. and you're just going on a short holiday and you're not actually going to be living abroad or be gone for months, keep your regular health insurance by a travel insurance policy for very cheap. Again, if it's $40 a month, you know, 20 bucks for two weeks, you know, do that while you're

gone. Now, if you're going to be gone for months or moving abroad, looking into IAM Glover World Nomads is definitely what I would recommend. One thing I did is this year. So I got a physical just to make I was all healthy before I, you know, got rid of my U.S. healthcare plan. And then exactly a year later, I was in Thailand, and I went and got a physical in Thailand in Bangkok. And I paid $170 for full physical in Thailand. It was done in four hours. They did the blood work. They'll do a chest x-ray if you want, any of that.

And it's all included. And they give you your results right then and there. And the hospital is really nice. I have a lot of friends, like people who are my parents age, that I know that come and do this stuff in Thailand as well, just because it's cheap and it's really good quality care. I also went to the dentist there. $30. So I'm starting to do more of that, that type of situation.

So my plan is to come back once a year because it's cheaper, honestly. I'm not saying don't have health care, but it's cheaper to fly to Thailand, get a physical and get everything done, and then fly back to the U.S. and just to pay for health care for a year. But you always have to have health insurance from the U.S. You can't not do it because it's such a risk in that type of situation. So my point is if you're going to be living abroad or traveling, I wouldn't recommend paying for health care in the U.S.

The only exception is if you have a preexisting condition, that I'm not. It's the only thing that's sort of a gray area because these policies will, they'll cover like a, I think it's like an unexpected reoccurrence of one. But it just depends on the situation. So that's the only thing like a chronic illness might be the only situation. Again, you definitely need to do your research. You can't just take my advice. So definitely look into fine print of all these policies and call the people. But that's essentially what I do there.

The one thing is now when I'm in the U.S., what I've been doing lately is the way that the health care system works in the U.S. us now is that if you enroll through the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare, then you, there's like a rolling admissions period. You have to enroll so that, you know, open enrollment and it starts in January. You can't just come in for a couple months and sign up and cut it off and on, cut it off and on. The only way you can do that is if you prove that you just lost health insurance or if you move and your address is changed, then they'll let you sign up at another time during the year, which makes it really hard for me to get on those type of plans because I don't want to pay the $500 a month that my policy was going to be while I'm gone because I don't. I don't

doesn't help me and he doesn't help me here. It's pointless to pay it when I'm gone. So what I do in the U.S. now is I do it. I get a short-term major medical plan. These are temporary. They only last three months at a time. Once one ends, you can sign up for another one. From what I've been told by the company that I use Golden Rule, which is through United Health Care, you can continuously do this. There's no limit. The one that I've been doing costs about $150 a U.S. a month. It's got a $2,000 deductible, which means that I pay for everything until $2,000, and then they pay for everything after that. But that's basically it's insurance for if I get hit by a car. Here's a tricky part in the horrible part is that if you ever claim anything on their plan on one of those plans, they'll probably never cover you again to sign up again.

It's a very terrible system, but it's the best that I can do to prevent any sort of major issue happening. It's the least hassle for my life. Because last year I was in and out of the U.S. so much for work that it just, I was like, do I really want to pay $500 if I'm going to be gone this whole month for the U.S. plan? So that's why I've been doing that, and that's what I'll do when I go back into the U.S. depending on how long I'm in the U.S., I might look at getting into the Affordable Care Act again, but it just depends. It's just that for me financially, it's just not viable to pay that amount of money for a policy that I can't use.

It's not going to help me abroad. Yes, medical. I'm happy to go into more explanation. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's brilliant because it is in saying the cost of health care in America. It doesn't make any sense the way the system is set up. And I love the idea of going abroad to get medical care done. and then hitting the beach. Exactly, exactly.

I mean, you always have to be covered with either travel insurance or health insurance whether you're in the U.S. or body. You always need to have something just to be safe. So you never want to not have health insurance. You always want to have something. A lot of the affordable care policies in the U.S., the way that everything's kind of done by states now,

the world is not designed for people like me that travel in different places all the time and that don't really, I guess, have a home in a lot of ways. Those policies will only cover things that are in network. So let's say, for example, I'm like going to visit my parents in South Carolina. I'm not in Texas where I live. And I have to go to the hospital.

They'll cover the emergency room fee. But that doctor is most likely going to be out of network. So I get no discount, no deduction. So I'm probably having, I'm paying a significantly higher fee because this person's out of network. And so that's a big issue with the Affordable Care Act plans for someone like me who travels. So personally, this short term policy will most think, a lot more things will be in network. So if I do have an emergency, I should have a cheaper rate.

There is some negotiated plans. And they do have like a prescription card thing. that you can do to kind of help with prescriptions as well. So that's something, that's the other point I wanted to make about that. Before I let you go, I would love to hear what your most extreme penny pinching tip is. Well, I don't know if this is extreme, but it's sort of funny. I would say maybe it is extreme to some people, but sleeping in my car. So when I was in, when I was living in Australia in 2008, I was probably about as broke as I could ever be because I'd been, you know, I had this great job before.

I was being paid to travel. I had expense accounts. I was like a top level of the Hilton Honors Club tier. And then I went to like living in hostels and, you know, and all of that. And I was doing this road trip around Australia with these two guys from New York. And we decided to rent a car to drive the Great Ocean Road in southern Australia, which was, it's like the equivalent of the Pacific Coast Highway there. It's absolutely beautiful.

And we, there wasn't really a way to do it by public transit. So I was like, well, we have to rent a car. So there are three of us. So we split the rental car. And initially I was like, it's too much money to pay for hostels and rent the car. We just need to sleep in the car. And the guys were like, yeah, that's a good idea. These guys were also like eating baked beans out of a can and peanut butter.

That's most of our meals were peanut butter sandwiches on this trip as well. And so basically we slept in the car the whole time. And it was absolutely one of the best like road trips of my life because we would always sleep by the beach. There happened to always be like a carnival in town as well. So we would kind of sleep near the carnival. So it looked like we were part of the carnival. And it was also by those little like, you know, those like, bathrooms with showers that they have right by the beach so we could go in there and shower and

stuff we would sneak into RV parks sometimes to shower remember one morning we were asleep in the car and I woke up and there was this like old man looking in the window at me and I got out of the car and the Saturday morning market had popped up in the parking lot that we were parked in sleeping in it was hilarious but it was it must have been a big car yeah well there are two of us in the front one guy actually like a tent he was kind of like sleeping outside in the tent so like I was in a passenger seat. One guy was in the driver's seat, and then the other guy who was really tall, slept. He had like a sleeping bag and a tent that kind of broken.

And I remember hearing when I saw the old man in the window, someone saw him and was like, is he dead? He started moving. We all had to get up. But it was just that's what we did for about like three or four days. And it was amazing. And it was literally, it was so much fun. And honestly, my travel, I feel like I've kind of gotten back to that a lot more on this

trip, like doing things the more adventurous way. Like in Vietnam, we went to see the Choochee Tunnels, which is the famous. tunnels there and we went by public bus instead of doing a tour and it was absolutely amazing. It was an adventure to the extreme and that's kind of how I feel about sleeping in the car. And it's something that I'm actually still doing, partly just being a photographer, like I did Iceland about two years ago and I rented a car in the summer and a car is like $100 a day in Iceland to rent and gas is not cheap. And a lot of the places that I wanted to photograph and I was there in the summer, you know,

sunset's you're only at four hours of darkness and they aren't always near places to stay that are affordable. So I would kind of just sleep in my car near the place so I could shoot it at sunset and then get up in four hours and shoot it at sunrise. And I had a sleeping bag and I would just sleep in the rental car. Even last summer I did a big camping trip with some friends to Havasu Falls and that. And then I went up to Arches National Park on my own and I had a tent and I did pay for a campsite. But I ended up sleeping in my car because it was crazy winds and I was like, I'm not putting up a tent by myself in this wind. So I just slept in my car for like three nights.

and I'm honestly going to Tasmania in a couple weeks, and I rented a car there, and it's expensive. I don't have a tent with me, so I'll be sleeping. I'll be paying for campsites, but sleeping in my car to save money. And also that means I'm there. It's sunrise, easily having access to the places that I want to photograph, the outdoor location for photos. But that is definitely something that I do a lot,

and we'll continue to do because it just makes my life easier, and it saves me money as well. And you can enjoy beautiful sunrises. Exactly. And farmers markets that pop up behind. behind you. Perfect. All of my favorite things. What is your best tip to save money that we can easily start doing today? I see the biggest thing would be just to kind of monitor your eating out, just sort of meal planning, like stop eating out for the sake of convenience. I'm not saying don't eat out

at all. You should eat out. You should treat yourself to a good meal. But a lot of times you're not eating out. It's not a good meal. You're just eating out somewhere quick for convenience. It's not even something you're enjoying. So that's something that I would definitely just, even when I was working like three jobs and 14 hour days, I was very, very conscious of my meal planning, my Sunday nights, we usually spent cooking something that I could eat all week. I would make a lot of sandwiches. Scramble eggs were always my go-to for a quick meal because it was just cheaper. It was healthier than eating out all the time. So that's something that I definitely recommend. And I've even listened to a lot of podcasts about budgeting and people always find money. They find ways to cut their

spending and it always seems to come from eating out. So that would be something that I would recommend. The other big thing would be to stop paying for things that you don't use or things that are wasteful. Like, for example, there's so many people that I know when I've met that are just like, well, I pay for this gym, but I don't go there. If you're not going to the gym, just cancel it. Like, either go to the gym or stop paying for it, like one or the other. One of the sort of antidotes that I use in the book is that a lot of the retail jobs that I had in the break room, there was always a table full of Starbucks cups that were literally almost full that people, they wouldn't have time before work to drink them. So they would take a sip or two,

it and they would never come back for it and it got spilled and create this whole drama in the break room. And I just kept looking at those every day and calculating the amount of money. I'm like, you could live in Thailand for like a day on like all of those things. Like I mean, or even a week with all the coffee that's just sitting there being wasted every single day. So just be mindful of like when you're being wasteful. And just if you're spending money on something, make sure you're getting the value out of it. You're actually using it. And then I think those are two things that people can do to kind of help save money. Well, thank you so much for talking to me today, Anna. Where can people find out more about you and your book Good With Money? You can find me on my blog, which is

Travellikeana.com. I'm on Twitter with the same handle. I'm on Instagram with my name, Anna Missouri, photo. And then if you look for my name, Anna Mozaric or Good With Money on Amazon, you can find the book. You can also go to goodwithmoneybook.com and that will take you to more information about the book. Well, thank you so much. This has been so helpful. I can't wait to start getting more organized financially and saving money and signing up for that reserve card. So thank you again. Oh, thank you for having me. It's been great chatting. So how about you? Are you good with money? I am not. I am not a big spender, but I'm definitely not as organized as I should be when it comes to finances. So my homework for this week is to set some financial goals for myself. If you take one action from

today's episode, what will it be? I would love to hear about it so you can send me your answers to Sarah at postcardacademy.co. The links to the information that Anna shared in this episode can be found on postcardacademy.com where you can also download my free guide to finding the best airfares, and you can find that at postcardacademy.co slash airfare. If you're enjoying this show, please subscribe and tell a friend about it. That is the best way to grow the show. That's all for now.

Thanks for listening and have a beautiful week wherever you are. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarah mygatel.com slash blank no more.