More Money Podcast - 099 Listener Series - How to Budget for a Roadtrip Across America

Episode Date: March 23, 2017

Podcast listener TJ Pridonoff shares with me how he saved up enough to do a roadtrip across America (and quit his job to do it). He proves that you don't have to be rich to go on a trip of self-discovery in the U.S., you just need to be smart about how you spend your money. Long description: For this episode of my Listener Series, I interview TJ Pridonoff who is currently on a road trip of self-discovery across America. I'm telling you, if ever you hit a point in your life that you feel unhappy, too settled or just need some sort of change to figure out what you want out of your life, travel is always a good solution. When I was 18 and went to Gambia, I had so much clarity when I got back in terms of what I wanted to study in school and do for a career. And after travelling around Thailand for 3 weeks, I came home confident that leaving my job and moving to Toronto was the right answer. I wonder what I'll discover on my next long trip? Anywho, TJ realized not too long ago that he needed a change and to figure out what he really wanted out of life for himself. He'd already gone to school and had a good stable job, but he wanted something more. So he decided to leave his job and take a road trip across the United States to satisfy his travel bug and to help him get some clarity for his future. And he's on that road trip now! The best part is, from a personal finance standpoint, he's proven that to do something like this doesn't mean it'll cost you a ton of money. Especially doing a road trip across the U.S., there are a ton of towns and cities you can stay in for really reasonable prices. The key thing to remember is to have enough cash on hand so you don't run out, budget strategically (so do you research ahead of time), and don't spend your money on stuff. Spend your money wisely to get the most out of your trip. If you want to see where TJ is right now and how his trip has been so far, make sure to check out some of his latest blog posts: Nomadic Leisure Doesn't Work for Me 3 Weeks of No Work Slow Travel - Overrated or Worth It? Thanks TJ for sharing your story with me, and looking forward to reading more about your travels! Want to Be a Guest on My Show? Got a story that you think would be good to share on an episode on of Listener series? Please email me! Helpful Resources I spent a good amount of time the past few years creating resources to help you with your money, life and adding more balance into the mix. Check them out on my resources page. For more podcast episodes, check out the podcast page. Show notes: jessicamoorhouse.com/99 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to episode 99 of the Momany Podcast. Oh my gosh, does that mean next week I'm going to hit 100? How did that happen? That's crazy. Jessica Morehouse here, your host of the Momany Podcast. Welcome to a listener series episode, my favorite type of episodes. And in case you're new, because it seems like there's lots of cool new podcast listeners, hey, the listener series is something I started back in, I think, September of 2016, where I was just getting a lot of emails from podcast listeners about their story. They were just, you know, wanting to share with me. And I'm like, oh, yeah, we need to turn this into a special listener series. And I have,

you know, interviewed, I actually don't know, I should probably count, a lot, a lot of listeners in the past several months. And it is awesome. I am going to speak to one in this episode. His name is TJ Pritinoff. And he also has a website in case you want to snoop on him after listening to this episode. It's TJPritinoff.com, P-R-I-D-O-N-O-F-F, just in case you're not sure about the spelling. And he emailed me a while back. We finally got in touch to record an episode together because he was very busy getting ready for this epic road trip around America that he's currently

on. He was, I think, a few days, I think, five days out from that road trip when we recorded this interview. So he is on the road trip right now. I should send him an email, make sure, where is he? What city is he in? I have to keep track of him. But anyways, we talk about his story, which is, you know, he did all the right things, went to school, got a good paying job, and then kind of realized, I am not really fulfilled. I want to do something a bit crazy and something that will allow me to figure out what I really want out of life. Hence, the epic road trip, which I think is awesome. I am all for going on a trip for self-discovery. Every time I've gone on a lengthy trip, I have come back a new person

basically. And whatever I was kind of having struggles with or just like wasn't sure about, I came back and like, oh yeah, I have some clarity here. So we talk about all of that in this episode. I'm going to stop talking so we can get to that interview. Thank you, TJ, for joining me on the Mo Money Podcast. I'm so glad we were able to connect and you're on the show. Yeah, thank you for having me. You are welcome. So I'm very excited. Right before I hit the record button, you told me some really cool news that your last day at your job was yesterday. So I feel like I got you at a really interesting point in your life. So I'm excited to kind of learn about

how you got to this point. So it's kind of a complicated, long story, but we'll simplify it. Okay. We'll do our best. So yeah, please. No, go ahead. Okay. Um, so in 2009, I graduated college without debt. So I was very fortunate to have scholarships, and my parents helped me out with the rest of it. Shortly after that, I found real estate and bought very close to the bottom here in Southern California. Oh, nice. And a few years later, it went up in value. So I sold it with a fairly major equity gain. There actually is a blog post all about that, which I will send you.

Please do. And so after that, I just started saving some more money to be able to take some time off and not worry about the money. That's basically where I'm at now. I'm so curious. How did you save up enough to buy your first property? Was it very soon after you graduated university or a couple of years after? I started looking about three months after I graduated, but all that time I was either living in dorms or living at home for free. So I didn't have any major expenses in between college and after moving out. But I also I had a job almost right after college because I was very fortunate to have a small business. And they also helped me out with the down payment for part of it. because I was very fortunate to work in a small business.

And they also helped me out with the down payment for part of it. But I had a tax credit, first-time homebuyer tax credit of $8,000. So that helped a lot too. So you're just, it seems like you're from the beginning pretty good at money, because most people, they kind of get into the major money issues that last, you know, decades when they're in university, when it comes to kind of getting student loans or just mishandling their money. So how, how did you know, you know, that it was, you know, a good idea to get a job in university, a good idea to kind of, you know, live frugally and, you know, live at your parents and save money that way. How did you know all this at the beginning?

Um, I guess I just got lucky that my parents set a good example for me. I definitely had an interest in personal finance, even during college, just reading blogs and things like that. But if my parents didn't teach me about how to properly use a credit card and things like that, I don't know, I might have ended up in a very different outcome. Exactly. And I think that's like a big thing with people. It's not that some people are, I mean, sometimes it is some people are just naturally not very good with money. But I think a lot of it just has to do with the examples that were set early on in your life. And it can kind of happen to anyone. Like if I didn't have, you know, parents that were really strict on budget and did live frugally, I don't think I would have integrated that into my own life as an adult so naturally because it's all I knew. If I had parents that were just always spending and always lived with debt and it almost seemed normal, then I would think that was normal and that I would integrate that into my own life.

And that's, I think, kind of the big issue what's going on on people, you know, our age or older that are into those situations is a lot of it has to do with they just, you know, didn't have the examples to kind of live by. So it's lucky that you did. Yeah, I'm very thankful that I had that sort of example growing up. And so what kind of inspired you to look to real estate to start investing? Because that's I mean, that is, you know, very young to start real estate investing, but also a very smart idea if you do it right. Of course, you know, you were lucky in that you did make money off that property. Whereas you did you say you bought it in 2009? Like, was that before the crash? I bought it in March 2010, but I started looking in the summer of 2009. What happened is probably all across America, what you had was called short sales. Yes. So basically the people before me, they bought this place for $350,000, a two-bedroom, two-bathroom condo in a suburb of California. So they sold it to me for $135,000.

So they had to get their banks to agree to write off these mortgages that they had. So, but the reason I ended up in real estate is entirely luck. My parents just basically said, you need to buy something. Or I don't know if they were kicking me out and just thought it made sense for me to buy instead of rent. But that's just what happened. And I got very lucky. Yeah, it was kind of a lucky time. I mean, unlucky for a lot of people, obviously, dealing with the recession. But in some cases like you, you were able to find a property that was way lower than it was several years ago.

And then I can assume being a property in Southern California has gone up in value quite a bit. Yeah, I sold for around $210,000. So it went up about 40%, which is very good. That's a pretty good return on investment. Yeah. I mean, people definitely did better than that during that time, but I'm very happy with the result. Now, since then, since you sold that property, have you invested in other properties? Is that kind of one of your strategies for kind of setting up a passive income stream? No, I'm actually all in mutual funds.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So why are you going back to real estate since you had a good experience? Because for me, I feel like I got lucky and I'm not very knowledgeable about real estate. So actually, when I was living there, I rented out the spare bedroom. And I before I sold it, I rented out the whole thing for a couple of years. And I didn't really like the idea of being a landlord and getting vacancies. And then you still got to pay, but you're not getting paid. So me, it made sense to sell and just put it in stock mutual funds.

Okay, that's interesting. Do you think you'll ever go back to real estate investing in the future and kind of just hone that craft a little bit more? Or you're kind of like setting that aside for the future? I think I would buy real estate to live in, but I don't know that I would buy real estate to invest in. So you're renting right now, I'm assuming? Yes, I'm renting. It is kind of nice renting, I'll be honest. Especially since you've had the experience of being a homeowner and a landlord, going back to being a renting, it's a lot less stressful, isn't it? Oh, I agree. And even when I was an owner, I was on the board of directors for the condo, so I got to be involved

with that. And it was fun, but it also had its challenges. And I'm fine just renting and not worrying about all that. Absolutely. So what are you putting your focus on right now since you were able to quit your job? And what are your kind of plans now that you quit your job? Was your kind of your goal to save up enough money or to kind of set yourself up so you could leave this particular job? Or what was your kind of plan? I'm so curious. So what happened is in the winter of 2014, I did, I had a lot of vacation time. So I went to Europe for three weeks. And I noticed that I was spending less money over there than I was in California. I was living by the beach then, so it was more expensive.

So when I realized that it was actually cheaper for me to travel than to live at home, like I wondered how can I do this on a more long-term basis? So I started saving up to kind of do this whole round the world trip. But then as I got closer, I kind of decided maybe I don't want to do that. I started focusing on traveling here in America. So right now, the plan is to do some slow travel around the States. Awesome. I know actually a few people, when I went to FinCon, that conference for all the nerdy personal finance bloggers in September, I met a number of people who did just that. They kind of, well, they were self-employed, so they had that kind of flexibility, but then they just got in the car, you know, loaded up some luggage and just made a really cool trip around the States. And it sounded

amazing. Yeah, I actually, I went, drove down to FinCon. I didn't pay for it, but for one of the days, one of the nights I just drove down for free because it's like far away and I talked to Kara for a little bit yeah Kara was one of the people that came to mind yeah yeah so she gave me some tips about about what to do what not to do exactly she's just talking about her experience a little bit while it was happening so that was kind of cool so where what is your uh plan for this trip where do you plan to go so at the beginning like I kind of envisioned just taking a year off work yeah to just travel all around as I have a lot of warranty left on my car and um so originally I

booked um for the month of March like I leave on March 6th is when I leave, five days from now. I booked 28 nights Airbnb in Albuquerque because it was just so cheap. Oh, for sure. and um so after that i booked um i think it's 30 nights in cedar city utah which is in south utah close to zion national park and bryce canyon and some of the other stuff around there and i have bookings through the second week of may and after that i not sure yet nice from the director of the greatest showman comes the most original musical ever i want to prove i can make it prove to who everyone so the story starts better man now playing in select theaters so what do you plan to do in some of these cities and like did those do seem like big chunks of time like 30 days so basically i'm just going to be living there for

a month so it'll be an experience because i've lived in california my whole life i've moved around different parts of southern california but it's still all pretty similar and with albuquerque it's three hours from white sands national monument it's close to santa fe which is the other big city in New Mexico. I'm not worried about running out of things to do, but it'll be fun. Yeah, just kind of a trip of self-exploration, it sounds like. Something that, yeah, that sounds so interesting to me, especially, I do kind of like that it's not like you're going to each city and you have to kind of take all these things off your list. I have to go see this attraction. I have to go see this museum.

I have to go this, this. I'm sure you'll do some of that anyway. But it kind of, I mean, that seems quite luxurious to be able to go to a city for 30 days and not really have much of a plan. You can literally do whatever you want. And that's kind of the whole point of that. Everything, right? Exactly. So for me, my big goal right now is to figure out what my next career, what that looks like, because I'm not really sure. I can use my job experience so far to move forward in that industry. But I also like the idea of because I'm financially secure, I can potentially change careers and it's okay if I make less money than I did. Exactly. Yeah. I feel like that is so, it's so funny that you mentioned that because I actually had

a, I mean, several episodes ago, I was talking to Bruce Ellery about how he went on a trip and that trip really solidified what career path he wanted to go. And I went on a similar trip about maybe four years ago now with my husband, we went to Thailand and that trip really helped me decide whether, you you know what direction I want to take my career into. So I feel like this is the best taking a trip is the best thing you can do to like really figure out who you are, what you want and what you want to do in the future. So I'm very excited to see what happens. Yeah, me too. And I have no idea. So that's it's scary, but it's also awesome. Exactly. And just all the people you'll meet, experiences you'll have, and you're going alone

too. And that's also a whole other experience traveling alone. Yeah, I've traveled alone in tour groups before. So, but I'm still around other people. So this will be different, but also the Airbnb's that I booked are room rentals in someone's house. So I'll be around people. I mean, I'll be around the same people for 28 days. So maybe it'll be, I don't know what that will be like. But when I talked to the lady, the landlord, she seemed to think that say that there's a lot of long-term people that stay there. So I guess it's normal and it's not this weird thing that I'm doing. Yeah. And you may even discover that one of the places you visit may feel like, Hmm, maybe I want to move here for a little bit longer. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm really curious to see what happens there. It's definitely a possibility.

And then it's like $500 a month, which is half of my rent here. So that's pretty cool. That's very, that is quite nice, isn't it? So you mentioned that you have a blog, I assume you're going to be kind of sharing your journey along the way. Yeah, I haven't felt much inspiration with the blog lately. And I've been quietly deleting posts that I'm not sure that they're still relevant because my plans keep changing. But yeah, my blog is, it's just my name, TJ Pritanoff, P-R-I-D-O-N-O-F-F dot com. Unless I change it to something else, that is the blog. Absolutely. So what did you blog about previously? Oh, I started this blog in the end of August and it was basically just about all this that like

hey I'm saving up to travel but the travel plans kept changing and uh that's just what it is yeah so there's a lot of um there's the post about real estate I did a post about um being on the board of directors for my condo. One of my posts was Rockstar Financed, which was pretty cool. Very cool. I think that was the post about my Roth IRA where I just kind of posted like every year, this is how much I put in and the funds I was in. And basically the point was that you don't need to wait until you're this expert investor to start saving and investing. You should just start as soon as you can and just pick an index fund or some diversified mutual fund and you can change it as you go along. It's okay. Exactly. No, that's a very good point because as I've been

kind of talking to more people about investing and more readers and listeners have been coming to me with questions, it seems like the big roadblock for them is just that they're too afraid to start. They don't think they have enough money. They don't even know what to do. And there are so many options these days, way more than 10 or 20 years ago. It is probably the easiest time to set up an investment and not feel like, oh my gosh, did I just lose all my money in the stock market? I feel like there's a lot of, yeah, misinformation out there. So I'll link to that article in the show notes. I'm sure it'd be very, very informative for people. Yeah. Yeah. So I would love to pick your brain on, you know, besides the real estate investing, like what other tactics,

what other things did you do to set yourself up in this situation where you are right now? Because I feel like a lot of people, you know, might listen and be like, that's nice for that person. But, you know, I did, you know, graduate with a bunch of debt, or I didn't, you know, find that, you know, awesome job right out of university. But how can I maybe attain a similar goal? Because I know a lot of people are dying to be able to quit their jobs to have some kind of freedom so they can discover what they want to do in life and maybe go back to something later. So for me, I think the secret is that I just don't have a very expensive taste.

That does help. So I think you had Anita on the show a few months ago. Yes. And basically what she said was she buys what she wants and saves the rest. And that's kind of what I do. It's just the secret is that I don't want a lot in life and I'm happy with what I have. But even with technology, it's like I used to spend several hundred dollars on music compact discs. And now with like Amazon streaming, it's $89 a year. So some of my costs like that have just gone down because of technology.

That's true. So do you feel like you're kind of a natural or unconscious minimalist, like you just don't need stuff, that you don't need that in your life, and that's kind of helped you reach some of your financial goals? There's some of that, but I don't consider myself to be a super frugal person. It wasn't until maybe six months ago that I really made an effort at cooking. So I spent a lot on going out to eat. I just wasn't going to super expensive restaurants when I did it. Yeah. Yeah.

As I've read about minimalism, I enjoy some some of that but I'm not gonna like sell all my shirts and just have one shirt because that's what you should do yeah no that there's definitely an extreme side to that I feel like since I've gone self-employed I'm probably like uh I mean unintentional minimalist where it's just like, I, you know, my wardrobe is full of all my old work clothes. So technically I guess I should get a new wardrobe for, you know, more casual attire, but I'm kind of too lazy. So hence I have like five shirts and a couple of pants. Yeah. And I have more clothes than that, but I probably,

I don't know how many clothes I'll be taking on this road trip because I don't need to take all my clothes and I'll be doing laundry more often. So that'll be different. Exactly. And you may be picking some stuff along your journey. Exactly. Exactly. That's awesome. Well, I'm excited to learn more about your journey because you're a couple of days away from leaving, which is awesome.

And how long are is your trip again it's kind of open-ended at this point and I've also been thinking about applying for jobs on cruise ships so I can get to travel that's true I know some friends who have done that it's uh it sounds like it can be depending on what your job is it can be fun or a lot of work I think no matter what your job is, it's a lot of work. But the thing about it is if you're cool with that lifestyle, you're going to have six months where you're working seven days a week for long hours, but then you get two months off to do whatever you want. And if you do another contract, it's another six months. And with most careers in

America, at least, you can't really do that where you get an extended period of time off. No, it's definitely an interesting experience. I have one friend who did it for, I think about a year and yeah, she said it was a ton of work, but it was also a really great experience. She made some great friends. She got to kind of do one of her kind of dream jobs, which was like going to cruise ship and take a, she was a videographer. And so she got to, you know, make all these kinds of cool tourism videos for customers and everything like that. And she said she saved a ton of money because you don't really spend it. Everything's pretty much covered your room and board. So she actually saved up a bunch of money. So that's one way to, you know, explore, you know, maybe something you want to try out and also, Hey, another great way to save money. Yeah. And if you you're in you're in debt and you're a single person like you can just go work on a

cruise ship and pay a lot of that off just absolutely yeah i feel like working on a cruise ship and also teaching english uh in another country are kind of like the two go-to things and honestly it's the go-to things because people have done them and and they do work and sometimes people you know fall in love with that career. And then that's kind of like, huh, I didn't realize I loved this so much. Yeah. So we'll see if I get to go that route or if I do something else. I'm not really sure yet. Absolutely. That's awesome. Well, I'm very excited to keep in touch to figure out where you're going and what you're up to. I would love to definitely get some updates from you and maybe some pictures. Yeah, I'll put that stuff on the blog for sure.

Fabulous. Fabulous. Well, thank you so much, TJ, for joining me. I feel like your story is a very something that I mean, I dreamed about all the time when I was working my nine to five of just being and actually, like, I don't think I've even told anyone this, but a year ago me and my husband seriously considered, maybe we should just kind of leave what we're doing, sell everything we own and we were renting at the time and just like travel the world. And we were really close to doing that until plans changed. So why did you change your plans?

You know, well, I think at the time we were thinking we would give our, he was working for a company at that time. He wasn't self-employed and we're like, let's give it another six months, save up a bit more money and then go. But then his job didn't work out. So he lost that job. He went back to self-employment and he just realized to kind of make that shift from working for a company for six months and then going back to being his own boss, he really needed to focus on kind of, you know, getting more clients and growing his business.

And so these, yeah, everything kind of fell apart. Then we decided to buy a home. But now that we're both self-employed, who knows what the future holds. We're, you know, fairly location independent. So we'll see. We'll see. It's never too late to pursue something like that. Exactly. Just because it didn't happen then doesn't mean it can't happen in the future. Exactly. Exactly. Well, thanks again for joining me. It was a pleasure chatting with you. Yeah, my pleasure to come on the podcast. I listened to it. It's a lot of fun.

No, thank you and that was episode 99 of the momenty podcast and a listener series episode with the wonderful dj pritanoff make sure to check out his website find out where he's at on his travels right now at tj pritanoff.com and uh you can also check out the show notes quite honestly because i'll put some tidbits in there that you may want to check out the show notes quite honestly because i'll put some tidbits in there that you may want to check out just go to jessicamaros.com slash 99 because this is episode 99 i think i need to treat myself for episode 100 i'm not 100 sure what i'm gonna do for that hmm well i guess i've got a few days to figure that out shall i maybe cake will be

involved probably cake any mahoo uh thank you so much for listening and again if you are a listener I guess I've got a few days to figure that out, shall I? Maybe cake will be involved. Probably cake. Any mahoo. Thank you so much for listening. And again, if you are a listener series, you're interested in being a part of this listener series, please email me at jessica at jessicamorehouse.com. And let's see if we can get you on the show. And before I let you go, I want to share some news. If you're not on my email list, then well, you should get on it because I let you know everything, everything that's going on with me right away. So just go to jessicamarose.com slash subscribe to get on that. But I announced to my subscribers this week that I did a whole revamp of my resource library. I have a ton of freebies

and downloadables and great things to help you with money, life, balance. And I spent all last weekend revamping it. So instead of having to individually download everything and give me email a bunch of times and annoying, I know I made it super simple. Basically, you just have to go to jessicamorehouse.com slash resource library. And you just have to kind of register yourself as a member and boom, you get special access to a private part of my website where you can access all of my resources with the click of a button, basically. So it takes the hassle out of everything. Lots of good things that you may not know that I even have in there

to help you get organized with your money. And I will be updating it constantly. Another reason to get on my email list, basically. So I hope to see you there. Go to the show notes. I'll include a link on there so you don't forget. But it was nice talking to you. I miss talking to people now that I'm self-employed. And I realize at this very moment that I'm recording, I'm talking to myself, but I know you're out there

and I know you hear me. So I appreciate when you chat back. So if you want to say hello, send me an email. I always get back to you as soon as possible. So I'm going to stop. I'm going to leave you. And thanks again for listening. I will see you back here next Wednesday for episode 100. Crazy, crazy, crazy times.