Most People Plan Vacations Backwards

By the time I take a vacation, I am not thinking about money. I am never going to walk into a restaurant at some resort beach area and be deciding, uh, can I afford the shrimp cocktail? Never gonna happen because I have made those decisions way, way back there. And over the years, as I've traveled from Kyoto to Morocco to Italy, I've developed a framework for planning trips that for me feels personal and intentional and creates unforgettable travel. And it works whether you are planning a weekend getaway or a $25,000 dream vacation. In this video, I am gonna share examples that range the entire gamut of spending. But remember that great trips are not just about spending the most money. They're actually about deeply knowing what you want and even what you don't want, and then building a personal trip around that. That means spending extravagantly on the things you love, and it means cutting stuff you don't care about, even if other people think you should see it. And today, I'm gonna show you exactly how I create these unforgettable trips. Why most people have boring vacations. If you wanna create a magical trip, then you must avoid what most people do when they plan travel, and that is they do it completely backwards. They literally pick a random place that has no real connection to them, and then the first thing they do is they go on some random travel site and start figuring out how much things cost. That would be like you opening up your kitchen cupboard and going, okay, we have almonds. Oh, coleslaw. That lettuce is a little rotten, but that'll do. And give me the jelly beans and pickles. Let's create a magical meal. It's freaking absurd. And yet, that is how so many people travel. They start by figuring out logistics Instead of asking, what do I want to experience on this travel? Have you ever asked yourself, what do I want to feel on this trip? No, you haven't. You asked if it's cheaper to go on Delta or United. Who gives a fuck? That's not how you start planning a magical trip. That is how you go through a bunch of random checklists that make you end up at Disneyland complaining how expensive and hot it is. Stop it. We're going to start a different way. We are creating magic. And the first thing we do is we wanna ask ourselves, what do we wanna experience? Sometimes when we travel, we decide that we want complete relaxation. That means we're probably going to a resort. We are going to actually stay there most of the time. We're gonna sit by the pool, we're gonna eat. That's what we wanna do. Other times we want adventure. We're going into the Medina in Morocco. We are going gorilla trekking in Rwanda and on safari. But we have to decide first, what do we want to experience? Sometimes we want to spend time with family. We're going to New Delhi. We are spending time hours and hours every day with our family in their house. These are all different examples of trips and they can be magical. But you have to decide. Nobody else decides. You do. There's a big cost that many people do not recognize of just randomly picking a destination and getting there. And then you get off the airplane, you go, what should we do? ChatGPT. If you only get 10 days or 2 weeks off per year and you spent $4,000 on this trip, not only did you lose $4,000 on a trip that you're not going to remember, you lost the opportunity to create amazing memories. You lost time. Sometimes we don't even recognize that we deserve to have at least one moment of Aww. Every quarter. And it could be as extravagant as watching a sunset with a sundowner in Kenya on safari. It could be as close to home as watching the sunset with your kids at the park as they're playing soccer. But you decide. Nobody is going to make that happen for you. We've all seen parents who go to Disneyland and they are irrationally angry at their kids who are throwing a tantrum. They're young. And they're like, we spent all this money, all this time to come here, and you can't even behave? Part of that is understandable. It costs a lot of money. It costs a lot of time. And so we build everything up into this one moment, and if it doesn't go perfectly, we become frustrated. What I would like to encourage us to do is to have a different relationship with our travel, one that is less about everything has to go perfect and more a simultaneous change of number one, lower the stakes. Not everything has to be perfect. In fact, things are gonna go wrong and we're just gonna laugh. That's life. And at the same time, when things go right, they should be magical. I am not on this planet to sit here and go to some museum I don't care about 'cause everybody else told me, you should go see the museum. I don't care. I'm perfectly happy saying I'm not interested in that right now. On the other hand, there are things that I am deeply interested in To the point where it's weird. Like, other people go, what the fuck's wrong with this guy? That's perfectly fine. I love them. That's why, for example, when I went to Tokyo, I created a special bespoke tour by a local person who lives in Kyoto. And I said, these are the things that I'm interested in, and I want you to craft an experience for me. She encouraged me, I think we should go to a temple. It's really important so you understand some of the aesthetics that we're going to show. I said, if you really, really believe that we have to do it in order to understand this experience, fine. But frankly, I'm not interested in temples at this point. And we didn't go. Remember, your money is good money. You get to choose what you want to see and experience. In order to have amazing trips, we never just land at a place and then start looking online to see what we should do. My wife and I plan our trips usually 12 to 18 months ahead of time. And what that means is We will create blocks of when we are going to travel, and we have a general idea, a document of ideas of where we wanna go. So every December we're doing a rich life review and we are saying, okay, this is how many trips we'd like to take. Here's who we would like to bring, and here are the kind of places we would like to go. Of course, we need to look at the numbers and see if all of those things are possible, but we always start with the vision. Like, what if? Wouldn't it be cool if? And then we work on the logistics later. In terms of planning, usually planning a major trip like a 2 to 4 week trip to Japan will probably take us 2 to 3 months, but it's really slow. We're in no rush. And I will tell you that I have a lot of pre-work already done. I already have a document of friends and family that we would like to invite to travel with us. I also have a list of hotels that I would like to stay at. I have a bookmark for virtually every country that I want to visit of things that I've been keeping track of that I would like to experience or eat there. These are all things that make travel easier, but it doesn't matter if it took me a year to plan it because I'm enjoying the process. A lot of people really do not enjoy the transit part of their vacation. Getting to the airport on time, lugging a bunch of bags, Maybe you got a car seat, security's taking a long time, and then the seat is super uncomfortable. And what I would encourage you to do is to think about, is that an important part of your trip? Because if it is, maybe you want to make it a little easier for yourself. Perhaps you want to book a car service so that you're not rushed finding parking. Perhaps you want to have something that expedites you through the security line. Perhaps you want to check your bags even though everybody tells you don't Don't check a bag. Perhaps you want to upgrade your seat because you look at your guilt-free spending and you realize, hey, we can afford this. And so we're going to land and we're going to be rested. Or you might say, look, we are going to intentionally get cheaper seats because it's going to allow us to stay for an extra day. That's also valid. It's up to you as what your rich life is, but you've got to own it. The world is not forcing you to get on a plane and go on vacation. You are choosing to, so make the trade-offs, make them explicit, agree if you're doing it together, and then own it. The first question I ask when I am planning a magical trip is never, how much is this trip gonna cost? But rather, what do we want this trip to feel like? Is it relaxing? Is it adventurous? Is it family or relationship-based? What is it? Because that determines everything else. Remember, you can have a very, very inexpensive trip and have it be adventurous. You can also have a very, very expensive trip and have it be super relaxing. Cost and experience are slightly correlated, but not as much as you would think. In other words, decide on what you want to feel first, and the money part comes way down the road. A lot of people make the common mistake of defaulting into generic vacation mode. This is like when the financial industry asks people, what are your financial goals? And then all these people who have just been talking like normal people, suddenly they go like this. My financial goals are actually to retire quite diligently, and I would like to save at least 4 to 5%. Shut up! That's not your goal. Nobody even talks about goals. That's not how people think. And yet when you go on vacation, you suddenly turn into default vacation person who feels they need to see all the museums and all the sights, even if you haven't been in a museum in the last 7 years. Why do you care about a museum abroad if you haven't been in a museum in your own hometown? Maybe you just don't care about museums, and that's okay. You've got to decide what you want to do, and I'm giving you permission. It is totally okay to say, we're just not interested in that, but here's what we are really interested in. What's really going on here is that when I ask people, what is your rich life? Many people are genuinely unable to answer it. Because most of us glide along through life as consumers. We do mimetically what other people do. We buy the same clothes, we buy the same car, we do the same activities. And so when we go on vacation for these rare, amazing opportunities that we have, we basically default into doing what everybody else is doing. I'm encouraging you to take this opportunity to sharpen your own knowledge of yourself. You have permission to make these trips as meaningful and magical as you want. And trust me, if you have a little bit of money to spend to hire somebody for 2 hours, they will happily take your money and share their life's work with you. If you haven't yet been able to take time to identify your real preferences, this is a great opportunity. Traveling is not just about seeing beaches. It's actually about helping you learn who you are. There's this magical phrase: We are never as American as when we are abroad. That is because when you travel, you start to reflect on yourself in ways you would never be able to do in your hometown. You start to realize things you enjoy, things you don't, things you expect, things you never noticed. And I am asking you to do that before you travel so that you can have a magical experience. Sometimes people look at my videos on traveling and they roll their eyes and go, must be nice. Oh, I realize I'm not in the same tax bracket as you. Give me something more relatable, Ramit. And I actually think that that misses the point. Sure, you may not be able to travel to the same hotels that I travel to, but what I am really trying to show you is what is possible and how to be intentional about your travel. You can be just as intentional with half the money, one-tenth the money. You just adapt the principles to your needs. For example, when I wanted to spend quality time with some couples that we know, we sent an email to them. We told them exactly where we were going to go. We told them that we wanted to spend time with them, that it was important for us, and that my vision of the trip was one big dinner together, one excursion, and then a lot of chill time on your own. And so we set the expectation We told them where we were gonna go so they could look at the hotel and see if it was someplace they wanted to go, if they could afford it, and then we told them the dates. You could do that whether it's an expensive hotel or an inexpensive hostel. You can be that intentional. And the point of money is not simply to just throw it around extravagantly on everything. It is to spend extravagantly on the things you deeply love. We've taken a lot of relaxing trips. We've gone to The beach in Thailand. We've been to a beautiful resort in Mexico and many other places in between. At a certain point, my wife and I looked at each other and when we asked ourselves, how do we wanna feel next year? We realized we wanted to feel adventure. We were healthy, we were fit, we were ready. We knew looking down the road, there are places we might not be able to visit one day. And so we said, let's do something adventurous. And we were both into it. We could just feel it. And then we said, what does adventurous mean to you? Yeah. Because adventurous could be going to the mountainside of Japan and doing a cooking class or ceramics class for 3 weeks. That's adventurous. But that wasn't what we had in mind. We kind of started talking about it. I said, I want to do something tactile, something a little physical. And she agreed. And we kind of talked about it more and more. We have a list of countries that we want to visit. And we started looking at them. And it was so obvious. She said, I think we should go to— Japan. See the gorillas in Rwanda. And I was like, yes, that's it. That would be so incredible. And I asked her, when would you want to go? What do you want to see? As we started to plan it, you start to get into some details. How long do people go to Rwanda? For example, if you're going to be in Rwanda, which is quite a trek from the US, are there other things that we want to experience while we are there? And so our trip became a very adventurous trip. We started in Rwanda. We went gorilla trekking. It was absolutely magical to be six feet from these gorillas, and they behave so similarly to humans. The little babies are running around; they're pulling everybody's hair, and they're just causing a ruckus. Then you have the adolescents who are going like this, and they're kind of like simulating being big and strong. And then you have The silverback gorillas, and for the most part they are huge, and they are just sitting there with their eyes closed, dozing. And once in a while, the young babies get too rambunctious, and the silverback opens one eye and goes, and the ground almost shakes, and the kids get quiet, and everybody knows who's in charge. So we're watching this. We have our guides with us. We're taking. Photos and videos, it is hard to believe. You feel very connected to nature. And I felt a special sense of gratitude because we had been talking about this and planning this for years. And here we are. It's surreal. It is a trip I will never forget. It is also a trip that I know I will return to. As we were walking and seeing these beautiful lush settings that we were walking through, the tea plantation that we first crossed before we got to the more jungle area, I remember thinking, this is exactly what we wanted to feel. We wanted to feel the wet grass. We wanted to be sweating. We wanted to be moving our bodies. And at that time, money was the last thing on my mind. Trip planning is just one piece of a much bigger financial picture. The real question is whether your finances are set up to support the kind of life you want. And as your money gets more complex, the stakes get higher. That is where having expert guidance can make a big difference, and it's where our partners at Facet can help. Facet offers dynamic financial planning that evolves with you, including monthly check-ins to help you stay on track with your financial and retirement goals. All Facet planners are CFP professionals and fiduciaries supported by a team of specialists. And the best part is that unlike traditional advisors who charge a percentage of your assets, which can easily equal tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars over your lifetime, Facet charges an affordable flat membership fee for financial planning. I've actually worked with the Facet team to help many couples on my podcast, especially those who are getting close to retirement, so they can understand all of their specific scenarios. If you've ever wished you had a smart team to help guide your biggest financial decisions, check them out to see if financial planning is a fit for you. Head to facet.com/ramit or click the link in the description below to learn more. That's facet.com/ramit. Now let's move on to my actual planning system. I love planning travel because I get to enjoy the trip 3 times. The first is planning it, and that's designing it in the way almost like I want to bring a piece of art to life. The next is taking the trip, and that is especially enjoyable because I'm living the things that I have been planning for months, sometimes years. And then the third surprising one is when I post photos and videos of it and I get reactions, people saying, oh my God, that's so beautiful, where is that? That allows me to relive that experience through your eyes. So travel is incredibly rewarding, and it's not just being there. It is everything surrounding it that makes it even more special. I never plan travel from a blank page. Like, if I asked you right now, hey, you're going to Bulgaria 6 months from now, what do you want to see? You'd be like, I don't know, I never thought about it. I don't have any idea of what to do in Bulgaria. When I am reading the things that I read on a daily basis, if I see something that looks interesting, I am saving it in my bookmark. Whether it is for Amsterdam or Mexico City or New Delhi, whatever city it is in, I am saving that. So when the time comes for me to plan my next trip to New Delhi, I open up my bookmark and I have hundreds of experiences and restaurants and things to see. And now I can choose from this list which of these bookmarks fits the vision of the trip that we are taking. If you don't have this, I did a little test. I went to ChatGPT and I told it, my wife and I are into design, this, that, et cetera. This is how old we are. This is what we care about. This is what we don't. Gimme a 5-day itinerary in New York City, what you would suggest. And I wanted to test it because I know New York really well. And it came back, it was like 80% good. It was a great place to start. It had a couple of restaurants that I thought were solid. It suggested a couple of hotels that were pretty good. Where I think it missed is that it did not give me something that would be ultra memorable for years to come. And that is what I am looking for when I travel. I don't care about a fine restaurant, a fine hotel. I don't care about that. It's just generic. When I'm traveling, I am looking for the different ends of the curve, almost like a barbell. I'm looking for an incredible restaurant, and it could be somebody cooking in a back alley, or it could be a super high-end restaurant. I am looking for something that is personally relevant to me, like a textile shop because I love textiles, and one where the owner will give me a tour behind the scenes of how they acquire their textiles. I am not looking for the middle ground. That's not what I'm interested in. I'm looking for the barbell, the things that are incredibly memorable. Could be cheap, could be expensive, could be high-end, low-end, could be close, far. I'm looking for the things that are gonna make me remember. What are your invisible scripts about traveling? I bet you have a bunch you've never even realized. It might be that we don't have enough time, it's going to be too expensive, or we're going to come back tired and need a vacation from the vacation. Or maybe the idea is I am frustrated because I see other people taking these trips and we can't take trips the same way. We have 3 kids, we don't have enough money, we don't have enough time, etc. Or is your script, I'm easy, I'm easygoing, whatever. I actually just like to wander around and see whatever's interesting. Or perhaps is it, I don't want to go to the tourist places. I want to go where the locals go. I think it's really important for you to interrogate your own invisible scripts, these deeply held beliefs that you have, because they show up in what you do on your travel. For example, when I see people who book things minute by minute for For 10 hours a day, I usually get the sense that there is scarcity involved, that they have an invisible belief. This is the only time we're gonna be here, so we gotta see everything. Maybe. But what if you change that invisible script to, we are gonna go here, we're gonna have an incredible trip, and if we love it, we can always come back? That would dramatically change your experience. It would change your itinerary, and it would definitely change the way you feel. Feel about this trip? When you are planning your trip, this is the time to dream, not to immediately shut yourself down by coming up with reasons that it's too expensive or too unrealistic or we don't have the time for it. No, this is actually the time to encourage yourself and optionally your partner to say, what if it were even more magical? Wouldn't it be cool if— what would you do if we could do anything And really get those juices flowing. A lot of times people are afraid to do this because they think if they open the door to this type of conversation that they are then going to let themselves or their partner down if they can't actually deliver on it. That's the wrong way to look at this. There's actually connective power in being able to dream together. It doesn't mean you have to do everything that you brainstorm about but just putting ideas out there And then the two of you, if you're planning this in a partnership, decide on what makes sense for your vision, for your level of affordability, for your time. That is actually the magic of the whole thing. I find that people who have started on their personal finance journey sometimes do not know when they have done enough. Like they'll constantly ask, what did I miss? Uh, I need to read 10 more subreddits. What about this one obscure thing that might happen? And it doesn't feel good to constantly worry that you got something wrong. That is exactly why we created Road to $100K. For most people, reaching your first $100,000 invested is a massive financial milestone. It's often the point where you stop feeling like you are guessing because you can finally see that the decisions you've made are really starting to add up. Inside Road to $100K, you will get a personalized path Based on your actual numbers, not generic advice. You'll see exactly where you stand today, what's holding you back, and what to focus on next. You will also get access to live coaching and a community of people working towards the same goal. If you are ready to start making real progress towards $100,000 invested, scan the QR code on screen or click the link below to learn about Road to 100K. Let's talk about. Time and how to avoid being booked minute to minute to minute for your entire trip. I understand the temptation, and I have to admit, I've done this myself. Early on in our relationship, my wife used to plan our travel itineraries. Once we were in Bangkok and we had been out all day and we were gonna come home and take a nap before we went out for a nighttime food tour. And things ran late and we ended up coming back. There was no time to take a nap. So we get back to the hotel room, we change our clothes, and then the food tour starts. And I remember being so irritable. Like, here we are, we're eating some of the best food in the world. Our travel guide was perfectly nice, and I had a terrible food tour. It wasn't her, it wasn't the city, it was me. I was not at my best. I was really, really irritated. Like, we're supposed to be having fun, and I'm sweating, and I don't enjoy any of this. And she took the feedback. But then something really funny happened because we were planning our next trip and she goes, hey, can you take care of Thursday? Because like, I'm busy and can you just handle the Thursday part of the trip? I said, no problem. Thursday comes around on that trip and I go, OK, here's what we're going to do today. And she just looks at me like— I had packed that freaking day from morning to night the exact same way that she had done it. And I realized at that exact moment, like, oh my God. It's me. The person traveling often does the very thing that they themselves don't want to experience, which is from the comfort of their home, they go, oh, that would be cool. That would be cool. Let's do that. It's like eating at a buffet. It all seems free to you. I'll take that. I'll take that. But the problem is you actually have to do that. And you are simply choosing like a checklist instead of saying, what is the experience that we want to create? And this actually opened up an amazing conversation For my wife and me, where we talked about what is our travel style, what do we want to feel? And we then created a new guideline for ourselves, which was we're gonna do one major activity per day. That might be a food tour, it might be going to see something, one major thing. You know what it is now? It's one every 2 days. That actually allows us to have so much open time. Now that rule works specifically for us because we tend to be taking longer trips. If we were going somewhere for 4 days and we said one major thing every 2 days, I don't know, that's not really seeing a lot when you're all the way across the world. Some of our best travel memories have come from completely unscheduled time. We are not afraid of being unproductive when we travel. I love it. I find that when people think about just sitting around their hotel or just sometimes wandering, they go like, oh, I'm supposed to be doing something. I'm here. This is the only time we're going to be here. The way I think about it is I am recuperating. I'm rejuvenating. It's almost like when I'm sitting at home watching hours of TV, I don't feel lazy. I don't feel guilt. I know that like a lion who's sitting and relaxing in the sun, when time calls for me to be active and to deliver, I'm going to be ready. So when we travel, we decide ahead of time how often we want to give ourselves time Just to recover. Now, if you're taking a 7-day trip, you're going to adapt this for your own needs. You might decide that 2 of the days we're going to have a late start in the morning so everybody can just chill and do their own thing. That I've found is really, really rewarding. You might decide if you're going with your parents that every afternoon there's going to be a big block where they can come back to the hotel and take a nap before you go out for dinner. You decide. And by the way, this next part is the difference between a trip you remember forever and a trip that just feels like expensive logistics. Most people completely miss this. How I decide what's worth spending on. When I was in college, my friends and I decided to take a grand old trip to Las Vegas. And so we got on our cheap Southwest Airlines for $59 or so and flew directly to Vegas. We got on the shuttle bus from the airport, which takes you to all the different resorts or whatever. And then we're the last ones left, and the freaking bus driver gets on the mic and goes, And now for our high rollers at Circus Circus. And we're like, yo, did we just get roasted by a bus driver? What the fuck? But he was right, because that was the worst hotel in Vegas. And I know Circus Circus because that's where my parents used to take us as kids. They would take us to the cheapest casino anywhere, and they had a place for kids to play these games. They would give us $20 and say, we'll see you back in about 6 hours. Have fun. Well, guess what? We had an amazing trip. We loved it. We still joke about that bus driver and knowing that we were there with our friends. It didn't matter that there were fancier casinos with better food. We didn't care about that. We were there to hang with each other. This is why it's so important to know that just having more money does not create amazing memories. Your memories are going to be created by the feelings you have, the connection with the people you're with, And the stories that you are creating. Now, my wife and I spend a lot more now than I spent on Circus Circus back in the day, but we've also learned that there are things we don't care about. For example, we've realized we don't care about fancy restaurants when we travel. We pretty much have our evenings completely clear because we're not making reservations for restaurants. It's just not that important to us, but we will happily spend tons of money on private experiences that are really relevant to what we like. For example, we went to tour a special home that an architect had designed. Normally, if it was a room, I would walk in, I would say, oh, that's really pretty, and I would leave. We spent over an hour in this small room, and I had the chance to ask this architect about lighting design. Why did you choose these lights and not that? How do you think about the light coming in in the afternoon, but what about when it gets dark? I asked him about the texture on the walls. We asked him about his own home because he has kids. How do you design your home when you have children and things get messy? So this was over an hour just in one tiny room, and this might seem insane to you. You're like, I'm bored, I want to go see other stuff. Perfect. Your rich life should confuse other people because true luxury is about getting Exactly what you want in a way that you couldn't even possibly imagine. Sometimes you choose not to experience what everybody else tells you to do because you realize you're not interested in it. When we were in Morocco, what do you know about Morocco? What do people do there? They go to see rugs. I've looked at Moroccan rugs. I'm not into them. I don't love the design. I much prefer Persian rugs or Indian design. So when we were offered multiple times to go look at different rug stores, I knew, not into it. I'm gonna skip that. Can you imagine going to Morocco and not going to see how the rugs are made? I can, because that's exactly what I did. On the other hand, I went much deeper on different parts of that experience. I went to a textile store and got a coat made based on looking at all the different thread colors they had, choosing that one, seeing how they had people on the loom making these different different clothing pieces and then choosing my coat. I now have that coat and it feels incredibly meaningful to wear it knowing I saw how it was made. I went to a beautiful hotel and I took the general manager out for a walk and I asked him to tell me about the property. How was this property created? How did you staff it? How do you deliver the same service that you would deliver in India here in Morocco? Sounds freakishly weird, I know, but these are the things I love and your rich life should be doing more of the things you love. Here's how I save for these magical trips without feeling guilty. If I know that a trip is going to cost, let's say, $12,000 next year, and I'm going to go 1 year from now, then I divide by 12 and I automatically put aside $1,000 per month into a dedicated travel account. And I actually name that account, for example, Japan 2027 or Family Italy Trip. That way, by the time we get to take that trip, We already have saved for it. In fact, I intentionally oversave because I never want to be on vacation wondering if we can afford to have gelato when we're on this trip. Now, how do you know how much it's going to cost? When you are first beginning your plan, you can actually come up with a number in about 10 minutes that's 85% accurate. The way you do this is you tackle the major cost drivers. For most people, those are flights and accommodations, and then there's some daily excursion or eating cost. But in general, if you get the flight part and the hotel part, that covers most of what your trip might entail. Over time, we have developed simple guidelines for how much we spend on a daily basis. This is really common, for example, in luxury travel. People will often ask luxury travel advisors, hey, how much should I plan to spend? And they basically say, you know, about $1,000 to $2,000 per person per day. Used to be $1,000 pre-COVID. Now it's about $2,000 per person per day because hotel rates have gone way up. But that's actually really helpful to know whatever the number is for you, that over time you will be able to just approximate it by how many days you are going to stay. And remember, for most people, it is not anywhere near $2,000 per person per day. That's at a luxury level. Most people are not spending that much on hotels. Now, I noticed that a lot of people have a very peculiar way of spending money, and that is throughout the year they will spend on things randomly that they barely care about. Hey everybody, let's get this cool Tide Pod, it's so awesome! And then they become hyper frugal when they are vacationing on the very thing that they have been talking about for months and months. I don't know if we can get that Dole Whip. Oh, honey, that's just too much for us. Why are you here? And why do you spend all this money mindlessly on things you don't even care about for 11.9 months of the year? And then when you're here with Dole Whip, you become this grumpy old guy. It's always guys too at Disney. Why are we here? Oh, I hate my wife. What is this bullshit? No, we actually want to focus on spending extravagantly on the things we love. And if you have travel as one of your money dials, then it's important for you to make your money match that. That means not only are you going to plan, but you're actually going to overplan and oversave so that when you're there, you can have a sense of ease and abundance. And one of the biggest rich life principles is using systems so that you can spend guilt-free. You don't have to feel guilty buying this dinner when you're traveling because you know you are automatically saving, you're automatically investing, and you manage your fixed costs Carefully. That is why I always encourage people to get my conscious spending plan and know your numbers. You can grab that conscious spending plan right here. The secret to making a trip unforgettable. I had a really magical experience in my money coaching program. One of my students asked me this question, hey, I'm taking this trip with my family to Mexico and I want to do something extra special, but I just don't know what to do. Here's what I told them. You have the money, you have the opportunity to create an unforgettable trip, and the way you do it is by being thoughtful. So the trip starts the second that your parents leave their house. That is why you are going to arrange a car pickup for them, and a nice car, a black car. So they're going to go outside, and for the first time ever, they're going to get in a black car. It's going to feel like, whoa, wow, this, this is kind of special. Okay. And then when they get to the airport, you're gonna have somebody waiting at the airport to help them with their bags. This is an international trip. They're not accustomed to it. They're not used to having to use their passports. No problem. You've spent $100, $150. It's not that expensive to have somebody greet them. When they arrive in Mexico, first time there, they're gonna be a little bewildered. What's happening? Oh, I don't know where to go. Not a problem, 'cause you have somebody there with a sign with their name, Waiting to greet them. They take them to their SUV. In the SUV, they have cold water, they have beers if they want it, cold towels. And the driver, very professional, uniformed, tells them, it'll be 25 minutes until we get to the resort. As they arrive at the resort, they can't believe it. They feel comfortable. They're not sweating like they expected. And somebody helps them with their bags and they go, no, no, I can take it. And you've reminded them before, Let them help. So they walk hands-free into a hotel. They're already greeted because the front desk knows who they are. They say, Mr. and Mrs. Sethi, welcome. We've been expecting you. In fact, we have a welcome drink for you here. They've got all their information. They say, we have a note for you from your daughter, and here it is. It's a handwritten note. You've left it for them. And you say, Mom, there's a spa appointment waiting for you. They'll take you there right now. Dad, we're over by the pool. They're going to bring you over to us right now. This is just the first few minutes of them being on this trip, and it has already become something like they've never experienced before. Over the next few days, you have leisurely breakfasts, no rush. You have a cooking class at one point where everybody gets their hands dirty, and you're making this and you eat it. You have a photographer set up to take pictures because these are rare moments where the entire family is together, and you want these photos captured. Professionally with these beautiful high-res photos. At dinner, you have stories. Everybody tells a story about something that you have already thought about. You have photos of each of them when they were younger. Yeah, tell us about this story. What were you wearing here? What kind of clothes did people wear in the '70s? You're asking them. And you are remembering and creating new memories. This is more valuable than any larger hotel room. ever will do because you did not simply throw money at the problem. You actually were thoughtful. That's what I would do. Ask for what you want. Now, I first want to say you don't have to be an asshole when you ask for what you want. You can ask for what you want and be super respectful, and sometimes they can't give it to you, and that's okay as well. When I arrive at a hotel, for example, we have sent a pre-arrival letter. At the type of hotels we stay at, they actually love receiving these because it helps them serve the guess better. And we tell them, for example, hey, we're not really into wine, which typically they have a bottle of wine waiting in your room as a welcome gift. We much prefer berries or some local fruit. Amazing, we're asking. Now, sometimes they don't have local fruit, fine, but at least we know what we like and we're gonna respectfully ask. Here's the principle: if you don't shape the experience yourself, you will usually end up with a mediocre version of of what everybody else does. You have to remember that when you go on a trip, they are catering to the average traveler. Makes perfect sense. Most people by definition are average. But because you're watching my videos and you understand the concept of a rich life, you can actually be specific about what you want. As an example, one time my friend and I were taking a food tour, and the typical food tour was something like 4 hours. And so we said to them, look, We'd actually like to have this food tour be 2.5 hours. Can you make that work? It was a private tour. She goes, of course. And that's what we did. We could have ended up doing 4 hours. Oh God, another thing. And we have to be polite to this food tour person, but we actually just spoke up and told them ahead of time what we hoped we could achieve. And they were happy to do it. Every week I go deep on the real math behind a rich life. And how you can build one especially for you. Subscribe to this channel to learn how. One of my favorite travel memories is when my wife and I decided to go to Ranthambore, which is a tiger safari place in India. And because one of our core values is relationships, we decided to invite some of our family to come with us. We invited my mom and aunt, 2 sisters, to join us. And even though they were born and raised in India, They have never been there. We get on the train from New Delhi and we're already having an adventure. We bought these first-class seats and I thought first-class Delta. No, it was like first class in an Indian train, which was a sleeper car. So we're like, all right, this is not really what we expected, but they had clean sheets. We lay down, we wake up in the morning and we're like, oh, this is okay. We're close here. We walk outside and suddenly there are multiple Uniformed porters there. They take our bags, they guide us to these beautiful SUVs, and they drive us to the hotel. We were staying at the Oberoi. That's my favorite hotel brand, very high-end and ultra luxurious, especially in India. We get there, there's a greeting ceremony, and immediately we let my mom and aunt know, don't worry about the bags, they'll take care of them. We have a spa appointment for you waiting. They have their own room. It's beautiful. It's luxurious. We go out for a tiger safari the next day. That's awesome. We didn't see any tigers, unfortunately, but it was quite adventurous. We're all outside and the road is bumpy. At the resort, I pulled the chef aside one night and I said, you know, I would love to create a special dinner for my family. My wife, my mom, my aunt, they're all here. I know where they grew up and I know their favorite dishes, and I would love to create a meaningful menu based on Where they are from. He loved it. He said, "Let's sit down. Tell me where they grew up. What what's your wife's favorite dish? Paneer." He created this menu, and so I told them one night. I said, "You know what? For dinner this evening, just be ready around six thirty. I have something special for you." They were all like, "Hmm, okay. We don't really know what it's about," and we're in the middle of nowhere, so it's clear we're not going somewhere else. We are on property. We get in a golf cart, and we are driven. So where are we going? And we turn a corner, there's hundreds of candles, there's beautiful Rajasthani music that starts playing, and they greet us. And there's the chefs over in the corner, and we are taken to our table where the menu personalized for us that night is presented. And you can hear the surprise in my mom's voice, my aunt's voice, my wife's voice. The memory that I will never forget is my aunt saying, why did you do this for us? And I thought to myself, like, this is the whole point of money. And to be able to create these magical experiences, to let people know that they are valued, that they are loved, that's it. That's a rich life. And if you can learn how to create one unforgettable meal, you can create one unforgettable trip. And if you can create one unforgettable trip, then you can learn how to create an unforgettable life. I want you to think about this. What is one specific thing that would make your next trip unforgettable? Not luxury, not business class, but something meaningful. Maybe it's a cooking class with your kids. Maybe it's a month in Tokyo. Maybe it's taking your parents somewhere they never imagined visiting and making it Put that in the comments. And if you want to learn how I spend extravagantly on the things I love without wasting money on the things I don't, watch this video next.