Travel Support Thursday

Welcome back to Travel Support Thursday.

We told you we'd be in Sydney, and here we are.

Yep.

Today on Travel Support Thursday,

we're answering all of your questions about eSims,

AeroLo, eSims, how to make them work,

what it's like to travel with our friends,

how to plan a trip to Europe 4.4 for free,

and this new trend called Mystery Trips.

Ooh.

Dun, dun, dun.

Let's get into it.

Let's talk about that.

All right, what's our first thing today?

All right.

Let's talk about AeroLo.

So we got this question from taketothehighway.com3152.

Great username.

And they say, hi, guys.

I love the way we explain things at a level

I can understand.

That's very nice of you to say.

I would love it if you would talk more about the eSim.

I tried purchasing AeroLo, but never could get it to work.

The instructions were horrible, agreed,

and kept telling me I needed to change all these settings

on my iPhone, so I scrapped it.

So everyone else seems to make it look so easy.

So we get this question all the time,

not just from people on YouTube, but from our friends

and our family.

We actually walked them through this whole process.

So we thought, let's do it live here.

So we're just going to do this live.

We're just going to buy a new eSim.

We're heading to New Zealand in a couple of days anyway,

so we're just going to buy that eSim right now,

show you the entire process from start to finish.

And for those of you on podcasts who are just listening,

we're just going to describe everything that's happening.

But if you want to see it, come over to YouTube

to check it out.

I think the first thing to check here

is whether or not your phone is compatible with eSim.

So one, your phone has to be unlocked.

And if you're not sure if it's unlocked, just look

on the internet for, is my phone unlocked?

And it'll tell you how to check for whatever phone you've got.

And two, whether your phone has eSim compatibility.

So if you have any iPhone made in like the past three,

maybe four years, definitely eSim compatible.

And if you have an Android phone,

I think made in the past five or six years,

all of those are going to be eSim compatible.

So if you keep saying this word eSim

and you have no idea what we're talking about,

quick primer for that, it's just a little piece of software

that replaces that little chip that you

used to have to put in your phone.

You know what I'm talking about?

The eSim card that you'd like, AT&T would give you or whatever

and you'd get it into your phone.

Sometimes you use a bobby pin or an earring

if you have one spare.

Right, to bob it out.

Instead of that, what they figured out

is that you don't actually need that little chip at all

to connect to cell phone carriers.

You can just install a piece of software.

And then bam, you'll be able to connect.

And what AeroLo does, this service that we're talking about

is you can buy an eSIM for any country on planet Earth.

And it'll get you a data connection no matter where you are.

Some places are better than others, for sure.

But for the most part, it's been pretty handy.

I think we used to be the kind of travelers

that whenever we got to a new country,

we would get off the plane, search around

for physical sims at the airport,

or look around for the best deal.

But AeroLo has made it so much more easy

because you don't have to go looking for a physical sim.

And the prices, while they may be a little bit more expensive

than a physical sim, they're pretty comparable,

maybe by a dollar or two more.

Pays for the convenience, I think.

Yeah, and in Australia, for example,

it was about half to a third of the cost

of actually buying a physical sim.

So it depends on where you go.

But it's great, the convenience is the number one thing

you don't have to ask anyone or give anyone your passport

and you can get cell phone data.

Anyway, enough of that.

All right, let's get started.

So I'm screen recording on my iPhone 12 mini,

which as it turns out, is a very rare phone

because it was really hard to find a phone case for this.

But this has eSIM compatibility.

So I am opening up the AeroLo app, dun dun dun.

Ooh, they're offering me $3 off your next eSIM,

if I refer you.

It says hello, Lisa.

So you'll see once you download the AeroLo app

and you open it up and sign up,

all these popular countries are listed.

We're searching for New Zealand.

We're going to New Zealand, yay!

And search New Zealand, these are all the different options

that you have for eSIMs.

So one gig of data for seven days is $4.50 US,

which is pretty great.

Two gigs for 15 days is $8.50.

Three gigs for a whole month is $11 USD.

So we're going to be there for about three weeks

and I'm imagining we're going to need a little bit more data

than most people because of the podcast and different things.

But for the most part, we use data,

I don't know how to get around.

Three gigs will do it.

Yeah.

I think three gigs a day.

So I'm going to pick the three gigs for 30 days,

click buy now, and they will of course try to upsell you

with any top-up packages.

Know that whatever you buy,

you can always top up later if you run out.

So you'll choose your payment method

and you can use your Visa, credit card, anything like that.

You can even use Apple Pay.

You agree to their conditions and their policies

and you complete the order.

Okay, so that's the easy part, right?

Like giving them the money is the easy part.

For sure.

And now we're going to show you the actual,

now we're going to show you and talk through

the installation of the actual piece of software

that makes it work.

What I usually do is scroll through

and click install eSIM and that will tell my phone

to activate the eSIM.

So basically as soon as you install it,

that means your 30 days starts now.

We normally buy that eSIM the day before we leave

or while we're at the airport before we get on the flight

to actually head to whatever new country we're going to.

We're doing this one a couple of days in advance

just to show you how it all works,

but generally that's how we do it.

And as soon as you activate it,

that's when your countdown timer starts

of how many days you've got.

But it's so cheap that if you run over

or you run out of data,

you can just top it up with another $10 or whatever.

Way cheaper than the other option

which is paying like five to $10 per day

for Verizon data on their international plan.

So right now we're seeing the activate eSIM screen

which is built into whatever operating.

It'll look different if you're on Android or not,

but you just click continue to activate the eSIM

and then it'll just take a little while to activate.

So it looks like it's been activated.

Now, I usually try to take a screenshot

of this access data step two.

The eSIM is pretty good at finding the network

that you need to connect to as soon as you turn it on.

So you don't really have to do anything,

but it's nice to have this information

in case you need to change any settings

in your cellular network setting.

It says network is up the was.

That's just the name of the network.

You don't have to set anything with that,

but the two things you do have to do are set the APN

which is just a little piece of information

that you just put into your cell phone settings

that we'll show you in a second.

And then you have to turn data roaming to on.

What we're gonna do is we are gonna head to the settings app.

All right, then we're gonna head down to cellular.

Tap on that.

Look at how many eSIMs I have.

Scroll down to your new one which is called personal

and you can rename it to whatever you want.

So I'm gonna rename this to New Zealand.

And then in the settings here,

you're going to see a cellular data network.

And remember how we had to change that?

So tap cellular data network.

Great.

And global data and then check that that's correct

from what was in the app.

Yeah, it looks like a global data.

So then you're all good to go there.

And then all you gotta do is tap on data roaming.

Little box at the bottom and you're done.

That's it.

So all you gotta do once you land in the new country

is click into the one that you want on

and then make sure that it's turned on,

turn on this line and then make sure that you go to the one

that you don't want on and you just turn it off.

That's all you gotta do and then the one eSIM is on,

the rest of them are off.

And then you'll just be using the data

that you purchased on AeroLo instead

of the super expensive roaming data

that you might have with whatever your normal SIM card is.

Hopefully that makes it more clear for you again.

If you wanted to see all those instructions,

just come on over to YouTube

and you'll be able to see that step by step.

I hope our vocal descriptions were good enough

to get you there.

Next up, a little bit about future planning,

a little bit about our lives here.

So you quit your job to make a YouTube channel,

but this is barely covering your costs.

Stings a little bit, stings a little bit.

I mean, correct, correct.

It is very accurate.

Out of curiosity, how do you plan your future?

Big question, very big question.

For instance, any plans to grow the family

or while you're doing the YouTube channel,

are you saving for your retirement?

Are you just living present time without further planning?

There's a lot to unpack here

and sometimes I only can think three hours ahead at a time.

So, you know, this is good though.

This is good.

It's helping us think actively about the future.

Yes, I'm glad we could talk about this.

I'm glad we could talk about this in front of a camera.

In Sydney, Australia.

Okay, so I think objectively,

this is kind of talking about risk in our lives,

like how much risk we want to take on.

And what we're actively doing to try mitigate those risks.

Sure, sure.

Let's speak in more simple language.

I would just say, people are just asking,

how are you doing this?

And how are you planning for the future

if you're actively not making money and saving?

All right, all right, okay.

So I would say, first of all,

when we were working our jobs a couple of years ago,

which feels like a lifetime ago at this point, pre-COVID,

when we worked a bunch,

we saved up as much money as we possibly could

to give ourselves as much runway as we possibly could,

like monetary runway,

to be able to do this life that we're doing right now.

We just cut out everything extra that we possibly could.

We didn't even have a car for a very long time.

Cut out everything extra that we could,

just to save up for this one thing.

And at the time, this one thing

was actually just quitting our jobs

to travel for as long as we possibly could.

We weren't even thinking about

making a YouTube channel at that point.

And this was like 2019.

And I think we were also fortunate enough at the time

to be at jobs where we could siphon away money

for future retirement and future savings.

We worked at larger companies that had 401Ks or 403Bs.

So that way, when we were saving

in our personal lives for this trip,

we were also saving for future retirement.

So the nice thing is, I guess,

I feel a little bit better after last week's conversation

because I know that we have spent

a significant amount of time before this

stocking away for the future.

Future, future.

Future, future.

Double future.

So we took all that money that we had saved away,

which is enough at that point in time for like,

we stocked away like $70,000 or $80,000

that we had saved up for a ton of years.

Like both of us independently,

before we'd even met, we're saving up money.

We didn't really know what for.

And then we were all like,

now we know what we wanna do

after we met each other and fell in love.

And then, so then we took that money,

which was enough for about two to two and a half years

of our normal living,

because we generally don't spend that much money.

Just normally in life, we spend like $25,000 to $30,000

per year, just existing, so.

Which seems like a lot, right?

Yeah, yeah, but I don't know.

I think that's low for a lot of people.

I don't know, like for two people to be, to be, I don't know.

Existing.

So we took that money and we had a couple of years of runway

and we thought, all right, we're young-ish.

We're gonna try to do something different

with our lives at this point in time.

We're gonna try something.

So we thought that that thing was gonna be travel

and then COVID came along and totally destroyed those plans.

And we're like, instead of that,

we're gonna start a YouTube channel.

And we're not the only people

to have had that idea during COVID at all.

Thousands of channels started over COVID.

So yes, we quit our jobs,

not necessarily to make this YouTube channel.

That wasn't the original intention.

But we did quit our jobs

without intending to go back to work soon.

Like we thought when we left our jobs

that we were going to go back to work at some point,

but it was gonna be a couple of years

after our runway that we'd saved up would run out.

Well, yeah.

Well, yeah.

So for the past like three years

since we started this channel,

for two and a half of those years,

YouTube was covering basically none of our costs.

Absolutely zero of them,

but I think that that's normal for any new business venture

that anyone would start.

I think YouTube has a slower uptake

than probably like opening up a cookie shop

or something like that, right?

Like you can immediately sell a product.

Tangible thing.

Yeah, if you have something.

I mean, it takes a while to come up with the branding

and the idea and maybe get a kitchen to cook into it,

whatever, but I think the uptake

for that sort of business is faster than YouTube.

And I think YouTube is actually one of the slower businesses

to see revenue out of in any real form.

So we knew that this was gonna take a long time

and probably longer than most other businesses.

And I don't even know that we decided

until maybe the end of year one

that we were going to keep doing YouTube

and try to even turn it into a business, right?

Like we started this thing as a,

let's take a one year honeymoon,

let's document our travels.

Hey, YouTube's pretty fun to do it while we travel

and maybe we can share some tips and tricks along the way.

Maybe we can help other people travel along the way.

And then I think around the end of year one,

we thought, hmm, this could go somewhere.

And so I think to answer the question of,

are we actively saving?

No.

No, no.

I mean, we were fortunate enough in our past lives

and our past jobs to have been able to save some,

actually a chunk for retirement in the future.

But right now we're cutting into the non-retirement savings

to try and make this business work.

You know, it was certainly a risk

to start this thing under the assumption

that we'd make any money off of it.

And to be honest, we're fully surprised that we are.

I would say it's still pretty baffling.

It's exciting and baffling that we're in the position now

where this is our full-time jobs.

What, we get to sit here?

In front of that thing?

In front of the harbor under these beautiful trees

looking at the skyline and the water, podcasting,

and making videos about travel.

It's pretty cool.

It's hard to explain how lucky we feel

without sounding like pandering.

Yeah.

You know, because I think it can very easily come across

from that of like, oh yeah, we're so,

but genuinely we feel like this whole thing is crazy.

And it's all just kind of happened very recently.

All of that to say, you know,

to answer this question a little bit more concretely,

while you're doing YouTube,

are you saving for retirement?

Are you just living present time

without further planning?

I think it's more the latter.

We have definitely planned for the future in the past,

luckily, but currently we're living presently

and we've decided to kind of go all in

on this YouTube channel and this business

with the hope that eventually

we'll be able to save in the process.

It's important to note that right now,

no, we are not currently putting away any money for retirement.

We don't make enough money to be able to do that.

We're just, we're at the point now

where we're almost covering all of our costs,

including like the cost of making these videos

and the equipment and the editing and everything else

that we have to do and our cost of living at home

and just existing.

So between the two of those things,

we're like losing a little bit of money every single month,

but we certainly aren't like making a profit

from any of this yet.

The hope is that someday we will.

And I think for now, yeah, it's a weird,

it's weird to think about that now

because past Lisa, pre-YouTube,

pre-travel Lisa was very risk averse,

very much like sock things away,

don't spend what you don't have,

always have tons and tons of room for, you know,

for emergencies, which I'm not saying that we don't,

we do, luckily we're fortunate that we do,

but in this present moment,

we've decided to live very presently and say,

this is what we're focusing on,

this is what we're going all in on.

Or I think starting a channel like this

and freeing up enough time to actually make it work,

I think is a higher risk undertaking

than most people would be comfortable with,

with their personal finances.

And we're also in a unique position

to even be able to consider it like our family is healthy.

For example, we're healthy, we're generally people,

we're generally healthy people, right?

Like we had pretty good jobs before

that allowed us to save up enough money

to even give this a try.

We even had the opportunities in the beginning

to even know enough about computers in the first place

to even give this a shot.

We had fast enough internet connections.

We don't take any of that for granted.

You know, you can't take it, that's such a leg up

in so many different ways that allowed us

to really give this thing a real shot.

That I think without any of those,

this would be obviously a very different story.

Very different story.

So for now, yeah, this is our current future.

You know, we're gonna keep doing this.

We're living in the future.

We technically are for those of you that are in the US.

We're in tomorrow.

It's looking pretty bright.

But yeah, for now, this is our plan.

We are going to keep traveling

and making these YouTube videos,

making these video podcasts, answering your questions.

And give somebody else a trip around the world

in the process.

That would be cool.

We're not there yet.

So we're just kind of taking it day by day

until we do get there.

That wasn't so bad talking about the future.

Yes, sure.

Every time I bring something like that,

I'm definitely more of like a future planner,

I think, between the two of us.

Every time I bring this up, Lisa just gives me like the...

Give me like five minutes to prepare, please.

And she has to be in like the right mood to talk about this.

I don't know if any of you guys

have someone in your life like this

where you can only have real conversations

when like the sun is in the correct position

or like the phase of the moon is right

or just like it's been a quiet, calm morning

and now we can have a real conversation.

I would have had to wake up already,

check my Instagram feed at least three times,

brush my teeth, have my coffee.

All right, there's this whole ritual.

There's a lot of different things that, you know,

I need to see the sun, feel it on my skin for a little bit

and then we can talk about anything past today.

Okay, all right, moving on.

This question, this is a question I have been waiting for.

Ooh, yeah.

For so long, for so long.

Okay, Janellers6321 says,

you asked for a specific travel need question.

We're taking our two college kids on a cruise in June.

Awesome.

Have plenty of time to book,

but hoping to figure out the best way to use points

to figure out where to fly from or to.

Need a cost-effective way to get from San Antonio

to Europe and back in the summer.

That's, yep, we're gonna find something.

We're for sure gonna find something.

Summer time in Europe, we've all been there.

Yep, cruise leaves Barcelona June 22nd,

ends in Athens, July 6th,

have a few 100,000 chase points and 200K Hilton points,

looking to open another car in a couple months,

open to positioning flights.

Awesome flexibility is always appreciated,

traveling by car, train to leverage a cheaper airport.

But basically the onus of this question

is how do we get to and from Europe,

hopefully for free or as close to free

as we possibly can. For four people.

For four people next summer so we can make it to our cruise.

And I have been waiting for this question.

I have just been. I mean, as soon as this came up,

Josh's face, I wish I could, he was the party emoji.

He was the party emoji, like, yes, this is the one.

Finally, you get to go into the matrix.

This is what I've been waiting for, okay.

So I'm just going to do this live right now.

I'm just going to connect to a, do you have a?

Aero Lo.

Yeah, can you turn on your, that new Aero Lo we just bought.

Turn that on and I'm just going to connect to that.

I'm just going to do this live

and I'm going to talk through every single step

as soon as Lisa's done taking a picture of this pigeon.

Thank you both.

I didn't know we were going to have an audience.

Okay, sorry.

Okay, so turn on that hotspot

and I'm just going to do this thing live.

Okay.

I'm going to talk through all of my thought process

of how I think about this,

of how we actually make this booking work

and then hopefully at the end of this,

we will have found you the perfect flight.

I break this down into three distinct steps here.

One is narrowing it down.

So this is taking the idea of like,

okay, we could look at every single flight

by every single company doing any number of hops

and we're going to narrow it down

to just the handful of flights

that we want to investigate further.

And then two is going to be matching

those couple of flights up to the points

that you have available to you

and the companies that you have available to you to book with.

And then third is going to be deciding

on which is the best one to go with.

Okay, so where I'd start here,

and if you're watching this on YouTube,

you'll see a big like screen share thing.

If you're just listening to this,

I'll describe it in as much detail as I can

without hopefully getting overwhelming.

Okay, so I'm going to start with Google flights

on the explore tab.

And what this does is this allows me to search

from one airport to anywhere in Europe

for nonstop only flights.

And we're going to search for nonstop only flights

because those are generally the cheapest

to get using points.

I didn't know that.

Okay, generally, not always, but generally.

And are we looking just to like,

see how much things cost or just what exists?

Yeah, we're looking to see what's not booked out already

and Google flights will tell us that, right?

It'll tell us what's availability.

The price is kind of secondarily important to us.

We're mostly looking for what flights exist

in which companies run them.

That's what we're trying to figure out.

Okay, so we're looking for San Antonio to Europe.

Let's say like June 14th to July 10th next year.

It's just a couple of days on either side

of what you wanted and filter by nonstop.

And okay, so there's literally no nonstop flights

from San Antonio.

Whoops.

So we're probably not flying directly out of San Antonio.

So you might be driving or taking the train.

Are there trains?

You might be driving or taking the train.

Having a friend drop you off at the airport.

A friend drop you off

or maybe taking a small connecting flight

from San Antonio to maybe to Austin or Houston

or maybe Dallas.

Yeah, I think any of those

will probably be able to find something.

Okay, looking next, Austin.

It looks like there's a flight

from Austin to Frankfurt on the dates you want.

London is via a British Airways flight

like actually operated by British Airways,

which means it's going to have super huge award fees.

And this is just something that I know

from booking a lot of these in the past.

A partner award flight with British Airways,

which is spending British Airways miles

to book a flight with one of their partners

like Iberia or American Airlines.

So essentially transferring your points

to book on a different airline?

It's not transferring them,

you are spending British Airways miles

to book a flight on a different airline.

Didn't know you could do that.

And they allow this

because they're all part of the same alliance.

There's like one world,

which is the alliance that we're talking about right now.

And then there's also Star Alliance,

which is United and Singapore Airlines

and a bunch of other airlines.

And then there's also Star Team, Star Sky.

And then there's also Sky Team, the Delta one

that I don't book very often

because I don't really like Delta miles

because they're not really all that valuable.

Anyway, moving on, that's the basics of a partner flight

and that's probably what we're going to end up doing.

Back to Austin, you can fly to London,

you can fly to Frankfurt.

We're going to ignore the London one

because it's on British Airways.

The Lufthansa to Frankfurt is interesting,

but generally those are kind of expensive flights.

So let's see, this Virgin Atlantic to London could work out

because we're not on British Airways, right?

We'd be just on Virgin Atlantic

and that would have less fees.

That could be interesting.

Okay, so let's look at Dallas,

bring that up on Google flights.

Okay, there's a billion options here, right?

There's direct American Airlines flights

because it's a hub,

but you don't have a good way

to get American Airlines miles right now.

There is this Iberia flight,

which I find very interesting

because that would get you straight to Madrid.

And that's right next to Barcelona.

So you could just take a train over there.

That's kind of convenient.

You could take an Air France flight to Paris,

Croissant sound good, tons of options.

Okay, it looks like we've got some good options.

We're going to move on to Houston, load that up.

Okay, yeah, there's way more United Star Line stuff

and there's a Singapore Airways flight.

Who knew?

Why does Singapore Airways fly from Houston to Manchester?

Yeah, normally when you think of like Singapore Airlines,

you think, oh, they're going to and from Singapore.

Yeah, or other Southeast Asian places,

but that one's cool.

I learned something here.

This is great airline.

It's a direct flight.

Oh, they're awesome.

They're awesome.

Okay, so I think like narrowing it down in my head,

the most interesting options that I see

are this Dallas to Madrid on Iberia,

because I think that'll be pretty cheap on points

and there won't be a lot of fees.

This Austin to Frankfurt on Lufthansa,

this Austin to London on Virgin Atlantic.

And I just want to see what's up

with that Houston to Manchester flight,

just to see if it exists.

Okay, so now we've narrowed it down, right?

We've narrowed it down from every flight on planet earth

to just these four flights that we want to look into, right?

So now we got to figure out roughly

how much these things are going to cost.

And the tool for that is called a Ward Hacker.

Okay, so what a Ward Hacker does is you'll pull it up

and you'll type in where you're flying from,

where you're flying to,

and then it'll just bring up every airline's award chart

and it'll tell you how many points it would cost

with that airline.

Okay, so it looks like 30K from Dallas to Madrid

on Virgin Atlantic.

That's very interesting.

30K, that's pretty good.

Not bad, not bad.

There's also British Airways option there, cool.

32 and a half thousand on Iberia,

I think very interested in that one.

There's this Dallas to Paris on Virgin.

We might want to start there.

That seems kind of good.

Austin to Frankfurt doesn't look like a thing,

like that's really 70K points.

I think that's outside of how much we want to spend.

London has potential.

And that Singapore Airways flight,

it's hard to tell,

we'll just have to check that right on their website.

Okay, so we know roughly that we're looking

between like 30 to 50,000 points per person

to be able to get there, which is great,

because if you have like 200K chase miles,

chase points, we'll be able to get you

on one of these flights.

Okay.

All right, let's start with that Virgin Atlantic one.

Now that we've narrowed it down,

let's start with Austin to London for that short drive time,

and then we're gonna check on Dallas to Madrid after that.

So anytime you're searching for flights by points,

versus like by just cash or money,

generally these airlines require that you sign up

for an account with them to log in

to actually see how much these flights cost by points.

And signing up for an account doesn't really,

doesn't cost anything,

it just costs you an email and a login.

They might send you some emails every now and then

for marketing purposes,

but it is your way to kind of just log in and see,

hey, how much does this cost by points?

And anytime you book with them, you're accruing points.

So we actually have quite a long list of

every airline in the world, basically.

Yeah, accounts with these airlines,

just so that we know how much these flights cost.

Yeah, all right.

So we are on Virgin Atlantic site now, typing Austin.

Oh, howdy Austin.

They knew I was coming, knew I was coming.

Okay, I'm just gonna log in real quick.

All right, June 14th, July 12th.

Okay, yeah, that flight is there,

but oh my God, those fees, fees are brutal.

Okay, so we're seeing this flight for 40,000 points

per person round trip, not bad.

Doesn't sound bad.

Not bad, but the kicker, $2,000 in fees

for four people to fly on that.

It's an okay option, let's move on from this one though.

It's nice, it exists, right?

Like we can get there and it's cheaper than taking

a picture of a bird.

This is a pretty bird, does anyone know?

I'm gonna, what kind of bird is this?

It's a black and white crow looking, it's pretty.

Lisa is riveted by this conversation.

All right, so Dallas to Madrid,

is not available there at all, there's just no availability.

Maybe it's too early to book, it's probably just none though.

We're just stone walled with Virgin on these routes.

Okay, we're moving on.

Let's check on the British Airways option.

So this is gonna be a partner award

like we were talking about.

We're gonna be looking for not a British Airways flight.

We're gonna be looking to spend British Airways miles

to book us on a different airline.

That's what we're trying to do.

So you're logging into...

We're logging into British Airways,

which we are choosing to use

because we can transfer our chase points

that we have to there and spend British Airways miles.

That's why we're gonna look there first.

But you can search for the partner flights

through British Airways online.

Correct, correct, exactly.

So, okay, so we're logging in real quick.

Booking this flight, June 14th to July 10th,

just like we said before, to Madrid.

No stopovers or else it's gonna force us through London,

which means it'll be on a British Airways operated flight,

which means huge fees.

So we're just gonna answer no to that question.

Please wait, we're checking availability.

We won't be long.

All right, oh, here we go.

Okay, okay.

Wow, that's a great flight.

All right, let's go off for both.

So we're just gonna move that last one back

to July 9th, 46,250 avios plus 226.55 in fees per person.

That's not bad.

Not bad.

So 185,000 round trip, a little more expensive,

points-wise for the last one.

But the fees are only $906.

Sweet.

Best option so far, I think,

and it's really easy to book these on British Airways.

I think I remember there being like a transfer bonus

for Chase right now, like last time I logged in.

Two British Airways?

Yeah, yeah, let me check, let me check.

Hold the phone, hold the phone.

Do, do, do, do, do.

Oh hell yeah.

Okay, 30% bonus between August 28th and September 22nd.

So like right now, so that brings a point cost

down to like 140K.

So they're saying if you transfer your Chase points

to British Airways, you're getting extra points.

Yeah, you're getting 30% more.

So if you transferred 1,000,

you'd actually get 1,300 British Airways points

and 10,000 would be 13,000, et cetera.

Not bad.

So, okay.

I didn't know they did that.

So just doing that math.

Okay, 143,000 points instead of 185,000.

So you'd transfer 143,000 Chase miles

and you'd get 185,000 British Airways points.

That's perfect.

I mean, that's the one I think.

Leaves June 14th.

And you get to Madrid.

It's an overnighter to Madrid.

So then you can hang out, see Madrid

and then go to Barcelona.

Bingo, bingo, return July 9th on a nonstop.

You got a couple of days at the end to enjoy Athens

and then fly back.

That's awesome.

The fees aren't perfect, but they're not bad.

Okay, so, and I think it's important to note

that there's no too early to book these things, right?

Generally, you'll hear this thing like

you should book an international trip

like three months before you wanna go

and domestic like six weeks.

First of all, both of those are incorrect pieces

of information generally.

And second of all, when it comes to award flights,

you just wanna book them as soon as you're sure.

Especially if you know where you wanna go

and your dates generally and you have those points,

those award points aren't really gonna fluctuate so much

as like cash flights are going to fluctuate.

Yes.

So we've booked award point flights six months,

even a year in advance sometimes.

And because they're booked with awards and miles,

they're a lot more flexible.

So if anything should change, you could cancel

and hopefully get your points back.

Yes, yes.

Okay, so I think that's the one that I would go with.

That's exciting.

But I wanna check out the Singapore Airway flights

just to see if it exists.

I'm too curious to know.

Just to see if they serve Singaporean noodles

on this flight to you.

To Manchester.

That would be incredible.

Okay, so Houston to Manchester,

log in to Singapore Airways, blah, blah, blah.

Okay, search that on the same dates.

Well, sure, there it is.

It's only five dollars and 60 cents is fees.

That's awesome.

Per person?

Yeah.

What?

What is the point?

Oh.

So there's more fees on the return flight.

The flight out is very cheap, but the way back is not.

Still, Singapore Air is really nice.

There's no transfer bonus, so this would just cost flat out

200,000 chase miles to do.

Which is...

But this is a really nice airline.

Like I think you would have a better experience on this.

You're paying less out of pocket for the fees, right?

Cause the other one was 900 something.

Yeah, yeah.

And this would still be like, I don't know.

Ah, man.

Or, or just looking at this,

you could fly live flat business for 81K

and just leave your kids behind.

Oh, no.

Just kidding.

Just kidding.

Kids, we want you on this cruise.

Just kidding.

You were a college student once, too.

Dude, if I could have flown live flat ever,

I would have been so bougie.

That's a crazy flight to flying from USA to Europe.

It's Singapore Airways to Manchester.

So you get to explore Manchester,

and then you would probably end up just taking

what, a budget flight from Manchester.

Or they would just basically be taking a one-way flight

from Manchester to Barcelona.

Probably some kind of Ryanair flight.

Yeah.

I'm guessing.

Ryanair, maybe like Air Europa or something like that.

Let me just take a look what that would cost in June.

June, or June like, you know, 17th

or whatever, a couple nights in Manchester.

Yay, looking pretty good.

So like 73 US dollars to get from Manchester to Barcelona.

I mean, Ryanair, you're definitely

going to be paying for baggage.

But that would work.

That's pretty good.

That's pretty good.

That would work.

And plus, you get to see Manchester.

I think between the two of them.

I mean, Madrid sounds cool.

Madrid sounds, I think, better, because you'd

be able to take the train for like 50 bucks from there

all the way to Barcelona.

You wouldn't have to worry about getting on another flight.

Yes, beautiful train ride.

You can take as much stuff as you want.

Yeah.

Like, yeah.

OK, so the two main options here are one,

this Dallas to Madrid flight on Iberia,

using British Airways miles to book it.

That we transfer from Chase.

Costs 143,000 Chase points.

We transfer them to British Airways.

That turns into 185,000 British Airways miles.

Their current bonus.

Plus the $800 in booking fees.

Not bad for four people to get there and back.

Not bad on a nonstop flight.

And then this other kind of cool one,

this Houston to Manchester flight on Singapore Airlines

for some reason, which is really cool.

200,000 Chase points transferred directly

to Singapore Airlines booked for 200,000.

With about the same amount of fees,

but you'd have a nicer airline experience.

And then taking a hopper probably

from Manchester to Barcelona.

This is just a taste of what the miles and points credit

card turning business gets you into.

I mean, it can definitely, I don't know.

For me, it gets overwhelming real fast.

I appreciate you.

Thank you for doing a lot of this math.

It's so fun.

Thank you for that very, very specific question.

Obviously, we love going deep into this.

And we've heard a lot of you say that credit card,

miles and points aren't really a thing from where you are.

Like if you're in Europe or Australia, we hear you.

And hopefully, for those of you that still have points or miles

with any of these places, regardless

from what country you're in, this is helpful or beneficial

in thinking about how to use your miles or your points.

And if it isn't, ask us a travel question down below.

And we'll tackle your question next.

I love these specific questions.

Please keep them coming.

Speaking of planning, though, I came across

this really interesting insider.com article

about these mystery trips.

And I guess for those of you that don't know,

it's very common now or on trend for people

to pay a travel agency to book a surprise or mystery trip

for you.

People are paying travel agents to send them on mystery trips.

So they don't know where the destination is

until the day of departure.

Now, on the one hand, when I first heard about this,

I was like, well, a lot of YouTubers do this, right?

Yes, theory.

There are a lot of YouTube videos that say, I surprised.

I think we even made one.

I surprised my husband and planned the entire day,

the entire day in Thailand, et cetera.

But I'm kind of curious, this is apparently

becoming more and more common for people that don't really

want the planning aspect of travel.

They just want someone else to do it for them.

But they also want some spontaneity.

So there are a bunch of companies now, journey,

guess where trips, the vacation hunt, pack up and go,

surprise me trips.

They're just a handful of these companies

that plan a trip for somebody.

You tell the travel company when you

want to go, what kind of trip you

want to go on, like a relaxation trip, an adventure trip.

And they just do the rest for you and you just show up.

Amazing.

You have no idea.

And you make it to the airport and you

don't know where you're going.

They just hand you the sealed envelope and say,

get on this plane.

I'm so curious.

You could ruin the surprise for yourself by looking up

when they're telling you to get to the airport.

But I think that would be really cool.

And also, you'd have to be in probably a different financial

position than most people are to make this choice,

to just spend a bunch of money and be like,

I don't care where I go because I go on vacation so often

that I just send me anywhere.

I mean, to me, at first, when I think of it,

I think, well, that's got to be pretty expensive.

But you can also tell these companies

what budget you're working with, which I appreciate.

But it sounds kind of enticing.

They say, they build you a surprise itinerary.

They send you over a packing list,

which is awesome because that would be my fear,

like not knowing where I'm going, what am I packing for.

Swimsuit or parka, which one am I bringing?

Do you think you would go?

I would absolutely do that.

I think that would be super fun.

I feel like my worries would be that they would put me

on a bunch of tours.

Yes.

And I really don't like going on these pre-packaged tour

things.

I would be worried about that, but.

I mean, the whole thing is kind of a tour, though, right?

Because they apply an itinerary for you.

Yeah, maybe it's like control issues

that I have that this would be difficult for me to go on.

But I think the idea of it is super fun.

It would be hard for me to not feel like I could optimize

in some way, or like I could save money in some way, again,

control issues maybe.

But it would be hard for me to not be involved in that process.

The people that are most excited about this, it seems,

are people that just get decision fatigue.

I mean, obviously traveling in itself

is a luxury and a privilege for all of us.

But it does take work to plan a trip not only for yourself,

but for other people.

And the decisions, every minute decision

you have to think about and go through

is something that I think a lot of these people

are hoping to rid of by going on these mystery trips.

I can especially see how on a group trip

this would be a lot of fun if everybody

was on board with this kind of mystery surprise

vacation, because then you don't have to take the blame

for like.

It seemed like I didn't book this place, man.

It's raining.

You didn't tell me to pack a raincoat,

or you didn't tell me we had to walk five miles to this viewpoint.

You put it back on to the travel agency that said, hey,

surprise, we're doing this.

Right, right.

And I do see that cool.

I do see that value add of saying,

just send me on a sweet beach vacation.

I don't care where or how, here's like $5,000.

Just send me and my family to a beach somewhere for two weeks.

And that's the most amount of input I want into this.

I think that would be pretty cool.

And then also the moment of arriving to the airport

and then opening up the thing and be like,

we're going to Barbados.

That sounds, yeah.

Or you'd be like, I am not excited about the,

why did they send us here?

I mean, it would be one or the other, but they could be exciting.

You have to go into it with an open mind, right?

I mean, I'd be curious about them sending us

to a place that's like somewhere that I never thought

to go before, or I never imagined.

And that would be a fun adventure, I think.

But I do, it kind of goes back to what

we were talking about a couple of podcasts

ago, like how we decide where we travel to.

We kind of generally think about budget first,

but then think about what type of vacation, what kind of vibe

you're going for, and let the Google Explore tab do the magic.

Right, or Scott's Tube Flight, would you do this?

Would you sign up for this or not?

Would this be like a thing you'd want to do?

I think yes.

I think the Lisa now, it's so funny,

because do you remember when we first started dating,

we were like two months into dating,

and I think you called me and you said, hey,

what are you doing on January, I don't know, 13th,

for the weekend?

It was a long weekend.

And I was like, I don't know.

I don't have plans.

Let's do something.

And he was like, do you have a passport?

And I immediately freaked out.

I mean, I had a passport.

She definitely thought I was going to kidnap her.

I was like, what?

But I just wanted to take her on a nice surprise romantic

vacation.

It was such an early on.

I mean, I think we were only one month into dating.

And I remember thinking, OK, I'm into this.

But cautiously, I remember, I think

I asked you to send the itinerary to my best friend

and roommate at the time just to let her, someone else,

knew where we were going at all times.

That was my control thing.

I just was like, yes, I'm open to adventure.

Asterisk, I want us to be safe.

Right.

So yes, I did have to get permission from a roommate,

which was so romantic.

But I do remember thinking at the time,

the main concerns were, what am I going to pack?

Am I going to a cold weather destination?

Am I going to a warm weather destination?

And I think we ended up going along the Pacific Coast

Highway, which was a great road trip.

My original plan was Mexico.

That was my original plan was to go to Cancun.

That's where we would end up.

I know.

I know.

I know Lisa now is like taking myself.

I just want you to know what you were missing out on,

not to make you feel bad.

But it would have been pretty cool.

Well, we went to Mexico.

It would have been pretty cool.

In the future, in the current.

But yes, so I think the short answer

is I would be into it.

I think now, now having been on the other side

and doing all the travel planning

and doing all the traveling with family and friends,

I see the benefit of this.

And I would be open.

I knew you'd be into a surprise trip.

Yeah, I think it'd be fun.

It would be like trying from a perspective

of not having any control over the planning portion of it,

which I love planning trips.

And but I think it would also be interesting to go on one

of these things and have zero input into any of it.

I think that would be like good for me mentally.

I think that would be like a good challenge for me mentally.

And it would also be very fun.

I love that that.

Yes, I want to go on a relaxing surprise trip.

It'll be good and challenging for me.

But only if I choose where we relax,

and then we can relax as hard as we possibly can.

OK, let's move on to you guys trying

to stir the pot up in our lives here.

Let's move on to this.

Oh my goodness.

OK, so Sherri Tina 2000 says, what

are the pros and cons of traveling with Tia and Chevelle?

The one-pack wonders are good friends, right?

So for those of you that don't know,

we first met Tia and Chevelle in Greece, I think.

Santorini.

We were traveling around the same time.

And we ran into each other on that faded day

when we were walking along.

What's the famous walk?

The walk to Oya to Ia, all the way on the northwest side.

And ever since then, we've traveled, I think,

to six countries together, which has been pretty incredible.

They're very famous YouTubers.

Check their channel out here.

OK, so I would say, generally, traveling with Tia and Chevelle

is awesome for a bunch of different reasons.

One of the biggest ones is that we both

understand the schedule of YouTubeing.

And we both understand what it takes to make these videos.

And we both kind of understand what that world looks like.

So that way, we can not really, we automatically

understand what each other's boundaries are.

And that if they say, hey, we're just

going to spend the next 10 hours sitting here editing,

we're not like, oh, man, like, oh, there's nothing.

I want to go out and do this.

But we get it because we have to do the same thing more

often than not.

We understand how that fits into this bigger trip

that we have, so that doesn't ruin our days.

And also, we travel on basically the exact same budget.

Which is actually really liberating and freeing.

I think any time you travel, they

say to travel with your partner or travel with other people

before you decide to get married, for example.

Or really traveling with somebody is when you really

get to know someone.

And budget is always one of those things

that I'm most afraid to reveal about myself

when we're traveling.

Because we are very, very thrifty, very frugal.

And I think not to say that we're on the same page

about every single category, but in general.

Because Tia and Shaveo, and we are all budget travelers,

it makes the decision making very easy.

We know generally where we want to go.

We know if we want to go out to eat.

Or if we're eating in, we're kind of going

to be on the same page budget wise.

For sure.

So I don't know, they're some of our best friends.

We love these guys.

We love these guys.

They are genuinely really good, good, good people.

And we text and chat all the time.

And I don't know, we miss them a lot.

And it's been fun as we've been traveling to see them in places

and specifically plan places based

on where we all were in the world.

I don't, I can't think of any, like, I probably,

probably in the very beginning when we were first

starting to travel together, like when we were in Thailand,

was when we were still figuring out our YouTube lives,

their YouTube lives, and how we all meshed together.

It was really fun to travel together.

But it became apparent for both of us, I think,

that we couldn't always film at the same time.

Yeah, we couldn't film the same thing

or make the same videos, right?

And kind of at that point in time,

we kind of were making very, I would say now,

we're making very different videos

in very different styles.

At that point in time, the difference, I think,

was less stark than it is right now.

And I wouldn't even say.

And we're just filming over the top of each other.

Yeah, I wouldn't even say it was a con.

It was more just a, like, adjusting

to what our regular schedules were

and what their regular schedules were

and figuring out when we could all just hang out

and not film or not work.

And I would say, probably, that's

like traveling with anyone else.

When we're traveling with family or with friends,

there are some things that you just

have to kind of adjust to over time,

whether it be budget, whether it be pace,

vibe, things that you want to see and do.

That initial period probably was when

we were trying to figure that out.

And now, I don't know.

It's so easy to travel together.

Yeah, it's so easy.

I think this is a good question in general, though.

What's it like to travel with anybody

that isn't your partner or someone

that you're used to seeing on a daily basis?

Travel compatibility is a rare thing.

It's super, super challenging.

And I feel lucky that we met Tia and Cheveo at the time

that we did because we were all kind of around.

I think we started our trip at the very same time.

They left their home in July.

We left in July.

We happened to be in the same area.

And we were all doing this YouTube thing and very new at it.

So we bonded in that way.

But it is a very special thing to find one, people

that you're on par with, you're on the same page with.

It's very rare, like you said, to find travel compatibility

on hobbies, things that you want to do,

sightseeing, budget.

But then also, what line of work that you're in.

Yeah, yeah.

To have all that in common is impossibly rare.

It's so cool.

I think, in general, this larger question, though,

of what's it like to travel with them and just with friends

or family or other people is very interesting.

Because I do think travel compatibility

is a very real thing.

A very rare thing.

And hard to know.

We've all been on trips where you go on a trip with someone

and you're like, nope, definitely can't travel.

Didn't work.

Definitely can't live with them ever again.

And I don't know, what do you think?

And it happens right away, too.

You notice it immediately.

Maybe even on the flight over, you're like, oh, no.

This is going to be a disaster.

And it's hard to just pinpoint the few things.

It's not quite a checklist.

I don't want to say there's a checklist of items.

But I think it's generally just a feeling or a personality

thing.

When you know you're able to travel with someone,

or you're not.

I think if you're looking to figure out

if you're going to be travel compatible with somebody else,

I think you've got to figure out who's

going to do all the planning.

Or can you?

But could you collaborate?

Because they're also collaborating.

Or if they're going to collaborate with you.

Or if you just want to be like, you handle all that,

and then I'll take care of it.

But I think the key is that everyone

has to have a job in the trip that you're doing.

You can't just have one person do all the things.

And then everybody else is kind of along for the ride.

Everybody's got to have a job, whether it's

you pick out all the hotels and then it's your two jobs

to find all the flights.

And then you're going to figure out the rental car.

Someone's cooking, or someone's finding the restaurant.

Everybody's got to have a value.

Everyone's got to bring something to the table for the trip.

And I think some of the biggest problems in trips

that I've been on where it falls apart immediately,

and people just argue the whole friggin' time,

is when somebody has way more jobs than other people.

And then they just start arguing because they

feel like one person has to take care of everything.

So the whole thing's on them.

And then everyone just blames that person

if something goes wrong, and then the whole thing just

disintegrates underneath them.

I think it's finding that right collaboration

between everyone or just truly, if you say,

you take care of it, and then somebody else

tries to micromanage them and their solution that they found,

or tries to offer a different one in the middle of them

trying to do the thing that you told them to do.

I think that causes a lot of problems as well.

Yeah, I do think it requires a lot of self-awareness,

I think, for both parties, whoever's traveling together,

to realize, this is the kind of person that I am.

This is the kind of person that I am.

We're going to do this together.

Let's be honest and transparent about it

so we can work together.

Otherwise, I think, yeah, it could go wrong.

Yeah, and I think it's weird, but it either fits or it doesn't.

There's very rarely times, if you get into a bad trip,

that you're going to be able to talk your way back

to it being a good one.

Sometimes it just doesn't work out, and that's OK.

And honestly, at that point, I think

it's best to just split up and just go your separate ways,

and then maybe meet back up at the end,

and you'll probably be best friends after,

and be like, have all these stories to tell each other.

But I think to force a trip together with people

that don't get along is super not enjoyable for anyone.

It's so interesting because you don't know until you try it,

right?

A lot of people don't really know until they travel together

that they can or they cannot do it.

And that's interesting to me, which is why I think now I'm

starting to understand why people say,

take a trip with your future partner

before you decide to get married.

Because it's a great compatibility test.

Yeah, in a lot of ways, it's similar to partnership

because sacrifices are involved.

If someone wants to go do this thing,

but the other person doesn't, you

have to be willing to compromise.

Collaboration involved in every single thing

that you do on the trip.

Budgeting.

Budgeting, yes.

Some people are future planning.

Some people are very, very not into that.

Yep, how good you are at taking the other person's

perspective on things of like, oh,

they're probably not going to be comfortable with spending

$100 on this meal, so I'm going to find us something,

even though I really want to do it.

That's OK, keeping this trip together and on a good course

is more important than me getting this one meal for really

expensive that I know the other person doesn't have enough money

for or whatever.

No, this is an interesting question.

It's like the first time that I actually

thought about why people always used to recommend going

on a trip with your future partner

before you decide to get married.

And I don't know.

I never really bought into it because I wasn't a big traveler.

I didn't travel that much.

But now this question is helping me realize, yeah,

there are a lot of parts about travel that

applies to partnership.

And what makes a good trip is oftentimes

the compromises, the sacrifices, but also the collaboration

to make it work.

Yes, and I think that for us, on that first trip

that we went on, everything just worked.

We saw all of the money stuff the same way.

We saw all of the pacing stuff roughly the same way.

We saw the type of hotel choice we'd

want to make the same way.

And of course, still gotten fights, though.

Well, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I think that that's natural or a light planning

disagreement, but LPD.

And if there were any LPDs, light planning disagreements,

we would just talk about it openly.

And it was a momentary like, who's

going to talk about it first?

And then once we talked about it,

we were all just able to adjust like we talked about.

Yeah, because if you see a light planning disagreement,

like you feel that kind of energy in the trip of like,

maybe we didn't do the right thing,

or maybe this feels like they're a little stressed out,

or we're a little stressed out, or whatever.

If you just talk about it right there, it just ends.

You just solve the problem right there.

But if you leave it and you ignore it,

or you just try to push past it or whatever,

then the light planning disagreement,

the LPD turns into a HPD, a heavy planning disagreement.

And those generally are just straight-up arguments

when you're traveling, because everyone's

tired and jet-legged and stressed out,

and there's money on the line.

And it could turn into a blowout planning disagreement.

Yes, those are the worst kind.

Nobody wants those.

OK, that is it for today's Travel Support Thursday.

Please, please, please put your questions down

in the description below.

We'll answer them next.

Be as specific as you want to be with your questions,

and we will answer them as best we can.

See you then.

See you next time.