Travel Support Thursday

Travel support Thursday, episode three.

Woo, welcome back.

We're back once again.

First of all, thank you all so much

for all the awesome questions and comments

and everything else that we got last week.

It was really great to see all that.

It was so, so nice to hear from all of you,

all of your support, all of your encouragement,

all of the people out there that travel the way that we do.

It seems like real people, real travel.

And it was really, really nice to hear

the support for the jingle.

Oh man, which jingle?

Which jingle are you talking about?

Give me a beat.

Travel Thursday, travel Thursday.

Getting a tattoo is a good way to save money.

What?

Episode three, so if you're new here, I'm Josh.

I'm Lisa.

And we're all about helping you travel the world

on $100 a day on a pretty reasonable budget.

You know, like real travel for real people.

And by that I mean, we're not talking about

some like insane unattainable $20,000 plane ticket.

Or for some reason I saw this YouTube video

the other day where a guy went to every single

Disney world on planet Earth.

There's like one in Hong Kong and one in Paris

and two in the, and they went to all of them

within a hundred hours, which seems very unlikely.

I don't understand why.

I don't, I mean, it's entertaining,

but that's not how anyone that I've ever met travels at all.

So we're all about travel for real people doing real stuff.

And this series is all about answering

your travel questions directly.

We get a lot of questions from all of you

on our YouTube channel and our breakfast

with Lisa and Josh newsletter and on our Instagram DMs.

But we don't always have a chance to individually

answer every single one.

So this is this video podcast brought to you on YouTube

and a podcast platform near you.

It's meant to answer all of those questions directly.

So every Thursday, wherever in the world we are,

we're going to answer your questions.

So feel free to leave a travel questions

in the comments below.

And I have one request here, which is that,

don't be afraid to get like really specific

about your question.

Like if you're just sitting there and you're like,

I want to go to Italy next summer

and I don't know how to get there for free

with the points I have, Lisa and Josh,

please help me find a good award flight

so that way I can fly to Italy for free.

Ask that question and then we'll walk

through the entire process.

And then probably everyone else watching will be like,

whoa, I learned a lot from how that happened.

So now I too can book an award flight for free to Italy.

And maybe you guys will see each other in Italy.

Yeah, maybe we'll be on the same plane.

Or same gondola ride.

Wouldn't that be cool?

Travel support.

Every Thursday, that's what we do.

Yes, we're here to support you.

We're here to support you.

Okay, so what questions do we got today?

Ooh, we got a lot.

Okay, so we are answering a lot

of your questions from last week.

Today we're going to talk about what we do

with our credit cards once we get the sign up bonuses.

And how does that, if they do,

how does it impact our credit score?

We're going to talk about how we get mail on the road

and how YouTube monetization works.

Oh, boy.

Boy, is that a complicated topic.

A lot of analytics.

Yeah, yeah.

We're going to answer your question about how we think

about full time travel versus short two week,

three week vacations now.

And most importantly, today we're going to talk

about how one tattoo can be the ultimate travel hack.

Oh man, I can't wait for this one.

I can't wait for this one.

Okay, so our first one today

comes from three different people.

So Angela, N-E-N-I-N-C-Y, Craig Misushima,

and Wayne Goh Productions.

All of them ask basically the same thing,

which is like, what do you do about the annual fees?

Do you cancel your credit cards

once you get the big bonuses?

How do you sort of handle the closing out

of the credit cards once you've actually gotten

the thing that you wanted out of them?

Yeah, so we'll talk about our approach,

how other people and how you might approach it

will be different.

But in general, if we think it's a pretty good credit card

that we might hold onto, we just keep it open.

And if the annual fees aren't too high,

like if it's $95 per year,

and we think that the credit card perks are worth it,

we might just keep the credit cards.

But in general, once we receive the signup bonus,

we start talking about whether we wanna keep this,

but most of them we end up canceling.

Yeah, I think there's some really important things

to note in the middle of all this,

which is that, let's say you sign up for a credit card

and it offers you like 60,000 united miles

after you spend some amount of money

in the first three months.

Once you get those miles,

you can cancel the credit card at any time

and you will still have all of those united miles.

You will lose all the perks that are specific

to the credit card, which might be like lounge access

or it might be like discounts on food and beverage

while you're on the flight or whatever.

But those points, as long as they're not

with the credit card, so for example,

if you get chase points, if you cancel your chase credit card,

you will lose all of those chase points.

But if the credit card moves the points

from wherever the credit card is to a different company,

like from the chase card you signed up to united

and you cancel, you'll still have all those points.

Or for example, if you have a credit card

that gets you American Airlines miles

and your miles after you reach the signup bonus

show up in your American Airlines account,

you're good to go, you get to keep those points

whether you cancel the card or not.

Yeah, yeah, so totally fine there.

There are some other questions around like

what is this due to your credit score

or what do you do with the annual fees?

So I wanna talk about the annual fee part first

because I think this is a big misconception

and I think a place where a lot of people have a lot of fear

when it comes to signing up for credit cards.

In that like you'll see, for example, Chase Sapphire Reserve,

it has a $550 annual fee which is one of the highest.

I think the only one higher than it

is the American Express Platinum at like $700 per year.

Huge amount of money, that's a gigantic annual fee

but this as well as any of the other cards

that have a big annual fee, they generally offset themselves

and normally they offset themselves so much

that the annual fee is basically zero.

So with the Chase one, for example,

it's got like a $300 travel credit,

bam, your $550 annual fee all the way down to $250.

It's got a $100 global entry flash TSA pre-check

application fee credit.

So if those of you who travel internationally a ton

and you get global entry, this credit card

will pay for that back.

So that's another $100 there from the annual fee.

Yep, lounge access depending on how much you travel

is actually really valuable.

We use this all the time and it is super valuable for us.

That's worth probably $100 per year for us,

maybe a little more.

And then it's also got like travel insurance on top of it

and then it's also got five X point bonuses

on top of it for some things

and discounts with certain places.

For example, I think our card also gives us like access

to Lyft premium or whatever.

Or DoorDash or something like that.

Or DoorDash, something like that.

Yeah, something that we don't use a lot

but some people may find that very exciting.

So usually these annual fees are generally heavily reduced

or reduced all the way to zero

but you should still do the math of each year

is this credit card, is the annual fee worth it?

So for the Chase one, we keep it around the Chase Sapphire

Reserve because lounge access for us is worth a ton.

And then that $300 annual credit

plus the other random stuff, it's ROI positive for us.

And every time we spend money

like either at the grocery stores or the gas station,

whatever purchases we're making,

we're generally using that card

and when you use that card, you're getting points anyway.

This is not an ad for Chase Sapphire Reserve

or for any credit card

but this is generally how we think about them.

Yeah, I think it's ultimately a decision

that like you have to make.

Is this something that's worth it for me in the long run

and is this annual fee worth it

with all the perks that you get with the credit cards?

Yeah, yeah, so the way that we do this

is each of us keeps one, maybe two credit cards

that we keep open forever.

And this is for two reasons.

One, because the annual fee is worth it and two,

because it allows our credit score to keep going up and up

because our length of credit history keeps getting longer.

And we'll talk more about credit score in a second.

Cards that fit that bill for us,

the cards that we still have around today

is both of us have a Chase Sapphire Reserve

which is a little bit redundant.

We both have lounge access and I don't know,

it's a great card because we both have so many Chase points

and we just haven't found the right way to spend them all yet.

So we're still just kind of keeping them around.

And then I have an IHG card

because it gets me a free night at an IHG property.

The annual fee is only $85, maybe 95.

And the hotel, a night at that hotel

is usually like 150 to $200.

So it makes total sense to keep those cards around.

But for most of them, 90% of them we canceled

before the first year annual fee comes up.

We definitely take the time to read the fine print right

to make sure we're spending the minimum amount

to make that sign up bonus

and we're getting the sign up bonus.

But we also have to double check,

yeah, like when does the sign up bonus arrive?

How long does it take and do they expire?

Or if I cancel this credit card, will the points go with it?

So we definitely, before we cancel any credit card

we do those things to make sure.

I think I have, I think right now

I have a Capital One Venture card

that I opened up in the last couple of years

which was great for the sign up bonus

but it is one of those cards that if I cancel

without using up those points

then I lose those points completely.

So that's one of the reasons why we've kept that card.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So let's talk about credit score.

Cause I think this is a hot topic of conversation

for anyone who's signing up for these things.

And I just wanna start by saying

that it's important to note.

We are not your financial advisor.

We are not your financial advisors

and two, your credit score

does not reflect your value or worth as a human being.

That's very sweet.

And I think for a lot of people

they've just internalized this idea that like your credit

that the credit score that you have this number applied to

is like a direct number that represents like

how good you are at money or like how

or like how good of a person you are.

And it's neither of those things.

And you shouldn't spend too much time

like worrying about it or like taking it personally

if your credit score is bad or good or whatever it does.

It says nothing about you as a person.

It's just a number.

It's just a number.

Okay, that being said, a lot of people have dreams

to buy houses and a lot of people have dreams

to get credit cards and to get new cars

and do all the other things you can do

with a credit score.

Yeah, it's a very real unit unfortunately

that everybody uses to measure.

Yes, but it's not, but it's not you.

It's not you, right?

Like it doesn't represent you as a person.

It's just this arbitrary score

that like these three companies all collaborated together

to kind of determine credit trustworthiness.

And there's so many factors that go into this.

And it's such an absolutely bafflingly calculated number.

Don't you wish they taught you this

in like high school, middle school, right?

Like I know we talk about this all the time,

but why didn't we have a financial planning class

in high school or middle school?

Yes, I don't know.

There's always a story.

There's always, we've heard so many stories.

There's so many reasons why credit scores can fluctuate

and how people end up in the place that they are in

with their credit score and with their credit.

And it just, yeah, yeah.

And it's so arbitrary.

Anyway, I have many gripes about how credit scores work

in the United States and elsewhere in the world.

I don't want to go too far down that road.

Okay, so here's been my experience

of how my credit score moves around

based upon a couple of different factors

that I've noticed and a bunch of research that I've done.

Okay, so let's say, I'll just tell you,

my credit score right now is 803.

That makes the math harder.

My credit score right now is 800.

It's actually 803, but we're gonna do 800

because it makes the math easier, okay?

So every time that you sign up for a new credit card

or anyone checks your credit score for any reason,

and it doesn't matter if you're approved or declined,

you get a five point hit on your credit score.

So let's say that I go online

and I apply for a new credit card,

I would then have a 795 credit score.

So then over the next couple of months,

no matter if you were approved or declined

for the credit card or you pay your bill or you don't,

those five points are going to be put back

onto your credit score.

And the only reason they do this

is to prevent you from applying

for too many lines of credit at the same time.

So they just build in this five point hit

so that way eventually if you applied

for like 20 things of credit,

you would eventually have a 700 credit score

which would put you under what most

of these credit card lenders would allow

to get some of their fancier, more premium cards

or an auto loan or anything else like that.

So once you have this hit of the five point

on your credit score, it then goes into your credit profile

online and probably a lot of you have done

online credit checks, right?

And it lists all the different credit cards you have

and all the credit cards that you have had over time

as well as any like mortgages you have

or car loans or anything like that.

And then it'll show you how frequently

you've paid these things off

and how big of a revolving credit limit you have

which is basically like how much money you spend

on your credit cards and other things each month

versus how much total credit you have, right?

And this is another indicator

of how good your credit score is.

But, so here's what happens.

Let's say that I apply for this credit card,

it then brings my credit score down to 795

and they give me like a $10,000 credit limit

on this credit card.

Those five points will slowly be refunded

over the next couple of months

so I'll equalize back up to 800 and then,

and then because I now have more credit available to me

and because I'm spending theoretically

the same amount every single month,

like let's say I'm always spending $2,000 a month

but now I have twice as much credit available to me.

So the credit card companies and the credit score companies

will then see me as a more trustworthy borrower

because I have more available credit

but I'm still spending that same amount

so it's a smaller percentage.

You didn't go out and buy that brand new Ferrari.

Right, I didn't go out and buy a yacht or whatever.

I don't actually know how much those cost.

So from their perspective,

you actually look like a better borrower generally

over time because you are spending a smaller percentage

of your available credit.

You have all this money available to you

but you're not spending it.

You're not spending it, right, you're not spending it.

This is crucial.

Not spending what you don't have.

Yes, but if you do spend all that credit,

all of a sudden this new credit that you get

and you also fail to make monthly payments,

your credit score is going to plummet immediately

and we're talking like 30 to 40 points.

I think these are like the big rules

that you gotta follow generally

whenever you sign up for these things

which is you gotta have a credit score above 750

to start and then also you gotta pay off

all of your balance on all of your credit cards

and all of your other various things

like if you have a mortgage

or if you have a car payment or whatever,

all of that gets paid every single month.

And if you don't do that,

you shouldn't start any of these hobbies in the first place.

Just too risky, it's just too risky.

Yeah, and so I think to answer some of the questions

that came up on what we do with our credit cards

after we receive the sign up bonuses,

do we cancel them and does that impact our credit score?

So the short answer is yes, it can.

When we cancel our credit cards, any of them,

there is a little marker, a ping on your credit score

that says you closed down an account

and that does impact your credit score

but very, very small amount.

Yeah, because it's changing that percentage,

you all of a sudden have less credit available

but you're still spending that same amount.

So you look very slightly like a less trustworthy borrower

because you're spending a higher percentage

of your available credit.

But in general, I think we, as we've done this

and we've followed kind of those golden rules

of making sure that we keep at least

one or two lines of credit,

like our oldest credit cards,

we keep open for as long as possible

and we pay off all of our credit card payments

and we pay off all of our credit cards every single month,

we've seen our credit score rebound

even if we've canceled a credit card

after receiving the sign up bonus.

Yeah, exactly.

And then there's one more factor that we can't miss

which is that it's an overall average

of how long you've had credit available.

And there's one really easy, I guess, hack to the system

which is just always keep the first credit card

you ever got.

Yeah, like the one from college

that you signed up for that one time

because you got a free t-shirt.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

There's no benefits, no perks

other than that free t-shirt

and someone got you to sign up

and even though there's maybe nothing on it.

Yeah.

Might be worth keeping.

Yes, yeah, exactly.

So this is what both of us have done

where we both still have these credit cards around

that we've had for like 15 to 20 years at this point, right?

Like forever.

And also the reason that this works

is because it kind of anchors your credit score

of like you'll have one,

you'll have one line of credit that's been open

for like 15 years or however long it's been.

And then you'll sign up for a bunch of other ones

along the way, right?

And then this one you'll keep for nine months

and this one you'll keep for three years

and this one you'll keep for two years or whatever.

But as long as you still have this one

that keeps getting like older,

that you keep around over time,

then the average of all of these will still average out

relatively high, which will keep your credit score

above this 750 or up into the 800 range.

That's a lot.

That's a lot, that's a lot.

I know big info dump about credit scores

and I'm sorry that we got to talk about this

because the system is so incredibly convoluted.

And this is our experience, right?

Like your experience probably will be different,

but this is everything that we've learned

about the system after signing up and closing down

probably like 50 to 60 credit cards

over the past handful of years,

but also like talk to your fiduciary or financial advisor

or whatever you've got in your life.

That's a great word.

That helps you with your financial stuff.

Fiduciary.

Yes, and they will know obviously,

hopefully significantly more than we do about this

and they'll definitely know a lot more

about your personal circumstances.

And I think we would be remiss to not talk about this.

I mean, I think in general,

there are also just a lot of hidden rules

with like what kinds of credit cards you can apply for,

what kinds you can have at any given moment.

Some credit card companies have their own specific rules

which prevents you from signing up

for a bunch of credit cards just from them.

Like for example, the most famous of this

is Chase's 524 rule,

which means you can't sign up,

which means if you sign up for five credit cards

from any company or from any,

even like you get a city bank card and a Barclay card

and you get a Bank of America card or whatever,

five total within a 24 month period.

So two years.

Yep, you can't sign up for any more Chase cards after that

until that like time clock goes out

where you've only signed up for four

within that 24 month period.

Yeah, it's a lot, it's a lot.

It can feel overwhelming,

but if this is something that you're really, really into,

there are lots of resources online, on Reddit,

all about credit card churning,

how to kind of navigate the system.

But when done responsibly

and in a way that like suits your personal lifestyle,

like we've found it extremely, extremely beneficial

and really helpful for us when we travel.

Yeah, so we also talk about this at length,

and I mean for hours on our Skillshare course

that we have about this exact topic.

So if you wanna check that out,

we'll put the link down in the description below.

It's on Skillshare.

There's a lot of info on it.

You might like it.

I don't know.

Maybe you won't.

If not, just keep asking more questions on here

and we'll just keep giving you the info on here.

Question two.

So these are actually a compilation of questions

in follow-up from last week's podcast,

which is talking about our finances

and whether the money that we make from YouTube

helps support our travels indefinitely.

The short answer is kinda,

but check out that video if you want to from last week.

This question comes from Carly Lilly,

who says, great video.

Thanks.

How does it work when you get YouTube premium

and there are no ads?

How do content creators get paid?

Is it just via interacting in the comments

and what does liking a video do to help you?

Wanna make sure I can support my fave content creators

where possible.

Thanks so much, Carly Lilly.

That's really kind and a really, really complicated question

that we would love to delve into.

Yes, so where should we start?

Okay, let's start from the easiest one.

What does liking a video do

and why do all creators ask you to do it?

Okay, so the YouTube algorithm

constantly changing at all times.

It's still something that we're trying to grapple with.

Yes, totally unpredictable.

So my understanding of this and what we've seen

through making this stuff for like three and a half years

is that liking a video shows it.

Liking a video triggers the YouTube algorithm

to show it to more people who might be interested in it.

So if other people are like watching travel content

or they're watching podcasts

or they're watching like personal finance stuff

of which this podcast is slowly morphed into like,

you know, Voltron of those three things.

What's the sound for Voltron?

I don't know.

Sound effect here.

I'll find one.

You know, if they're searching for those three things

and then you happen to go on in there and like the thing,

then the YouTube algorithm will then show that video

to other people who are also interested in that same thing.

How many of those people a like is worth?

I have no idea.

And I think commenting on your favorite content creators'

videos also goes along in that same vein.

It shows people that this is something

that you're interested in, you're engaged with,

and you're trying to like communicate with them

and with other people.

And generally, the more comments,

probably the more likely other people are commenting

and maybe YouTube will again share this with more people

because they think other people might be interested

in engaging with the same kind of content.

Yes, and to be clear, we don't make any money

from interacting in the comments.

There's no direct revenue connection there.

We just do it because we like talking to y'all.

It's true.

That's the only reason.

Okay, so moving on to like,

how does it work when you get YouTube premium

and then you're not actually seeing any ads?

So we actually get a higher percentage

from YouTube premium subscribers than we do

from just people who don't have YouTube premium

and actually just watch the ads.

Really?

Yes, so they're paying like $12 a month at 30,

I don't know, I don't remember exactly how much it is,

but it's $13 or $12 a month for YouTube premium right now.

Which means that you essentially aren't watching ads

while you're watching YouTube.

Yes, yeah, it just like turns off all the ads

inside of YouTube and does some other things

inside of YouTube that are also cool.

So we sign off for YouTube premium, I think it's great.

So from that $13 a month, right?

Like any video that you watch,

it actually calculates how many videos you've watched

over that monthly period,

and then it just divides that YouTube premium revenue,

that $13 and just directly gives it to the creators also

with YouTube, I think taking like a 40% cut out of that.

So it's just like a slightly bigger piece of the pie

from each person that is giving money to YouTube

versus those that are just watching

and then watching the ads as well.

The math here is very,

incomprehensible is the word I would use

to describe how this math actually adds up.

And it's also incredibly unpredictable

which is why last week we talked about

we make somewhere between like $2,000 and $6,000 per month

and you might listen to that and be like,

well, that's unhelpful, I mean, isn't it consistent?

We agree, it is totally unhelpful and totally inconsistent

and most of it is entirely outside of our control.

Sometimes like in December, all of the ad rates go up

and everybody on YouTube makes a little bit more money.

And then in January, and then in January,

it just plummets back down real, real, real, real far

for reasons entirely incomprehensible.

Like major Sunday blues, I don't know.

January blues.

Yeah, everyone's just hungover from New Year's or whatever.

But for whatever reason, there's seasonality to it,

there's differentiation to it, it depends on which country

the person who watched the video comes from.

It's totally inconsistent, totally unpredictable.

And there's a reason why every single YouTuber out there,

I guess besides us, because we don't,

there's a reason why almost every YouTuber out there

tells YouTube like and subscribe to their video

and it's because it's helpful.

It's helpful for a lot of reasons.

Sharing this video to new people who might be interested

in it, sending YouTube a positive signal

that like this is a quality video.

There's a reason for that, but honestly,

like the most helpful thing, like the biggest thing

that you can do is if you watch a video,

like if you watch our three days in Tokyo video

and then one of your friends wants to go to Tokyo

and you're like, hold on, I gotta send you this video

before you go there and you tell them about us

and you like share that, that word of mouth

is the most valuable thing.

And I think for a couple reasons, one,

because it showed like the video was useful to you

and that it was useful enough to you

that you would send that along to someone else,

like that's so big, like that means the world to us.

It means the world to us.

Screw all the analytics, screw all the numbers,

screw all the liking and thumbs-uping like that,

that like actually helping you and then by proxy you

then sending our stuff to your friends

and then also helping them, that's all we want.

That's the most important thing

and that's the only thing that we really care about.

I think in general, your question about

how to support your favorite content creators is really,

I mean, first of all, just really kind

because I think we really appreciate any amount

of interaction, whether it's just watching our videos,

liking it, sharing it, subscribing

and just letting us know how you feel

because your feedback generally helps us, right?

Make better content and answer your questions directly

so that we can help you travel.

I think with YouTube and probably with any line of work,

there's endless amount of stats and analytics

that you can get into to try and, I don't know,

make more money or get more views,

get more subscribers, et cetera.

But I don't know, the thing that we love the most

is like connecting, connecting and hearing from you,

what your thoughts on travel,

what your thoughts are on these questions

that we get every single week.

This long ramble is just to say thank you.

We appreciate you.

Thank you for watching.

Thank you for listening.

And thank you for asking questions.

After saying that we don't really care

about the numbers of analytics,

we are very interested in this question,

which comes from MeLG1W,

OneYW, which just seems like a generated password.

MeLG1E.

So anyway, who says, have you ever calculated

how much YouTube pays you per hour of work

creating your videos?

This is going to be so depressing.

Yes, okay, so let, all right,

how would we figure this out?

How do we figure this out?

So we have to think about how much time we spend

one filming.

Yes.

And then how much time I spend editing.

All right, okay, so let's figure this out.

Let's do this in two ways.

I think we do this over the past 12 months,

which is really the only time

that we've already started making any money with this.

And then we do it for the lifetime.

Okay.

Per hour, per person.

Right, so.

Per person, no, that seems even sadder.

Okay, so can you bring up your calculator

and we'll start figuring this out?

Yes.

So like when we're filming,

we're probably filming for like 12 to 14 hours a day.

Right, like that's all we do all day

from sun up to sun down.

So we'll leave it like.

Maybe a week for that, yeah.

Yeah, from 8 a.m.

And then we'll finish up the video at night, right?

12 hours a day.

And then when we're not filming,

some days we'll edit, right?

A lot of days we'll edit and do work that day.

Let's like take an example

of our most recent filming trip.

Okay.

So like 12 hours per day.

And let's say we filmed.

We do this three times a week or whatever.

Yeah.

For three days in, yeah.

Or even four sometimes.

Yeah, even four.

Okay, so that's 48 hours of just filming a week.

And then let's say I edited on that trip.

I mean.

Which you did, right?

It has just, yeah.

So I would think it would take you probably like 50 to 60

hours of work time to edit a video.

Edit a video.

It's just like a ballpark figure.

Okay.

And then while you're doing that, I'm finding music

and I'm responding to brands and telling them no.

And I am doing accounting stuff.

Yeah.

And I am writing the next videos

or I'm writing the newsletter.

So that's like 48 hours of filming.

Yeah.

And then like 50 hours of editing, let's say.

All right.

And that's over the course of a week, do you think?

Yeah, in a week.

So if we divide that by two,

that's like 50 hours a week per person about.

So okay, so let's just take that number

that's probably conserved.

I think that's under.

Yeah.

If I had to guess that's under the amount of hours

that we work on this right now.

So at 50 hours per week, times two,

that's a hundred hours per week,

times 52 weeks in a year.

And we do this every week.

We've taken, we've never really taken like a full break.

We took one week off.

We took, but even then we were editing.

That's true.

So let's subtract two of those weeks.

Just for the time that one.

I'm at 5,200 right now.

Okay, so if you subtract 200, right,

then we'll be at, then we'll be at 5,000.

Okay, so that's how many hours we've worked.

In a year.

In a year.

Right, so now we need to.

36902.

36902.34 divided by that amount.

Yeah.

Boy, lots of math today.

Seven dollars per hour.

Seven dollars and 38 cents per hour.

But that's for the two of us.

So if you divide that by two,

that means we are each making 3.6 dollars per hour

over the past year.

3.7.

3.7.

Okay, we're rounding up.

Okay, so now let's do the same thing,

but over three years.

So that's 15,000 hours.

56,000.

Yeah, this is $631.

And 70 cents divided by.

Divided by 15,000.

Right, so three years.

We've been doing this for more than three years,

but we'll just make the math easy.

So divide that by two again.

3.77.

This is for the two of us.

Three dollars and 77 cents per hour.

$1.88 for the two of us.

So just under $2 an hour since we started.

We love this job though.

We do love this job.

Yeah, it's not a good number to look into.

This is us just like self,

what's the right word for what we're doing right now?

Sunk cost fallacy.

Sunk cost fallacy, a bit of that,

but this is us just like talking ourselves

into making ourselves, yeah, we're self-justifying.

That's right.

This is us self-justifying this.

So in case you're like looking at this

and you're like, hey, YouTube's a get rich quick scheme.

It ain't, it's not at all.

It's not at all.

I can imagine this as though like any other person

who's starting a new business,

you're just investing so much more.

The startup costs are not just like monetary,

they're also time and effort.

You're just investing now, early.

Yeah, and then the hope is,

is that we build this thing big enough

where maybe our dollar rate per person

will reach minimum wage.

Or hopefully even more one of these days, I don't know.

But I think like back to what we talked about last week,

even though this is not a get rich scheme at all,

I think we're both very, very happy

with where our life has brought us

and like this particular,

while working and making YouTube videos

isn't the most lucrative business,

it certainly offers a lot of freedom

and it allows us to travel, which is pretty incredible.

Best job I've ever had, definitely still a job,

but the best job I've ever had, no question.

No question.

Okay, I am a little sad now and slightly depressed,

but also hopeful because our hourly wage-

Hey, double.

Double from when we started to right now.

That's pretty great.

Look at that, look at that.

We just gotta do that a couple more times.

And you know, we can always streamline our work

and I think we're getting faster as we go.

Or slower.

I think our videos are taking longer,

but we're making better videos.

I hope.

Yeah, yeah.

Anyway, on to the next listener question.

Okay, moving on.

Moving on.

Okay.

This one's from-

Mr. Rogers.

RM Rogers 263, very close to Mr. Rogers, man.

Our Mr, we're just gonna call him our Mr. Rogers 263 asks,

how do you physically get your new credit cards

when traveling the world?

What address do you use?

So this is like great question,

especially for people who are like full-time traveling

or long-term traveling.

How do we handle mail while we're away?

Yeah, so the service that we use for this right now

is called iPostal One.

And this is like a mail scanning service.

So it gives you this address

that's somewhere in a city nearby you, hopefully.

And then you just change all your stuff

to send mail to this one address.

And for ours, it's inside of like an office department store.

And they just happen to run this at the same desk

that they're like photo desk runs out of.

But they have all these little mailboxes

scattered around there.

And when they receive mail, they take a picture of it

and then they ask you,

do you wanna open it and scan it for like 10 cents?

We'll do this for you.

Or we can just like toss it and shred it for you.

They send you an email.

Yeah, yeah, they send you an email.

So we get this email anywhere in the world

and then I can just say like,

please scan this and then send a PDF to my email.

So there are some weirdnesses with this,

like since it's running out of a Kinko's

or an office depot or whatever.

I'm imagining like office space, the movie.

Yeah, there are some weirdnesses

like they have just forgotten to scan some of our pieces

of mail or they have just thrown out some of our pieces

of mail occasionally.

And it really depends on like which office you go with

or which service you go with.

I think we're honestly gonna change from iPostal one

to a different one, but I don't know which one.

So I can't say that I like, it's been good, but not great.

There are lots of services to do this.

So we use iPostal one, but there's a lot of different ones

like traveling mailbox, earth class mail,

anytime mailbox is another one, escapies, RVs,

apparently another traveling mailbox like on the road.

It just takes a little bit longer, right?

Cause you have to first respond and say,

can you open this or you can toss this?

But if you open this, I think there's also an additional fee

to have them like send you a physical scan

of the opened envelope and open letter.

So I don't know.

It's like, there's a lot of different ways

that you can handle it.

We've definitely, when we first started traveling,

we've used the like, hey mom and dad,

could you check our mail for us

and send us any pictures of anything really, really important.

And by the way, if you happen to be joining us

on our trip in the future, which you have in the past,

can you also bring that piece of mail with you?

Thanks, we love you.

Like we've definitely done that before.

Yeah, to get back to like the original question,

which is what would we do if we got new credit cards

and they sent them to this theoretical like mail service

that we have, how would we get them from there

to wherever we are in the world?

And I've had to do this before for a bunch

of different reasons.

One, like my debit card just stopped working

or I was in Thailand and I put my debit card

into one of the ATM machines and it just ate it

and never gave it back.

And these things happen all the time.

So what do you do to sort of recover from that situation

or how do you get a new credit card on the road?

And there's really only one way to do it,

which is I would tell our mail forwarding service

to ship it to a hotel that we're gonna be at

like three weeks from then,

which means we'd have to plan out a little further

than we normally do, which is normally none.

It's really hard.

Yeah.

And we would just tell them to ship it internationally

and then we'd have to clear customs out of the US

and then clear customs into whichever country

you're going into.

And then we would just tell the hotel

to expect this piece of mail from us.

I would generally stay at one of like the bigger hotels,

definitely one that has a 24 hour front desk

and preferably one that speaks the same language that you do.

And then they would just receive the mail,

hold on to it for a little while for you.

And then whenever you make it there,

which hopefully is right when it arrives

or you'll probably want to stay like a couple of nights

in the hotel just to make sure that you're there

when the mail gets there.

But this has worked about a dozen times

from various credit card related problems

that I've had on the road,

especially ones where like my card information got hacked

and I needed to like cut up the card

and then cancel it because, you know,

my information got leaked and then I had to get a new one.

This is really the only way to solve the problem,

except if you go with Schwab,

like we have for a debit card,

they actually offer an international service directly

with them where they'll like super fast,

almost overnight at anywhere in the world

that you need your debit card to you.

And that has been super helpful a lot of times.

Like when you're really, really hosed,

they have come through.

Yes.

Yeah, also not sponsored.

Not sponsored.

Not sponsored, they're just a good service

and we use them and we like them.

The less coordinated way,

like if we knew we were going back home

for any specific amount of time,

whether for a wedding or for a family reunion or whatnot,

we might then save that time period

to kind of get our admin stuff out of the way,

like taking care of mail, getting new credit cards

if we're signing up for any

and reserve that chunk of time to kind of like refresh.

Yeah.

Okay, so I want to talk about this tattoo thing.

I feel like we've been doing so much logistical stuff.

It's time to talk about the greatest travel hack

that I've ever seen in my entire life.

The single greatest one.

Okay, the government of Austria

is offering a one year free train ticket.

If you get a tattoo of that train ticket

somewhere on your body.

What?

Yeah, exactly.

And this train ticket, this is no small fry.

This thing's worth up to $1,000

or hopefully more than it would cost

to get this thing laser-removaled after a year,

after your ticket is done.

But it seems like a pretty great deal.

I mean, it's catchy.

I'm actually really curious.

Here's the deal.

So as a way to get people on board

with taking public transportation, reducing emissions,

promoting, you know, going green basically,

Austria, the government is offering free year

of public transportation if they get a tattoo

that includes the word climate ticket,

which is the name of Austria's eco-friendly public

transportation.

Do you just have to get the word tattooed on your body

or is it more specific than that?

It's unclear, but so I think they just have to get

the name of the local travel pass climate ticket

tattooed somewhere on your body.

I don't know how you confirm this,

but they're like Instagram offers some options.

I think.

Oh, so maybe it has to be one of those.

I don't know, like some, they're kind of cute.

Like some of the, some of that.

Oh, that train was cool.

Example tattoo is our kind of fun.

Like this go green one.

Their, their whole motto is action

that gets under your skin.

Wow.

What do you think?

Literally, literally.

Would you do this?

Yeah. Oh my God.

You would do this for the country of Austria.

Yeah. To be able to just travel around Austria

and all I got to do is get a tattoo.

But I don't care if I get another tattoo.

Like why would that bother me?

And plus they don't specify where you got to put it

or how big it is.

That's true.

On the one hand, a lot of people were super into this

and we're like, yeah, this is a really good way

to get people on board with public transportation,

reach young people, all kinds of people.

And then they're of course, they're the naysayers

that like, how dare you, how dare you use tattooing

as a way to get people to promote your cause

and, you know, promote the government.

I don't, I don't really know.

I.

Obviously this would not work in Japan.

This would not be an accepted form of currency in Japan

in the same way that is in, is in Austria.

I get how this could rub some people the wrong way,

but I would do this in a heartbeat.

As of yesterday, this article says

that six people have so far participated.

Whoa.

So, you know, it's reaching.

Should we try it?

Some people.

I've got a pen.

Yeah.

What?

Should we like, like, do you think it would work?

I don't even know how you would prove it.

Like what, do we fly to Austria and you'd be like,

yeah, I would just pull up my sleeve and bam,

the tattoo would be there.

There's only one way to find out, really.

You want me to try drawing on your hand?

I kind of like that train one.

Oh boy.

I want to find out.

I want to, all right, we're going to do this.

Okay.

She's going to draw this on me and we're going to take a picture.

We're going to send it to this Austria climate ticket thing

and see if this is an acceptable form.

Yeah, they don't really say if it's like permanent, actually.

That's true.

They don't actually say.

All right, where do you want it?

That's true.

Well, I got one on here, so maybe like up here or something.

Oh, okay.

Okay, all right, we are tattooing this thing on me.

Stick around to see what the outcome of this one is.

Which way do you want the train to face?

Going that way.

What?

That's backwards.

Okay, whatever's easiest for you to draw,

you're going to end draw it.

I'm going to draw it like, because yeah, okay, here we go.

This is such a cool thing.

I'm really excited about this.

You're going to have to twist your arm a little bit more.

Wow, I have so much respect for tattoo artists

who also do podcasts at the same time.

Okay, so while Lisa's tattooing me here,

I'm going to move on to the next question.

Okay, so next one is from.

Oh gosh.

Hold on, this is a very small one here.

Okay, from House Parade 1767 that says,

this was a great discussion.

Don't worry, Josh, I thought the money part was well handled

and offer a realistic look into travel content creation.

Thank you very much, I appreciate that.

One question for next week.

When you were on your one-year trip,

you were on the road for months.

Has this now changed to being based in Hawaii

and venturing out as a flight ticket?

God's allow?

I love that.

Or do you think you'll head out for a longer trip again?

Which do you think is more cost effective?

Wow, yeah, well.

Okay, great question.

I'm sure you want to have this discussion

as I'm tattooing you with a very precise V5 rolling ball pen.

This is going to look great.

I'm sorry for you podcast people out there,

just go to our Instagram

and you'll be able to see this finished tattoo on there.

Okay, so I guess to answer the first part of this question,

yes, when we were on our trip,

we actually traveled straight for almost two years.

Non-stop, we were just in constant motion

for almost two years.

We didn't, the last actual home that we lived in

was probably in 2020.

Okay, so after that, then we didn't really know what to do.

We kind of like came back home

and we realized that we really liked full-time travel

for a lot of reasons, but also the full-time travel

plus content creation at the same time

was pretty tiring, honestly.

Like it burned us out a little bit.

And we realized that we needed,

oh, and we realized that we needed some way

to sort of break that up, have a little bit of a home base.

So that way we could keep doing

this content creation thing more full-time.

Yeah, I would say that like,

I mean, this was the first time

that I had ever taken a full plus year off

from working the nine to five and traveling for this long.

And you had done it before a few times and came back.

I mean, our intention was never really,

like when we quit our jobs to travel,

we didn't think this is gonna be our life plan.

We didn't know we were gonna start a YouTube channel.

We didn't know that we were gonna wanna keep doing this.

And then after our one-year honeymoon,

we were like, let's continue traveling.

Let's continue making YouTube videos.

But we reached a point where we realized traveling

isn't awesome and this life is incredible.

This lifestyle is incredible,

but we wanted to be able to keep doing it and sustain.

And we knew that if we kept going every single day

at this pace, we would have stopped.

Well, and while I think full-time travel

is certainly glamorous and exciting,

and we got to experience so much

more than just a two-week vacation,

we missed a lot too.

There's a lot that you miss out on,

like the birth of your best friend's baby

or weddings and funerals and a lot of different things

that we didn't want to give up completely.

Going all in on travel was awesome for a year,

but that trip, I think if anything,

taught me that I want to keep traveling,

but I also want to make room

for all the other things that are important in our lives.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, there's definitely a cost to going on a trip

and just dropping out of your old life

for a very, very long period of time.

And we just didn't want to follow the path

of most of the other travel YouTubers that we saw,

which was basically full-time travel

and make videos three times a week

for just as long as you can,

which for most is like three or four years or whatever.

And then burn out so hard

that you either have to totally quit your YouTube channel

entirely that you totally give up on the entire dream

and then just come back home or have a baby

and then make some vlogs about the baby

and building a new house wherever you are.

Not that those are wrong things.

No, that's just not the path that we wanted to do that.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

And there's definitely some burnout inherent

in making YouTube videos like super frequently

because then every single day you're both filming

and editing and traveling.

And it becomes really hard to be present in the place

you're in and enjoy the thing you're doing

if you're constantly documenting it.

You know, if that's all you're doing,

if that's your number one priority

and that's the only thing you're there for.

So yes, our current like breakdown in time

is we spend roughly a month out in the world

traveling, making videos, having an awesome time.

It's just, it's great.

And then we come back here and we stay here

and we do all the post-production things.

We edit all the videos.

After that month, then we're all fully rejuvenated

and ready to get back out in the world and travel again.

And that's where we're at right now.

I think it's this balance that we found

between like the full-time content creation and the life

and then actually being able to have like

relatively consistent friends and a consistent life here

and being able to have consistent friends here

and a consistent life and a family around us

and all those other things that we were kind of missing

that we couldn't find in full-time travel

that just weren't there

because we were on the road moving constantly.

So it was finding this balance between the two things.

And I think we're pretty happy with the way things are now.

Yeah, it was, I remember when we were in South Korea

last two years ago when we decided

we were gonna go home for a little bit.

It was a little bit, we were out at crossroads

like do we keep going?

Do we keep trying to do this thing?

How do we keep going?

It was a really special time because we said

we set out to do the one-year honeymoon and we did it

but we didn't know what to do.

We wanted to come home but we didn't wanna come home.

We knew we were starting to like take traveling

and YouTube, all of it for granted

and certainly our family and friends

because we hadn't seen them in a year.

And it was just this, so we spent,

I think a chunk of that time after we came back

a little bit confused, a little bit unsure

where could we spend time at home?

Were we giving up a lot of what we could create

with this business if we are not,

if we're not full-time traveling?

I mean, last week we talked about

how this job is hard and risky

because you literally have to stop everything

you're doing to travel and make YouTube videos.

You can't really financially, maybe some people can

but it felt hard to commit to this long term.

We're experimenting now, we're in this phase

of we're experimenting, having this home base

and traveling from said home base

and I think to answer that question of,

is it, is one better than the other financially?

It's definitely more expensive obviously to rent

and have a home and travel from said home back and forth.

Full-time travel, way cheaper the longer on

than having a home base, 100%, not even close.

But physically, emotionally, mentally, I just feel,

I don't know, every morning I wake up and I feel happy

and I feel lucky that we get to be with our friends

and our family and we get to see them more often

and we get to travel, which is, yeah,

I just didn't think that that would come sooner.

I mean, certainly it's a very financially risky experiment

but so far I think we're trying to do it.

We're trying to make it happen.

Yeah, and we just found that if we kept on that same track

that we were on, which was making a gajillion videos

all the time, constantly traveling nonstop,

that we were just gonna burn out

and we did a couple of times

and this saved us from burning out

and gave us a little bit of work-life balance,

not that we have a ton of that,

but it gave us some enough to consider doing this

on more of like a marathon pace,

which is exactly what we wanna do.

We wanna keep doing this forever.

For as long as we possibly can,

we wanna keep traveling, making these YouTube videos

and doing this.

And I think that it saved this channel in a lot of ways

because there were moments, especially like that one video

that we made in Sydney, Australia

when both of us were just feeling awful.

I mean, I think we literally called it like we're burned out.

And at that moment, both of us were really close

to just quitting, to just being done with all of this.

Like you said, it's a little bit about taking things

for granted that should not be taking for granted, right?

Absolutely not.

Going on a round-the-world trip, what kind of headspace

do you have to be in to start taking that for granted?

And we were just in a bad place.

Yeah, I don't know.

But we wouldn't have known all of that

had we not taken that whole year to do all of that.

We would not have known the things that we appreciated.

I honestly thought that when we came home

from our number one year,

I honestly thought when we started the one year honeymoon

that we were just going to come right back home

and start our jobs again, start looking for a job

and work again.

I don't know where we were gonna live.

I did not think that we were going to end up finding

that the thing that we love the most is travel

and being at home.

Yeah, so yes, we are still just flying

wherever the flight gods allow.

And we found these crazy cheap flights

via Scott's cheap flights and I refuse to call it going.

So it's called Scott's cheap flights

from now until forever.

$170 one way round trip.

It was like $200 round trip tickets to Sydney.

One of the best deals we've ever found.

That's where we're heading soon

and the reason that we're heading there

is because it was so dang cheap and awesome to go in

because we can't wait to go to Sydney

and New Zealand right after that

and just seemed like a perfect mashup.

What's going on?

Can you twist a little bit more?

I gotta draw the mountains now.

How am I gonna show this to anyone?

There are mountains.

Tattoo's almost finished, by the way.

Wow, I have so much respect for tattoo artists.

I mean, I always have, but.

Okay, so while we're waiting for this thing to get finished,

we just got two comments that we wanted to read

that we thought were awesome from last week.

First one is from Anna S. 9001

that says, the way Josh looks at Lisa Hart.

What about the way that you look at me

when you find out my laptop is at 2%?

What about the way you look at me

when I say your hair is getting in the way of this tattoo?

What about the way you look at me

when I say in the morning?

Okay, we're done.

So this other comment from dad smack that says,

please do not get rid of the travel Thursdays.

Yes.

It's the best, okay.

Yes, we heard from a lot of you, thank you.

Yes, thank you.

Okay, so this guy says,

I'm starting my world travel next month

after a 30-year career, awesome.

Someone across your channel,

Travel Thursday motivated me to get moving.

I love it.

That's awesome.

I have amassed a,

I've amassed a material amount of points in the past year

and shared your channel with my adult children.

Thank you so much.

This is what we're talking about.

This is like the coolest thing that could happen.

I love that.

I love that.

Remember, new is not always improved

and bigger is not always better, Lisa and Josh.

Plus my face looks like yours

when you say Scott's cheap flights change to going.

See?

Yes.

This is what I'm talking about.

You have a smile on your face though.

Yeah, I know, but it's just like, why would you do it?

You know, why would you do it?

Okay.

Are we ready to show the artwork?

It has been complete.

Okay, hold on.

This was a fun one.

Tell us what you think in the comments below.

Would you get this or one of the tattoos

for Austria's free public transportation for a whole year?

Okay, government of Austria, you have seen my tattoo.

We're gonna put this on your Instagram page

and you tell us if you think that this is good enough

for us to be able to ride a train for free.

And if so, we're gonna try it.

We're gonna go there.

We're gonna try it early next year.

We're going to Austria and we're gonna try this thing out

if you guys think it's good enough.

That would be incredible if that worked.

It would be so amazing.

This was a really fun one.

Thanks so much for all your questions.

Thank you for listening.

If you're listening on a podcast platform,

thanks for watching.

If you're watching on YouTube,

don't forget to leave a question in the comments below.

Travel related question for next week's

Travel Support Thursday from, I think we'll be in Sydney.

Yeah, from Sydney.

Most upvoted questions, they get answered every week.

So be sure to vote

and be sure to leave a question in the comments.

Okay, see you next time.

Bye, bye, bye now.

Bye, see you later.

Thanks for coming.

Bye.

Should we outro Travel Thursday?

Travel Thursday.

See you later.

See you later.

Okay.