Latest / Only Fee-Only / #72 - Planning for Retirement and Exploring the Joys of Living Abroad - Tommy Sikes

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#72 - Planning for Retirement and Exploring the Joys of Living Abroad - Tommy Sikes · Only Fee-Only

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: How's it going everyone?
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the only fee only podcast and, as always, we appreciate you being here.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: In this episode we got to talk to travel retirement, aka Tommy Sykes.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: He actually writes the travel retirement newsletter and really talks to people about having cheap homes in Italy and France and expat living and moving somewhere for and once you're retired.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: So this was a really fun conversation and it was really cool to hear about how Tommy kind of got into this and to also hear about his planning practice.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: So this is a really great conversation.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: We hope you guys enjoy it as well.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Here is Tommy Sykes on the only fee only podcast.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: What's up everyone?
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Welcome to another episode of the only fee only podcast.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: I'm Peter Travlo.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: I'm here with my co-host, brock buckles.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: How's it going today, brock?
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: It's going well, pete.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Good to be here with you, man.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Likewise man, and we're very excited to have Tommy Sykes on from Wander Wealth and travel retirement.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: You may have seen him on Twitter, youtube, and he's really been growing a cool following around, just thinking differently around retirement and possibly retiring abroad.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: So, tommy, welcome to the show.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: Thank you guys, I appreciate it.
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: I'm big, big fans of both of you, so it's nice to be on the show.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Love it.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much, man.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: I know you and I we've been following each other now for maybe about a year and a half, two years and really love your content.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: But for those who don't know who Tommy Sykes is and don't know who Wander Wealth is, you want to give a quick overview of who you are and who you're currently serving.
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: Sure, so I am a obviously fee only planner.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: I'm in North Carolina, usa, and I actually got into the fee only space a long time ago, in 2006 and RIA is worth thing then.
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: But I was at a big brokerage I won't say the name here, but they were famous for knocking on doors and I knew pretty quickly I didn't want to be, you know, product sales person my entire life, which, and I understood, going in that that's what it was.
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: But it was, you know, good training, great for somebody who hadn't been in the industry.
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: But I knew I wanted to do something for myself.
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: So when I started investigating it after being there a few years, you know, most of the people who had left the brokerage world basically did the exact same thing.
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: It's just they did it through you know another independent third party like LPL or something like that, and the thing is they were just doing exactly the same thing.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: They just made a little more money and I was like that.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: There was something little you know icky about annuity sales and insurance and you know, brock, obviously you can talk about that a lot, but yeah, this is, you know, still kind of old school sales techniques and things.
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: And the more I researched, I heard about this thing called a registered investment advisor and I literally had never heard the term.
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: I've been in the industry for I don't know four years, three or four years, and I was like what is that?
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: And so I started looking at that more and more and I was like, wait a minute, I can open this business, become a registered investment advisor, and I basically can choose exactly how I want to be paid, like I can charge by the hour.
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: I can charge, you know, for a consultation fee.
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: I can say, hey, we're gonna meet four times and it's this much you can charge, you know, based on assets under management, you know the more traditional stuff.
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: Anyway, I was like why?
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: Why have I never heard of this?
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: It's bizarre.
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: So I went straight to RIA.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: I was like I'm just gonna open up my firm.
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: It's very, you know, relatively low cost.
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: They'd have to have a little help getting the initial paperwork done.
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: But the compliance and the overhead stuff, I was like, okay, I have to keep, like, copies of stuff, but I was doing that already.
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: Anyway, long story short, I started in 2006 and you know it was.
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: I mean, people were calling me from the brokerage.
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: They were like, wait, wait, what.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: What is the thing you're doing?
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: And of course now it's very, you know, popular and you know XY planning network and all these other you know platforms and kind of done for you systems that you can plug into to do this.
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: But it was, it was very different back then.
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: So, anyway, that that business has gone through a bunch of iterations over the years.
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: You know mostly traditional, you know geographically, local, financial planning, managing retirement accounts for people, most of them retirees, are, you know, fairly elderly, and the the.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: The latest iteration, which is travel retirement, is it's actually a separate you know business LLC.
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: But I really wanted to do something more digital.
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: So, you know, hopefully online, selfishly.
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: We, we have three kids, one is left to go to college, other two are one's graduated, one's graduating in December, then we have the daughter who's going to college next year, so we're going to be empty nesters.
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: I was, like you know what I really have like for a long time wanted to do something digital where, like, we can travel we can talk about that in a little bit, because I know both you guys are travelers too but so travel retirement is this kind of thing that just kind of came it kind of dropped in my lap.
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: I mean, honestly, it wasn't like I said, like here's, here's the plan for this thing.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: You know when I'm going to do this and do this and do this.
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: It's um, it's a passion project.
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: But I found out other people have this passion too, and so that has really started to grow and we can, you know, we can talk about details on that if you want.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: But so, so that's where I am now.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: Wonder wealth is my ria, which I still operate.
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: It's, it's really small it.
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: I'm honestly maybe phasing that out.
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure um depends on how the travel time it thing goes, but um, anyway, that's, that's, that's the the long of it.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: I should say it's it's good man, and I'm curious because I know once we get on the travel talk, we're we're gonna be rolling.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: So before we do that, since this is the only the only podcast, I do want to ask you.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: You know, given that it was 2006, situations were different.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: You didn't have things like the advent of x, y, pn.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: You were trying to figure that stuff out on your own a little bit.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: What has it been like for you to kind of see the evolution of the industry and and what it, what kind of the layout looks like today versus what it was like back then?
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: yeah, you know it's, it's terrific.
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: Um, I mean the options now for not only for clients, obviously, because it was always, you know, think about clients first, that they have, you know, fiduciary options, that transparency, the all the things that we, we all kind of preach about.
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: But from a business standpoint, it is incredible to have again these, these kind of turnkey platforms for somebody who's brand new, who, who doesn't want to do the you know brokerage route.
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: There's so many more options for them now to do that without again having to rediscover and recreate the wheel.
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, it's, it's, it's very different.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: I was.
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: Have you guys heard of ria in a box?
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, I have.
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: They've been around for a long time.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: But back when I started my RIA, it was still like it was this one guy I think he actually ended up selling the business to a bigger firm, but it was like one guy who was, I think he was like a CPA and he figured out like there's this gap, that RIAs needed that initial paperwork, like how do I fill out the registration information?
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: What financial documents do I need to share with regulators, and all that stuff.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: He literally had like an Excel spreadsheet with like multiple pages of this stuff and so I was like, ah, I don't know what I'm doing.
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: So I think I paid him like I don't know, it was like 1500 bucks and he's like all right, I'm sending you this document, you just fill it out as much as you can, and then I'll fill out the stuff and like, do the registration for you.
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: It was very cobbled together but it did the job.
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: And then there was obviously a gap there because he, you know, he ended up selling that business, you know, when it got, when RIAs got really popular.
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: But yeah, it was very different back then and, like I said, I'm thrilled with the I mean the options, like I said, for customers that people just know, luckily, know more about what questions to ask, what to look for when interviewing financial advisors, and the industry, luckily, is starting to catch up to on some of the areas that I would say were just a little bit lax as far as you know who should be able to do what for for who you know legally.
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, no, no.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great background and I feel like talking to so many advisors.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: It's almost like today there's almost I don't want to say too many options, but there's so many more options than just the RIA in a box.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: And when you were starting it was just very simple.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: Weren't many options?
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: It was just figuring out how to get alive.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: You know, now people have like analysis, paralysis to try and figure out where their tech stack is, what organization to get into.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: So maybe it was a blessing in disguise how simple it was and being at the very beginning of it.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: So that's, very cool, yeah.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: So let's just segue right into, you know, the travel retirement.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, I feel like most advisors we talked to who are more experienced, you know they'll have like this first half of their career, just like everyone else, where they're just trying to figure it out, trying to stay alive.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: You know, hey, I'm a business owner, I'm a financial planner, I'm wearing all these hats, and then they have like this revelation of like hey, you know what I can.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: You know, I see this niche, it might be underserved.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: Like how can I help these types of clients?
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: So how did you kind of segue into this travel retirement and just reprogramming and helping people figure out like, hey, this could be a reality.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: That's a great, great, great question and, like I mentioned, it almost fell into my lap.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: So on Twitter, I've been on Twitter for a long time and I love to travel.
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: My wife and I, we love traveling, a lot of international travel.
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: I've been to France four times.
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: We've been to Italy, scotland, england.
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: Anyway, long story short, I love Europe and there was this period and it was probably, I don't know, a year ago, maybe not even a year ago where I would randomly I'm basically on these email lists for property, like there's websites where you can go search for French property or Italian property, portuguese property, spanish property, all that kind of stuff.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: It's like how's Hunter's?
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: International.
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: But there's I mean there's a bunch of them and the French one.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: I would get an email every Friday.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: It would come early and it would be like hey, here's the you know the properties we're looking at currently and they would have this list of maybe 20 properties.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: Some are you know relatively well expenses over there.
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: You know 400, 500,000.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: But then they would have a bunch that were $100,000, $80,000, $120,000 and all that would click through.
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: And I was like no way.
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: Like this thing is.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: It's like in the middle of a beautiful, you know rolling hills, vineyards, there's a castle down the road, it's in a little town that you can walk around and tell the amenities, you know this like quintessential little French town.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: And I was like that's crazy.
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: And so I would literally like I'd be on the phone here in my house, I would sit out on the porch with my coffee, with my iPhone, take a screenshot of, like the little property pictures and put four of them out on Twitter and just say, oh my gosh, look at this, this house in France, it's, you know, $89,000.
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: And it's got two, two bedrooms, one bath, you know three acres of land, blah, blah, blah, and just purely like.
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: I can't believe this.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: Like I got to share this and then people started, you know, responding, and so I would do this like once a week, maybe twice.
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: People were like, wait, where are you finding these things?
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: And so that'd be like, all right, well, you know, it's this, this website, well, can you buy if you're?
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: If you're, if you're not a citizen of France?
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: I'd be like, oh, that's, that's a good question, let me research it.
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: I'd research oh, you'd know, you don't have to be a citizen, like, anybody can buy property into these places.
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: Oh well, how would it, how would it actually happen?
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's a good question, let me research that.
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: And so I started doing this like every week.
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: I would get a handful of these questions and I'll see you, there's some desire here.
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: I mean, I love the research part.
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: I was like, oh, I should find that out.
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: But I was like, oh, there's actually a desire for this kind of information and the content.
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: So I was like I should look to possibly set a separate thing up specifically for this.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: I started with kind of like, let's just make it Europe.
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: But then, the more I thought about it, I was like, no, that's way too broad, I would rather know a lot more about a small niche than know a tiny bit about it.
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: You know a bunch of stuff.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: So that's where travel time came in and I was like, well, I'm going to go with Italy and France Because, again, I love them.
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: I've been there and the opportunities are amazing and it turns out there are a lot of people that love Italy and France.
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: So here we are now.
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: Again, I try to post every day.
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: I have a YouTube channel now for travel retirement, which I do at least one video a week which we can talk more about.
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: But again, I'm in audience building mode and also research mode.
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: The thing you mentioned on Twitter, where I have these email comments.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: Basically, when somebody signs up for travel retirement, which they can do at travelattirementcom, there's an automated series of emails that go out, but one of them just looks like it's handwritten from me.
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: It just says, hey, welcome aboard.
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: Where is it?
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: You want to travel, tommy?
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: That's it.
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: I have hundreds, hundreds of responses to that email and people will I mean people write page like a whole page of.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, my grandmother was born in Italy.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: She grew up in Sicily, in this little town, and we've never been back there and my wife and I have always talked about.
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: We wanted to get, you know, maybe retired there when we're older and learn about our family and I mean stuff like I'm like, oh my gosh, you don't even know me and you're sharing with this with me because it's a passion and they're like you know.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: So we really would love some help with, you know, finding a property.
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: Here's our budget.
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: You know we're thinking about retiring at this age and you know I'm going to have Social Security and my wife will too, and I'm like, oh my gosh, it's amazing to hit on something where you get that kind of response.
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: It's way more than anything I've ever done in the financial world as far as you know people having a passion for it.
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: But yeah, let's hopefully it'll continue and you know I'm learning from people and trying to share with them too and we'll see what happens.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so would you say that from your experience that most of it is like people just need help figuring out how to get it?
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, they have this dream right the lower cost of living, healthier food, no GMOs and stuff like that, you know, cheaper health care, just a higher quality of life?
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Siesta's in the middle of the day, like do you find that most people you know they're dreaming of this, but they don't know how to get the rubber to hit the road?
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: Like what do you think that?
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: I mean your real value here is like, hey, you have this dream, let's investigate it and see if these pros outweigh the cons.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: Or you know, where do you really see yourself driving value for these people?
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: I'll hopefully I can answer this correctly.
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: So I've learned that there's, you know, sell kind of from the old brokerage days, sadly, like sell people what they want but then give them what they need.
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: And what people want, like ostensibly what they think they want is the pictures of the cheap house on the hilltop with the views, and, you know, it's 20 minutes from the coast and there, you know, there's wineries all around them and that's like the kind of visceral thing in their brain.
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: But what they really need is do you have enough assets to meet the income requirements?
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: Because France and Italy, you can't just move there with zero assets.
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: They're, you know, they're like you can come in, but you want, we want you to be self-sufficient.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: You have to have, you know, health insurance for a year that you have to pay for upfront.
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: You have to have a place to stay, which means you have to have gone through, like, the legal process of either getting a lease in an apartment or purchase a property.
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: Anyway, so what I've learned is like the content that I put out on Twitter or YouTube is all about look at this cheap house on overlooking this lake in the hills of Italy.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: But then when people start contacting me directly, because I've done like one on one calls with people.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: That's like.
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: You know, this is exciting, but let's check this stuff first and then we start talking about, maybe, the financial stuff.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: So, and my angle then is it can be the financial stuff, because there's a ton of like channels on YouTube that are all about like property tours.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: And here's this little town, let's do a walking tour of it, but almost all of them would be like If you're, if you're thinking about moving here, contact, you know, an international attorney or contact us, so-and-so, and it's like well, no, I can be that, I can be that least the financial person on that.
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: So it's, it gives me a little different angle, but still I can capture a lot of the same audience who's again interested in those kind of visceral things, and then again provide them with financial planning.
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: If they're American, you know, online courses maybe if they just wanted to like well, here's the here's actually like that, step by step, if you want to buy a property, here's the first thing you need to do.
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: You need to get your, you know, codice fiscale in Italy, it's like a social security number Then you need to contact the agent, then you need to.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: You know, there's like a series of things, so that could be like an online course.
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, to be able to hit up, hit a larger audience.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: One of the cool things that I think that you Are doing and and one of the cool things that people can kind of gain value in working with you, right, is that you're from America.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: You have the same interest in traveling and going around and doing these things, whereas, like you said, you know, if you get on a YouTube channel and there's an international realtor or attorney or somebody at the end of it, you're like, yeah, I can call them and talk to them, but are they really thinking about me?
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Do they understand it from my side of my perspective, or they just gonna try to get me to buy this thing?
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: So one thing I feel like I really like about your process and the way you've kind of gone about this, tommy, is that you started with the questions of why you were interested in it and then, because of that, start putting out content that was relevant to whatever other people were already kind of thinking.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: So it's cool.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: You've been able to kind of build this community Through just being inquisitive.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: I think that's awesome.
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and yeah, I agree with you too that because I've had a conversation with a, a tax Like a CPA, basically in France and another one in Italy, that we've done just some some kind of one-on-one calls, and they both said the same thing.
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: They're like well, the cool thing is you're You're again not the agent like trying to sell the property, like you don't have a commission on the line, it's it's more the education.
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: You know, the open people's eyes to the education.
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: If they need help with the financial part, it's a natural segue.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: But it doesn't you know.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: Again, limiting conflicts of interest and, again, hopefully, thinking about, like, the things that are important to me are the same things that are important to them.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, mm-hmm, I love that.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: Now I know that your program is called travel retirement.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: But you know, like, what are your kind of your thoughts on?
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: Because I feel, like some people, they always have this dream of like, okay, when I get to retirement, I'm finally gonna travel, right, and it's like they're almost holding it off during their working years, right, like, what are your thoughts around that?
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: And you know, living in the present, not just thinking about retirement the whole time.
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm, I'm a big, you know advocate for Sure, you need to.
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: You know, don't yell low and, and you know, spend all your money on a around the world cruise and then come home broke.
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: But Personal story.
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: So my parents are the ones who got me into traveling.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: They took my sister and I traveling a lot when we were younger.
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: We went to again various places in the world, really got the travel bug.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: My dad passed in 2015, at the age of 70, so he had just retired a couple years earlier and had a bunch of other trips planned.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: Now it's sad, but he did.
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: He, I think they went to 15 or 20 countries.
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: I mean they, they traveled their whole life and when he passed, I was like you never know.
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: You just never know.
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: And luckily, you know we've already done some travel.
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: But, yes, I always encourage people like, especially nowadays I mean, with the way travel is, you can get anywhere you need to.
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: You know, probably within 24 hours.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: I mean literally anywhere in the world.
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: And yes, there's an expense involved.
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: But the, the experience you have and the memories that you build are things that you'll carry with you for your entire life and, and you know, obviously family members and loved ones you go with.
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: I know, peter, you did a bunch of like a world tour in the last year and you know, because I saw your pictures from Gibraltar and and all the other places you've been, which is amazing I mean that you'll, you'll, you'll remember that for the rest of your life and, and that's something, something that you can come back to and be like oh, now I need to go Hit this other, this other spot, because I want to keep building on that memory.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: Same thing with you, brock.
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: I know you got married recently, didn't you?
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah we did.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Congrats, thank you, thank you.
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: My wife and I are celebrating 25 years in like two weeks, so I'm gonna ask you thanks, thanks, but but I saw you did some travel too.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: But yeah, you, you need to, you need to take advantage of the time you have while you're healthy.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: You know, again, you got you, you both the young bucks.
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: But when you get to be my age I'm 52 things start aching, you know, things start wearing out and you know there's there's a point at which you can't do it anymore.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: Not not trying to scare people, but, again, make it a priority, put it in your financial plan, you know, set up an annual budget for, you know, travel, whether it's something relatively local, whether it's international, again, everything can be planned for.
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: But, yeah, I would say live, live, some for today and and save some for the for tomorrow.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's great advice.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: I would imagine that there's some aspect of people that you know Email you or we'll send you know that you'll communicate with, where they feel like some of the Choices that they've made or things that they're doing or prohibiting them from doing these types of trips right.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: So maybe it's kids, maybe it's a corporate job, maybe it's so, but, like you just said, if you plan for it, you save for it, you can accomplish it as evidence of you being able to go around.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know what your, your mom or dad did, but being able to travel as a kid right.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: Obviously your family figured that out.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: Obviously you figured that out.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: Do you get a lot of questions like that from people or like I just don't feel like I can do it because of the position that I'm in.
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and a lot of those email conversations that I have with people, you know, because I'll follow up with oh, you know, is this are you thinking about vacation or you think about retirement?
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: And then we'll go into next thing.
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: And I do have a bunch, and I'm I'm both like encouraged but also kind of sad, because I do get, probably at least once a week, something like hey, I'm, you know, I'm 70 years old and I'm retired, you know, in the United US and finding it hard to make ends meet.
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: So been considering, you know, moving to Italy.
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: It looks beautiful and I know it's cheaper, but I don't know, you know, if it's too late for me and it's like, oh, like number one it's not too late, but we're gonna have to work at this and you know, and put the pieces together.
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, I do get those those things.
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: And then there's a ton of people like me who are like, hey, our kids are in high school and we're, but we're already thinking about, like you know, five or six years from now, when they're in college, we'll be empty nesters.
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: We would love to, you know, maybe have a place in Italy that we buy and we spend maybe a couple months a year.
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: You know, these are typically, you know, people either have, you know, extended vacation time or they own a business or can work remotely, and they're like, yeah, we'd love to buy a little place we'd be able to take our family to and then, when we pass, we'll pass it on to them and it could be like a legacy, you know, asset.
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: But yeah, you hear lots of different stories.
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: Everybody's story is a little unique, but again, they all have that desire to again experience the other country.
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: And again, most of this is like, not, hey, we're gonna go for a week and see the touristy sites, it's, you know, I wanna be in a little hilltop town, I wanna learn how to speak French and, you know, be able to walk down to my, you know, buy my bag at every day and spend time in the beautiful country side.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: It's typically very modest, but amazing dreams.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: No, I love that perspective and I mean, there's so many different flavors of travel too.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, you see, all the time you know the Golden Visa in Portugal or you know, hey, this small town in Italy is gonna pay you to move to Sardinia, but there's a lot of caveats with it and you don't necessarily have to.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: One thing I like that you said is that you don't have to purchase.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: You know, renting's cool, leasing's cool too.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: You know, as American citizen, you got 90 days every year that you can go to the EU.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: You know a lot of visas allow 45 days, 60 days travel visas, no problem.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: So I mean, what are like?
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: What's one big thing that you see between the ones that end up doing it and the ones that end up just kind of flirting with it and never pulling the trigger right, like I'm thinking here?
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: I've got friends who are always like man, it'd be cool to go like travel, but you know they can't comprehend booking a plane ticket.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: So, like, what do you kind of see as, like, you know, the driving factor for people and who actually gets over that hump?
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: You know that's a good question.
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: I mean, I would say a lot of it just for travel in general.
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: I would say a lot of it has to do with family, like family and close friends.
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: If you have a parent or even a sibling who you know, after college they went to Europe and backpacked, or your parents, again, you know, took trips internationally when they were younger.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: Just having that experience and that I don't know if it's confidence or, you know, fear of the unknown, that that's a huge thing, Like just having somebody we can go.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: Hey, when you went to Europe, you know how did you do, like how'd that work?
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: Like where'd you fly out of, how'd you do, how'd you find the tickets?
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: And you know stuff like that.
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: There's a little bit of you know, not knowing what you don't know.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: When it comes to like moving over there, I think it's similar, except a lot more familial connection.
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: So, like the people I've talked to who've actually moved to Italy or bought a purchase, you know, purchased a property in Italy.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: They've, number one, they've been there on a vacation first.
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: You know they've gone to visit first.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: They maybe had family that lived there, or their grandparents or somebody from their family was from there.
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: So again, it's not only the connection but also there's a familiarity there.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: So that's why you know a lot of the content I share.
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: I try to you know, not just share kind of like the nuance details of numbers and things like that, but also the you know, here's what's around this area and here's how I mean it's actually got.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: They have all the amenities that you have in your little town, in you know Indiana.
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: You know there's grocery stores and there's gas stations and you can drive places and, even better than that, there's like trains that can take you places and, yes, they have high-speed internet everywhere, like they probably there's.
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: It's probably faster and cheaper than yours.
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: You know there's all these little things that people are just in the back of their mind, either have assumptions about or they just it's just an unknown and that holds them back, and so I'm trying to break through that for people.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, your environment's huge and it's usually, you know, you see someone who does it and you know you're like, hey, you know what, I think I could do it, or you know you just kind of have that feeling and eventually you're gonna have to do it.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: But I know in the beginning you mentioned, you know you're about to be an empty nester and I know that you're in your 50s and kind of nearing your retirement, but like what, what's your future?
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: Look like Like what's Tom, you're gonna do?
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: Are you gonna do the France thing?
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: Like, you know, what are you thinking?
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: That's a great question, I know.
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: I mean, my wife and I have already talked about it and we definitely want to travel a lot.
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, our daughter is.
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: She's going to college in Georgia, so it's not too far away.
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: So it's, you know, it's, it's fairly easy drive to get down there.
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: But and our sons are still close but they even have said yeah, you guys, you guys should like that'd be awesome if you like bought a house in France, like we could totally come visit on spring break and you know, that'd be just a fun place to go.
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly yeah.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: So yeah, we're going to.
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: Florida, we're going to France.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly yeah, forget Murdovitz, the best ever.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah One.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I met a friend one time in the airport, or we just crossed into each other and they were going to Naples, florida, and I was going to Naples, italy.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's awesome.
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, you know, first, first thing is, like I said, I want to build it, hopefully, build a travel retirement up so that it's something that can be, you know, relatively passive-ish, like I said.
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: Online courses, I don't know.
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: I mean there's, there's so many different options you have now for you know online, for ways you could, you could potentially make some income, but yeah, see where that goes.
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: And then I mean there's the sky's the limit.
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: I mean eventually it could be actual, like tours, like setting up travel tours and to these countries or hosting tours.
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: You know, I've always wanted to like, I like biking and I've always wanted to do like one of the multi-day bikes where you can you know there's all these bike paths across Europe that are designated the Eurovelo system like bike across France and document it and, you know, build another itinerary around that.
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: Anyway, there's a lot of, a lot of cool options, so many options and so little time.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: One last question as we wrap up what's on your bucket list?
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: You know what motivates you.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: What are maybe some four or five cities or events, or you know, I know you just mentioned the cycling around, but what are some like high bullet points.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: You're like you know, hey, gotta get this done.
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: Yep, well, one one is already scheduled.
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: So next summer we're taking.
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: My wife and I are taking our daughter who's?
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: She's a big swimmer.
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: She's actually going to college on a swimming scholarship.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: We're taking her to Paris.
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: We're taking her to Paris for the Olympics to watch.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, one of the swimming events.
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: So that's already, you know, tickets purchased, so that one's already done, locked in.
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: Locked in On the cycling front.
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: We watch the Tour de France every year, like our family watches it.
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: So I definitely would want to go, like follow the tour.
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: You know, maybe do two or three weeks, rent the camper van, so followed the tour, but also see all the beautiful side.
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: You know little villages and there's a lot of areas.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: I haven't been Just don't jump in front of the Peloton Tommy.
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: I'll try to stay out of the way.
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: I know that I'm so cringe every time we watch it and there's an accident that's caused by a fan, I'm like, please people like everybody wants to everybody wants to get on camera, but they're like these people are literally going 45 miles an hour on a little piece of metal.
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: Stay in your lane, I think that's where that phrase comes in.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: Literally.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: We have a very determined Lance Armstrong barreling at you.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, 45 miles an hour.
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's crazy.
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: The other.
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: The other big trip that we've talked about that we want to do is there's a actual hike called the Tour de Mont Blanc.
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: Mont Blanc is the highest you know mountain in Europe but it sits on the border of France, italy and Switzerland and there's basically like a hundred mile trek that you can do around the mountain and hit all three countries.
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: You do it Usually you do it over a week or 10 days, so that would be a big one.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: But yeah, those are definitely, but like the best trips, they're huge.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: That's fantastic.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Before we go.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: Before we go, I have to mention something because I was looking at both of your Twitter accounts.
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: You both have pictures of you with monkeys on your on your Twitter accounts, which I was like.
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: This is interesting, brock.
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: You have the selfie with the monkey like holding the camera.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's in the.
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: Aboud monkey forest.
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yes.
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: And then, peter, I think you got one in Gibraltar, didn't you?
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm on the Rock of Gibraltar in mind.
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: Yep, anyway, I was, I was like I was like looking through, like interesting there's, there's a monkey connection between these guys.
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: There definitely is we might be able to distance or distant, relative or something.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: You might catch us monkeying around, yeah.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: No it's fine.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: I like, we like doing that stuff.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: And yeah, last time I was in, when I was in Bali recently Peter just mentioned it, but one of the coolest experiences of my life I got the scuba dive with manta rays giant manta rays, so that was a 20 feet wide, 3000 to 5000 pounds.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: You feel like you're pretty small when you're down there with them.
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: So I would be terrified.
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: I'll be terrified, but amazed.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: They're peaceful.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, it's back to traveling man.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: You experience things that you don't get to do anywhere else.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: So this has been a blast man, Tommy, it's been great to talk to you, Anything else before we let you go.
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: Nope, if people are interested in you know, checking out what I'm doing on Twitter, it's at wander, underscore wealth and if you want to look at the YouTube video that is up and doing them and I'm also happy to share if any advisors are interested in starting on YouTube or trying to learn what I'm learning, again, I'm an open book.
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: I'm happy to share, but on YouTube, if you just search at travel tire mint, you should be able to find me.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: Love it.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Tommy.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: You got me fired up.
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: I might just head to the airport right now.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: So thank you so much for jumping on and sharing your story.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: All right, Thanks, guys.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: Thanks man.