Latest / Real Money with Lisa Chastain / From Dreams to Reality: Planning Your Perfect Vacation Getaway

Transcript

From Dreams to Reality: Planning Your Perfect Vacation Getaway · Real Money with Lisa Chastain

• 0:04
  Hey, it's Lisa. I'm on a mission to help people
• 0:07
  stop budgeting, build wealth, and spend guilt free.
• 0:10
  Today I'm going to share with you all of the details of my
• 0:13
  family of fours during vacation to Alaska.
• 0:16
  I'm not here to tell you about all the ways you're going to
• 0:17
  save money, but you'll definitely find out what this
• 0:20
  trip cost and how you can make it happen yourself.
• 0:22
  So this summer my family and I, I have two boys, 12 and 15, and
• 0:27
  my husband went to Alaska. We took an Alaskan cruise on
• 0:30
  Celebrity Cruises. Shout out, you guys are awesome.
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  We had an amazing time. I want to talk about the
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  planning process, financially and otherwise for this cruise.
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  Last summer we came home from Hawaii and we started thinking
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  about this vacation, what was going to be next?
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  We started planning that far ahead and I recommend that if
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  you have a dream vacation that you know you want to take, you
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  definitely want to spend enough time planning ahead, not just
• 0:57
  timewise, but financially. So we we realized in January,
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  think shout out to my assistant Ashley.
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  She was already researching cruises.
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  We found the cruise that we wanted and it was on sale.
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  We could book one cruise and get the 2nd 175% off.
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  So we did save some money there and in total we knew that the
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  cruise for the four of us was going to cost $7500.
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  It was $5000 for one room, half off the second room of 2500.
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  So my husband and I were going to have a room together and my
• 1:28
  boys would have a room together. That was super important for us.
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  Definitely don't want to go cheap on that.
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  FYI, if you're going to take kids on a cruise, you want to
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  have your own space and it's important that they do too.
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  So that's tip number one. Once we realized and knew how
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  much the cruise was actually going to cost, then we had to do
• 1:45
  some research around what were the additional costs that went
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  into the cruise. First, we had to figure out how
• 1:50
  we were going to pay for that. And one thing that we do as a
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  family is we always set aside money every single month for
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  different purposes. That's something that I teach in
• 1:59
  my stop budgeting course and something that you can learn to
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  do as well as you are saving intentionally for different
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  things. But you you know saving for
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  travel and my family is a must. It's a non negotiable.
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  So we have money set aside in different accounts for different
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  things. The second thing I did was I
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  looked at my credit availability to be able to know that I could
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  afford to pay for the actual cruise because you've got to pay
• 2:22
  in full for the cruise when you book it and they give you a
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  certain amount, number of months to make sure that it's paid
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  before you depart or embark, I think is the word that they use.
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  So for us, we had to make sure we were leaving in June and our
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  trip had to be paid for in full by March.
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  So that gave us a little window to get it paid.
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  But we we were able to put that on a 0% credit card and that
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  gave us a little time to pay off with regular cash flow in the
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  month to get some of that paid off.
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  But then also we were able to move money and savings and it
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  wasn't an emergency to do it. So that was that was booked and
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  then it was time for us to get planning on what we were going
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  to do in the different places that we were stopping in Alaska.
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  Fair warning, Alaskan cruises are not cheap.
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  If you're looking to do a cheap cruise, go to Mexico, Alaska,
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  the the trip itself was $7500. And then on top of that, we had
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  excursions and different things that I'm going to get into next.
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  So here's all the fun stuff. Then you're not just on a
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  cruise, you get off the cruise. And for us, we did a 3.
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  It's actually a four part series to the cruise.
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  The first was the Hubbard Glacier, which we didn't get.
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  Glacier, which we didn't get off at.
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  That was our first stop. And then we had three other
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  cities that we stopped at, Juno, Ketchiken and Sitka.
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  And so we got to start thinking about the things that we'd want
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  to do while we were on land in Alaska, but before we before we
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  booked those excursions. And I do recommend that you book
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  those excursions early, they sell out.
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  So we found out too late because I'm not that big of a planner,
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  although I try to plan so much. We were scrambling kind of close
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  to the end of the cruise to get or before the cruise left to get
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  those things booked. So do that early and I'm going
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  to share with you how much those things cost.
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  We had to make sure that we were planning for airfare there and
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  we decided to go straight into Vancouver from Las Vegas, and
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  those flights on the way there and back cost us about $1400
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  apiece for four of us to fly there and back.
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  So you want to know that too. You've got your airfare, travel
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  costs, you've got the cruise costs and you've also got
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  getting there, getting home and anything that you might want to
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  do along the way. We spent two days in Vancouver
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  and I'll share what that cost us as a family as well now once you
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  have your travel arrangements taken care of.
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  So for us, we had the cruise and we had our flights planned and
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  we're already in at $10,000 for the whole trip.
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  Some of you are like, holy cow, that's pretty steep.
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  And it didn't stop there. And I'm so grateful for the
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  different systems that I teach in the different ways that in my
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  household were able to manage money because I could have let
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  that $10,000 price point stop me from taking a dream trip with my
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  family. But I didn't because I had money
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  set aside and I knew how that money was going to get.
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  Or, you know, when we did charge to a 0% credit card, how that
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  stuff was going to get paid off. And I'm the money worrier in my
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  family. And even for me, it made it a
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  whole lot less stressful. And when push came to shove, I
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  was like, we're going because we said as a family this is our
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  highest priority this year and we made it happen.
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  So for the cruise and for the flights were already in at
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  $10,000. And then of course we're
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  thinking about excursions and all the other things that are
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  come next, going to come next. And you might be thinking that
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  too. Before we get to excursions, I
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  want to talk about the actual costs on the cruise.
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  We were just talking about this in the studio before we jumped
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  on to film this. And there are costs.
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  Don't be fooled by the price point of the cruise.
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  There are other things that go into being on the cruise that
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  are not included in the actual cruise price.
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  So a few things that are included in the cruise price.
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  One of those things is that almost 24 hours, actually 24
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  hours, you can get food and drink on the ship from select
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  places. So we had the Ocean View Cafe at
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  the Celebrity on the Celebrity ship, which was amazing.
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  Again shout out to Celebrity and my boys could eat 24 hours a day
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  on the ship and it wasn't an additional cost but there is
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  gratuity for everything that you do on the ship.
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  They add gratuity on every single day and that is not
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  included in in the in the cost of the cruise.
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  Other things that you don't pay for.
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  We didn't have to pay to use the gym or the pool or certain
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  amenities. So don't worry that if you don't
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  have a ton extra money you'll be able to really enjoy yourself on
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  the ship. But for us we were like we want
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  to be able to take full advantage of the stream vacation
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  and do everything that's available to us.
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  We got ship credit crew, they call it cruise credit at 250
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  dollars per room so that was $500.
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  My husband and I knew that we wanted to take advantage of the
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  spa that was on the ship and so we booked a couple's massage.
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  Grand total for the massage was $520.
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  We used some of our crews credit to book it so it ended up being
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  a little less than $300.00 for the two of us to do a massage
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  the second day of the cruise. But it was such a great way for
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  us to start the vacation, to be able to let the boys go, have
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  fun, and then we were able to have a massage and not worry
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  about that extra cost. So that's something that you
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  might want to think about as well.
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  Look at all the things that you can do on the cruise and make
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  sure that you plan accordingly financially because you don't
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  want to not be able to do certain things just because you
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  feel like you're on a budget. Remember, I'm not the budget
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  coach. I'm not going to teach you how
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  to take a cruise on a budget. I want to give you the full
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  layout and so you can set up expectations and game plans so
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  you can do it the way that we did it, which was we went all
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  out so we had some food taken care, but there were some
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  restaurants on the ship also that were extra.
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  And also based on the different drink packages that are
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  available, you definitely want to get a drink package.
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  My husband definitely wanted to make sure he got the premium
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  drink package with the premium drinks, if you love the mojitos
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  and the different the different coastal island kind of drinks or
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  even if you just like your regular vodka soda, make sure
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  that you choose the right drink package for you.
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  Because based on those drink packages, like for me I got the
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  classic cuz I'm cheaper than my husband, I got the classic drink
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  package and that was a little less.
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  But also, I was limited to certain drinks that I could have
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  on the cruise. As a part of that package, my
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  husband was able to get any drink that was a part of the
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  cruise at no additional cost. But those are pretty hefty.
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  So we had the classic. I'm looking at my spreadsheet
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  here, the classic beverage package, which was $600.00 for
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  the entire week on the cruise. My husband got the premium
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  package, which we did book on the on the cruise that first
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  day. They do deals, FYI, so if you
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  don't book it before you go on the cruise, you can book it when
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  you get there. And they gave us a deal on that
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  first day. They were Wheeling a deal on us
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  the whole time, which I appreciated.
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  And then they were able to bonus the kids a drink package.
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  So they have a 0 proof drink package for the kids.
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  Just so you know, even the waters, like the bottled waters
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  they'll charge you for if you don't have a drink package and
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  it really adds up. It really does make sense to get
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  a drink package. At the end of the day, you're
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  probably looking at this price point.
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  So far we're in, we've got flights, we've got, I'm going to
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  do a whole summary of this at the end of this video.
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  But we've got flights, we've got the cruise, we've got the drink
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  packages, we're not even in to to the excursions and we're
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  already in at $11,650. Just, you know, things for you
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  to be thinking about, like how can we afford our dream
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  vacation? It adds up.
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  Let's get to the excursions. So like I said, don't do what I
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  did. Don't wait until you're like 3
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  weeks away from leaving on your cruise to book your excursions.
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  If you have an idea of the non negotiable things that you want
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  to do, especially in Alaska like for my husband it was whale
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  watching. Make sure you book that stuff
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  early so it doesn't sell out. A couple of things to be mindful
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  about that with the with the cruise line, with Celebrity
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  Cruises, we could book through the cruise and get a discount on
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  those different excursions. So you get off the boat like
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  everybody with everybody and you go off to your excursions.
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  They make it super easy to find where you need to go and they
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  are a blast for the whale watching.
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  It was already sold out cuz I waited too long, but I was able
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  to find one through via Tour. That is another website that I
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  love to go through. When I went to Hawaii we also
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  did a cruise through via tour. I highly recommend that if you
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  find yourself in the same situation it's all good.
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  Our whale watching tour, which also included a glacier tour of
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  the Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, AK, ended up being
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  $800.00 for the four of us as a money coach.
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  What you'll learn about me is that I'm not A to the penny kind
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  of person. So these numbers are a round
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  rounded number. If you want to know the exact
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  number, send me an e-mail. I'll send them to you.
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  But this gives you a really good ballpark and I just don't.
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  I don't. I'm not a penny pincher so I
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  just am giving you these round numbers so that you can work
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  with them. But $800?
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  I think it ended up being $789.00.
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  But I always round up. Then we did as an excursion in
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  Catch a Cannon. Oh my gosh, this was amazing.
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  If you go to Ketchikan, I highly recommend this eco tour.
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  We were on an eco boat that floats about 3 inches I think.
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  I don't know, it was a couple feet off the ground.
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  And so we all got in this boat. We've, you know got in this like
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  it had this big air van. So for me that was really cool
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  because we knew that we weren't also adding additional resources
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  into the into the ocean. We were being eco friendly and
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  they took us off and we went to an island.
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  At that island, we were able to firsthand see bald Eagles and
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  their babies eat in front of us and they were very sensitive to
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  it. They had like they had fish that
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  they threw out. We weren't touching them or
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  anything. They were being very sensitive
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  to the environment. But that eco cruise was so fun
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  because we felt like we were on the water so low, not in a like
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  typical kind of boat, but then going off to the island and
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  seeing firsthand bald Eagles in their natural environment.
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  It was really, really cool. I highly recommend that tour and
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  that cost us about $600.00 for the four of us so you can start
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  to see how these trips add up. And again, I'm not here to tell
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  you how to penny pinch on this. I'm here, to be honest and real
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  with you, about what these things cost, what dream
• 12:44
  vacations really cost. And anybody can make these
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  things happen as long as you plan forward.
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  This is what I teach in my world, how you can move money in
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  a certain direction toward travel.
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  I call it saving to spend. And when you're doing that,
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  these things are totally possible for you.
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  You just get to decide how much you want to spend.
• 13:07
  I was having coffee with my friend GAIL yesterday, and she's
• 13:09
  like, there's no way I'd spend $20,000 on a trip.
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  We did, and I don't regret it at all.
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  Okay. So that's our excursions.
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  So flights, excursions, cruise drink packages, and then also we
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  went to a couple of restaurants that were not included on the
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  cruise package and all in we were at $13,350 and we flew it.
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  Well, we were going to fly and I'll talk, I'll talk about my
• 13:37
  snafu, my travel snafu. These things happen to
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  financially you got to prepare for them.
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  But we planned on flying into Vancouver, BC because my boys
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  had never seen Vancouver and I absolutely love the city.
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  So on the way there, and I do recommend you fly in a day
• 13:53
  before your cruise. Take my story as an example of
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  why, I'll share with that, that with you next.
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  But we wanted to spend the whole day in Vancouver, cruising the
• 14:02
  city, enjoying the beautiful city and then on the way home we
• 14:05
  also did that. So we needed to be able to spend
• 14:07
  a night in Vancouver and there was a hotel cost and travel cost
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  with that same thing on the back end of the cruise, we got a
• 14:15
  hotel and we also needed to make sure that we had travel plans
• 14:19
  and food plans and activities planned while we were in
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  Vancouver. So I'm gonna go ahead and switch
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  gears, but just to recap our total costs for the cruise with
• 14:32
  dinner, with drinks, with excursions, for just the cruise
• 14:36
  itself, not including any keepsakes or souvenirs, those
• 14:41
  kinds of things. Oh, and also in Sitka we ended
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  up walking. We didn't take it's it cause a
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  really small town, but we ended up walking to the nature
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  reserve. We didn't do an excursion in
• 14:50
  Sitka. We could have, but we just chose
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  not to. And that was still about $150.00
• 14:54
  for the day to get into the nature reserve to see the bald
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  Eagles. The Rapture Center is where we
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  went and we're at 13,500 add in the the day.
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  In Sitka we're at 13,500. That was the total cost of our
• 15:08
  cruise but not the total cost of our trip.
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  So let's talk about Vancouver. So let's talk about extra costs
• 15:16
  that are not necessarily connected to the cruise directly
• 15:20
  that you want to make sure that you consider.
• 15:22
  First of all, we spent two days in Vancouver, so we had two
• 15:25
  hotel stays, one on the way into Vancouver before the cruise and
• 15:30
  one on the way out of Vancouver on the way home.
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  So 2H nights in Vancouver and then all the things that we did
• 15:36
  in Vancouver while we were there, we went to the aquarium.
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  We for a family of four today, it cost us about $100 no matter
• 15:44
  which way you slice it to eat out and when you're on vacation
• 15:48
  and eating at hotels. We definitely wanted to make
• 15:50
  make sure that we could do that in Vancouver, so those costs
• 15:54
  added up as well. But let me tell you about this
• 15:56
  blender that happened, that if we were on a budget trying to
• 16:00
  plan our dream vacation, I don't know if we would have actually
• 16:04
  ended up making it to to Alaska at all.
• 16:08
  Three days before the flight to Vancouver.
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  It's international travel and I've got two kiddos myself and
• 16:15
  my husband. My husband got his passport, I
• 16:17
  had my passport and my 12 year old has his passport.
• 16:20
  My 15 year old got his passport in 2018.
• 16:23
  I want to say yes, it was 2018 before we went to the Bahamas.
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  So I opened up his passport and I realized three days before our
• 16:30
  international flight to Vancouver that his passport
• 16:33
  expired. What the fuck?
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  I didn't realize at the time that kids passports only last
• 16:44
  five years. So I was assuming that because
• 16:46
  we got our passports at the same time that his passport was going
• 16:49
  to be good to go and it wasn't, which could have ended the trip
• 16:54
  for us because we weren't. We weren't going to be able to
• 16:57
  get him a passport, even expedited in the amount of time
• 17:00
  that we needed to get on the plane.
• 17:02
  So we talked to who we could talk to.
• 17:04
  We did our research and we realized that he was not going
• 17:07
  to be able to take the flight to Vancouver, and we weren't
• 17:11
  willing to let that stop us, even though there were a ton of
• 17:14
  extra costs that came with it. We had to then backtrack our
• 17:19
  flight because we could only get to Canada through the border,
• 17:23
  through ground transportation. That was going to be train, bus,
• 17:27
  or private transportation. We had to rebook our flights to
• 17:31
  Seattle. We took.
• 17:33
  We were on an international airline that we weren't able to
• 17:37
  change the flight on the way to the way to Vancouver.
• 17:41
  So we ended up having to eat that flight cost because they
• 17:44
  were nontransferable. Nonexchangeable, nonrefundable
• 17:48
  tickets. Our loss, our learning, and we
• 17:51
  rebooked flights to Seattle. And then we were in a
• 17:54
  conversation about how we were going to get from Seattle to
• 17:57
  Vancouver. My husband was not willing at
• 18:00
  that point. It was going to be a really long
• 18:01
  day with the boys. He really didn't want to go on
• 18:04
  the cheap and and take a train, which we could have done, take a
• 18:08
  train to Vancouver. Instead, we decided to take a
• 18:12
  private car from from Seattle to Vancouver for two reasons.
• 18:16
  One, it was going to be really late at night by the time we
• 18:18
  were getting in. We're going into a foreign
• 18:20
  country. You didn't really know our way
• 18:22
  around and we wanted to make sure we did it safely.
• 18:25
  Second reason is that you can't rent a car and drive across the
• 18:30
  border. They don't let you do that for
• 18:31
  just a day, and we didn't want to dock a car for a whole week
• 18:35
  and pay for it for a car we weren't using in a foreign
• 18:37
  country either. So we decided to take a private
• 18:39
  car, which was amazing. It was $1100.
• 18:44
  It wasn't the cheapest route, but it was definitely the best
• 18:47
  route for us. We had a comfortable ride into
• 18:49
  Vancouver, pretty stress free. They picked us up at the
• 18:52
  airport, they got us to the hotel and that was the least
• 18:55
  stressful way that we decided we wanted to do that on the way
• 18:58
  home because we were traveling during the day, we decided to
• 19:00
  book a train and we lucked out that it was actually a bus,
• 19:03
  which was a beautiful ride from Vancouver to Seattle.
• 19:06
  Got across the border just fine. But that whole snafu, shall we
• 19:10
  say, cost us about $3000. Now, if we were trying to be
• 19:14
  really tight and if we didn't have our money planned and
• 19:19
  saved, and I'll tell you how we how we were able to manage those
• 19:22
  extra costs at the end of this video, we probably would have
• 19:25
  had to cancel the trip. And that would have really been
• 19:29
  horrible for us. We were so looking forward to
• 19:31
  it. This was a dream vacation. $3000
• 19:34
  didn't make us or break us. I'm so, so grateful for that.
• 19:38
  And I just want you to know that if you're planning your dream
• 19:40
  vacation, some of these things are going to happen.
• 19:43
  You cannot, you cannot plan for absolutely everything.
• 19:46
  And I've got families who travel abroad, who have medical
• 19:48
  emergencies that you just can't plan for everything.
• 19:51
  So you've got to make sure that you've got extra money saved,
• 19:55
  that you've got your finances handled in a way that you can
• 19:59
  absorb these extra costs so that you're not stressed out to the
• 20:03
  Max when it comes to your money on a dream vacation.
• 20:06
  So that's just a heads up for you.
• 20:08
  So for our stay in Vancouver, for our extra travel, all the
• 20:12
  things including all of the costs that I just that at the
• 20:16
  you know, front end of this video that I shared with you
• 20:18
  about our trip to Alaska, the total cost of our trip was
• 20:22
  $19,000 rounded up to 20 because there's some cash in here that
• 20:27
  we spent and other kinds of travel that we spent.
• 20:29
  I'm going to give you a breakdown of all of these things
• 20:32
  at the end of the video, but I just feel like it's really
• 20:35
  important for me to be open and honest with you about all the
• 20:38
  ways that my household spends money and the way that we plan
• 20:41
  our vacations, Because budgeting will only get you so far in your
• 20:46
  life and for so many people who are on a tight budget.
• 20:50
  I also want you to hear today that you can enjoy your life.
• 20:55
  And for those of you who are really good at budgeting, it's
• 20:57
  likely you do have money set aside for these things.
• 21:00
  But the actual thought of spending your money makes you
• 21:03
  feel really gives you a lot of anxiety or fear.
• 21:07
  And I want you to know today that my family doesn't make
• 21:10
  millions and millions of dollars.
• 21:12
  I'm still growing my company today.
• 21:14
  I'm making great money in my company, and my husband makes
• 21:17
  pretty good money too. But we're not millionaires yet,
• 21:21
  and we were still able to make this happen because it was so
• 21:24
  important to us and we just we had total clarity of where our
• 21:27
  money was. So next let me tell you about
• 21:30
  the ways that we were able to afford this total trip.
• 21:33
  So I knew last year that my family and I, we were going to
• 21:36
  be taking an Alaskan cruise. Now the cheap chip in me really
• 21:40
  thought that we probably should have put it off a year from now.
• 21:44
  And my husband was like, babe, if not now, when he's definitely
• 21:48
  the spender in the relationship. And I love that so much about
• 21:51
  him because he stretches me outside my comfort zone to do
• 21:53
  things that I normally wouldn't do.
• 21:55
  The saver in me was like, we got to put this off another year and
• 21:58
  make sure we have all of the money.
• 22:00
  But you know what? It all worked out.
• 22:02
  And here's why I was talking about this at the front end of
• 22:05
  the video. Every month I put money aside
• 22:08
  into different buckets. Two of those buckets are my
• 22:11
  husband and I's are Roth Iras. And if you don't know how Roth
• 22:15
  IRA works, I'm not going to, I'm not going to spend this time to
• 22:17
  explain all of it to you. But high level, I look at my my
• 22:21
  Roth IRA as longterm money, but also I know if I need it I can
• 22:25
  take it out and not have any penalty or taxes.
• 22:28
  So that's always in my back pocket.
• 22:30
  For those extra expenses, especially the extra $3000 that
• 22:33
  we spent. I could have spent time in a
• 22:35
  conversation of we can't make this happen.
• 22:37
  There's no way, because the actual money wasn't in our
• 22:40
  checking account or our household savings account.
• 22:43
  But we did have it, and so it was just time for me to look at
• 22:46
  all of the money that we had available to us to make it
• 22:49
  happen. Not only do we save into our
• 22:51
  Roth Iras every month, but we save into a household emergency
• 22:55
  reserve every single month, and that money is just set aside.
• 22:58
  We've got three dogs for emergencies, whatever, So I have
• 23:01
  that money to pull from if I need it to as well.
• 23:04
  I also save into my son's accounts.
• 23:06
  My sons have two accounts that we send money over to every
• 23:10
  single month. So if I was just looking at my
• 23:12
  household checking account, my household savings account, it
• 23:15
  may look like I don't have the money to do things that I want
• 23:18
  to do. But that's all about mindset.
• 23:20
  Where there's a will, there's a way.
• 23:22
  And because I'm such a savvy saver most of the time, all of
• 23:27
  that money is set aside in a way where I know I can access access
• 23:30
  it if I needed to, and then I just got to have a conversation
• 23:33
  with myself and my husband about what was negotiable.
• 23:37
  The other thing is with the cruise is I knew ahead of time
• 23:39
  enough what the costs were going to be.
• 23:41
  So I put a lot of those charges and expenses on a 0% credit
• 23:45
  card. I didn't.
• 23:47
  I I mean, I have money in the savings account, but if I can
• 23:49
  put it on a 0% card and then every single month just pay off,
• 23:53
  chunk a little chunk of it at a time, we made it a whole lot
• 23:56
  more manageable. It didn't feel like I was taking
• 23:58
  $20,000 of savings out for this trip.
• 24:02
  We've used, we've used and managed our cash flow in the
• 24:05
  household, some savings accounts and some 0% credit cards to help
• 24:11
  us fund this total trip. That was super helpful the
• 24:14
  morning that we were traveling to to Vancouver and realize we
• 24:18
  weren't going to be able to fly internationally.
• 24:20
  For me to go, you know what babe?
• 24:21
  We'll figure it out when we get home.
• 24:23
  I put it on a credit card, which I knew we had availability for,
• 24:26
  and then I got home, looked at all my funds, transferred what I
• 24:29
  needed to transfer, and the trips paid off.
• 24:32
  So for those of you today who are for you specifically today,
• 24:36
  who's thinking about your dream vacation and what it's going to
• 24:40
  cost for you to get there, I really hope that everything that
• 24:43
  I shared with you in this video is hopeful for you and helpful
• 24:47
  for you to think about what could be possible, what might be
• 24:53
  the money that you want to spend on a trip like this.
• 24:56
  And I'm here to answer any questions.
• 24:58
  All right. So let me give you a total
• 24:59
  rundown of all of the expenses that we had for this dream
• 25:04
  cruise to Alaska. I have to say, there were some
• 25:07
  parts of it that were stressful. I'm like because my husband's A
• 25:09
  spender and I'm a savior. Savior because I'm a saver and
• 25:15
  my husband's a spender. We had some conflict and
• 25:18
  disagreement about how money was going to be spent, but I didn't
• 25:21
  let that stop me because we're OK, We're OK, And like I said,
• 25:25
  we're not millionaires yet. Like, I'm still building,
• 25:28
  building my business. We make great money.
• 25:31
  I'm a good steward of making sure that things move where they
• 25:34
  need to move on a regular basis. So that money's there when we
• 25:38
  need it. But I looked at all the
• 25:39
  resources that we had available as a family, and I was like, you
• 25:42
  know what? This is the year that we're
• 25:44
  going to Alaska. I'm not promoting irresponsible
• 25:47
  financial behavior. What I'm telling you is that
• 25:50
  where there's a will, there's a way.
• 25:52
  And by embracing the systems that I teach in my world, I can
• 25:56
  teach you how to save to spend. I can teach you how to save for
• 26:00
  the big picture. You don't need a budget to do
• 26:03
  that. You can stop budgeting.
• 26:05
  You can build wealth. You can spend guiltfree.
• 26:08
  And this Alaska trip is a perfect example of how my family
• 26:11
  has been able to do that. And we're loving our lives.
• 26:13
  So let's do a recap of what this trip cost us.
• 26:16
  First, you've got the actual cruise that was $7500.
• 26:20
  And just remember this is rounded up Okay to like the
• 26:24
  nearest $100 Okay. So you've got the actual cruise
• 26:28
  I will mention, which I didn't mention at the front end is that
• 26:31
  we, we went concierge class and it was amazing.
• 26:35
  In the concierge class we had private balconies on the back of
• 26:39
  the boat. So for those of those of us who
• 26:42
  get motion sickness, it was really great to be able to look
• 26:44
  out at the back end of the boat and be in motion with the boat
• 26:47
  versus on the side of the boat. That can be a little
• 26:49
  disorienting. That was awesome.
• 26:52
  We also had our own concierge in on our floor, so every time we
• 26:57
  came out of our room, he was there.
• 26:58
  Amir, shout out to Amir, he was amazing, like good morning, what
• 27:02
  do you need? We had this snafu with our keys.
• 27:05
  He helped us with that. And so the concierge class for
• 27:08
  us, we had a private balcony or helicopter tour going in to
• 27:13
  catch a can. Nice little touches that we were
• 27:16
  able to take advantage of because we chose the concierge
• 27:19
  class. We didn't want to go cheap on
• 27:20
  that either, $7500 for the cruise and then we had our
• 27:24
  flights, our first round of flights to Vancouver, which was
• 27:27
  $1400 there, there and back to Vancouver and home.
• 27:33
  And then we had the beverage packages that we chose into.
• 27:36
  So one was $600.00, one was 750 total beverages for the four of
• 27:42
  us for the cruise was 1350 dollars.
• 27:46
  Then we had our two excursions, which was 1400 dollars, $800.00
• 27:50
  for Juno and $600.00 for Ketchikan.
• 27:54
  Totally worth it. Totally worth it.
• 27:56
  I don't know if my family and I will ever get back to Alaska in
• 27:59
  this way, and my boys are growing so fast.
• 28:02
  Every dollar we spent and every memory we made was totally worth
• 28:06
  it. Then we had Vancouver, so we had
• 28:08
  two nights in a hotel in Vancouver.
• 28:11
  We had two nights of dinner in Vancouver.
• 28:14
  We went to the Vancouver Aquarium.
• 28:16
  We had, we had gifts and sundries and other kinds of
• 28:20
  things and gratuities. Don't forget that as a part of
• 28:23
  the the ship as well, they add gratuity onto the things that
• 28:26
  you do. We had travel and then we had
• 28:29
  our extra travel blunder. So I'm coming in for our total
• 28:35
  Vancouver trip at about $1680, not including travel.
• 28:43
  So that will you'll see that in this lineup as everything adds
• 28:47
  up. And then I have some Ubers and
• 28:50
  cabs. You had to take a cab to the
• 28:51
  port or an Uber for transportation to the airport
• 28:54
  and whatnot. That's in there at $150.00.
• 28:58
  And then we had our travel blunder to Seattle through
• 29:00
  Vancouver and that's in here as well.
• 29:02
  So we had a train, we had a a private transportation and we
• 29:07
  had our flights to Seattle and that was a total of, whoops,
• 29:11
  that was a total of $3000. So all in, our trip cost us
• 29:17
  about $19,000. And like I said, these memories
• 29:22
  were going to have the rest of our lives.
• 29:24
  I got it paid for within the first week of us being home, and
• 29:29
  I'm so glad that we did it. I wish you travels.
• 29:33
  I wish you memories and abundance.
• 29:35
  I wish you opportunities like these to take your family's
• 29:38
  places that you've always wanted to go.
• 29:41
  And I hope that today this conversation enlightened you on
• 29:44
  all of the ways that you can make that happen.
• 29:46
  And I'm so grateful for you tuning in today to hear about my
• 29:50
  family's dream trip to Alaska. We'll catch you next time.