Digital Slomadism on a Dime w/ Becca Siegel #821

Welcome to Had a Money.

I'm Joel and I am Matt, and.

Today we're talking digital nomadism, if that's a word on a dime with Becca Siegel.

Yeah. So you've heard about being a digital nomad, right. You've probably seen it in the headlines where they're talking about it over like at CNN or MSNBC. I feel like there's always like these future articles like featuring somebody awesome looking doing something really cool, and you probably thought to yourself, nobody actually does that wrong because we are joined by a real life digital nomad, Becca Siegel from Half Half Travel. And of course Becca is a well

Thank you guys so much for having me.

As you know, I am a huge how to money fan and being here is just super cool for me.

So thanks for having me today.

Yeah, I was telling you before we start recording, most guests are like, I don't even know who you guys are, but I joined you because you asked. But yeah, the fact that you actually listen is awesome, So thank you for that.

Like, honestly, that's what was so cool about podcasts at least our show is. I mean the fact that like one episode we can we can talk with an editor at a highly esteemed publication whose work we've been following for years, and the next week we're able to talk to somebody that we would not have otherwise known if it wasn't for the podcast because she listens to us. It is so cool. Such a I don't know, accessible medium. It's small one of the many reasons I like podcasting.

Yeah, no doubt, Okay, The first question we have to get to with you, Becca, as you know, is what's your craft beer equivalent?

What are you.

Spending money on cheap? Answer will be trappable. What are you spending money on proactively in the here and now while you're also doing the smart thing, you're saving and investing for your future.

So I thought long and hard about this, and I thought I would mention flights, but that has been said a lot of episodes recently on your show.

So I said, I have to be different.

I think that my craft beer equivalent is shelter, and that is because I have spent a lot of my life in high cost of living areas. And while many people in the country might think, hmm, that's not for me. I want my money to go to other places, you know, like whatever they else, whatever else they enjoy in life. For me, living in places like New York City and like Metro New Jersey right near Manhattan has been really important and has added value to my life.

So that is somewhere that I put a lot of value.

Is that because of like proximity to cool stuff or conveniences. The what's the main reason you're willing to spend more on shelter than most folks.

I might be biased, but having been born in New York City and having spent a lot of my twenties and thirties living there, it is the greatest city in the world. Sorry, Atlanta, but I think there's just a lot to be said about being in the biggest city like in the country, with all of the work opportunities there, the culture, and then of course, as we were saying before we started recording, there are three major airports in New York City that you can't really beat if you

That's right, And we want to hear about your history because from what I understand, you met your husband Dan at a craft beer bar, which is something that we love to hear. Can you can you kind of share your story how y'all met and kind of how that led to the company, the site that y'all found it together.

Yeah, our story is a bit of a unique one. So we met actually a very run of the Millway. We met on a social dating app on our phones in late twenty fifteen.

So we met and we our first date was at this craft beer bar.

That no longer exists, I don't think, but it's called or It was called Upright brew House in the West Village in Manhattan, and at the time it was a great.

Place, very cool.

So we met and within a few of our first dates, Dan said, you know, I'm really interested in traveling. I haven't done that much of it, and I want to go away for a year on this digital nomad like program I found where you can work and travel travel the world with a group of seventy five people and take your job with you. And I said, that sounds amazing. You know, you should totally do that.

And this was before we.

Started seriously dating and realized that that might cause us to date long distance. But I said, you know, a big part of me is that I spent two and a half years living in East Asia in my twenties.

I'm sure your mom was impressed.

My mom was blown away. There was very cool stuff that happened to us. Around that time. We were in Travel and Leisure and Cosmo and Conde Nast Traveler and

You could have ever imagined.

So now we're reaching millions of viewers on half half travel dot com, where we share everything from you know, what we're packing, to guides to places we've been to

Yeah. No, that's so cool, and like the way it started. I think if it is stitching.

Your love together from abroad, you know the photos, it's like, that's just a cool way you're apart. This is a way to kind of have a shared endeavor and continue to communicate and create something. It's like it was like your first baby almost.

Yeah, it was well.

Okay to talk to us specifically, maybe about Dan's first stint remote traveling. He did the twelve month thing. He did it with through a company called Remote Year. Is that right, Yeah, tell us more about that program totally.

Remote Year still exists.

Anyone can do it as long as you have a remote job. So Dan did it back when the standard offering was a twelve month program. He got to go to twelve cities around the world in Europe, South America, and Mexico, which is in Central America, and he also spent a month in Morocco, which is in Africa.

Of course.

And during that time, I was living and working in New York. Like my life hadn't changed, except I had a long distance boyfriend in twenty sixteen and seventeen and I got to visit him. So in those twelve months we only saw each other five times, but in those in four of those five times, I was visiting him in Spain, Columbia, Portugal, and Argentina, Buenos Aires and Corduba.

So that was super cool.

Remote Year versu kind of DIY digital nomadism. What is it the remote year off, I guess, versus kind of trying to do your own thing, like just booking your own Airbnb or just kind of deciding on your own destination. What is it that an organization like Remote Year has to offer.

Yeah, this is the perfect question, and it's the perfect segue into the fact that when Dan and I, So I should backtrack a little bit. When Dan got back from a remote year, you know, of course, it was great and we got back together and we moved into our first Brooklyn apartment together and everything was nice. Then a few months later, he was like, you know, we

And he was like, no, I mean we could really make it work.

Quit your job and I was like no, Dan, like that's ridiculous. We need money and like, you know, we need to have careers, and he was like, I'll.

Quit my job too. I was like, no, this is getting out of hand.

Eventually, Dan and I negotiated with each other and he was like, you don't even like your job, and I was like I know, but like you know, life, we both the same kind of week, put in now notices with our jobs in New York, and we negotiated with those jobs to let us go part time and remote, which in twenty eighteen was kind of wild because if you think about it, the pandemic and COVID made everyone remote, but before then people didn't really like work remotely, kind

What you need.

If you kind of want to spend like a regular business day working somewhere with all the comforts of an office, it's kind of ironic that you are going somewhere else just to like be in another office environment. But at the end of the day, working from a dining room table in a chair that's not ergonomic is going to

But time is money, and so we spent so much time.

Figure out how we were going to get from Taiwan to Vietnam and which Airbnb we were going to book in Taipei. And that's a story of its own because we spent we spent time doing that. But whereas if you are signing up for like a group travel trip, and there's so many of those now that you can do with remote work and remote years just one of them. There's quite a few others. All of those types of chores and tasks are completed for you by someone.

Else, so they handle a lot of the travel arrangements, they handle the co working spaces.

Or turnkey right, and it's all been vetted, so you don't have to do that research and you don't have to make mistakes either, like you.

Don't have to pick a coworking space that closes. I don't know.

Just as an example, in Vietnam, we were actually working some eastern hours, so we were working like nine pm to two am, and if you wanted to be going to a co working space, we actually didn't, but we knew people who were.

You would need a.

Place that was open twenty four hours if you needed to talk to your boss.

In New York or in LA or anything like that.

So there are a lot of considerations to have based on the demands of your job.

Right, So that was back in twenty eighteen. Do you feel that things have gotten better when it comes to being a digital nomad just given the pandemic, given the fact that it's become something that's more popular.

I think it's gotten better.

Yeah, and I say that confidently because even if you look on Airbnb nowadays and hotels also, they will like kind of boast about the fact that they have a spot.

For remote work.

Like I've looked at Airbnb listings, and you know, you can choose one you can filter by has a desk space for you know, sitting for a few hours getting work done. A lot of airbnbs also, because we were recently looking for I guess airbnbs in either Mexico or Columbia. A lot of airbnb hosts will even show a screenshot of their internet speed or they'll say that they have high high speed Internet, and they'll even quote you on what kind of carrier they have.

So it's kind of like the.

World is gearing a bit more toward the remote working professional and how that person can keep traveling and keep having the same type of confidence that they'll be able to have a ergonomic and fast Wi Fi workspace where.

It makes sense.

So, Okay, we all see the cool picks from the excursions that anybody who's traveling, but it's even digital nomads, right we see, Oh on this trail today, Look how beautiful the sunset is which is awesome, But you're still working too, like you just acknowledged, so like that makes funding those excursions possible, being able to work during the day. But can you give us a peek inside of the daily life of a digital nomad Monday through Friday's one thing?

Like?

What comes to mind is like two pretty different nomad experiences we've had. So we had like the ten months of traveling and working remotely, and four of those months were doing it with a group and having.

A lot more structure actually, because we did have a.

Co working space every single day of those four months with remote year in Latin America, and the other times I don't know if we actually spent so much time renting out our own co working spaces on our own just me and Dan kind of like rumping around the world and figuring out. We went to a lot of cafes, and if we had to take a meeting, sometimes we did it from our accommodation, which sometimes was a hostile private and sometimes was an airbnb, And we might have stayed in some hotels too.

But what I'm thinking of Is.

In twenty twenty two, we spent a month in married on Mexico, which I recommend for anyone who loves hot weather, because this is like the hottest place in Mexico.

Like it is just so hot you like the sweat, Yeah, this place is for you.

The week we got there was a little after Christmas, and it was like ninety six degrees.

That's really hot.

Wow, Like yeah, that's like sweat your face off, get me inside type of hot. And then we were there for all of January and it got a little better.

It was like mid eighties.

Some days were in the seventies and that people were freaking out and thought it was winter.

Oh, very laughable for us. But there.

So we traveled completely on our own to Marrida. We were there for about four weeks, and we we bought like day passes or a month pass to a coworking space there. That was really awesome. And so what I'm what I was saying is at that time we were both working totally full time. The website was, you know, a nights and weekends thing. But I was working for a tech startup in New York and Dan was still

So our daily life and our you know, what we.

Could expect day to day was I actually would walk sometimes to the corking spots alone if I had like earlier meetings than Dan did, and we would go to a phone booth take those meetings. We would sit at these long tables like hot desks.

We would make our coffee.

I would dip out for lunch and maybe pick something up or bring something from home. It's kind of like you almost lead your life at home, but you are leading it else somewhere else.

That's what I was going to say. That doesn't sound all that different than I mean, the kids in the carpool, and you know, a couple of other things. But it doesn't sound all that different than like Joel and I showing up at at our little carriage house, our little clubhouse here, going to get coffee, coming back and doing the podcast.

I think it depends how much work we would have on our plates. And then sometimes in those four weeks in Maridith, and this was only two years ago, we would take off like a Friday, and I'd be like, I want to go see Mayan Ruins would go do that, and that's kind of where things are a little different, or like, we really should go to the beach. We've been working really hard and we deserve a beach day, so we would take an uber out to the coast from where we were staying.

Okay, it sounds awesome. You're talking about, Hey, beach day boom, Like all of a sudden you're on like some beautiful beach that you know you've only seen pictures of a national geographic that you get to hang out at. And otherwise you're working generating income, which is a good aspect of making this, I guess sustainable. But like, what are the biggest pain points of being abroad.

For so long?

Like is it the financial aspect of it that's not quite as streamline as and as efficient as maybe I don't know, maybe not New York City, but maybe a more reasonable cost of living area or talk to me about community, because I guess that's a big part of Joel and my our lives here where we live is just the community that we're trying to build up around us.

I'm curious what you struggled.

With the most.

Yeah, Okay, so a few different things to pick apart here. So, first of all, from the financial aspect, going abroad to do work and work remotely really depends if you have done what Dan and I did the first time, which was quit our jobs and take them back part time in remotely, which you know, by working part time, we weren't generating the full time salaries that we had been taking home.

Just days before we left.

However, the second time, when I'm talking about we went to Mexico for a month, you know, a year and a half after we got back from like the ten month trip, is we both were making our New York salaries.

We were just in Mexico.

However, once you're living in New York, paying New York City rent, working full time, and just going on vacation to get out for a month, we were paying rent on top of the cost of the trip.

So I think what I'm getting.

At here is if you are already you know, paying your mortgage or paying rent somewhere, and you're leaving on top of that, you have to be prepared for kind of the costs piling up. However, if you are either maybe you have a free living situation, maybe you live with family, maybe you actually don't, you know, have a home and you just pay for wherever you're living. And I know people who actually in our like remote year community. We know other people who are full time geographic arbitrageers,

You know that.

Then home is wherever your WiFi connects automatically.

That's what people say. I don't know if you've heard that before.

It seems like a digital nomadism.

I would love to, you know, I'm sure people have it like tattooed on their arms and stuff.

Yeah, yeah, I guess crossed it. I guess it's crossed it.

So what you're asking about the financial aspect is are you paying two rents at one time or you know, are you out and about and you don't have any strings attached back home.

That's what I'm getting at.

And then for the community that you asked about, so I think a big plus of if you want to go and work remotely, and you want to go for months at a time and you want to never look back, and you don't want to do it, alone going with a program like Remote Year or Wi Fi Tribe or Hacker Paradise. You can look all these up online, but going with a program like that automatically buys you into the community of people who I don't want to say are like you, but are different from you at the

It was lacking in the community aspect.

I mean when I keep mentioning Taiwan because I love it there so much, But when we went there, I was lucky enough to meet up with a friend from high school and meet up with a friend of the family, and we actually even met up with someone we met in Columbia, which was totally wild and at a house party, like you really never know what can happen but we didn't have, like, you know, a group of friends, or we also weren't there long enough to meet those types

So we've done it both ways.

And I'm a very community oriented person, which is why I'm so happy with where we've moved recently, and it is why I was so happy in New York for so many years, you know, as a young couple, just like with all these friends from all these.

Different parts of my life.

Community is very important to us, and I think if someone is looking for community, you're not going to really get that by doing the whole thing like hodgepodge on your own.

Gotcha, that makes sense.

That's yeah.

Another plus for a program like that, right, just making it a little more seamless, and also just helping connect you to other people who are in a similar phase of life, wants some similar things. All Right, We've got more questions to get to with you, Becca, and specifically you want to talk about how you decide where what destinations you're going to go to and wyte to travel for less. We'll get to some questions on that front right after this.

We are back for the break, talking with Becka s. Siegel about, like Joel said at the beginning, being a digital nomad on a dime, and Becca, like you were saying, a big part of literally being a digital nomad is the ability to kind of sustain your life essentially just like you went at home, except for your somewhere else.

Of work that y'all had.

But if folks are working in person and their employer isn't flexible, though, like where would you suggest that they start looking for jobs? Because I could see some folks saying that, oh my gosh, like I hear Beca speak, she's clearly passionate about this. I love hearing about this wild house party and Taiwan like, and folks were.

Saying, like, I want that, but my boss said no.

Or they're just in a completely different line of work and so I think there might be some folks who are just building something from scratch when it comes to online work. Do you have any advice for folks there?

Wow, this is a tough fee honestly, because from time to time, during you know, these years in New York, that I was unhappy at my job and which kind of sparked in to say like.

You should quit, and I was like, but I don't want to quit.

But I finally did quit and went back you know, remote part time and didn't love it, but.

Did it because it allowed us to get out and travel.

It's really kind of like a double edged sword because if you like what you do and it just won't let you be remote. I mean, some people are really passionate about what they do or they're very specialized in something, and if that's not a remote type of job, you can get creative by you know, becoming a type of consultant, maybe on the road, consulting in what it is you are an expert in. And then aside from that, I would recommend checking out a lot of the remote job

So it's a tough time I think right now. And I don't know if the.

World is going to slide back into a remote work revolution. Maybe this hybrid thing is going to go out of style in a few years. We might kind of see that in the future. But there are still a lot of remote roles out there. It's just that not all of them are like based in New York or LA or San Francisco, paying those types of salaries.

So there are a few sacrifices that may have to be.

Sure, Yeah, the financial sacrifice. Did you see me folks who are out there doing the odd jobs on some of the different platforms out there, like I'm thinking of like up work or fiver or something like that, were like, did you see many folks who were able to sustain enough income people living abroad. Yeah, while piecemealing it together with various projects like that.

Yeah, that's a great question.

I think it depends and this will lead us definitely into a great topic. But it depends where in the world you're really trying to make a living, Because if you're in Norway, you're going to have to be bringing in thousands of dollars on upwork.

But if you're in Thailand you could make it work with you know, a lot less.

And it also I think a lot of Originally I thought a lot of digital nomads are doing engineering work like web developers, web designers, ux the tech stuff. But I've met a lot of people who are real designers and writers and consultants and people who do like things you've never heard of, just remotely. And I think it's been inspiring to see new jobs are being invented all

Yeah, you can't do surgery be a zoom yet maybe someday, let's take a game of no I would game of operation or something like that. Okay, So you mentioned the dichotomy between a place like Thailand and Norway. I don't know if you can get a much starker contrast. You've avoided Norway to this point for that reason. I've been to Norway. It's very costly, So I can't imagine there are many digital nomads making Norway their home over an extended period of time, because you just gonna run out

Yeah, still to this day, even though we are no longer going for really big trip.

Well we've just went on a kind of big trip, but we're no.

Longer going on huge you know, open jaw or one way tickets because we have a kid. We're still hyper focused on the cost of travel where we're going, and we think it's more fun to go places where you don't get bogged down by the cost of accommodation and

So all over the place.

You definitely didn't mention London or Paris. What I think what you said to say true though, like the ability to have more fun because you're not constantly thinking, oh my gosh, this better be worth it because we're paying out the nose for this trip or for this I don't know, Eiffel Tower tour or something.

I mean, like a big mac meal in Oslo, like literally just going to McDonald's. It's like twenty four So that's going to send you back.

Well, I think so much of what makes a fun trip are some of the things that you do while you're there, of course, but like I'm thinking about finding free things to do and so like where do you turn when you are trying to figure out what it is that you want to do, like and where to

Yeah, So I used to be in the boat of like someone who wanted to go somewhere and see literally everything, and if I didn't.

See it, I was going to be really disappointed.

And I'm thinking specifically of the time I went to Guatemala for my first time with my friend, and we wanted to see everything, and she was totally down to see everything, and we spent so much time in transit that we did see all the things, but we were and we were on buses every other day when we could have been all so seeing things. So I think that was the last time. And I was about twenty five or twenty six years old on that trip. I think that was the last time I said, my gosh,

Oh, we have to change the title episode.

That's for people who want to travel slower and spend more time in a place, getting to know that place, getting to feel like you live in that place. It's also better for the environment, and it's less hiring than really flying around, you know, taking lots of flights, taking lots of buses. None of this is good for the environment, and it's not good for anyone's like health either to be sitting on a bus or trainer even in a car all the time. But the question was, how do

We recently went to Mediine.

Columbia with our daughter, and we had a bunch of things that like we wanted to do in general, Like the first half of this trip we stayed with friends and I really just wanted to see the village where we were staying and it was beautiful, and I loosely wanted to go do some hikes, but you know, actually we have a baby. We didn't get around to any of it. There's nap time, there's meal time, there's early bedtime. You have to account for either you getting sick, baby getting sick.

Someone gets sick.

So we didn't get to do any hiking, but we got to see a really beautiful village, and then we spent some time in Mediine, where the only thing on my agenda was let's drink really good coffee. And I think at this point in my life, you know, just being somewhere. And I recently wrote a piece for our blog about this, called how traveling with the baby has

Yeah, I gotcha, So okay.

Used to be like it's got to be an eight mile hike, or I got to go see three top things on my list, or but now it's like a super chill morning at a coffee shop.

That's what kind of hits the.

Right note, which makes sense, Like as we get older, the things that we want out of our travel experiences they morphin, they change, and the things we're comfortable with morph and change too. Think about I did CouchSurfing back in the day. One of my good friends met his wife CouchSurfing in New Orleans. I mean, those are the kind of experiences I was willing to sign up for back in the day, sleeping in a tent, all that kind of stuff. And I'd still be down with a

Wow?

These are questions that I've actually really mulled over in the last week since I wrote this pace for our blog.

About traveling with the baby.

And when I had the baby, I kind of just like I stepped back and I was like, oh, my god, having a kid is so hard. You're caring for a new person. This baby didn't come with a guidebook, like, you know, how do we do it?

No one's sleeping.

We're figuring out what this baby eats and how they like to play.

And I said the fact.

Of going away again is so overwhelming, you know, how do we bring all this stuff the baby needs?

But with time we figured it out.

And for our first flight with her, we went to Canada last summer, and you know, everybody survives, it went well and we had a great time.

Like taking our baby around. People are like, oh my god, your.

Baby's so cute, and we're like, hah, we don't now, but like, yeah, that was the first travel experience we had that was like far away and really felt like we were in our element again, you know, like going through an airport, getting the bags, using our passports, using our global entry, doing all those things we love that give us a high. We just had another tiny person with us. And so now having gone to South America recently with the baby doing it all again.

We got her a passport and we got her a global entry. That's been very exciting for her. And she has no idea.

She's gonna have more stamps than me soon, oh I know.

And plus I'm just picturing a baby's photo, Like don't you have to like just hold a baby up like into the frame, Like what does that look like for a baby's passport photo?

We have We put her down on a white blanket and then Dan like photoshop the wrinkles out, and then it's so funny.

It's like she's just floating.

I think eight weeks old in her photo. So even the last port officials laugh at her though, they're.

Like, that's so funny, so funny.

Yeah, so yeah. So, I mean now we kind of got the hang of it again, and now.

That we've gone to South America with her toddler, we're like, all right, what's next?

Nice?

Okay. So I'm curious because that you are a very experienced traveler, Like I imagine a whole lot of new parents who like to travel and they're just packing like everything but the kitchen sink, because they're like, oh, I gotta do this, gotta take this, gotta take that, which is largely probably unnecessary because they probably don't touch half of the stuff anyway, you just think that you need it.

Okay, amazing question. I actually I think having traveled, but we took a bunch of road trips with our daughter to actually quite a few places. We went to Upstate New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, where else, Connecticut and New Hampshire before we went to Canada. So we had a bunch of time in the car with her, and what we were able to do was bring literally everything we wanted because we were like, it'll fit in the car, this will fit in the car too, and this will fit

We just have to convert this, you know, with.

Google and so now we traveled with a thermometer, and I actually think that's something that adults can trouble with too, because you never want if you think you have a fever and you want to, you know, either get more help or take some medication.

You never want to have to run out for one.

So right, so maybe broadly speaking back in that out just like a certain amount of medicine or healthcare, not healthcare, but like band aids.

Yeah, yeah, all the all the time and all types of stuff. So now that's like top of mine.

There's websites out there now too that will let you rent baby stuff. Is it baby quip dot com?

Maybe that?

Uh?

Or we've had how the money listeners? I think who said, guess what? I listed my baby stuff on there. I'm making money now renting out my baby gear. So that's a cool side hustle to make some money too.

Is cool? Right? Yeah, that's super smart.

So uh, I guess that's a way too to maybe avoid some of the you know, the hassle of bringing all the big mountain load of baby stuff with you is potentially ransome stuff when you're in a specific location too.

Yeah, and my other hack, because you said, what are the things that we haven't had to take with us or that we don't need. My main hack to this day has been stay in other places where you know people who have kids or babies.

Because we went to.

Columbia and we visited my friend Alex, who I actually met in Shanghai, so you know, everything comes full circle. She lives in Columbia with her friend Ryan. They also have an amazing blog about couples fitness. It's called Alex and Ryan du A Life, and they will probably love that I gave them a shout.

But they have a.

Child eight months older than ours, and so we were able to go to Columbia without taking a high chair, a baby club, a baby bath, and they even said if you need any clothes you can borrow the stuff are perfect out real, So that really.

Helps you pack light.

If you're able to visit and stay with people anywhere you can think of who are going to have that type of baby.

Yeah, and that makes sense because then you can just fly spirit or you can go ultra cheap. I mean, so all that note, Actually, we've got more I guess maybe general travel questions that we have for you. We'll get to all that and more, right after this, we're back to the break. We're still talking digital slowmatism. Yet we just changed the title of the episode. That one right there with Becca's Eagle.

Becca, we got a bunch of questions we got to get to, specifically on the money front and kind of how you handle and pay for some things when you're abroad too. First question, what cell phone service do you use? There's ah, do you use Google Fi? Because that's, in our estimation, one of the best, you know, cell phone services for people who travel frequently or using local simcards in different countries. What's the best route for regular travelers?

Okay, such a good question.

I have actually recently changed my answer to this question. So we used to use Google Fi and that performed really well for us in all of Latin America, Europe and East Asia. And however, on our most recent trip, I tried aer ralloh Ai r Alo and Dan helped

And how to do it?

Okay, cool?

What makes it better? What makes it because if you've had a good experience with Google Fi, why is it.

Just is it just a more robust service? Because it's the it's the local provider.

I mean, there's not much of a difference except it is hooking you. They're both hooking you into the local services, kind of what I call piggybacking.

But this was very cheap. It was like twelve bucks.

I got a three dollars discount from another blog, kind of if you search for Rollo, everyone's giving their own referral code. I paid twelve dollars for two weeks, and that just can't be beat.

I think that is so stinking affordable. Oh my gosh.

So it's a few dollars a day.

We talked about our consternation when we went to Scotland and we're like, oh, yeah, well maybe we'll like drop twenty by on the mint Mobile International. And we've just.

Changed their plans since and I think it's gotten better, but it's still not great.

Well, you just.

Blow through data faster than you realize. I guess that's what you realize is how much everything weighs. Once you start consuming when you're not on Wi Fi because obviously, yeah, you're not even thinking about it at home. But then when you are actually looking at the data that you're consuming, especially abroad, it makes much more of an impact. But uh, Becca, what is the best way for folks to access cash

Yeah, I think the more you discover as you travel is well, first of all, a lot of the world is digitalizing, but if you are traveling in developing countries like India, like where else have I been?

Places like Zambia.

Maybe not everyone's going to Zambia, but a bunch of East Asia, bunch of Latin America, cash is still going to be king And some places might be charging a credit card fee for use of a credit card there, and so that might actually not even make it worth it once you are either getting your cash back or foreign transaction fees whatever you're running up there. When we're not using cash though, it's credit all the way for sure.

They removed nice.

But you want to be sure that you're not going to get those fees in the.

First placendred percent. And that's that's so much easier to do now than before. Like for a while, there were just a handful of credit card credit cards that had came with zero foreign transaction fee. Now there's a lot of them, but yes, for sure, because you don't want to pay three percent more for everything when you're traveling. How important are credit card rewards points to you today and when it comes to reducing your out of pocket

I guess yeah.

One of our greatest success stories was with the Capital X Capital one Venture X card, which at the time we got it was giving away one hundred thousand points if you got through the I think it might have been six thousand or maybe even ten thousand dollars spend in six months if you think about it, and if you have two users on the account, you can kind of hit those minimum spends to get all the miles in the points if you really put your mind to it, and if you put a bunch of things on credit

With the travel credit to book our hotel in Vancouver.

So we pretty much went to a really high cost of travel place totally for free.

Let me lead back to like we were talking about credit cards. Talk to us about the difference between paying for a purchase when you are abroad somewhere in local currency versus paying for it in US dollars. I guess, tell me your experience with buying stuff abroad.

There's actually this is really good to know, and it's a really good point you bring up, because so we were just in Colombia. A lot of times when you're in a restaurant and they give you, like the credit card reader to punch out and add your tip, and.

You have to like sign and hit enter.

Sometime these machines give you a choice of like would you like to be charged in local paysos currency or would you like to be charged in usd If you're in a hurry and you don't realize you will just hit USD because you're used to that. But what you want to do is hit payesos. You want to be charged in the foreign currency because it will be converted on your bill at the most optimal rate at the time of purchase. Typically paying a USD is going to be a worse deal for you, even though it seems

The end the morning.

That's a good point because just getting the money can sometimes be kind of costly, and some people think, oh, I'm just to bring like five hundred bucks and I'm gonna go to the counter at the airport and that's where I'm gonna exchange. You don't get as good of an exchange rate. You pay additional fees. It's just a bad way to get money, and it just cost you additional dollars that you don't have to spend. So that's

I think I would love to hone in more or in a final type of way, on the fact that there.

Are places out there that are not London, Paris and Rome, and there are just places in the world that are so cheap that they'll blow your mind in like a great way where you could have an amazing getaway from home and you can spend a fraction of what you would.

In Western Europe.

And don't get me wrong, I love Western Europe. And I actually just wrote a piece for our blog called why I've never been to London, Paris or Rome. Before everyone gets at me, it's because I've been everywhere else and so what I would love for people to just you know, from a financial perspective too, if you can just take your boundaries a little farther, you can have so much of a long you can travel longer and better when you're not bogged down by the costs of high places or places that have.

High costs of travel, which makes sense, but like, for instance, Vietnam is one of the places you mentioned that's like top of the top of the pile for you. But a lot of times some of those flights are so dang expensive. So is there any place that's it's abroad but it's not as expensive of a ticket, but the cost of living is crazy low and it allows you to really travel a lot more on a limited budget.

So yes, And I'm so glad you asked.

Because there is a country right next door to us called Mexico. And if you don't go to resorts, and I really mean this, if you go past Cancun and the resort strip, if you go to the city where we spend a month called Merida, and I guess you know you guys have so many listeners, the secret is going to be totally out. Everyone's going to book a

I like it a lot of good tips. Becca, Thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast. Where can our listeners find out more about you and your travel excursions?

Sure? I am totally reachable.

Anybody can email me at Becca B e Cca at half half travel dot com and we are half half.

Travel on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, and of course visit half half travel dot com for all of our experiences and personal recommendations in remote work and travel, traveling with a baby, travel gear, travel advice, and travel destination guys.

Thank you. I think we'll probably end up linking to a ton of the topics that maybe we just barely touched on, but if you want like the full ride up, we'll link to some of those in the show notes up on the site. Becca, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today.

Thank you, guys. As you know I'm a number one listener.

We appreciate it. All right, Maddie, where we traveling next? That's the uh, that's the question I have for you?

Now? Do you have the fever?

You got? The bud because I feel like I do man like truly, the ability to hear Becca's excitement about travels, it's obvious that is something that she's really pumped out, but she's enjoyed doing. The only cure for my fever is more cow Bell, though I think the cure of my viewer is is it Mereda or Marita Merida?

Yeah?

So it's over there on the Yucatan Peninsula. So I'm looking forward to looking more into that.

Perhaps it might be too hot for me. I don't know. We live in Atlanta. We get enough heat. I might go somewhere a little cooler.

Can we go there?

Wait?

She said that they were there in January and it was still and it's still like in the eighties, and I felt like a Colt snap. Yeah that does seem pretty hot. Yeah, don't go.

In July for my blood.

But what was your big takeaway?

Okay?

So I think my big takeaway was when she talked about negotiating for part time work or for remote opportunities, and we we've talked about the trade offs, and she even mentioned it that you listening to this podcast, she's heard, Yeah, you're probably gonna make less money. Work from home, and I think it's a supply and demand thing if you want to work remotely, unless you're really lucky and your employer says, no, sure, we love you so much like you go work from.

Wherever you want.

We'll pay you the same amount of money. That is best case scenario. But these are things you can negotiate. And guess what, if you're willing and able to get rid of some of your current expenses, the apartment that you have, maybe you're willing to sell your car and you don't have those recurring monthly bills, you're not paying for the insurance on that car as well, you can maybe afford to take a little bit of a pay cut and jet set to a cheaper cost of living

Listening to Becka, yeah, I totally agree. Man. My big takeaway is going to be that you don't have to completely diy figure all of this out yourself, because I think for a lot of folks who are listening again, you get inspired and then you start looking into it and you don't know where to start right. And so I think there's a previous version of not just Matt, but Joel Enman where we would say, guys, you don't

While you're there.

I think it complete can completely change your experience of slow travel and digital nomadism. And so if you're like, oh, I was worried about the logistics. I was worried about the overwhelm of planning how to do this, it's kind of cool to have an organization that you know, you partner with her, and then you pay money. I guess too, I didn't ask her how much. I'm curious about that

It's also also the community, and I think that can be more than worth the money.

But cool.

All right, let's mention the beer. You and I both enjoyed a juice party.

This is a hazy Imperial.

You have to say it like that when you say the jew party, hazy Imperial.

I p a.

This is by fire Maker Brewing. These guys are ruined here in Atlanta, or at least it was. I think it started in They're.

Still yeah, yes, okay, So this one, in my mind tasted like torched oranges.

Oh my gosh it did it remind you of digits burnt hickory for sure?

Like a blood orange variety. Did they close? They did?

Yeah, that was like a brewery not too far from where we are, and it was an og It was a good one and it's gone.

Yeah, but this one like a blood orange IPA.

Maybe it's because the dragons on the cover and dragons breathe fire. But I was just thinking as I was drinking, and I was like, this tastes like roasted oranges, almost in IPA form.

Like you're sitting there at a bar, someone's making you an old fashioned and they got the orange zest and they kind of squeeze it and light it on fire, like right, that fragrance that Aroma exactly. Yeah, in my mind, it's sort of had more of an old school kind of IPA vibe to it. It's certainly not like a New England hazy like it says hazy on here, but it's not like it's not that kind of hazy kind

No doubt.

All right, buddy, until next time, Best Friends, houst Friends Out