Episode 24. Scott’s Cheap Travel Hacks
We know life gets busy, but we truly believe investing in your marriage should be a priority. Traveling together is one of our favorite ways to reconnect and make memories. In this video, Scott will give you the inside scoop on how we find super cheap flights, hotels, and more using sites like Priceline and credit card rewards.
We walk through real examples that have gotten our hotel costs down to just $45 in points! Scott's a master at travel hacking - he'll even teach you his method for sneaking extra bags onto budget airlines.
Beyond saving money, we'll also talk about the mindset shift that changed our view of travel. Instead of just being tourists, we want to deeply experience each new place and culture. That outlook has led us to some incredibly meaningful trips in recent years. If you've been putting off a couples retreat due to money concerns, definitely tune in. Apply these tips on your next getaway and you'll be resting easy in an upscale hotel for a whole lot less!
-
00:00:02
Welcome to Marriage IQ, the podcast for the intelligent spouse. I'm Dr. Heidi Hastings. And I'm Dr. Heidi Hastings. We are two doctors, two researchers, two spouses, two lovers, and two incredibly different human beings coming together for one purpose, to transform the stinky parts of your marriage into scintillating ones, using intelligence mixed with a little fun.00:00:35
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another scintillating yet intelligent episode of Marriage IQ. We love you, and we hope that you are having the best day ever. We're really excited to share with you something pretty unique again to us, I think. And that is the secrets to unlocking cheap travel. Scott is one of the world's experts in this field, or at least among our friends.00:01:12
Oh, it's a dream, right? Well, we really wanted to combine this with our episode on marriage retreats because some people might say, I can't travel because it's too expensive. I can't get away for a few days because it's too expensive. Do you want to know how to get marriage retreat weekends for free? For free.00:01:34
So are you really going to teach them how to get them for free or really, really cheap? As I said last time, I'm really passionate about traveling, and traveling for cheap, too. So for this, they can use your information not only for how to travel cheap for marriage retreats, but also how to travel. Yeah, just in general. Okay.00:01:58
Marriage hacks for cheap travel. I wanted to put it together to follow the marriage retreat episode because I think we both agree that getting out of the house, shaking up our world, getting somewhere new, helps us kind of start again, recreate ourselves, move forward. So let's jump right in. Okay. We've been married over 28 years now, and I think right out of the gate, I remember after getting married, just like, I want to just travel with you.00:02:33
I think that started for you probably when you were a little kid. No, it did. I remember sitting there as a ten year old just back then. They didn't have Internet, of course, but in the pioneer days, yeah. Looking back at all the airline timetables and the airport was my favorite place to go.00:02:54
You have always been a sucker for cheap travel, though. That's like a big rush for you to find these. Really? Yeah. Great deals with travel.00:03:04
It's so weird. I spend like 2 hours to save $20 on the. Because it's this rush. Yeah, it's a rush. I can't explain it.00:03:16
I don't know. But for many years, yes, I was seeking the cheapest way to get there and largely succeeded. People were quite amazed with my stories. But now that we're in our fifties, a little bit more mature, we're not sucking air for money as much anymore. We do tend to put out a little bit more cash, and I realized that especially after paying off our house.00:03:45
Yeah. So, like, it's just. It does make traveling a little funner, I guess, with a little bit more cash.00:03:55
But anyway, I still get sucked in by some super awesome deals that I can't pass up. All right, maybe you can share some of those. But. So let's start at the very beginning. It's a very good place to start.00:04:10
That's a common song that we're going to. I love that movie. I love the sound of music. Yes. I love Maria.00:04:17
Which one of our trips was on a sound of music tour? Yes. Well, the sound of music tour was not awesome, but everything else about Austria was incredible. It might have been awesome if people would have gotten up on the bus and started singing with you. I'm like, what are you doing on this bus?00:04:33
You're on a sound of music tour.00:04:37
What we need to do is take our kids with us on the sound of music tour, and then it would rock. There you go. That's what we're going to do. All right, so let's start. So, number one, planning.00:04:47
You cannot have success without planning. Ingredients needed. One calendar book and one spouse. I think you're the spouse who initially did a lot of the planning and dreaming, and you still do the majority of it. Yeah.00:05:04
Well, eventually you come in the scene after I've crafted my story. So when are we gonna do it? We start looking at the year ahead of us. What do we got going on? What school, work, etcetera?00:05:19
We also look at our goals. Look at our goals. Right. How often do we go? And when you say this, are you talking about on trips or are you talking about on marriage retreats?00:05:30
For both. Okay. So in this case, I've specifically tailored it to planning our marriage retreat. So, again, from last week, how often do you want to go? It's up to you.00:05:40
We typically do every other month. Usually. And sometimes we'll do those at home because when I was in grad school or whatever, just couldn't get away as much. But I would say at least four times a year we go swinging. I would say once a year is probably too far apart, and even two, it's better than nothing.00:06:00
But, yeah, I would say minimum three. If you can swing at a minimum of three a year, I agree. But again, you have to make that decision. So you agree. Schedule the dates.00:06:14
Usually it's going to be over a weekend. Doesn't have to be. It's always been that way for us because of my work schedule, the kids school, and in the past when we didn't have as much money, it was like a one night thing, an overnighter. Which is okay and drivable. Yeah.00:06:34
So the two nights we found is more doable. But I. We understand some people just cannot do two nights with kids or other things. Where are we going to do it? The large majority of our marriage retreats were close to home, so we traveled some out of state or on an airline.00:07:00
But usually it was going to be around where we lived because it saved money. We didn't have to do the airfare. But in Dallas you can get really good deals. If you lived in a small town, it might be hard to find some of those. Well, and we did live in a small town for ten years.00:07:17
You're right. And that's why we didn't stay there. That's why we drove to Phoenix area, where they were less expensive. Yeah, you're right. It was about a two or three hour drive.00:07:27
3 hours to Phoenix and 3 hours to Tucson, 2 hours to Flagstaff. So number two is what kind of hotel? Where do you want to stay now that you planned? When and where? It's time to start looking, how to get there, where you'll stay.00:07:46
And some of you might ask, why don't we just stay home? Why don't we just stay in our own house? It'll be free. And to that we say, think again, because your home is where you live anyway, and you're not mentally going to be able to get out of that box. You need to remove yourself from where you live so you can start thinking with fresh perspectives.00:08:17
There is a really good book I just read recently. It's called deep work. I read that too, by Cal Newport. He talked about this. We really recommend that book.00:08:27
Yeah, it's a great book. Learning how to do deep work and be very, very effective in what you do. And that is you gotta get out of your familiar surroundings into a new one. We think this is deep work. This is marriage work.00:08:43
Yeah, absolutely. You need to get out of your house. I found over the many years of travel planning, the best bang for the buck, for hotels, for hotels is going to be priceline. And I don't have any affiliation with any of these businesses websites that I'm going to talk about. They don't have any affiliation with us.00:09:12
So I use priceline only for hotels, they're not great for flights or car rentals. Sometimes for flights, but hotels only. Here's why. Priceline tends to be lower than other websites for their hotels, but they also have an express deal option that allows you to save extra percentage off. But you just don't know what the name of the hotel is.00:09:43
Okay. Most people don't know what the name of the hotel is. Do you know the secrets? But I'm going to tell you how you could find it. It's not hard.00:09:51
They've cracked their code. So also on express deals, they always typically have a 10% off coupon that you can use. Okay, where do you get the coupons? Do they email them to you or they email to you? You sign up, you get these 10% off.00:10:08
If you use them enough, you become a vip and you get them every time you travel. We're platinum vip. So, of course, why does that not surprise me? So we get them every time. On top of that, if you get a credit card, the priceline rewards card, you get five times the points on any of the priceline purchases.00:10:31
Okay? So you can later redeem those for priceline purchases. And I'll tell you how. That gives me examples. Give me an example.00:10:40
What does that look like? So if I want a hotel that's at least a three star quality or higher, which is all I pretty much do these days, like a three and a half or four star. Four and a half. Sometimes five star? Yeah, sometimes five star.00:10:57
But not typically. Not typically. I don't really do two and a half or less anymore, especially for a marriage retreat, because you're gonna be sitting in a hotel room for several hours, you kind of want to have it be something that you enjoy. And we do look for a hotel room, typically, that has enough space that we can spread out a little bit. Yeah, I do like space.00:11:21
You're right. So usually for marriage retreat, three and a half star or better. Okay. And because I like nice sheets, I like nice pillows, nice mattress. Nice mattress.00:11:33
Three and a half or higher. Tend to. It just tends to be better. So I start on priceline. I put that in, I start searching four or three and a half or better in a general area.00:11:45
So for us, it's Dallas area. And then I'll go to the ratings. Right. So people rate the hotels and then they do an aggregate and an average. So it has two rating systems on priceline.00:11:59
Well, they have a star level, right? The quality level. There's certain levels. Three and a half and above tend to be the more upscale and then the ratings. How do the people like the hotel?00:12:09
What's their experience there? Yeah. So you can have a five star hotel that's not rated highly by the people or a two star hotel that's like a nine or a ten. Really, really high rating by the people. But the quality level is just.00:12:23
It's a two star quality. Right. Okay. That makes sense. You can control these things.00:12:28
So I started a three and a half star or higher on priceline. It's a three star, but you can pick out the three and a half stars. I start with the seven or higher ratings. Okay. And the reason I start with seven, there's some really good hotels out there that they get a few rogue ratings and they drop it down to like 7.8.00:12:50
And it's like a. It's a good hotel. Right. I don't want to miss out on those. You're really wanting eight and above most of the time.00:12:57
Most of the time. But there might be some outliers. I found anything that's like in a six or below. Don't even mess with it. Okay.00:13:03
Then I'll click on the sort button to go from lowest price to highest price. Okay. So the lowest price for three and a half star hotel with at least a seven or higher rating. And I'll find some hotels there, you know, could be like a Sheraton or a embassy, Swedes or sometimes a Marriott or Hilton. And I'll go over to the express deals button and I'll click on that.00:13:33
And that shows some offers for hotels. Again, we don't know the name, at least not right now, but it's really easy to figure out. So for an example, this morning I looked up in McKinney, which is near Dallas, the Sheraton McKinney, which we've stayed at before. And it's a very lovely hotel. It's a good one for our marriage retreat.00:13:55
Yes. Because it has an extra room where we can. Lovely hotel. It's a three and a half star with a rating of nine. So very high people like it.00:14:06
And it has 1077 ratings. So it's on there. It goes for $143 per night.00:14:17
But for some people, that's not bad. For us, that's bad. If I click on the express deals I did this, this morning, I see that they have a deal for the same area. It's a three and a half star hotel with a nine rating and 1000 ratings. So you're matching the star level, the rating level, and how many reviews and how many reviews there are.00:14:43
And so by looking at those three things, you can pretty much match it up. Right. With what you think it is. Right. Okay, so there is 1077 reviews for Sheraton McKinney, but when it shows up on the express deal, it'll just say a thousand.00:14:59
It just rounds it down or rounds up. Okay. And so I know that that's the Sheraton McKinney. There were no other three and a half star hotels there with a nine rate. Yeah, and a thousand.00:15:12
Okay, so you know it's the Sheraton. Well, guess what? It's going for $70. Instead of 143. That's less than half the price.00:15:22
You know it now. Now I take my 10% off coupon. So $70 a night now becomes $63 a night. That sounds like about the price of a motel six. But wait, does it even get better?00:15:38
There's more. If I use my priceline credit card to pay for it, I get five times the points I normally would. And so we use the priceline credit card for everything in our house. Hold. That we can buy with a credit card.00:15:54
Can I make a caveat there? Yes. We pay it off every single month. Do not sign up for a priceline credit card. If you cannot pay it off every month, you got to pay it off, because then all the savings.00:16:07
Yep. All the savings out the window from saving money on travel are wasted. Yep. You got to pay it off every month. So the only way that we recommend doing travel credit cards is if you've got the discipline to pay it off.00:16:20
And so we just use it as a checking account, actually. So everything we buy, we get points. Points. Stacking them up. So every two to three months, I go online and redeem travel that we've used through priceline for points.00:16:37
So when it's time to do our next marriage retreat, you cash in. Yes. And those go towards whatever hotel you've got for the next marriage retreat. But wait, there's more. Oh, my gosh.00:16:49
If I purchased travel on Priceline with the Priceline card, the number of points needed to reimburse the cost is 33% less than points needed to cover any other purchase. So they give it to you for an even better deal. Yes. So for a $63 hotel, at this point that we've got it down to. Are you saying it's only 60?00:17:18
Let me go from all the way from the beginning to the end. Okay. And then you'll see. Okay. The Sheraton McKinney.00:17:25
Good beds. Nice. Yeah. Nice hotel. Great hotel.00:17:29
Sheraton McKinney is $144 on hotels.com okay. We said it was $143 on the regular priceline. Okay. Then we found it was $70 on Priceline express deals, and then it became $63 using express deal coupon. Okay.00:17:51
Now $63, I only have to pay with my points, the equivalent of $45 to pay for this hotel. Oh, my gosh. Wow. Okay. And actually, I'm paying $0 because I used points to pay for the hotel.00:18:16
So now it ends up being $0. But the cool thing is I only have to use $45 worth of my points to pay for that hotel. So you've still got more for the next time. That's right. For another hotel and another marriage retreat or two nights hotel or I vacation, they can go towards hotels when we're traveling.00:18:37
That's really cool. That's amazing. I knew some of the elements of that. I don't think I knew all of the elements of that. So that's really impressive.00:18:46
So when is the best time to book a hotel? I would say generally speaking, because hotel prices go up and down. Right. The Sheraton McKinney might be like $200 if there's a special event going on in the area. Exactly.00:19:04
So you want to go when there's not a lot going on. Yes. We had that happen more than once. So you want to look at a few different weekends and see where the prices generally are. But I will say, in my experience, typically the best prices, if there's not a big event going on, it's going to be like one to two weeks before your date.00:19:26
So it's a good idea, you would say, because of that, if you find cheap plane tickets somewhere, maybe go through this process to at least look at hotel prices before you book the plane tickets. Because if there's a big, huge concert going on or a big art festival or something, I remember you had a business partner that booked tickets to Hastings for not too expensive, and then he couldn't find a hotel for under dollar 800 a night or something because there was a big event going on. Big event. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah.00:19:59
So some people. The other thing, too, is, you might ask, okay, is it better to book a budget hotel located in a better area than an upscale hotel in a less popular area? This is my philosophy. Okay. Scott Hastings philosophy, by extension, our philosophy.00:20:17
Okay. Because you do our travel, the Hastings philosophy is that we can always find something to do no matter where we are. Yeah. Okay. So I prefer to do the upscale hotel, even if it's in a not so, not a downtown area.00:20:36
Sometimes we have to drive a little bit. Big deal, right? Who cares? I'd rather stay at the higher four star Marriott than the two and a half star la Quinta. That's just me, though.00:20:47
Of course you do. You remember, though, you're going to be spending quite a bit of time in your hotel room together, so you want to like it. Four marriage retreats especially. I've dipped my toe into the Airbnb and the Vrbo scene, and we have had some really great ones. We've had some very lovely stays.00:21:06
There are pros and cons to both, I will say. Over the years, I tend to prefer hotels for several reasons, but one of them is I feel a little bit more confident that nobody's going to be spying on us. Right. Airbnb has had some bad press on that lately, haven't they? Yeah.00:21:27
Like hidden cameras and things. That's a little weird for me. I don't like people looking into my private life and I feel actually very angry if that does happen, and they better watch out if I ever find out. But I think hotels, too, tend to have dining options. Restaurants, a pool.00:21:49
We love the pool. Typically exercise equipment. They have quite a bit, especially the upper scale ones. But we do have a really great Airbnb about an hour from here, out near the Longhorn cow ranches. That's right.00:22:05
Where we take our own food in. It's so peaceful. We take our bikes with us and we just bike among the rolling hills, the longhorn cows. We call it our casita. Yeah, we do.00:22:17
We don't own it, but we stay there, and that's where we do our deep work. That's exactly right. Number three, air fares. So if you want to add air travel into the mix, I generally start with Skyscanner. Skyscanner.com or the Skyscanner app, and Google flights.00:22:40
Sometimes I add in, it's called kiwi.com. and then I'll go to hopper, which I think is only an app to find out the best time to buy. So Skyscanner gives me an idea of the lowest prices. They're very reliable. I use them probably the most, I think, by far.00:23:01
Skyscanner.com, if you know where you're wanting to go. Yeah, that's a good point. If you don't know where you want to go, maybe you can address that. Yeah, I know, as well. Right.00:23:13
So if you know where you want to go. Yes, that's correct. I think Hopper is important to do, and I found this fairly recently because they tell you, buy it now or no, wait, don't buy it right now. It's going to go down. Okay.00:23:27
And I really wish I would have listened to my own advice on this not too long ago, actually. Yeah. But for the most part, you do. I would have saved $600 on our flight to Paris. But anyway, Hopper will tell you, hey, this is a good price, or, no, wait, it's going to go down.00:23:48
And so I think that's important to keep that in the mix. There are some other sites. I know there's several. The ones that I use, it used to be called Scott's cheap flights. Yes.00:24:01
That's addicting. I'm like, wait a minute. Every night you would come home, honey, do you want to go to Japan? Honey, do you want to go to Norway? If only I had to unsubscribe because I was literally going crazy because I kept telling him, no, I was in grad school.00:24:20
I was going crazy. And I said, I can't do this anymore. I can't. So I've recently resubscribed and I'm a premium member. I like Jack's flight club.00:24:33
They send some really good notifications that then we take into Skyscanner and some of the other areas. Yeah. The thing about Scott's cheap flights, which is now called going.com, they tell you kind of when you need to go. So instead of you saying, hey, I have these dates that I want to do something, it's backwards. It's, you can go to Paris for $450, but you have to do it over these dates.00:25:00
So if you can't do the dates, then you're not going to do it. So you know when you have some free time and then you're looking at what the options are, what the good deals are when you have a break. Yeah. So going. Or Jack's flight club will say they're going to tell you when you can go.00:25:17
And the cheap price, which is usually really astounding, versus Skyscanner, where you're like, hey, I want to go here on this date. And it's usually going to be more typically. Right. And it'll usually have like a, from September to November or something like that. It'll have a couple of months in the range.00:25:36
Right. So on Skyscanner, if you don't know where you want to go, let's say, hey, I want to get out of here. I want to try somewhere new. But I just don't know. There is an option.00:25:47
You just type in everywhere. Okay. Or anywhere. It's anywhere or everywhere. And then what they'll do is they'll come up with everywhere in the world the lowest price.00:25:59
And this is on which one? On Skyscanner. Okay. So if you're lacking of ideas of where to go, start with that. That can give you some great ideas, you know, Puerto Rico, that's how I got that trip is like, where should I go?00:26:14
So Puerto Rico was cheap. St. Thomas. That's how I found that one back from COVID in those. And they were really, really cheap.00:26:22
But also with going, correct me if I'm wrong, they also find mistakes that airlines have made. Yeah. So you can find a mistake. Fair. You gotta jump right on it a couple of hours.00:26:34
Yep. We've never done those, but I will say I credit going for the. The trip to New Zealand. That was about a third of what they usually are, super cheap. So thank you.00:26:47
Going. How do you feel about discount airlines? Well, I remember having these conversations with friends, and they think you're crazy. We've spent a lot of time on a lot of flights on spirit, let's be honest. Yep.00:27:04
And lately on Frontier, to some degree, it can be somewhat controversial. Some of your friends might think that you're just. A lot of our friends are crazy. Like, who are you guys? It's a cultural experience, and they get you just there just as fast.00:27:22
Right. They're nice planes. Well, in earlier days, spirit had flights from Dallas to Florida all the time for $30. We took our kids to Florida every January, remember, to Tampa. Right.00:27:37
For like, what, three years? And it was literally $38 round trip. They don't have those fares. No, well, they don't have them at all anymore, but I just remember back more of those flights now. Okay.00:27:51
All right. But I don't know if they go to Florida, but I'm like, that's like an awesome trip. Go to Tampa, you get your priceline hotel, and bam, you got a family vacation for cheap. Right. But we've got to say, we've learned to pack minimalist style to be able to get on those flights, because they charge a fortune for baggage.00:28:13
So. Yeah, that is. That's a great point. You and I looked up the dimensions for the free, because the spirit and frontier allow a free handbag. Right.00:28:24
And so I looked up those dimensions and I put it in to Amazon and I said, find one that matches that. So we bought six of them for all of our kids that match exactly that free size. Right. These little teeny tiny suitcases. It works better in the summer than it does in the winter.00:28:45
However, in the winter, I have been known to put on three layers until I get on the plane and then take off some layers and pull out a bag to put them in. I don't know if you should be saying this. Look, I even had one of the people at the gate tell me that. She's like, you're gonna have to pay $100 to check this bag because your bag doesn't fit. This is on frontier.00:29:08
That's your bag. Ridiculous. That's how it fits in there. And she's like, just take it on and put on layers. Yeah.00:29:13
Oh, she told you how to do it. Yeah. So, yes, that's what we do. We get our little carry on suitcases, and I watch with a smirk on my face the gate agent who tells me to put my suitcase in the little. At the boarding area to make sure it fits.00:29:31
And it fits perfectly, right? And I'm like, huh? But on frontier, it can't bulge at all. And on spirit, it can bulge a little more. Their measuring guide is a little bit bigger.00:29:44
So, yeah, spirit, you're going to probably get a little bit more room than frontier. We did take a discount airline to Jerusalem. We took our kids to Israel, and we took that size of bag. They have them for international, all six of us, right. In a little spirit sized bag that takes choosing items with very thin fabric and doing a little bit of laundry in the sink.00:30:10
But we were there a whole week and we did just fine. We had a little laundry line that we could do some laundry while we were there. So another question, is the best time to travel, typically on an airline is going to be Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Those are the cheap ones, the cheap flights, typically. Not always.00:30:30
Saturdays are decent, too. Yeah, Saturday mornings. Yep, you're right. I typically, for me, Friday nights after work, I know it's gonna cost more, but I have to measure that against how much I'm losing by leaving work early. Because we own our own business, right?00:30:48
If you work for somebody else, just take a vacation day. It's not a big deal. Right? But you gotta think about this, right? How much you're saving on the air for.00:30:55
Ooh, ooh. I got this deal. But then how much you're losing with leaving work early. And I would just like to say that Southwest is not a discount airline unless you're taking a lot of luggage with you. Right.00:31:11
But the intelligence spouse knows that taking a lot of luggage is just not really fun intelligent. Because then you have to sit and wait for it all to come off. Look, it's not that I mind southwest. I'm sure they're a great airline. We do take certain circumstances.00:31:28
They're not cheap usually, like, at all. Every once in a while you can find something. So that leads us to number four, car rentals, Skyscanner again, every time. I know it says Skyscanner, but I've looked at just about every car rental site out there. I found some good ones through Costco.00:31:49
You might have. I think we tried one once. I went back there and tried it and it failed. It worked really well once, but then we didn't get that to repeat. Skyscanner is reliably cheaper than anywhere else.00:32:04
So a lot of time, like. Like, yeah. Okay. Sky. Skyscanner for car rentals.00:32:11
I highly recommend downloading the app tripit for car rentals. Or this. You mean after you've got your whole vacation planned? This is for everything. This is an app, okay?00:32:22
It keeps your itinerary very nicely, your flight, your hotels. It's beautiful, it's wonderful. It's the best thing ever. And it's free, so you're not having to find all of the emails with all the confirmation codes and everything. And then you can share it with me, too.00:32:40
You can email me. Yeah, I can share it with people to travel. I will say again, word about credit cards. Well, you said earlier, pay them off. You have to, otherwise it turns into a disaster.00:32:53
You have to pay them off every month. The other thing, too, though, if you're going to do credit cards, there are some airlines that have fantastic deals. I think somewhere in the late summer, early fall, 80,000, 90,000 miles if you sign up. And for some airlines like Delta and American, I mean, that's going to be a trip to Europe. And if you both sign up, I remember we both signed up and we paid our airfare to New Zealand from Dallas to Auckland.00:33:23
Ended up being almost free because we used all these points. And all you have to do is buy like a stick of gum. You don't even have to buy a bunch of stuff. So smart move if you're paying off your bills every month. Well, and I know Frontier has just been advertising that if you have their travel credit card and you reserve your travel on that credit card, that you get to check two free bags, which is similar to what Southwest does for a fraction of the price.00:33:54
Yeah. So that's a little travel hack there. Also, if you're a business owner like we are, and you put your business expenses on a card and then again pay it off every month, you can not only be getting travel benefits for your home, but also for your business, which gives us a lot of extra benefits there as well. There are a lot of pros and cons both to owning your own business. But that is one of the pros.00:34:23
That's a pro. I purposefully do not over plan my trips. I get the hotels, the airfares, transportation all figured out. Then I have some very general ideas of what I want to do. Specifically.00:34:36
If it's a pretty hot item, then I plan ahead. Like the cool restaurant in the sky tower in Auckland or tickets to the Louvre Museum in Paris. You gotta plan ahead for those. You can't just show up, but loosen up on the small stuff. Like Muhammad Ali said, float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.00:35:02
One of my favorite philosophers. Finally, there's a movie you must watch, absolutely required for all of our intelligent spouses out there. It is on Netflix. It is called a tourist's guide to love. It's kind of a hallmarkish type of it.00:35:23
Is such romance a good movie? We won't tell you about it, but there is a line in there that I want to put somewhere, frame it somewhere. A tourist travels to escape life. A traveler travels to experience life. Life is too short to waste it escaping life.00:35:46
You should experience it instead. I really think that has become our focus of travel the last little while. It makes me teary when I read that. Why? It just, it's, ah, it perfectly explains what.00:36:04
Tell me what a traveler is in your mind. What do we do? How has our travel changed since we started focusing on this? Everything's new, fresh perspective, exciting, wondrous, filled with awe. And for me, it goes beyond that.00:36:24
Instead of going only to all of the tourist places, we want to know what the real people are like who live there. We try to connect deeply by getting off the beaten path, asking questions of other travelers, looking at what is important to the real people, especially if we're traveling foreign, going places where we can see and learn about their culture, about their families, about their way of life. I remember in Thailand, we went up in the mountains to Chiang Mai and we stayed in a treehouse. That was really awesome. We had these nets over us, but also the shower.00:37:06
The bathroom had no ceiling. There was no roof over it. No roof. And so you can be there in the evening, taking a shower, watching the sunset, hearing the birds. It was the most incredible experience.00:37:19
And then they took us on motorcycles down into the market. The little owner had us taste crickets and taste different things, explain things to us. We ate things that were in that region. We saw how people lived and that was very, very meaningful way to travel. Getting off the beaten path.00:37:41
It was wonderful. It was part of a scintillating life. And with that, we will leave you for this week. We hope that you've enjoyed this and hope that you've gained some things out of what you've learned today. And have a great week everybody.00:37:57
We love you. And remember, the intelligent spouse knows that to change from a stinky to a scintillating marriage first requires a change in themselves. Thank you all for tuning into marriage IQ. We hope today's episode has sparked some wonderful thoughts and brought you valuable insights. Remember, the conversation doesn't end here.00:38:22
If you are interested in more information on this topic or to learn more about what we do, check out our website, Dr. Heidi Hastings, PhD, and if you get the chance, we'd love to have you leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. It really helps us get the word out about marriage IQ and we appreciate your support. Thanks again for listening. Keep exploring and we'll catch you next time on another exciting episode of Marriage IQ.
