www.atravelpath.com

 

Andy and Rachel:

Andy and Rachel - YouTube

Andy Rachel (@andyandrachelvlog) • Instagram photos and videos

AR Treasures (artreasuresphotography.com)

 

What an exciting show! Andy and Rachel sat down with us to share their interesting and inspiring story of how they manage to travel and creating a work life that supports them meeting their travel goals.

In today’s show you’ll learn all about:

🏠Using real estate to house-hack your way towards your goals

🐶Finding creative ways such as pet-sitting to stay in places for free

🥚The importance of not putting all your eggs in one basket, so you have multiple streams of income to rely on

And much more!

 

🔗Links

 

Music:

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/abbynoise/rocky-mountains

 

💵Hacks

International house-sitting community - Nomador

Google Flights - Find Cheap Flight Options & Track Prices

 

🏠Real Estate

Airbnb | Vacation rentals, cabins, beach houses, & more

Travel Nurse Housing - Search For Monthly Furnished Rentals (furnishedfinder.com)

 

💡Influencers

Eamon & Bec - YouTube

The Nomadic Movement - YouTube

Kara and Nate - YouTube

Create & Build Wealth With Real Estate Investing | BiggerPockets

Scott Trench Set For Life: https://amzn.to/48HxJVH (The book mentioned during the show)

 

*All content from atravelpath.com, including but not limited to The Travel Path Podcast and social media platforms, is designed to share general information. We are not experts and the information is not designed to serve as legal, financial, or tax advice. Always do your own research and due diligence before making a decision.

 

Transcript from YouTube:

Andy and Rachel thank you guys for joining hope and I on this episode of the travel path podcast hey thank you thank you guys so we know you guys on Instagram and YouTube as Andy and Rachel you've got a ton of content everything from product reviews you've traveled all over the world you have your wedding photography business and it might be a foreign topic to most of our audience the house hacking and Airbnb hosting but it's speaking our language we're excited to dig in there why don't we start by having you share a little bit about yourself and then letting the audience know what your current travel lifestyle looks like so I'm ra obviously and um I actually right out of college did social work for 14 years I had a huge life change and um went through a divorce I have three daughters and when I met Andy I had three daughters and was kind of like done with the social work thing I had done it and I wasn't I just thought you went to school for one thing that's what you do the rest of your life and he comes from an entrepreneur background he's like what do you want to do like that's like an option so but I'm also um um kind of like jump into a person like I'm like ready for adventure so I quit my job like really soon like a month into knowing him or so and tried different entrepreneurial things and so wedding photography was what stuck so that's currently my full-time job as a wedding photographer we tried a lot of things and we'll probably touch on that a little later with the whole entrepreneurial and house hacking and all that I came from an entrepreneurial family my dad was a big entrepreneur we started a business a family business buiness early on so that I kind of knew it was possible I uh grew up in Ohio I went to college in Florida I lived out in Los Angeles for a while uh San Francisco eventually came back to Ohio met Rachel know we uhhuh and first he had bought a van was running a business I kind of like always wanted to travel and I was thinking well I can I can work remotely I might as well like buy a van and and fix it up and live in it and and and travel around the world with it and stuff and anyway so that's basically what I did for a year because you know the the rent was you know $1,500 a month and living in this van I could basically essentially save that $1,500 a month and and then I would would take that money and kind of snowball it into the next kind of investment and that's kind of what led us into our first property was using the income that I had saved from living in My Van Into the rental income and then you know once that rental income turned into another house and yeah then we we created a photography business and kind of worked our way up and you know along with other entrepreneurial things so awesome so it sounds like that goal of travel came first and then and you were putting systems in place the real estate the photography business to get you towards that goal right you mentioned house hacking what exactly is that so B yeah so so basically I had heard about it a while back my brother bought a a duplex and he lived on one side and he rented out the other side and um the person that he rented out the one side basically paid the entire mortgage so he wasn't paying any money for you know he was basically living for free and so me and Rachel kind of talked about it and we were like yeah it would be ideal to to eventually get a property to do that so we bought and sold one house before we finally found our first house hack it was ended up being a Triplex so we had three units we lived in one and rented out the other two yeah there's a lot of work involved I me we had to remodel both the the two units we we rent it out and so we learned a lot with and we happen to rent them app through Airbnb actually right great yeah think I saw that when you had a video posted on that it's the studio you have two studio apartments up top right and then you were living in the downstairs when you were renovating yeah that's great I'm I'm glad you bring up the the work involved because we're the same way we did the whole YouTube University thing and I like the the point you brought up too about how you can accumulate wealth so quickly and I tell people your cost of living is like the biggest expense you're going to face and if you can buy something that essentially either eliminates that or reduces it greatly you're limiting that huge expense you can put that towards whether it's another property towards travel whatever it is right yeah and there's tax incentives if you you know and you can get you can get deeper and deeper with it because the you know the the government gives you tax write offs for owning real estate and so yeah it can compound really quickly you know so it absolutely does yeah so what would you say to somebody who doesn't want to get into real estate because of the headaches they hear you know you're you're a landlord especially Airbnb host you're getting text communication all the time there's leaky toilets what would your response be to someone who's avoiding real estate because of that yeah that that was my concern because my my brother was renting out the traditional way with with monthly or with yearly rentals and and he has problem clients and and that and I I didn't really want to deal with that type of stuff so we started we aligned kind of kind of like Sy Synergy a little bit we we rent it out we were like well let's Airbnb first and rent it out to vacationers and just kind of see how it goes and that seemed to work pretty well for us we didn't have if there was anything to fix we would catch it when we were doing our cleaning or or whatever um and it made us more money than the traditional route and then we had discovered that we lived near a big Medical Campus so we had a lot of doctors and nurses and those people coming through so we eventually transitioned our model from vacationers and travelers into like 90% traveling nurses and and doctors like on rotation on rotations and so we would advertise that way we would say great for medical students and it was a quiet place that was really close to the hospitals as well so we just we would just say it in the wording but then most of our reviews they would also say like I'm a medical student or I'm a doctor most of them were medical students and so so they were semi longterm renters I mean like a month to three months month sometimes or six months and they were paying premium so you know cuz it's furnished and yeah do you use furnish finders have you heard we looked into it yeah our area where we live isn't as big city so it's so there's less you know what I mean we're kind of five 10 years behind the we're lucky in a way because it's it's like we're cutting edge all the time when we're like behind yeah that's true we're a big fish in a small pond so ahead of the crowd yeah something else I would say if someone hesitates because they don't want to get into it um we no longer own that property yeah we we ended up selling because it just worked out you know you you got to kind of time the market and yeah like I kind of thought well I could make 10 times as much as it would take me to work 10 more years at this right now and then do like we were talking about earlier I can take that capital and roll it into the next so we ended up selling this year yeah so the point could be too is like it might not be a long-term thing for you maybe if you just think of it as like a temporary thing of dealing with tenants and communicating and stuff that you can use that money when you sell it there's always exit plans yeah for sure so you had that property I'm sure that helped fund your business it was a passive income source for you it eliminated you know your your cost of living essentially and then did that allow you kind of that opportunity to start that wedding business or how did that work we basically did it kind of at the same time yeah the winning business was kind of going ahead of time actually yeah yeah we we we started the photog every business around the same time we bought our first property our first property was uh we got it for super really cheap property it was but you know it was a it was a 1880 Historical house that was like 70 grand and it just I mean and it was like pretty much dumb but no one could see the vision it was a very odd house and so and it was like a cabinet shop and it was just very odd so we ended up buying that we sold it unfortunately we wanted to keep it for a little while we ended up selling it making a profit on that took that profit Prof bought the triplex and so but yeah while doing that we also built a photography business and we you know did e-commerce Amazon eBay we dog walking dog sitting driving buil yeah we built a dog sitting business and and uh yeah I mean we I think at one point we had six or seven businesses just you know K going so but like you know each one is like one makes five grand a year one makes 30 grand but what I had told is it's like you're diversifying your income so like if you have three incomes going at once and you lose one you're still still above doesn't hurt as bad yeah right so and that's kind of what's scary for a lot of people who work N9 to-5 is like they're you know the 100% of their income is built on this job and and so it can be scary you know people don't want to quit when they should quit you know and I will say what's he had asked about how I'm starting the photography business so in general we try to start businesses where there's very little money forward like he already had cameras because of the business he already had so our startup C was essentially nothing so we didn't really need anything to help start the photography business yeah that's a good point that's a great tip we could talk about real estate all day but this is a travel podcast so why don't we switch gears and talk about what your current travel lifestyle looks like are you traveling full-time part-time so that really goes back to um like when we met how where we were at so I have three daughters and I have them half the time so that's why we are based in Erie Pennsylvania and so our travel schedule really for now really has a lot to do with the girls sometimes we travel with them but they're in Traditional School so that's very much based around their school schedules besides occasional I just brought my daughter for her first our first trip just a daughter of me she turned 16 we're going to do that with all the girls so we tend to go on short trips actually throughout the year so like when the girls are with their dad we go on a trip here and there or if they go on a longer trip with their dad we go on a longer trip the two of us or sometimes we take the girls on longer trips when they're off school yeah I think I think at our Peak we were like we do 10 to 12 like three or four day trips throughout like once a month we would go on like a three day or four day yeah and we do some still because of photography as yeah so because you had so many businesses rolling at one point how did that affect your travel lifestyle when we had a whole bunch of them going it was tricky you learn what works and and what doesn't for example we stopped doing Amazon FBA and and e-commerce stuff a lot because you had to be home to package things to ship out you know and same thing with the dog sitting and that type of stuff it it limits your your availability to travel and so we we learned that and we were like Okay cool so we're focused more on you know remote type of stuff I still do graphic design remotely for you know businesses and we can do editing on the road and you know that type of stuff so yeah so honestly it was like we learned that the ones that we couldn't travel with as well that we weren't interested in and and I think we just put more energy then into the photography business and that's probably why it grew I know you have some videos on YouTube you talk about it sounds like you have these weddings that you shoot all over the country how are you marketing that so that you know you're living in Ohio but you're shooting a wedding video I think the last was in Florida right yeah yeah so mostly I think it's just because we share on Instagram we got we've mostly got travel weddings through Instagram which is not how we get most of our weddings in general however um I just put on there that we travel and I put that like on our stories when we are traveling and then I share weddings and I just think it just comes together that way where people who are more open to where their photographers from sometimes just reach out to us because they like our style and it works out that way but um I'm also on like Facebook groups at various locations when people are looking for a photographer I'll say oh we're interested there's also like SEO and you can add in alopen and you know that that type of stuff which we're working on that's kind of like our new kind of goal is to to try to get more like uh organic you know people to come to us for that type of stuff sure that's great I wasn't sure if it was like I know we have like the mobile RV techs they just drive all over the country and they'll just update their website for where they are and then if you need someone you can call them and you just do Google search so while you're traveling what are some of the biggest frustrations that you face so the camera debate oh yeah I don't know if you guys have this but it's always like the biggest um decision for us to decide what cameras we want or don't want to take with us for vlogging obviously if we're doing a wedding we take the big nice cameras but it's not necessarily sure it's how much we can fit in our bags but also like how much you want to worry about when you're on vacation like if we want to go to the beach do we need to worry about if our camera is safe and so it's really funny we always have this huge debate like what we really want to capture and the quality that we care or don't care to capture when we're traveling sure now when you're traveling is it did you sell that van Andy that is that where you're still traveling in or do you fly stay in airbnbs what does that look like our favorite ways to stay are is home exchange so it's similar to Airbnb but instead of cash you use points so people can stay at your house and you earn points for it to go stay anywhere in the world it's actually based out of Europe um but it's growing so there's more and more places to stay at you can switch actual places at the same time but we've never actually done that house to house like complete swap right yeah yeah it's hard to do that was where it's it was founded like that but that's it's hard to do that when the stars have to kind of line up for both to be going to the same place it's it's already pretty difficult to to get it to work perfectly um because it really depends on where you're going like if you're going to New York City like it's pretty easy because there's a lot of people doing it there but like like we're we're trying to go to Kawai next year and so finding people there to let us you know do the home exchanges hard because there's only like four people on the entire Island you know so on the yeah when we first started dating and and traveling we actually did a lot of taking care of people's pets because we didn't have to pay um any money to stay at their house so that was that was really nice but then we slowly learned over the last four or five years it's kind of just this added responsibility where you know you need them to take care of their pets and their house and and you know we're responsible people so so it limits the amount of time um that you can go on vacation but we still do it from time to time so yeah there's there's options out there you know a lot of people don't travel because they think it costs so much money but um there's a lot of ways to to to do it for cheap so there are yeah and that's one thing that we discovered when we first air beat our house we were living there and we rented it out we took a vacation and we realized that renting our house out basically paid for the trip and it's similar with home exchange where it's that point exchange but yeah it's incredible that that hack right there if you're going to take a two-e trip just furnish your home it takes a little bit of work if you have a home office you need to lock some things up but it does it it makes it way worth it for sure yeah that's a good point we we we talked about that we never actually did it though renting out where we actually live no there there's not a lot of big interest to people coming here that's probably why but yeah we we actually ended up owning um we bought a property in uh Southwest Florida we rented rented that out on home exchange and that was an Off the Grid tiny house in the jungle so it was a very different experience all the great tiny house in the jungle let's hear about that yeah a goal of mine like I don't know at least 10 years ago um one of my best friends I I've wanted to live in Hawaii and buy land there and he kind of got me onto it and and so I'd look every every once in a while and at some point he sent me a link to this Craigslist posting of of uh like three it was like three and a half acres in basically the Everglades it wasn't in the Everglades but very close to the Everglades um it was only a 10 10minute drive to Marco Island which is right on the right on the Gulf Coast and you know it was cheap it was like 40 Grand it had a off a fully Off the Grid um tiny house on it with solar and just it was brand new brand new it was beautiful and uh so anyways long story short we went down there and my friend and I checked that out you know I bought it and and we originally planned we were like well this would just be our place we come down to and vacation at and and then we were like well we can rent this thing out we ended up renting it out basically letting people a lot of people from France came and stayed there and we did home exchanges with them and but then we had to like constantly go to Florida and clean this house and yeah it was so yeah so yeah cut back that literally had to cut back the jungle with a machete to get to the house is maybe a little too much adventure for us yeah it was it was it was a three and a half acres like dense jungle with only like 5% of it carved out into the middle with with the tiny house there there was only six months of the year where you could live there because during the rainy season during the summer it's just filled with mosquitoes and rain and the weeds will grow up like six to8 feet tall and just we would go down in October like October what the hurricane season would be over we'd go down and I like the first couple years I I literally used a machete and would just like cut and just be out there with like you know all this mosquito gear on cutting it down and getting it prepped and stuff and then he felt like a Rambo yeah totally it was it was he got to live his childhood dream it was and I have to like buy a knife every time we flew down because you couldn't fly with knives that's a good point yeah because I was scared that a that a cougar would jump out because um there's like Mount they like introduced mountain lions and into Florida to like rebuild their like cougar population and anyway so there were black bears alligators Turtles it was a pretty nutso experience but that sounds like an adventure yeah and I know what tiny house is something that's on her list she really wants a tiny house really bad apparently our van doesn't count so we're gonna have to buy one at some point yeah it's it's a nice upgrade from a van you know I I lived in a low top van with like I don't know 70 square square feet so upgrading from that to that tiny house it was a little extended it was it was 10 by 16 um so it was nice we had a little area for living uh you know like a living area with with a couple chairs and table and it like took too much of our vacation time up yeah it took too much you know too many plain chicken too much too much time cutting down the jungle turns out that's not fun in the long term yeah so we so we basically learned that when you get into real estate the best thing you can do is that if you if you're owning property is to own it really close by because even that like 20 minute or 30 minute drive when you need to go do something over there is plane ticket yeah yeah it really takes a toll on you so miss real estate prices were cheap like that but I guess there was a reason for it now You' mentioned I know the home exchange you had mentioned there were a couple of other travel hacks that could potentially save money what were those um so pet sitting no matter is a app that we use and so that's really cool you can like literally travel and take care of someone's pets have a place to stay and often they have a carf to use especially if you're on an island which we like to go to Islands actually Hawaii we did with that yeah three three or four years ago we stayed in the Bahamas the lady we got to stay there for free in her house she took care of her two dogs and she left her car for us you know so you didn't have to pay for a place to stay and you got a free car like you get the authentic experience they usually have food in the fridge for you that's like local food yeah it's definitely a game changer when if you want to travel for for on a budget it's it's a big game another really epic one we had right away as soon as we got together was um watching what kind of dogs were they called it's a great pise yeah Great Pyrenees so it was like mountain dogs and one of them she was like leave her off the leash because she'll protect you and I'm like oh I'm not comfortable that like you don't want to lose someone's dog she's like no there was a house sitter it was a house sitter there and she went ahead and she literally fought off a bear so that the house so that the sitter was okay okay yeah we'll let her go ahead of us I will take your word for it yeah yeah we that one was fun too we we arrived the lady had like bread with like butter and just like we had their own little like studio in their basement a hot tub hot tub that's awesome if you're a pet lover you're watching a dog and it's really not that big of a commitment yeah it it was fun and and yeah we stayed in Hawaii once with twice yeah twice through that yeah twice where where we you know got a car and cool uh puppies to play with and if you're into that type of stuff stuff you know it's definitely untraditional but it can be cool awesome yeah so no matter home exchange I'll put links in the show notes for all the resources we talk about today so that's great through all your travels what is the coolest experience you guys have had together or it can be you each can have your own cool experience too we actually landed on to they actually were both of our girls yeah the first one that came to mind for for us was uh we got married at a courthouse but then secretly secretly and then um you know the a day or two later we surprised our our daughters and the next day we had a flight out to California so we brought them to LA and then the next day we got married on the beach in Malibu in Malibu and it was like a Valentine's Day weekend it was like they had a long weekend from school and so like everyone else knew that they were going but they didn't know and so so was fun yeah it was their first time on the west coast and they were just like Jaw drop the whole time yeah so our other one was to the Bahamas with our girls it was like such a local experience it was an Airbnb actually and it was right on the ocean it was not in a tourist area at all and so it could have gone either way we didn't rent a car we were trying to save costs and trying to just be like chill and give them a chill experience of like just being on the ocean and they're like older they're like teens so it's like you don't know if they're going to like miss all the excitement and they didn't want to leave it was phenomenal it was the person had a pool and it was an Airbnb with like four units in it on the ocean and it wasn't even like a nice Sandy Beach it was just like you're basically like in the ocean yeah we walked to the grocery store so they like saw locals like we literally had to walk every day to get groceries because we only had whatever our hands to carry the food so we would go to the grocery store every day and our big like final meal was literally everyone came to the grocery store together and ate outside the grocery store for a big fancy meal yeah there weren't there weren't like restaurants nearby I mean it was yeah we walked to like this little convenience store and they had like a food truck that was like closest thing to to a restaurant we told the girls a while ago that like we we would we buy them stuff whenever they needed any clothes we'll buy it but for Christmas and like uh summer break and stuff like that we we we'd like to buy them experiences you know through traveling and so that they can just be a little bit more you know well-rounded a as an adult when they grow up and kind of understand there's more out there than just you know your your surroundings and your kids so then not renting a car thing is kind of a new thing for us so we've been doing that a lot lately we've been trying to find like cities that have a lot to do within itself so like San Juan Puerto Rico was like one of the first times we were like well let's just go here and just not run a car and we'll just kind of see if it's fun you know we don't have to drive around and go see mountains and all these different areas because we which we love to yeah we love that but we were so we were trying to do the opposite thing we were trying to to figure out if it was doable and and so far it's been fun mhm we did add one question I don't think it was on your list but we we asked um if there was one thing you learned that you can't live without while you're traveling and then also contrary to that like one thing that you learned that you thought you would need but didn't need does that make sense I will preference this by that we are extremely minimalist Travelers we only travel with a book bag yeah we just do we just do a carryon which just a backpack small um the only time we do use a a check bag or even a carry-on we don't even do car we do personal items when it's included we'll bring a carryon uh but most of the time we're trying to keep the cost down so we use like Frontier spirit and we don't really we're young enough we don't really care about extra room and you know and all that stuff so we we'll min max it so we'll we'll spend as at least amount on airfare as we can and then spend the rest of our money on experiences or like fancy restaurant or whatever I since we travel around town a lot and stuff it's nice just to have a book bag instead of carrying that's another big tip too especially if you're in a place that's like kind of dangerous you don't really want to be that person rolling a carryon down the road you know oh but he asked for something we can't live without and I think we have one I maybe you'll agree with me just goggles we actually love snorkeling but if you like make it into a really tiny thing really you just need to see underwater so yeah small goggles are great to have I love that tip on Min maxing too it's kind of that goes hand in hand with the whole real estate delayed gratification you can you know suffer on that plane ride for a couple hours and then just Splurge when you're down there exactly yeah you can stretch your dollar and not a lot of people do that I don't know I feel like I grew up that way or something because I I I do it with like everything if you could have listened to this podcast when you were first starting out traveling what is one question you wish I would have asked tonight and how would you answer that now I think we kind of already talked about this a little bit um and I don't really know exactly the proper way to to say this question but basically something to the effect of like how do I get to the point where I can travel as much as I would like to or you know have a job that I that allows me to travel and explore the world my answer I think we already kind of touched on this a little bit you kind of have to be doing two things at once at least it worked for us was we were building our long-term goal of having a successful photography or successful wedding business but at the same time we were also building these other businesses and rentals and uh you know e-commerce businesses and dog sitting and all these other types of things to to help push that goal into where it needed to be and I think yeah I think a lot of people just kind of stick to one thing and and and they just do that but like if you're if you're able and capable of doing a couple other things and it doesn't necessarily mean you you spend like you know instead of spending eight hours a day working you're spending 16 hours a day working but just like a little extra every day on another couple goals and and really it's like it's like growing plants and stuff all you got to do is plant the little seeds and you know you just you water it once in a while and and eventually it grows that's great advice if you set a goal you want it bad enough so you can set up those side hustles while at the same time making sure you have a lifestyle while you're trying to make it there and then keeping that mindset knowing that one day you will be there and at the same time those side hustles you're not going to be doing those forever either and so thing that makes us jump right into things I just feel like it's just worth mentioning is both of us lost a parent really early and so both of them had Big Dreams for their retirement that they never got to and so when we met that was like a very joining point and like a very important thing to us is that we live now and plan for the future right very inspiring story and I'm sorry to hear about your parents but it's I'm glad to see you guys put the work in and it's working out for you guys are enthusiastic and happy I can tell yeah so how many trips have you guys taken this year we're almost at the end of a year we went to Mex meico oh yeah January we went to Cancun we brought her parents Honolulu oh before that we went to New York City with the girls like a million small trips all over the place but it sounds like all those little travel hacks you're doing all those moneysaving things they're really allowing you to take all those small trips because most people will be like oh I didn't go anywhere in a year right so just the fact that you went to three plus a bunch of other small trips throughout the year shows that all these steps you guys have been taking really do help you get to those travel goals throughout the year right yeah it adds up you know if you're you're saving money you're able to kind of look for deals and and and uh one of the big travel hacks that we have is we use Google flights to find cheap cheap flights places and so you know some people don't know this they just go to like American airlines.com and they type in roundtrip to whever we spend an extra 20 minutes and and and look okay what's the cheapest one way to Chicago and then we find a new search what's the cheapest one way from Chicago back and they could be two different completely you know Airlines but you're saving like hundreds of dollars and so so yeah like over the course of the year if you do three trips that way you're saving a thousand bucks so yeah you can you can do you can do a lot and especially if you're doing it in all areas you know you're saving money with Airlines you're saving money with uh rental cars and you're saving money with your with your Airbnb you know is I have to say one thing in case in case Talia watches this I I can't forget I just got back from s ju with my daughter too so at least four big ones this year yeah like we travel from like Michigan to Pennsylvania Ohio at least for weddings throughout the wedding season pretty much went to Philadelphia we went to Vermont West Virginia we did yeah starting to come back I'm like okay yeah we went on like 10 trips this year it's a good problem when you're starting to lose track of how many trips you took said 3 to five whether it's 3 to five or 10 plus that's a lot more than most so you guys are doing it right I love that analogy about it's it's every little thing that adds up yeah sure the plane tickets might not seem like much but you know not doing a rental car and that's a good analogy for life you know if you can save a couple bucks here and there it it adds up you know your weekly monthly expenses if anybody did an audit on themselves with you know you're streaming bills uh there's a there's a platform for everything nowadays Netflix Hulu peacock everything if you sit down and figure out what am I actually spending money on is it worth it and then you could start saving a lot of money pretty quickly and the money save you're not getting taxed on I I read somewhere and it blew my mind is when you try to pick up an extra job you're getting taxed you know whatever that tax bracket is but when you start saving money you're saving 100% of that Penny yeah that's a good point that's a good point for anyone listening who is just starting out and they want to be in a similar travel lifestyle as you guys what would be one thing they could start doing today one of the first things that you know I had helped Rachel with when we first started dating was she was in kind of uh you know the typical way of life where people have like a brand new car and they spend $700 a month on their car and and so I was giving I was kind of like let's start correcting these these things because I was just brought up that way I I just figured everyone else did this but so we ended up buying um you know we bought like a $3,000 Toyota Sienna minivan because she had a sedan which is like with me and her and three kids in the back seat like it just didn't it wasn't very practical so not little either yeah so I'm like well let's get a minivan that's very reliable and that we own outright so so yeah we bought this $3,000 minivan and ended up eventually selling her car and so that takes care of a monthly payment like that's a huge difference in being able to travel just that one thing yeah so I I did the math you know a couple years ago we were we were spending on average about $75 a month on this minivan for taxes Insurance uh maintenance tires oil change everything so 75 versus 700 you know it's $625 extra in your pocket every month so multiply that by 10 or 12 like you're at $66,000 a year and that's just one thing yeah you add that and then you start you start house hacking and so instead of spending 12 Grand a year on rent you're making 12 Grand a year on rental income so now you're at 20 grand extra in your pocket or even like if you can't afford a house yet you don't have a down payment yet or something like you encouraged me to find a rental that was like way smaller than the rental I was in and like yeah if you think of people in other countries like it might seem like everyone needs their own room and everything but it depends what's important to you and like for a while we sacrificed yeah and now we have a big house again but you know sometimes you have to make sacrifices yeah she lived she lived in a in a one room apartment it was a big room three girls with three daughters for like six months it was like 400 bucks a month so it was like she went from 850 to 400 so she cut her rental cost in half and I was living in my van at the time you know it's doable and like like you were saying earlier it's just for a brief amount of time it's not saying saying that you're like well I want to live in this $400 a month one room apartment forever like you only did it for six six months at the most yeah so yeah and so I always put my myself in perspective other it helps to put yourself in other perspectives there's tons of people around the world that are like living in dirt houses with you know no shoes and happy yeah and they're like happy running around with one toy it's good that if you can kind of switch your brain and go like you know this is really nice that I live in my tiny little van you know and like it's all perspective absolutely yeah Tyler always said we need to live below our means yes I know what not to contradict what we said earlier about all those little things adding up but at the same time if you have big things you can slash immediately you know for that house hacking or getting rid of that van payment or getting rid of the car payment that would be worth way more than cutting out those small little things if you have those big things you can slash do that first and then little things add up after that there's a million different things you could do you know you could sell stuff sitting in your closet for 10 20 bucks a pop and you just you you spend an hour one night listing it all on eBay and just get rid of it and all right one more question before we start wrapping everything up um were there any YouTube channels or other influencers that motivated you guys to travel first of all I will say that like I had like a deep burning passion to travel but I wasn't traveling really much besides for work I was traveling for work when I met Andy when I had like the idea to to get a van and live in it and stuff I remember typing in YouTube I had well I originally bought this really crappy like $2,000 uh Ford E150 that was like rusted out it was just like a total junker and I remember I bought it and I did like what I call like the Walmart special where I put like a mattress in the back and like a cooler and like you know a sleeping bag and just I was just like well this is I'm going to live in this my hack at the time was where we live it gets to zero degrees in the winter so it was like you freeze to death so I would pull my van down I I worked in this office building and I and I rented a a heated underground garage spot for like 40 bucks a month and so I would pull my little low top camper band down into that spot and it would keep me like pretty warm you know during the winter as he was running a successful business no one really inspired me to do it I just kind of did it myself and then and then I was like you know this kind of works I'm gonna buy I'm gonna like build this thing out and so I like remember typing in YouTube like how to build a camper van you know and this was this 2016 so I like typed in like how to build a camper van so then I went down that rabbit hole of like travel influence was like Aon and backck and nomadic movement Jordan and Kaye and well car and Nate but they weren't doing that yet yeah Karen Nate was like later in the game but yeah I found all these van life people that were building out their Vans and stuff and I was like well this is like a movement actually ended up buying a totally built out camper van out in Oregon and I flew out there sight unseen bought the camper van and drove back to Ohio cuz I didn't had the time to build this thing it died on me in the middle of the mountains and he decided you needed a girlfriend yeah but yeah they're they're yeah Jordan and Kayley from nomadic movement aing and back sure yeah we've definitely heard of most of those channels and we'll put a link below in the show notes for all those channels you mentioned there and while my audience is checking those channels out where can I found out more about you guys uh we're primarily on YouTube We also are on Instagram yeah Andy and Rachel Andy and Rachel excellent all right guys Andy and Rachel thank you so much for coming on you guys are a proof that you don't need a camper you don't need a trailer you don't need a van to travel fulltime and you can do it with kids and you can travel and meet all your travel goals and dreams so guys thank you for sharing your inspiring story and um looking forward to meeting up with you at some point soon yeah thank you I appreciate it thanks guys