Episode 2: How to Afford to Travel an Interview with Danielle Desir

Acquania Escarne 0:02

You are listening to The Purpose of Money Podcast, a podcast where we talk about building generational wealth $1 at a time. I'm your host Acquania Escarne.

Hey guys, I'm so glad to have our special guest today, Danielle Desir. Danielle is an author, speaker, podcaster, and the founder of The Thought Card-an award winning affordable travel finance blog and podcast, empowering people to make informed financial decisions, travel more, pay off debt, and build wealth. Danielle paid off $63,000 of student loan debt in four years and purchase her first home at the age of 27. She has traveled to 27 countries and four continents and strongly believes in not letting your financial responsibilities hold you back from pursuing your dreams. Welcome, Danielle. How are you doing today?

Danielle Desir 0:56

Thank you Acquania. Super excited to be here. Very good today.

Acquania Escarne 1:01

I just have to be honest with people. Danielle is the reason why I'm launching a podcast in 2020. She's one of the first people I talked to about it. She really inspired me. And what I didn't state in her bio is she is the founder of the WOC-Women of Color Podcasters Group on Facebook, right?

Danielle Desir 1:22

Yes, that is true and accurate.

Acquania Escarne 1:24

Yes, yes. So I want to make sure people understand the impact that you have on not only people of color, encouraging them to travel, to save, to boost their finances, but also to pursue their dreams like launching podcasts. So thank you so much for everything you're doing in that space. So today, we're going to talk about a lot of the interesting things you've been up to, which is quite a bit. You're really busy. One of the first things I want to kind of launch into is The Thought Card. And what is it? What inspired you to create this platform?

Danielle Desir 1:58

Sure. So I started my blog almost five years ago. And originally, it was a lifestyle blog where I was just sharing my thoughts and general things going on in my life. A lot of the times when I was traveling, I had a couple of trips to Europe, when I first first started traveling solo, I would write about that. But I found in my writing, and just in general, I was trying to figure out how to pay off my student loan debt. And there wasn't really a lot of people at the time in my immediate circle who were talking about their money situations and their money stories. And I said, "You know what, I'm learning how to pay off my debt quickly. I have these goals. So let me just start to share not only my travel adventures, but also my student loan journey, and how I was paying it all off." So I wrote this article about like five tips for paying off your student loans quickly and it kind of like took off with my audience, and they were super interested in student loans. So I realized, you know, while writing more about travel and money that you know, at the end of the day, you need money to travel. And if you have a lot of debt, or you have a lot of bills holding you back from the things that you want to pursue, you're not going to be able to have the financial freedom to actually devote to the things that you want to enjoy in life. So I eventually started to combine travel money together. And right now, five years later, it really just shares the journey of the things that I have done financially and my adventures as well. So it has followed me as I paid off my student loan debt. It's following me now as a homeowner, and as I build wealth, and of course, all of my crazy adventures around the world.

Acquania Escarne 3:45

So speaking of adventure, I heard from a little birdie, i.e. your social media platforms, that you just went to China. Tell us what that's like. I mean, for real, the good and the bad. You are are traveling to a place on the other side of the world. And it's probably culturally different in some aspects. So tell me more about that. And what was it like?

Danielle Desir 4:11

Yes. So I had a lot of reservations when I was planning this trip to China. So in 2018, I believe very close to Black Friday, or maybe on Black Friday, or after, I found this deal to go to China for $300. And that included flights, 10 day accommodation, breakfast, optional tours that you had to pay for. And I was like, "Is this is a real?" Like, I'm obsessed with cheap flights, and I am known as a financially savvy traveler, so I know how to stretch $1 but this sounded like way too good to be true.

Acquania Escarne 4:47

I know, that's crazy.

Danielle Desir 4:50

I know I did some research, and I called up the company which is called UTOvacations. And I said, "Hey, why is this $300 like, it literally cost me more money to travel. From New York City to LA than to go to China on this venture." And they said, "You know what, you know, the Chinese government is subsidizing this trip. And they're really looking for more people to come and visit the country. So this is why it's that there's no rock bottom low price." I was like, "okay, checkmarks I'm Yep." And it was actually a surprise with my boyfriend. So it was a Christmas gift for my boyfriend. And when I, you know, told them, we're going to China, he wasn't enthusiastic, because we hear a lot of negative things about people who have visited China. For whatever reason, you know, people would say that they would look at you, a lot of people would look at you or stare at you. If you're a person of color, they would touch your hair. And like you said, the cultural differences are so vast that you know, I mean, we literally talked to dozens of people and we didn't hear that many good things. But there were a couple of people who I talked to who said that China was actually one of their favorite places. So I kept my you know, an open mind as I was planning out this trip. And I just got back from spending 10 epic days. I visited five different cities Beijing, Shanghai, Wuxi, Guangzhou. I mean, these are place I didn't even know existed. And it was absolutely beautiful. It was stunning. The people were so friendly. The food is delicious. There's so much history, so much culture, so many things to learn. There are language barriers, the language barrier is a serious issue. Because what's happening is that in China, you don't have access to Western social media. So there's no Facebook access, no Instagram, no Twitter, no Reddit, no Google, no Gmail. So their English exposure is very limited. So you will have difficulties, you know, communicating with locals, but guess what? Sign language, number one helps a lot. And a lot of people have this really useful app on their phone, which they can speak into and then it will translate it into English for you. So it was actually easier than I thought to communicate with a lot of locals. But it's literally- China is literally my on my top my top three list right now. So I'm really, really inspired. I'm even trying to learn Mandarin right now, which is so hard.

Acquania Escarne 7:19

Yeah, it is, but go for it. I mean, I always tell people learn a language because you want to, not because of the residual benefits, you think you're gonna gain. So if you're out to actually enjoy a culture more and really learn more about the people, why not learn the language? You might end up in China again, maybe in a different capacity. So I think that's pretty awesome. And you're changing the, the information out there and the dialogue on the conversation, right? You had a positive experience and you're sharing that with people, so I think that's awesome. And maybe more people will make it there.

Danielle Desir 7:53

Exactly, exactly.

Acquania Escarne 7:55

But it does sound like it was busy. 10 days in five cities. You must have been hopping!

Danielle Desir 8:00

Yes, I call it luxurious backpacking, they really wanted you to see the see the country. So we were moving every couple of days. So I always say there's a big difference between a trip versus a vacation. And this was a trip. This was very active. I was not lounging around, you know, at the Great Wall of China. I was moving. I was moving every couple of days, but that was part of the adventure.

Acquania Escarne 8:26

Got it. And so vacation is cocktails and beach, at least in my opinion. It might have no agenda, you just lounge and do what you want on that day. Okay.

Danielle Desir 8:36

Exactly, exactly.

Acquania Escarne 8:37

So let's transition a little bit to finances and travel because like you said, travel takes money. Why do you feel that the two are so correlated, and therefore you have created not one but several platforms to kind of promote this, your podcasts and your blog?

Danielle Desir 8:56

Right. I think it's important to realize that although a lot of people talk about travel hacking, and finding ways for you to reduce travel expenses, at the end of the day for you to get from point A to point B, you will need money. You need the finances to do so. Now, I'm not going to say that travel is, has to be expensive, but you will have expenses. And it's really important for people to carve out the funds in their life and in their budget to be able to do those things. Even if you're travel hacking, even if you're using credit card points and miles and redeem them for free stays and things like that, at the end of day, you still need to pay for food, you still need to pay for, you know, attraction and things like that. So I think it's really important to have those funds set aside. And also not coming home to a bunch of bills because not only when did you overcharge while you are traveling, but also you didn't take care of your finances when you're coming back home. So I like to think of it as a holistic approach and travel and money are all tied together. When I had student loan debt, it was a lot harder to travel because I had to pay my student loan bill. But without that bill, I can now funnel that money into other things like traveling or building wealth. So I think it's very, very important. And people who try to pretend like travel doesn't cost money is you know, that's just a lie.

Acquania Escarne 10:20

Right? So let's keep it real. But it's good that you're kind of educating people on different ways. So one-you just talked about taking a one bill once it's paid off, and reallocating that money to something that you value, which is travel in your case and building wealth. And then I know you and I in the past have talked about vacation funds and how you can create a fun where you save every paycheck money towards your next vacation. And you know, it doesn't have to be a lot. For some people, their budget will allow $25 bucks a paycheck. For other people it might be $200 or more. But the point is, you're consistently saving for your next adventure. So, I want to kind of move into what you've been working on, because I know now you have created another stream of income for yourself. And this time it's in the form of book royalties. So let's talk about that. How many books do you have out there? And what are they about? You know, because I really think this is going to help other people maybe think about how they can put their dreams to paper or tell their stories.

Danielle Desir 11:27

Yes. So it has been my dream for a really long time to become an author. And my backstory, even before that dream, I'm more of an analytical person. So my thought was like, "I'm not really, in the past, I'm not really a writer." I'm more like, I come from an accountant family. So we're numbers driven. And that was my that was my basis. But after starting my blog, and writing daily, it's becoming a habit and a practice in my life. Writing has become something that I am super attached too, and it's what I do in my free time and what I also do to monetize and make money. Now, with that being said, after writing blogs for five years, I had a compilation. So many blog posts on a particular topic. So I said to myself, "You know, what, what is, what is the one destination that I know well enough that I can write a guide and write a travel guide?" And what's interesting is that there aren't that many travel guides written by people of color. So it's important that if you want to do something, like just go forth and do it, and you don't have to necessarily, you know, get published by a publishing house. So you can also do self publishing via Amazon. So that's kind of like the encouragement piece. So after thinking about the destinations that I knew really, really well it came down to Bermuda or Iceland, and these are my favorite travel destinations. I've traveled to Iceland three times and Bermuda twice. But at the end of the day, I figured you know what? Let me do Iceland because I know so much more about it. I've been there more times. So let me just start writing it, start writing that down. So it took me two months to write the book. And it's called Iceland: Nature, Nurture, and Adventure. And it's really about helping adventurous travelers to plan an affordable and culturally enriching trip. So not only how do you, you know, get to enjoy Iceland but also learning about Icelandic culture to give you that perspective when visit so it gives you more context. And that is the first book and the only book I have out right now.

Acquania Escarne 13:38

Hey, guys, I hope you're enjoying the episode. I just wanted to take a break to share with you one quick tip on how I am creating more free time in my life today. I am a busy mom, an entrepreneur and a 9-5 employee. And I have to be honest, I used to use trips to the grocery store as an opportunity to relax and go on every aisle and take my time and sort of have "Mommy Me Time." But since I've taken on more responsibility and extracurricular activities, I just don't have the time to go grocery shopping anymore. So I've embraced Instacart, which has helped me save hours of my life and get the grocery shopping done without me having to step into a store. Instacart delivers groceries from your nearby grocery stores right to your home, and saves you hours on shopping. You literally can do everything online or even from your mobile phone. And most of the time, they can deliver the groceries within an hour. So you get the food that you need to save time and you create more freedom for you to do other things, which is what I love. Check out Instacart for yourself. I have a code that allows you to earn $10 off and a free grocery delivery on your first purchase. My code is AESCARNE14C or check out the show notes where I have a special link. Now I include the code there too, just for you. Hope you try it out and let me know what you think.

Danielle Desir 15:26

But I am working on another book, and actually many more in the background. But my second book is going to be about affording travel and it's called Affording Travel. And it shares the strategies for saving for a lifestyle where you can travel as much as you want.

Acquania Escarne 15:44

I love it. And then do you have approximate time when we can see this book?

Danielle Desir 15:49

Yeah, yeah, so it will be coming out in April. And I'm very, very excited because again, this book is more on brand because I talk a lot about how to afford travel on my website a little bit. It's interesting because I talk a lot about it, but this book really puts step by step by step, how to take your dream of travel and to actualize actionize it and make it a reality. So I'm really excited about that. And creating a new income source is a great addition as well.

Acquania Escarne 16:20

Love it. So I'm excited. I think maybe we could regroup in April or at least do some cross promotion so that we're promoting your book and maybe you my podcast to get more people to know about it because I think it's gonna be awesome. I saw the sneak peek of the cover, I voted for my fav, so I cannot wait to see your travel book come out in 2020, April 2020. So the other thing that I think is really awesome and this goes back to the finance side is, At 27, you purchased your home. You became a homeowner. And I'm really big on home ownership, when the time is right. I think it's a great way for families to build stability and wealth, but only if you're ready to take on homeownership responsibilities. But I learned recently that you are two years ahead of your mortgage being paid off. I wanted to know how did you get ahead? And why did you make the decision to aggressively attack your mortgage?

Danielle Desir 17:21

Yes, so I am on the path to FIRE which stands for Financial Independence Retire Early. I am what's considered slow FIRE. So I'm really taking my time on this journey. But with my path to Financial Independence, it's really for me thinking about what do I want my life to look like? Where I don't necessarily have to depend on a paycheck and not necessarily have a bunch of bills weigh me down? My biggest monthly expenses is my mortgage. So for me, that made the most sense to eliminate that as much as possible because again, if I can reduce this bill, I can allocate those funds elsewhere or not even have to, you know, work as hard to cover that bill, right? So I can retire early if I want to, or I can maybe get a lower paying job that I'm more passionate about, like there's just a lot more that you can do when you have less debt. So it made sense for me to tackle my, my mortgage, but at the same time, I'm from the philosophy of tackling multiple financial goals. So I'm not going to put all of my eggs into this pay off my mortgage basket, because I want to do other things with my finances as well. And I remember on the podcast actually Acquania you were on my show. And you talked about that. You're like, "If you're not really 100% committed to paying this off as soon as possible, there are different strategies that you can do and you can save money on the side for it. And at the end of the year, you can decide how much you want to pay or not pay toward this debt." So I've been taking a slow approach to this process, but at the end of the day, it's been even though it's considered slow, I've been able to get so much more ahead of my mortgage payments. So the what I recommend to do is, it depends on how your mortgage payments are set up. Unfortunately, I cannot make extra payments towards my mortgage because my mortgage company caps me off. So what so what I have to do is I have to build in the extra payments that I want to make into my monthly payment. So to do that, I figure out how much I want to pay extra a year. And based off that number, let's say it's $5,000 for the year, I divide that by 12, $5000 divided by 12. And I add that amount to make the extra payments towards my mortgage. But making extra payments towards your mortgage is a really great way to accelerate your payment and it's something that's highly recommended. If you can take advantage of making frequent payments like two to three payments every paycheck, that's great. Unfortunately, I can't, so I found different ways to do that.

Another thing that I've been using to help me track my progress is Dave Ramsey's mortgage calculator. So if you're able to put in your your principal amount and how much you pay, and what your expected payments will look like, it will show you what your trajectory is. And I love going on that website and using their calculator to figure out okay, if I make $1,000 payment next month, what will it look like? And how much will it decrease my mortgage? Will it decrease by a month, two months, you know, so, so not only am I making extra payments, but I'm also using mortgage calculators to help me look out into the future. And that really will help me to figure out what my payoff date is. So because I'm slow FIRE, I don't actually have any date that I want to pay off my mortgage yet. I'm just taking my time with it. But I do see the fruits of my labor by making the extra payments every single month. And some months, it's not a lot someone's it's $100. Sometimes it's more than $100. But that, again that compounding has really helped to put me in this position. It's so interesting because I had I had called a mortgage company to consider refinancing my mortgage. And they were asking me like, "What are my current stats?" And the mortgage lender was so surprised that in like less than three years, I've been able to do so much. So don't knock the small and you know, small but mighty payments that you can make.

Acquania Escarne 21:42

I love it small but mighty is good. And I think I want to kind of highlight just for our listeners. one really important thing you mentioned in the beginning, which is not every mortgage company is going to allow you to accelerate your mortgage payments the same way. And so it's really important that you take time to contact your lender and figure out what your options are. Because in your case, like you said, you couldn't just make extra payments at the end of the year or whatever. You needed to be making them monthly when you made your regular payment. I in my case, my husband and I are on a mortgage acceleration plan, so we pay our mortgage bi weekly. So every two weeks, they take half of the mortgage out. And for those, here's the quick math, that equals about 26 pay periods a year, we're contributing half of our mortgage. So at the end of the year, that's actually 13 payments a year instead of 12. So we're paying an extra mortgage payment, but that 13th payment is all principal and it's applied to the loan directly. So we're decreasing the interest we pay over time. We're also paying down our mortgage faster, but slowly, so it might take a couple of years off our mortgage as well, but it doesn't require us to have thousands of dollars, that we're just throwing onto it at one time. We don't feel the difference because I get paid bi weekly, and I'm paying for the mortgage with some of my income. So to me, it's a regular, consistent bill. Whereas some people who are only making one payment a month are only doing 12 payments a year. So make sure you know what your options are. Because some companies don't allow you to do bi weekly payments, they might hold that payment until you have made the second one. So it ends up still only being 12 a year. So just make sure to ask questions before you start putting extra money on your mortgage and you're not sure if it's being applied to your principal, or if it's being applied to advancing your next payment, which is important because it determines the end result.

Danielle Desir 23:44

Exactly. I want a couple couple that with the fact that even though for me, I can't make bi weekly payments, the mortgage money still gets cut from my paycheck bi weekly. So I still put half of my mortgage from pretty much I take half of my mortgage and save it each pay period. So at the end of the month, I have the full mortgage amount and I make that payment. So even though I'm not making a payment to the mortgage lender every two weeks, I'm still putting it aside every pay period so that for me, it just helps me to save and just makes things so much faster and easier for me so...

Acquania Escarne 24:23

Awesome. So you got it guys, you got some budgeting tips, you got some travel tips, you have some books that you need to read. One is out now the Travel Guide on Iceland you can get on Amazon and the book coming out in April. We'll definitely post your website so folks can find it, when it does come out. And of course subscribe to Danielle's List and you'll get all her updates and regular advice. So let's end on the what's up next note! I'm excited. I've loved everything I've heard so far. I want to know what are your upcoming financial goals and what are you trying to do?

Danielle Desir 25:01

Yeah, so definitely accelerating my mortgage payments is one of my big financial goals for the year. And my goal is $10,000 to pay off my mortgage for 2020. And I'm super excited about that I love quantifying my goals. So it's not enough to say I'm going to pay it off early, but how am I going to get there this year? And I have also some improvements I want to make to the home. So even though I bought the home a couple years ago, I still want to continue building it up and I would love to, you know, save for that. So that's one of my other financial goals that I'm working on, as well as traveling more. And in terms of projects, for my brand, I would love to launch a YouTube channel so that is coming up soon. So sharing more about my travel adventures as well as tips for you know, managing your personal finances and continuing to grow the platform.

Acquania Escarne 26:01

Love it. So tell my listeners, where can we find you on social media?

Danielle Desir 26:06

Yes, you can find me over @TheThoughtCard on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. If you are enjoying reading about blogs and things like that, you can head over to thoughtcard.com. I also have a podcast called The Thought Card where we talk about all things, travel and money. You could read my Iceland Travel Guide, which you can find on Amazon or take my budgeting course if you need one on one help with budgeting and managing your finances.

Acquania Escarne 26:37

Awesome. Thank you so much. And I really, really appreciate you being one of my first guests on my podcast, The Purpose of Money. Thank you so much, and I look forward to catching up with you soon.

Danielle Desir 26:48

Thanks Acquania!

Acquania Escarne 26:51

Thank you for listening to Episode Two of The Purpose of Money Podcast. I hope you enjoy that interview with Danielle Desir. We dropped a lot of gems about affording travel, but we also talked about home ownership, pairing your finances so you can travel and so much more. If there's anything you missed or you want to learn more about, check out my show notes at www.thePurposeofMoney.com/Episode Two. I'll make sure to include links to Danielle's books so you can preorder, Affording Travel on amazon.com. Until next time, please make sure to write a review on Apple Podcasts or on my website, so that more people know about the podcast and get this wonderful information. Sharing is caring so make sure to share.

Thank you for listening to The Purpose of Money Podcast. For more resources and information, check out my website thePurposeofMoney.com. And while you're there, please sign up for our newsletter, so you have the latest information on new episodes and blog posts. Until next time, keep building generational wealth $1 at a time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai