You can do luxury travel for free! And Julia Menez is on The Purpose of Money Podcast to explain how.

Julia Menez is a points strategy coach, speaker, and host of the Geobreeze Travel Podcast.

After traveling to more than 30 countries before age 30 and saving thousands of dollars each year with points and miles, Julia mastered the art of free luxury travel.

Today, Julia shares strategies from top award travelers on her podcast and creates Instagram videos about credit card benefits such as trip protection and luxury travel opportunities.

Julia’s podcast features diverse guests with traditionally underrepresented experiences in larger points and miles blogs and media. Her episodes often highlight women, first-generation travelers, and people of color.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • What inspired Julia Menez to start Geobreeze Travel
  • How to leverage credit cards to get free luxury travel
  • 3 Tips every beginner credit card strategist needs
  • Tips on when to use cash vs. credit card points
  • Who should NOT use these credit card strategies

And so much more!

Acquania Escarne 0:00

Hey everybody. Welcome back to The Purpose of Money Podcast, today I'm super excited. We are joined by special guests Julia, who is a travel queen. She's going to tell us today how we can leverage credit card points and rewards to do Lux-free travel. We are super excited to have the opportunity to ask these questions because so many people have always been asking me how can I travel as much as you.

You are listening to The Purpose of Money Podcast, a podcast where we talk about ways to build wealth and create more freedom in your life today. I am your host, Acquania Escarne.

Hey, guys, I just wanted to tell you about a free real estate challenge that I'm hosting. It's called the purpose of money leave a legacy real estate edition. And I want you to learn different ways to invest in real estate. This week, we're talking about how to invest in hotels, short term rentals, buying your own dream home or rentals to build a real estate portfolio and more, I encourage you to join us each night and experts will talk about their expertise in real estate investing. To sign up, please check out bit.ly/pomrechallenge. If you want to join us for free you can every night from 7pm Eastern Standard Time to 8:30pm. And if you want to get access to the replays, they will be available for sale for $47. Hope you can join the challenge just visit bit.ly/pomrechallenge.

So now we're really going to dive into this. Our guest today is the Queen and creator of Geobreeze Travel. I'm super excited because I have been able to be on her podcast by the same name Geobreeze Travel, and now she gets to be on mine. So as we have into this episode, I want you to think of some questions that you can ask live and make sure that you are staying to the end so you can ask them and get your answers. Okay, so without further ado, I'd love to invite the guests to the stage. Hi, Julia.

Julia Menez 2:23

Hey, Acquania. I'm excited to be here.

Acquania Escarne 2:25

Yes, I'm excited to have you and I can't wait to talk about this topic. It's been a popular one amongst my listeners, as well as my clients. They've also been asking me, you know, I travel a lot. And I never actually told people, I travel a lot for free. So it's really cool to have someone who is a credit card strategist, and coach who helps people do this all the time. But first, I want to get started by telling our guest a little bit more about you. So please, Julia, introduce yourself and tell us more about geo breeze travel.

Julia Menez 3:01

Hey, everybody, I'm Julia. I'm the host of the geo breeze travel podcast. And I mostly hang out on Instagram, but the handle at geobreeze travel. And really I just love hearing about the different ways that people use points and miles and loyalty programs to travel for free, whether it's getting free hotel rooms, free flights, economy flights, or business class or first class flights. So I like just getting to chat with all sorts of people from different backgrounds, different walks of life, and aggregate all of those different strategies into the Geobreeze Travel Podcast.

Acquania Escarne 3:35

I love it. I really want to talk about how you even started this platform and what really propelled you to explore on different ways to leverage credit cards specifically. But before we hop into that, I want to take it back a little bit because I'm always curious to know how someone formulates their money habits. And so I asked them this question. What was money like for you when you were growing up?

Julia Menez 4:02

So I grew up in a first generation Filipino household in Missouri, which is now where people expect that I grew up, but I grew up smack dab in the middle of the United States. And my parents immigrated from the Philippines, my siblings and I were born in the US. And I think it was Hey Verna that had a phrase called the Filipino frugal flex, which I think is just such an accurate description of what money is like and a lot of first generation Filipino households where on one hand, you are being very frugal, and you're always taught save, save, save everything, prepare for the worst in the future. But on the other hand, your family is the one that made it out and you're the ones who are lucky enough to be in America and you need to show everybody that destiny chose correctly for you guys being the ones who got to go to the US. So what that looks like is it can be really confusing because on one hand, you're told we can't afford movie tickets. We can't afford extra snacks at the grocery store, if kids are asking, oh, can I get these cookies or something? But on the other hand, you're trying to look fancy with some designer clothes, always looking nice, always being very generous with gifts to other people. So it can, it can be a little bit confusing with the money habits growing up. But I'm glad that these days we talk about money so much more openly than we did 20 years ago.

Acquania Escarne 5:27

I love that. What are your parents think about your social media platform? Do they even get it?

Julia Menez 5:33

Oh, they're confused. So before all of this, I was an actuary, which is confusing enough for them to try to tell their friends what I do for a living. And now they're like, well, she was an actuary, she took all these math exams to predict when people were gonna get sick and die. But now she just makes money on Instagram. And we don't know how to explain that either. So they're, they're confused. My in laws are confused. Everybody is confused on how this makes money.

Acquania Escarne 6:08

That's so interesting. So for those who are just joining or don't know, actuaries are really important, especially in like the life insurance space and the health research and other statistics. And so you did a lot of math, like you said, and determined a lot of statistics on when people might die or get sick. And that was your career. How long did you do that?

Julia Menez 6:32

I did that for about nine years. And then I moved from corporate to a startup. And then about five months after I joined that startup, they ran out of money. So we can talk about that a little bit later. But that's what kind of propelled me to start doing this full time. And it actually pays better than actuarial science, weirdly enough, yeah.

Acquania Escarne 6:49

Weirdly enough, that's interesting. And that is sometimes the life of a startup, you go for the passion and excitement and they don't always make it. So that kind of answers one of the questions I was gonna ask you, which is like, what are you doing when you're not giving travel tips on social media? And it seems like you're traveling? Is that your other past time? Yes.

Julia Menez 7:11

Um, lately, we've been getting set up in Las Vegas and just doing all the paperwork that's involved with moving. So that's less fun, putting together Ikea furniture, trying to get into a routine with just meal prepping, and everything there because I really feel like I live two lives sometimes. One is, everything's different. Every day you're traveling, you're going to new places, and the other one just wants a routine, where you have your meals prepped for the week, you try to get onto a sleep schedule, you try to get onto a workout schedule. And as many of us entrepreneurs, now it can be a little bit of a hassle trying to balance both of those worlds.

Acquania Escarne 7:48

Absolutely. I totally can agree with that. But I think routines help build discipline and great people. So I do want to ask, you know, where the heck did you get the fascination to go very deep into credit cards and credit card reward programs? What was your aha moment that I could leverage this for travel? And I could teach other people to do it too.

Julia Menez 8:10

Yeah, so the way I personally just got into this about five years ago, I really got into personal finance blogs. My husband shared some with me not knowing how deep down the rabbit hole I was gonna go with reading Mister Money Mustache and the afford anything blog back when it was blog before it was a podcast. And a lot of them just talked about how they could travel for free using credit card points, they would open up these credit cards and then travel for free. And I thought to myself, that sounds like a scam. That definitely sounds like a scam. But as I just heard about it more and more, my husband and I talked it over and said well, let's let's try it out. Let's see if we can get this to work for us. So we opened up a couple of cards, met the sign of bonus, got the signup bonus points. And then our first redemption was actually accidental. We were going to Morocco everything was already covered by a tour guide, hotel excursions transportations, but then he had to cancel on us about 20 hours before we got to Morocco. So I was in a panic because we had nowhere to stay. We were about to land there. We had never been there and we didn't know where to go. So I called American Express and said, Hey, I have points do I get to travel for free now? And I'm like reading a script off of a blog. I sound ridiculous. When I'm reading that I said yeah, you have enough points for three free nights at the Sheraton Casa Blanca. So I said great. We'll do that. We'll figure out the rest of it from there. And when we got there, like there's no way this is gonna work, but it did and we had three free nights we even got upgraded because we had status with that card. We had free breakfast free cocktail hour. So from there I was really hooked and tried to figure out Okay, how can I get even more points pretty quickly because I just want to do this over and over again. And at some point, I realized that business cards will really, really propel you. If you want to get deeper into points, miles. Little did I know people were getting approved for business cards just by selling stuff on eBay, Uber driving, Instacart, delivery, things like that. I thought you had to make a full on business. So I opened a travel agency, Geobreeze Travel actually started as a traditional travel agency. And I got some clients, and I hated it. It was, I did not like it. And so in the pandemic happened, I use that as an excuse to just say, Oh, nobody needs travel agents. So I kind of just closed it down at that point. But also with the pandemic, and with everybody just sitting at home all the time. I was just so lonely. I didn't have anyone to talk to you. I just wanted to talk about points and miles. My family thought I was crazy. My nan points, friends thought I was crazy. And everybody was just like, you need to not talk about this all the freaking time. And so I was like, Well, surely there's somebody else in the world who would want to talk to me about this. So I found some people on Instagram, and said, Hey, do you want to chat about points and Miles jump on a video call? And they said, No. Weirdo. So then I was like, Well, what if I record our conversation and release it to thousands of people on the internet? And they said, oh, like a podcast? And they said, Yeah, like a podcast. And that's how the god travel podcast was born was I just wanted to talk to other people about points and miles. There were some people where I just wanted to ask, how are you doing this? Tell me your secrets. But I You can't just slide into someone's DM since they told me your secrets. You have to record that conversation and share the secrets with thousands of people. So that's how the Geobreeze Travel Podcast was born.

Acquania Escarne 11:50

Julia, you're hilarious. And the funny thing is, like, I've known you through different groups connections, I met you finally in person at FinCon, but I just never realized how like, coy your humor is and you're just like talking to you like, Oh, and by the way. I love it. I absolutely love it. So that is really interesting. I didn't even realize that's when you kind of took off. When did you hop on the real bandwagon? Because your reels on Instagram are absolutely amazing. And you sometimes you play two roles, sometimes you just give tips straightforward. You have really good engaging content. What made you do that? Was that also a part of that I'm at home bored and I want to talk to people about points?

Julia Menez 12:33

Yeah, at some point, I realized my static posts weren't performing as well as they could be just because of how the algorithm was going and with TikTok taking off, everybody was like, oh, everything's gonna be short form video now between the YouTube shorts and the Instagram and the TikTok and everything else. So I said, Okay, I should probably learn how to speak on video and give tips that way instead of just writing everything out. And then just getting inspiration from lots of other people's styles. Whether it's, I used to do this thing where I would take random objects and use as a microphone, like, I would just talk into my sunglasses or talking to my pen or something, or the two different characters talking to each other. I have these funny glasses that I wear sometimes on my different reels. But really just trying to find tips that resonate with people. Apparently, my audience really, really likes target deal more than travel. Anytime I post a target deal that that reel goes off. And all the travel ones are hit and miss, which is kind of interesting.

Acquania Escarne 13:37

That is interesting. So let's get into some tips for those beginners who are here with us tonight. What are your tips for someone who's getting started, and they want to use your strategy, but they have no idea where to begin?

Julia Menez 13:51

So there are a few prerequisites before you jump into a word travel as I teach it, which is to leverage the different loyalty programs of airlines, hotels and credit card companies. So before you apply for a credit card that can get you these rewards, your credit score should probably be about 720 at least. And you need to be in a place where you are paying off your credit card bills in full every month or else you have to pay late fees, you have to pay interest charges. And the interest charges on these cards are really, really high, they're well over 20% some of the highest in the market. And that is how they can afford to give out such luxurious travel experiences is they're kind of banking on people not paying their bill in full. So to get around that you need to make sure that you can pay your bill in full. Those are the two prerequisites. And then I would work backwards. So instead of trying to study all 30 different cards and like which combination is the best for you, that's just a lot and then you try to figure out what you can do with those cards. It can be really overwhelming. So instead, pick where you want to go and the trip that you want to take and then work backwards. See who flies there. What hotels are there that you could use on points lead that determine how many points you actually need, what kind of points you need, and then figure out what kind of cards can get you those kinds of points. So working backwards is gonna save you a lot of time, the most popular starter card is the Chase Sapphire preferred. And another really important tip for beginners is please never just apply directly through Google, always find a friend who has this card already and use the referral links. If you've none of your friends are into the point space, any blogger or any creator on Instagram is probably going to have affiliate links, I have affiliate links. So you can just go to your favorite points, create our page and support them by using their links, but never apply directly through Google.

Acquania Escarne 15:42

I love that tip. And I would never have even thought about that, even though I too have an affiliate link for some cards, and I share it. I just never really thought to remind people, Hey, you can ask me for a link. So that's really, really good. And I love what you said about making sure that you're in a financial position where you are actually able to pay off your bills in full not just because the interest rates are really high. But also because it's not that rewarding to pay interest on what you think is your free vacation, right? Because those points when you're paying interest are actually costing you more than you think. So I definitely agree that you should be in a position where you're not accumulating debt, paying interest and then getting excited about the points. That's not necessarily how it really works in your favor. So I really love that. And I think you also kind of indirectly answered my next question, which was who should not do this. So anyone who isn't at the credit score that you recommend, or in a position to financially pay these things off? I personally, if it comes between choosing a card with a rewards program, or choosing a lower interest rate, I sometimes say choose the lower interest rate, especially if you're not in a position to pay off your cards in full. Do you also agree with that? Or do you have a different strategy you take?

Julia Menez 17:07

I just, I've rarely ever pay attention to the interest rates, because if I'm not in a position to pay for all of this, I would honestly just maybe stick to debit cards until you can put together a conscious spending plan. Because there are some debit cards that can earn you some okay bonuses, they're not going to be great. Or if you want us to do something like the discover it secure card, you could do that. Or if there's something that has zero balance, if you have a business venture or something and you're sure it's going to pay off in the next 12 months, you can go that route too. But I personally, do not pay too much attention to APR, because I'm trying to avoid that at all costs.

Acquania Escarne 17:46

That's fair. And I think that's kind of, you know, just cosigning on what you said as far as you should be paying it off in full. So the interest rate doesn't matter, because you're not going to pay interest. So that makes sense to me. I wanted to ask you questions about financial freedom and independence, because, you know, in our money space where we're money nerds, and there are a lot of other people like us, there's a lot of chatter and aspirations to have financial freedom. And I've seen on your posts that you and your husband are fairly comfortable. And I think I heard one time. So this is a rumor that I'm hoping you could tell me if it's true, that you donate proceeds from your social media platforms to charities, is that still true for you? And if so, why did you make that decision?

Julia Menez 18:36

Yeah, so when I was working as an actuary, and this was my side gig, I was donating 100% of profits. And now that it's my full time I do about 20% of revenue, which comes out to about the same amount per month and the charity will just depend on which one is voted on by my Patreon each month. And I started that just because all of this was just supposed to be a fun hobby for me, I think points and miles always starts off supposed to be a fun hobby for people. And then they get really, really competitive or in the weeds where they're like, am I getting enough value out of my points? Oh my god, I only saved $500 instead of $2,000. I must be losing at this game, where you're still saving $500 That's still such a good travel win. And people will just get very, very obsessed with the numbers. And as somebody who's worked in numbers, my whole adult career. It's important to take a step back and look at some other lenses, like how many people can you help with through this hobby who maybe wouldn't be able to afford that vacation or wouldn't be able to get on a plane to see their mom to Honduras or something like that. But then travel hacking makes it possible. Same with people when they get into the entrepreneur space and then it all just becomes about this flex contest of did you make 200 a month 2000 A month? 20,000 a month? 200,000 a month, millions per month, and to what end like. Nobody needs $2 million per month to live a comfortable life. And I think a lot of that can go towards people who can just the marginal utility of a lot of the money coming from Geobreeze can really help some other people as well. People who don't have, yeah, people who don't have any access to even think about traveling for free with credit cards to even be in a position to consider this is such an amazing privilege. So for everybody who isn't there yet, I hope that the charitable contributions will help them as well with whatever they do need in life.

Acquania Escarne 20:42

I love that. And I love the fact that you give your audience some buy in and allow them to choose the charity. So they feel like they're a part of that decision and that effort to help other people. So that's really, really dope. So I want to know, like you said, you don't care about interest rates. But do you ever care about how many cards you've applied to in a given amount of time? Or how many credit cards do you have? Is there a limit or a max? You know, what, what is your perspective on that?

Julia Menez 21:15

So I've got about 20 different cards, they're all ironically stored in this binder that I have right in front of me. You don't need 20 cards, a lot of different blogs will try to convince you that you do because that's how we make money. But you've really don't need 20 cards, unless you're doing this as a full time job and trying to do reviews of all of them and trying to juggle all of the benefits so that you can give people information about what cards are worthwhile and which ones aren't. Most people can get away with probably three or four, and be fully covered there unless you want to dive really deep. But in your first year, if you get two or three cards, you're you're doing fine. That's probably enough for a free ticket or to to Europe. And as far as Yeah, how many I'm juggling, and how many is too much. I would say a lot of the cards come with different benefits. And a lot of the cards will come with annual fees, if you're paying annual fees, and your benefits are expiring, because it's just too much to stay organized with all of these cards where you're like, oh my god, I paid $95 for this card, because it came with a free hotel night, but I completely forgot to even redeem the free hotel night, then you're probably a little bit you're probably stretching yourself too thin at that point.

Acquania Escarne 22:32

Hmm, that's, that's fair, I have a Marriott card, it comes with a free night. And I use it because I don't want to lose it. But I could see how I always tell people, if you're gonna pay the fee, make sure the benefits are exceeding that fee, right? Like you're getting more out of the card than you're paying. And when you're not, that's probably a time to reflect on whether or not you still need this card. So in your strategy, do you ever encourage someone to close cards just so they can qualify for benefits again in the future? Or like how does that work? If you if you apply and you have it and you keep it? Isn't it all about that signup bonus, and you don't have that after a while?

Julia Menez 23:15

Yeah, so that what you're describing is called churning where you already have a card and then you close it just so that you can reapply for it again and get the signup bonus again, because signup bonuses are some of the fastest ways to earn a lot of points and miles. So for example, the Chase Sapphire Preferred or Chase Sapphire Reserve, you can get that signup bonus every 48 months. So every four years, you could get rid of the card, reapply for it, get the signup bonus again. But rather than just closing the card, it's actually much better if you have the option to downgrade to a free version of the card. That way, you don't have to pay the annual fee in the future, you're eligible to get the signup bonus again, since you don't have that card in your portfolio anymore. But it does keep your credit line open. So that's better for your credit score so that you're not shrinking the total amount of credit available to you.

Acquania Escarne 24:06

Absolutely. I love that. And I've never heard that tip before and I didn't even know what I was describing had a name so churning is what it's called. But I totally agree with you. It's way better to go to the free card and not jeopardize or affect your credit in any way. Yeah, because utilization and access to credit matters and and people don't always realize like closing a card is going to then close a percentage of your available credit, which will affect all of your numbers. So actually think that's a really awesome tip. So thanks for sharing that one. So what are some, I guess if someone thinks they're more experienced in this space, or they have the AMEX, they have the Chase Sapphire, you know, what is it that you do once you have all of the popular cards and you have all the signing bonuses? How do you even know if it's worth using the points on something. Do you ever have like an equation that you do that determines if it's worth using points versus cash?

Julia Menez 25:07

Yeah, so the most common metric that's used for this is called cents per point, or cpp. And to calculate it, you would take the cash price of a hotel room or a flight divided by how much they would charge in points. So for example, if it was a $200 hotel room, or would cost 20,000 points, that's a one cent per point redemption. And then the next question is, is that good? Should you use points? Or should you use cash at that point? And it's going to depend on what type of points you're talking about, because not all points are created equal. If I'm using Chase points or Amex points or something flexible, or Hyatt points, I'm probably aiming for at least two cents per point. If it's a Marriott, or an IHG, or a Hilton, those points are only valued at about half a cent per point. So the example I just gave of $200 or 20,000 points, with one cent per point of value there. If it was Hyatt or chase or AmEx, I would just use cash, I would save my points for another day. If it was Marriott or IHG, or Hilton, that's a pretty good redemption. So I go ahead and use points. And the way that you know what threshold to aim for with your cents per point, all of the major blogs will have their own different valuation. You could Google how much are my points worth, and you'll find all these blogs. The points guy has a page on this view from the way frequent miler one mile at a time. If you Google the name of your favorite blog, and then the word points valuation, you'll see how much they recommend aiming for.

Acquania Escarne 26:39

Okay, I love that. I love that that's really good. And I try to do all those calculations and then sometimes I'm just like, I just want the experience. Let's do it. So it just depends. But my husband and I, we had our sixth anniversary trip to the Czech Republic. And we paid less than $100 on the taxes and the different fees because we use Emirates miles to get the free airfare and business class we did hotel and an SPG. I think at the time it was SPG. Now it'd be Marriott property. And so we only had to pay for our food. And it was like one of the best trips we ever had. And I was super impressed with my husband, because he planned this entire trip in secret. He even changed the AMEX passwords. So I couldn't log in to see that he had booked stuff for the Czech Republic. And then we had like a whole scavenger hunt around the house. And he gave me clues and I had to figure out where we were going. So the clues were things from our past or memories we created. And somehow were also present in the Czech Republic was really crazy. So I was running around our apartment getting clues. And I finally figured out it was Prague because he had a clue about the steeples to steeples in Europe or whatever. And then we just had an amazing time, and I the business class tickets, and all that was totally a surprise. But I didn't know that he actually use points and miles and different things until we were at our last dinner. And he was like, How much do you think this trip costs? And I was just like, Oh, my God. And one of the highlights is we renewed our vows. So now I can say we've been married in Prague, and we've been married in Georgia. So that's pretty cool. But we've done a lot of anniversary trips, actually on points. We went to the Canary Islands as well and kind of hung out and the airline ticket was pretty much covered. And so was the hotel, and so many more experiences. So out of all of the places you've been because I've been to about 39 countries, and I think you would hit 30 before 30. So you might be someone who's visited even more than me, what's your favorite place? Are you even able to say?

Julia Menez 28:58

I think I've only been to like 35 countries at this point. We've we've been to a couple of them multiple times. But my favorite is Singapore, because it's the perfect intersection of good food and also good logistics. We've been to a lot of places like for example, Morocco. The food is excellent. The logistics and the traffic jams were a little bit problematic. And then we also been to places like Denmark, where public transit is fantastic. Everything tastes like pickles. So Singapore has both and it was like our fancy or our Crazy Rich Asians trip. And we stayed in some really nice hotels. We're actually going back to Malaysia this summer. We've now flown Singapore suites just recently from Germany back to New York. And oh my god, there's like a chair and then also a bed and then so you can connect to suites and make a double bed in the sky. They give you these pajamas that are so comfortable. They give you this candle, which I was really entertained that they included a sign that says please don't like this on the plane. But I can only describe the sense as Crazy Rich Asians. It just smells so fancy. And it's the Lalique brand from Paris. It's an amazing experience to do that first class flight. And Singapore Airport is also the best airport in the world. They have so much free stuff we went to library and they gave me a free facial and the jar of moisturizer cost $600. And they just like put that on my face. We went to the Dior counter got a free Dior makeover, you can get free samples of Grey Goose martinis, Singapore Sling, $300, cognac, they just give out free fancy samples all over. And they have movie theaters, I think the movies are in nine different languages, there is a butterfly garden, they have these free massage chairs. This isn't even this is just for everybody. This isn't even including if you have access to the lounges where you get free food and free drinks. So Singapore is my favorite.

Acquania Escarne 31:11

Oh, em, gee, you make me wish I'd taken the opportunity to serve there because working in Singapore probably would have been fun even though it's crazy expensive. But that's amazing. I and I thought Dubai had a nice airport. Jeez, that sounds like paradise. So I'm definitely adding Singapore back to my list. It's already on my list. But I didn't get to go. Because in the pandemic, they shut their borders. And so right before the pandemic, I actually had flown to South Korea, Malaysia and Thailand in one trip, I had to go out there for work. And then I decided, you know, let me see what I can see. And the goal was to get back out because I was supposed to go to, oh, it was a really, really long island. But along with Mongolia, and right before like three days before, you know, my job shut down travel, they were like you're not going to Mongolia because they close their borders because of the pandemic. And I was like great because it's winter. And I don't know if I want to go there anyway. But Singapore has always been on my list because it was a huge transit spot for a lot of places in Asia too. So now I'm like, I need to get there. And I need to get there now. So I really appreciate you sharing that. Because I've actually told people, it's hard for me to figure out my favorite place. I've been to places that are great for like you said for food and great people, but necessarily don't necessarily have a lot going on social wise. And I didn't get a lot of visitors when I lived there. But then I lived in Dubai and I got over 40 visitors and I could not get enough guests. So it's really hard for me to figure out my favorite place. So I just tell people, you know, my two favorites are Haiti and Dubai, but for different reasons, the impact I made in Haiti and volunteering and the people I helped, and then Dubai because it was like a 24 hour playground, which was pretty cool. So that's pretty pretty dope. So Julia, thank you so much. This name of the show is called The Purpose of Money Podcast. And so I do ask all my guests this question, what is your purpose for money?

Julia Menez 33:24

I think the purpose of money is to give us the options to live the life that we want to live. And I think at some point, hopefully everybody gets to experience when the thing that's keeping you from your dreams is not finances. But sometimes it just takes like creativity. Sometimes I'm like, what, what do I want this business to look like in a year or five years? Or if I'm still doing this in 10 years? What do I want that to look like? And that's always just really exciting. But if you're constrained by personal finance, then it's just hard to make those creative decisions. So the purpose of money is to let you make the choices for the life you want to live.

Acquania Escarne 34:05

I love that. And I think that's so true for so many people. So let's get it together guys and get our finances in order so we can make some creative decisions. Okay, Julia, thank you so much for an amazing interview. Before we wrap up, please drop your handle on Instagram again and your website too, and let people know where they can find you.

Julia Menez 34:27

You guys can find me mostly on Instagram @geobreezetravel. My website is geobreezetravel.com and you can listen to the Geobreeze Travel Podcast wherever you like to listen to podcasts.

Acquania Escarne 34:38

Awesome. So now we will take a few minutes to answer questions live. Do we have anyone in the audience brave enough to pose a question that can be for Julia but if you have any questions for me, I'm here too. But I love to give people an opportunity to ask their questions live because when we normally do a podcast we're recording and they don't have this opportunity. So drop it in the chat. If there's anything you want to ask, just let me know. And then we'll pop it up on the screen, read it and answer, but I'm just so excited. I can't wait to tell my husband about this episode. And tell him we need to go to Singapore. First class. So yeah, no, definitely this has been great. Everybody check out Julius podcast Geobreeze, travel podcast, because she's giving some more tips all the time about how to leverage credit cards to travel. And I think you guys can get a lot out of it. And she has some really cool guests. I've been a guest on her show. So check out my episode, where I talk about how I've been able to leverage and leverage travel through my job and also living abroad. It looks like we don't have any questions. So I'm gonna just do one more announcement for the group. You guys are always asking me what's next. I want you to know that next week The Purpose of Money, we'll be hosting a live real estate challenge. And it is free, free free, we're going to be telling you how you can invest in real estate to build a legacy and day one is going to kick off with how to invest in hotels. Day two will be a special guests will talk about how she actually retired at 36 thanks to passive income and revenue streams created from real estate. Day three, we're going to talk about short term rentals and whether or not they are still the way to secure the bag. And Thursday, we're going to talk about this current housing market and whether or not you should be looking for a house, even though the market is changing drastically every day. And on Friday, the last day, I will be sharing with you how to leave a legacy through life insurance and how to also invest in real estate, leveraging your cash retirement and life insurance. So if you're interested, check us out November 14th to the 18th. We're going live on Zoom every night at 7pm. And the link to join is going to be dropped in the chat for you guys so that you can sign up, it is free. So join us live and get all of this information. And as usual, I want to thank everyone for joining us on our second live episode of The Purpose of Money Podcast. This has been great as usual. I can't wait for the next one. But until next time, keep building generational wealth. Bye bye, guys. Thank you, Julia.

Julia Menez 37:30

Thank you so much for having me.

Acquania Escarne 37:32

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 creating freedom in your life today.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

You can also watch this episode on YouTube!

Follow Julia Menez on Instagram

Instagram: @geobreezetravel

Website:

geobreezetravel.com

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