43 Stop Making Excuses. Learn to Prioritize Travel Now with Mari Escobar

On the season finale of Alone with Peter, Mari Escobar shares practical tips for travel, useful resources for staying safe, as a female/solo traveler, and good habits for saving money for your next trip so you can stop making excuses and learn how to prioritize travel!

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43 Stop Making Excuses. How to Prioritize Travel Now with Mari Escobar

*Transcripts may contain a few typos. With interviews ranging from 1-2 hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors.

Peter Kersting: Welcome to Alone with Peter a podcast for entrepreneurs, artists, digital nomads, and people seeking personal growth. We are back for part three of our interview with Mari Escobar and Mari's been through a lot of different accounting jobs right now. She is a financial controller for an indie record label, which I laugh cuz I, the term financial controller sounds so intense to me. but one of the things that I know Mari better for is she's really good at maximizing her travel time, even though she has a nine-to-five job. So if you were someone who was looking for some tips and tricks on how to find a way to travel more while still doing your job and still having your boss be happy with you, Mari's gonna give us some practical tips in this episode about that, about how to travel safely, if you're a female solo traveler and so on and so forth. So thanks for coming back on the show, Mari, and are you ready? Ready to jump into this masterclass?

Mari Escobar: Let's do it. My friends have been asking for it for a while.

Peter Kersting: What exactly are your friends asking about? Let's start with that.

Mari Escobar: They're like, how do you travel everywhere? And don't take that many vacation days or like, how do you do it? Like while working a regular job? So like I mentioned before, I'd say one of my biggest, it's not really a trick, but you know, you gotta take advantage of the holidays any, any day off official day off that doesn't count as vacation, do it and combine it with your vacation. Like if for example, I'm going down to Europe, I'm using Memorial day. It might be a little bit more expensive, but you get more days out of it. You go, yeah. Instead of taking four days, I mean, five days you take four days and you can leave four 10, like I said, before you go like the Friday before you come back the Sunday, midnight before and you multiply the days.

Mari Escobar: Don't spend the days sitting at home

Peter Kersting: you gotta bookend the weekends too is other thing you're saying?

Mari Escobar: Yeah. Mm-hmm sure that's very, that's very big. That's yeah. That's how you maximize the days are these business days, the weekends don't count of course. And then try to leave AF right after work. Don't always wait until the next morning, cuz I mean, those travel hours make a difference. You can be at the destination the next morning instead of like the next night.

Peter Kersting: How long are you planning a trip before you go? Cause that seems like that's a pretty key part too. You're looking out ahead. You're like, oh, Memorial day weekend is coming up. Where do I want to go? And what days? Cuz that takes time some time and effort to think through, where am I gonna go? How am I gonna budget for it? What, how is the best way to bookend it? So how far out in advance are you looking for? Where you wanna stay and when you're gonna go,

Mari Escobar: Not too far in advance I don't plan more than two, three months before or even less. But that's one thing I know all the holidays by hand and by, especially by through the different jobs, I know which holidays we have and we don't and which ones we don't have available. Most people like don't keep track of that. I'm like, I'm on top of it. I know how many vacation days I've taken. I know how many vacation days I have left and I know the holidays coming up. I'm like, okay, there's Memorial weekend then there's July 4th and labor day. And then I don't have anything until like Thanksgiving. So I kinda like split it up around that. And I that's one thing I'm always like on top of

Peter Kersting: That's amazing. And I don't know why I haven't mentioned this earlier, but you sent me right before we did this podcast interview a list of all of the countries you've been to and it is a massive list. I am going to make sure I share it somehow with the group. But in case you think, ah, I don't know how much I believe this. How many countries have you been to?

Mari Escobar: 54. I finally put it up in an app. I mean, I was writing it. I have a, a handwritten list that I did during the hurricane. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna sit down and write how many countries I've actually been to. You know, there are some technicalities, like the Vatican is a separate country, but you know, I'm gonna use it. Sure. Towards my count

Peter Kersting: Still, 54!

Mari Escobar: Yeah. And counting it's 21% of the world. It comes up on the app.

Peter Kersting: I love that 21% of the world. Do you have, what do you have a goal to get to everywhere by a certain time?

Mari Escobar: I mean, it's impossible to get everywhere. I don't have like a special, like specific number, but I wanna try to do maybe between one or three countries, like new countries maybe per year, like this year I want, so like I mentioned before, I'm going to Europe now and I wanted to squeeze in a new country. But it was getting complicated so I'm, I'm doing like a new city. But the new country was like getting into too much, but later in the year I'm like, I need to get at least one during this year/

Peter Kersting: Sure, sure, sure. I'm curious. What have been some of the repeat places for you?

Mari Escobar: Too many most of Europe is a repeat. But I just love going there. It's just like, I never wanna leave. So yeah, I, I don't do that. Like I know people who go to one place and they don't wanna repeat it because I've been there. Sure. But I've been traveling all my life and there's a place that I like. I go back to it. I do try to add new activities or new cities or, you know sure. Not always do the same thing, but in terms of country, I'm like, I try to, or even mix both. You do one old and then one new one. And that's also like right now, like I've seen most of the touristy spots in a lot of places, but I go back and I try to like, not necessarily completely avoid those, avoid those, but you know, I just wanna like go walk around and explore the city.

Mari Escobar: Sure. Without any rush, I don't need to go into the loop and see them on. At least I've seen that. I just wanna walk around, sit in the cafe for hours and you know, relax. Like, yeah. So it's a different kind of traveling and I don't wanna be rushing. I don't like those like three day trips. Like you do three days, three day, three days. And you're like switching every day. No, I like also like getting to know a place better than doing four cities and you know, just getting like one day or two days in each.

Peter Kersting: Sure. Is there anything else before we keep moving past it about maximizing your work days off and your travel time that you wanna add?

Mari Escobar: Also now take advantage of the remote life. And that's what I did. The last two years you can combine both like you can work a few days remotely. Yeah. You have to take your laptop with you, which can be annoying. But it lets you also, you can find cheaper flights cuz you don't have to leave on that Friday, which is more expensive. You can leave on Wednesday work Thursday and Friday, and then you start your vacation the next week. Or like last year I went to Spain for like two weeks. I worked one week and I took the other week as vacation. So that lets you use more of the days.

Peter Kersting: Sure. The fact that you're actually able to work in a new country, you can still do something after work. If you're good about saying I'm done at this time or if your job allows you to do it at any time, if you want. Cause that's

Mari Escobar: Probably, yeah. It can also be hard depending on, you know, the time difference too. Sure. You can be tricky. Sure. and trying to explore a new city and you know, have to be working, but it's not, it's manageable. I'd rather do that than not go at all and right. I think that's my, that's my motto for a lot of things. like, I'd rather do it this way than not go or yeah. You know, you have to sacrifice one thing that you have to work longer hours for a few days in order to be able to take that trip or, you know, skip going out for lunch in order to, you know, use that money, that sort of thing.

Peter Kersting: sure. I mean, and that's a valuable lesson, whether it's trying to maximize your travel time or anything else you wanna do, you have to prioritize it and that means not prioritizing other stuff. Right. Mm-hmm sure. So you talked about planning versus not planning sort of already, but how do you go about funding, your travel? What are some things that you could suggest to people as far as how they can prioritize travel? They're serious about it? How can they do a better job preparing for financially?

Mari Escobar: Well, I guess for this, yeah. You have to do it in advantage of like, oh next week I'm I'm heading out. If you can, that's perfect. But if not try to your budget yourself and be like, okay, I cannot be going out that much this week or for a few weeks, like I'm gonna be holding off on those like a hundred dollars dinners. Like this is LA. So that happens more frequent then you would think stuff like that. And then there I've, there's always a meme. I've seen it a couple times when it's like so accurate. It's like you say, you don't have money for the, for the trip, but you know, tries bringing lunch into, into work and you'll be saving what sure. $50 to a hundred a week. And then by the end of the month you can buy flight somewhere

Peter Kersting: Or, or be like Tanner Combias and, buy like a sandwich while your friends are drinking beers or something.

Mari Escobar: I saw that. I heard that.

Peter Kersting: Oh, I love it though. It's so great. But you're right.

Mari Escobar: Something else in the tip of my mouth and I just forgot.

Peter Kersting: No, I'm sorry.

Mari Escobar: It's okay. Keep going.

Peter Kersting: I was just gonna say that the reason you're able to do that for a couple is partly because you know where you want to go and you know that you're prioritizing travel. So like when you go, like I'm gonna go, you're going to Paris next right. Specifically. Mm-hmm ly so have you already turned down, going out to dinner with somebody this, this last couple weeks? Or like, is that something you end up having to do, right?

Mari Escobar: yes. I'm yeah. I'm gonna keep it to like $50 a night. The most I can't do like this hundred nights. Like it's like 400 weekends. No,

Peter Kersting: That's so funny.

Mari Escobar: Like I need to hold off a, a little bit and all the concerts. I love going to concerts. So the last few ones I'm like, okay, I need to, you know, hold myself a little bit because I'm going on this trip pretty soon.

Peter Kersting: So on the aspect of funding, your travel, there's finding the time from work and there's also saving the money. Is there anything in gen