Episode 10 - Crafting a Savings Strategy for Bold Family Adventures

A moment of clarity can strike at any time—even while sitting in a cubicle, dreaming of distant lands. That’s where our tale begins, as my family turned a dream into a daring three-month odyssey through the heart of Spain, fueled by an ingenious tool: the opportunity fund. 

Our latest podcast episode is laced with a vibrant tapestry of personal anecdotes and practical financial wisdom. We discuss how an opportunity fund can bridge mundane saving and realizing life’s bolder ambitions, inspired by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. From the cobblestone streets of España to your backyard, discover how you, too, can craft a savings strategy that aims not just to protect but to propel you towards your dreams. There's magic in the meticulous planning that precedes a leap of faith. 

You'll get the inside scoop on why my family trimmed our initial seven-month plan down to three, how we grappled with passport regulations, and the art of stretching our dollars without pinching the fun out of travel. Delving into the specifics, from off-peak flights to public transits in Spain’s bustling cities, this episode isn't just a recount of our adventures—it's a blueprint for any parent looking to transform their relationship with money and adventure. And for those number crunchers among us, I've got a detailed budget breakdown waiting on my website. 

Join me, and let's chart a course to turn the what-ifs into what's next.

Episode Highlights:

(01:25 - 03:15) Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and Growth

(06:17 - 07:23) Opportunity Fund for Entrepreneurial Dreams

(25:48 - 27:21) Family Travel Budgeting

Full transcript

Deb Meyer (00:08.846)

Hello and welcome to episode 10 of Beyond Budgets®. We're going to talk about preparing for opportunities, not just emergencies. I know the emergency fund is a popular item in financial planning and you hear about it a lot, saving at least three to six months of living expenses for an emergency fund.

But I want to take a different spin on it and show that it's possible to not just have an emergency fund for true emergencies, but also think more about the opportunities that lie ahead and how you can be saving for those items. So we're going to talk about an opportunity fund, what it is, how to start building one, what some of the different hierarchy of needs are when it comes to thinking about building that opportunity fund. And then also I'm going to talk a little bit about

my specific family's travel. We did some big travel in 2018 where we actually spent three months abroad in Spain. And it's a pretty big feat to pull off something like that financially. So I'm going to share some of the nitty gritty details of how we made that happen, how we budgeted for it and really made that dream a reality. Okay, let's dive in. So,

Maslow's hierarchy of needs, when you think about that bottom of the pyramid, you see the physiological and safety needs. Food, water, sleep, security, those are all basic human needs that we need just to survive, right? If you are missing one of those, if you're missing access to clean water or you're unable to get sleep or your physical safety is threatened,

it's hard to really move out of that place and build any kind of progress in life. So once those basic physiological or safety needs are met, I think it's really important to start focusing on some of the other higher level needs. Love and belonging are the third tier of that hierarchy. And then esteem, which is confidence, achievement, respect.

Deb Meyer (02:16.654)

And finally, self -actualization. That's where you really are looking at achieving your potential. It's a state of creativity and spontaneity. It's a place that very few adults actually achieve in their lifetime, but it's a great spot to work towards if you want to move from kind of surviving to thriving. So it's really difficult if you think about someone that's operating at a base need of physiological or safety need.

It's hard for them to move up to that next rung of love and belonging without the proper mindset. And I've talked about this in a prior episode, but having that abundance mindset where you feel like there is opportunity ahead, that your current station in life isn't fixed, you don't have to be settling for today's circumstances for the rest of your life. Just being able to see that abundance mindset and...

harness it in your thinking is going to be one step in the positive direction to move up to that next level of hierarchy and Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And for a lot of people with the emergency fund, you're still focused on those base level needs of physiological and safety. When I think about my own family and when we used our emergency fund, it was actually in 2016. My husband, Brian, was unemployed for a few months and...

It wasn't voluntary. The company just said, you know, we're having to make some changes in the company and we need you to look for another position. Now they did have some severance pay for him, which they get us through for a couple of months, but it was definitely a scary time in our lives. And we did end up having to draw a little bit on the emergency fund because at that time my business wasn't really super evolved and it was a very part -time income for a family of five.

Now, when that severance pay ran out, I mean, it really did become about a matter of keeping food on the table, making sure we could pay all of our bills, and having that emergency fund was crucial. But again, that's an emergency fund. It was a feeling of insecurity, not being safe. And that's why we had to draw on the emergency fund. So if you're at that point where safety, security is a big concern,

Deb Meyer (04:41.006)

just working towards building that emergency fund is really crucial. But if you're in a different spot in life where you feel like, okay, I have that protection, if something were to happen unexpected, like a job loss or a severe illness or something like that, and I have enough saved to take care of that, then you could look at building the opportunity fund as a secondary cash fund.

I don't recommend putting long -term investments in an opportunity fund just because the market can fluctuate and you don't quite know if you're going to be able to draw on it or not, depending on the time you might want to or need to use it. But yeah, just building a secondary and really even naming it opportunity fund so you have a different mental image of what it is used for. That can be really, really beneficial when you name it differently.

Okay, and with the Opportunity Fund, it really does allow you to dream. I'm gonna share a statistic here about just careers. So I know Gallup conducts studies annually and this statistic has held relatively study over the last several years. When I wrote my book, Redefining Family Wealth a few years back, I think we were looking at a 2017 statistic and it only changed like 1%. But according to the latest Gallup 2022 study,

only 32 % of employees are engaged in their jobs. That means 68 % are either disengaged or actively disengaged. That's a pretty startling statistic. So if you're in that 68 % of people disengaged or actively disengaged, you might be thinking about a new career. And for people that are more established in their careers, it can be scary to think about that.

What would the next step be? What transferable skills do I have? Do I need to retool those skills and go back to get a different college level certification? Or if it's an entrepreneurial dream, having the savings and resources to start on that entrepreneurial journey, different businesses cost different amounts of money. If your entrepreneurial dream is something relatively service -based and you can kind of get up and running pretty quickly.

Deb Meyer (07:00.686)

you're not going to need as much in savings in an opportunity fund as you would if you were starting a more brick and mortar store or manufacturing plant or something that has heavy investment in machinery, equipment, buildings, things like that. So obviously different levels needed in an opportunity fund depending upon what that dream is. But that's just one example of how people have.

looked at an opportunity fund and said, hey, this career I am in, I'm not satisfied with it, and maybe you're many, many years away from retirement, you can't imagine doing the same career for the rest of your adult working life. So when's the time to start making that transition? Well, if you have the financial support to do it, if you have that opportunity fund, it's going to be a lot easier to make that leap or start that transition period.

The other item I want to talk about for Opportunity Fund, you know, that a lot of people overlook would be just home improvements. If you plan on staying in your home for a long time, it can get very expensive to move, especially in today's environment. Unless you have good reason to relocate or, you know, something's changed with your job and you have to move or whatever the situation may be, it can be very expensive to up and move from one unit to another.

and largely keep the same size house and everything else. So, you know, might want to consider having an opportunity fund just for those home improvement projects to make your existing home more comfortable. And if you think about regular home maintenance, that's one category that you should be kind of budgeting for normally, appliance breakdowns or just replacing floors every so often.

maybe needing to update hardware and bathrooms, things like that. But for an improvement project, I mean, you're talking 10, 20, $30 ,000 and up for some of these home improvements. I mean, depending on what the improvement is, and if you're using contractors or DIYing it, the costs are going to vary tremendously. But...

Deb Meyer (09:19.662)

just think through what those specific costs are, what some of those home improvement projects are, and get quotes. It's hard to know how much those things are going to cost without asking a few of the qualified vendors. In our case, when we made some home improvements, this was back in, I guess it was probably 2016, 2017. I can't remember the exact year, but this was our former home up in Missouri. We...

decided to redo the master bath and we got a couple of different quotes. One at the time was like over $25 ,000 and I was just shocked. And then we got a few others and we were able to find one guy that could come in and just do some plumbing and electrical work and a little bit of drywall, a different guy for drywall. And we were able to do it for just a couple grand paying these outside contractors. And then we did a lot of the, you know, choosing the

new furnishings, painting ourselves. I think my husband did the flooring himself. So there were a lot of items that we did to bring that down. And in total, we ended up spending closer to $10 ,000 on that home improvement project. But again, the initial quote we got was $25 ,000. And just being cognizant of the fact that some of the DIY part can be great, but make sure

on the home improvement projects that matter and have qualified electricians or qualified plumbers going in if that's the extent of the project. So you don't want to bite off more than you can chew trying to DIY things. And then when you go to sell at some later date having to redo it all, but you also don't want to be so willing to just take the first bid and plan for that budgeted amount. So in that case, we were able to.

do it for $15 ,000 less than that original quote. All right, and then when you're thinking about building the opportunity fund, I guess there's three primary steps. And obviously, step one, start. Start small if you have to. Just know that whatever your goal is, try to make it a vivid goal. Instead of naming it a generic opportunity fund, you might even want to name it your specific fund. So if your goal is,

Deb Meyer (11:41.55)

career change, say new career fund, and just be very explicit on what that goal is so it's easier to put extra savings towards it. And then step two would be to steadily add cash, you know, build up that savings, build up that reserve. In today's interest rate environment, you know, there's pretty good money market accounts out there, some earning four or five percent, at least in current rates. So,

be willing to stick the funds in those types of accounts. Don't just settle for a regular money market at your local bank that might only be paying less than 1%. In today's interest rate environment, you should be able to go, you know, maybe perhaps to an online bank, Ally, Capital One, Synchrony, all of those are online banks currently paying some pretty high interest rates on money market or savings accounts, new ones. And then, you know, the third step would be to...

to finish. So once you reach that targeted goal, great, give yourself a pat on the back, celebrate. Or if it just seems like the progress you're making is so minimal and it's just taking forever to get there, maybe it's time to revise the goal. So in the case of the home improvement, if your goal was to save $25 ,000 for bathroom renovation and you've been saving for two years and you're only getting up to $5 ,000,

you still have a long way to go. So maybe at that point, it's a matter of figuring out, okay, is there some of the stuff that I can do on my own? Or is there a different professional I can bring in that's going to be more of a ma and pa shop and charge a lot less than a larger firm that has a design consultant and all the rest. So again, just seeing if you need to revise that goal over time because it's just not matching what your ability to save is.

Okay, so let's take a quick break. I do want to talk a little bit about the book, Redefining Family Wealth. I know I've mentioned it here before, but if you haven't read it, it really is a good read. It's just beneficial for you to kind of take the info you hear as you're either listening from your car or working out, whatever the case may be. And if you are a reader, just being able to sit down and put some...

Deb Meyer (14:04.942)

thoughts down in the margins of the book as you're starting to see some of these concepts over and over. So anytime I record a solo episode like this, I'm usually drawing from the book, at least initially. And you'll kind of see that as new episodes get released. I'm typically following the same format of the book. Of course, I add some extra stuff in here that's a little more current since the book was published back in, I guess it was 2019. But...

Yeah, there's a lot of good info in there and I do think it's beneficial when you can hear it from more than one source, hear it and then read about it. It really will help it sink in and hopefully the lessons that you learn from that book are going to really change the trajectory for your family for the better. Okay, so let's get into the fun part. I'm going to talk about funding big travel using an opportunity fund.

And I have to go back to 2017 for this. My mom had just been through a major, major health crisis. It really just shook me to the core, it shook her to the core, obviously. And it just made me kind of reflect on life. And also prior to that, my husband's grandmother had passed away. She was the last of his grandparents to be living. And when she passed as well, it was just...

a wake -up call to us that life really is finite. And I'm not one to say like, YOLO, you only live once. But in that kind of spirit, that's when we made the decision we were going to do some extended travel as a family. And one of the things in 2017 that struck me too, my husband and I were both working a lot and we just...

We weren't really enjoying our time as a family because we were just running from one thing to the next. It was also after a season of him, he had been doing like an MBA program on top of a full -time job. And I've been doing this entrepreneurial thing and it was just, it was just a lot to be handling at one time. So we made the decision, because he wasn't loving his, his role in 2017. We made the decision for him to leave his role.

Deb Meyer (16:25.582)

and he was going to be largely supervising the kids while I continued to run Worthy Nest. And that's exactly what we did. So in 2017, we started looking at booking some travel and really working towards this goal. And we ended up spending three months overseas, January, February, and March of 2018 in Spain.

So I do have a good article on the website and I'm going to link to that in the show notes. But it really goes into all the nitty gritty details of how we funded the three months of Spain travel. I'm going to share some of those details with you as well verbally. But again, if you want to go back through any of the numbers or see some of the more detailed budget, that's where you can find it. So kind of just to start with context here.

When we originally thought of the idea of traveling to Spain, we were like, okay, let's do seven months. So we were thinking January to July of 2018 would be our travel months. And when I started budgeting it out, I'm like, oh gosh, the expenses are insanely high when you factor in the travel costs just to get over there from an airfare perspective. And then the longer we were over there, the more expensive it was going to be just to do rentals like Airbnb rentals.

And it really wouldn't have financially made much sense unless we were planning to rent out our existing home, which was in Missouri at the time. So we had planned for seven months. We ended up changing it down to three months. And that was largely also inspired by the passport limitations. So there's a rule within Europe where you can visit a country as a US citizen for up to three months with your passport.

But beyond that three months, it becomes much more difficult and you really have to.

Deb Meyer (18:22.394)

be mindful of like leaving the European Union countries and then you could come back again, but you would have to go to like a different continent for three months. But you would have to leave at least another three month time span before you went back to Europe. So we just didn't want to deal with like visas or anything beyond just the passport. So we said, okay, three months will be plenty of time. We'll get to go explore in Spain.

We didn't really want to target outside of Spain just because we knew it could get expensive with the public travel and again, family of five, so two adults, three kids, just thought it would be a little too much to bite off. So we stayed in Spain. The other big thing we did decided was to stick to the major cities so we could get public transit to the city and then also get public transit within the city. So.

We flew abroad over to Barcelona, stayed there for a couple of weeks. Then we went on to Valencia, which I loved. Then we went to Madrid for a couple of weeks. We were in Valencia about a full month. Went to Madrid for a few weeks, and then we ended in Sevilla. And all four of those cities have pretty extensive public transit systems, both from a metro perspective.

Obviously the bigger the city, the more robust the metro system, but they also had buses and other trains and things like that. So we were able to completely avoid renting cars. I think we had one car rental just to take us to an airport one time. And that was about it. Outside of that one car rental, it was all public transit. And now this was pre -COVID time, so we felt more comfortable on public transit.

I don't know if we were doing the same kind of travel today, if we would feel super comfortable exclusively doing that. But I mean, obviously for yourself, if you're concerned about that from a safety perspective, that's one thing and something to factor into your budget. But if you're not concerned about it, just roll with the punches and try to rely as much going to destinations where you know you can use public transit more easily. The other thing that...

Deb Meyer (20:46.734)

was working in our favor. We picked a time of year that wasn't super popular. So most people do not think to do extended travel during winter. Most people wait till summer or spring or fall even. But we were there largely during winter and that really did help. We avoided major holidays. We were not flying around Thanksgiving or Christmas. We waited until after those big holidays were over and ventured out in January.

From a flight timing perspective too, we timed that pretty well in terms of purchasing the flights. So we purchased the first leg of flights, which at the time we were living in Missouri, but we found some cheap flights to go from Missouri down to Florida where my parents were living. And we hung out with them for a couple of days and then we ended up flying out of Fort Lauderdale and went directly to Barcelona.

early January, but we had booked those flights back in May of 2017. So we had, you know, pretty substantial lead time there. And from what I read, a lot of international travel experts will suggest anywhere from like six to nine months before your departure to try to book the flights. I know prices have changed significantly, but at that time when we booked, we were able to take our entire family of five.

It only cost us $1 ,455 for all five of us for that one way ticket as a less than $300 a person, which obviously in today's dollars with inflation and all the travel craze the last couple of years, very different prices now. But again, we were focused on trying to find a good flight and we're even flexible on the day of the week that we flew out. I've heard international flights. It's usually good to try to fly out like...

Tuesday or Wednesday for some of these overnight flights to Europe. You can usually save a few dollars that way. And then on the return flight, we didn't end up booking that until December of 2017. And we booked it. So we knew we were going to be in Seville for our final destination. So we did Seville to Miami and did a layover in Lisbon. And again, my parents were living in Florida at the time, so they were able to provide

Deb Meyer (23:09.588)

transport from the airport to their home. So that was another thing we didn't have to pay for like a car rental or anything else. We were able to just rely on them for transportation to and from each of these airport, these flights. But that leg of the flight again was very affordable. I understand these are 2017 prices that we were booking these, but we got it for

$1 ,719 total. So all in all, a little over three grand for round trip for a family of five to go to Europe, which again, unheard of now, but we got lucky. And some of those more reasonable prices do still exist. I was searching the other day and kind of did like a Google search of, okay, in this month,

If you go from Miami to whatever city in Europe, like what are some of the best deals you can get? And if you act quickly, you can sometimes find some good deals. But that same flight, you know, if you look a week later, the crazy price might be gone. So again, just be mindful as you're thinking about flights and what time of year to be going. And I shouldn't overlook this.

At the time, our kids were much younger, so we felt comfortable pulling them out of school and kind of doing a semi -world schooling. And we had talked with the school about putting them back in as soon as we got back. So that's exactly what we did. We pulled them out for a few months, and then we had them back into their traditional school. And since we had communicated upfront with the principal, it was fine. We still had our slots at the school. So that's another piece that...

we were able to travel during the winter instead of waiting until summer. All right. The other thing I wanted to highlight in kind of talking through these nitty gritty details is that multi -week or even one month stays can be pretty affordable if you're, again, willing to be in a place longer term. So a lot of people, when they think about epic family vacations, they think one week and...

Deb Meyer (25:29.87)

I'm going to spend thousands of dollars to go to this one exotic location or I'm going to go from hotel to hotel and all these major cities. And it can be really exhausting. Ours was not exhausting. We traveled one place, stayed there for a few weeks or sometimes a month, and then we moved on to the next place. So we ended up renting Airbnb, three bedroom rentals the whole time we were there. And we ended up spending $6 ,672 total.

in that three month time span. Again, very affordable when you factor in the fact that we were moving every month and those may not be the prices you'd find today just because of the inflation we've had over the last few years, but directionally you can save quite a bit if you're willing to stay longer term in the property. We...

Like I said, use public transit, both traveling between the cities and then traveling within the cities. So that was really good from an expense side. Didn't have any car rental expense. We also were really cognizant of our daily purchases. So making sure we ate at the Airbnb rental at least twice a day on average. Oftentimes we go out like for one meal, either for lunch or for dinner and then cook breakfast and whichever one we.

We hadn't had out as the opposite. And then when we thought about, you know, expenditures on like local attractions, we weren't eager to hop on crowded tour buses. We just stuck to kind of normal everyday living, tried to live like locals. So we stayed off the beaten path. We didn't, you know, stay in these touristy districts and high rise hotels or anything. We just stayed in Airbnbs and suburbs. And then.

would go in and see attractions if there were deals on a particular day of the week. That's what we took advantage of. We weren't rushed, so we didn't have to go see a particular attraction on a particular day. We were able to kind plan around that from a budgeting perspective. So in short, anytime you're thinking about big travel, extended travel, just make sure you're planning for it, you're budgeting.

Deb Meyer (27:49.422)

you have a good idea of what it might cost up front. And then if you can save some dollars like we did with the airfare, that's a great, great feeling when you can be under budget on something. We also prepaid for large expenses. So we booked the flights, the initial outbound flights, you know, May of 2017. And then we booked the return flights in December of 2017. And it wasn't until December of 2017 that we booked the Airbnbs.

I think at that time, I don't remember, but I don't think there were like free cancellation clauses. Now I believe Airbnb does have free cancellation clauses on certain units. Obviously, if you insist on having a free cancellation clause, you're going to be more limited in which options you choose, but, and I'm not promoting Airbnb specifically, I'm just saying that's who we happen to use. But.

Yeah, it can be really beneficial if you plan on booking them in short time span and wait until you know for sure you're going to be making the trip. And we just as easily could have paid for the flights, tried to do the return flight right away. We just wanted to make sure my husband was actually leaving his role before we had a big expenditure on the flights because those were non -refundable. And then we did have...

travel insurance as well, just in case an emergency arose. And lastly, we were very mindful of our daily purchases while we were there. We didn't go and accumulate a lot of tangible souvenirs. We just did a lot of experiential family activities and again, made strong memories there. So I think we came back with like one magnet from Spain after the entire three months, but like...

That's just kind of how we roll. So I hope that's encouraging to you as you kind of think about your family goals and what is on the horizon. And I shouldn't discount some of the things that made it easy for us to do something like this. Number one, we didn't have any pets. So we didn't have to pay anyone to take care of the pets. We also had a pretty low mortgage at that time. And it wasn't a crazy amount to be paying that mortgage on top of.

Deb Meyer (30:12.366)

paying for some of these other Airbnb rental expenses. And then because we did a shorter time period, we had moved it from seven months down to three months. We didn't have to hassle trying to find someone to rent our existing home. And we were just able to up and leave and then have someone check in on the house. We had family close by to check in on the house periodically, make sure nothing catastrophic was happening.

And those things really did play a big factor into knowing that this was something we could think about doing. So I hope, again, that's encouraging to you. And as you think about your number one financial goal this year outside of saving for an emergency, just think about the possibility that it could be a career change, it could be travel, it could be a home improvement project, whatever it is. But...

Really think through that in these coming days and write it down. Make it a goal. If you're married, talk with your spouse before you make that goal and those decisions. But just start dreaming a little.

Deb MeyerWorthyNest LLCfamily finance, beyond budgets, opportunity fund, financial wisdom, maslow's hierarchy of needs, extended family travel, Spain, budget planning, adventure, abundance mindset, career transitions, entrepreneurship, employee engagement, personal health, family losses, strategic financial planning, public transit, budget breakdown, travel abroadComment