Travel Is Cheaper Than Divorce

Family Unity in a Digital Age: The Transformative Power of Travel

September 02, 2024 • David Packer • Season 1 • Episode 2

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Can material wealth alone sustain strong family relationships in today's tech-driven world? 

Explore this compelling question as David shares personal frustrations with the deterioration of meaningful connections within modern households. David argues that societal pressures and an over-reliance on digital devices have left families more disconnected than ever. 

Drawing from his own experiences, he propose travel as a powerful remedy to this malaise. By taking a break from daily responsibilities and the constant buzz of notifications, families can find the space to reconnect on a deeper emotional level. 

However, In this episode David cautions against poorly-planned, stress-inducing vacations, emphasizing the importance of mindful and meaningful travel experiences that truly foster family unity.

In another fascinating segment, discover how David revolutionized the families holiday traditions by replacing material gifts with unforgettable travel experiences. Initially skeptical, he soon realized that most pricey presents quickly faded from memory, offering little lasting joy or connection. 

Instead, David and his family now reveal exciting travel plans through a simple manila envelope, a switch that has ignited his family's anticipation for the holidays and created enduring memories. David also shares insider tips on how to travel luxuriously without breaking the bank, proving that incredible vacations don't need to be exorbitantly expensive. 

Tune in to learn how you can transform your family's relationships and holiday traditions through the magic of travel.



Speaker 1:

You are listening to. Travel is Cheaper than Divorce. This podcast for all those who may be struggling with their spouse or their children and the relationship with them. We help give you tips and tricks by using travel as the means to be able to help your relationships with your family. I will provide those tricks and other ways to help travel with little or no cost. So let's get into it.

Speaker 1:

I am extremely tired. I'm tired of all the people in this system, in the system of the world. I will just call it not really getting that. The biggest problem we have, one of the biggest problems we have, is the denigration of the family, and that denigration is not because of a lack of therapy or whatever it might be. Access to therapy seems to be higher than ever. It's that nobody looks at each other anymore. Nobody sees each other anymore, nobody spends time with each other anymore. Things like this, things like phones and other things, are the things that babysit. They're the ones that tell things about it.

Speaker 1:

If you're having issues with your spouse or your children and I know that that is the case for some of you who are listening then your solution sometimes is to go on to Google and hope that Google will solve your problems for you. I'm telling you that that is not the solution. I'm telling you this from experience. This world is full of stress, everybody's stressed out. They're so stressed out and they can't see past their own job, they can't see past anything and they can't see the solution to the problem. Now, my solution and what I want to bring to the world, is a solution to the problem that is completely, I would say, unconventional, something that maybe has never been sold or maybe you never thought of before.

Speaker 1:

Okay, maybe you're a person who who spends most of their time just providing for their family. They've just spent their entire life just providing for their family. That person is is the person I am and and was that. That was my whole, entire goal. I just need to provide for my family. That's a noble goal as a, as a provider, at a breadwinner of the house. But if you just buy them a house right, you buy them stuff then that's all that matters to them, because that's what you told them that matters.

Speaker 1:

And maybe you, maybe you take him out on sports events and things that's not what I did, but and you travel, you know, to go take him to. You know a baseball game for your child like miles away. Is that really spending time with your children, or is that you spending time on the sideline? Is that an analogy for your entire life? Are you just spending time on the sideline? That, I think, is something that needs to be addressed. Listen, everybody has stress and that never will change. I have stress, everybody has stress, everybody has stress and that never will change. I have stress, everybody has stress.

Speaker 1:

But if there is a way, if there was a solution to the stressful problems, like even in your marriage with your children, and I can provide that, or if I can help teach you or at least provide something to you in that case, or to tell you the story that I went through, then I think that would be something that could be valuable to anybody. But let me talk to you right now. Who are listening? You do not have to remain in a marriage that is stressful or a family that is stressful. There are too many men who leave their marriages, who leave their families because they are not getting what they want. That's a very, in my opinion, very selfish mentality. What does your family need? That's the question. And as you work through that question, what does my family need.

Speaker 1:

That is the solution that I want to provide to you, because ultimately, you just need to get away. You need to get away from it all and sinking yourself in a house in four walls, and not only just and not only that, but sometimes you're not even even in the four walls. You're not even in the four walls. You're so stuffed into your television, into your, into your electronics and for some men and the percentage is high so stuffed in pornography that they can't, they can't see what's real anymore, they don't touch things anymore. Their life is simply going to work. Your life may be something like this you go to work, you come home, maybe you have church responsibilities, maybe you have civic responsibilities, but all of these are responsibilities and you want to be a provider and you always want to provide the things that your family needs.

Speaker 1:

And maybe you considered going on vacation to get away from it all, but you just can't see to find the money. Or, even worse, even worse, you take them on a vacation that is so budget constrained that the actual memories are worse. You take them out to get better memories and you stay in a hotel that is so run down that you can't sleep. And now you're at each other's throat even more. That really is not the way to travel with your family.

Speaker 1:

So, and I mean maybe you could tell a little bit, but let me just tell you a little bit of my experience. See, my wife and I we don't have a perfect marriage. Even now, the things I'm trying to tell you, I don't know if anybody really does. You might find that couple out there that you think has a perfect marriage because they of social media, right. Everything we see may not be real, but that was even pre-social media, right. You saw people out in the world and you say, wow, they have a perfect marriage. No, they don't, no, they don't. In fact, I wonder if the experience sometimes of the people who seem to have the most perfect marriages are the ones that are struggling the most. I don't know that because I don't want to get into people's business, but I wonder if that's the case because they're hiding things or burying things, and that is a problem unto itself, as I've realized more recently. So you can kind of get the idea here that when my family and my wife and I were struggling, my wife was and I were foster parents for a while, and while we were foster parents. We had some of the most stressful times in our life and I will certainly get into that at a later time but we were extremely stressed. But the thing is, my wife was more stressed than I was, and this is what most men don't get about.

Speaker 1:

Women, in my opinion, is that they come home from work. If they're working outside the home, that's less common than it used to be, but it still is the most common thing. You get home from a business trip, you get home from wherever for work and your first thought is well, I'm going to get what I need, I'm going to relax when they don't realize that their spouse the entire day either. They work. I don't know if they do, but if they stay home, they still work. There was a study done years ago. I find fascinating that if a, if a homemaking wife or a uh, a stay at home mom that's what the term was were to get paid for all that she does on the market, she would be paid over six figures. And this was years ago. I read the study. It's probably way more than that now. But just because they don't get paid, you don't think their work's more valuable than yours. That's such a selfish mentality. But this is the problem. We come home and we say I worked all day, I worked all day and so you need to take care of me. Nope, nope, nope.

Speaker 1:

My experience with women in general and, to be frank, I've only had one, one spouse. So you know, I'm I'm not, I don't have multiple experiences with being married multiple, multiple, different people, but, but my experience from other people is that is that women in general want to take care of you anyways, but are you willing to take care of your spouse and are you willing to take care of your children? I'm going to give you a very simple way. I want to help you. That's what I want to do. I want to help you find that solution.

Speaker 1:

So let me get back to what I was telling you about how it went with my spouse and I before I went off on that little tangent there, we, we, I got home, we get home from work and again I, I. This was the mentality I had, same as as that some of you out there might have is I want to be taken care of. It got so bad that she's like you know, I don't even know. You know, I don't even know if I need you, I just need your money. Essentially, those aren't the words she used, but that's essentially where it came down to. There was no emotional connection, zero. So so the the issue that we're having right now is that is that people? Well, anyways, let me just continue the story, I think. I think that will be helpful.

Speaker 1:

My spouse came to me and said we just need to get out of this house. Again, going back to the four walls, again, we need to get out of this house. So what she wanted ultimately was to get out of the area. This wasn't a house thing as much, because we did go on hikes every so often and those are nice and that did help a little bit, but it's a relief for a couple hours right back to where we were before. So, ultimately, she wanted to get out of the house and travel, wanted to get out of the house and travel. So I did what I've always been very good at and I just started researching and researching, and researching, and I go over and over and over again, because I knew there was something that could help here and I believed in her solution. That's the thing. I actually believe that, since she's home all day and she was stressed about being in the house because, again, like I was saying before, I didn't finish the stop but they're in the house all day. If they're a stay-at-home mom, that is their workplace and you come home and say, no, I want to stay in this workplace because I haven't been in, I want to stay in your workplace because I haven't been home all day. How does that make sense to her? So she's. The solution that she brought forward for her and I listened to her because of the things we were talking about brought forward for her and I listened to her because of the things we were talking about was to get out of not just the house but the area.

Speaker 1:

At this moment of my life, I was building a business. I did not have disposable income to speak of, we had foster kids. We had other kids, our biological kids and the foster care assistant they call those bio kids and so we had a lot we had at one point of our lives as doing foster care. We had six kids in the house On my floor. A lot of people people, some people can't even handle two, but we had six and that's okay. If you can't handle more than two, everybody has their limits. I'm not trying to shame anybody on that. I think six was a little too much for us anyways, but that's the way we were. So we didn't have a lot of disposable income. We're taking a lot of money to take care of the kids and the house and the mortgage and everything. We're taking a lot of money to take care of the kids and the house and the mortgage and everything.

Speaker 1:

So what we decided what I decided to do is again is to go through and do some research and research and research and research some more. And at first I wasn't researching ways to get out and get away without spending any money. I mean, that wasn't even in my head. I was actually researching destinations to go. I was trying to figure out okay, where can I go, where can we go, where can we afford to go? And then I stumbled on something that has changed our lives. It's changed our marriage, it's changed my relationship with my kids that you'll hear about in later episodes. But I stumbled onto something where I realized there is this whole nother world out there where you can be stress, where you can lower your stress, even financially, and and get out. I had no idea at the time that when I did this when we started to travel more and we have traveled quite a bit, and that's part of what I want to talk about. Is that how much that made a difference in my kids' lives, in my marriage, you know, and I'm not going to tell you what to do in yours, I'm just telling you my experience, and my experience is that getting out and getting away, it will change a lot of things for you.

Speaker 1:

There is an epidemic, epidemic of divorce and one-parent families in this entire country. I don't care what race, I don't care what religion, I don't care. It's happening everywhere, Everywhere, everywhere, and there is a way I believe that is unconventional, that's not being talked about, and this is what I want to bring to you. I want to bring to you a solution that has not been talked about very much, or it's been talked about, as you know. Be nice, do this once in a while, it might help. No, no. I want to give you another example.

Speaker 1:

In my household, we, about three years ago, in the midst of all this that I was learning and that we are growing together in this way, in the midst of all this, we decide that we are going to stop giving our kids Christmas presents. You, man, are the horror of my mother when I said that what You're not going to give your kids Christmas presents no, we're not. We decided to take and funnel all of the money we would spend on Christmas presents and funnel it into travel. Now I understand this. Actually, I've been talking to people. This is becoming more and more of a trend lately, because our reasoning was that memories are more important than stuff. Your kids will never I shouldn't say never, but it's less likely that they will remember the stuff that you bought them for Christmas 10 years from now. But they will remember the memories or, even worse, as I hear from some people who grew up and are grown up, they'll remember the lack of memories. And so we decide that we were done with that. We're funneling so much money and, by the way, I want to be frank with you again this was my spouse's idea two years before you implemented.

Speaker 1:

Because I resisted it too, because, you know, I grew up in a household where presents were a big deal. So my spouse said that and then, about three, three years ago, I was cleaning out. No, it was even longer than that, sorry, it's been. Oh, it's been five or six years ago. We are cleaning out what, what was our playroom downstairs, and I realized that half of the toys or whatever electronics, you know stuff that we gave them for Christmas, six months later, within six months, they didn't give a living care about that. I was so mad because I'm kind of. You know, I've been in the. My background is in the financial industry. I've been in the financial industry for 15 plus years and it drives me insane when I waste a dollar and so I was looking at that. It drove me insane. What was the point? What's the point? What's the point of giving them stuff To make them feel good inside for five minutes? I mean. Memories last so much longer, so much longer. And so we decide that we were done. We were done with Christmas presents.

Speaker 1:

Now, I say that kind of halfway because we do give them quote unquote Christmas presents, but they're usually a lot cheaper and they always have to do with the trip we're taking them on. So our big reveal during Christmas, or our Christmas present, is literally a manila envelope and inside the manila envelope taped because my kids are teenagers and think they can go look at things. So pains in the butts, but whatever you could relate to that I'd imagine, taped inside. Taped inside of that manila envelope is our destination and usually a lot of information on it. Like, we took the kids one year on a cruise. And when we took them on that cruise, this is right at the tail end of the pandemic Cruises were dirt, dirt cheap and that's you know. Again, I don't like the waste of dollar. So we put information on the boat, we put information on all the activities on the boat, all this other stuff that was inside the manila envelope.

Speaker 1:

We don't let them know what we're doing beforehand. So that's the big, big present is literally a manila envelope with papers inside that I printed off my printer, that's it. But they are so excited they're actually get somewhat anxious and I don't know if I should use the word angry, but they get really pissed off that they don't tell them before Christmas. They want to know where they're going. So bad, because this is what has been built up for them. I have never seen my kids more excited about opening a manila envelope than they were opening presents six, seven years ago. They don't care about the stuff as much anymore, so we started doing that. We do give them presents related to the trip. One year again, we took them on a cruise. We wrapped up presents that one was like a boat, like a little toy boat. Again, these are little things. We're not spending a lot of money on presents anymore. The present is the trip. Everything goes relates around it. In fact, that's one of our favorite things to do is to wrap up these presents and have them open everything but the manila envelope to try to get them to guess where we're going. So, anyway, that is that is. That is something that has changed in our household. And now they get really, really excited more excited, it seems like for Christmas, since we started switching that.

Speaker 1:

And I'm telling you, that's the power of travel. It's the power of getting out, it's the power of getting away. Ultimately, all that doesn't matter. The power is the memories. That's the power. None of this other stuff matters. It's the memories. And, like I said, going away and going to a baseball game with your kid and you, calling that travel is not travel. That's not building a memory. You're on the sideline. He may be building a memory with his team and whatever, but is he really building a memory with the travel when you're on the sideline? Is your spouse even there or is she working? I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 1:

But this is just the experience I have and throughout this entire podcast, all the episodes of the podcast, I want to get in more specifics. I want to get in more specifics on what in my story, what I've done and what you can do as well, and how it's changed things and why this was so important to me and why it really is important to you. So that is the goal here. My goal is to show you a way to bring your family together in an unconventional way, in a way that most people would not even considered. I didn't. I thought it was just nice to travel and my wife really wanted to travel. So I said, all right, we'll try to find a way to travel, and I did.

Speaker 1:

I found a way to travel in luxury, not going to the cheapest hotels and on the cheapest flights. Sitting in the back of the plane Like worst experience ever. I feel like sitting in the back of the plane like worst experience ever. I feel like sitting in the back of a plane. I hate, I absolutely hate sitting in the back of the plane, only because then it takes forever to get off the plane. It drives me insane. But anyways, that's. I digress off of that point.

Speaker 1:

But? But this not yeah, not sitting in low class hotels and and sitting in the back of a plane, because that doesn't build as good of memories, if not any. Like I said earlier, it could actually build bad memories, worse memories, if you actually stayed home. But I learned how to travel in luxury for little to no cost. Little to no cost because the excuses I hear from people when I talk to them I don't have the money, I don't have the money, I don't have the money. Then don't use money, don't use money. But the thing is is that there's this whole other world out there that I discovered after years and years of research that has helped my family get there.

Speaker 1:

So, anyway, that is really what I want to tell you about you, the listener. I want to tell you about that. I want to tell you about that. I want to tell you about the memories. I want to tell you about the things I have built in my own family because of this and what is really possible for you. Because it is possible. Money isn't the issue. Don't talk to me about money. I've been in the financial industry for over 15 years. I know all about money. Don't talk to me about money. If you want to do it, I will help you Because it is possible, but I need you to know that it's important too. You have been listening to. Travel is Cheaper Than Divorce with me, your host, david Packer. Please connect with us on our YouTube channel at Travel Point Pros. There, you will learn many tips and tricks on how to use points and miles to travel in luxury for little to no cost. Remember to like and subscribe and comment on any of the videos that you find helpful to you. Thank you for listening.