Suzy: Welcome to Wander Worldschool Podcast. It's trivia time. What city is home to the unique Abo Elementary School, which was built entirely underground as a nuclear fallout shelter in 1962? Tune into this month's Listener Locations to find out. I'm Suzy, a travel-loving money nerd, mom of two, and our family lives between Spain, Colorado, and soon Japan. On this show, we discuss the stories, logistics, and finances of traveling families and the many ways to learn along the way. Today's End of the Month episode includes updates from our Naples, Italy pop-up, my favorite takeaways from this month's episodes, and listener locations, including the answer to this week's opening trivia question. For our deep dive, we are breaking down all you need to know to knock out debt on your way to building the life of family travel and financial freedom that you desire.

Whether you're debt-free or not, you can walk away with crucial financial insights to live your best life. Speaking of numbers, thank you so much for helping the show reach over 10,000 downloads. Sharing your favorite episode with a friend is the best way to help grow the Wander World School community. Will you help me celebrate by going right now to your Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leaving a review? You can also give five stars on Pocket Casts, which is my favorite podcast player, and also leave a fun comment on any episode on YouTube. Please help me spread the word about the amazing stories on the Wander World School Podcast. Thank you so much. Before we jump in, how has your month been treating you? May started with birthday celebrations for my oldest in Naples with an amazing pop-up crew. Arriving to this historic part of Italy from over five countries of origin, over 20 kids explored the ruins of Pompeii.

We swam at gorgeous beaches of Capri and navigated the scooters and fried pizzas of the Spanish Quarter. I shared more about the pop-up in the Worldschooling Mama Network Substack post, linked in the show notes if you want to read more about this amazing pop-up. Otherwise, besides enjoying the beautiful spring weather in Sevilla, I was lucky enough to get to London for the Podcast Show. I can't wait to use what I learned to continue to grow this show and community. But speaking of pop-ups, my Osaka Worldschooling pop-up is ready for sign-ups. Join us October 11th to the 17th in beautiful Osaka, Japan. I have been spending hours on Japan planning and I finally think I have a slow travel plan that balances seeing the must-visit sites in Japan while also spending time at less busy places like Matsumoto and Izu. If you are experienced in Japan and have any tidbits or advice or places we should see during our four months there, please let me know.

But please also join the Osaka pop-up. The link is in the show notes. Are you based out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Tokyo, Japan; or Artesia, New Mexico? I love looking at the listener locations from this past month. Artesia, New Mexico is that unique city from the opening trivia. It boasts the only fully underground nuclear bunker elementary school, and it was named after the nearby large underground artesian water source. World of Wow sent me this lovely message. She says, "Hi Suzy, I've come across your podcast, and I must say I really love your shows, your questions, and also the guests you curate." She continues with more to this lovely message, and I will say these messages, these reviews, they mean so much to me. If you find value in these episodes, will you leave that five-star review right now? You can also send me fan mail by clicking that top link in the show notes. You can send any feedback, questions, or ideas for future episodes.

For the monthly episode recaps, listen back to episode 51 with Astrid and Clint from the Worldschooling Q&A and The Wandering Daughter, episode 52 with Sol and Camilo on their sixth year of full-time travel, and episode 53 with Carolyn from the Field School of Hvar. I really enjoyed hearing Astrid and Clint's adventures during their four years of travel, and their podcast is a great starting point to figuring out all those many questions that worldschooling families have. They cover different locations like the Philippines and Mexico, and also packing essentials and Wi-Fi considerations. So check out their podcast if you haven't saved it as a favorite yet. Sol and Camilo in episode 52 brought some interesting insights as they are navigating full-time travel and homeschooling on the go. Did you catch Camilo's language-learning tips? Most notably, what stuck out to me was that you just have to go for it. You have to practice, you have to get speaking. And I know I get really nervous around native Spanish speakers, but I'm trying to be more okay with just going for it and having those conversations, even if it does embarrass my kids a little bit. And lastly, I loved hearing what Carolyn and her academic team are creating in Hvar, Croatia with a field school. To create consistent learning environments that tie in closely with the environment and the local history, it's really a lovely way to combine slow travel, creativity, and learning. Next month's episodes are taking us to Tanzania, Italy, and navigating summer camps around the world. So tune in for those episodes coming shortly. How about you? What episode from this month resonated the most with you? Send me a text in the show notes with your feedback, thoughts, and questions.

It's time for our deep dive, which is all things getting out of debt. First up, debt may bring up a lot of different feelings for you, so I want to start with that. Money discussions, especially around debt, can bring up shame for our past choices, either joy for meeting debt payoff goals, or even anxiety around just not wanting to know or not wanting to have sometimes some hard conversations. First off, everyone is starting out from their own money starting point. You may be completely debt-free. Yes, that's awesome. Congrats. And if you are, I think you're still going to want to listen to this whole episode. There are some valuable tips at the end around mantras to avoid future debt. You may have a little or a lot of various kinds of debt. There are things like credit card debt, car loan debt, medical debt, mortgage, or rental property debt, and lots of different types, and they all mean a little something different. Or you may have been burying your head in the sand and avoiding it completely. If you relate more to the last one, the debt avoider, let's set up a call and work on getting you in a better financial situation so that you can afford more family travel. It is completely possible to trade a debt-heavy life for a path of meaningful travel, but it requires a focused approach to your balance sheet.

I also want to acknowledge that there is so much more about your money situation that is affected by where you were born, how you were raised, and the systemic factors around you. I wish I could level the playing field for everyone, but until we support systemic change in this regard, that's just not going to happen. So as Albert Einstein once quoted, learn the rules of the game and then play better than anyone else. Thus, for this episode, we're going to focus on the things that you can control. Moving from debt to a gap year is about putting together a plan and making progress in the direction you want to go. Here's a roadmap to tackle debt and build your travel fund.

First phase: take a deep breath. Before you pay off a cent, you need a radical level of clarity. Getting into the nitty-gritty details of your assets, your debts, and a debt payoff plan may bring up a lot of feelings, but I'm here to say you can do it. It is worth it to make positive financial choices for you and your family. But first, let's define debt. Debt is money owed to someone or an organization. For some, it's just a number. For others, it feels like a ball and chain that's holding them back from their dreams. Either way, taking action is the best way to move forward.

Phase two: write it all down. We're going to start with a comprehensive financial record—ideally a spreadsheet, or a pen and paper is fine too. And we're going to track every single source of debt. You cannot optimize what you do not measure. I want you to first list every debt and then sort them by interest rate and remaining balance. Let's first define interest rate. An interest rate is the cost of borrowing money or the reward for saving it, expressed as a percentage of the total amount. It acts as a rental fee for money; you pay to borrow it. Higher interest rates make borrowing more expensive, while lower rates make borrowing cheaper or less expensive. Again, it is still debt, so keep that in mind.

Phase three: the radical expense audit. So to accelerate your debt payoff plan, you're going to have to look very closely at the fixed costs with a very critical eye. Many families find that the excess stuff of a stationary life is exactly what is holding them back. My first recommendation is to take one hour and go back to the last thirty or, ideally, sixty days of expenses and list every single expense on a tracker. I've included a free template in the show notes that you can use, or again, pop this into any spreadsheet that you have available. You can make whatever categories you want and put all those expenses in for the last 30 or, ideally, 60 days. You can also review credit or debit card bills, autopay bills—everything—to look for those expenses. If you prefer to do it via an app or a website, Monarch Money is your go-to financial tracking app. For less than $100 a year, you can track and categorize every expense and personalize it to exactly how you want it. We love Monarch in our household because I can match exactly the categories in Monarch to the ones that I like to track on my spreadsheet that I've been doing this for over 10 years on.

Once you have all your expenses listed, it's time to cut the invisible costs. Look very closely at the cell phone bills, the cable bills, the unused subscriptions. Shop around for a lower cell phone bill carrier. Cut the cord, cancel those unused subscriptions. Look at each and every bill and recurring expense closely. And even though this sometimes feels nitty-gritty, this is actually where you can get some quick wins. Very quickly, you can probably chop off 20, 30, maybe even 50 or more dollars from your monthly budget by looking very closely at those recurring expenses. But for the most bang for your buck, we're going to want to evaluate the big assets. These are things like housing, transportation, and food. Consider if you really need two cars or even one. What do you pay for housing? Can you house hack and rent rooms out? Can you rent your house out while you travel? And again, I have that ebook that can help you figure out all the ways to do that. Can you sell a house and downsize or invest the difference? The other big expense for many families is food. Look closely at what you spend on groceries and restaurants. Restaurants, DoorDash, and drive-thrus can wreak havoc on even the best food spending plan. Looking closely at every expense to cut back and make some of those quick wins, and then I want you to celebrate those. You are already making progress. On this audit, write down all your sources of income as well. The difference between your income and your expenses will be the money that you can use to pay down debt.

Phase four is the debt paydown strategy. Paying off debt is not just about math; it's also about psychology and momentum. Turns out humans are a little interesting in that regard. Here are the main ways to tackle that debt, ranging from purely mathematical to the psychological and the structural. We're going to first talk about the math versus momentum strategies. So there are two popular methods in order to pay off your debt balances. The debt avalanche relies more on the math component of it. This is where you take that debt that has the highest interest rate and you tackle that first. Again, a high interest rate means that it is expensive to borrow that money, and so the more you tackle that debt, it's going to free up other expenses for those lower interest rate debts. Often this is credit card debt that can be as high as 22 or more percent. Cars and student loans may also be over six percent. There's a rough recommendation that debt that is over six percent is important to pay off because it is a guaranteed six percent win for you. In theory, if you could invest that money in the stock market, you could make about seven percent on average after adjusting for inflation. But since the stock market is variable and debt is a continual expense until it is knocked out, it is important to pay off high-interest debt as soon as possible.

The other way to go about it is the debt snowball. Wow. This is often the psychological choice. When you list those debts by balance size, you pay off the smallest one first, and you get that quick win to knock out a complete debt category. This may not be the most efficient mathematically, but that quick win can help give you the dopamine hit needed to keep going with kids and a busy life and all the stress that can come with making these financial decisions. Don't spend too much time overthinking this. Most importantly, you want to get started on paying down debt and you can adjust your strategy as you learn more between either the debt avalanche or the debt snowball. Again, most important: get started.

We're also going to talk about the structural optimization. There are other considerations if you can change the terms of your debt to make the payoff faster. This may include things like a 0% balance transfer. If you have high-interest credit card debt, you can move that balance to a card with a 0% introductory rate, often for anywhere from 12 to 21 months. This ensures that 100% of your payment goes to the principal, which is the debt amount, and none of it goes to interest because that interest rate is 0%. Often this is not going to last forever. It might only be for a year or two, but it gives you a runway to work with to knock out debt. You may also want to look at debt consolidation loans. If you have many high-interest debts, a single personal loan with a lower interest rate can simplify your life and reduce the monthly overhead. Student loan refinancing is another option, especially for individuals with high-interest private student loans. If you can refinance to a lower rate, you can shave years off of that payoff timeline. Either way, these tricks are most useful when you have a clear plan to pay off the debt and not to go right back into debt after getting to a zero balance. So make sure that your spending habits and your income reflect your new goals as well.

Debt payoff is also about increasing income and generating extra cash. You can accelerate your debt payoff by widening the gap between what you earn and what you spend. We talked about focusing on reducing housing expenses, transportation costs, and food. Food is often that category where you can make instant changes. We have dropped our food bill before by $500 in one month just by actually scheduling time to meal plan. If you plan your meals out and shop accordingly, you also avoid food waste. Meal planning ensures you always have easy-to-prepare, low-cost meals available. My tip for this is stock up on frozen pizzas if your family likes them. You can always have something on hand that you can have on the table in a couple of minutes if you are hungry and everyone wants food instead of calling for food delivery. So always having these go-to meals can be very helpful.

Also, I encourage you to think about your side hustle as a way to increase your travel fund. So maybe you have skills and you can pick up extra contracts or shifts outside of your typical work. Maybe you can start a side hustle: coaching, consulting, medical shifts. You can put a hundred percent of that extra income to debt, and that helps prevent lifestyle creep as well. The last aspect of debt payoff is treating every unexpected influx of cash as a debt-destroying tool rather than a spending opportunity. Think about things like tax refunds. Did you recently get one back? Do you get a bonus once a year? Instead of allocating that extra influx of cash to something fun or a new gadget, put this right to your highest interest debt. You can also think about selling things. So if you have stuff at your house, especially if you're preparing for a gap year or traveling, you might want to start selling furniture, the extra technology, clothes. Other awesome side hustles that we have done over the years are babysitting. Yes, even as an adult, I did some babysitting. We've also both driven for rideshare companies, dog walking with Rover—we did that just as recently as last fall, and we loved it. Also, I like to participate in surveys. There are a lot of websites locally where you can do in-person surveys that sometimes will get you fifty dollars for thirty minutes of your time.

Phase five: I want you to think about your primary asset, which is your home, especially if you own it. I don't want that to be a ball and chain. I want this to be an engine for travel. Renting it out is an option, and we talked about that in the episode and in the ebook that I'll link in the show notes. You can convert your primary residence into a rental. This can provide income that you need to live or travel abroad. Things like home exchange are platforms where you can swap your home with other families to bring your accommodation costs down to zero while you travel. Also, you may want to start looking into things in the real estate investing world: buying, flipping, renting properties. This is all an option to fund a slow travel lifestyle, and some of my past guests have shared that that is how they're able to do it. I also want you to start thinking about travel hacking as a way to build up your miles and your points. Stop spending money on flights. Starting now, you can put those daily necessities on travel rewards cards to help accumulate miles and ensure that you don't have to pay for a major international flight for the next couple of years. Also, take advantage of off-season planning when it comes to flights. Because you might not be bound by a traditional school calendar, you can look at tools like Skyscanner or Google Flights to find destinations that are lower cost during the off-season or the shoulder season.

With these steps, you are on your way to living the debt-free life. For us, we have a mortgage and we have rental debt. But all of this is under 3.6%. And with inflation sitting right around 3% typically, or sadly, even higher over the last few years, this is debt that we have no intention of paying off anytime soon. But in the past, we have paid off over $20,000 of my husband's student loan debt. And I am so proud of family members of mine that have knocked out credit card debt. I have seen the power of knocking out debt in people's lives. It is amazing what is possible when you come up with a plan and put your mind to it and you create ways to celebrate the wins along the way. Still, I want to make sure I recognize that there is a mental and emotional part of debt payoff. Debt can feel like a monster under the bed, but the real monster is that anxiety of the unknown, not the numbers themselves. Here's a breakdown of the mental hurdles you might face and how you can foster a healthier relationship with your finances as you plan for your family's future.

Some of those mental hurdles of debt include the shame and secrecy trap. This is where many people keep their financial struggles under wraps. They don't want to fear judgment from those closest to them. Other mental hurdles include external criticism. Sometimes our family and friends are our harshest critics. They may question unconventional choices, like traveling with kids, especially when debt is involved. This can lead to a defensive mindset rather than coming up with a productive plan to move forward. And self-doubt. It is common to experience a cycle of, "Am I doing this right?" or worrying if your family is going to get enough out of the sacrifices that you're making. But I promise you, getting out of debt can open up so many doors for you and is a way to lighten the load of some of these mental hurdles of debt. So how can we approach money in a mentally healthy way? We can first prioritize clarity over comfort. So that means we're going to replace fear with data. An important way to do this is maintain comprehensive records. Use that dedicated spreadsheet to track every family expense. I also want you to visualize the goal. Don't just pay off a bill, but if you relabel it as a living experience, you can see that your debt decrease on paper makes your future trips feel more tangible. So for every bill or debt that you have, attach something really exciting to that so that as you pay that off, you see that more of these future opportunities are going to be possible for you.

Minimizing the excess stuff is a way of getting rid of material items like a car or a boat. This can be really freeing once you realize those things are often just anchors keeping you in one spot. I also want you to think about finding a like-minded community. You don't have to do this alone. Again, I know it's not easy to talk about money, but you can ask people, "How is this working for you?" And the more we share, the more we can learn from each other. I want you to also celebrate those small wins. Acknowledging that your family's needs are going to evolve, it's important that you stay adaptable. This is a strength. Whether you're trying out something like homeschooling for the first time or going to school in a brand new country, all these things are also going to take adaptability. You can focus on those small wins as you're heading toward your ultimate goal.

I want you to end this episode with a money mantra for debt payoff that will help motivate you to continue on this path. If any of these resonate with you, write them down and say them to yourself daily or whenever you hit a lull in your payoff journey. If none of these speak to you, I want you to come up with your own. The mantras around the philosophy of freedom can include things like "Have less, live more," or "Every dollar of debt eliminated is a day of freedom earned for my family," or "I prioritize my goals and my energy toward what truly matters." You may also find that mantras around clarity and momentum resonate with you. Things like "Clarity is the antidote to anxiety," or "My future self will thank me for the discipline I show today." Or lastly, mantras focused on the purpose of the journey might be exactly what you need. Things like "The world is our classroom and I am preparing the path for my children to see it," or "I am more than just a debt number and my purpose is to build a better life for my family."

Do any of those resonate with you? And tell me, have you ever paid off significant debt already? Or are you currently under the weight of credit cards, student loans, or other high-interest debt? The best plan is the one that is tailored to you and your needs. So make a free 30-minute consultation so we can discuss how I can help. You don't have to do this alone. I think back to the money I invested in financial education many years ago and how that has absolutely paid for itself multiple times over in our ability to both feel in control of our finances and have more peace about enjoying the seasons of life that we're in now while still planning for the future. And as a reminder, please use the link in the show notes to support the show. Thanks to Daniel for signing up for the Preply lessons. I hope you enjoy it. Please let me know how those go. Other links for home exchange, TrustedHousesitters, and Monarch Money, which you can use to track your expenses on your debt payoff journey—all those links are in the show notes. Until next time, stay curious and keep exploring.