Transcript:

Ben Smith:

Welcome to the Retirement Success in Maine Podcast. Let me introduce the Gifford's ice cream to my Shane's ice cream. Curtis Worcester, how are you doing today, Curtis?

Curtis Worcester:

I'm doing well, Ben. Now you're going to make me hungry here, because it's been a minute since I've had some ice cream. So that's a good one.

Ben Smith:

Yeah. So question for you then, what's your favorite flavor? What are you indulging in summer 2022?

Curtis Worcester:

So, favorite flavor or what do I order? Because that's two different answers or I have two favorites, I guess.

Ben Smith:

You got to give us both. Now that you ...

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah. So, I do a scoop. So I go cookie dough and cookies and cream. That's the two. So if I had to pick one, probably cookie dough, because in theory I could just buy Oreos outside of the ice cream if I had to pick one flavor of ice cream. So, I think, cookie dough is probably the winner, but the order is a scoop of cookie dough, scoop of cookies and cream. That's what I'm going for.

Ben Smith:

Wow. That's well thought out.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Ben Smith:

I like it.

Curtis Worcester:

Yep.

Ben Smith:

I like it.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Ben Smith:

Well, I got to say I've been going to the, I know I'm the Shane's ice cream in this analogy, but Gifford's aroma Joe's PD mocha has been awesome for summer of 2022, so check it out if you haven't checked it out yet. But I also want to just do a quick little announcement too. Guidance Point Advisors just had a little bit of an award. We're named best of the best financial advisors for the Greater Bangor Area 2022. So, we got a little bit of an award, so thank you everybody for ... And if you participate in voting, we really appreciate that and everybody kind of doing that.

Ben Smith:

So again, our podcast keeps growing and going and our practice is too, which is really nice. But I wanted to talk about an item and a topic and something that just comes up a lot in terms of our conversations. And especially with client meetings kicking back up here in 2022. There's investment volatilities impacting financial plans, right, Curtis. It's something that we've been working through a lot in people. What can I afford and where am I?

Ben Smith:

But one thing that really our set of retirees have been saying to us is they can't wait to get back out in the world exploring after being cooped up for a couple years, right? I think we've all been expanding our circles a little bit, right? Like pandemic, we can go local and we can do the things in a car and we can get outside. So, we've done a lot of that. And then now we're expanding, our circle is expanding and maybe we're starting to get to the point we're comfortable of really expanding to our dreams that we had previously.

Ben Smith:

So especially for newly retirees, we're hearing that a lot. But the world of travel is pretty different with a variety of new wrinkles, roadblocks and requirements to be aware of. So, what are those? What are some tips, tricks and hacks that can allow us to smoothly overcome some of these roadblocks when they present themselves? And what are some destinations and trip ideas that people are traveling to that now they've expanded those circles? So that's the premise of today's show.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah. And I think as everyone listening knows, we are not travel experts, so we had to bring someone in. Hopefully a familiar face for most of our listeners, so our next guest is a Maine transplant, originally from St. Louis, Missouri, after studying to be a diplomat in a brief career as a teacher in Salsburg, Austria, our guest fell in love with the travel industry and its ability to connect people across countries and cultures. She pursued a master's in tourism administration with a focus on sustainable destination development.

Curtis Worcester:

Her travel style is best defined by her curiosity, which I love that because I make no plans when I travel and I just let my brain take me wherever I want to go. She loves to explore the things that make a destination unique through food, through the landscape and through meeting people and loves to help others explore new to them destinations. She's a firm believer in the transformative power of travel. When she isn't traveling or helping others see the world, she enjoys good food, ice cream in particular. Good plug there, Ben, I see what you did there. Hiking with her family and her dog and watching her son discover the world.

Curtis Worcester:

So at this time, please welcome back for a third time now to the Retirement Success in Maine Podcast, Keri Forbringer Hetherman. Thank you so much for coming on our show, Keri. It's great to see you again.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Thank you for having me. It's great to be back.

Ben Smith:

So now that Curtis and I have shared with our audience our ice cream choice. So since you are a fan of ice cream as well, we got to ask 2022, what's the palette liking for ice cream right now?

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

One of my go-tos is the Gifford's campfire s'mores in a good waffle cone. But because now my ice cream is often shared with my one year old, the cookies and cream is a classic and he eats that up. So there's often a scoop of cookies and cream on the side for him and for me.

Curtis Worcester:

I like it. I like it.

Ben Smith:

Okay. Well I got to say that campfire s'mores is probably a pretty close second for me too, it's the Graham cracker and the marshmallow. It's a really good mix and you throw a little hot fudge on top of that.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Yep. Yep.

Ben Smith:

So good.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

So good.

Ben Smith:

Well Keri, thanks again for coming on the show. One of the things that we wanted to do, obviously where we start with every episode, so there's a lot of people that discover us as they go through our episodes. So, they might not have heard you before. So for those that are the kind of first time tuning in or not familiar with, you love to just hear about your story. Again, we did the read about kind of this, but talk about your story kind of coming to Maine and your love of travel.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Yeah, they're kind of intertwined. My coming to Maine story was I ended up going to Bowdoin College. So I'm from St. Louis, Missouri and knew that I wanted to pursue diplomacy as a thing and Bowdoin has a really good government and legal studies program. So that's why I chose Bowdoin and accidentally also acquired a German degree while I was there. And it was the German degree that helped really inspire the travel part, the pivot into travel versus the kind of politics side of things. Because really, ultimately, when you think about diplomacy, you're talking about connecting people and you're talking about making connections and that's really what travel is. So that's kind of where that came from. And then living abroad for a couple of years, teaching English. I crossed that off my list. I loved it. I thought it was wonderful. It was not going to be a full time career for me.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

But once again, we came back to the whole travel thing. So I came back and people started asking me for recommendations for Salberg and also for Maine, because I had known Maine from being a college student here and living here over the summers. When my husband and I had the opportunity to come back, we came back. So here we are.

Ben Smith:

Nice.

Curtis Worcester:

That's great. Yeah. So knowing in our previous conversations, this might be a loaded question for you, but I just want to ask, obviously we're all here based in Maine now, what do you love about Maine? And I know you might have to cut that list short a little bit, but just kind of what is it about Maine that you just love so much?

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Oh my gosh. I mean, what don't I love about Maine, honestly? Maybe the length of the winter, that's the only thing I don't like. But everything else, you can't beat the Maine summer. You can't beat the landscape. The landscape is gorgeous and the people are wonderful. I mean, we've felt so welcome since we moved here. Yeah, it's everything. It's kind of hard to narrow it down, but yeah, it's a great lifestyle. I mean we can be out in nature in 10 minutes. The City of Forest is our favorite place to be. And it's 10 minutes away and we can hike around and bike around and it's wonderful. It smells like a pine pillow back there. You think it's not real, but it's real.

Ben Smith:

Yeah. And also, I'm sure from the travel component piece too, as it's helpful having some really great airports in the state as well, where especially internationally, everybody's kind of coming through us anyway. As you're kind of cut off some of that and you can get to where you need to go without having to travel to a major city and have a little bit less headaches there. That's what I would imagine as well, right?

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Yep. Yep. Bangor is wonderful. I adore flying out of Bangor because you can be through security in less time than it takes you to get a bagel on the other side of security. It's awesome. And you park and it's inexpensive. You park down at Boston, Logan, it's $45 a day in the economy lot. It's not the case in Bangor. So all of those things are wonderful. We've got really good connectivity, which is we're lucky for a small town and we've got a good connected airport here. So that's awesome. Portland obviously, and Boston, isn't really all that far away, you can get there, which is great. So, yeah.

Ben Smith:

And I know we'll talk about little of maybe some ways to cover costs and some of those options too. So, we'll talk a little bit about that in a few minutes, but I want to just ask about travel personally for you. How has your love affair with travel evolved over time? So, I'm thinking about what you really liked about travel maybe when you were in college or younger versus maybe today and what you were finding interesting or what you liked to do might be different for a certain age group. So, love to hear about how that's adapted for you as you've kind of evolved or grown in your career.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Yeah, well, my budget is a little different than it was when I was a college student, which is a welcome change. I did the couch surfing thing for a while. That was an adventure and I'm grateful that that's an option if I needed to be, but ultimately, it's not something that I'm doing really at all anymore, which is fine. So like I mentioned, we now have a one year old son and for a very long time, always, always the thing that I love about travel so much is kind of exploring new places, exploring the things that make a new place different. But now, with a one year old that exploration looks a little different. And sometimes if we get a chance to go without him, all I want to do is sit by the beach and do nothing at all.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

So, there's a little bit more of that in my world as well. No shade to people who have always known the pleasure of that. This is a new discovery for me, the needing to slow down and really just take a deep breath.

Ben Smith:

I hear you there.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Yep. Yep.

Curtis Worcester:

Oh, that's great. That's great. So obviously now, we just want to keep going with travel. And obviously the core of this conversation today, right, we're talking about kind of kickstarting or maybe restarting are kind of retirement travel plans. Obviously, the last couple of years, travel has evolved tremendously, I'm sure. So I guess we'll kind of kick it off. So obviously, the world is quite a bit different than the last time we had you on our show. The pandemic obviously created a lot of barriers and obstacles for folks to go about the world exploring. So, I guess, the big question off the top is how has the world changed related to travel? And then, in that change, maybe what hasn't changed as well is kind of the two ways to look at that question.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Yeah. The world has changed in a lot of ways and you can see it kind of locally we've lost restaurants, we've lost shops, we've lost small businesses, you can see it in Maine. Although we've been really lucky actually in Maine. Maine became, has always been a destination, but became because we're so drivable, became a really hot spot to come from all over the US. So I think we got very lucky that we lost fewer businesses than other places seemed to have. But yeah, the world has changed in that way. Some of my go-to restaurants, some of my go-to tour operators, they're no longer in business and that's unfortunate. It happens anyway, regardless of a pandemic, it just happened a lot.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

So all of my guides I have to revise any of the guides that say, here are the restaurants I recommend, I have to revise that. Let's see, we've been through a lot of waves of places that are popular, places that are open and accessible to people. I'm sure you remember everything kind of closed slowly, slowly, and then everything. And most things are back open at this point without you can travel there as an American without quarantining or without a test, even at this point. And for most places they're not even requiring vaccination cards anymore.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

So those things have not been true for the entirety of the pandemic obviously and are slowly coming back to what we experienced in 2019 before everything went down. So yeah, the world looks different. The world looks different because of those things, the places that we've gone to look different. But the world is still out there. Aside from Port of Notre Dame, most of the major sites are still out there. So, you can still see them all. And the world's slowly opening up again. So, there are really only a handful of places that I am not seeing interest in yet because they're ... China, which has a no COVID policy. People aren't going to China. Japan, it's open, but it's not open. But, yeah.

Curtis Worcester:

So one kind of follow up there, and what do you see ... I think I know the answer to this, but obviously cost is a part of this, right, that's changed is that, I mean, obviously the pandemic and now inflation, and I know Ben talked about that in our intro. Just kind of what are you seeing there with cost? Is it drastically changing in travel right now? Has it not changed? Has it changed then come back. Where are we at with that?

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

We are, I would say probably 20% higher than we were in 2019 if we're talking about, and maybe 2020. It's hard to compare because not everything was open or accessible. But I'm seeing a significant cost increase and that's just the cost of services are higher.

Curtis Worcester:

Sure.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

There have been some really interesting things. So I don't know if you know this, rental cars are a pain in the butt. And the story behind it is that the rental car fleets sold off their fleets because the cost of the used car cost was going through the roof. Nobody was renting. So they sold everything off and then they couldn't buy new cars just like the ...

Curtis Worcester:

Rest of us.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Yeah, exactly. So they have wait lists and they're slowly rebuilding their inventory here. So there are just not as many as there used to be. And that's kind of true for different reasons, but true across the industry that there are just fewer options. There are fewer places that people are going to like I said, China, Japan, Australia was off the table for a really long time. And when Europe was largely closed to us, we were seeing most people who wanted to leave the country or people were either staying domestically or they were going to Mexico, which just causes demand to increase. So, it's really a combination of factors. And I think we'll start to see some things come back down.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

We're also saying, because the exchange rate for the Euro is as good as it's ever been, so Europe though, the costs are higher, when you look at euros compared to 2019, for us, they're not as high as they would be otherwise. Selfishly, it's great for us, for us traveling. Yeah.

Ben Smith:

So, Keri, I know obviously we're kind of talking about some challenges here, right, costs and as you said, like vaccination statuses and what you may need in one country versus another. And again, things are being relaxed and it's getting better, getting closer to what we previously experienced. But for example, I know we're all seeing that right now as labor shortages during flights. As flight teams and pilots having to get moved from one hub to another, to then catch the next plane and the mechanical issues and not having anybody to work on it. All of those. And to your point about then I go to rent a car and there's not a car to rent. And so, there's a lot of, again, hurdles and challenges that I think are new ... But travels always had a level of hurdles and challenges. So I guess what I was always taught that whenever we present a problem in life, what we just talked about, it's our job to present possible solutions.

Ben Smith:

So now that we've talked about a few things that might make our travel journeys more difficult. So what are some possible tips, tricks and hacks to overcome those challenges?

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Number one, the number one tip, trick hack, anything that I can offer is to be flexible.

Ben Smith:

Yeah.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

It's hard to say because we've all been cooped up for so long. Everybody's so excited to get out into the world again. And because travel is more expensive than it's been in a long time, I think there are a lot of really high expectations. And so, when things go wrong, it feels even harder now. But really if you can just let go a little bit of some of that rigidity and be a little flexible. Okay. So something goes wrong. Your flight gets delayed by half an hour. We can weather that storm. I am going to tell you to use a travel advisor. I think, I'm incredibly biased here, but we do a great job.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

So for example, I had a client who was in Belgium. They called me from Bruges to tell me that their train was running late, and while I was on the phone with them could find the connecting trains that if they missed their train in Brussels, what's the next time that they can get on a train? How long is it going to take? What's the cost increase? All of that. Can we get their money back? And we had answers in 15 minutes while they were still on the train. And luckily they made their train and it didn't matter in the first place. But it was peace of mind for them. And that's the benefit. One of the benefits of having a travel advisor is we can help make things a little more easy smooth.

Ben Smith:

Well, I think Keri, just to jump in for a second, it seems like there's more disruption to our travel. Maybe it feels like there's a high probability of that something might happen during your travel. So to your point, by being flexible of like, well, if there's a higher probability that something goes wrong, we have to be flexible enough to maybe take a little bit more time to solve it. And I don't know from a feeling perspective, observation, anecdotally it's like, I think, maybe us as a world community, we maybe are a little less patient with certain things. And it feels like we're very passionate about our experiences and wanting some gratification a little more quickly.

Ben Smith:

So being on hold with a certain airline for two and a half hours while I'm stuck in an airport, those sorts of things I could see where the families or retirement trips and all of a sudden there's something going on that's not really working the best. And all of a sudden, our relationships with the people that we're traveling with tends to have some friction there, I guess, is what I want to ... I'm trying to be careful on framing this. So, I guess, what I want to say is that to have an advocate, it feels like now more than ever there's room to have an advocate to help out and say, "Hey, I don't know this stuff. I'm not the expert. I don't do this on a daily basis. I'm doing the best I can. And probably I don't have the answers and I'm probably going to maybe mess that up."

Ben Smith:

So having an advocate I think is going to be pretty helpful. But I guess so in terms of, okay, here's one thing is have an advocate. Are there other things that so for example about being flexible, can you give some examples of something's going wrong in your travel, what sort of things do I need to be flexible to in order to maybe get to some better outcomes?

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Yeah. I think it's just being patient a lot of the time. Because I think especially when you're frustrated and you're standing in line with a hundred other people because your flight's been canceled and you're waiting to get to the front of the line. It's really easy to snap at the people around you, family members or other people in line. And it's easy to snap at the people who are trying to help you. And that's not helpful. It's easy to do. We've all done it. I hate to admit it, but we've all done it. But it just doesn't help. So that kind of stuff seems obvious, but it's something that I would implore people to try and have a little patience, have a little grace.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

We're all trying to get through this together. There are things that you can do in advance to mitigate some of these problems. We're talking about booking direct flights rather than having connections. You just minimize your chances of losing your luggage. You can buy Apple AirTags if you're an Apple user and throw them in your luggage. So you can track your luggage remotely on your phone. So if the airline loses it, can't figure out what they've done or they put the wrong tag on your luggage, which is something that has happened, you can track it and say, oh my gosh, my luggage is in Cancun and I'm supposed to be in Turks and Caicos. And you get them to claim it.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

I also always recommend booking an early morning flight and looking at when you're specifically talking about flights, because flights are often where we're seeing a lot of the issues first arise. An early morning flight if you can, if you have a connection through somewhere that has multiple connection options during the day. So for Bangor, we have plenty through Philly, plenty through DC, plenty through New York. And if you book that first flight and you say, you're coming back to Bangor, you've got an earlier flight. Hopefully, if something goes wrong with that first flight, mechanical issues, whatever, they can get you on a subsequent flight that day rather than three days later or whatever.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

I make no promises. But that's one of the things that I always do for my own travels is I try and take those earlier flights. It's inconvenient, but it's ...

Curtis Worcester:

That's a really good point though. I mean I know the three of us know the Bangor airport. Well, I mean the flight to DC goes back and forth eight or nine times in one day. So that's a good tip. I never thought about it that way. All right. Enough of stuff going wrong. I'm going to move on now. So, I want to ask currently, what are some popular destinations that your clients are booking now or the past few months or even a few months into the future here? And why are those places hot right now? And maybe why of other places that were popular pre pandemic? I know you teased this a little earlier if stuff's closed and stuff, but really I guess where are people going and why are they going there right now?

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

That's a really good question. So for a while in the pandemic, we were really seeing people almost exclusively going domestically. And then, when they started to feel comfortable with a little bit more of the world, Mexico. Mexico is always popular. Always popular for us who have winter, right? Especially on the east coast, it's super easy to get to Cancun. There are a million and a half flight options. That's definitely popular. It's always popular for that reason. It's also very popular because there were no quarantine requirements, no vaccination requirements. And we could get back into the US relatively easily.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Most of the hotels that we're going to an all-inclusive resort in Cancun area or whatever have the testing option on site so that people could then just get right back into the US when the testing was still something that we had to do. So Mexico was popular. That kind of expanded a little bit further into the Caribbean, but really it was truly Mexico for a while. National parks got really popular for a while. Or always popular but were definitely popular where people thought, "Well, let me cross this off my bucket list." I could drive there if I had to. I can see parts of the US that I haven't seen before and they're outside in the open.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

And it's a lot of that kind of stuff that we were seeing. And now that Europe is back open, Italy is super popular. I think people have had Italy on their bucket list for a really long time. And they said, "Let's do it. Let's plan this." I have no idea. Maybe they watched a lot of the Stanley Tucci Searching for Italy during the pandemic. Maybe.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah. Could be.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Yeah. Right.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah. Yeah.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Yeah. And another place that's really popular specifically for us on the east coast is Portugal. It's easy to get to, easy to get into. They had really low COVID rates for a while. They had a really high vaccination rate. So I think people felt really safe going there and it's beautiful. The food's good. The people are nice. So those places. We were seeing those trends before the pandemic. I think that it just kind of got exacerbated where people maybe they were going to take a river cruise, but they decided it was too risky.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

They didn't like being enclosed on a boat. So they decided they were going to do, what's called an FIT, which is free and independent travelers. That's the kind of trips that I tend to be the most helpful for. Often is where you're going to Italy and you want to see Florence, Venice and Rome. How do you get from point A to point B? How do you see all the things you want to do? I organize your tours for you. I organized your hotels, all of that, your trains. And I think people felt safer doing that often than they felt doing something like a cruise or something, a group tour. Yeah.

Curtis Worcester:

No, that makes a lot of sense. And it's almost like some of this too. I know you mentioned some of these destinations were you could see it coming pre pandemic, I wonder if not being able to do it for two years also kind of scared people or made people say, "You know what, I'm not waiting anymore. I am going to do it. I'm going to go to these places." So I'm going to go back to kind of pick your brain here for a couple tips or tricks here. I know we were talking about airlines a few minutes ago. Obviously, cost is a big thing right now with travel, as you mentioned. So what are your best kind of tips and tricks right now in terms of negotiating or just finding affordable or the most affordable airline travel right now?

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Airline travel, man. Airline, I'm going to preface this with the airline travel. The airline portion of travel is just the absolute pits, right? Yeah. It's not the exciting part, but it's essential to get to where you're going.

Curtis Worcester:

Sure.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Book in advance as far, gosh, what is the average date? I think it's 54 days in advance is when you start to see really the perfect balance between flight availability, like it's truly going to happen at that point. And the price is not increasing as quickly as it.

Curtis Worcester:

Interesting.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

But that is an older statistic. So don't totally follow that. Things are influx always since 2020. But yeah, book in advance. If you know somewhere you're going to travel during a really popular time, holiday time, that kind of thing, book that as soon as you know. Caveat there, as we talked about rental cars, if it's somewhere that requires a rental car to make your trip happen, you're talking about an August 2023 national parks trip and you need a rental car once you get there, look to make sure that there are rental cars available and also book that. Because you don't want to then book your flight to Missoula, Montana and discover that Missoula, Montana has no rental cars for you. Which is something that happens.

Ben Smith:

Noted. Noted.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Yep.

Ben Smith:

So Keri, my parents, so again, they've kind of been expanding their circle here and what they've been doing for travel. So they're retired and they recently booked a tour of Kentucky and Tennessee that was themed around behind the scenes look at the Kentucky Derby. So my mom is a horse person. She loves horses, grew up around horses and she said, best tour bar none she'd ever done. So question for you then is, so what's your advice about finding tours that create those memorable experiences? How do you look, survey the field of here's some of the tours that are out there and finding the right one for me, I guess is the question. How would somebody go about doing that?

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

So, I mean, it really depends when it comes to finding the right destination for you. Like your mom, for example, is a horse person, she probably has always thought about the Kentucky Derby. She's always known that it exists. If she came to me and she said, "I'm a horse person, this is my passion." I would say, "You could do a riding trip or have you done a dude ranch?" I have a horse client, a passionate horse ...

Ben Smith:

Not Miss Red, right?

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, I know what she's saying. Yeah.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Who's a client who went to Vienna because her goal in life is to see the Spanish riding school. And for me, what I would then do is I would work all of the connections that I have to try and make sure that she's getting not just a guide, but somebody who also really knows horses. And maybe we're going to send her behind the scenes to meet the riders.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

And maybe we're going to send her to Pierburg which is the summer horse destination, where she gets to go see what they're doing when they're frolicking in the fields, rather than performing at the Spanish riding school. Or she talks to the breeders, which is kind of a cool ... I don't know anything about that. I've watched National Geographic on occasion. But she comes back. She's like, "Oh, did you know? Did you know?" That kind of stuff. So for somebody like me for travel advisor, I think anybody who comes to you with a passion, we are going to do what we can to make sure that we match your passion level when it comes to your tours, your experiences. And that kind of stuff is my absolute favorite. When somebody has something that they love that they really want to do, I love making that happen because you're watching people's dreams come true. It's so cool.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Smith:

I think, Keri, you know and I have chat about this just offline at times is sometimes it's like you have this core idea of what you want to do, but it might not mean like well, as you're saying, geez, I didn't know that I'd have an option on the table maybe to feed the horses that I'm going to see and just to be able to walk up to them and feed them grain and have an interaction with that. And those sorts of things that you go, I didn't even know that would even be an option, right. That you wouldn't even know that's a question to ask, is it okay that I feed the horses? That sort of stuff I think is really cool for your industry and what you were able to do personally for people is like, "Hey, you could do A, B, C, D, E, F, and G, in addition to the thing?"

Ben Smith:

So, again, kind of a pretty cool thing that you go is not only just what I thought it was going to be, but is way more because of all those extras, which I think exceeds expectations. But I want to ask a question for those that are day one, episode one listeners of our show, way back episode three. So we're episode 70, just for some landscape. So, 67 episodes ago, way back when we were all in diapers and really, really young, we were talking about family vacations being something where multi-generations are booking a trip, but each generation does a bit of their own exploring to their own interests. And then, they all reconvene for mutual meals or conversations or mutual things that they do together.

Ben Smith:

So that was something that I thought was a really cool thing, because especially where I have a son and my in-laws and my parents were all really close and kind of doing something for multi-generational travel. I could see where there's lots of variance of interest and things that we all would like to do, but nobody would like to do all together. But how has that grown as a theme, this multi-generational travel? And what are some core themes you're seeing around what those kind of generations are looking to do? And I'll ask you a followup question when you've done that.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Okay. I mean that is still very true. We're definitely seeing multigenerational travel growing exponentially. I think a lot. We saw it a lot. I had many requests for full families where you're talking about grandparents down to grandchildren. Especially last year, starting last year where people were like, "Okay, my priority is to see my family. My priority is to hang out with them. I haven't seen them in a year. We're going to get together. We're going to do something." We're seeing a lot of larger property requests, villas or big home rental, that kind of thing, internationally and domestically.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

There are some really cool places that would then have cabins or something where people ... You see this kind of stuff in Maine too. Cabins where everybody can have their own space, but they can all come together, do their own activities and then go somewhere else if they wanted to have some time to themselves so that you're not all on top of each other. So yes, that's definitely grown a lot. But there are also, I think, not just doing things separately, but there's a lot of the doing things together where some of the group tours have really started to understand that this is a theme.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

So for example, some of the bike tours or some of the river cruises that have biking options, they're making sure that they have electronic bikes so that mom can keep up with 10 year old, whatever, William, who's speeding off ahead, doing whatever and with significantly less effort and still have energy at the end of the day to do whatever, which is awesome. I love that. I think it's so cool to be inclusive. We're actually seeing a lot of people on the multi-generational trips wanting to have levels of activity that are just kind of staggered like that, where you can have all of you can do it together, but you don't have to be everybody, the fittest person in the world to do it, which is great.

Ben Smith:

So question that maybe you might be thinking about personally here. So talking about multi-generational travel and for someone that has a little one and I have a soon to be third grade as well. So this has been and present in our thoughts as well. So we're getting to travel, we're planning things out, but the question is, okay, now I have a little one. And I'm wondering whether all this money and all the planning and all the things we're going to do. And all of a sudden, little one gets sick or needs a nap from 1:00 to 5:00 or all those things. So I guess the question is, what age do you feel like kind of big travel, whether it be multi-generational or not, but what age do you think kind of kiddos maybe starting to incorporate them into those plans that maybe would meet expectations of the parents without leaving them kind of disappointed that, "Hey, I got to put my kid first, but I had to leave a lot of stuff on the table because we had to adapt."

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Yep, yep. Ben, you can probably tell me more than I can tell you. I have been told that sometimes vacation with kids is very much just parenting with different scenery. You're doing the same thing that you would do at home just somewhere else. And I've been advised to lower my expectations when it comes to the things that we can actually accomplish. That said, we are going, we are about to leave for a multi-generational trip with my in-laws the entire family. There are nine of us going to Italy. My one year old is included in that.

Ben Smith:

Awesome.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

And I think it helps for us to have a lot of hands. It's not just me or my husband who's going to be dealing with tantruming 15 month old. And you adapt, you do what you can to make them comfortable. But I would say that travel at any age is really worth it.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

I mean, I'm excited to see him get excited about stuff. And he is equally excited about the sand at sand beach as he's going to be about the sand on the Amalfi coast or whatever. For me, it's so cool. I am making memories for me rather than for him as a 15 month old. You having a kid who's in elementary school, it's a little bit of a different story. He starts to really enjoy the things and have opinions about what he wants to do. They're a little bit bigger, broader. He's got his own interests and that I think is also so cool to watch. So I don't think there's ever a time that's too early, but it really depends on what your comfort level is.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

And if you think that your enjoyment of the trip is going to be overrun by your emotions of frustration towards your child or whatever, then sit it out. Maybe wait a little while until that's not the case or until they have opinions about. And I think most parents will take their kids' opinions into consideration. If your kid is the thing that I love most in the world is trains. I want to go ride a train. You're going to make that happen. And it's worth it, even with the frustrations and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Don't know if that answers it, ask me again ...

Ben Smith:

No. I'm with you. I'll add just to my own personal experience. I'm not a travel advisor nor do I want to [inaudible 00:38:07] but that's something where for us where we've done a bunch of trips with our kiddo from I think age four or something, we were starting to do that. And it just felt like more and more that when he got to understand what we're doing and that he could then kind of say, here's what we're doing. And he could then say, this is the thing today that I'm really excited about doing. Even though there might be a few things before he got to do his thing, but that thing was keeping him alert and present. And then, again, we know biologically that we need to rest or hey we get to 95 degrees and we're going to need a break or we're going to need food more often or water or whatever. Making sure those things are being taken care of.

Ben Smith:

But I think that by everybody kind of participating into the list of the stuff that they wanted to do is that we all checked the boxes. If a day was a bus because of weather or tantrums or dad tantrums, mom tantrums anybody tantrums, it's like, well, there's a new day tomorrow. And okay, it's a bus, the whole vacation is not a bus, we're okay. We'll be flexible. That was our experience with it. And it was a new day the next day and we just tried again and just being thankful and grateful and present, I guess, was kind of a big thing for us.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

I will take that into consideration as we go.

Ben Smith:

What that's worth. Yes.

Curtis Worcester:

Yes. I like the idea of having a part two episode when Keri gets back from Italy so we can really get the answer to this question but ...

Ben Smith:

She's like, you know what I said, what I really meant was yeah.

Curtis Worcester:

No, no, that was great. So I'm going to keep going. I'm going to change gears back to money. I'm the money guy here apparently on today's script. So obviously inflation has just been everywhere. That's the topic with our conversations with our clients. Even our clients who have been very kind of cost conscious in the past, but now they're just really aggressive cutting costs everywhere they can. So I want to ask you, Keri, what are some things that your clients have been doing or what have you been doing for your clients to really keep their costs down or to just help combat some of these rising costs as they plan these travel trips?

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

One of the things that anybody can do is, again, plan travel in advance because really what's the hardest right now is the last minute trips. And I know it's so hard because we've all been cautious for several years. Maybe not all, but we've all had this on our minds, right, things could change at any moment. The world could shut down again. Maybe. Who knows? So, I think that there have been a lot of really last minute trips where suddenly you feel like, oh yeah, I am comfortable at eating in a restaurant. I am ready to go somewhere. I am ready to get on a plane. But planning in advance, start planning a year in advance at least is really, really helpful. So then, you can also budget. You can understand. You can wrap your head around what things really do cost. Even if you don't book it all at that point, you say, okay, this is how much it's going to cost. I'm going to book the hotels because those are essential, but we're going to wait on some of the other things.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

I haven't done a whole lot of paring down for clients. I think they've done it on their own where they've said, "I want to do my trip, my bucket list trip the way that I want to do it. But that means that I'm going to forego this other vacation that we kind of have in the works. We're going to put it off until 2023, 2024," something like that. I guess that's not entirely true. I had one client where we really did a pivot. They originally planned on Paris and Paris was very popular. It was booked. Things were more expensive. And this is the client who ended up going to Belgium. Okay. Well, what if we fly into Paris, we spend a couple days on either end of the trip in Paris so we get kind of the feel of the city?

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

We don't feel like we're missing out as much, but we spend the bulk of the trip in Belgium. And Belgium was significantly cheaper and significantly cooler because it was summertime and it's further north. So some of those less popular destinations are definitely a thing to consider. I mean, for a lot of it's hard to anticipate. We know that food costs are higher. We know that gas costs are higher. But we don't know how much higher they're going to be. And sometimes there's no way around it. You've got to eat. You've got to get there.

Ben Smith:

Can I just maybe ask, maybe let's get a little specific on the cost part. So say I'm working with you, Keri, and I'm going like, okay, we're a year in advance. Here's the trip I'm thinking about. It's 2023 summer. This is what I'm looking to do. So you kind of use the number just roughly of, okay, travel costs have been going up by about 20% a year, right?

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Yep.

Ben Smith:

So would the thought be that okay. Say just because to keep the math kind of easy, say it's a $5,000 trip. So, thinking about, hey, if I got a budget for 2023, then maybe what I'm trying to do is let's kind of book, let's budget, another $1,000 here in 2023. So there's the 20%. So if I'm over, I kind of have thought that through. Say it's worse. Say it's like, no, it's 30% or 40%, right. It's 2000 more than what I thought it was going to be. So, as we're starting to book things like we're working together and we book the flight and then we got to book the hotels. We book the tour. Geez. It's starting to creep up. Is that kind of the point where you're kind of saying, okay, well, we're getting kind of excess above even the inflationary budget. Is that something where you're then kind of picking apart and then reconfiguring the cost to get it back into the wheelhouse?

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

It really depends on the client. If I present you with a trip and your stated budget is $6,000, because we've pre budgeted for it and everything. And I say, okay, but the trip that you have in mind where you're staying in this level, this category of hotels and you're doing this, I don't know, private transfers instead of the train or something like that. Here's what that's going to cost. And usually, if you look at it and you say, but this is my perfect trip. I'm not going to change it. Then we won't change it. But if you look at it and you say, oh, but I just can't do this. Then I'm going to work with you to change it. And there are things that we can do. You can lower your room category or you can go to a different tier of hotel. You could take the train instead of taking a private transfer. We could cut out ...

Ben Smith:

Shorten the stay.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Shorten the stay. Yeah. Yeah. There are usually places. And I can't always itemize because often, I use partners on the ground who have proprietary rates with their tour guides and their hotels and that kind of thing. So I can't always itemize things, but I have a pretty good guess on what the most expensive part of your trip is going to be and where we can. So, if you're going to the multi coast and you're taking a private charter yacht up and down the coast, it's pretty easy to say that's the most expensive part. Maybe we take a smaller boat. Maybe we don't do the boat part at all. Maybe we do it by land and we cut out a thousand dollars or something. There are things that you can do.

Ben Smith:

Maybe list the help of your 10 year old to bike you up and down the coast. It could be lots of different ways to make that happen.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Many different ways. I really hate to compromise on the quality of somebody's trip because they can't afford to do it the way that they want to do it. I would much prefer that if you look at the trip and you say, it is just out of budget, but this is my dream trip. Well, let's try and put it on the books for the following year when you can afford to bring it to the level that you've dreamed about. Because there are some things that just, I don't want you to come home disappointed. Most people hopefully are not disappointed. I have not heard of people being very disappointed on their trips or whatever. But I would hate for that to happen. Say you've always dreamed about going to see the pyramids and then you end up not actually seeing the pyramids because it's out of budget. Geez, that would be a real bummer, right? Yeah.

Ben Smith:

Well, so Keri, I know talking about with our clients is we talk about not hopes and goals, but also fears. And I know some fears that kind of come up is getting stuck in an airport, which of course you hear about on a nightly basis with news, missing connecting flights, flight canceled, especially in a foreign airport.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Yep.

Ben Smith:

So what are some things that you find your clients are most scared about traveling and then how are you helping them overcome that?

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

We standard stuff, even pre pandemic pre all of the travel disruptions, I find people are often scared of foreign countries with foreign languages trying to communicate with people. The good news is that we Americans by and large speak English. The world by and large has learned English to speak with us and with the Brits. So, we're very lucky from that standpoint. But I can help provide some of the translation tools that you can use or just common phrases and get you a guide maybe, like a person, a physical person guide. Because I'll tell you like Thailand, I speak one word of Thai. Having now been there, my husband and I went. He doesn't speak Thai. We had a guide and she was a little spitfire. She had an umbrella. She whacked people out of the way with it, do whatever. But I had no problem getting around Thailand because she was there to help translate and say, oh, well this is good.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

And is what's in this food. This is what's in that food. So that kind of stuff really helps put people at ease in my experience. The travel disruptions, I think, are everybody's nightmare. Nobody likes them. And with some of the stuff that we talked about already, the hacks for airline travel and that kind of stuff helps put some of that at ease. I use an air desk for my own travels frequently and for the travels for my clients, if they're not booking with credit card points. That's usually what I would recommend. And you pay a fee it's like a $50 fee per ticket, but that $50 fee gets you a 24 hour person that you talk to.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

If your flight gets canceled, I am going to tell you, go stand in line in case that the line is short enough and the person in front of you, the ticket agent in front of you, has better access to more information. Maybe they know something that we don't. We can't always see all the information, but also get on the phone with the 24 hour ticket agent that I have for my air desk who's going to say, ah, okay, so you're going to miss this flight or you're going to miss this connection, but here are the other options for you. That kind of stuff, man, that is priceless. I am happy to pay $50 more per ticket for that, so.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, that's a great word of advice there. So obviously, Keri, the last time you were on our show with us, which was your second appearance on our show, we talked about the concept of wonderlist, right? Essentially that wishlist of vacation ideas that codified someone's ideas of where they might want to go, things they want to do or experiences they want to have. So the question I have for you is, over the last couple of years, how have your clients wonderlist changed? Obviously travel's changed and whether you could go somewhere, couldn't go somewhere. So I guess, just their wonderlist, have they changed over the last couple years?

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Yeah, they have. The where you can go part of the list has really bumped things higher or lower on people's lists. Like I said, Japan, hard to get into. It's on a lot of people's bucket list and maybe that was going to be their trip for 2022 and they can't do it. So they're going to put it off until a little while longer and bump something up a little higher. We've seen a rise in people wanting to do safaris because Africa was relatively open, has continued to be relatively open. And people kind of had that lower on their list and then bumped it right up because they could go there, which is pretty cool.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

I mean, I love when people take chances on their trips and that's a big trip and yeah. And we've seen, I would say a real uptick in bucket list kind of travel. We're really seeing a lot of the Italys, a lot of the people who have never been, who really want to go for the first time to somewhere new, foreign. Yeah.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah. That's great. So I have one more question for you. So we've reached the end of our conversation here. As you may remember, we usually ask a retirement kind of success question. But now that you've been on our show a couple of times, I can't ask you that one again. So if people want to hear that answer, they got to go back to episode three to hear that one. So I want to ask and I'm going to go back to the first question I asked you about why you love Maine so much. So they're going to intertwine here. So if you had to design the perfect weekend of experiencing the State of Maine for someone who'd never been here, how would you structure their stay?

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

It depends on what part of Maine, because Maine really has a bunch of different parts. But I think as I highlighted before, actually what's in my bio there, the three elements, in my opinion that make any destination are going to be the food, the landscape and the people. And if I can have all three of those things, if I can check those off for somebody, that's definitely what I'm going to do. So if it's, I don't know, MDI or something, MDI is a great place to send people, honestly, because there are outdoor activities for every skill level. There's good food to be found. It really hits the Maine landscape you've got the ocean and the mountains. So yeah. Try and get them some of that. Try and get them some delicious food. If they're lobster people, that's pretty easy. We can find somewhere to eat some lobster ...

Curtis Worcester:

Probably find some lobster, yeah.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

If they're not, then we can find something else that's good. I mean, Maine, we're really lucky. We've got a lot of really good local food that people take a lot of pride in, which is awesome. We are so lucky. And then the people, maybe it's at a restaurant, I want to get people to really have an interaction with somebody who lives here. I can live here and be that person for them. But because Mainers are so passionate about the state and love it and they're so passionate about so many things. One of my favorite Maine person experience is my mom and I went to Stonington in 2019 before everything. And we went to the Center for Coastal Fisheries. Is that what it's called? And it's like a one room, little museum thing. And it's staffed by this local celebrity who's a retired lobsterman named Leroy Weed.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

He's been written up in Down East Magazine and Maine Mag and the BDN. You can see him all over the place and he is just so passionate about what he's done, what he does. And he wants you to know all about lobsters and all about lobstering, all about the Maine coast. He wants you to stick your hand in the tank and understand this is what this looks like. It's so cool. So that kind of person is who I would love. If I can find somebody like that to have somebody interact with that's like cherry on top, right?

Curtis Worcester:

All right. Sounds like they're going to Stonington then.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Yeah right.

Ben Smith:

Well, Keri, thank you so much for your time today. Again, kickstarting our retirement travel plans. I think you were a wealth of information for people to just start dreaming. Just to listen to our conversation, get them inspired, get them fired up to go outside of their locale and to go experience and go just explore, I guess, is the big thing here. So I appreciate you imparting all that on us and it was a real fun time. Thanks for coming on our show again.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Thank you for having me.

Ben Smith:

All right. Take care.

Keri Forbringer Hetherman:

Thanks. Bye.

Ben Smith:

So, well, we dug in ice cream today, so that was the good thing is we were able to get out our favorite flavors in summer of '22. And again cookies and cream seems to be the champion ...

Curtis Worcester:

That's right. That's the one.

Ben Smith:

Yeah. So, Keri Forbringer Hetherman, really great to have her on the show. Our only three time guests at this point kickstarting our retirement travel plans in 2022. And again, I think, there's a lot of things that we can take away from today's show. Again, me personally, what I took away is, again, I know inflation is something that we've been talking about a lot and that's coming up with our clients, whether it be grocery store, from every little thing that we do from food and dining out to big travel. And interested to hear Keri's point about 20% to kind of annualized rate here of inflation for travel costs. But she also brought up another point about, you got to be careful about where're going because of exchange rates. So I think those are some key things to come thinking about.

Ben Smith:

And one thing that I just took away, especially as you are looking ahead, she's saying 12 months, and looking at what you're going to do and where you're going to go. And thinking about that budget is maybe adding a little bit of a layer of extra just in case. So, again, you don't want to get to that point and I'm kind of locked in and out and I'm feeling really uncomfortable about the amount of cost I have here. So I think that was something for me that I took away there. What about yourself, Curtis?

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, first I'll just echo that last piece you point out, because that was just huge. And you think about the best case scenario there. You might overs save for your trip. I'm a lot happier when I overs save for something than when I under save. So I think that was a huge point there and I'm glad you made it. I think the other one and I think it might have even been her takeaway of the episode or she wanted to hone in, but she just talked about being flexible. And I know we've talked about that in the past, just generally over the last couple of years in any area of these conversations. But I think tampering expectations. You got to know. You know what's going on with travel right now. You see the news about airplanes and airports and pilot shortage and all this.

Curtis Worcester:

So, again, do the work, do your budget, make that planned plan, your trips, because we all want to get back to life here. But I think that flexibility piece is key and just being patient, like she said. I know this is a minor point, but the lady at the ticket desk for American Airlines, when your flight gets canceled, she didn't cancel your flight or he, it's not their fault. So just be flexible, be open. You're planning this trip. Don't let some, it may seem like a major inconvenience at the time, but if the whole grand scheme of things, like she said, the flight is necessary, but it's not the highlight of the trip. So try not to let these delays kind of hamper the whole experience.

Ben Smith:

Yeah. And, again, I think Keri gave some good tips about how to maybe minimize some of those disruptions and kind of things to think about as you do. So, yeah, really great to point there Curtis. And so for us, so again, you can find a little bit more about this show. We're going to have a little bit more if you want to contact Keri about talking travel. Again, obviously she's very open to talking about it. If you want to reach out and kind of get her thoughts on certain ideas that you might have and maybe planning that next trip, you will have information for you to reach out to her. So you can go to blog.guidance point llc.com/70 because we turned 70 today.

Curtis Worcester:

It's our 70th birthday.

Ben Smith:

70th birthday. So that's our 70th show. We really appreciate everybody tuning in. Again, we had a little award that we were named best of the best financial advisors in the greater Bangor Area in 2022. So for those that voted for us and maybe listeners show that did we thank you for doing that. That was a really wonderful honor that we were given. And we will catch you next time.