MSU Extension 4-H Adulting 101

Good evening, everybody. You ready for me to take over Kathy? You got a few things to say? Yeah, welcome everyone to the Adulting 101 for June. Today we have Andy Northrop, who is our Tourism Extension Educator Expert from MSU Extension. This is our, our June 2nd webinar. Thank you all for taking time. Please, while we're getting started, if you can put in the chat where you're zooming in from, your county and possibly your state, and then I'm going to turn it over to Andy. Welcome. All right. Hi everybody. Kathy, I guess you'll manage a chat here shortly. I'll chime in on the chat periodically. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the actual second version of Adulting 101 travel session, if you will. This one's called Smart Travel Abroad, and the previous one we did this time last year was on Traveling on a Budget. There's some similarities here tonight, but this one specifically is about being overseas, going overseas. If you're not familiar with MSU Extension, our mission is to help people improve their lives through an educational process that applies knowledge to critical issues, needs and opportunities. Just to let everybody know that we are funded through the United States Department of Agriculture and our programs and materials are open to all. As Kathy said, I work in tourism here, one of our many program areas within MSU Extension, and it's a small but mighty team. This program is pretty unique in the sense that it is offered to youth. I don't historically work with youth and young adults, but on occasion, I get the opportunity to work with Kathy on things like this. We've got a lot to cover tonight as you would expect, Traveling abroad is a lot different than just traveling in the United States. We've got 190 some countries, I think, somewhere in that range. So traveling to one country is going to differ from traveling to the next. So we're going to really hyper focus on something called an international travelers checklist and spend some time researching your country of choice. We will cover traveling on a budget. So if you attended the session last year, there will be some similarities because a lot of the tips that you would use within the United States are applicable in other countries as well. We will just talk a little behavioral decision making tools that can help you organize your thoughts at the end. So smart travel abroad is really about more than just budgeting. This is about understanding your destination or destinations plural. It's also about learning some of the culture and safety within these countries that you intend to visit or have already visited, plan to visit. It's about knowing laws and rules abroad as well within different countries and about being prepared for different and unexpected experiences. And while we can't anticipate exactly everything that will happen to us traveling in other countries, Learning some of the culture and safety and the laws and rules abroad and being prepared for different circumstances can help keep your budget in line. Because rules change from country to country, cultures change from country to country and having a general idea of some of the potential pitfalls and pros and cons will help you manage your time and your resources more effectively. And all of this, if done so will help keep your budget. All of this up. What did I say that? Last sentence is misspelled. But anyway, you get the point, I think. I'm going to turn my video off here and Kathy, if you're opposed to that, let me know, but I've got a bandwidth issue here. International tourism to the United States slumps. This is from April of 2023, approximately a month ago or so, but Americans can't stop traveling overseas. So this is not something that we always see, but that's a good sign that Americans are getting out and traveling overseas. I would like to know a little bit about the 14 of you currently on here today. Kathy has a poll that she's going to put up. The big question is, where are you on traveling abroad at this point today? So we've got coming in they're coming in fast. So we're over 61%. We'll give you a couple more seconds. All right. I'm going to end the poll, and then I'll share the results. So you see the results, Andy, or you want me to go over? Yeah, I can see them. We have two out of 11 that took the poll that never traveled abroad. Six, over 55% have with their family only. That's a good sign. One or 9% have traveled abroad minimally once or twice on their own. One has traveled has traveled extensively abroad and one has even lived abroad. That is good to know. We're going to move forward. If you want to add any more information or if you didn't get a chance to take the poll, feel free to put your response in the chat. I see a couple more people trickling in here. Tonight's webinar is only an hour long, so I try to make these as interactive as I can. Kathy, can I close this poll out? Are we good to go? Yeah. We're good. So everybody should be able to access the chat and should be familiar where that is. I'm generally curious where do you want to go the most? Put your country of choice in the chat if you want to, but more importantly, get a country in mind and keep this location in mind throughout tonight's webinar. So obviously we're not going to pick the United States. It could be anything from some other country in North America to somewhere across the continent of Africa, Asia, Europe, South Pacific, and while they trickle in, looks like some people, South Korea, I used to live in South Korea, Japan, New Zealand I lived in New Zealand too, Iceland, Wayne County, Westland. Just kidding. Stockholm, Sweden. All right. So Belize, wonderful. Give some thought to countries. You have the bucket list, the number one because we're going to spend some time researching it tonight. A lot of the information that I'm going to share to you tonight is from the US Department of State, the Bureau of Counsular Affairs. I came across this government website that specifically deals with travel and I thought, goodness, they have such a wide range of information on this website that this is really what we're going to focus on. And the Department of State has the Bureau of Consular Affairs and they have a five step checklist for traveling abroad. Full disclosure, I've traveled to many countries and I've spent many years abroad in Korea, New Zealand, lived in Thailand as well for a long time and full disclosure. I never spent any time researching what the United Department of State has to say. This is really good information as people begin to plan trips abroad. So we're going to walk through these five steps. One is we're going to learn about your destination. We're going to talk briefly about the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program, also known as STEP. We're going to talk about the importance of organizing your required travel documents, and we're going to talk about reviewing travel basics and personal considerations, and then the buying travel insurance, considering doing that if you're going abroad. The five step checklist for travel abroad has eight steps to it. And when you learn about your destination, which we're going to do shortly here in a few minutes, there's different points here where they talk about travel advisories. So these are government issued advisories on certain countries that have different circumstances taking place. Some may be high level of threat, some all the way down to no level of threat to US citizens. There's also tips from the US embassy, entry and exit and visa requirements, passport validity requirements, US embassy, and consulate contact information for each country that we have an embassy in. There are sections on local laws and special circumstances when learning about your destination. There's also health information such as vaccine requirements. Should you be headed to a country that has those requirements, it's good to be very aware of those and potential outbreaks for different circumstances. The last one is searching your destination. So Kathy is going to put in the chat this link to, again, the Department of State's Bureau of Counsular Affairs. I'm just going to play a video here. It's not all that exciting of a video, but we're going to put this in the chat and each of you is going to , research a country in this particular case, I put in Costa Rica. If you're watching the video right now, you can see that there are sections on the travel advisory, embassy messages, alerts from the embassy, things to be aware of, quick facts about the country, and so forth and so on. Embassy in San Jose, Costa Rica. You can see there's destination descriptions, safety and security, things to consider in Costa Rica. These are very important pieces of information and well written as well, local laws, special considerations, safety and security, things like that that will help travelers such as you going abroad for the first or second or third time, be aware and take note of. Specifically, this section calls out various activities, local laws, special circumstances, and so forth. So, Kathy, I'm going to have you stick that in the chat if you haven't already. Yep, I did. It's a second one. I put the checklist in prior to that. So it's the second link I put in. Okay. All right. So what we're going to do is all of you are going to ask to focus on number eight, searching your destination. You're going to learn about your destination, you're going to visit that link that Kathy put in there and it should go to travel.state.gov in the chat. I want all of you to just take 3 or 4 minutes, if you could, may take some a few minutes longer to type in your preferred destination and then find important pieces of information. What I'm looking for , because probably the most important thing when going to any country is to find out what you need to get into that country and how long can you stay in that country. Because if you can't get into it, you might as well not plan on going to it. Once you know you can go, if you think you're going to go for 60 days, but they only allow you to come for 30 days, that's going to greatly impact your budget and your plans. So we're going to share in the chat and I'm hoping people will certainly participate in this and share with us a lot of countries on the radar for people, Australia, Norway, Belize, Germany, Greece, France, Czech Republic, Poland. A lot of good stuff. So just take a couple of minutes and you can go right to entry and exit visa requirements. And I'm hoping people can just put in the name of the country they're looking at going to and how long you're able to stay and what is required before entry. (waiting...) Alright, Melinda, thank you. You're the first. In Japan, tourists can stay for 90 days visa free. That seems so long. For the average American, three month trip to Japan is pretty foreign, but people do take advantage of it. You'll get 90 days on arrival at the airport, it sounds like in Japan. I think South Korea is roughly the same. How about somebody else? Thank you, Melinda. (waiting...) 90 days without a visa in South Korea. There you go. Used to be only 30, 20 years ago. Those are two examples. New Zealand must have an ETA. We'll talk about ETAs here shortly. Pay a visitor conservation tourism levy and IVL. I haven't heard about that before. Nothing on how long you can stay for. Belize visa not required for stay is less than 30 days. There you go. Good. We've got four different countries and Australia tourists can stay for 90 days with the ETA. I'm willing to bet New Zealand is the same as Australia in terms of length of stay, but you definitely want to double check. Don't need vaccines for France. We'll get to health and other topics regarding to health and safety later, but good stuff, Haley on France. Iceland not required of staying less than 90 days, valid passport six months after departure. Good. That's important pieces of information. I'm going to move forward here because we're going to come back to that. The Smart Traveler Enrollment Program or STEP is a free service from the Department of State. It's ideal for anyone traveling or living abroad. This is a safety program. It sends email updates and alerts from the United States Embassy, I believe within those countries. There's security alerts, demonstration alerts, health alerts, weather natural disaster alerts, travel advisory updates, routine message about embassy and consular services. This is a good way to stay in touch with things happening in the country that you're visiting. And the same goes for tourists coming to our country, they are able to sign up for various alerts as well. So this is something I strongly suggest you consider regardless of where you're going. Number three is organizing your required travel documents. So obviously, passports are required, but maybe that isn't so obvious for everybody. You can't get into another country without a passport. Although I did take a cruise a few weeks ago and we were able to enter Mexico. But regardless, you're going to need a passport. Like we just did, don't forget to check visa requirements and length of stay first. Some countries require electronic travel authorizations. These are relatively new. They're also called ETAs. We'll get to those in a minute. List of medications. If you happen to take prescription medications, it's very good to have a backup copy of those at home. I often email these kinds of things to myself so they're accessible should I be traveling around the world. But making copies of important documents, give a set to friends and family, keep a set with you or two sets, take photos with your phone. There's just three or four different ways you can keep that stuff organized and always have access to it. That goes the same with passports. Take a copy of your passport with you, leave a copy of your passport at home. As I said earlier, emailing yourself a copy of your passport is always a good idea too. Passports, I just renewed mine the other day, took about three or four weeks in the mail. The renewal fee was around $130. It looks like passports, if you're getting one for your first time, might be a little bit more closer to 160. Regardless, though, you can apply for these at the United States Postal Office. You can do it all right there. That's where I had it done. That same website will give you further information on how to apply for a passport. Electronic travel authorization, ETAs, these are pretty common across Europe and Australia. Even Canada requires them for most people. Not sure they're required so much for Americans going into Canada, but entry ETA is an entry requirement for visa exempt nationals traveling to any one of the 30 European countries. So I'm going to focus a little bit on Europe right here because that seems to be the most dominant continent requiring ETAs with all of the European countries. This is basically a new requirement for Europe. I read that by the end of 2026, this is going to be in full force. It takes a while to get each country up and mobilized for these kinds of transitions. ETAs do not replace passports. An example is with the United Kingdom. Those are about $12.34 per person. They usually take three business days. I think getting an ETA for Canada is about the same price. It's pretty quick. But more importantly, always check websites for updates and costs. What's presented here may not be the same tomorrow should you be looking for price points and so forth for ETAs. Kathy will put another hyperlink in the chat regarding ETAs she's already put it, excuse me, in there. You want to apply for ETAs in in advance before you buy tickets and accommodation. That way you have guaranteed that you are traveling into the country and you're approved to do so. Passport details must correspond with the ETA authorization, even one number that doesn't match with your passport could really jeopardize the whole trip. I had a recent experience where one of the names was misspelled on my wife's reservations flying from Toronto back into the United States for a cruise and we had to jump through some hoops. And we were granted permission to travel, but that was a one time thing, I guarantee you that they don't make exceptions. Check your length of stay in the country requiring the ETA. Passport is to be valid for three months after intended departure from the European Union countries. Anyway, you can see all that information there. I've never used an ETA yet, so all I can speak to experience is just what I'm reading here. Review travel basics and personal considerations. One of the interesting things that I saw on the website is that every traveler is unique, learn more before you go. On the Department of State's Bureau of Consular Affairs website, they have descriptions and things to consider for all the different types of travelers. And you can see on the list there's cruise ship passengers, women travelers, 65 and older, volunteers abroad, people traveling with pets, firearms, travel agents, lesbian, gay, and bisexual travelers, adventure travelers. So if that is of concern to you, the US students abroad is one topic. I'm willing to bet some of the people on the call here today are potentially going abroad through university or high school or perhaps both. It gives you some information as to what to expect if you're a student abroad, and I strongly encourage people to spend some time on that as well as understanding culture shock at some point too. We're going to take a little bit more time now searching your destination. The reason I'm emphasizing this is because, 1. the length of stay, as I said earlier, is significantly important when deciding where and when to go to a different country, but also the safety and security as well as health and travel transportation. I'm going to give you another opportunity to research the country of your choice, going back to that initial website link that Kathy put in earlier, the one you used to research Japan and Norway and South Korea and all of that. But we're going to take a few minutes longer because we want you to dive in a little bit deeper on safety and security and health and travel and transportation and tell us one thing that you've learned about safety and security in the country of choice and one thing that is of significance to you for health and travel transportation. Those are categories within the website. I just put it in again. It's the US State Department one. The last one. I put in. Thank you. (waiting...) But we are going to take about 5 minutes for this. Yeah. Make sure you reply to all, not just the hosts and the panelists. Good point. Kathy, yeah. Haley, if you want to repost what you just put so everyone can see it. But you were quick. Kudos to you. France as of right now is experiencing terrorist attacks as well as Italy. So Haley, is that you mean in the news currently or you've pulled that from the website and the website is emphasizing that they are.. Alexander, you're going to go back to that website and find two important pieces of information, one, within the safety and security of the country of choice, and then two, health and travel and transportation in that same country of choice, and you're going to tell all of us what are those things that we should be knowledgeable regarding safety and security and health and travel and transportation. (waiting) Yeah. Thanks, Gabe. I'm not sure we can read something to that extent. If you could summarize it, you know, what stands out to you. I'm not really I don't think anybody can spend a great significant amount of time reading all of this. We're just kind of looking for a couple of sentences. You know, for example, local transportation in Costa Rica is not going to be as efficient as say, our country, therefore, there's probably delays and things like that. Nisha says in Iceland, the crime is low. Colin says, Sweden has been subject to terrorist incidents in the past and the potential for a future terrorist incident remains, has very low crime rate in South Korea, that's true. Isle of Man, imposter sometimes poses undercover police and demand cash payments and sure prescriptions are legal according to UK government. Very good. Yeah, don't let the website deter you of going abroad. Exercise increased caution due to crime level two, Belize City level three. Weather natural disasters in Japan, top three are typhoons, earthquakes and heavy snow. Snow, I know how to deal with typhoons and earthquakes, not so much. All right. You get the idea there is.. (reading) Australia has experienced lots of terrorism and lots of crime. Yeah. Well, I guess that's what the websites report on and then take it for what it's worth. I definitely think that depending on where you are within certain areas of the country, crime may be a lot higher and certain times of the day, crime is going to be a lot higher, such as being out late at night and in the early morning hours or something like that. Yeah, Kathy put in there about the health insurance. We'll get to some of that in a few minutes. Well, I'm going to press ahead here. Does anybody have anything on health? I was looking for something from somebody on perhaps vaccinations. That's something you're going to want to consider. Looks like most people are planning to travel to Western European, Scandinavian countries. I don't see anybody really or East Asian countries. All of those are relatively safe. If anybody is planning on going into a developing country and whatnot, I chances are you might need some vaccinations and so forth. New Zealand, do not need pre departure tests of proof of COVID vaccination. Yeah, I think we've passed that point, I believe. I'm going to move forward here in about another minute. Does anybody have a, Colin put in there something about medical care in Sweden. This is interesting. It is comparable to that found in the United States. However, non residents are expected to pay their own medical costs in full. This is interesting because we're going to move into another category on travel insurance. While Kathy put this in earlier, be aware that all US Medicare and Medicaid does not apply overseas. Most hospitals and doctors do not accept US health insurance. This is pretty much the blanket approach around the world. You can't roll into town and get banged up on a mountain bike or a motorcycle or crossing the street and then expect to be let out of the hospital because you're an American without a medical bill. Some countries, they will make you pay before they allow you to be discharged from the hospital. They can get pretty ugly. I've heard a lot of stories. Fortunately, none of them have happened to me. Egypt needs records of hepatitis A, typhoid, and yellow fever, interesting. There you go. A lot of people would love to go to Egypt. Sounds like you need records of those three diseases or that you don't have those diseases. All right. I'm going to move forward. So one more thing actually. Following these protocols and understanding safety and security, health and travel and transportation allows you to stay within your budget. The more you dig and the more you learn, such as if you went abroad and you didn't have travel insurance and you got sick, your budget would be out of whack and you would be stuck with a pretty hefty medical bill in another country. That brings us to our next part of tonight's webinar talking about considering buying travel insurance. This is all from the State Department as well. Critical information. US government does not provide insurance for citizens. It does not pay medical bills or costs, Recommends buying insurance before you travel, and assumes no responsibility, nor does MSU on tonight's webinar. This is a screenshot. When looking at travel insurance, I strongly suggest taking a significant amount of time to Because travel insurance varies widely. You should carefully read the terms of an policy to make sure it fits your needs before selecting the travel insurance. Make sure it covers the regions, your duration, medical care, transportation back to the United States, accommodation costs, pre existing conditions, activities you plan on engaging in. If you're a scuba diver or skydiver and you plan to go overseas and do some of those activities, it's not uncommon for travel insurance to not include those um adventure sports, if you will. For scuba divers, for example, they have their own insurance, which is very affordable for the Divers Alert Network, and you would want to purchase that. For skydivers, I cannot speak to that. So types of travel insurance to consider, and this is just a snapshot. Kathy is going to put in a link to the CDC Travel Insurance Center for Disease Control. They had a great series of information on their website. But in short, and I say this is summarized, medical evacuation is one type of insurance pays for medical care and emergency transportation. Travel health, that covers routine medical services overseas. Probably one of the most important is the medical, should you get sick, if you drink bad water, if you eat bad food, or you perhaps catch the flu in a different country and need to go to the doctor. Trip cancellation covers financial investments of the trip, flights, cruises, trains. Should you get stuck somewhere and you're not able to go on your trip. Sometimes the trip cancellations may not cover medical care you need overseas, so you may want to have a supplemental plan. The State Department website or the one we've been sharing a couple of times already today, they've got quite a bit of information on there. Bureau of Cosular Affairs, all this information is extracted from there, as well as the CDC travel insurance. Strongly suggests that for sure. Adulting 101, I'm moving into the next section and some of this may look familiar if you were on last year, so don't sign off because I've inserted some new stuff into this. I came across a website called Budget Your Trip. Kathy is going to put that in the chat. This website is fantastic. I've never heard of it until a few weeks ago, and we're going to do another activity where you are all given this website link and identify the country of choice and type it in. This website, budget your trip will give you general ballpark figures of costs to consider when going to Norway or Iceland or the UK and things like that. So take a few minutes. I'm guessing, Kathy, that's in the chat. Yeah, budget travel abroad and type in your country of choice and just share a little information as to perhaps what the average cost is for hotels or budget hotels or some piece of information from the country that you've had on the radar since the webinar began (waiting) Iceland, one week trip for two is approximately $2,400. Sweden, looks like Colin's focusing on maybe hotel rooms, $106- $198 on average. With the Iceland example from Nisha, that's pretty good information to start with. There's probably a million ways you can reduce that and we'll talk about some of them. But I'm sure there's a million ways that can get even higher too. It sounds like that's an average. Around $100 - 250 per night in South Korea. About $155 per day in New Zealand to spend per day. That's probably three meals in a hotel room. Kimberly one week trip to San Pedro for two people costs about $2,300. This includes accommodation, food, local transportation, and sightseeing. I thought that this website is fantastic. The more I looked at it and checked it out, the more I realized that this is very helpful and even if it is slightly out of date, I think it still has a lot of relevance. There's even a travel insurance guide here in the center, activities, day trips around hotel costs. Plug that one into your favorites on your computer and reference it when you do plan to go abroad, that will help you really flesh out costs. So I'm going to talk a little bit about budgets and costs of travel. As I said earlier, you know, as you all can see, it is significantly different from country to country. So to try and budget for going abroad is extremely hard unless you know exactly where you're going, which is the purpose of the activities before we made the transition to the slide. But for an average cost for a three day vacation in the United States, for an individual, it's about $1,400. These statistics are about a year 2-years-old now, so they're probably a lot higher. For a family of four, it's about $3,600 and So domestic versus international flights, the average in 2024 for a domestic ticket was 366 bucks. That's about the same. I just booked a ticket to San Francisco for a few days and it was about 350 bucks from Detroit. However, the average international economy class ticket is 1,200. But of course, that's going to vary from where you're leaving from and where you're intending to go. and of course, what time of year you plan to go. So there's going to be guaranteed cost traveling from the United States. That goes without saying you're going to go abroad from the United States, you have to unless you're going to Canada or Mexico, you have to fly, right? I suppose you could take a cruise ship and many do. But to get to Europe or Africa or East Asia, you're going to have to get on an airplane. There's a guaranteed hefty cost right from the beginning. It's best to book the trip three to five months ahead of the trip. From research shows that the midweek fares are cheapest, leaving on a Tuesday or Thursday, leaving on Tuesday, coming back on the following Wednesday. Finding cheaper flights, there's cheap tickets.com, Google flights, kayaks, Skyscanner. There's probably several more. I use all four of those, less with Skyscanner. But there's, I think Trivago and some of the other ones. There's so many now. But those are the four that I've honed in on for a number of years and you may want to consider those as well. Planning when versus where. There's the high season for us, which is June to August. That's typically when school is out in North America, the rates do increase at that time, of course, on holidays as well, December, spring break. The higher rates and the weather consistent with more crowds during all of this time. The low season shoulder seasons, if you will, May and September. Those are good times to leave and travel to different countries. There are lower rates, the weather is still good. Depending where though, of course, if you're in the Northern Hemisphere, the weather would be good. If you're going in May, which is our spring, you go to the Southern Hemisphere, you're going to be going into winter. If you're going in September into the southern hemisphere, you're going to be going into spring. Just remember that. Where you're going can ultimately impact when you go and both determine really how much you spend. Especially the where. That website, budget your trip is going to be a really great resource along with the Department of State Department. Significant traveling costs will come from driving, having your own automobile, renting your automobile, having a personal car, taxis. Strategies abroad and even within the United States and abroad carpooling or hotel shuttles, local transportation is a big factor, ride sharing services, those exist in many other countries like Uber and Lyft. Convenient in most urban locations. Not sure about other countries in rural locations outside of major cities, you'll probably have a hard time. That's why public transportation, like bus, rail, and train are going to be quite useful and different parts of going out throughout Europe, there's rail lines everywhere. Some of the downsides with public transportation is they're irregular hours, they may be longer distances, but that can also make the journey way more fun and exciting. Um, Walking, of course. If you can walk long distances, that's going to be your cheapest healthiest and an immersive slow travel. It's going to be lengthy, time consuming, and eventually exhausting. But getting around major cities, you can learn a lot and see a lot by just simply walking and catching a bus one way and perhaps walking back. Just again, use that safety and precautions component on that website to understand perhaps things to watch out for while you're doing those forms of transportation. Accommodation, prices will vary by location, the season, and the level of luxury that you are looking for. Within accommodation like hotel chains, major hotels, it's pretty consistent. That's a positive. You know what to expect. If you're a regular visitor to the holiday inn, for example, which I am, you pretty much know what to expect. There's also going to be security and front desk support at major hotels and perhaps smaller hotels in different countries. You know, mid range in luxury, you're going to have a larger value with goods and amenities, different qualities of goods and amenities, you know, breakfast and other snacks are typically included. You want to check the reservations on a lot of that, of course. And if you are a regular user of various hotel chains, maybe the Holiday Inn or the Embassy Suites or something, you can generate point systems points to then apply to future travel, which would reduce your cost. Of course, short term rentals is probably not something anybody is unfamiliar with. Certainly, you probably heard the term Airbnb or VRBO. These might offer more bang for bucks. In these types of settings, you can cook your own meals. The location may be even more convenient than a hotel. There's typically a lot of privacy, they're unique, they're authentic, and they can offer an experience that a lot of hotels can't offer. I think Airbnb's motto is live where you stay or something or stay where you, live where you stay where you live or something like that. The downsides to using Airbnb, there's sometimes a minimum night stay policy. Cancellation policies can be confusing and challenging. You definitely want to read the fine print right before you book those and understand what the renter or the homeowner is renting and what their cancellation policy is. Most times there's no security on site at these, so it's kind of a stay at will, excuse me. But I know you can get into, um, some assistance with Airbnb. I haven't used them in quite a long time. I'm not sure how they operate now, but there's usually cleaning fees, hidden fees, occupancy taxes with these, but those are probably not much different than what you may find at a resort resort fees and things like that, plus taxes too. Budget accommodation, camping is always fun. But of course, if you're going abroad and you plan to go camping, you lug in your gear to Japan or Korea, which is possible to do, can certainly have added weight, added luggage, added costs, But if you're able to camp in Norway and save on accommodation, and it sounds like it might be a good way to go. Hostels are another option, especially throughout Europe. These are very popular places for people to stay throughout different parts of Europe as well as Australia and New Zealand. They're typically found in larger cities, but smaller communities have them as well. They have dorm style and private rooms, often with shared bathrooms. This is a dormitory style where people can meet other travelers from around the world. There's shared kitchen space. Does anybody have any other options of accommodation? Types of accommodation that they've stayed in? With friends and family? Yes. If you're lucky to have friends and family in other countries, you would be save on accommodation and probably have a pretty unique experience with local host from the country. What kind of accommodation would people plan on using if they were going to let's see, I'll scroll up here. Gaby talking about New Zealand. I spent about a year in New Zealand a long time ago and they have a lot of hostels. Do you have any plans to visit New Zealand and where do you think you might stay should you go? Or Colin looks like you're focused on Sweden. Alexander, you're focused on South Korea. I lived in South Korea for several years. They've got hotels all over the place. Couchsurfing.com, there is an option. I haven't seen anybody talk about couch surfing over ten or 12 years. Click on that link and that's an option for people if it's still active and available. So lots of different options for accommodation, couch surfing, short term rentals, hotels, camping, potentially maybe even renting an RV if that's within your budget, and you can sleep in the RV and drive around the country and things like that. So recreation and retail. Also national parks. This gets into free things to do to reduce your budget. Museums, great insight into local history. State and national museums will have a longer, more convenient hours, but a lot more information and potentially higher prices. So you want to keep that in mind. Parks offer places for people to stay. I know in New Zealand, they have cabins all throughout the national parks there for people to stay and definitely want to research that and reserve stuff and plan ahead. Melinda says she has used hostels for cheap stays in the United States, but feels more secure in a resort hotel. Safari tours. Some of your accommodation could be very well included in your whole activity abroad. If you're doing a tour thing, then you wouldn't have to necessarily worry so much. Seek out free activities, and that's just a good way to reduce your budgets as well. When it comes to unexpected costs, not every country tips. I've been to Australia, it's been 20 years. Kathy has been there more recently than I have. I don't believe Australians tip but tipping is becoming more and more common in other countries, but it's also not expected as it is in the United States where it's woven into your bill. So while 15 to 20% might be customary here, some countries don't tip. You definitely want to research that. If you're out for dinner and you might just pay attention to your bill and double check if the tips been woven in or if there is no tip or if you should tip. Taxes, other forms of transportation as we talked about earlier, and then of course, souvenirs for you and other people. If you're planning on shopping and buying some things for people, that can really change your budget as well. So we're getting near the end. I want to just introduce a couple of little tools. Some of this information can be pretty overwhelming and you might not know where to start and you're looking at the US State Department, you might not know what kind of insurance to buy or you're not quite sure. how to make decisions on perhaps some of the safety or travel precautions or let's say you're looking at two different countries and one country is a little bit safer than the other one, but the other ones a little bit cheaper or one has safe adventure travel activities and the other one doesn't. A great tool for that is a T chart where you can list the pros and the cons of decisions that you're struggling with because there is a lot to consider when going abroad. A lot of countries have a ton to offer, If you lived in Europe and we were doing this webinar, chances are all of you would have been to 20 countries by now at your age. Whereas in the United States, we are divided by oceans on either side, so it's very challenging for us to get to a country relatively quickly. You've got a lot of options. If you can afford to go buy a $1,200 flight, then you're probably able to pretty much fly just about anywhere. Lots of choices. A T-chart will offer you the opportunity to identify pros and cons, and then I I like this bridge diagram because it allows you to start with the wow and the wow is your goal, our goals, in this case, your location of choice, the experiences that you want to have, and that's really what you're shooting for that is that. The now is where you start. It's the second step, but really the first step. The now is what you have such as your motivation, the desire to travel, the money, the travel plan, the location, the timeline. That's what you have in mind on how to make your next decision. Then the how is how are you going to get to the wow? How much to budget? How will you budget? How will you manage your money? What safety precautions will you take, How much do you need for your passport? How much do you need for your visa? If you're going to another country, sometimes you have to buy the visas. That means you would have to send in your passport to an embassy within the United States, send them a check or money order for whatever the visa costs. They give you a visa, they put it in your passport and they send it back to you. Some of these things you need to consider. Also, just pay attention to the fine print. Researching costs could sway your expenses unexpectedly, impacting other activities. Go with the flow when you're abroad. Sometimes it's better to just wander and don't hone in so much with all the information because you can get inundated with too many choices. Considers all of that. Traveling is about exploring, learning, and putting yourself in new environments. Oops. I'd like to end on this quote. I have one more slide after this, but travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow mindedness and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the Earth all one's lifetime. This is a 4-H international program. There's a QR code there. You can join a homestead exchange and immerse yourself in another culture. This was provided by our 4-H colleagues within MSU Extension. Encourage you to scan that to learn more. It looks like a whole lot of great opportunities and you can see the website there as well, states 4-H exchange.org. So that's all I have for you tonight. Kathy, if you want to put that in the chat, I'm not sure if if everybody's had an opportunity, but that's all I have for you tonight. Right on time. We've got about 5 minutes left for questions. Does anybody have any questions?