063 - Investing In Memories: Twenty One Pilots Edition
As Travis's mentor Dr. Gary Hoag always says, we need to invest in mission and memories. Recently, Travis and his wife celebrated their 12-year wedding anniversary with a quick trip to Chicago to attend a Twenty One Pilots concert at the United Center. Aside for ranting about how amazing Twenty One Pilots is, Travis discusses the fact this 27-hour trip cost $1,000.....yikes! It's important for us to recognize the importance of memories, stop dwelling about money, and why there are broader implications in our finances and relationships. Money is NEVER about money....it's always about something bigger.
Side note: If you get a chance to experience the Twenty One Pilots Takeover Tour, please do yourself a favor and buy your tickets now! Unreal!!!
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Full Transcript:
I have a confession to make. This weekend, my wife and I went on a 27-hour anniversary trip to Chicago. That's not my confession. My confession is we spent $1,000 on a 27-hour anniversary trip to Chicago. I want to unpack this because I was telling somebody about this the other day, and they looked at me as if I was absolutely insane.
As they shared with me their feedback on my decision to spend $1,000 on a 27-hour trip to Chicago, I was starting to think, this is worth talking about. Let's hash this out because I think there's something there.
So first, let me explain. My wife has been a huge Twenty One Pilots fan for many years. I am not in any shape or form, and don't even know their music. So over the last one to two months, my wife has been playing it a lot for our little kids. They were four and now they've just turned five. Now my little kids love Twenty One Pilots and my wife, Sarah loves Twenty One Pilots.
Sarah was looking and saw that Twenty One Pilots would be at the United Center on our 12-year anniversary. She said, “Travis, can we go?” I said, “Absolutely! Let's do it. We just have to find a babysitter.” We start thinking about the logistics and thus the planning begins.
We start to look for tickets for the show. We're talking about what kind of tickets Sarah wants. She had some preferences. So we ended up spending about $400 bucks on two tickets to Twenty One Pilots…a band that I didn't even really know.
And, by the way, can I just add a side note? I am now a huge Twenty One Pilots fan. I started listening a little before this trip, and I have a theory that live performances will either expose people for not having talent, or it will shine a light on how ridiculously talented somebody is. And I gotta tell you, I can not believe how talented Twenty One Pilots are. It's mind boggling.
As I listened to their album, their albums can't capture how talented they are. So I am sold, I've been converted to Twenty One Pilots fan. If you're listening and are a huge fan, that was awesome. That was truly an incredible show. Okay. End of tangent.
All right. So, we bought two tickets to Twenty One Pilots and now we needed to find a babysitter. One of our trusted babysitters, she agreed she was going to babysit which ended up costing us about 350 bucks. Now that sounds insane. Like, why would you pay a babysitter 350 bucks? Well, because we're not paying a babysitter 350 bucks, we're investing 350 bucks in our marriage.
And because it's a young babysitter that we care deeply about, we're investing in her. So I was more than happy to pay that because it mattered. It was an investment into my marriage so of course it was worth it.
Then the concert got over late, and so we had a hotel room in Chicago. We had gas, and we had some food. We left late morning on Saturday and we got home early afternoon on Sunday.
It literally costs $1,000 for a 27-hour anniversary trip. And I look at that and I say, “that's the biggest bargain ever.” Why? Because as my friend, Dr. Gary Hoag says, we need to “put our money into missions and memories.”
And as you know, I love generosity. I love missions, but this was for memories. My wife and I had a blast. She needed to get away. She was burned out and she loved it. She freaking loved it and I did, too. We just had a great time together.
I wish I could say we were rested when we got back. We weren't. We were more exhausted than ever, and she actually had to turn around and leave town the day we got back. So we were definitely not rested, but the memories that we created on our 12-year anniversary, nobody can ever take that away from us.
Several years from now, if it weren't for this podcast, I wouldn't even remember how much we paid for that trip. That will fade away because ultimately money doesn't matter. Handling it well does. And I would make the argument that was an amazing investment into my marriage.
Now a lot of people would say, “Well, Travis, if you invested a thousand dollars at blah, blah, blah percent, over this many years, you would have this much money.” I don't care. Yes. We need to invest. Yes. We need to save. But this was about creating memories with my wife.
It's important. It has to be important. If we lose sight of that, and all we do is dwell on the money, we dwell on the math, we dwell on the finance, we're going to lose out on something so truly important to us.
So I thought that story was worth sharing because we all have our own versions of that. I'm not telling everybody to go spend all their money on a Twenty One Pilots concert. That's not what I'm saying, but find what adds value to your marriage. Because mission and memories are what matters. Go enjoy, create those memories, build those relationships, because that's ultimately what matters.
If we're talking about meaning over money, relationships, our marriages, being a good parent, being a good husband, being a good wife, those things. Man, a lot of people feel guilt….deep, profound guilt when spending money on those things. Some people feel guilty buying a pair of jeans or a new phone, or even going out to dinner. There's a deep guilt that comes with some of this stuff.
I think we've got to shake it. We've got to shake it. I have a young client, we just started working together, and she texted me saying, “Hey, Travis, I feel like I'm trying to beat my budget by cutting out all the fun. I feel like if I can cut back on all the fun stuff that I budgeted and have more extra at the end of the month, I've won. I know that's not true because I listened to the podcast.”
She said that she and I have talked about this enough that she knows that it's not true, but she says she can't shake it. Now she's going to shake it and she's going to succeed. But she recognizes the power that these feelings have on us. Even when she knows it's important to spend on things that add value to her life and create memories, it's still hard.
If that's you, I just want to say you got this. Give yourself grace along the way. It's not going to be perfect and you're not going to break it overnight. You're going to break it with one small purchase at a time.
One decision to invest in memories and in relationships. One small decision. Yes, with time you can overcome this, but don't feel like you need to conquer the world overnight. You're not going to, and if we think we're going to, and then we fail, we feel defeated and we just give up. Don't give up. This is too important.
Go invest in the things that matter.