Ramit Sethi's 20 Travel Rules for Trips That Don't Leave You Needing Another Vacation
I Will Teach You To Be Rich
Ramit Sethi opens with a phrase he dislikes: "I need a vacation after my vacation." His claim is that he comes home from trips feeling great. He says the reason is how he designs each trip, not expensive hotels. He then walks through 20 rules he uses to make trips intentional, relaxed, and worth the time and money. Some cost money, some cost nothing, and he says at the end that no one needs to adopt all of them.
Rule 1: Pick a Theme Before a Destination
Sethi calls this one of the biggest changes to how he travels, and he says very few people do it. Most people start with a place, such as Spain, India, or Morocco. He asks what the trip is about. Without that answer, he argues, every decision feels equally important. The result is overbooked days, heavy FOMO, and jumping between unrelated kinds of experiences. People go from early morning to late night every day and end up exhausted, and the trip feels scattered.
So before booking anything, he and his wife choose a theme, such as adventure, relaxation, culture, or connection. That choice rules out many options, which lets them go deeper on what remains. On an adventure trip, early mornings and long physical days make sense and aren't resented. On a relaxation trip, they don't try to fit in every museum and tour, and they might set aside a day or two just to stay at the hotel without guilt. The theme works as a filter. The question stops being "Is this a good activity?" and becomes "Does this fit the theme?" His exercise is to write one sentence, "The theme of this upcoming trip is…", and cut anything that doesn't support it. That includes things that sound interesting and places you may not return to for a while.
Rule 2: Spend to Improve How You Feel, Not How Things Look
Sethi says he has repeatedly seen people, himself included, plan trips around how they look. They pick something that sounds impressive, feels like a deal, or photographs well, then arrive and find it underwhelming. He prefers to ask how the trip will feel: exhausting or energizing, calm or irritating. He adds that discomfort is sometimes the goal. In some cities he wants the flood of smells, food, and sensory experience. He just doesn't want it on every trip.
His concrete example is arrival. He has learned that landing exhausted ruins the first day for him. He becomes short-tempered and tired, and everything drags. So he plans around it. He picks flight times that don't wreck his sleep, sometimes pays more for a seat where he can rest, and pays attention to what he eats on the plane. Other times he simply accepts it: they'll get to the hotel, sleep four hours, and then go out. He also says a little extra money to avoid chaos is usually worth it, such as not running sweaty through an airport or carrying too much. His advice is not to ask what the nicest option is. Ask where the trip usually starts to feel bad, irritating, or chaotic, and spend money on that point.
Rule 3: Never Start From Scratch
Sethi says planning from zero every time is draining, and he thinks that's why so many people do the same generic things in every city, like "let's go see the Eiffel Tower." Most trips reopen the same questions: which airline, which seat, what arrival time, what kind of hotel. He wants a standard operating procedure for these.
He keeps a one-page travel document. It lists his preferred airlines in order, the seat types he likes, arrival times he avoids, and hotel rules, down to specific hotels and, in his case, specific rooms. It also lists things he doesn't care about. He says this turns booking into "plug and play" planning. It's faster, has fewer mistakes, and saves him from spending mental energy on questions he settled ten years ago. Without such a document, he says, you face around 50 decisions and overthink small ones, such as booking dinner on the fourth night, as if they were as important as the big ones. His starter version is a Google Doc with three airlines you like, one preferred seat, one arrival time to avoid (3 a.m., or 5 p.m. rush hour), and three things you don't care about. His example of the last item is high-end dining, so their trips aren't built around reservations.
Rule 4: Distinguish Good Stress From Bad Stress
Sethi argues that travelers don't actually want to avoid all stress. A new city and unfamiliar restaurants would normally be stressful, but on a trip they feel like adventure. What matters is telling useful stress from pointless stress. His "simple fantasy" is walking through an airport with his hands completely free. Dragging bags up stairs while one falls apart adds nothing to the trip. On the other hand, he enjoys finding a local laundromat and doing his own laundry, because that effort makes him feel connected to the place. He gives another example: shopping in the markets of New Delhi, where his family lives, is stressful and he loves it. Hauling a 75-pound suitcase up an escalator and getting sweaty is not.
He suggests identifying one part of travel that always frustrates you and asking whether $20, $50, or $100 could remove it. Then identify one part that is a little stressful but that you remember fondly, such as exploring an unfamiliar neighborhood or watching locals shop at a grocery store and making your own lunch, and keep it.
Rule 5: Use a Travel Advisor for Trips You Want to Get Right
Sethi expects skepticism, since many people assume travel advisors disappeared decades ago. He says he uses one on almost every trip, especially important ones like an anniversary, a long trip, or a place he hasn't been. His first point is that advisors are usually free to the traveler because hotels and excursion providers pay them. He admits he doesn't love commission-based pay in any profession, but here he thinks it can work, since you were probably going to stay at that hotel anyway and might as well get the free breakfast and room upgrade.
His example is a stay at a high-end hotel in New York with his wife. Their advisor introduced them to the hotel manager in advance and sent their preferences. Because they don't drink much, the hotel left chocolates instead of a welcome bottle of wine, and on other stays fruit. The hotel also triple-upgraded their room. Sethi says this didn't come from asking nicely at the front desk, which he says rarely works now. It came from an advisor with deep relationships who wanted to delight them.
He interviews advisors before hiring one. He doesn't ask where they can send him or what perks they can get, because he believes most can offer similar perks. He asks whether they understand him and how he travels, and whether they have other clients like him. His method is to search "travel advisor" plus the destination, talk to two or three, and notice who listens and asks thoughtful questions.
Rule 6: Add 50% to the Hotel Price
Sethi calls this one of the biggest financial mistakes travelers make: multiplying the nightly rate by the number of nights, for example $300 × 4 = $1,200. He says the sticker price is never what you pay. Taxes, which he says almost no one estimates, plus breakfast, the spa, the bar, and tips all add up. Then the final bill is a shock, and on the next trip you start debating with yourself whether you can afford dessert. He wants none of that on a vacation.
So he adds 50% to the room rate in his head. A $300 room becomes $450 a night all-in, which covers taxes, tips, meals, transportation, and the occasional extra like a spa treatment. If that higher number isn't affordable, his advice is to shorten the trip or choose a cheaper place. He doesn't want you somewhere you're unsure you can afford the pizza. You should have enough room that you can order two desserts if they look good.
Rule 7: Ship Things Ahead
To keep airport friction low, Sethi asks whether bulky, awkward, or replenishable items need to travel with him at all. A big protein shaker on a long stay is one example. Oats he wants to prepare himself for breakfast every morning are another; he ships them ahead. Sometimes it's an entire suitcase. He admits this may sound ridiculous, but says shipping a suitcase costs roughly $100, at least domestically. He doesn't do it for weekend trips, only for longer trips or ones where he cares a lot about how he feels on arrival. He says arriving to find his own shipments and Amazon orders already waiting makes the trip feel different. There's nothing to go buy the next morning, so he feels calm and present.
It also works on the way home. Once, worried that their shopping and souvenirs wouldn't fit in their suitcases abroad, they handed the bags to the hotel front desk and asked for help shipping them. The hotel packed them, shipped them, and handled customs, and the package reached their house before they did.
Rule 8: Design an Energy Arc for Longer Trips
Sethi describes a familiar pattern. The first three days somewhere wonderful feel amazing. Then around day four comes a thought like "Not another early morning. Not another packed day." If you haven't planned for that shift, he says, the trip starts to feel like an obligation, and you may start resenting a beautiful place.
He learned this from a travel planning firm on his honeymoon. For longer trips he thinks first about how his energy will change, and only then about places. The general rule he and his wife follow is to start in a city and end at a resort: active at the beginning, calmer toward the end. He says others might do it in reverse. What matters is planning for an arc at all. By the time they reach the restful place, they don't feel FOMO because they already had their activity earlier.
Rule 9: Send a Pre-Arrival Preference Email
Before arriving anywhere, Sethi's assistant sends the hotel a short note with what they like, what they don't, and anything useful. For example, since they don't drink much, they ask for berries or chocolates instead of a welcome bottle of wine. He stresses that you don't need an assistant. Anyone can send the email, including, as he jokes, to a Best Western. His reasoning is that people in hospitality like delighting guests. The worst case is being ignored. The best case is that they act on the request, perhaps helping with a restaurant reservation or telling the kitchen you're gluten-free. When you say nothing, staff guess based on the average guest and often guess wrong. He says that's not bad service; they just don't know you.
He describes this as a mindset shift from his younger self, who assumed everyone was trying to rip him off. He acknowledges that sometimes someone is, "so what?" Now he assumes that from the moment he leaves home, people want to delight him. He points out how it feels when a few places respond to a note mentioning an anniversary or even a half-birthday.
Rule 10: Ask for What You Want
Sethi sees travelers treat the first option offered, whether a hotel room, concert seat, or tour format, as the only one. He treats it as a default. He usually accepts what's offered, but when he wants something different he asks clearly, "not aggressively, not awkwardly." In Tokyo, he and a friend didn't want a four-hour food tour. They asked for a two-hour version that included one of the city's fruit parlors, and the operator agreed. He estimates that more than 50% of the time the answer is yes, or at least something better. Declining things works the same way; he gives the example of turning down an obscure European art tour at a museum. The point is to be engaged and polite, not pushy.
Rule 11: Take a Car Service To and From the Airport
Sethi jokes that his 21-year-old self would come through a time portal to strangle him for this rule. He still defends it. Traffic, parking, and loading bags can leave people tense before a trip starts, especially with children. He wants both ends smooth. On the way out, a clean car is waiting on time, and once he's inside he stops thinking about logistics or routes. Coming home after a long flight, he doesn't want to search for the Uber pickup spot or wrestle bags, particularly with family. He says his parents strongly resist this, and his advice to reluctant people is to try it once.
Rule 12: Business Class for Flights Over Four Hours
Sethi knows this rule draws "that's crazy" reactions. His first reason is that he can afford it, and he says people who can't shouldn't follow this rule. He recalls walking to the back of the plane when he was younger and mocking the people in front for paying four times as much to reach the same place. He now thinks he should have been curious about why they paid. His own answers are that he arrives rested and has certainty: there will be space for his bag and he'll be in basically the same seat every time, which is one less thing to think about. He says it isn't about status or even the food, since he usually brings his own.
Rule 13: Bring Your Own Food on Flights
Sethi used to see airplane food as a free perk, first the crackers in economy and later the tablecloth meals in premium cabins. He has since stopped wanting free things in general. He turns down free items and doesn't take hotel shampoos because he has his own. He says airline food typically leaves him sluggish and heavy. For him and his wife, the ultimate luxury is now simply bringing their own food. He says he's surprised he never connected what he ate on the plane with how he felt stepping off it.
Rule 14: Don't Land at a Bad Time
He wouldn't choose to land in New York at 5 p.m. on a weekday if he had a choice. He admits this is fine-tuning the last "three or 5%." But he thinks the timing of how you enter a destination, and how you re-enter your own life, sets the tone for the next half-day. So arrival times, both outbound and returning, are in his SOP. He says he ignored this for much of his adult life. He also suggests thinking about whether you're willing to wake up at 4:30 a.m. for a flight.
Rule 15: Stay at Least Four Nights in Each Place
Sethi says he and his wife arrived at this rule after stays of one, two, six nights and more. They decided four nights is the minimum for them to feel comfortable and not rushed or pressured to cram everything in. He calls free time the ultimate luxury. He recalls a friend, Steve, who loved a place so much he simply extended his stay. Sethi says that option had never occurred to him, and he loves the spontaneity.
Rules 16 and 17: Normal Routines and Built-In Recovery
On a four- or five-day vacation, Sethi is fine with eating everything and staying out late. Over longer periods, he says, that drains you and leaves you bloated and feeling bad. So on longer trips they build in normal life: morning walks together, sticking to their workout routine as closely as possible (not as intensely as at home), and keeping familiar sleep times. He says this is what lets them travel for longer stretches.
He admits he used to plan trips "like I was trying to prove something," with reservations, restaurants, and tours packed back to back that looked great on paper and felt rushed in person. His example: his wife, who was busy, asked him to plan part of a trip. He scheduled one day from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. When they got there she looked at him with a raised eyebrow, and he knew he had messed up. Their current pace is one major activity every two days, plus one full reset day for every ten days of travel, with no reservations and no agenda, just the hotel room or the pool, and no guilt.
Rule 18: Leave Room for Serendipity
Before a trip they save many pins in Google Maps, including cafés, restaurants, neighborhoods, and textile shops. Sethi says these are references, not a checklist. Typically they choose a neighborhood for the day, start walking, and visit whatever nearby pins look interesting at the moment.
Rule 19: There Are No Once-in-a-Lifetime Trips
Sethi calls this a big one. He sees the belief that this is your only chance as a major source of stress that makes people rush. His view is that if he loves a place, he can come back, and knowing that changes how they travel. He gives an example: on a safari in Kenya, he and his wife loved one lodge so much that they went back a few years later. He describes this as an abundant mindset that they try to act on by returning to places they love and going deeper.
Rule 20: Celebrate Special Trips With a Ritual
The last rule is about remembering why a trip matters. Although they rarely drink, on special trips Sethi and his wife toast with champagne once they're seated on the plane. He says it isn't about the champagne. It's a moment to look at each other, say "cheers," and mark that the trip matters and is separate from routine. He invites viewers to find their own version, such as a prayer or a particular food.
He closes by repeating that the rules aren't about being fancy. A few are expensive, and nobody needs all of them; the idea is to adapt them to your own needs. His final point is that travel becomes a mirror that shows what matters to you. It also raises the question he says he'll take up in a follow-up video: if you can design your vacations this way, can you design the rest of your life the same way?
There's a phrase I don't like, and it's when people come back from a vacation and then they go, "I need to take a vacation after the vacation." The implication being that you are so tired after that trip. When I come back from a trip, I feel amazing, and this is not because I spent money staying at a super high-end hotel. It is because of the way that I designed my trip.
I'm going to show you the rules I use to design trips that actually feel like a rich life. They are intentional, they are relaxed, and they are worth the time and money. And near the end, I'm going to share a rule that changed the most miserable part of travel for me.
Rule number one, decide the theme of the trip before you plan anything. This is one of the biggest changes I have made to how I travel. And in my experience, very few people do this. They always start by picking the destination. "I want to go to Spain. I want to go to India. I want to go to Morocco." All of those places are great. But what is the theme? What is the trip about? Because if you don't decide that, then every decision you make feels equally important.
So what ends up happening is you overbook your days. You feel an immense amount of FOMO, and you bounce between totally different types of experiences. These are the kind of trips you've been on. You start early in the morning, and you're going all day long, and at the end of the day you are exhausted every single day. The trip starts to feel scattered.
So that's why before we book anything, we decide the theme of the trip. Not the destination, the theme. Are we going for adventure, relaxation, culture, connection? That one decision quietly eliminates tons of options, which allows us to go deeper on the things we've chosen. For example, if the theme is adventure, then early mornings and physical activities and long days make sense. We don't resent them. Or if the theme is relaxation, we are not trying to squeeze in every museum and tour and reservation. In fact, we might actually just book one day or two days just to stay in the hotel and relax guilt-free.
Here's why this matters so much. When you choose a theme that is meaningful to you, that theme becomes a filter. So once you know what this trip is about, planning becomes easier because most of the decisions are already made for you. For example, if you are doing a relaxation vacation, you are not going to be waking up at 6 AM and going until 9 PM. It just doesn't fit with what you yourself chose. So you don't have to ask anymore, "Is this a good activity? Would we like this?" You're instead asking, "Does this activity fit the theme of our trip?"
Try it. Before you book anything, write one sentence down. Just fill this out: "The theme of this upcoming trip is..." And if something doesn't support that theme, cut it. Even if it sounds interesting, even if you might not come back for a while. And once your theme is clear, the next rule determines whether this trip actually feels good or it just looks good on paper.
Rule number two, spend money to improve how you feel, not how things look. Here's one problem I have experienced over and over, and I've seen it in other people's vacations. We often optimize for how things look instead of how they feel. So we'll plan a trip that sounds impressive, or it sounds like we got a deal, or we go to one of those Instagrammable places that looks good in photos. But once we get there, we're just like, "This is not that cool."
What I actually care about is how this trip will feel. Am I going to feel exhausted or energized? Am I going to feel calm or irritated? Sometimes I actually want to feel uncomfortable when I go to certain countries or cities where there's an assault of smells and foods and all kinds of different sensory experiences. I actually want that for certain trips, but not for others. This is how I decide what's worth spending on.
For example, I've learned that if I land feeling exhausted, that entire first day of that trip is going to be really difficult on me. I'm going to feel short-tempered, tired, and everything's just going to feel like it's lagging. So I design around that. That might mean choosing a flight time that doesn't really wreck my sleep. It might mean paying more for a seat where I can actually rest. It definitely means paying attention to what I eat because I don't want to walk off feeling sluggish. Sometimes it might mean just accepting: we are going to be tired. We're going to get to the hotel, and we're going to sleep for four hours, and then we're going to go out.
Now I will show you exactly what I do about food later because actually changing the way that I eat on vacation has completely changed how I travel. But this idea right now goes beyond flights. I've also noticed that spending a little bit more to avoid chaos often is worth it. I don't want to have to run through an airport and sweat. Chaos might mean having to carry too much or deal with logistics when I'm supposed to be present.
Here's how I want you to think about this on your next trip. Don't ask, "What's the nicest option?" Instead ask, "Where does this trip usually start to feel bad or irritating or chaotic, and how can I make that part feel better?" That answer at that very moment is almost always where you can start to use money to make your experience better and easier. And once you start designing for how you feel, the rest of these rules start to really come together. The next rule is what stops travel from feeling stressful before you even book anything.
Rule number three, never start from scratch when you travel. I got to tell you that starting from zero every time you travel is exhausting, and that's why so many people end up doing the same generic things in every single city. "Oh, what should we do when we're in this city?" "I don't know. Let's go see the Eiffel Tower." Okay. The Eiffel Tower is cool, but there are so many other amazing things that you would probably find more meaningful.
Think about it. For every trip, most of us start by asking the same questions. What airline should I take again? Which seat do I like? What time are we going to land? What type of hotel should I book? These are all repeated decisions. And when you repeat something over and over, I don't want to repeat them. I want a freaking SOP, standard operating procedure. That's why I have a one-page travel document. It's simple. It's nothing fancy.
It just captures what I already know about myself, including the airlines I prefer in descending order, the seat types I like, arrival times that I avoid, basic hotel rules such as which hotels to stay at, or if I have a favorite hotel. In my case, I'm very specific down to the room that I stay in, and things that I genuinely don't care about. This turns every trip booking into much easier plug-and-play planning. So I don't have to reopen the same debates. What time should we take off? No, I start from a default that already works. Planning gets faster, mistakes disappear, and I don't have to burn cognitive energy on things that I figured out 10 years ago.
Now, if you don't do this, because very few people have an SOP for travel, here's what happens. You're often going to have 50 different decisions to make, and you're going to overthink small ones because they seem as impactful as big ones. Think about booking dinner on Thursday, the fourth day of your trip. That's going to seem existential, but actually you neglected to ask yourself, "How do I want to feel?"
Here's how to do this without overcomplicating it. Open up a Google Doc. Go ahead and do it right now. Let's do it together. And I want you to write down three airlines that you like. Write down one seat that you prefer. Write down one arrival time that you don't want to arrive at. It could be arriving at 3 a.m. or 5 p.m. when there's rush hour traffic, and then write down three things you don't care about. In my case, I don't really care about high-end dining. So when I travel, we don't need to plan our trips around reservations because we...
Idea of removing invisible stress so you can focus on what actually matters shows up all over travel. And I'm going to show you that you have more control than you think. Let's go to the next rule.
Rule number four, stress is actually okay. When we travel, it's not that we want to avoid all stress. Think about it. We are actually willing to go to a brand-new city or country and eat at restaurants we've never eaten at. These things would ordinarily feel very stressful, but when we travel, they can feel adventurous. So it's not that we are afraid of stress, but there are certain things that are good stress and certain things that are bad stress.
For example, one of my simple fantasies is to walk through the airport with my hands completely free. Look at my beautiful hands. I'm twirling like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. They're free. Okay. That's my fantasy. I don't want that kind of unnecessary stress of having to drag these bags, navigate stairs, and one of them falls apart. No, that friction adds nothing to my experience, but I am perfectly happy walking through a neighborhood, finding a local laundromat and doing my own laundry. I actually really enjoy exploring the city that way. I love it. That effort makes me feel more connected to where I am.
Living a rich life, especially when you travel, is not about avoiding stress. It's about deciding what is worth it to you, what you actually enjoy and where you want to incur stress. When I go to New Delhi, and my family lives there, and I go shopping in the markets, I know it's going to be stressful, and I love it. I choose to do it because I know it's going to give me an amazing, rich experience, but I have to sit there and lug around a 75-pound suitcase up an escalator, and then I'm all sweaty. No, thanks.
Now, once you make this distinction of what is good stress and bad stress, your travel starts to get much easier and I actually think much more meaningful. You don't have to ask, "How do I eliminate stress?" Or even worse, "Oh God, it's probably going to be so stressful." You start to say, "Hey, which kind of stress am I looking forward to, and which kind of stress am I going to intentionally avoid?"
Let me show you how to apply this on your next trip. Think about one part of travel that consistently frustrates you. Something that feels like work. It pulls you out of the experience. It just doesn't make you feel good about the overall trip. What if you could use 20 bucks or 50 bucks or 100 bucks to remove that stress? Then think about one part of travel that is a little stressful, but actually adds something. You look back on it fondly. Maybe it's walking into a new adventurous neighborhood that you've never been to. Maybe it's slowing down and just watching people, going into a grocery store and seeing how the locals eat and making your own lunch. Who knows? That's usually worth keeping.
I love this, and that leads directly into my next rule because once you know what kind of stress you want to pursue, the question then becomes who should be handling the rest?
Rule number five, use a travel advisor for trips that you actually want to get right. Now I'm going to tell you right now, I know a lot of us are going, "Travel advisor? Are they still around? I thought they went bankrupt in the eighties." No, I use a travel advisor on almost every trip that I take, and it can sound a little intimidating. How do I find one? Don't they charge me a bunch of money? No, I'm going to surprise you here. For trips that really matter, like a big anniversary, a long trip, a place that I've never been before, I don't want to guess my way through it.
The first surprise is that travel advisors are usually free. You don't pay them out of your pocket. They are compensated by the hotels that they recommend and the experiences or excursions that they recommend. I don't particularly love the commission-based compensation of any profession, but in this case, it can be good, especially because you probably were going to stay at that hotel anyway. You might as well get the free breakfast, the room upgrade, et cetera, et cetera.
So this is exactly what happened, for example, when my wife and I stayed at a high-end hotel in New York. We work with a travel advisor. They know how we travel. Before we even arrived, they had introduced us to the hotel manager, sent our preferences. So when we showed up there, they already knew who we were, and there was context. For example, they know that we don't really care to drink. So instead of leaving a welcome bottle of wine in our room, they left a little box of chocolates. Sometimes they leave a box of fruits to welcome us.
They also, in this case, triple upgraded us in our room. Now that didn't happen because we asked nicely at the front desk. That rarely happens anymore. It happened in this specific case because we were working with a travel advisor who had deep relationships and knew that he wanted to delight us. So this is why I interview travel advisors before I work with them. I'm not asking them, "Where can you send me?" I'm not even asking them, "What kind of perks can you get me?" Because most travel advisors can basically get you the same perks. What I'm asking is, "Do you understand me? Do you understand how I travel, and do you have other clients like me?"
If a trip feels important, or it starts to become complicated, don't do it yourself by default. Search for travel advisor plus your destination, like travel advisor Morocco, travel advisor Amsterdam, and then talk to two or three of these travel advisors. Pay attention who actually listens to you and asks you thoughtful questions. Let's talk now about numbers.
Rule number six, always calculate an extra 50% for hotel costs. One of the biggest financial mistakes people make with their travel is they look at the sticker price for a hotel and then they just multiply it by the number of nights they're going to be there. They go, "Oh, this hotel's 300 bucks. We're going to be there for four nights. That's 1,200 bucks." Wrong. The sticker price of a hotel is never what you are going to pay.
There are a lot of phantom costs when it comes to staying at hotels. Just on a pure transactional level, you might eat something for breakfast. You might go to the spa. You might go to the bar. You might tip somebody, but in addition to that, there's also taxes, which almost nobody calculates in their head. What happens is suddenly this hotel's adding up. It's adding up. You get the thing at the end. You go, "Oh my God," and for your next trip, you start negotiating with yourself. "Should we do this? Is it worth it? Can we afford dessert?" I don't want that in my trip at all.
Now, when I look at a hotel, I mentally add 50% to the room price, and that is how I think about affordability for vacations. For example, if a hotel is $300 a night, it's actually $450 a night, all in. That covers 38% taxes, tips, meals, transportation, and maybe the occasional discretionary choice I might want to make, like a spa treatment or something like that.
Here's the key part. If that higher number is not affordable, then don't do it. You should actually be very strategic with where you choose to stay because you do not want to be staying at a place where suddenly you're like, "Oh, I don't know if I can afford that pizza." You actually want to either shorten your trip or stay at a more affordable place. Just make sure that you've given yourself all the room to breathe so that if you sit down and decide to have two desserts because it looks good, you can do it. That matters, especially for the next rule because some of the smartest decisions happen before you ever set foot in the hotel.
Rule number seven, ship things ahead to the hotel whenever it makes sense. Earlier, I mentioned that one of my goals when I travel is to move through the airport with as little friction as possible. One of the ways that I actually do that is if something is bulky, awkward, or it's something replenishable like a big protein shaker and I'm going to be there for a while, I just stop and ask a simple question. Does this really need to travel with me, or can it just be waiting for me when I arrive?
Now, sometimes it can be something very specific. I want to eat oats every morning for breakfast, and I want to prepare them myself. Cool. I'll just ship those oats ahead of time. Sometimes it can be something as large as a suitcase because I'm
Going to be in this specific area and this is what I want. Now, let's talk about cost because most people do not do this and this frankly sounds ridiculous.
Shipping luggage does cost money, but it's not as expensive as you would think. Usually for a suitcase, we're talking about a hundred dollars or so, at least domestically. Now, I don't do this for every trip and I certainly don't do it for a weekend getaway, but for longer trips or trips where I really care about how I feel when I land, that can be worth it.
And I'll tell you, I've landed several times where I have things that were already shipped either from me or from Amazon and that trip feels different. I know that pre-planning went into it. I know that I don't have to go out of the hotel the next morning to pick up this or that. It's already there. So I'm calm. I'm present. I'm ready to enjoy the trip.
By the way, you can also do this on the reverse. Sometimes if you're traveling, especially if you're traveling abroad, you buy a bunch of things and souvenirs. We're like, "Oh my God, is this going to fit in our suitcase?" And one time we were like, "What if we just ship it back?" And we just went to the front desk of the hotel. We're like, "Can you help us arrange to ship this back? We have these bags." We just handed them some shopping bags. They're like, "We'll take care of it." Amazing. They packed it. They shipped it. They handled all the customs stuff. Boom. It was at our house before we even arrived.
If you start making decisions like this before you arrive, then the next rule becomes obvious because how you structure the end of a trip matters just as much as how you started.
Rule number eight, for longer trips, design an energy arc for your entire trip. Let's say you get somewhere incredible. It could be a beautiful city, the Alps, someplace you've been excited about for years. First day's amazing. Second day's perfect. Third day you're going, "This is incredible." And then around day four, something might shift. Maybe you go, "Not another early morning. Not another packed day. I just want to sleep in on my vacation."
And if you don't plan for that shift, that trip starts to drag. It starts to feel like an obligation. And ironically, you start to resent this beautiful trip that you're on. Now, I love this rule and it was taught to me by a travel planning firm when we went on our honeymoon.
When a trip is more than just a few days, I don't think about where we are going first. I think about how my energy is going to change over the course of that trip. And our general rule is that if we're on a long trip, we want to start in a city. We want to end in a resort. In other words, we want to start active, moving around. And then as we go, as we go, eventually we want to get calmer and calmer, more and more relaxed.
You might do it in reverse. It's totally up to you. But the important thing is to simply think about an energy arc in the first place, someplace designed for rest. We don't feel FOMO there because we already got our activity way back here, which leads into our next rule because what you say once you arrive can completely shape how your trip feels.
Rule number nine, send a pre-arrival preference email to the hotel. Before we arrive anywhere, my assistant sends the hotel a short note. It's nothing complicated, just the basics. What we like, what we don't, anything that is useful to know. For example, we don't drink much alcohol. So instead of a hospitality gift of a bottle of wine, which a lot of these hotels have, we say, "If you have that, we would love some berries or chocolates in the room." And you don't need an assistant to do this. You can just email the hotel yourself.
One short message before you arrive can actually totally change the entire tone of the stay. Now, I know a bunch of you are wondering, "Hey, Ramit Sethi, are you telling me I should email the Best Western and tell them my hospitality demands before I arrive?" Actually, yes, you should try it because anyone who works in hospitality loves to delight their customers.
They might not have a fresh bowl of handpicked berries waiting for you when you arrive, but so what? What's the worst that happens? They ignore you. The best that can happen is that they actually acknowledge what you requested. Maybe they help you with a restaurant reservation. They certainly pass the word along to the kitchen that you are gluten-free and on and on and on.
What I've noticed is that when you don't say anything, you are treated like everybody else and people guess. And when people guess, they guess wrong because of course they guess for the averages, not because they're bad at service, but because they don't know you. When you travel, you should assume that from the minute you leave your house, everybody wants to delight you. This is a radically different way of thinking compared to how I traveled when I was younger.
When I traveled when I was younger, I immediately assumed everybody's trying to rip me off. Look at my body language. "Oh, they're trying to take me for everything I've got. They're trying to rip me off." And maybe once in a while they are. So what? Imagine how it feels when you send a preference document. "Hey, we're celebrating our anniversary or celebrating a half birthday." Imagine what happens when a couple of those places actually delight you.
Rule number 10, do not merely accept what's given. Ask for what you want. Pattern I see all the time, especially around travel, is people assume the first option that they are offered is the only option. I'm talking about the hotel room, the seat at the concert, the experience on the food tour that you booked. But I got to tell you, in most cases, that is not the only option. It's just the default.
So I don't assume anything is final. If I'm offered something, that's totally fine. Most of the times I'll go with it. But if I want something different, I will ask specifically for what I want. Not aggressively, not awkwardly, just clearly.
My friend and I were in Tokyo. We wanted to go on a food tour, but candidly, we didn't want to spend four hours. We said, "Hey, can you make this two hours? And specifically, we want to try one of these fruit parlors. They have fruit and ice cream." They were like, "Yeah, no problem. Happy to do it." We asked for what we wanted. They deliver.
Now, sometimes the answer is no. But very often, in my experience, over 50% of the time, the answer is yes, or at least it's better. Like when somebody asked me, "Hey, Ramit, do you want to go take this obscure European art tour at a museum?" I go, "No, I actually don't." That's okay. The key here is not being pushy. It's simply being engaged with what you want and being polite when you ask for it.
Do you want to know how to use money to create magical experiences when you travel so that if you're bringing your family around, your children are entertained and there are things waiting for them in your hotel room? Do you want to know how to attend an amazing cooking class? If you love food, do you want to know how to access these behind-the-scenes travel experiences?
I share that in a new live presentation that I made in my Money Coaching program about how to use money to create magical experiences. And this is just one of many live events that I've held inside the program. You will learn exactly how money works, how to spend money guilt-free on everything from health and fitness to convenience to travel and how to grow your money, how to invest it, where the money should be saved and what to do on a day-to-day basis.
Because when your money system is clear, then you stop worrying about tiny little decisions. You can take intentionally amazing trips. So just the same way we've talked about travel rules, let me help you do that with your money. You can join my Money Coaching program by scanning the QR code on screen or clicking the link in the description below. And once you have that clarity with your money in place through our Money Coaching program, the next rule becomes much easier because it's about removing friction from the first moment you begin your trip.
Rule number 11, always take a car service to and from the airport. I will admit that as I say this out loud, I'm thinking of that show The Outer Limits from the nineties where people were traveling through time and there's all these—I love that show. And there's Ramit Sethi who's 21 years old. He's going through a time portal. He's emerging outside finding Ramit Sethi of 43 years old and strangling me to death, saying, "Mother, talking about taking a car service to the airport. Who are you?"
If you're still watching this, then the 21-year-old me has not gone through a time portal and strangled me to death. So I'm just going to finish this rule before he comes. Getting to the airport is one of the easiest ways to create delight for yourself before the trip even starts.
Think about traffic, parking, dragging, having to put the bag in the trunk. And by the time you arrive, especially for people who have children, very easy to be tense and the trip hasn't even begun. So that is why when I travel, I try to remove friction at key friction points.
For example, I want both ends of the trip to feel really smooth. On the way out, I want to know there's a car waiting for me. I don't want to have to stress out being like, "Oh, when's the car going to show up?" Or, "I got to get in the car and park it over there." No, I also want to know the car is clean. It's on time. And once I sit inside, I am done thinking about logistics. I'm not checking directions. I'm not figuring out the best street to take. That's it.
And that matters also when I come home after a long flight. I don't want to figure out where is the Uber pickup. I don't want to figure out, especially if we have family with us, how to carry a ton of bags. So it's really helpful to know that there's a car waiting with somebody who will help with bags to make that return feel calm instead of chaotic.
I've been trying to encourage my parents to do this as well. It is a battle for me to get them to just try having a car service and to give up their bags to somebody who's actually happy to help. If that is you, if you feel reluctant to try this, that's fine. You don't have to do it, but try it once. Try it just once, especially if you have a family with a lot of bags, it can feel so calm once you get this right.
When you protect your energy on travel days, the next rule follows naturally because we're going to talk about what happens when you are flying somewhere.
Rule number 12, for flights over four hours, I book business class seats. Now I'm going to tell you why I do this because whenever I post my list of money rules, people go, "That's crazy. That makes no sense. Why would you do that?" I'll tell you why. Number one, I can afford it. So if you can't afford this, then you shouldn't do this rule.
But also I realized when I was younger, I used to walk from the front of the plane to the back, sitting in my economy seat, and I would laugh at the people who would sit in the front, be like, "You're so stupid. Why would you pay four times the amount of money? We're all getting to the same place." What I should have done is to get more curious. "Hey, if you can afford this, why would you sit up front and pay four times the amount? Is the food really worth it? Is it really worth sitting 10 minutes before everyone else? What's the reason?"
So now as someone who does pay for business class seats, I will tell you, I like knowing that I'm going to arrive rested. I like knowing the certainty that there is going to be a place for the bag, that I'm always going to be sitting in basically the same seat. I like the certainty because it's one less thing I have to think about. It's not about status, not even really about the food because I usually bring my own food and that one difference of intentionality carries through the rest of the trip for me. Now this naturally led to the next change that I made.
Rule number 13, bring your own food on flights. Years ago, I stopped treating airplane food like a perk, meaning when I would sit in any seat, they give you the food, they give you the crackers and it feels free. "Wow, this is so cool." Then I started traveling business class, first class, and they give you these meals with the tablecloth and the silverware. Then you go, "Wow, this is good. It's free." And then eventually I started to think about things differently.
I actually don't want free. If you try to give me some free thing, more likely than not, I'm just going to say, "No, thank you." So when I go to a hotel, I don't need to take their free shampoos. I have my own shampoo at home. Same thing with food on a plane. I don't want free food that's going to typically leave me feeling really sluggish or heavy.
A better approach, at least for my wife and for me, the ultimate luxury for us now is actually so simple and it is to bring our own food. So I can't believe I didn't think about this before, but I just did not connect the food that I was eating on a flight with how I felt walking off, which brings us to the next rule because I think the arrival matters a lot. Sometimes as much as the flight itself.
Rule number 14, never land in a city at a bad time. In my opinion, one of the easiest ways to make a trip start off in a tough, tiring way is to arrive at somewhere without thinking about little logistics. Like I don't want to land in New York at 5 p.m. on a weekday. It sounds like, "Hey, that's the ticket I got. That's the ticket I got." But if I have a choice, I'm probably not choosing that one.
So we're now fiddling around with the last three or 5%. But when it comes to that, timing matters. How you enter a travel destination, how you reenter your own life, that can really set the tone for the next half day. So not only do I have my SOP that includes airlines that I like and seats that I like, but it also includes arrival times, something I did not think about for a long part of my adult life. That includes outbound and also coming home.
Think about it. Do you want to have to wake up at 4:30 a.m. to make a flight? Maybe, maybe not. But it's something to think about and put into your standard operating procedure. Once you get intentional about timing like this, then the next question becomes how long should you actually stay in one place?
Rule number 15, spend a minimum of four nights in any place. This is my personal rule. And my wife and I developed this because we stayed in certain places one night, two nights, six nights and on and on. And we realized four nights for us is the perfect amount as a minimum amount of time where we can be comfortable, where we don't feel rushed, where we don't feel like we have to do every single thing in a very, very compressed manner. And I think the ultimate luxury in life is time, free time to be able to go places or sometimes simply just relax.
I remember one of my friends, Steve, told me he was traveling and they loved the place they were staying at so much that they simply decided to extend their stay. That had never occurred to me that you can do that. You can just cancel your trip over there and just stay an extra night or two. Wow, I love the spontaneity. And once you slow down like that, it can change how you plan your days, which is exactly what the next rule is about.
Rule number 16, on longer trips, make life feel normal. When most people go on vacation for four or five days, it's basically purely a vacation. It's fun. You're just eating everything. You're going out late at night. I can understand it. But if you do that for longer periods of time, it starts to pull on you, starts to drain you, you feel bad, you feel bloated, you just don't feel good.
So what we did was we built normalcy into our trips. It might mean morning walks together. It definitely means closely following our workout routine, maybe not as aggressively as when we're home, but as closely as possible, familiar routines in terms of when we want to go to sleep, things like that. And what that allows us to do is actually to stay and travel longer, not just for four days of aggressive vacationing.
Now, remember, I only do this on longer trips. If it's four days, I don't really care. We're going to eat whatever. We don't have to go to the gym as much. Fine. But in our case, because we started to travel for longer, we realized
We need to bring some semblance of normalcy into these trips, which leads to the next rule. Rule number 17, design your trip with built-in recovery. I think I used to plan trips like I was trying to prove something. Every day was packed, reservations and restaurants and tours and all kinds of stuff back to back. On paper, it looked amazing. We're going to do this, this, this, this, this. But when I was there on the ground, it just felt rushed. And I learned that great experience needs space to breathe.
This happened with my wife and me. One time she said, "Hey, can you help me plan this part of the trip? I'm pretty busy. I need your help to plan." I said, "No problem." And I planned it. And we get there, and on that day, I freaking packed that schedule from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m. And she just looked at me with her eyebrow raised, and everybody knew, specifically me, I messed up.
On paper, it looks amazing. Of course, when you're at home planning it, you want to do this and that and this and that. We've got to make sure we see this and also that. But then when you're there, you don't want that. Maybe one thing, maybe two things a day. In our case now, with the way we travel, it's one major thing every two days. And also for every 10 days of travel, we've got one full reset day. That's a day where we do nothing. No reservations, no agenda. We might just sit in the hotel, sit in the hotel room or by the pool and not feel guilty at all. We know that it is part of our entire trip experience, which brings us to the next rule.
Rule number 18, build in time for serendipity. One thing we always do before we take a trip is we save a bunch of interesting places on Google Maps, cafes, restaurants, neighborhoods, random spots, textile shops that we want to check out. But we don't turn those pins into a tight plan. They are there as references, not a checklist. Often what we'll do is we'll pick a neighborhood that we want to walk around today, and we've saved a bunch of pins, and so we'll just start walking. And as we're walking, we'll look at what's around, and if it sounds interesting to us, we'll go there.
This is what leads to the next rule. That mindset that quietly changes how you travel and how you plan, all of the pressure that you put on every single trip. This is a big one. Rule number 19, there are no once-in-a-lifetime trips. One of the biggest sources of stress in travel is the idea that this is your one shot. If we don't do everything right now, we will never get another chance. So people rush. I have a new metaphor. If I love a place, I know I can come back. And just knowing that changes everything about how we travel.
My wife is abundant enough to know that if we want to come back, we can. And guess what? We were on a safari in Kenya, and one of the places we went was this lodge that we absolutely loved. We loved it so much that a few years later, we did go back. And so not only is she abundant and we are abundant, but we also try to live it by going back to the places that we love and going deep.
If this way of thinking connects with you, if you've never heard anybody talking like this when it comes to travel or life, make sure you are subscribed because this is what we talk about here. Counterintuitive, surprising ways to make better decisions with money and time and your energy so you can actually live a calm and intentional life instead of being rushed and reactive. And now let's bring all of this together.
Rule number 20, celebrate special trips intentionally. One thing that's easy to forget when you travel is why the trip matters in the first place. My wife and I look for rituals that we can create to commemorate special moments. And we try to do them a lot. I mentioned that we don't really drink that much, but when a trip is special, when we sit down on the plane, we will toast a glass of champagne right there. It's not because of the champagne. It's the moment where we pause and we look each other in the eye and we say, "Cheers." We're really saying, "This matters."
I think those small rituals are really important. They mark that trip. They separate it from routine. What is it for you? Could be a prayer, could be champagne, could be eating a certain type of food. None of these rules are about being fancy. There's a couple of them on there that are pretty expensive, but you don't need to do all of them. Just adapt and adopt for your own needs.
So once you start thinking this way, travel kind of becomes a mirror. It shows you what is important to you. It shows you, "If I design my vacations like this, can I design my life like this as well?" And in the next video, I'll show you how to apply this same way of thinking to your entire life, not just travel, so you can design what your rich life actually looks like. Watch this video next.
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