Are you ready for your dream vacation?

Hosts Whitney Reagan and Daniel Sharkey dive into stretch goals and “once-in-a-lifetime” trips, from a South African safari to a five-star hotel stay. Sharkey explains why one-off extravagant expenses rarely derail a financial plan—unlike heavy, recurring fixed costs—and why these experiences are “inherently attainable.”

Learn how working with an advisor can help you repurpose non-valuable expenses, isolate costs in advance and overcome the psychological “guilt” of spending to create unforgettable core family memories.

Transcript

Whitney Reagan: We’re back on camera, and we get to have another conversation. I think today we’re going to talk about when clients, prospects feel they’re ready to get their dream vacation or, you know, that stretch goal of a vacation to go somewhere that they don’t necessarily think is attainable or reachable. I’m sure you talk about this with your clients all the time.

Danel Sharkey: I have a lot to say here, so I’ll get into it quickly. But as a grand takeaway, the biggest thing I want to leave everyone, if they don’t listen to a second past this, is know it’s inherently attainable, and you should pursue it if it means that much to you. We’ll talk more about the details about how we do it, how we think about it.

But I think the most important takeaway, and we’ve touched on this in previous episodes, we want to ensure that things like this that really matter to you, that they matter to someone in your family. It may be something that you may only have a single opportunity to do in your life, due to the uniqueness of what you’re trying to accomplish.

Just know that you should kind of tackle that with both arms, and that this is inherently doable. And we’ll talk through some of the tools and tips and techniques that we use to make that a reality. But I want people to know that if they have something like this that they really want to do, you should do it.

Whitney: Yeah, I like it. And I think just the pure fact of putting it out there and jotting it down or putting it out into the universe, so you can start manifesting it. And then working with the wealth advisor, you can have that neutral party to help you take milestones or take small, achievable steps to then get to the milestones, to then get to the stretch goal.

Dan: Absolutely. And the important thing is for clients that we have that we help with all of the time. This is precisely why working with someone at Mariner allows you to reach things that you may not have thought were attainable previously. It goes far beyond what goes into your portfolio and what your income looks like, and all those other things which are important.

But by having someone to actually run those numbers for you and walk you through what the true levers to financial success are. This is one of them that I feel is incredibly attainable for everyone. And we’ll talk about exactly what that means. So, for example, one of the things that we often hear is I want to take that one trip to Paris, and I really want to stay at this hotel, or I’ve never been to New Zealand, and it’s the place that I’ve just been dying to go to my entire life.

I’ve never been on a safari. I want to go backcountry skiing in Yellowstone or see the penguins. Whatever your particular thing is.

Whitney: South Africa and a safari.

Dan: Yeah, exactly. And I always forget if the penguins are North Pole or South Pole. But I’m sure my first grader will correct me tonight at dinner. But the benefit of this is that typically, from my experience and from running thousands of financial plans over the course of my career, those individual, isolated one-off trips typically never derail a financial plan.

They never derail your retirement plans. They don’t set you back decades that you have to then uncover or come back from. And embedded in that goal might be some level of extravagance that you are not typically comfortable with. Staying in a five-star hotel, going to a Michelin-star restaurant, flying first class.

I’m here to tell you and promise you that when you call your Mariner advisor, and you ask them whether or not I could stay on the Rue de …, at the five-star hotel. That goal is inherently tangible and possible, primarily because those one-time singular expenses over the course of your life have absolutely no significance on the overall success of your financial plan.

Now, we’re not talking about spending $800,000 for the normal person to go on vacation, but those little fringe extravagances that people historically have avoided, like flying first class or like staying in a very expensive hotel, if that’s going to bring you a level of joy that you’re not going to do ever again, I would really encourage you to be able to do that.

What we typically see, what derails a financial plan or what derails retirement, are some things that are outside of your control. Like people getting sick or dying early, or some other major event that you can’t control. But also it’s the recurring expenses, whether that’s a country club membership, a boat, horses, anything that you are—a second home, which I know we’ll talk about in a in a later episode—but the things that you have to pay in month in, month out, those heavy, heavy, fixed expenses, those are the items that when you and I sit down with clients that we go over that typically have a significantly greater impact rather than the extra 5 or 6 or $700 you might spend on an upgraded plane ticket or an upgraded hotel room.

I think most of the reservation that people have is directly related to, they don’t typically live that way, and there’s a little bit of guilt involved. They’re worried about what that might say about them. They’re worried about whether they’re going to like it, and maybe they want to do it more. But all of those things are inherently reachable.

And we want you to realize that when you have an advisor at Mariner, they’re going to be able to not only support you in what that goal is but show you empirically that it’s actually possible.

Whitney: I can give you an example of—I am going to take my kids to Disney World for the first time in probably January, and I’ve been saying that I was going to do this for like three years now. But I kept going back to, oh my gosh, the Chief Magical Officer gave me this over $30,000 quote for, you know, like a few days at Disney.

And it freaked me out. But then, take a step back, I started to replan and figure out some of the costs and some of the expenses. And then I also heard about this like private walking tour guide. That seems like I might want to splurge on something like that, but I think I’m okay with splurging on that as long as I don’t spend as much maybe on the hotel. You know, I feel like there’s also some kind of like give and take too like, what’s absolutely a priority for your family and what’s absolutely something that you want to do on this vacation, and then maybe start cutting out some other things if you’re really trying to budget, or if you’re feeling bad about being super luxurious.

Dan: Those little tradeoffs apply to everything. And it’s a perfect example when you’re taking a singular trip that you may feel is more expensive than you were initially comfortable with. Not everything is important or carries the same level of weight and what your enjoyment will be. So, to your point, whether we save a little bit of money here, whether we save a little bit of money there, whatever the total expense ends up being, prioritizing and making that particular—what you may think is extravagant—your top priority just will enhance the experience. And what I would tell you is that at Mariner, we don’t judge what anyone’s goals are. That could be things that are tangible, like a sports car or a really fancy watch, or a very expensive home, or intangible, like trips and things that we’re talking about today that create those core memories.

But just think about, to your point, about shaving some dollars from other parts of your life—when you think about all the things that you spend money on that don’t really provide you much value. If you work with an advisor who can identify what those things are, you can simply repurpose those dollars into something that really does matter.

And if you have, in our case, we both have three young kids. If you can provide that level of experience for them at a young age, in which they want to be around you. And I know we’re talking just to people of our age right now, but this applies across the age and desire spectrum. If you can provide that experience that they’re going to remember forever. It’s going to make your life a little bit easier, and it’s something that you’ve always wanted to do. And if that means you stay at a second-tier hotel, but the price ends up being basically the same, that’s really something that you should absolutely consider. And it’s something that’s possible.

A way that we do that—and I’d be curious to know how you think about it, but the way that I typically do that is making sure that we isolate that cost as far in advance as we can and using all of the income sources that are available. So, whether that’s isolating a bonus payment that you may have received in a previous year, whether that’s using your second paycheck of the month in a dedicated fund to make sure that we can actually pay for that.

Those are the mechanics of how you do it. But I think the bigger headwind that people face is just whether they should. And I’m here to tell you that I think that you absolutely should. We don’t want to ever have people go through life without really doing the things that they really care about, that bring joy to them and their families.

And if it costs a little bit more than what you’re typically used to, just know that that’s okay and your plan is going to stay on track, and an advisor can help you better understand how all those numbers tie together.

Whitney: Everything that you said is very aligned with how I work with clients too. And I think just psychologically speaking, I think it makes more sense to bucket it out and isolate it and separate it just for there. I think it’s for peace of mind and having them know that it’s either out of sight, out of mind or it’s going to this specific goal.

That’s why we identify goals like this. Even if it is a stretch goal. You identify it, you put it there, you put it in a bucket, you’re saving for it, and you know that you’re working towards something specific. I think just that in and of itself helps people to start planning and preparing and feeling like, okay, I can do this.

Dan: Absolutely. And then when you actually have the money in the bucket, spend it. Don’t be afraid to spend it. How many clients can we talk to that we try to help with this who are nervous. And this is where the you know, as a good old Irish Catholic boy myself, this is I know this. Where this comes from, right? But this is where this comes from. If you have an emergency fund—

Whitney: The guilt.

Dan: The guilt, it’s always the same guilt, right? If you have put the money away, feel free to spend it. It’s the entire pyramid structure that we typically talk about. If you pay yourself first, which is a phrase I don’t love, but is very applicable in this scenario.

If you’ve hit your savings goals, if you understand what your income and fixed expenses are, whatever is left over when you know you’re on track because you have an advisor who’s walking you through what you need to do to be successful, it doesn’t matter what you spend on this once in a lifetime trip. If it’s going to enhance that experience and it’s going to bring you joy and it’s something that you really want and it’s something that you’re going to remember forever, give yourself the permission to actually spend that money to, to take that thing.

And it’s never something you are going to regret. I went to Disney World just this past January, right in the middle of that huge snowstorm, engulfed the entire country, spent more time in the Charlotte airport than I care to admit, but it’s something that we’ll never, ever forget. And it’s something that that the entire family can benefit from, and that we all are going to look back on in a long time from now, knowing it was worth every dollar.

So we know not everyone has the ability to do those things, but if you find yourself in something that you know is unlikely to be repeated, or is truly something that, you know, like a once in a lifetime trip that you’ve been waiting your entire life to do, we can figure out a way to make sure that with your income and resource that you have, but I can promise you that the takeaway is going to be that you should absolutely do it and not let it weigh you down.

Whitney: Well, I think that was the best way to end it, Dan. I think that we covered everything in a short amount of time and it was valuable. So, if you liked what you heard, please like, subscribe or follow wherever you listen to your podcast. Have a great week!

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