Transcript
Intro
Stephan Shipe: Welcome back to the Scholar Wealth Podcast. Today, we start with a listener question about social security, specifically whether it ever makes sense for high earners to claim benefits early and invest them rather than waiting until age 70, especially given concerns about a future benefit change.
Then we turn to a housing question many long time homeowners face. A couple who bought their home decades ago has seen significant appreciation and would like to move closer to family, but the capital gains tax on selling their primary residence is giving them pause. We’ll talk through how to think about that trade off and what planning can and cannot realistically do.
We’ll wrap up with a from the field conversation with Kelsey Perri from Road Scholar. We talk about educational travel and retirement, multi-generational trips, and why experiences often become a priority in your second act. Let’s jump in.
Question 1 – Claiming Social Security Early vs. Waiting Until Age 70
Listener:
I’m 63 earning about 1 million per year and I plan to keep working until at least age 65. My retirement savings are strong, so I’m not relying on social security, but I’d like to maximize what I receive after paying into the system for so long. Conventional wisdom says to wait until age 70, but some people suggest claiming early and investing the benefits yourself. I’m also concerned about possible benefit cuts or future means testing. Given that uncertainty, why shouldn’t I just take social security early and invest it rather than waiting for a potentially larger benefit at age 70?
Stephan Shipe:
So this is a question we get a lot.
Fortunately, that means I’ve had to do a lot of background research into this type of question.
The outcome of a lot of different questions around social security and cuts is that social security is regularly running out of money. I mean, this is not a new found issue.
Every few years, we hear the new statistics that social security is going to run out of money in 2020. It’s going to run out of money in 2025. It’s going to run out of money in 2035. It’ll run out of money in 2050. And that’s not to say those numbers aren’t necessarily true. Of course, they’re true. The issue is what changes could be made to lengthen that timeline.
When you look at what numbers are going into it, they take into account the current draw from social security, which is expected to get a little higher as the population ages, but it doesn’t take into account what possible outcomes are. Everyone always jumps to the conclusion that if social security is going to run out of money, it must mean that they’re going to cut social security checks, which would absolutely be the worst thing for any politician to do. Could you imagine taking the main voting base in the United States and saying, what we’re going to do is cut your income? That would be very difficult.
So if we put that up on the wall, not to say that it couldn’t happen, that is one of the possible outcomes that could exist. But if we start ranking them, we start looking at all the possible outcomes and think about what the Social Security Administration could do. One, they could cut social security checks. Absolutely. Two, they could go and cut social security checks only for certain people, which gets to your point of means testing and everything, also possible.
Both, I think, are still hard to sell because it’s hard to sell in general the idea that people have paid into a system and now you’re taking that money back. Even though that’s not how social security works, that’s how it feels. It feels like it’s a savings when you’re older.
The other one is we could go increase the social security tax that’s out there. So instead of it being 6%, why couldn’t it be 7%? And you could tax that 7% even at the individual level or the company level or only at the company level.
And that is an easier pill to swallow. If you think about it, you have to kind of close your eyes and put yourself in the shoes of a politician who’s trying to sell this. It’s hard for me to sell, I’m going to cut your social security check. It’s easier for me to sell, I’m only going to cut the social security check on people who don’t need it. It’s even easier to sell that we’re going to tax the future generation that’s not you more to pay for your social security check now. That becomes a lot easier.
The other factor is that there’s a cap. There’s a cap on how much individuals pay into social security. So the current limits are in your high 100s, around $170,000 or so, and income above that limit, you’re not paying into social security anymore. So a really easy one would be to take that limit and just increase it and say that limit is $250,000, that limit is $400,000, or that limit doesn’t exist and it just continues to go up.
And the reason why that has outsized benefits for the Social Security Administration is that when you look at the benefit ratio to how much earnings you had compared to the amount of social security benefit that you’ll receive, that is not a linear relationship. What I mean by that is let’s say you make $20,000 a year and that’s your income. Your social security check may be $20,000 a year. So it becomes kind of a one for one scenario.
Now let’s say you go to $40,000 a year, your social security benefit now may only be $35,000. So there’s a little bit more of a higher ROI for the Social Security Administration for that additional amount. What ends up happening is the Social Security Administration has two bend points. In other words, they do have a linear relationship up to a certain income level, and then the slope of that line drops, and the benefit you get for additional income starts to decrease. And then there’s a second bend point later.
So let’s say you get over $100,000 a year. That benefit that you get for every $10,000 of earnings doesn’t equate nearly as much to any benefit in social security. So sure, your social security check is still going up a little bit at every dollar you earn past $100,000, but it’s not nearly giving you the benefit that someone who earns another $1,000 from $20,000 to $21,000 gets.
And so it’s sort of a built-in means testing, is really what they did. And they said, we’re not going to make this linear.
If you’re making $150,000 a year, that $50,000 you made from $100,000 to $150,000 may only give you $5,000 of social security benefit a year, where the $50,000 to $100,000 may have given you more. That $0 to $50,000 gave you a ton.
So if I’m the Social Security Administration, I’m looking at this, the easiest thing for me to do would just be to increase that cap. Because by increasing that cap, you have somebody earning from $200,000 to $300,000, that additional $100,000 income that they’re paying social security tax on, they’re not nearly getting that return.
So not that I’m advocating for that, because that is absolutely a negative ROI for all of the employees out there who are working or anybody who’s paying into the system. But as a Social Security Administration, that becomes a lot easier of a pitch for me to go change those bend points around, change those limits around, because you now change that around and it immediately changes the entire layout of what social security looks like.
So that’s the one way I look at it. We have a lot of different levers that can be pulled. The lever of let’s cut social security benefits is really low.
And the other thing is we have precedent on this. If you look historically at times when the Social Security Administration has run into issues, they’ve made adjustments before. They’ve added bend points. They’ve gone through and looked at things like changing the full retirement age from 65 to 67. And that wasn’t an overnight thing.
One thing I hear regularly is somebody says, well, I got to take it before they increase the age. They’re like, well, what happens if they increase the age to 70 and I’m a month away from getting my social security check? I don’t want to miss out.
First, this is not going to be an overnight shift. You don’t just wake up one morning and they say social security age has now changed and it’s all finished. This has to be voted on. You would see it in the system for a while. So you’d have some time to plan for it.
But the other factor is that even if they’re going to do it, any time in the past that there’s been changes like this to benefits, there’s been a shift in how long it takes for that to be rolled out. So when social security age changed from 65 to 67, it wasn’t a one time switch. It was 65, 65 and one month, your full retirement age was 65 and two months, then 65 and three months. And it just slowly rolled this out.
So that way you didn’t have that issue of, I retired today, I delayed social security, but now I have to wait two more years for social security. That just doesn’t happen that way.
So to the other point though of what do we do around this, couldn’t I just invest the money myself? You could. You could absolutely invest the money yourself. However, there’s a big difference between an 8% average return and an 8% increase in benefits.
So social security, for every year that you delay, is an 8% increase in benefits. And that’s guaranteed. That is really hard to match, an 8% change in shift compared to any investment you’re going to get in the market, especially now with valuations the way they are.
We may expect a 100% stock portfolio to have an average return of around 8%. And you add inflation onto that. Now you’re talking about a nominal return of 10% needed in the market to match a social security delay. Every year you get that 8% plus inflation. That is really difficult to match.
That’s why conventional wisdom around social security is to delay. Because when you run these, whether it’s Monte Carlo models or you theoretically think through them, it’s really hard to beat a guaranteed 8% increase every single year.
Now I know you may say, well, that’s guaranteed. That’s a hard word to say around the government and everything else. Exactly. But that wouldn’t be an overnight thing. You would know ahead of time if there are any changes.
I would stick a little bit more credibility to that 8% being guaranteed as opposed to the market having an 8% guaranteed return during that time. So we need to take that into account.
Means testing could happen. Like I said, we have a lot more possible outcomes that they’re likely going to get into.
The last thing I would add to that, especially from a high earner perspective, is that age 70 usually is the way to go. But another factor to consider is depending on the historical earnings of your family, if you’re married, the other benefit of waiting until 70 is a spouse gets either their social security or 50% of your social security.
So the benefit there is if you have a big discrepancy in earnings over time, and let’s say you are the highest earner in your family, and now you go through social security, if you wait until 70, that’s a higher benefit not only for you, but then your spouse will get 50% of a higher benefit as opposed to 50% of a lower benefit.
So just another aspect to throw in there on this decision. And now we can roll into our next question.
Question 2 – Selling a Long-Time Primary Residence and Capital Gains
Listener:
My wife and I bought a house in Santa Cruz for $300,000 in the 80s. Today our house is worth $1.8 million. We’d like to move closer to our kids now that they’re having grandkids, but the capital gains tax on the house makes me pause. Are there any ways to lessen the hit?
Stephan Shipe:
This is a prime example of how grandkids ruin financial plans all the time. Everyone’s got a great plan, like the Mike Tyson quote, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. It’s equivalent for financial plans and grandkids. You have grandkids, they mess everything up.
So this is a good example of that as well. So we need to talk first about what the impact is going to be, because the capital gains hit, there is an exclusion that exists. So in the US, the federal exclusion, states are all a little different, but you have $250,000 of capital gains exclusion or $500,000 for a married couple.
So in your situation, we’re looking at $300,000 of basis. And you may be able to do some calculations there depending on the renovations to the house and changes and everything. Let’s just, for ease, say $300,000 of basis. You’re going to go sell it for $1.8 million. That gives you $1.5 million of gains. $500,000 of that you can exclude, which means you’re stuck with a million dollars of federal capital gains.
You take that million dollars of federal capital gains. You start paying, you’re at the 20% capital gains bracket, plus you’re going to pay net investment income tax, or NIIT, on that as well, which is another 3.8%. So you’re roughly 25% in for federal. You throw some state tax in there and it’s going to get messy really fast. You’re easily paying probably $250,000 plus in tax to be able to sell this house.
So the way I would look at this is a couple of different ways. One is depending on what your entire financial picture looks like, it may not be that big of a deal. You pay the $250,000 of tax, you walk away with $750,000 of—no, more than that—because you’d have the gain and everything else. So you’d have $1.25 million in cash that you could go buy a house close to the grandkids. You’re probably hopefully buying in a lower cost of living area. So that’s going to go a lot further, and end of story, it’s going to be fine.
So I would say no matter what, as long as the numbers work out, I wouldn’t focus your whole decision of whether or not you should live next to family solely based on whether or not you’re going to have to pay taxes.
Now, the question that comes up is your last question. Are there ways to lessen the hit? Of course there are ways to lessen. There’s lots of ways to lessen. I think it’s a question of whether or not you’re looking at lessening the hit for you personally, or you’re lessening the hit for your estate as a whole.
For instance, the one option is, like I said, you just go sell it, you pay the tax, and you walk out knowing that it’s done. You go buy a new house somewhere. Maybe it frees up enough cash for you to take some more vacations with the family or fund 529s for the grandkids, do something like that. We don’t know.
The other aspect, also depending on whether or not you need that money, and at risk of turning the podcast a little dark, we can look a little bit more into the estate side of this and know that what also exists is a step-up in basis upon death.
Now you’re looking at $1.5 million in gains, or $1 million in gains after the exclusion. If your kids were to inherit this house, they would get a step-up in basis and they would have zero in gains, and their cost basis for this house would move to $1.8 million. That has major implications. And we can quantify that implication. It’s at least $250,000 worth of value to your whole family, if we think about it that way.
So you can either pay that $250,000 now and your estate is $250,000 lower, or you can wait for a step-up in basis and they get another $250,000. But you would say, well, Stephan, that doesn’t solve the problem of me being close to the grandkids.
That comes into whether or not you can benefit from that $250,000 of savings. Does that mean you could go rent for a little while closer to the grandkids? Does it mean that you go take out an equity line on your current home and use that to purchase a home closer to the grandkids so that way you don’t have to sell the current place?
You go rent out the current place to cover all your expenses, and your only cost in that scenario would be the interest you’re paying on the loan for the new home.
So there’s a lot of different ways to think about this beyond just, I have to sell it and eat the taxes. That is absolutely one option as long as your finances would be able to sustain it. But there are some more creative ways to go around this of saying, maybe we look at the picture as a whole and from a kind of higher-level view of this income and these assets not only being your assets, but being assets of the family.
And what’s the most efficient move from a financial perspective that has positive impacts on you now and also on the tax side and the tax burden for you currently and in the future for your children.
From the Field – Kelsey Perri, Road Scholar
Stephan Shipe:
Next we’re joined by Kelsey Perri from Road Scholar to discuss why educational travel and shared experiences often become a meaningful priority in retirement.
I’m joined by Kelsey Perri, Public Relations Director at Road Scholar. Kelsey has worked across travel, tourism, and communications throughout her career and has been with Road Scholar since 2016. She works closely with programs focused on educational travel for older adults, solo travelers, and multi-generational families, and regularly shares insights on podcasts and talk shows.
Road Scholar shows up very often in conversations with our clients. I’m looking forward to discussing how educational travel fits into a thoughtful financial plan and why these experiences can be such a meaningful use of time and resources.
So Kelsey, thanks for joining us today. And why don’t we start off with how you got into this? What is your role, your background?
Kelsey Perri:
Yeah, definitely. So I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin, and my family didn’t do a lot of traveling. And I think my first mode of travel was really through reading and through books. That was how I got around the world into different places and learning about different places.
So I was in a family of lots of athletes. I was the one under the bleachers reading books at my sister’s hockey games. That’s kind of where my beginnings start with travel.
And then I studied abroad in college in Ireland. And that’s when it really took off. I really, really fell in love with travel and learning through different cultures and things like that.
I always knew that marketing communications might be a great way for me to combine my love of writing and another industry, which ended up being travel. I found Road Scholar and I’ve been here almost 10 years now.
Yeah, I get to combine my love for communications and writing and travel and education as well. So it’s really the perfect place for me to be. I love working at Road Scholar. We’re a not-for-profit organization and it’s a really incredible company culture. And we have a great mission of education that brings together all of the people that work here. And so it’s just, it’s a really great place to work.
Stephan Shipe:
Sounds great. I’ve been really excited about talking to you about this because it was years ago we’d have people mention that they’re going on trips and like, we’re going with Road Scholar. And at first it’s like, oh, just a company name you hear.
And then you hear it a second time. And I think it was like the third or fourth time I hear it, I’m like, what is this place? And why is this the one company that continues to come up all the time?
So for someone who hasn’t been on one of these trips before, what are you doing out there that makes people continue to mention this company?
Kelsey Perri:
Well, I love to hear that. It’s great to hear great things from our participants. We have 100,000 travelers a year, so it makes sense that you’re hearing it more and more often.
So we are an educational travel organization. But I think what’s important to understand where we are and who we are today, it’s kind of good to look back at our history and where we came from.
So we were founded 50 years ago. This was our 50th anniversary this year. And so we were founded in 1975 as Elder Hostel. So some of your older demographic may even remember that more than Road Scholar, some of their parents traveling with us and things like that.
So when we were founded in 75, we were taking older adults to college campuses and they were staying in the dorms and they were taking classes in the lecture halls from the professors at the university. So it was kind of more of like a back-to-campus experience for older adults in retirement for them to continue learning after retirement.
And then over the last 50 years, we’ve really evolved to be more of an educational travel organization. So we’re staying in hotels now, not in college dorms anymore.
We are still a not-for-profit. We still serve older adults. And we are still all about learning and education. That’s still our mission and that always will be.
So even though we are staying in hotels now and it’s a little bit more of a travel experience, it’s still super immersive and it’s all about learning.
And so the trips are, you enroll in a program, you pay your money all up front. It’s pretty much all-inclusive. Once you get there, you have a group leader who’s taking care of all of the logistics and details. So you don’t have to worry about anything.
You can kind of enjoy the ride, enjoy the learning. Hotels are included, all of the activities and meals and everything like that.
So it’s really a group travel experience. But again, it’s all about learning and education. So you’re not there to sit on a beach and read a book. You’re not there to hit the spa all day. You are there to be active and to be learning.
But there’s a lot of different ways you can do that. We have literally thousands of programs all across the US and all around the world. So you might be in more of a classroom setting. You might be learning about pickleball on the pickleball court. You might be traveling internationally. You might be on an African safari. You might be hiking through national parks.
So there’s lots of different ways that you can learn with Road Scholar.
Stephan Shipe:
Give me one of your favorites right now. I know there’s a lot out there to pick from, but narrow it down to one.
Kelsey Perri:
That’s like asking for my favorite child! I’ve been on about 10 programs myself, and I have to say, I think one of the most iconic Road Scholar experiences that I recommend to anybody is to go to Cuba.
Cuba has not always been an easy place to travel for Americans, and Road Scholar has been able to go there pretty consistently since the 90s because we are an educational organization. And it’s a really unique, interesting people-to-people experience when you go there.
It’s a country that we don’t always hear a lot about, or maybe it will change your ideas of what Cuba is like when you go there.
So I went there, actually my husband came on a Road Scholar program with me there, and it was just really one of the greatest learning experiences I’ve had ever in my life, but especially on a Road Scholar program.
That’s definitely one that comes to mind, and it’s very iconic because Road Scholar at times has been really the only travel organization that could go there.
Stephan Shipe:
So you said you’re not hanging out at the beach and the spa. What are you doing on your trip to Cuba? What were you doing in those days from the education perspective?
Kelsey Perri:
Yeah, we’re traveling through Havana, learning about the historic architecture, learning about the history of the old fifties cars that are there. We got to ride in them on the program.
We went out into more of the countryside and learned about some of the farming there and the smaller cities. We went to a senior center and learned how to do some fan art. This was years ago now, so you’re testing my memory.
But we learned how to do fan communication. That’s something from historical Cuban culture, and we did some dancing with them. We learned about some different sports that they have in Cuba.
We went to a private performance from a local dance troupe, and then we got to meet with them after and talk to them about their lives dancing.
And one of my favorites is we went to a printing co-op. They did screen printing. And some of the best screen printers in Cuba were part of this co-op.
And they actually did the screen printing on old Cuban cigar presses that they used for the labels of old Cuban cigars. And they retired from that and came over to this printing co-op.
And so we actually bought a piece of art from one of the artists there. And that really kicked off me and my husband’s thing now that we always try to get a nice big piece of art wherever we travel.
So yeah, that’s some of the highlights.
Stephan Shipe:
Yeah, that’s great. Definitely, definitely different than the spa and beach scenario there.
And one of the big things that I see when we’re putting together financial plans is that by far the big expense that hits in retirement is travel. It’s always the one that everyone’s excited about.
They start rattling off, like here are the places we’re going to go, this is what we want to do.
But what’s interesting is another area of that we’re starting to see a lot more is multi-generational travel.
Kelsey Perri:
Exactly.
Stephan Shipe:
And it’s not just we’re going to go on a trip. It’s we’re going to take the whole family or we’re going to take the grandkids. What are the trends that you’re seeing in that right now when it comes to travel?
Kelsey Perri:
Yeah, so Road Scholar is really experts in multi-generational travel. We’ve actually been doing grandparent trips since the 1970s, since the very beginning.
And for us, that’s grandparents and grandkids traveling together. Sometimes it’s referred to as SkipGen. That’s another term for it. That’s just the grandparents and the grandkids traveling together, which is a really unique and meaningful experience for the grandparents to spend that time just with their grandkid one-on-one.
And then we also have family programs, which is three generations. And that’s typically what you’ll see when you see, yeah, the grandparents celebrating like their 50th anniversary and they want to take their kids and their grandkids.
So we do do private trips as well where you can have it just be exclusively for you and your family. And we see a lot of those for milestone anniversaries and birthdays and things like that for our participants.
So yes, as far as what’s trending in that area, international travel in general has been trending since the pandemic, but we’re also seeing that be the same with families, family and grandparent programs.
And it’s not always something you think about, to travel to like Africa or South America with your kids and grandkids. That maybe seems like a big trip, but it’s definitely a great way to do it with an organization like Road Scholar who takes care of all the details so you don’t have to worry about booking everything and taking care of all the details.
And we designed these for kids and their grandparents. So we’ve designed them perfectly to be both engaging for the grandparents and the grandkids, very interactive, hands-on experiences, lots of active outdoor adventures and things like that.
So we really are experts in that. And so it’s a great way to do it with your family if you’re taking your whole family on a trip and you don’t want to worry about the details.
Stephan Shipe:
Perfect. And when you think, because obviously with the number of programs that you have and all these different types of programs, when it comes to actually allocating resources to this and trying to figure out like what trip I should take, how much I’m spending on it, do I just take one really awesome trip or am I taking three smaller really awesome trips?
What advice do you typically give for someone trying to make that decision of do I take that two or three week trip or do I go and take two or three smaller trips throughout the year?
Kelsey Perri:
Yeah, I think it’s kind of you have to know yourself. You have to know your time. You have to know your health. You have to know your priorities.
We’ve definitely seen, again coming out of the pandemic, a lot more people taking those big kind of bucket list adventures or the longer trips or more trips because travel was taken away from all of us during the pandemic. And I think it was a real wake-up call to a lot of people that that can happen to anybody for multiple reasons.
And so this really is the time. There’s no time to waste and really get out there and see what you want to see.
But you have to kind of prioritize and think about, do you really want to go to Antarctica or do you want to see all of the national parks? Maybe both of those things would cost the same thing. I’m not totally sure exactly, but you have to look at your budget and you have to be realistic and you need to know your budget before you start planning.
But one great thing about traveling with Road Scholar is that you know what the trip is going to cost from the moment that you enroll in it. There’s not going to be any surprise costs along the way.
I think if you’re booking a trip by yourself, you only have to spend the airfare right off the bat. Then you don’t have to pay for the hotels until the trip is over, but then you have the food. So it’s so much harder to know exactly what that budget is going to look like if you’re planning a trip by yourself.
But when you travel with Road Scholar, you know what that cost is going to be from the outset. So it’s a little more transparent.
And you can actually filter our programs on our website by the cost as well. That gives you a good way, we have hundreds of programs, so it gives you a good way to narrow down what’s going to be the right trip for you.
And then the other thing I’ll say is just don’t forget that there is so much to learn about and so much to see right in the US. So don’t be discouraged if you feel like you can’t afford a trip to Paris or to Africa.
There’s just so much to see right in our backyard. So maybe some smaller close-to-home trips that you can drive to or that are a little more affordable might be a good option, at least a good place to start.
Stephan Shipe:
You mentioned the international travel taking kind of that uptick.
One of the things that we see when we do live events and bring people in, and by far the big comment that we always get is not that the speakers were good or the topics were great, but it’s the networking aspect and the connections they make with other people.
Do you see that same thing? Do you think that’s increased as well post-COVID, or has that always been the case that one of the big draws toward these programs is not just the education or the location, but the types of people that you’re traveling with?
Kelsey Perri:
Definitely always been the case for us, even back in 1975 when we created the programs.
The social connections that you build and the friendships that can be created on our programs are something that’s really special, especially among our solo travelers.
We hear again and again that they’ve met other travelers on their programs that they end up becoming friends with and staying in touch with and traveling together on programs for years to come. So that’s definitely something that’s really important.
I think when you travel with an organization like Road Scholar that has such a specific mission of learning and we have such a specific style of travel, our programs attract people who want to travel in the same way and who are interested in learning and who are curious, intellectual people.
And so that really attracts a lot of people that are immediately going to hit it off. Our participants become really close really quickly.
And so we hear that all the time, that the participants are really a big part of what make our programs special.
Stephan Shipe:
This is making so much sense, because now I know why we have such a concentration of people who are interested in Road Scholar, because of that interest in learning and everything that goes along with that.
So when you look at decades of past experience and where the organization has been, what do you see for the next year? What are the big innovations, evolutions, or trends in travel that you’re seeing, whether in the industry as a whole or for Road Scholar in particular?
Kelsey Perri:
Yeah, so one thing we’ve been hearing a lot from our participants is that sustainability is important for them. They want to make sure that they’re traveling sustainably and responsibly, that they’re leaving the place better than the way they found it.
So we have launched a sustainability initiative over the last few years. It’s always been something that’s important to us, but we really wanted to be consistent about it across all of our programs.
So that might be things like limiting single-use plastics and food waste on our programs, interacting responsibly with wildlife and local Indigenous communities. We also offset some carbon emissions from our programs and prioritize locally sourced meals.
So there’s lots of different things that go into that, but that’s something that we’re seeing that’s important to our participants and is going to continue to be a bigger thing in travel moving forward.
We also launched our online programs during the pandemic, and they have been more popular than ever, which is great. We didn’t know if that was something that would just keep us running during the pandemic or if it would peter out after, but they’ve been more popular than ever.
And so that’s something that I see in travel. What does the future of virtual travel look like for us?
It’s our online programming, and we try to recreate the travel experience as much as possible through the screen.
That has allowed us not only to engage with our participants during the pandemic, but to engage with more participants that we couldn’t before. There are lots of people who can’t physically travel for lots of different reasons, including financial reasons.
So our online programming and virtual lectures are a great option as well for people who are on a budget but want to engage through travel and learning.
We have at least one virtual lecture every month that’s totally free, and the others are $25. And then we have multi-day adventures online where you really have immersive travel experiences through the screen, everything is live, you’re getting live musical performances, live discussions with other participants, and all that kind of thing.
I don’t know exactly what the future of virtual travel is going to look like, but at least in the short term, that’s what it looks like for us.
Stephan Shipe:
We’re just missing the VR goggles and you’ll be set.
Kelsey Perri:
Yeah, that might be the next thing around the corner. We’ll see.
Stephan Shipe:
Exciting stuff. Kelsey, thank you for coming on today and talking to us. I think you answered a lot of questions that I’ve had over the past few years about why people like Road Scholar. So thank you so much.
Kelsey Perri:
Good. Well, I hope maybe we can get you on a program. I don’t think you’re in our demographic quite yet, but maybe you can bring a parent or an aunt or uncle with you and experience Road Scholar yourself.
Stephan Shipe:
Sounds great. Thank you.
Kelsey Perri:
Thanks.
Outro
Stephan Shipe: And that’s our show. Thanks for listening. New episodes come out every Monday, so be sure to subscribe and turn on alerts so you never miss an episode.
See you next week.
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