Retire To A Hotel - Low Cost Retirement Housing

hey guys welcome back to the channel today we are discussing if you can retire to a hotel so recently we did a video about how we were basically moving away from Airbnb as much as possible and it came to a big surprise to a lot of people and uh and just people wanted to learn a little bit more about what we're doing instead which is using hotel stays and so we're going to go a little bit deeper into it because so many of you had questions and comments about doing this yeah and it turns out you can actually retire to a hotel long term for like a period of a year two years three years and it makes total Financial sense once we started diving into the numbers it was pretty cool to see actually what a good deal it is so we're going to break that down for you uh and kind of explain why we did it what we're doing in the future and how it's working out so far we have started already we we're in this hotel here in Vietnam we're here for 40 nights and then we're going to be moving on to some other hotels after that uh but when you do this type of thing the first thing to mention over Airbnb or even living in your own house or rent an apartment somewhere is a lot of the perks that you get with it absolutely and one of the really big ones is cleaning um you don't have to clean ever because the housekeeping staff will come and clean uh for you and replenish with clean towels and you don't need to worry about things like you know shampoo and conditioner and lotion and tissue and toilet paper like none of those things are things that you have to worry about you don't have to worry about maintenance if your toilet gets clogged you just call downstairs they send somebody up they take care of it no problem anything else happens in the room again same thing you don't have to worry about any cleaning any maintenance and then the other things is the hotels all have incredible amenities as well we have at this particular particular hotel we have state-of-the-art uh gym which we love there's also a spa that we can take advantage of for free there's a restaurant here at the hotel plus we have access to the lounge which also provides us with several meals throughout the day yeah exactly there's there's a there's a free breakfast every morning there's afternoon tea with in snacks and drinks and then in the evening there's a a light snack but it's a meal full meal and they're serving some of the most incredible food we've had steaks we've had uh the best beef ribs I think we've ever had like super quality high-end restaurant style uh food so it's been pretty amazing and I know you're thinking if you've not been outside the US to hotels lately well the cleaning isn't really big deal they don't even do the cleaning anymore not the case here uh they're cleaning every day they come every day to see if you want to clean it's usually two to three to even four people in the room cleaning at once it's a different thing once you leave the US the level of service that's out there in the world right now we're in the US a lot of services have been cut back and they've made a lot of excuses as to why they can't provide these Services anymore simply not true they just don't want to provide them because all the hotels in the rest of the world are providing them still so it's kind of a a big deal uh let's go into the best strategy for doing this you don't want to just bounce around you want to pick two to three hotel chains and build up Elite status in them yeah because that's going to be the best way to kind of attack this method is pairing not just the hotel stays but pairing that with your Elite status is what's going to give you a lot of these advantages other advantages you'll get with these statuses are things like room upgrades this room we're in is bigger than the room that we originally reserved because they upgraded us because of room status right and then also you know getting your drinks included as well with uh some of these statuses as well so this it's really important that you choose which brands you're most interested in and work towards status on those because that's where you're really going to get that extra value out of your hotel stays now the chains you choose will be sort of dependent on the countries you're going to visit and how you'll prioritize those so in the US Mexico and Canada we prioritize Hyatt when we're there because we're mostly trying to travel on points and Hyatt has the cheapest tier one point structure which is 3,500 points per night you won't find anything even close to that in the US on any of the other chains you're going to you're looking at mostly 20 to 30,000 points a night and right now if you're looking in a big city you're looking at 50 60 70,000 points a night so it's pretty expensive to do do this in the US unless you're utilizing some higher points in Southeast Asia though which is where we're at right now we're in Vietnam and Japan the best chain to go with is IHG without a doubt you're getting redemptions between 5,000 to 8,000 points pretty economical and then in select countries kind of like Oddball countries we've noticed uh the best chain to go with is Maria so there's some really cheap ones in Norway it's kind of an oddball uh Cambodia IND India you can get properties 5 to 10,000 points per night there yeah so that's actually going to be so important to work that into the plan like I said earlier to know where are the places you're going to be going to or that you have interest in going to and then working towards Elite status in the brands that make the most sense for those countries or continents that you'll be going to so our picks in order would be IHG then Hyatt then Marriott uh and the hotels do offer this is where it gets good like so far it's good this is where it gets really kind of Juicy here is that the hotels offer reward perks most of them call these Milestone rewards where after You' stayed 10 nights 20 nights about every multiple of 10 you get to pick a free award these add up really quickly uh so the thing is they max out at a certain number of nights IHG stops giving Milestone rewards after a 100 nights Hyatt stops giving them after 150 nights and Marriott stops after 75 nights conveniently for you and for us you add all those up it's 325 nights so you could literally max out all three of those Hotel chain programs uh and still have 30 some nights left to spare in the year yeah it's amazing that that works so neatly into the package of being able to do that in a year now here I'm going to go over what you would get if you maxed out your reward Wards uh this is on top of any points you would earn and any status you would get through your or any perks you would get through your your credit card status things like that this is just for the Milestone reward perks that you pick every 10 nights so with hayatt thiss is the best uh a lot of these are points a lot of them are free nights but you would end up being able to crew if you played your cards right 32 additional free nights in a Hyatt which is amazing just for staying there 150 nights they're going to give you 32 nights free a lot of those are Level One Rewards but some of those are even level four level s level eight which is like the really expensive hotels yeah I was kind of Blown Away when we started uh first you know researching this at what some of these perks were and it's so funny when you start you know digging into more of the of the rewards like this and how to maximize them this is an incredible uh gift from H to be able to you know translate what they give you into 32 free nights which is incredible for us yeah and then speaking of gufts the next thing you'll get from them is you'll get three guest of honor certificates so by doing this you're going to earn globalist status which is their top tier status which includes the free breakfast and the lounge access but you get three guest of honor certificates which you can give to somebody else which is good for seven nights so they can come visit you somewhere have that same status that you have and so you'll be able to gift 21 nights of that to people throughout the year then you're going to get five sweet night upgrade certificates each good for seven nights so you could spend 35 nights a year for free in sweets that is pretty awesome uh I love that it's the sweet upgrade but it's for up to a seven night stay which we would for sure do because you want to be able to maximize everything you can out of that sweet upgrade I think that's incredible you already know right out of the gate I'm getting the sweet and I'm getting it for all seven nights yeah now there are some pretty amazing sweets out there too so you don't just blow this at like a Hiatt place or something no you don't want to do that so like if you go to like uh Park High at chenai in India which is one that we're planning on going to you can get the the room for 5,000 points a night then you apply your sweet upgrade so for seven nights it's only 35,000 points uh then you apply the sweet upgrade and the site you're going to get is just stunning we'll show it here on the screen uh you're going to get these suets they're just simply amazing so that's something you want to take care take advantage of next moving on to IHG you're going to get four of those seven night suweet upgrades you'll also get $540 worth of food and beverage credit uh at the hotel and the annual Lounge membership now $540 doesn't sound like a lot to you but remember you're not spending this in San Francisco uh we're we're at this hotel in Vietnam and it's hard to spend $10 in a day yeah honestly $540 in food credit used in the US or maybe like us and Canada is going to be about five meals practically whereas if we try to use it here we wouldn't even be able to use the whole thing first of all the lounge you're already getting these meals so what are you even going to use the food credit on I don't know but we'll have to use it when we're in someplace when we can yeah we we've been here 22 nights already I think and we've eaten almost all of our meals in the hotel and we've probably only spent 50 $60 in food credit so 22 nights because the club lounges that that good so whatever sometimes we go to the club LNG they be like oh we don't really like what they have let's order something let's order room service it's still cheap and it's not that many times so we're just not digging into the food and beverage credit uh that she would get so moving on to marot theirs is the worst by far uh for staying 75 nights you're only going to get one free night and five sweet nights that's pretty bad marot so I would prioritize them last as far as trying to run these uh Milestone rewards yeah as far as the extra bonuses you'll still get you know like Lounge AIS and stuff like that you already get some of the Bon some of the bonuses with your status you don't get a lot for the extra nights yeah you don't want to prioritize staying a ton of nights at marott uh so total of all three chains you'd be getting 33 free nights 68 nights in a suite $540 food and beverage credit three guest of honor reward weeks and and annual Lounge membership so that's pretty good that's just mindboggling which is one of the reasons when we sat down to make that switch from airbn B2 hotels why we were like the math makes sense on this um you're really not having to spend that much to get not just the upgrades but get all the other amenities and bonuses with these with these um Elite statuses all right so it's really good but it doesn't make sense if it's going to cost you like four or five grand a month to do this let's go over cost uh with IHG you want to use your points that you've earned through your credit card spend or stays and points that you buy with I you can buy uh basically we've already bought 800,000 points in the last few months you can buy them at 50 cents a point which is definitely the way to go you should almost never pay a cash rate for IHG because booking with points is cheaper than the cash rate if you're buying them on the buy one get one free free sale combination with if you have the IHG Premier credit card you get your fourth night free and it makes the deal even better so uh that's how we booked them we also use if you're in Asia and you're going to be traveling to Asia there is a singles Day Sale we talk about no one from the US has ever heard about this 1111 November 11th 1111 they call that singles day in Asia they have a massive sale on the hotels every year and we book that's when we booked this hotel for 40 nights we actually paid a cash rate and we were seeing mindblowing prices on that sale like there were hotel rooms in Indonesia for $18 a night sweets for ridiculously low prices and we were just like we got to do this so we decided on on Vietnam and decided this is where we'd spend our singles Day Sale time yeah it was the perfect place to grab a great deal plus this helps us working towards our status uh for the year so it worked out perfectly to get such an incredible deal be able to add on the lounge access uh for almost nothing and to enjoy it in a great location too yeah so people are always asking when they hear about that s they see these prices how do you know about it because they've never heard about it you just kind of start looking like about November 1st they'll start announcing oh it's going to come out so like this year it came out actually I think it was November sixth or 7th it was actually the day that she had her surgery and I was sitting there and it came out and I was like oh she's in surgery I probably should have booked something right now so actually waited two days so we could think about it talk about it when I was unmedicated yeah so they don't like sell out right away you don't have to like get it the very first day is what I've learned I was a little worried they were going to sell out but uh we waited two days and uh so the sale starts a few days before 1111 so anyway uh that's a great way to get the points though are also ridiculously low like this hotel we're in right now which is a festar chrome plaza this is like the most amazing Chown Plaza in the world the service the staff the rooms everything is magnificent here this hotel is 8,250 points per night IHG points which if you buy the points on the 50 Cent per Point Sale it's $41 total so we're staying here for $41 a night uh you you could stay here for $41 a night if you booked it with your points that would include your Club lounge access and remember you're also getting that food and beverage credit for every 10 nights you stay which is worth $10 uh a night so basically it kind of works out to $31 a night for your room and all your food that's ridiculous it's really quite M mindboggling when you take all of this information into to account when booking some of these places to think that we're staying at this incredible luxurious uh property um like you said with Incredible staff the food's amazing and just all of the amenities I feel like are even over the top um incredible amenities and for that price you just it's just hard to wrap your head around it that it's even possible yeah now we did buy this one on the singles Day Sale we didn't use points so if we come back we would probably use points cuz then we would have uh the status to to be here so there's a lot of hotels in Indonesia that can be had 25 to $30 a night with points you see points the lowest I've ever seen is 3,750 points a night which is like $18 a night it's just crazy uh Hyatt let's move on to Hyatt you want to use your points here again they're a lot harder to acquire though because they're more valuable and if you try to buy them they're going to cost you about 1.5 cents so they're going to cost you three times what an IHG Point uh cost so you do want to use your Chase safai reserve your Chase business Inc to get points the best way to get high at points is to use a Chase Card one of those you get the points you can transfer those to Hyatt and that's the best way plus they have amazing sign up bonuses I know you just signed up for one I did yes I just got that Chase business Inc and uh we're working on our sign up bonus for that one it's going to be really really nice because we will be transferring those points to Hyatt and using that um to complete our nights stays there as well and also before we move on and forget uh we'll have links to all of these credit cards that we're talking about uh to to earn some of these bonuses with we'll have links to all of those down in the description so make sure to visit the description uh area so that you can get links to all of these cards and kind of check those out and explore what would work best for you yeah because if you do stay at the hotel and you do end up paying cash you want to pay with the hotel credit card because you get a massive amount of bonus points so like I think we get 26 points per dollar spent uh at this uh IHG hotel that we're run right now so that is going to add up into thousands and thousands and thousands of points uh by the end of the month which is just an additional to everything that we have said so best use for Hyatt like some of the best things you could do is give you kind of a scenario of how it would look 58 nights uh at a high Regency in Indonesia here $2,090 per month including taxes including your breakfast they do have a club Lounge so you're basically going to get all your food all your drinks and it's not just like Cokes it's like any drink you could want yes they have coffee beverages available which is amazing I love the ones here in Vietnam cuz their coffee is incredible um so coffees tea teas they even have like leaf tea which is incredible they also have a variety of other things like tonic water and soda water they have um cocktails from the bar wine sparkling wine beer all kinds of stuff all of that is included and so far there has been no limitation although I haven't tried to push it yeah uh there's been no limitation on food too because most of the nights we've been the only people in the lounge probably 17 out of the 22 nights we've been the only people up there so like they put the food on it's like it's just for you this set the whole thing up and we're just like they set it out like 20 people are going to show up and it's just the two of us yeah and they know it's just the two of us so it's like they just do it for us it's kind of crazy they still they like if it was me I would just kind of tone it down but they don't they bring out the whole thing everything looks so beautiful the way they set it all up with all the plates all the silverware the beautifully folded napkins like everything and then they come to your table take your drink order go get it for you bring it back to you it's amazing yeah one day we went out to eat out at a restaurant in town and I was like I feel bad cuz I know they set the whole thing up for us and we're not there so uh but if you stay at this High Regency you would also if you have their card be earning another $257 worth of points for your stay so you kind of reduce that from the price that high Regency would being about $1,833 a month for your stay and all of your food and drink now marott kind of the best used case would be we've stayed at hotels in Bali you can get those for about $44 a night including taxes so you're looking you know a little under $1,500 for the month there uh again you'll get lounge access which can be had with one of their cards or just by staying I think it's a 50 nights at a Marriott you do get lounge access so really when we looked at these and we we saw that a lot of the countries we were going to be visiting we could be getting our stay upgrades perks and basically all of our food and drinks for the month for under $2,000 no brainer yeah once we started uh clicking those numbers and looking at the math and what you get it just made no sense to continue to pay for places and food and all that kind of stuff on top of you know everything else this just makes sense to do it this way so you know at the end can you retire to a hotel as we said in the beginning yes absolutely you can and it's incredibly affordable it's very comfortable uh you know we've already talked about the amazing perks this one has been great almost everyone that we have booked for the year um has got in incredible perks even the ones we've we've booked in the the us we'll see how it works out with upgrades there um as well but we've we've got some booked in in the US and in Canada uh so it should be fairly interesting to see how it pans out throughout the year we'll continue to bring you along on the journey yeah we've got 180 nights right now booked out pre-booked so yeah we're going to go for it uh we'll documenting if we like it how it goes so far it's really going well though yeah hopefully guys this was helpful for you if you're trying to decide how you want to go about your housing in your early retirement or Nomad life or just in general how you want to stay guys if you have questions leave those Below in the comment section so others can see it as well subscribe to the channel if you haven't already and we will see you next time

Channel: Grounded Life Finances

Views: 641,647

Keywords: can you retire to a hotel, how can you retire to a hotel, is it possible to retire to a hotel, points for hotel stays, ihg loyalty program, hyatt loyalty program, marriott loyalty program, marriott bonvoy, hyatt, ihg, crowne plaza, how to live in a hotel, how to use your points to live in a hotel

Id: kMQaflLaTVI

Length: 22min 47sec (1367 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 21 2024