Travel now, or retire early? How Henah Velez is choosing both / 94
Sometimes travel — and personal finance — can feel like one giant optimization exercise.
Find the cheapest flight.
Maximize every credit card point.
See everything on your trip.
Henah Velez has taken a different approach. The creator of the slow travel newsletter Departure and former producer for Money with Katie has learned to think less about maximizing everything and more about deciding what’s actually worth her money, time, and energy.
That shift has helped her make travel a priority across very different seasons of her financial life, from earning around $55,000 while living in New York City to eventually reaching Coast FI.
Her approach isn’t about spending freely or finding the perfect travel hack. It’s about building enough intention into your finances that you can enjoy your money today while still taking care of your future.
Episode highlights
[02:00] How working on Money with Katie changed Henah’s relationship with saving, investing, and spending
[06:00] Why Henah created Departure and how slow, intentional travel became its focus
[10:30] How travel remained a priority when money was tighter — and how her approach changed as her income grew
[15:00] Why slow travel can make trips more restorative, especially when plans inevitably go wrong
[20:30] Conscious consumerism, creating friction before purchases, and deciding what’s actually worth a splurge
[28:30] A beginner-friendly approach to credit card points and miles without tracking a million cards or obsessing over every redemption
[35:00] How to use points and price-tracking tools when your travel dates aren’t flexible
[40:00] Why day trips and weekends away still count as travel — plus ways to explore when a big trip isn’t in the budget
[44:00] What Coast FI means and how Henah balances financial independence with enjoying her life today
[47:30] Rapid-fire travel favorites, from repeat destinations to affordable trips and worthwhile splurges
Travel doesn’t have to mean doing the most
Henah’s love of travel started early. Growing up in a middle-class family, expensive clothes and cars weren’t necessarily priorities, but her parents made room for travel when they could. One particularly formative experience was a three-week cross-country road trip when she was eight.
That experience helped shape the way she still likes to travel today: slowly enough to actually experience a place.
It’s easy to approach a vacation with the opposite mindset. You’ve spent hundreds or thousands of dollars getting somewhere and used precious PTO, so naturally you want to make the trip “worth it.” Before you know it, you’re trying to squeeze every landmark, restaurant, museum, and day trip into one itinerary.
But getting more into a trip doesn’t necessarily mean getting more out of it.
Henah generally plans only one to three activities per day. Living with chronic illness is part of what led her to travel this way, but a slower pace also gives her more room for the inevitable unpredictability of travel. Flights get delayed. Weather changes. Sometimes you’re simply exhausted.
It also allows her to choose depth over breadth. Rather than treating a destination like a checklist, she can spend more time on the experiences she genuinely cares about.
Before filling every blank space in an itinerary, it can help to ask:
What do I actually want to experience here?
Am I doing this because I’m excited about it or because I feel like I “should”?
Would I rather spend more time in one place than squeeze in another destination?
There’s no correct pace for a vacation. The point is to stop assuming that more automatically equals better — and spend your limited time and money accordingly.
Spend according to what you actually value
Henah uses this same approach even when she isn’t traveling.
As her income increased, it became easier to choose higher-quality products and spend more on things she hoped would last. She’s also quick to acknowledge that conscious consumerism can be significantly harder when money is tight.
But regardless of income, Henah likes to create friction between wanting something and buying it.
She might leave an item sitting in her online cart for several days rather than immediately checking out. If she’s still thinking about it later, she can reconsider. Sometimes she buys it; sometimes the desire disappears.
That waiting period isn’t about denying yourself things you can afford. It gives you a chance to figure out whether you actually want them.
Henah and her husband use another strategy they call their “fun fund.” When they receive bonuses or other one-off income, they save most of it and put a predetermined amount aside for guilt-free spending throughout the year. They can use the money however they want, but once the fund is gone, it’s gone.
A finite amount makes the tradeoffs clearer. Spending $250 on one thing isn’t inherently good or bad — it simply means having $250 less for something else.
For Henah, travel often wins that comparison. She’s realized that the excitement of a new purchase tends to fade much faster than the enjoyment she gets from an experience.
That’s ultimately what intentional spending is about. You don’t have to minimize every category. You need to know which ones deserve more of your money and which ones don’t.
Make affordable travel simpler, not perfectly optimized
Henah started using credit card points when she was earning less but still wanted to make travel a priority. They gave her another way to cover some of the cost without going into debt — but she doesn’t believe getting value from points requires juggling a dozen cards or obsessing over every redemption.
For beginners who can responsibly use credit cards and pay their balances in full, her advice is to keep your strategy manageable. Start with one travel rewards card, choose a program with airline or hotel partners you’ll realistically use, and only pursue a welcome bonus if you can comfortably meet the spending requirement through purchases you would have made anyway.
The same simplicity can apply when it’s time to book. If you have fixed dates for a wedding, family visit, or another event, compare the cash and points prices as soon as you know when you’re traveling. Price-tracking tools can also do some of the monitoring for you instead of turning airfare into something you check every morning.
And don’t let the pursuit of the “best” redemption stop you from using your points. If they help pay for a trip you genuinely want or need to take, they’ve served their purpose. Saving money matters, but so do your time and mental bandwidth.
Of course, points can only stretch a travel budget so far. If a bigger trip simply isn’t financially realistic right now, Henah suggests expanding your definition of travel instead of forcing it.
A day trip counts. A weekend away counts. Exploring somewhere an hour from home that you’ve never visited counts. When money or PTO is limited, a nearby town or one-night getaway can still offer the novelty and change of scenery you’re looking for.
Build a financial future without postponing your life
Henah’s preference for intentionality over optimization extends beyond travel.
As her income increased, she quickly began maxing out her 401(k) while continuing to live on roughly what she’d earned before her raises. Doing that consistently for several years helped her reach Coast FI.
Coast FI generally means you’ve invested enough that, assuming your investments grow as projected, your existing retirement savings could potentially grow enough to fund retirement by your target age without additional contributions.
Reaching that point created more flexibility for Henah. But getting there also showed her how easily saving can become another optimization game.
If saving more gets you to financial independence sooner, why not save even more? If skipping a dinner puts another $100 toward the future, shouldn’t you skip it?
At some point, her husband challenged that thinking. They wanted financial freedom in the future, but there was also a life happening right now.
Watching her parents get older has reinforced that perspective. Some experiences may be easier at one stage of life than another, and there’s no guarantee that delaying everything until retirement will produce the life you imagined.
Financial independence is ultimately about creating choices. Maybe that means retiring early. Maybe it means eventually working part-time. Maybe it means taking one meaningful trip every year while continuing to invest for the future.
There isn’t one perfect allocation of your money, just as there isn’t one perfect itinerary or points redemption.
The more useful question is whether your money is supporting both the future you’re trying to build and the life you want to experience along the way.
TL;DR
More isn’t automatically better, whether you’re planning a trip, earning points, buying things, or saving for the future.
Slow travel can help you prioritize the experiences you genuinely care about instead of treating a destination like a checklist.
Creating friction before purchases can make it easier to direct more money toward the things you value most.
Credit card rewards can make travel more affordable without becoming an optimization project, as long as you use credit responsibly.
Building financial security matters, but the goal is ultimately to give yourself more choices—not postpone everything you enjoy until someday.
✨ Resources ✨
Connect with Henah:
Credit cards:
Travel tools:
Podcast episode: Bilt 2.0 Rewards Explained (Points, Cards, and Travel)
Want more from The Finance Girlies? Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly money tips, episode drops, our favorite recs, and more.
*This post contains a referral link, meaning we may be compensated, at no additional cost to you, if you use the link to apply for a credit card. And of course, we’d never recommend a product or don’t wholeheartedly believe in.
This content is for educational purposes only and is not personalized financial, tax, or legal advice.
