Tips to Saving some Moolah
I was originally going to call this “tricks to saving some money” but realized that if your hoping for a trick or shortcut to saving money then you’re probably going to be disappointed. A lot of the things I read on this topic do a deep dive into the specifics on saving money. Cancel Netflix, don’t eat out as much, make PB&J sandwiches for lunch, sell a kidney, and other stuff like that. That material didn’t help me much because everyone’s circumstance is different, and while a Netflix subscription may not be a significant expense for some, it may be for others. If you want to meet a savings goal then you will make the sacrifices needed to achieve it. Pretty simple.
The only thing I am going to do here is just give a couple of tips that might help you save some $$ down the road.
Travel/Reward Credit Cards - My parents have done a lot of good things for me but one of the greatest was giving me a credit card when I was young. Better than the actual physical act of giving me a credit card were the instructions they gave, “you spend money on this and then you pay it back at the end of the month”. They didn’t even tell me there was an option to not pay the full amount so that’s how I have operated ever since. Every dollar I spend goes on my credit card and then I pay it off. The ones I have are:
Capital One Venture Card - I have had a Capital One card since 2012 and have only redeemed points for travel once when we went to New Zealand in 2016. As a result, we have a healthy balance of 200,000+ miles which equals about $2,000+ when redeemed for travel.
Chase Sapphire Card - We enrolled for this in June of 2018 so we’re newer to this one, but I saw that they had the bonus of 50,000 points if you spent $3,000 in the first few months so we signed up without any issues, switched all our spending from the Capital One to the Chase, and met that threshold easily. In this account we have around 100,000 points so equals about $1,000 when redeemed for travel.
While these cards do have an annual fee, I still feel like this is free money for travel in the sense that we would have already been spending what we were spending, we just happened to do so on a credit card. Our plan is to use these points for plane, train, bus, and car travel. Based on our budget, we are hopeful that these points will help tremendously.
ONE LAST THING - These cards have deals that will get you more points if you spend in, at, or on certain things. For example, if you pay with Apple Pay using your Chase card in the month of December then you receive an extra 1 point on every dollar you spend (that’s on top of the points you are already earning). Deals like this are a no brainer. The hardest part is remembering what the deal is AND making sure to check your email for these deals. I ignored emails from my own credit card company for years because I just associated them with spam but once I started opening I realized how many opportunities I was missing.
2. Love finding good deals and research your ASS off - My wife, friends, and family would probably characterize me as competitive, which can be a good thing and bad thing depending on the circumstance. Playing a friendly game of ping pong at work? Bad thing. Trying to find the best deals possible? Good thing. I really do love researching and digging to try and find great deals whether that be on a plane flight, hotel room, AirBnb, renting a car, etc. I realize I can’t “win” this game, but trying to beat a price keeps me motivated and interested. If money is a factor (which it is for 99% of us) then this is going to be absolutely crucial when planning long term travel because if you are just settling for the first thing that pops up then you will notice that savings account go down a little bit faster than you’d prefer.
Be flexible with dates - Sites like Kayak or Skyscanner are great because you can be open-ended with dates. On Kayak you can select +/- 3 days so it allows you to see the price for 6 total days. Skyscanner is my absolute favorite because it’s the definition of open ended (more to come on this). Bottom line, if you want a good deal you might have to be flexible with dates and fly out on a Monday as opposed to a Saturday or Sunday.
Be flexible with airports - Maybe you just assume that the cheapest departure city out of Brazil is Rio De Janeiro, but then after doing a little research you find that it’s actually cheaper AND closer to fly out of Sao Paolo (this is a personal example). Just make sure to check surrounding cities but also be careful because sometimes you might see a cheaper city, but you need to take into consideration costs of getting to that new city/airport. For example, I live in Des Moines so Chicago is always tempting because of how much cheaper it is, but by the time you drive 6 hours there, pay for parking somewhere, and maybe even a hotel, then it might not be worth it (also a personal example).
Sleep on the ground - Just kidding but hopefully it got your attention. Lodging along with transportation and eating are obviously the major expenses. There’s no question that transportation is the least flexible and eating is the most but lodging is becoming increasingly easier with all of the options out there. It’s funny how quickly things can change because there are blogs from 5 years ago where the travelers only slept in hostels. However, now that room sharing sites like AirBnb have exploded, it’s made things so much easier.
I used to rent out my apartment on AirBnb and made a nice chunk of change so I have always been a big fan of the site, and have used it a lot. We have not had any terrible experiences. The only thing we run into pretty often and especially overseas is people advertising their home as being the WHOLE home, but when we arrive it’s actually a whole floor (the owners are upstairs), or a disconnected structure in the backyard (the owners are still in their house). At first this kind of pissed me off, but we started to embrace it and love interacting with the hosts if they are around. Some people would rather have nicer accommodations and not spend as much on food and vice versa, but we just kind of assume that sleeping is really the only thing we will be doing at our home base so we’d rather spend more money elsewhere. It’s a personal preference.
3. Use Holiday’s to your advantage! Use a birthday, Christmas, anniversary, wedding, or whatever other holiday you receive gifts for to your advantage. Use these as an opportunity to get trip essentials that you may not get otherwise. We asked for a water filter that will hopefully be put to good use in areas with not very sanitary water. I asked for a cheap tablet so one of us could use the laptop while the other had a tablet, Caitlin asked for a fleece, and so on. I know it might suck not being able to ask for a video game, gift card to a movie theater, or a crockpot, but you will be thankful when it’s time to blast off.