Frugal Travel

This Street is Closed. Travels During a Pandemic 2021 Version.

How 2021 will change the way we travel and dine out forever.

By Brad Beckstrom

For 2021, I’ve decided to dust myself off, climb back on my horse, and start sharing my ideas again. I’ve got a pretty good backlog of things I’d like to write about, sticking with my themes of living lean, working lean, and traveling lean.

Speaking of getting back on the horse, we decided to take our first pandemic journey of 2021. For my wife Kelly’s birthday I surprised her with a four day, three night getaway to Miami. Frontier Airlines has been bombarding my browser with ads for $50 round-trip direct flight to Florida. It’s funny, I usually ignore these ads because when I click on them the flight ends up being $350 roundtrip by the time you hit purchase.

Frugal, Frugal

But, the $50 round-trip price for a direct flight fascinated me. Usually cheap flights involve long layovers, crappy connections, and out-of-the-way airports. I went through the process with Frontier and, lo and behold, was able to book 2 frugal round-trip tickets for a total of $108.94. It’s like making it to the last level of a game avoiding all those upgrades. It pays to have a few days flexibility when booking with discount airlines.

Of course, I knew Frontier would charge for any baggage. They allow for one personal item, which is not to be confused with a carry-on. Check the size on the personal item. Generally a (small) backpack, messenger bag, or purse will get through without a problem. For checked bags or carry on bags, it’s a $41 fee each way. They give you up to a 50 pound limit so we just put both our luggage (all 46 lbs. worth) in a single large bag and checked it.

Pandemic Travel

I figured this flight would be fairly crowded based on the price. It turned out the plane was crowded but not overly so, and on the way home it was only about 60% full. The airport and parking garage were empty.

I’ll be honest, I probably wouldn’t be comfortable flying if my wife and I had not already had the virus back last March and both had positive tests for antibodies. We still took every precaution and wore N95 masks. Obviously no food or beverage service was available unless you wanted to buy a small bottle of water for $3.99.

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The Allure of the Obscure.

05/19 by The Frug Leave a Comment

See more for less by traveling off the beaten path.

The Real Grand Budapest Hotel. Palace Bristol Hotel in Karlovy

By Brad Beckstrom

Knowing little about your destination is half the adventure.

Years ago, before online travel booking, I had a roommate that used to walk into a travel agent, or up to a ticket counter, and ask for the least expensive plane ticket available to anywhere. He would gather up the information and try to talk friends into joining him at this random, often obscure, location for a weekend. It was the late 80s and discount airlines were starting to crop up with all kinds of $39 specials to destinations that they wanted to build traffic to. There was one airline, People Express, that would even collect payment for the tickets once you got on the plane, sort of like a city bus.

His rule was it had to be the absolute cheapest ticket available, not something close to cheapest. The destination would be a secret to anyone who went along until they got to the airport.

Super Airfare Travel Hacks for Families and Groups

12/18 by The Frug 4 Comments

By Brad Beckstrom

There are a ton of great travel hacking tools and adventure travel blogs out there. The blogs include lots of great tips like maximizing use of frequent flyer miles, credit card point programs, traveling during off-peak periods to less popular destinations and top 10 lists of great online tools and apps to use.

Despite the abundance of advice out there, one area that’s rarely mentioned is travel hacking for a family of four (or a small group of friends.) Planning for four or more people takes travel hacking to a whole new level. Keep reading if you’re traveling solo since these tools can also work when traveling alone or as a couple.

When planning for four people, you’re often not only dealing with the worst time of year to travel, like spring break or the holidays, but you’re also trying to use up some of your frequent flyer mileage. This goes against the grain of what most travel hackers recommend, including efficient use of frequent flyer miles and traveling at off-peak periods. [Read more…] about Super Airfare Travel Hacks for Families and Groups

How I earn over 4% back on all credit card spending.

03/17 by The Frug Leave a Comment

By Brad Beckstrom

You read that correctly, over 4% return on credit card spending. This includes rewards points on business and personal spending. Quick disclaimer: if you carry debt on credit cards, or don’t pay your bill off (in full) each month, any gains you have from points will be likely negated by interest charges. Once you have zero credit card debt and are ready to use cards to earn rewards points/cash back, then you’re ready to put together your rewards points plan. Here’s mine.

To keep this simple, I’m going to use Chase credit cards as examples. They have one of the best rewards programs out there that meet both my business and personal credit card needs. This program can be put together with other cards, but my best experience so far has been using a combination of Chase cards to get the 50% point bonuses and benefits, I’ll describe here.

Like many cool things, I stumbled upon the Chase Ultimate Rewards program while reading about travel hacking on personal finance sites. I was consistently seeing the Chase Sapphire cards and their Ultimate Rewards Program listed at the top of most lists for high reward, high credit rating cards.

My Ultimate Rewards set up

My setup with Chase utilizes one personal card and two business cards. The personal card is the Chase Sapphire Reserve that came with a monster 100K point sign up bonus. Normally I would not pay annual fees over $95 for a reward credit card, however, this high fee card applies $300 of the of the $450 annual fee to the first $300 in travel expenses each year. It also includes 3X bonus points on all travel and dining with another 50% point boost when you book travel through Chase. It includes an additional $100 credit for TSA Pre / Global Entry programs, travel insurance, sky clubs, and other perks. So after doing the math, this is a great value. See points bonus calculation red boxes. [Read more…] about How I earn over 4% back on all credit card spending.

The Home Swap. A grand experiment in international travel.

01/17 by The Frug Leave a Comment

By Brad Beckstrom

The proposition I made to my wife was pretty simple: “If you could spend two weeks in Europe every summer, would you be interested?” Of course I got an enthusiastic “yes”, until I brought up home exchange. Home exchange is just what it sounds like. It’s a website with over 65,000 homes in 150 countries. You list your home on home exchange, include all the countries you’d like to visit, and wait for opportunities to appear in your inbox to swap homes in places like Spain, and Italy, Brazil, and all over the world.

It’s vastly different than Airbnb as you are not paying a stranger to stay in their home. With Home Exchange, you are simply staying in their home while they stay in yours: a true exchange. The network is large enough to match up eager travelers from around the world who want to visit your town. Larger homes tend to attract like-minded families, while tiny apartments attract singles and couples. What they have in common is a sense of adventure and openness to meeting new people and trying new things.

As I started to browse through some homes along the Amalfi coast in Italy, or the Le Marais neighborhood in Paris, I started to realize our home is just not ready to attract the type of visitors we would like to exchange homes with for a two week trip. At this point, I am no more near ready to do this than I would be to start renting a room out on Airbnb. There is so much to do before I would even post some photos or create a profile. Sure, our house is in a great neighborhood less than 4 miles from DC, but it’s a big step to make it ready for some long-term visitors.

That is, unless I look at this as an opportunity. The great thing about the opportunity is at the end of the project, my reward is two weeks abroad. Not just this year, but nearly every year. That’s something worth working towards. It’s also a grand experiment in the sharing economy. So far we have truly enjoyed our experiences using Airbnb and saved tons of money using UBER and Lyft all over the world.

I was a bit discouraged when I started looking at some beautiful spotless homes in Italy and France, but then I looked up some US properties, even some in our neighborhood. I could spot the familiar clutter that didn’t seem to deter these folks from listing their homes. If we can just get our home somewhere between good and great that would be a start. I’ve always been adept with frequent flyer miles but found that hotels drain them too quickly, especially after you’ve coughed up enough miles for 4 transatlantic tickets. Doing a once a year home swap would be a perfect solution. Adding 14 nights of free accommodations to free airfare can really put some punch behind your travel plans. The great thing is we don’t have to accept any offers for a home swap if we aren’t interested. [Read more…] about The Home Swap. A grand experiment in international travel.

7 reasons you should travel like a Viking this year!

05/16 by The Frug Leave a Comment

By Brad Beckstrom

Vikings are back. Well, I’m talking about the popular History Channel TV show. Whenever I watch this show I’m amazed at the spectacular scenery. Where is it filmed? Norway? Finland? It’s actually filmed in Ireland and Canada. Regardless, there’s something about the show that just makes me want to explore new lands. So, here are my 7 reasons you should travel like a Viking this year.

New discount Scandinavian Airlines are on a mission to pillage and plunder other airlines business Viking style.

Did you know that the Vikings were the original settlers of Iceland? Now I can fly there direct for $99 on Reykjavík based WOW airlines. This isn’t some firesale you click on and it’s gone. It’s been on their website for months. The cool thing about flying to Iceland is that you’re only about three hours away from Europe. This makes their flights to Europe very competitive. They have a cool calendar view on their website that shows you the cheapest day to fly. If I am willing to fly on a Tuesday, I can get to Copenhagen for $189. The tickets are one way and you’ll be paying some bag fees, so travel light, my Viking friend. Another airline up for some plundering and pillaging is Norwegian Air. They have some eye-opening flights out of some Northeast airports, like $69 to Martinique. Yes, that’s the French Caribbean, I might just like to hop on that flight and not look at a map. It’s only $69 from my local airport, I can’t get to Cleveland for that. They also have a one way ticket to London for $194. I also like that their flights don’t have ridiculous layovers or require much travel hacking. I purchased tickets to Paris (in June) for $700 round-trip that have a total travel time similar to major carriers charging about 60% more. I’ve put together a list of great travel hacking tools for low airfare here and here.

We will ransack your treasury and devalue your currency.

Over the past year, the US dollar has hit all-time highs, multiple times, against the euro and other currencies. When this happens US travelers can often find amazing deals. The breakfast buffet at my four-star $53 per night hotel in Mexico City set me back a full $4.25 with tip. For lunch I had the best sandwich I’ve ever had, portobello mushroom with avocado and swiss cheese and other secret sauces, along with a cold Mexican microbrew, that set me back $5.50. [Read more…] about 7 reasons you should travel like a Viking this year!