travel hacks

The Freedom of Limited Options

By Brad Beckstrom

I’ve been busy lately, limiting my options. Nope, not talking about stock options. I’m pursuing a simpler lifestyle built around fewer possessions and more time to enjoy what I already have.

The idea is simple, stop spending time and money accumulating, storing, and caring for stuff. Give it away, starting with the small stuff, knickknacks, unused toys and clothing. Later move on to larger items, eventually cars and houses. With each box of things we get rid of, each closet we empty out, there’s a sense of lightness. With each thing we wear out, then don’t replace, there is a feeling of freedom.

The closer you move to this limited lifestyle, the more things improve. If you limit your wardrobe, you’ll spend less time picking out what to wear every day, less time in the store replacing cheap sweaters and shoes. If you limit your diet to exclude crap foods and monster menu items, the payoffs include your finances and your health. Those “vintage” clothes will fit better.

Even the best restaurants serve crap food. If they don’t get you with the heavy-handed ingredients, they will get you with the portions. I do miss my weekly visits to the local BBQ joint with 100 different sauces. Now, when I stop in, maybe every few months, it’s more of an event, something I look forward to. My gut has not missed the weekly three meat platter at all.

Limiting options does not just apply to clothing, diet, or the number of cars you own. It’s something you can apply to any part of your life with benefits. I’ve learned to master investing by knowing less about stocks, bonds, and mutual funds and more about simplified lean index investing.

I’ve gone on a high quality, low information diet by using tools like Feedly and Flipboard to follow the best and most trusted writers I can find. Anytime I add a new source I see if there is one I can prune.

Time

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

02/21 by The Frug 1 Comment

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.

[Read more…]

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.

8 ways to hack UBER, ditch your car, and save money in the on-demand economy.

02/19 by The Frug Leave a Comment

By Brad Beckstrom

In the middle of a crowded Irish pub, my friend stood up and shouted “Brad will be taking Uber home tonight!” and ordered another round to cheers and jeers. Late that evening, a shiny Jeep showed up and drove my wife and me home in the freshly falling snow. The total cost of the ride $6.28. My friend didn’t know that I use UberX about once a week and whenever I’m traveling

Having a shiny sedan show up at your home with a driver may not seem very frugal until you consider parking costs $6-$10 for a night out in the city and the occasional $50-$100 parking ticket. I got $200 worth the year before I started using UBER. The hundred dollar parking ticket was due to an expired Virginia inspection decal. I was a bit peeved until I saw that this parking ticket actually said “ticket and tow” and I’d gotten to my car before the tow truck had arrived. My Virginia inspection decal was two days expired and I was parked in Washington DC! That city will do anything for a buck as long as it’s a pain in the ass.

A few years ago when Virginia tried to ban Uber, I wrote to my Congressman and told him that he was putting drinkers back on the road if he supported banning services like Uber and Lyft. I didn’t use the word drunks because many folks who get a DUI think they’re fine until it’s too late. The average cost of a DUI can range anywhere from $7000 to $25,000 depending on the area and fines. The younger the driver, the more invincible they believe they are and more likely to have others in the car with them, not to mention the other drivers and pedestrians they endanger when driving impaired. If you’re going to be out celebrating, use it tell your family and friends to use it. I’ll give you some Uber hacks below to eliminate any excuses. [Read more…] about 8 ways to hack UBER, ditch your car, and save money in the on-demand economy.

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.