Travel lean

The Allure of the Obscure.

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.

How to Talk Yourself Out of a Boat or RV Purchase, Every Time You Get That Itch.

05/19 by The Frug 2 Comments

It’s springtime here in Virginia which means my mind often wanders to adventure. We live close to the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay. When the weather gets nice, I’m often thinking about how it would be cool to own a boat or an RV, get the family out, and have some fun. As a kid I remember some great times out on my parents’ boat on the Chesapeake Bay.

If you spend some time following blogs or YouTube channels, you’re bound to run across lots of folks having grand adventures sailing around the world or traveling cross country in RVs.

Weekend Warriors vs. Modern Nomads

There are generally two types of folks here: Those modern nomads who have chosen to live on a boat or in an RV full-time and those who are enthusiasts who make these large purchases for recreational purposes. Since the second group is vastly larger, that’s who I’m talking about today.

So, if you actually live full-time on a boat or in an RV you’ve already achieved a high degree of minimalism and don’t need these tips. Unless of course you’re thinking about buying a house to have a home base for your RV or boat, then please read on.

[Read more…]

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.

Are GPS apps rendering part of your brain inactive?

07/16 by The Frug Leave a Comment

How to vastly improve your experience with maps and keep your head from getting lost in the map on your smartphone.

By Brad Beckstrom

Cartography – The study and practice of making maps.

Remember paper maps? I’m talking about the big unfolding kind they used to give you at tourism offices, AAA or full-service gas stations. How about the slick plastic coated ones that you could access with one hand on the steering wheel trying to navigate in a city like Rome or Washington, DC? Or the jumbo 50 page city or county map books they used to sell at office supply and convenience stores for about 18 bucks, still popular with some realtors and salespeople who work in remote areas or haven’t jumped on the smartphone bandwagon yet. Or the mother of them all, The Rand McNally Road Atlas hundreds of pages just waiting to be explored. I always had a thing for maps. I was always up for exploring out-of-the-way places, and maps helped me get there.

When my boys were younger, we used to play a game called “spin the globe”, wherever you land, you have to go there. I remember once my oldest son spun the globe and landed on Yakutsk, Russia generally considered to be the coldest inhabited city on earth with average temperatures of -58°F. He immediately added the city to the weather app on his phone and kept an eye on the place, occasionally sharing the sometimes ridiculous low temperatures. I don’t think I’ll ever see Yakutsk but I have a feeling he might.

Once GPS came along I knew I was hooked. (Finally an answer for my lack of direction in life.) I played around with some of the earliest handheld GPS units, the kind where you had to load a CD onto your computer then somehow transfer maps to the GPS unit. These early units were popular with boaters because it’s very important to know where you’re going on the water. You also need to know about a third dimension, the depth of the water so you don’t end up on a sand barge, as I occasionally did. At least I can blame the fricking GPS unit versus my lack of preparation with paper navigation charts. [Read more…] about Are GPS apps rendering part of your brain inactive?