Personal Finance Advice

With the price of hotels eating up a larger piece of overall travel expenses, finding good accommodations at reasonable prices has become an important factor when planning any vacation. It is no longer unusual to have accommodation expenses amount to more than half of the total cost of a vacation. Not having to pay for [...]

Why spend money buying magazines at the airport for full price when you can get them for free with a little advance planning? Many magazines allow you a free trial of one or more issues. Sign up for a couple of free trials four to six weeks before your next trip, and you’ll have free, [...]

For the vast majority of people, timeshare resort units are a huge waste of money. Here are 10 things that that the timeshare sales rep won’t tell you, but you really should know before you consider buying one:
1. Time Shares Are a Lousy Investment
2. You Can Get the Same Time Share for Half the Price
3. [...]

Frequent flyer miles was a fantastic and simple idea when it began a few decades ago. All you had to do was fly on your favorite airline and you could earn points for every mile you traveled. When you had amassed enough points, you could redeem them for free travel. And “free” is a golden [...]

There is going to be a significant lack of posts this week (probably none) because I am once again heading back to Japan to live. While this wasn’t a planned event, one thing that you should always expect from life is that there are going to be a large number of curve balls thrown your [...]

Why would anyone want to get bumped of a flight? Because there is money to be made in doing so…By doing a small bit of planning, an hour delay at the airport could be worth several hundred dollars off your next trip.
While many people were watching all the people stranded in the Denver airport before [...]

When it comes to your money, being proactive can end up saving you a lot. If you are planning to make a trip in early 2007 (or willing to go on one if there are some great prices), go and get your passport now if you don’t already have one. A lot of people don’t [...]

I saw a brilliant marketing move as I walked through the San Jose airport today on my way back from Seattle. In the middle of the San Jose airport is a bar/cafe. This is nothing unusual except for the name of the cafe which is “The Expedia.com Cafe”

The brilliance of it is that they get [...]

One of the most expensive aspects to travel these days is the cost of accommodations. During my recent trip to Victoria, I didn’t spend a dime since I stayed with my sister in their new house (pictured above). As I write this I’m staying with Nate at his apartment in Seattle. During the entire 10 [...]

One of the tips you hear time and again in order to save gas (and which I have given) is to reduce your speed to 55 miles per hour when driving. This will save you about 20% on fuel consumption (a 20% return on your money) compared to driving faster. The question is whether or [...]

On this trip to Canada, I wasn’t sure where I was going to be staying the first night. That meant that it was impossible for me to make hotel reservations ahead of time and get any discount connected with that. When I travel like this, I simply want a clean hotel room off the highway [...]

I’m off to Canada for a week - by car. My sister and her family are moving to Victoria on Vancouver Island for her husband’s new job and they have enlisted me to drive their car up to Canada for them (they have a 16 month old baby that would probably make driving themselves a [...]

I’ve mentioned on several ocassions that I’m always on the outlook for hidden costs because these are expenses that most people never realize are costing them money. USAToday has a new one that makes perfect sense, but which I hadn’t really thought about before seeing it - bad roads cost you money:
Crumbling roads and highways [...]

The Transportation Security Administration has announced they plan to lower the price from $200 to $110 a year the cost of getting fast-tracked through airport security. The reduction comes after companies argued the $200 fee was too high and “could deter millions of people and some airports from signing up for the Registered Traveler program.”
While [...]

One of the biggest reasons I chose to quit selling on eBay where I had built up a good clientele and was making a decent income was time. Unless you hire people to keep eBay listings going while you aren’t around, it is difficult to take time off because a week’s vacation can mean [...]

Here is an interesting site that I came across today. The name of it is FareCast and it uses an algorithm to predict the future prices of airline tickets to the destination where you want to go so you know whether it makes more sense to purchase them now or to wait to buy them. [...]

For those of you who have not been watching the news lately, Northwest Airlines handed out a booklet to their employees who were going to be laid off including a section called “101 Ways To Save Money” - the airline employees responded by protesting the list as offensive:
“This is disgraceful that somebody at Northwest Airlines [...]

***The photo doesn’t due justice - the line for the security check went all the way back to the arrival baggage claim area and took an hour to get through at 6:00 AM***
The airports today were quite an experience. Glad that I arrived 2 hours in advance, I left on a 7:20 flight and even [...]

With the latest airline terrorist plot in the UK, I’m expecting even the short jaunt to Las Vegas to be a major hassle getting through the airport. I’m hoping that since I’m taking a fairly early flight I will be spared the brunt of it, but still plan to get there at least 1.5 to [...]

I’m off to Las Vegas to meet with Nate in less than 7 hours and it will be nice to get away for a couple of days. Originally I purchased a ticket leaving Friday morning and returning Sunday evening, but Nate decided to take a plane back Monday morning. I decided to try and change [...]