Posts Tagged with “New”
Save Money When You Fly The Friendly Skies
It is Possible to Save Money on Airline Tickets
There are some time-proven axioms that you can follow to put the odds on your side in helping you save money on airline tickets. These include:
#1 Change the Time You Travel
If you want to save money on airfare, don’t be rigid on the time of day you want to travel. Going between New York and Los Angeles, for example, may have one airline offering as many as seven or eight flights on a particular day. If you want to leave in the morning, investigate the three or four departures offered during that time period. Moving your departure time by just one hour, on your departure or return, may save you significant money on the airline ticket price.
#2 Change the Day You Travel
Even if you require traveling on a particular airline or time of day, look at moving your desired departure or return day by one or two days. It is often the case that a particular flight may be cheaper on a Tuesday than a Wednesday, or a Saturday instead of a Sunday. The side benefit of this might be a free one-day “vacation” as the savings in airfare can more than offset the additional cost of a hotel room and meals.
#3 Change the Route You Travel
Yes, we all like to travel directly from where we are to our destination as quickly as possible and without changing planes. But how much is this worth to you? Airlines often make connecting flights from your origin to destination less expensive than their non-stop flights. It may add a couple of hours to travel time but it may be worth the hundreds of dollars you could save on airfare. Airline websites, unfortunately, are designed to show you the most direct and shortest time between the cities you request. If they have an option to “search by fare” use that option with maximum number of results possible and drill down deep in the results to make sure you see all the fares available. Changing the route you travel could be the best way for you to save money on airfare.
#4 Change the Airline You Use to Travel
Competition is a wonderful thing when it comes to saving money on airfare! Many routes are highly competitive and it can force an airline with traditional dominance in a market to drop its airfares, sometimes dramatically, in response to a new competitor or fare sale from other competing airlines. Often times these “sales” will happen on a moment’s notice and may only last for a few days. If you have a favorite airline you wish to use, subscribe to their email alerts for your favorite cities so you can be kept up to date on any fare changes. But, don’t limit yourself to just one airline. Do it for all the airlines in your market.
#5 First Class Cheaper Than Coach?
No discussion of ways to save money on airfare would be complete without talking about the new currency for airfares: the frequent flyer mile. More and more of us are accumulating these frequent flyer miles that pay for airline tickets. Our first inclination when trying to redeem these miles is to seek out a coach seat using the lowest amount of miles, typically around 25,000 miles. However, it is usually the case that the airline does not have any seats at the lowest mileage redemption level when you would like to travel but may have them if you use twice the miles. Before giving in to this requirement, ask about business or first class awards. You may be surprised how many times discounted business or first class awards may be available to and from your destination for the same or less or slightly more miles than for double mileage coach awards. The extra comfort and perks are the icing on the cake!
What’s mine is yours, what’s yours is mine…
What’s mine is yours, what’s yours is mine…host a clothing and accessories swap!
For many of us, watching our budget can seem doable until that cute pair of shoes or sparkling pair of earrings catches our eye. A moment or two of rationalization later, and we’ve dropped another $20, $30 or $50 on something we probably didn’t really need in the first place.
When we were children, we outgrew clothes year round. Our parents provided us with new clothes, and before we could tire of them, we had outgrown them and it was onto a new wardrobe. As adults, we no longer have that excuse to buy a new wardrobe each season. It can be so tempting to go hog wild when we see new things in the stores, however, or even when we see a particularly great outfit on a friend.
The funny thing is, our friends feel the same way. The solution? Get together and have a swap meet! No, this isn’t a bunch of guys trading used car parts, this is you and your favorite fashionistas gathering to trade things that are old to you, but new to each other. Let’s face it—having these items sitting around collecting dust in the closet isn’t doing anyone any good. On the other hand, someone else could make good use of those items. Chances are, the scarf that you have tired of will be very appealing to one of your friends. The almost new jacket that never quite fit right may be perfect for someone else.
To start, have everyone go through their closets and purge them of everything that they no longer wear. Don’t feel limited to just clothing—go through scarves, costume jewelry, shoes, belts, headbands, barrettes, handbags. If you haven’t used it in a year, it’s likely you won’t use it again. Just make sure you’re not getting rid of things you can’t part with.
When instructing everyone to comb through their fashions, you may want to have a deadline. This will help keep everyone on track! Otherwise the date of your swap could be indefinitely postponed while waiting for the procrastinators to finally get this crucial step completed.
Once everyone has had a chance to clean out their closets, choose a date and place to get together for the swap. Ideally, you want to have a good sized location to display all the wares. You’ll also want to set up tables and/ or racks, depending on what everyone has to bring to the swap. In addition, have mirrors handy, as well as a spot for clothing try-ons.
Make sure you give yourselves some time for the swap. Once everyone is together, you’ll want to plan on spending a few hours together. One of the bonuses of the swap is that it is a great chance to socialize, as well as breathe new life into your wardrobe.
Let everyone browse through the various offerings, trying things on and asking for opinions as they go. To keep things fair, you may want to draw numbers, one through however many guests attend. If there is an item that two people want, whoever has the lowest number gets that item. Once they have used that “turn,” their turn is forfeited until everyone has had a “first” choice, if necessary. Usually these things are able to be resolved on their own, but it’s nice to have a backup plan—just in case.
To top off the swap, have everyone choose their favorite “new” outfit and model it for everyone else. And it doesn’t have to be an entire outfit—maybe it’s a great hat that frames someone’s face just so, or a great pair of shoes that one of the ladies loves to strut her stuff in. This is supposed to be informal and fun, so have a great time with it!
Make sure you have a camera on hand to take pictures of the “models” as they show off their new treasures. If possible, have someone take a picture of the whole group together donning their new duds, or set a timer on the camera—you want to make sure you have everyone in the photo.
Hang onto that group photo and use it to make a great invitation—you may want to make this swap a yearly event!
A Room Is Just A Room….Or is it?
To save money on hotels, you can start with the internet. Be careful relying solely on travel web sites, however. The ones that find the cheapest plane tickets work pretty well, but you’ll never find the cheapest hotel rooms online. Of course, you probably don’t want the cheapest room, but you do want to know what your options are, right?
It seems that the web sites which locate cheap hotels for you only work with those that have a decent marketing budget. Or perhaps they assume for you what kind of room you want, and so exclude the ones that they don’t think are appropriate. This is speculation on my part, but what is not speculative is the fact that I have often found cheaper rooms than the ones listed on these web sites. How? By doing the following.
1. Start with sites like cheaptickets.com, but don’t stop there. This just gives you an idea of what is available – and sometimes you will find a great deal.
2. Find a online phone book for the town you are traveling to. Look up hotels and motels in that, and call them directly.
3. When traveling by car, take the hotel coupon-books available at gas stations, rest areas and visitor’s centers. These will often save you $10 or $20 at hotels you might have stayed at anyhow.
4. Ask for AAA and other discounts that you may qualify for. I saved $15 recently just by showing my business card to get the corporate rate. There are sometimes senior discounts as well.
5. Negotiate. This won’t always work in the United States, but we occasionally have an owner drop the price when we start to walk away. Also, we have paid cash for several days in advance to get a discount. This negotiating tactic has worked for my wife and I from Ecuador to Montana and California.
6. Plan ahead and call ahead. When making a multi-day trip by car, you have some flexibility in where you stop for the night. Check hotels in various towns online before you leave. Sometimes the rooms in the next town will be $30 less just because there are more hotels. Why not drive the extra forty minutes today (or tomorrow) to get the cheap hotel rooms?