How to save up for the dream vacation in 90 days: Tips from a financial guru.

by Jamie Rhein on

I love financial expert Jean Chatzky’s voice. She sounds so calm and reasonable. I came across a video clip of hers where she outlines how to save for a dream vacation in 90 days. It’s not rocket science, and her tips do work. I just did number two myself.

Here are the three tips in a nutshell. Seriously. It’s not rocket science.

1. Once you decide where you want to go, find out how much it will cost. Chatzky says to figure in the costs of eating and entertainment as well. The ticket or gas prices are only part of it. Factoring in ALL expenses helps plan. She recommends travel Web sites to scout out deals.

2. Then she suggests that you look to see if there are ways you can save, such as seeing if you can use miles. (That’s how I’m going to Denmark with my daughter in December.) In many cases we have NOT used miles if flights were not that expensive. We wanted to save up miles for a bigger trip.

3. Once you know your total cost, divide the cost by 13 since you have 13 weeks to come up with the money. Chatzky then says you look at your expenses to see what you can cut out each week. Chatzky picks coffee, clothes, lunches out and make-up as areas for savings.

Her figure to save was $80 a week. If you save $80 for 13 weeks, that’s $1,040.

If $80 is a hefty amount, my idea is to expand the length of time you need to save the money. The point is to know what your goal is so you can aim for it.

Although cutting back on immediate expenses, Chatzky says that once you’re on the beach, or wherever, the sacrifice you made to get there will be worth it.

Here’s the link for the video so Chatzky can tell you the how tos herself.

Any tips you’ve come up with to save for your dream vacation? I’ve saved all spare change.

Museum Day: Get cultured and learn something for free

by Jamie Rhein on

If the ticket price of the admission to museums makes you hesitate before pulling out your wallet, on Museum Day, September 27th, the price is right. It’s free–not all museums, but many.

Several museums and cultural sites across the U.S. have been enticed by Smithsonian Magazine to not charge on the 27th to promote Museum Day.

You do need an admission card for free admission, but one pass will get you and a friend in the museum of your choice’s door.

If you use the drop down menu on the Museum Day Web site, you can find out which museums are free in any state. I checked out New York state and found dozens. Reading the list is one way to find out the variety of museums there are.

One museum that fits the historical site category caught my attention in particular. Huguenot Street is in New Paltz and is where I dressed up like a Huguenot when I was in high school and gave tours on what was called Huguenot Day. The house in the picture is one of the houses that is part of the tour.

I found out about Museum Day from Tom Barlow, my friend at Wallet Pop. He swears that I told him about it last week. Where was I? I have no recollection. Here’s the link to the Museum Day admission card.

The upside of rising travel costs

by Meg Massie on

Raise your hand if you’ve had to change your travel plans in the last year due to budget constraints. Just about everybody, huh? Travelers who fly to their vacation destinations have had a rough time this year. Fares are up across the board, except in the cases where whole airlines have ceased operations entirely. Maybe planes don’t even fly to our destinations anymore, or those that do cost three times more than the budget airlines that have recently gone bankrupt.

Leisure travel has taken the biggest hit, of course, and resorts are suffering heavily as tourism is down 5-10% in many American vacation hotspots this year. Labor Day air travel was down this year for the first time since 2002, the first Labor Day following 9/11/01. The last part of this ugly equation is the development boom that began a few years ago — now more hotels than ever are competing for far fewer guests.

In order to stay afloat, hotels and resorts have been slashing prices and offering incredible vacation incentives to attract visitors. Some are cutting prices and offering deep discounts, and almost all have slowed their price hikes, which have been steadily increasing over the past several years. Other resorts are directly addressing the airfare issue. Sandals recently unveiled a new “fly-free” offer with an airfare credit of up to $550 per person for trips booked by Oct. 23, and Elite Island Resorts just announced a new promotion that guarantees round-trip airfare of $299 on American Airlines flights to its properties in Antigua. Both companies operate resorts in the Caribbean.

Now at the tail end of the summer travel season, hotels and resorts are bracing for an even weaker autumn and winter. If you can handle the more expensive plane tickets, you may be able to recoup some of that money in hotel savings. So if you put your summer vacation on hold this year, maybe it’s time to consider a fall getaway. It should be easy to find some bargains.

Couchsurfing by the numbers

by Aaron Hotfelder on

Just how popular is Couchsurfing these days? According to the site’s most recent stats, sleeping on other people’s couches is pretty darn popular: there are over 700,000 registered users and 622,000 successful “surfings” have taken place since the inception of the site four years ago. Couchsurfers live in approximately 47,000 cities and towns (wow!), and the most popular destinations are Paris, London, Montreal, and Berlin, respectively.

Couchsurfing reports that 51.4% of its users are male, 40.4% are female and the rest are unknown (or undecided). Couchsurfers can speak over 1,200 languages, with English, French, Spanish, and German being the most predominant. The least-spoken languages, in case you were wondering, are Ligurian, Manchu, and Sibe. I confess to not knowing what exactly those are.

Perhaps the most impressive Couchsurfing statistic is its rate of growth over the last four years. In July of 2004, 536 new Couchsurfers signed up for the site. Four years later, in July 2008, about 55,000 signed up in the same amount of time.

Haven’t tried Couchsurfing yet? Head over to the site and see what all the fuss is about.

[link via the Freakonomics blog]

Plano, Texas: The most affluent city in the U.S. What’s in it for the traveler?

by Jamie Rhein on

Over at one of our sister blogs, Wallet Pop, Plano, Texas is being touted the most affluent city in the United States.

That Texas! Texas has two of the cities where people have a fighting chance of making the best living.

Plano may have turned into a suburb of Dallas over the years, but there are distinctive Plano-type things to do, even for folks with a more modest income. The city’s official Web site does give reference to spouses which alludes to trips taken by people who head to Plano for business meetings and bring their spouses in tow.

Here are three places I’d go if ever I was in Plano.

  1. The Heard Natural Science Museum and Wildlife Sanctuary– Technically, this attraction is not in Plano, but in McKinney. It is, however, close enough that I’ll included it, otherwise I would not have ended up with three things. Here is where you can learn about Texas’s natural environment through walking trails and indoor exhibits. One permanent exhibit is on Texas’s venomous snakes. Currently, there is a butterfly exhibit that will run through September.
  2. The Heritage Farmstead Museum – An historic Blackland prairie farm that was turned into a museum to highlight life on the Texas prairie back in 1891.
  3. Interurban Railroad Museum– This restored train station is where you can learn about the history of Plano and about the train that used to go between Dennison and Dallas. It’s free, so, what’s the harm in checking it out?

From the extensive attractions list you can surmise that Plano is close to Ft. Worth and Dallas. If you expand the distance you’re willing to travel, you’ll find loads of things to do. I’d go to the Ft. Worth Stockyards National Historic District.

I checked on the Frito-Lay Web site to see if there is a tasting show room or some such thing since Plano is the company’s home. Nope. Didn’t see one.

For more Plano facts, check out Wallet Pop’s post.