Finance

Getting the Most out of Your Accommodations

August 1, 2018 By Ian and Sarah Thomas Leave a Comment

One of the biggest costs of any trip is the accommodation. Sure, airfare can be cheap or even free, but it is harder to find good deals on hotels and Airbnb’s. A couple nights of hotels or Airbnb’s, plus the assorted cleaning fees and taxes and whatnot can really add up.

One of the best things you can do to fight against the accommodation money-suck is to consolidate your rewards programs. And what I mean by that is to pick a major hotel chain and stick with it when you are looking at multiple bookings that cost the same. This way, you will be able to funnel any rewards points into one stack instead of randomly having a couple thousand points here and there.

Hotel points are funny because it seems like across the board almost they cost more in points than airfare. On Southwest, a $100 flight will run me around 5,000 points, but a hotel room at a mid-level chain can easily start at 20,000 points. Because of that, these hotel credit cards with huge sign-up bonuses don’t go as far compared to airline cards with smaller sign-up bonuses….

Our Complete Bathroom Reno for $2,000

July 11, 2018 By Ian and Sarah Thomas Leave a Comment

So, if you guys have been following on our blog or our Instagram stories, you are probably super aware that we have been renovating our bathroom in our house. We purchased the place in May after a couple years of living in it, and we were very much ready to get going on some long-percolating ideas that would help us put our stamp on the place – and hey, an increase in value doesn’t hurt either!

In looking at doing this full-scale bathroom renovation, we started from a place of “I wonder how much it would cost someone else to do this” and ended up at “Hey, I think we can do this all ourselves”. Initially, we weren’t sure how it would look – doing it all ourselves – and whether or not we even had that capability. For one, my dad and grandfather are super-human, fix-anything-ever people… but they live a solid 13 hours away. So anything that we took on would be all on us, though we had the option to phone-a-friend if (read: when) we had questions (pretty sure I used up all my Grandfather’s minutes).

As I researched it more and more, I kind of really started to want to take it on by myself. Not only would that represent some significant savings, it would also be kind of an adventure. And now that it is all done and looking… well, I think pretty good, there is a great satisfaction that comes from knowing and remembering every single step and struggle that went into the creation. And that feels really good….

Friday Five Episode 7: McDonald’s, IKEA and Flying Blue

July 5, 2018 By Ian Thomas Leave a Comment

This Friday Five is coming at you at the end of a really weird week – July 4th on a Wednesday – I mean, what is that. Needless to say, whether your BBQ was over the weekend before or on Wednesday, it was probably a hot one! I hope you had a pool or a lake to cool off in. Alright – let’s get started on Friday Five.

McDonald’s $1 Burgers

Look. I know McDonald’s has a bad rap in North America. And I mean, sure, sometimes the restaurants aren’t the nicest and the food isn’t super healthy or fresh – whatever. We don’t eat there every day by any means, but if we are on a road trip… and it’s Sunday and Chick-fil-a is closed, we might end up there….

Friday Five Episode 6

June 22, 2018 By Ian Thomas Leave a Comment

This week, Friday Five is going to cover how to stay on top of expiring miles, cheaper house reno buys and some potential Southwest expansion routes!

AwardWallet

Sometimes, it can get a little difficult to keep track of the different miles and points programs that you’ve collected points with over the years. This can be an issue because most miles expire if they don’t have activity. That’s where AwardWallet comes in, and it’s a handy tool I use to stay on top of everything. How it works is you link your awards programs to it and they will send you updates depending on changes – so if you get more miles, use your miles or most importantly, your miles are getting ready to expire.

It’s important to know that you don’t have to fly in order to save your miles. Miles can be “renewed” by making even a small $1 purchase through an Airline’s online rewards portal – it’s a great option that I’ve used on multiple occasions. One thing to note about this, though, is to not wait until the last minute. Sometimes that point or two can take a month to post to your account.

Side note: I have a bookmarks folder containing all of my travel rewards programs in it, just so I don’t forget who I have points with!…

Tips for Staying on Top of Your Credit Score

June 19, 2018 By Ian Thomas Leave a Comment

Credit scores are funny little beasts, and it’s important to stay on top of your score. Knowing what your score is and keeping an eye on it for changes will give you a lot more ownership over the whole credit thing in general. And a credit score is essentially a numerical representation of your credit report, so knowing your score and watching it for changes makes it easy to see and understand over time how your credit is impacted by decisions you make. Open a new card? Your credit will drop by 5-10 points. A couple months later, back to normal.

So for today’s post, I’m going to run down some of my favorite options for staying on top of your credit score, what to watch out for and what to do if you notice a mistake. It’s important to note that checking your score in this way is considered a soft pull and will not impact your credit. This is unlike a hard pull that lenders perform, which will show up on your credit report and drop your score slightly.

Before diving into this post, it’s probably a good idea to head here to get a quick 101 in Credit and here to disperse some common myths about credit.

All good? Then let’s go!

Credit Karma

You’ve probably seen a commercial for this website at some point – it really started to gain steam a couple years ago and now you can even file your taxes through them. Credit Karma pulls your reports using the last couple digits of your social security card and runs them through a credit scoring tool. Based on the information in your reports, like recent accounts or missed payments, it spits out a number. This is what mine looks like….

Friday Five Episode 5

June 8, 2018 By Ian Thomas Leave a Comment

Hey guys, it’s been a solid two weeks since our last episode of Friday Five because we decided to make this a bi-monthly effort! That way we can highlight more important things and not be so overwhelmed with trying to scrape the bottom of the barrel. All that out of the way, let’s go ahead and jump in.

Southwest Schedule

I know I probably sound like a broken record talking about Southwest on here, but now that the schedule opened up until January 6th, it’s a good idea to go out and book your holiday flights. Even if those flights are just placeholders, Thanksgiving and Christmas prices skyrocket fast. I booked on the day after the schedule opened up, and had to settle for some weird times and more expensive routes. Southwest has no change fees, so if you need to make a switch later on, no harm no foul….

How to Get the Best Phone Plan

June 5, 2018 By Ian Thomas Leave a Comment

So, last week was phones and this week I am moving on to cover phone plans. More specifically, I’d like to give you some background as far as what the carrier market looks like right now, and then some different options that might work for you. But first, an overview.

The phone carrier market basically boils down to 4 major carriers – AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile. Sprint and T-Mobile are trying to merge right now, so soon we might only have a big 3. Anyway, these 4 carriers and the networks they have built out are basically the only options available in the US – chances are, you are going to be on one of their networks.

But wait, you say. There are all kinds of commercials everywhere with other networks, and they are always talking about how much of America they cover. Where do they factor in? These other carriers, like MetroPCS or Cricket, are called MVNOs, which stands for Mobile Virtual Network Operator. And what that essentially boils down to is that these MNVOs piggyback on one of the networks owned by a big 4 carrier. And in many cases, MNVOs are owned by a big carrier. For example, ATT owns Cricket, which runs on its network.

These MNVOs are a great option for people who are willing to make a change – and often times, you won’t even notice a change in your day to day, because your new carrier runs on the same network as your old carrier….

Saving Money on Smartphone Purchases

May 29, 2018 By Ian Thomas 2 Comments

These days, all of us are pretty attached to our phones, right? And to be fair, smartphones make life a lot easier. I can check my mail, see what the weather is going to be tomorrow, pull up tickets for the game tonight, and even pay for my groceries at Trader Joe’s. These mini computers we carry around sure have made life a lot easier.

As for the negative sides of them, well, I’m not going to get into that here. Trust me, I know all about trying not to get too involved in my phone – Sarah and I are always on each other to “be in the moment” and all sorts of other cliches that we can apply to phones.

The problem with smartphones is that they are, like I mentioned, basically computers. And that means they come with computer-lite pricing. Heck, Apple’s iPhone X debuted at almost $1,000! That’s crazy talk.

And personally, I’m not that into all this and that they are going on about for the latest models – full display screens, glass front and back, camera upgrades – it’s all just noise to me. I mean, I probably couldn’t tell you the difference in picture quality from something taken with the iPhone 4 compared to the iPhone 8. And at the end of the day, they all run the same operating system, so everyone basically has the same phone….

Friday Five Episode 4

May 25, 2018 By Ian Thomas Leave a Comment

We are kicking off a brief Friday Five with some flight sales, a dream home competition, and a credit card FYI! Let’s dive in.

1. HGTV Smart Home Giveaway

HGTV is having a sweepstakes with a grand prize of over $1.6 million. Sure, the odds are low, but hey someone has to win! Check in out here.

2. APR Poll

This was an interesting poll I ran across that has some scary numbers: almost half of the people with credit cards don’t know what their APR is. As a reminder, APR, or annual percentage rate, is basically the interest rate that banks charge consumers for carrying a balance. This is reason number 1 why I recommend paying off your card each month if you can, and getting a card with a low APR if you can’t! Read more about APR and how it is calculated here….