Simply Well Spent

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Travel

Friday Five Episode 4

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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….

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Our Favorite Apps

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I’m going to change things up a bit today by zooming in on something that we use regularly – phones, and more specifically, apps! There are a ton of apps out there, and we’ve gotta find out about them somehow. Today’s post is all about my favorite apps, how I use them and why I think they deserve consideration to be on your phone. Let’s get going!

Mint

Mint is huge. Mint helps me organize all of my credit cards, bills, and budget, all in one app. It’s so great I’ll probably do a whole post on its different nooks and crannies at some point. For now, though, I’ll just put it out there that it single-handedly drives my finances. It automatically categorizes spending and slots that right into your existing budget, notifies you of upcoming bills, provides a real-time snapshot of all your accounts on one page, and man, the list goes on!

LastPass

Right up there with Mint, LastPass saves me time and energy on the reg. It stores all my passwords for me and generates super complex ones that I don’t have to remember, because LastPass will! Along with its browser extension, this app keeps track of all my passwords so I don’t have to, and this makes everything way easier. Plus, really strong passwords….

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Friday Five Episode 3

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We are still up in Canada, so I’m just going to get right into our Friday Five’s for this week and then get back outside to work on the in-law’s patio project! We might include some of the fun on our SWS stories, but for now, let’s jump in:

1. Southwest sale

Head on over to Southwest and check out the sale they have going on right now – it’s a good one! Flights start at $49. And just a reminder, if you have a flight that you already booked, check and see if the price went down. If it did, change your flight… to the same flight! Any extra points would be refunded to your account, or if you used cash, you’ll get account credit for the next flight! Usually by the time I’ve taken a flight, I’ll have changed it (to the same flight) a couple times. And at the end of the day, this saves me thousands of points….

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Our Favorite Spots Along Highway 30A

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Summer is pretty much upon us – the weather is getting warmer and pretty much all I’m wanting to do with my time is spend it outside – and hey, if it was at the beach I wouldn’t complain 😉 Just a couple weeks ago we headed down to the Gulf for a weekend getaway, and last fall I had a girl’s weekend in Rosemary Beach.

Today’s post is a list of our favorite spots along 30A. But wait – first, let’s back up a bit – some of you might be wondering what the heck 30A even is. It confused us like crazy when we first would see it as bumper stickers on people’s cars, but thanks to Google we discovered that it is a scenic road along the Gulf Coast in the Florida Panhandle. And as far as sand, sun, and fun go, we couldn’t recommend it more highly! Along 30A you will find several beach towns, each with their own charm and character (which you know we’re big suckers for 😉 )….

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Friday Five Episode 2

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So, it’s only the second week of our Friday Five series and already we are running late on it! Jeez-laweez, can we get our act together over here or what?! I guess in our defense, WHAT a week we’ve had. We have been all over the map trying to finish up our first big reno project before we headed out of town (update at the end), and this week just slipped by! Anyways, here are my top fives for the week.

1. $4.5k trip giveaway

Million Mile Secrets having a travel giveaway that is worth $4,500 in travel! Head here for more details – and in case you missed it, check out the interview we did with them a couple months ago….

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Inaugural Friday Five

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So after a couple months on the scene, today marks the debut of a new series lovingly dubbed “Friday Five”. It’s meant to be just a shorter recap of things we think are interesting, deals we are digging or credit cards we are applying for. So, with that being said, let’s jump in!

1. Moviepass

Summer is when a lot of big-ticket, blockbuster movies come out. Just this summer we are looking at Avengers, Ant-Man, Mission Impossible, Jurassic World 2, The Incredibles 2, Mama Mia 2, Solo, Ocean’s 8 – and jeez, the list could go on! Knowing that we will want to see a couple of those, I checked out what was being released when and decided that it makes sense for us to sign up for Moviepass for two months this summer….

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Planning Trips with Points and Miles

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This past weekend, Sarah and I headed down to the beach for a relaxing weekend full of sand, sun, and friends. It has been a while since we have been to the beach – and it feels like it’s been even longer since we had a chill vacation trip; usually, we are all about the exploring and adventuring. This trip came at the perfect time for us, though, because our life has felt like a whirlwind ever since we got back from our Aus / NZ trip – buying a house and starting reno jobs adds a whole extra dimension to our definition of “free time”. Kinda what I imagine having a kid will be like, though usually, our house doesn’t wake us up in the middle of the night, except for the random I-think-someone-is-in-our-house kind of wake up that happens occasionally.

On our way down to the beach, we had a solid 4.5 hours of drive time that was full of podcasts and discussions about what our next year looked like. Sarah and I have lots of plans for our house, and that is going to keep us incredibly busy, but we want to make sure we have space for travel as well. We have a good number of trips in the pipeline – Canada, Maryland, and D.C. – but all of those have some connection to either family or work. And don’t get me wrong, we looove those trips and are incredibly thankful that we are able to visit family so much, but we are kind of itching to have another adventure trip in the works….

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7 Days on New Zealand’s South Island

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After a whirlwind (and amazing!) 4 days on the North Island, it was time to take our trek to the South Island. We were so excited for this next part of our trip, as we had heard SO many great things about the South Island. From everything there is to do – extreme sports to leisure activities – and everything there is to see – Mount Cook, and other natural wonders like Milford Sound – we hit the ground running.

Here’s our itinerary of how we spent our 7 days!…

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4 Days on New Zealand’s North Island

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We spent a total of 12 days in New Zealand, and although you could spend way, way, WAY, more time exploring the islands, what we came to realize within the first few hours of being there is that it’s worth it no matter how long you go! Don’t let going for a short period of time stop you – we were so blown away by all the beauty and landscapes of the country!

Because our time was somewhat limited and we were spanning pretty much the entire country in our 12 days, we had to accept we couldn’t see everything, and that we’d have to pick and choose what we wanted to do.

But also, because we still managed to see and do so many amazing things on our trip, we’re breaking it down by the North and South island. So here we go! North Island itinerary coming right at ya:…

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