Simply Well Spent

Travel + Renos + Finance

Budgeting

The Best Deal in Travel

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Writing a post with the headline “The best deal in travel” has to be click-bait, right? That’s definitely what I would have thought years ago when I first heard about the Southwest Companion Pass – this can’t be real! But it was, it is and man is it amazing.

Wait a minute, back up

Southwest is easily the airline we use the most. Several times a year are guaranteed trips to Maryland to see my family and to Canada (flying into Buffalo) to see Sarah’s family. Southwest makes this easy with their flexible points, free checked bags, and no change fees.

And with Southwest’s expansion into the Caribbean and Mexico, the airline keeps getting more attractive. Adding to that the fact that Southwest is starting to fly to Hawaii soon and are looking at Canada, the airline is clearly focused on growth.

But back to the Companion Pass, would you believe me if I told you that ever since we got married, Sarah has flown for free with me wherever I go with Southwest? Or that we haven’t paid for a single flight on Southwest in the last 5 years? It kinda sounds too good to be true, but it’s not!

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Bye, Bye, Cable. How we cut the cord, and still get HD TV (for Free!)

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Television is becoming more and more consumer friendly with the recent explosion of “build your own” packages available from streaming services like Sling, DirectTV Now and YouTube TV – to name just a few.

That’s kind of a big deal, because now consumers are in more of a position to pick and choose what they pay for instead of just paying for blanket packages. This gives us a little bit of control in an industry that is notorious for how badly they treat customers.

But you said “Free HD TV”…

Outside of those, there is another option that can get you free local HD channels! We use an antenna to get crystal clear broadcasts of NBC, Fox, CBS, PBS, ABC, CW, and more. And the best part is, there is no monthly cost – your all-in cost is the price of your antenna.

These antennas aren’t the bunny ears of years past or the bulky Dish antennas; our antenna actually looks like a piece of paper. It’s a little bit smaller than an 8×11 and just a little bit thicker. I have it stuck on the inside wall of one of our closets, and you’d never know it was there!

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How to Save Hundreds of Dollars on Textbooks

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With fall kind of around the corner, students are gearing up to go back to school and that means transitioning from beach mode to study mode. Not the easiest, but at least fall means cooler weather, colorful trees and holidays on holidays.

Today, I thought it would be a timely post to dive into textbooks… aka a potentially huge money suck for students. Textbooks can easily run upwards of $150 per class, and even with a typical 4 class semester, that is over $1,200 per year! That is pretty crazy. But it doesn’t have to be that way for anyone and it certainly doesn’t have to be that way for you, because here you are! Stick with me as I run through some of the different options out there and then I’ll finish up with the tool I use to search for the best deal.

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Getting the Most out of Your Accommodations

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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….

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Our Complete Bathroom Reno for $2,000

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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….

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

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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….

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Friday Five Episode 6

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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!…

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Tips for Staying on Top of Your Credit Score

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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….

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Friday Five Episode 5

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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….

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