June 11, 2008
While exploring my points hoards further, I made the discovery that, by golly, Starpoints are actually quite nice! I wish there were a faster way to earn points than the standard 1 point per dollar on regular purchases, and 2 points per dollar for stays and SPG-related purchases.
The key (not the standard free hotel stays) awards that caught my fancy:
1. Nordstrom GC: 14,000 points for $150/9,500 points for $100/5,000 for $50
2. Banana Republic GC: 9,500 points for $100/5,000 points for $50/2,800 points for $50
3. For BD, Starbucks: 9,500 points for $100/5,000 points for $50/2,800 points for $50
4. Westin at home (if you want a Heavenly Bed): 14,000 points for $150/9,500 points for $100/5,000 for $50
5. 50% off rack rates (if you can’t get a deal at your popular destination): 1,000 points for 50% off rack rates for up to five nights. Good for up to Category 6 (read: most luxurious) hotels.
6. Nights and flights: 60,000 Starpoints for 50,000 airline miles and five free nights at a Category 3
7. Amtrak Guest Rewards: convert your points into train miles.
This makes me want to re-evaluate my credit cards portfolio and figure out where I can shoehorn in the Starwood card again. I’m content with my current mix, but I may want the flexibility of such rewards in the future.
June 10, 2008
This might be considered cheating because I’m not spending any less. But, if the end result is saving some cash by being creative about the spending, then it still counts.
My budget for Con is $300 from my travel fund, of which $92 is earmarked for reimbursing my friend via comics. That leaves me $208.
If I recall semi-accurately, I usually fill up once before I head out to San Diego, and once more when I come back. That includes the 100+ mile drive down there, 5 round trips between my housing and the convention center, and a trip back home. This year, I’m required to cut the trip short by a day because of a business trip, so I only have to account for 4 days of driving. But, I’ve factored in an extra trip to the airport to pick up BD who will be joining me for a day. Total, I’d say that’s just a shade under 400 miles. My car can, on a good day, make about 400-450 miles per tank, but I may be ferrying passengers on some days, I might be stuck in traffic for five hours coming or going, who knows?
I’m going to estimate the trip to require about 20 gallons of gas to be on the safe side.
By the end of July, $5.50/gal gas is probably not unthinkable, considering the Shell is at $4.45 right now. Conservatively, I now expect to spend more than half my budget on gas alone. That’s before I’ve factored in parking, food, or even a bit of shopping for gifts. Oh, and my ticket for next year. Oy, I thought my budget was HUGE a few months ago.
My brilliant idea? Gift cards! Browsing the Thank You points rewards the other night, I discovered that they have Shell gift cards. Sadly, they only offer the $50 for 6000 points exchange rate which I despise, but it’s still gas money that won’t come out of pocket. My ideal solution would be to earn another 2000 MyPoints and redeem 7350 points for a $50 GC, and redeem 12,000 Thank You points for another $100. It’s not likely that I’ll be able to get another 2000 points via MyPoints between now and Con, though, so I might have to bite the bullet and burn 18,000 points.
If I use no more than $150 on gas (dear Heavens I hope I don’t!) then I will have saved my Con cash stash entirely! That would be wonderful. The use of that many Thank You points and the lost opportunity to redeem for shopping GCs is sad, but I can repurpose any leftover Con cash to later travel, I can’t do that by hoarding TY points. Besides, I can always earn more points.
June 9, 2008
Southwest is running a promotion for a $25 discount when you purchase a $100 southwest gift card.
There are a handful of restrictions, so I would be very careful when deciding whether or not to purchase it.
Purchase dates (for the gift card): June 1st-30th (still have time.)
Requirement: must use Visa. It can be any cobrand as long as it’s US-issued. (Great, I carry one Visa and one Mastercard at all times. It’s not my preferred points rewards card, but it’s still a rewards card.)
Limit: one per Visa cardmember and/or e-mail address. Visa cardmember will earn one $25 fare discount on a $100 or more single card transaction. Shipping and handling fees do not qualify towards the total transaction amount. The $25 fare discount will be sent via e-mail to the Visa cardmember’s account. A valid e-mail address is required to receive the discount. Allow four weeks after the conclusion of the promotion to receive the discount. (Wait, shipping and handling? Just pop the thing into an envelope and throw it in the mail! 42 cents! And BD and I can each buy one, if I have need of two round trip tickets in the near future.)
Discount Valid: Purchase must be made between July 1, 2008 and August 30, 2008 for travel August 18, 2008 through November 19, 2008.
This promotion does not include Business Select, Anytime, or Senior Fares. (Does that mean it’s only good for the Wanna Get Away fares?)
Despite the numerous caveats, I think that I will pick one up because as I look at upcoming travel, I was unexpectedly invited to a wedding in August, and have got a sporting event to attend in October. It’s only good for the event in October, and I’m looking at paying $100 for $125 purchasing power. As long as the flight prices hold until July 1st, or whenever I get that discount, I’ll be able to purchase a $149 ticket for $75 now, and an additional $24 later. Not bad, I say!
June 6, 2008
Boy oh boy, every time I think I’ve learned my lesson when it comes to airfare, I make another mistake.
I spent a couple hours working out an elaborate plan to trade award credits with BD last night. I have SW award credits, he has a free round-trip ticket on United. He needed an open jaw flight, and his free ticket doesn’t allow multi-city travel. Southwest didn’t have the travel dates I wanted open for Standard awards.
We checked: I could find a flight on United, could redeem a one way ticket for half of his travel on SW, and buy a one way ticket on United for $87. I did my usual scope out on Travelocity first, and then went to the United site to actually pin down the cheaper fee-free price. $87 for a multi-city trip, for almost exactly the itinerary he wanted. So what do we do? I let him promise that he’d buy the ticket today, and let it go at that.
He sure didn’t buy it, and overnight, the ticket went up to $110. ARGH! I knew I should have snagged that sucker, or at least reserved it last night! I know prices can go up at any time, look at the dratted gas prices skyrocketing twenty cents in 5 days, for heaven’s sake!
Of course, the irrational response was then to refuse to buy it because it was $23 more. Completely irrational? Yep! But the price isn’t going to be any less if we wait even longer. *sigh* So the trip’s going to be over $100 instead of under $100. There’s something depressing about spending just over the $100 mark.
April 15, 2008
For whatever reason, I cannot seem to get my mind focused on anything but investing or travel tonight. The first is simple: I finally read my Rollover IRA prospectus last night, figured out that I have a little over a thousand dollars invested in an REIT mutual fund that’s made roughly $200 in the last four years, and I don’t want to pay another $15 annual maintenance fee because I’ve been too lazy to get my butt in gear and roll this over to my Vanguard accounts. Then, too, I’ve been talking stocks with a friend who is actually quite experienced in investing and I’ve been feeling completely out of my depth, so I want to start dipping my toe into the market. Kind of reminds me of Sistah Ant’s comment about being jealous of a teenager with her own stocks š
The second? I’m desperate to get away. For a change of scenery, of pace. Just to get away from this life and my job and the bad management and frustrating workload and passive aggressive BS. I can’t move out until I have the money covered for first and last, start up costs, maintenance just in case money. Oh and a roommate. I need a roommate. So now I’m overwhelmed by this need to go somewhere exotic like Bali, the Bahamas, Mazatlan, Los Cabos.
This might be a need to shed my feathers for the summer, now that we’ve ridden through our first heat wave and an oppressive fog has rolled in to mock us, but whatever it is, I’m going stir crazy tonight. [Wait. Feathers? Shed my feathers? Look at that, I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore. Shed my winter coat! That’s the analogy I meant.] I’m itching to grab someone and just take off for a weekend. Reminding myself that I don’t actually have cash to spare isn’t helping tonight, especially not when I know that I’ve got the e-fund covered and throwing a couple-few hundred dollars at this getaway wouldn’t break me. It wouldn’t be good for the budget, but it wouldn’t break me. *sigh* I should let this run its course, and hope that I don’t accidentally find a really good deal tonight š Like a three day cruise to Mexico for a couple hundred dollars. Hmmmm……
Ack! Quick! Snap out of it!!
February 21, 2008
Ahhh, finally home again. We drove, the five of us from the office, from the LA area to Vegas on Sunday for our semi-annual power retreat, and are finally back five days later, spent.
It was one heck of an intense trip. For the first time ever, our office was running the agenda and giving the presentations, and I tell you what, that was nerve-wracking. Lots of pros and cons.
Having to go at all was a con because as you know, I’ve been sick for three weeks now. The two weeks prior were NOT spent in bed recuperating, they were spent in the office preparing my presentation, managing the office’s workflow to get as many projects up to speed right up ’til we left and preparing the work assignments for those staying behind so we didn’t lose a week of productivity. That insanity was even MORE stressful than the usual work weeks. Definitely did not help the cough, sleep, or energy levels.
The schedule was incredibly packed. We were to meet between 7:30 to 8:30 if we wanted to eat, and be ready to begin the meeting at 8:30 sharp. Meetings ran until after noon, we had 20-30 minutes to walk to our rooms and drop our stuff, and turn right back around to meet downstairs for a working lunch from 1-3. Sometimes until 3:30. Or 4. The kicker was that we stayed in the Venetian (more about that later), which meant that it usually took at least 15 minutes just to get to your room! That place is massive.
Regardless of when lunch ended, or when we got back to our rooms, we met again at 6:30 for cocktails before dinner. And then it was a semi-social, semi-working dinner from 7:30 until 10:30 or 11:30. We frequently didn’t get back to our rooms until after midnight. My bosses are crazy, because I think they usually spent half the time available before dinner, or more, walking around the casino or shops talking business.
The meetings were draining as well. One person would present and 11 other people would randomly interrupt as questions and ideas occurred to them. We needed half the group to be taking notes throughout to make sure we actually remembered what was said at the end of the day.
On the upside, our standard rooms at the Venetian were opulent. I practically lived in my bathroom. The floor space in there was bigger than my room at home, before taking into account the bathtub, glassed shower, and separate toilet room. Oh, and the vanity, in case the wall length mirror over the double sinks was insufficient. *swoon* I loved that bathroom. Loved it. The one thing that made the insane days and nights worth it was the fact that I managed to take a hot hot hot bath every single afternoon before dinner. It could be a ten or fifteen minute bath, I didn’t care. Getting to soak my poor abused feet was absolute heaven, and made it possible to get up and go for another 6 six hours again.
Oh, I also had a bed. A lovely king-sized bed with four pillows. More heavenly! If my cough settled for the night, I was set up for a grand night’s sleep.
Our meals were excellent as well. We were treated to lunches at the Mesa Grill, Olives, and Mario Batali’s Enoteca and dinners at Bradley Ogden, and Le Cirque. I have never (and probably will never again) eaten so well or so lavishly in my entire life. *ahem* I’ve also never drunk so much in such a short period of time. It’s very likely that I had more to drink during this meeting than I had during my entire college career. Does that say something sad about my social life in college or something disturbing about my job? š
And of course, we can’t not talk about the gambling and shopping!
Coworker 1 had never gambled before in her entire life, so we snagged a few ones from the boss and colleagues, and set her up with a few penny slot machines. Yeah, we’re high rollers.
Another colleague handed me a twenty to share with the gals, so we used $6 the next day and while they lost it all, I managed to win $9.60 on my second dollar. I’m no fool, I cashed that out right quick š So I came home up $24 in cash.
As for shopping …..
You already know about my American Apparel splurge. The gals went to Express and Guess, and picked up some more work clothes on sale. I abstained from that trip because I just couldn’t see spending any more money. The bosses bought us bathrobes as our souvenirs.
And while walking with the bosses, we discovered the women’s clothing store, Theory. That’s a story for another day, though.
January 2, 2008
I had to use 25,000 miles for BD’s short haul flight the weekend of the wedding that would normally only “cost” 15,000 miles, but the trade-off is almost $200 that BD can put towards paying down his debt, so it’s worth it.
Ya hear that, BD? $196 —> debt repayment! š
(Just kidding, he doesn’t actually read this.)
