February 12, 2007
according to Travel+Leisure, Feb 2007:
Act at the right time. To increase your chance of getting a good price on your next flight, keep in mind that carriers must release new airfares to a central clearinghouse (called the Airline Tariff Publishing Company) at certain hours; on weekdays, the best times to look for new fares are just after 2 p.m., 4:30 p.m., and midnight. T+L tip: Tickets that were reserved but never paid for usually appear after midnight, so the selection is especially rich then. On weekends, fares are updated just once a day, around 5 p.m.
February 11, 2007
according to Travel+Leisure, Feb 2007:
Act at the right time. To increase your chance of getting a good price on your next flight, keep in mind that carriers must release new airfares to a central clearinghouse (called the Airline Tariff Publishing Company) at certain hours; on weekdays, the best times to look for new fares are just after 2 p.m., 4:30 p.m., and midnight. T+L tip: Tickets that were reserved but never paid for usually appear after midnight, so the selection is especially rich then. On weekends, fares are updated just once a day, around 5 p.m.
I won’t be keeping my Citi PremierPass card open beyond the first (fee-free) 12 months, but in the meantime I realized that I could maximize the rewards from it by using it to pay for my trip. It’ll net about 15k points from miles which makes up for the fact that since I’m not flying one of my usual airlines, it’s doubtful that I’ll ever use the logged flight miles through the airlines’ mileage program.
It won’t be terribly useful for domestic flights because I have a number of miles with a few airlines, United and Southwest still maintaining first place, but it’ll do in lieu of adding to my miles pot. Until I start travelling internationally on a regular basis, this won’t be worth the $75 annual fee that kicks in after the first year.
Veddy rewarding indeed!
Seriously. Thank GOD for emergency funds. If I had to sit here and try to find airfare and all that AND worry about where this money was coming from, I would be just about bald right now. And I’m pretty sure my spleen would have exploded too. Gross.
Grandma’s terribly ill now, and she’s at that age when we’re really not sure if we’re measuring her time left with us in minutes, hours, days or weeks. PaDucky’s got his plans, I think. He’ll be leaving next week because we just don’t know how long she can hold on for us.
As for me, well, it’s a little more complicated. Aside from dealing with the work schedule and making sure things keep moving while I’m gone, I’m still trying to coordinate with BoyDucky because this is the one and only chance he’ll have to meet my beloved grandmother. My only wedding-related wish as a little girl was that my husband would meet my grandmother, and vice versa. And since PadresDuckies actually feel that it’s a good idea, if he can make it, we’re trying to make arrangements for him to go as well.
I used Sidestep.com at first, (thanks to Debthater), but the most affordable options that it turned up were the most time-consuming. I only have about a week or 8 days to do this, and I’m asking BoyDucky to leave his work at a really awkward time as well, so I just can’t take two days to get there. Orbitz.com was a little more helpful in pinpointing some of the more common carriers that fly from here to there, and though there aren’t any direct flights there, I have narrowed down the possibilities to flights on Cathay Pacific. The price? About $1366. *faint* That’s without having my visa taken care of! I might have to sacrifice some time and go to my dad’s travel agent in Orange County who took care of the flight and his visa for about $1100ish.
Another point of contention is, assuming that he can still go with the timeline now it’s moved up, I want to pay for BoyDucky’s flight. My reasoning is that he just paid for an extravagant trip for us, and he’s still paying that off. *shudder*
He should NOT pick up more debt because of me. This is not going to be a trip for fun, this is not a trip for “us-time” and it’s going to be terribly stressful. I’m only asking him to go for purely selfish reasons: I want his moral support and I want him to meet my grandma. I should pay! It won’t bankrupt me. I have the e-fund, and I knew that this was coming.
Don’t I have a good point?
I’ve changed the allocation of my Vanguard 403(b) from a 75/25 VTRIX/VTIVX to a 60/40 allocation.
And last year I opted to sign up for the contributions to be applicable through the 2006 calendar year, intending to increase my contributions or change them in 2007. Foolish! That did not work out the way I expected. Instead of being able to jump on that at the end of 2006, it turned out that my online access to the contribution signup was delayed until mid-January!
Naturally, that meant my selections wouldn’t go into effect until February. Augh! So now I have to up my contribution again, starting in March, so that the cumulative amount will make up for losing ground in January. I think that works out to throwing 600/month into that pot so that it averages out to about the same. Lazy Benefits Office bums! I’m sure they hate me now because I keep changing my contributions.
I learned MY lesson: just sign up for continuous contributions!
Last night, I went through and looked at last year’s tax return and figured out how to plug in this year’s numbers. That went ok, but I have a little more homework to do because I’m a little fuzzy on the Self Employment tax. I always get a 1099 for the amount of my bonus because the company just cuts me a check from the office and it’s up to me to do the tax figurin’. But what constitutes an expense when I figure my net profit and how would I prove those expenses? I’m sure he estimates the amount I have to spend on new business clothes each year because that’s mandatory for my job, and I sure don’t use that clothing for anything BUT business travel, etc. but what else qualifies as an expense to calculate net profit? I work from home so I would think that a portion of those expenses for internet and cell phone would qualify, but I’m not sure how that works exactly.
Eventually I came up with a modest number, but I haven’t gone through my state return yet. The question is, with all of the insanity swirling about trying to get flights and visas and coordinating travel schedules and work schedules and packing and all that business, do I really want to spend a few more precious hours working on my taxes and second guessing my numbers and decisions? Or should I ask the accountant to double check my numbers, let him do the state taxes and just plan to do them myself next year?
My family’s accountant usually does my taxes for about … 75% of his usual cost. He’ll have the normal charges-breakdown, per form, which add up to approximately $75 and then he’ll stick a sticky note on there saying “Just pay me half!” or “$50 is ok!”
February 9, 2007
So the meetings went ok despite my near-paranoic fussin. We got back yesterday, actually. Or rather, at about 1am this MORNING. *sigh* That’s right. Instead of getting a good night’s sleep on Thursday and leaving Friday morning, we left after lunch on Thursday and kept on truckin’ until past the wee hours of the morn. What else sort of sense would have worked better?
And I got the news that my grandmother back in the old country isn’t doing well at all. Nothing’s wrong with her, exactly, other than being 93, so, you know. PaDucky’s gonna have to go back to see her and PadresDuckies want to know if I’m going too. He’s going to be gone for two weeks, starting the end of this month. This is what an e-fund’s for, so that’s really not such a worry, [though the airfare alone will start at $700!] but trying to figure out how to fit this trip into March so that I’m not stuck there for two weeks will be interesting, to say the least.
And I’ve still not come to grips with the fact that I’m going back to say goodbye. I don’t want to. I want to see her as I remember her now, healthy and lively and wise. There’s a piece of me that keeps hoping that she’ll understand that we’re coming to see her, and miraculously get better. But most of me is terrified that I’ll just get there in time for her to have gone and ….. say goodbye.
What really gets me is that I can now pretty painlessly afford send MaDucky to see grandma (her MIL), but her health won’t permit it. Figures. I finally get the point where I can afford to foot an emergency trip that’s really important to her, but she can’t go.