Frugality

Going for a Hike

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CAM00151I will be heading out for a hike starting tomorrow. I’ll be hiking in Shenandoah National Park to make up some of the section of the Appalachian Trail that I missed when hiking in Shenandoah. It is a 13.5 hour drive to Virginia from here. A few years ago I could make that drive straight through. Nowadays, I don’t think it would be safe for me to drive that long in one day. I’ll be driving 7.5 hours tomorrow and doing the remaining six hours the next day.  I’m able to get a room for free with my Starwood points so there is no hotel expense to worry about.

Once I arrive at the trail I plan to hike out and back on the trail returning to my car at the end of the day.  Then I will sleep in my car or perhaps hike in to a shelter if there is one close to where I’m parked.  My daily hiking miles will be determined by the distance between parking areas and how far I feel I can comfortably hike. I’m out of shape right now so the daily hiking miles will be low to start out. Having the car will allow me to go to town if I need more food or just need a night off the trail. I think hiking with the car will allow me to ease back into hiking.  Once I’ve returned from the hike I’ll share how it went. I think it will be a fun and frugal trip.

Almost Free Vegas Vacation, Broken Laptop, and Other Stuff

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fremontstreetI haven’t been posting much lately. My excuse is that I’ve been working and my laptop died. My job finished Friday and I bought a new laptop yesterday so I don’t have those excuses anymore.

My excuse for not posting from October 31 – November 4th is that I’ll be in Las Vegas on vacation at that time and posting on the blog won’t be a priority for me. I do plan on taking my laptop so there is a slight possibility I’ll write a post during that time.

This will be our second vacation in Las Vegas this year. The last vacation was crazy cheap and this vacation will be even cheaper. It should be almost free. My GF is traveling to Las Vegas to attend a conference for her job which makes her hotel, airfare, and food free. I’ll be using some of the Southwest credit I received in August for volunteering to be bumped to get my Vegas airfare free. I’ll be staying with my GF in her hotel room. Luckily, her job is only booking one employee to a room, allowing me to share the room. My only cost for the vacation will be food and any gambling I do. The food shouldn’t be too big of an expense. In-n-Out burger is pretty cheap :). The gambling could get expensive if I allow myself to get carried away.  Although, I’ve lost the last couple of times I visited Vegas I didn’t lose too much.  The gambling loss was much less than what I would have paid for airfare if I didn’t have free credits. Anyway, I’ll budget the amount of gambling I do so my losses aren’t too big. If I get really lucky I could win enough to make the vacation profitable. That is unlikely, but it has happened before.

My friend Jon, at MyFrugalMiser will be flying in to Vegas on the day we’re flying out. We plan to meet at the airport for a short visit before we have to leave for KC. When I return from Vegas I should have some exciting (well, it is exciting to me at least) news to share. In the meantime, I plan on posting several times this week and reviving the blog a little.

A Fun and Profitable Vacation

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View from Cape Horn
View from Cape Horn
Last week my GF and I spent four days on vacation in the Portland, Oregon area. We were visiting friends of my GF that live there. We spent one day doing a tour of the waterfalls in the area and enjoying the scenery. There is spectacular scenery in this area. We ate that evening at the Portland Grill which features a fantastic view of the city. The next day we went to the famous Powell’s Books and went out for a great lunch at Killer Burger. We also spent a lot of time hanging out at our friend’s house and catching up with them. It was a short and fun vacation.

Multnomah Falls
Multnomah Falls

Making the vacation even better for a tight-fisted miser like me was the fact that the vacation was almost free. Our round-trip airfare on Southwest was free using Rapid Reward points. We only had to use points to purchase my airfare since we have a companion pass allowing my GF to fly free with me. The only cost for the airfare was the $5.60 security fee. We didn’t have any hotel cost since we stayed with our friends. They will be visiting us in September so we can return the favor. They were also nice enough to lend us a car so we didn’t have to spend any money on a rental car. Other than leaving $20 for gas in the car the use of the car was free. Our biggest expense was for restaurants. We went to happy hour at the Portland City Grill which kept the cost of the meal reasonable. Killer Burger is a fast casual restaurant so it was a reasonable cost as well. Our only other cost was for airport parking. I used a coupon giving us a free day of parking which made the total cost of parking $21. Our total out-of-pocket cost was just a little over $100. I think that is a great deal.

Bridge of the Gods
Bridge of the Gods

The trip became an even better deal on the way home. When we arrived for our flight home Southwest was asking for volunteers to be bumped from our flight. Since I was traveling on a ticket bought with points and my GF was flying free on the companion pass I wasn’t sure they would offer us much for being bumped. Before volunteering I asked the agent how much we would get for being bumped. When she told me we’d be compensated $500 for my ticket and $400 for my GF’s ticket I decided to take the offer and be bumped to the later flight. The later flight was only a couple of hours later but since it was a connecting flight rather than a non-stop flight like our original flight we ended up arriving in KC about 5 hours later than we originally would have. We didn’t have anything planned for that day so the delay wasn’t a big deal. I felt like receiving $900 in travel credit for a few hours delay was a great deal.

Overall, we spent a little over $100 on our vacation and made $900 in travel credit on the vacation. This vacation will pay for our next vacation. It was a fun and profitable vacation.

Savings Saturday – Two Ways to Save 30% on Movie Tickets

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vcheckout  If you have been reading this blog for a while you probably know that I love to go to the movies. My GF and I go to the movies most weekends which adds up to about thirty movie outings a year. Since this is a frequent expense I have found several ways to keep the cost of going to the movies relatively low.

One way I save on movie tickets is by attending the first showing of the day. The movie theater we usually attend only charges $5. 20 for a movie ticket for the first showtime of the day. A later matinée would cost $8.67 and an evening show would cost $10.29. Going to an evening showing rather than the first show of the day costs almost double the price of attending the first showing of the day. Attending the first show of the day is generally a more pleasant viewing experience since the theaters are less crowded giving you plenty of space and making it less likely that a fellow patron will distract you from the movie.

Another way to save on movie tickets is to buy discount gift cards. I was able to buy a $25 AMC gift card for 30% off this weekend at Raise.com.  That is a better discount than the usual 15-20% off, but better deals are such as the 30% gift card are sometimes available. At the time of this writing I still see a few vouchers left at 29.9% off. If they sell out  buying a card at the regular discount of 15-20% off is still a good deal. If you are not yet a member of Raise.com please consider joining using my referral link.  You will get $5 for joining and making a purchase and I’ll get $5 as well.

Visa Checkout is having a temporary promotion with Fandango offering $10 off when you buy three or more movie tickets through Visa Checkout on Fandango on the weekends. This deal lasts until September 6, 2015 while supplies last. Get full details on the promo at the Fandango/Visa Checkout web page.  I used this promo a couple of weeks ago to get three movie tickets for a total of $5.60. Even though we didn’t have a third person to give the extra ticket to with this promo it was cheaper to buy three tickets than two. Unfortunately, this is a one time use promo or I’d be taking advantage of this deal again this weekend.

Going to the movies can be pricy but by taking advantage of good deals and special promotions a movie outing can be cheap entertainment.

How I’m Currently Saving 20% on Gas

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fuelgauge Last month I wrote a post on how I get quadruple savings on gas. Since then I remembered another method I sometimes use to save on gas. This method is actually simpler for me and results in savings of over 10% based on current gas prices.

This saving method is to spend $50 or more at Kmart. When you spend $50 or more at Kmart they will issue you a coupon for 30 cents off a gallon of gas that is good at participating BP, Shell, Speedway and Kmart Express locations. You need to be a Shop Your Way rewards member to receive the coupon. Only BP and Shell are in my area and I’ve only redeemed coupons at BP so I’m not sure how the process works at locations other than BP. At BP the coupon is good for a purchase of up to 20 gallons. Since my car’s tank won’t hold 20 gallons I don’t have to worry about going over this limit.

To redeem the coupon I’ve always gone inside the gas station and let the cashier add the discount to my gas purchase. Using the coupon is easy if the BP cashier knows how to redeem it. The cashiers often seem confused at how to redeem the coupon. Luckily, so far there has always been a more knowledgeable cashier available to figure the transaction out. The nice thing about this coupon is that your percentage savings grow bigger when the price of gas goes down. Currently our local gas price is $2.69 a gallon which is a savings of 11.15% per gallon. That is a pretty good percentage savings for only having to make one relatively small purchase.

Since I’ve been reselling stuff on Amazon I’ve been buying stuff to resell for the $50 purchase requirement. If you don’t have anything to buy at Kmart you could buy a $50 BP gas card there to meet the purchase requirement. It has been a while since I’ve met the purchase requirement by purchasing gift cards so I’m not certain that it still works, but it used to work. If anybody knows if gift cards still work to meet the purchase requirement please leave a comment.

I was able to combine the discounted BP gas card I got on eBay with this promotion to get an over 20% savings on gas. Now that I’ve used up that gas card I’ve figured out another way to get 20% savings on gas. This method will only work for those who were lucky enough to enroll in Discover Card’s double cashback promotion*.  Discover is currently offering 5% cashback on up to $1500 worth of purchases at home improvement stores. By buying a BP gas card at Lowes I’ll get a total of 10% cashback. I’ll get 5% now and another 5% in the 13th month of the promotion period. Combining this 10% cashback with the over 10% savings from the Kmart coupon I’m able to save over 20% on gas purchases. If you have a Kmart in your are you should give this deal a try.

 

* Discover is currently offering a $50 bonus when you sign up through a referral email. If you’re interested in signing up for the Discover card leave me a comment and I’ll send you a referral email. I’ll get $50 for referring you as well so any referrals are greatly appreciated.