Lazy Man and Money

Four Unexpected Ways We Saved Money on Back To School Clothes Shopping

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Save Money on Clothing

So many people say that kids are expensive. They certainly can be. However, sometimes they are not. It can run the whole spectrum.

I don’t know where are on that spectrum. On some things we are extremely spendy. On others we are extremely thrifty. In the end, it probably averages out.

Here are some of the things that we don’t spend much money on: clothes, toys, food (they don’t eat much, and they will only eat the cheapest, processed, most unhealthy foods).

Here are some of the things we spend a lot of money on: private school/day care, after school activities.

Today, I’d like to cover about some of the ways we saved money for back-to-school clothing shopping. Typically, I’d give my old standby, “Go to TJ Maxx and Marshalls.” It’s always served me well in the past.

1. Outlet Malls are Back in Style

This year we did something a little different. We found ourselves travelig near the Tanger Outlets in Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. I didn’t have very high hopes and thought it would be a waste of time, but I decided to humor my wife. Besides, with stores like Gymboree, there will definitely be some cheap clothes.

I hadn’t been outlet shopping in years, maybe even a decade. I used to love it around 2002, but it seemed that the stores caught on and made the deals a little worse and the quality of clothes a little worse.

Well, in my recent experience, the deals are back! Maybe it’s because retail clothing companies have run into difficult times?

My wife and I were tempted so much we ended up upgrading our own wardrobes as well as the kids. We picked up a mix of very frugal clothes (the aforementioned Gymboree) and some “special” clothes. Due to the private school, there’s a certain amount of “keeping up with the joneses” when it comes to clothing. When it’s time to wear more formal clothes, we won’t stick out like sore thumbs.

2. Kohl’s is King

I think that Kohl’s is a strange store. It’s almost like they intentionally price some stuff at $30, just so they can put it at 60% off and sell it for what the real price should be. It’s probably not as bad as I make it out, but we had no problem finding tons of quality clothes on clearance.

The other weird thing about Kohl’s is that they allow you stack discount after discount. My wife has the credit card (the only store card I think we have) and got a mailing for an additional 30% off. Then there’s Kohl’s cash for spending so much money. I think we ended up getting around $300 worth of clothes for $100.

At this point, there’s an argument to be made that we didn’t really save much money at all. It’s very popular in for personal finance bloggers to say that the best way to save is to not spend the money in the first place. I don’t think we overbought considering we have two kids to outfit and could also get some summer clothes for next year.

3. Shopping My Mother’s Closet

My mother has always done a fantastic job combing the a second hand store in her town. Her ability to pick up any kind of clothing, even winter coats, for around $2 or less is one of the reasons why we have never really had to spend much on kids clothes.

The store hasn’t has as many deals as it has in the past, but my mother still had quite a pile of clothes in the closet. I know not everyone has a bargain-hunting grandmother. However, if you happen to have a store like this one and the time to drop-in, it can pay off.

4. That Neighbor Down the Street

I’m pretty friendly with my neighbors. That means that I give them a head-nod and half a wave every now and again. I’m exaggerating that part a bit, but most people tend to keep to themselves.

There’s a couple of neighbors who I talk with a little more… usually while our dogs are running around on the lawn. Earlier this year one of my neighbors offered their kids’ old blazers. I obviously said I’d take them, but it hadn’t come up again in months. Earlier this weekend, we found a present at our door, two blazers that appear as if they were worn only once.

Final Thoughts

I had originally intended to write this article to cover the outlet malls and Kohl’s as a way to get cheap clothes.

However, I felt like it was necessary to point out that we do have a couple of unique sources for cheap clothes that help out. You can consider them bonus ideas such as looking at second-hand stores yourself, or maybe even BEING the helpful neighbor paying it forward.

What are some of the ways you save money on clothes (either kids or your own)? Let me know in the comments.

Solar Power is Still Awesome (Three Years Later)

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It’s been more than three years since we’ve paid an electric bill… and it feels every bit as good as it sounds.

Yesterday we got our bill for May. It’s amazing to look forward to getting a bill in the mail. This was our best bill yet:

Electric Bill

No, THANK YOU for letting me use your DirectNOPay Program.

For newer readers, I wrote an article here about how and why we transitioned to solar power. Solar power worked out for us based on a confluence of three things: house orientation (facing south), state and federal subsidies, and the price of electricity in general. The last two are Rhode Island related, but it make sense for you in your state. I think the federal subsidies are still in place, but you may want to investigate this quickly. To put it mildly, I don’t think environmental causes are near the top of this administration’s priorities.

We’re currently in the “sweet spot” of solar power. In the spring, the days are long which means a lot of sun. We don’t use much electricity as we don’t need heat or (much) air conditioning. We are starting to get into air conditioning season though, which is when we’ll start drawing down on that negative balance. (Or is it drawing up, because we’re in negatives?)

I think we’ve gotten as close as a -$50 balance, but this recent -$255 bill is the biggest credit I can remember. This June has been cooler than I remember and we were on vacation for part of the month. Maybe we’ll get to -$300.

It’s funny (and weird) to feel as much pride in that number as I do. In the grand scheme of our net worth, $255 is a round off error. Don’t get me wrong, I still run around to several groceries stores to save a couple of dollars, but we’re in a financial place where the difference between $125 and $255 isn’t a big deal… unless you “earn” it in small increments as we have. (I put “earn” in quotes there, because so much of it is passive and has nothing to do our active involvement.)

The best thing about not paying for electricity is just that… eliminating expenses. And as much as I gloat about it here, it’s a little dishonest to say we aren’t paying for electricity. Solar panels are not cheap. We took out a HELOC to cover them. A reasonable person could make the very valid case that we’re just paying someone else (the bank, plus interest) each month and we did not eliminate an expense.

If you want to make that case, at some point, we’ll eliminate the expense. The timeline on that seems to change every few months, but we are making good headway. If not for some other unexpected expenses, we would probably have been down to zero a little back.

Or maybe we won’t truly ever eliminate our monthly electricity bill. We are a couple of months away from paying off both of our SUVs (they were on 5+ years of low/zero interest loans), so in another 8 years maybe we’ll look into an electric SUV. At that point the SUVs will be 13 years old. If we don’t have Uber gPods, we’d likely be looking for an electric SUV with 4-wheel drive (for New England snow), which is a bit of a tall order right now. If it becomes a reality, we’ll shift some of our transportation costs towards our electricity bill. I’m not sure how that will impact things, but we’ve got nothing but time to figure it out.

Have you looked into the cost of solar in your area? Let me know in the comments.

I Feel Scammed by Red Pocket Mobile (Cell Nightmare 1)

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Sometimes trying to saving money is an extremely difficult job.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about this Red Pocket Mobile Deal. In short it was unlimited cell service on AT&T Network (5GB LTE) for a year at $240. That’s $20/mo. for those who are math challenged. I’m paying $35 a month for similar service at Cricket Wireless.

Who wouldn’t want to save $15/mo., right?

It looked to me that Red Pocket Mobile is one of those resellers who run on very thin margins, which is what leads to the low price. I’m used to going with the frugal option and giving up customer support. My view is that typically once you get service up and running on reliable network (AT&T) it’s smooth sailing.

One thing concerned me about the deal, the return/refund policy. I’d need something very solid if I’m committing to buying a year’s worth of service. Hidden away at the bottom of the Ebay store listing is a tab of “cancellation/refunds.” Clicking it gives you their policy, which is:

“We want you to be delighted with your purchase of this prepaid service. If you are not satisfied with your service and it is within 30 days of receiving your starter kit, we will refund your purchase in full. However, if you have consumed more than 30 minutes, 30 texts, or 30MB of data, it will be considered buyer’s remorse and a refund will not be available.

If you do not contact us to cancel the plan within this 30 day period, or if you consume more than 30 minutes, 30 texts or 30MB of data, your purchase will be considered buyer’s remorse and you will no longer qualify for a refund.”

Okay, if it’s within 30 days, they’ll refund… great. Oh wait, if I talked to someone for 30 minutes, received 30 texts, or used 30MB, they’ll consider it buyer’s remorse and not give a refund.

This scared the hell out of me. I took to Twitter.

That last request drew a wise response by @MLM_Police:

I followed up on DM and asked the same questions that I did publicly. On April 20th, they said escalated the request. By April 23rd, I reached back out to them, as it had been 4 days and I feared the deal would be removed or sold out before I received my response. On the 24th, they got back to me and said that they hadn’t received a response yet.

I decided to take a chance and buy, mostly because I believed that paying $20 for AT&T service is better than paying $35 for AT&T service.

I ordered my sim and it sat a few days while I found the free time to focus on getting it installed and activated. I started the process on Friday, May 4th early in the day. I decided to port my phone number because some of my dog sitting client text me directly. In hindsight, this was probably a bad idea.

Here’s the number portability section of the Red Pocket Mobile’s activation website. I highlighted two interesting sections.

Let me tackle the second highlight first. It’s very strange that a pre-paid phone company would ask for your Social Security Number. This Forbes article covers it a bit. In this case, Red Pocket Mobile doesn’t require it, which tells me they don’t need it. They’d like to have it. I remember thinking, “Hmmm, you escalated my question about the return/refund policy 2 weeks ago and I haven’t gotten a response yet. I’m not sure I’d like you to have my Social Security Number. Thanks!”

The other highlight is the “Account Password” of my (then current) carrier, Cricket Wireless. I used the password for the Cricket Wireless website. Big mistake.

This is the first time I’ve ported a phone number in years. I had read it takes a couple of hours. Here’s the thing they don’t tell you about porting your phone number. You never get notice (such as an email) about the completion of the port. And you have to reboot your phone for the new activation to take effect. So you fill out this form try back in 3-4 hours and hope for the best.

When my service wasn’t activated in 4 hours I called Red Pocket Mobile. They said that the PIN didn’t match. I said, “Of course it isn’t going to match my PIN… your website asked for the password. If you wanted the PIN you should have asked for it.”

I gave them my PIN and they submitted the new request to port my number. Four hours later, I still didn’t have service. Time for the second call to Red Pocket Mobile.

After one person disconnected me when they went to investigate, I got one who would work with me. She said that the PIN was denied. I asked what she had for the PIN information. She read the same information I submitted from the website hours ago, not the information I gave in my last call. It seems as though the call that I had four hours ago never happened.

Four hours later, I still didn’t have service. At this time, it’s getting late, so I decide to resubmit the activation and port request with the correct PIN from the website. My theory is that it can’t hurt. Maybe they are only allowed to go off of what is submitted through the website?

The next morning I call back and the customer service representatives tell me the PIN was denied again. Once again, she reads me the same password that I originally submitted and not the PIN that I’ve now corrected twice over the phone and once online. After I explain to her that I seem to be caught in a low-budget, direct-to-video version of Groundhog Day 2, she puts me on hold to investigate some more.

She comes back and says that it should work now! And amazingly it does! I can make a phone call! She painstakingly reads me through at least 10 APN settings to get the mobile network configured. Near the last one, my phone inexplicably erases the previous 9. I thank her and tell her that I’ll just do it through the Red Pocket Mobile app as the company intended.

It works without a hitch. I decide to take my dog on a short walk around the block while I check up on some news, Twitter, and email. (We were off the “beaten path”, so not this “phoning and walking” wasn’t really a danger.) Everything seemed normal and great with the LTE coverage.

I got back and it was time for the kids soccer practice. My wife drove the mile (maybe 1.5 miles) down the street. I don’t know why I had my phone out for such a short trip, but I noticed that I didn’t have LTE coverage. I only had “H” coverage and pages were slowed to a crawl. Uh oh. It’s panic time!

I looked at how much data I used. It was at 28MB. I had 2MB of data to spare before I had wasted $240 on cell phone service that I wouldn’t be able to use. In a panic, I quickly put my phone into airplane mode.

When I got back home, it was time to call Red Pocket Mobile again. I asked if they’d waive the 30MB requirement like I did in all the Tweets. Instead of promising they would, the phone person jumped to “Let’s see what we can do about this coverage. Turn your phone off airplane mode and we’ll get started.”

It seemed that he couldn’t understand the position I was in. If I turn the phone back on, it could get email updates and get over the 30MB limit. In order for Red Pocket Mobile to attempt to troubleshoot my problem, they’d effectively be demanding that I waive any right to a refund.

We went back and forth like this for what seemed to be forever. It was unfortunate, but I feel that Red Pocket Mobile put me into a corner where I couldn’t be their customer.

Finally after number calls over the 24+ hours, I decided to give up on Red Pocket Mobile. My wife was quite relieved.

I called up Cricket Wireless and said, “Please let me come back!” Their customer service representative said, “Sure, no problem. We’d love to have you back.”

Oh there were problems! We’ll continue that story in Cell Nightmare 2…

Red Pocket Mobile Conclusion

Like everything in this article, this is just my opinion based on my experience. It’s quite possible that the service is good and that I freaked out due to the refund policy before I had the chance to get a good feel for it. However, their lack of customer support and that policy really made it difficult for me to fairly review the actual phone service itself.

If you are thinking of giving Red Pocket Mobile a try, I’d recommend porting your number to something like Google Voice and then using that to route a new Red Pocket Mobile number to that Google Voice number. This has worked well for me in the past, with the exception of people getting confused when their caller ID gives them the underlying carrier number instead of my Google Voice number on outgoing texts and calls.

Reminder: Libraries Can Save You Hundreds of Dollars

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Last weekend, my son told us that other children in their school have watched Star Wars. I thought 5 (almost 6) might be a little too early, but even if a lot of it goes over his head there’s not much harm there.

Dog Book - library
The library doesn’t bite, but interrupt me again and I will!

My wife and I went through the age-old question of which order to introduce the movies. Fortunately, we both agreed on the chronological order of release date – we started with the 4th movie.

There was just one small problem. How do you watch Star Wars nowadays? I couldn’t find it streaming on Netflix or Amazon Prime. Star Wars isn’t there. Amazon and Google Play were willing to sell me the digital movie for around $20. We were simply looking to rent it for the day and maybe explore buying a collection in the future.

We went down to the local Blockbuster, but strangely they only had pizza and subs there. I looked online to see if it was at my local Redbox kiosk. That was a dead end as well.

My wife was going to start calling up random friends and co-workers, before she came up with a better idea, “Why don’t we go to the library?”

This may sound strange, but we had never gotten library cards. For whatever reason we’ve been running around from one thing to the next or simply enjoying all the books, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video that we already have at home. We were long overdue to become members and reap all the benefits of our taxpayer dollars at work.

Libraries: Much More Than Books

Of course the Library had all the Star Wars movies. We grabbed episodes 4 to 6… even “upgrading” to Blu-Ray for A New Hope. I put upgrading in quotes because it was the same price of “free” as the DVDs. They also had a bunch of new releases in Blu-Ray as well. While it isn’t a new release, I never got around to seeing Deadpool and that caught my eye.

We watched the Star Wars movies and my kids picked up some of the large plot ideas. Show off my ability to talk like Yoda did I? My kids didn’t know that Dad was good friends with Yoda. (More accurately, his college linguistics class analyzed such sentences and how we still what he’s saying.)

When I returned the movies, I noticed that they had a section of kids movies. There we found the original Pete’s Dragon, which is something my wife and I wanted to introduce to our kids. It’s been very hard to find that on streaming services as well. Next, I spied a real treasure: School House Rock: Multiplication. I grabbed that just to watch my kids’ heads explode at Three is a Magic Number. They only know the Jack Johnson version from the Curious George movie Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Multiplication is not typically taught to a 5 year old (much less our 4 year old), so my expectations are zero. However, the songs were fun for everyone. Any math that stuck is a bonus. (Note: There should be a much more extensive post about my planned “Summer of Math” with the kids coming soon. Don’t worry, we got them in camp and soccer – stuff that some silly kids think is more fun than math. Update: The Summer of Math is here!)

Beyond books and DVDs, libraries have a number of very cool things. My library even has few fishing poles and tackle boxes that you can borrow with a library card. That’s the most unusual thing they have.

There’s one more huge benefit of my library (and I bet your library too): Free digital content. Last night I signed up with < a target="new" href="new">Hoopla, which has videos from The Great Courses. I grabbed the one on chess and was watching it in minutes like it was Netflix. (I don’t think Hoopla and Chill is going to catch on, especially with my chess video.) I grabbed an episode of Mr. Wizard’s World and the first episode of the 4th season of Octonauts (which I don’t think has made Netflix yet.) My library limits me to 6 pieces of content per month, so it’s not going to replace Netflix, but it’s a very good supplement.

There’s a similar service for free music via a company called Freegal. I haven’t looked at that yet. There’s also something called Mango Languages, which is normally $20/mo.

The library also a 3-D printer and 3-D classes. I think the only cost is the plastic for the printer itself. We’ll probably explore this sometime in the near future.

I realize that this article fits squarely in the “But Lazy Man, I already knew all this!” area. I had an idea that most of these things were available, but I had simply forgotten them. I’m going to have to start a spreadsheet of things like, “Rainy Day activities”, so that I can remember to take advantage of all the awesome stuff the library has.

We have an affiliate relationship with one or more of the companies linked in this article.

Still Saving Money in Aruba

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naturalpool.jpg[Note: While this article is focused Aruba, there’s a lot of universal tips that can be used on many vacations.]

Thank you for your patience over the last couple of weeks. Due to the kids’ school vacations, the best week for us to go on vacation is right before Christmas. That leaves us, as Bill Belichick would say, doing our Christmas shopping “In a two-minute drill with no timeouts.”

We spent the week in heavenly bliss in Aruba. It’s my favorite place on earth. There’s zero competition. Aruba has perfect weather, perfect dining, and relatively affordable luxury accommodations (more on those later). Lastly, since a few airlines fly directly from Boston for relatively cheap prices, there’s always a lot of Red Sox and Patriots fans there. That makes it what my wife likes to call, “South South Boston.”

Let’s back up and explain how I discovered Aruba. A college friend invited me down in or around 2000 or 2001 as he got to use his father’s time share. That’s where I learned how awesome Aruba was. Another college friend when down there and ended up buying a Marriott timeshare around 2003. After a few months of dating my wife, a friend had an open room and invited us down to use his timeshare. While down there, my wife-to-be decided to buy a timeshare at the same place for $19,000. (I joke that the timeshare was my dowry.)

Since then, we’ve either used, traded, or sold the week. I’d say that I’ve probably been to Aruba around 8 times now. It was difficult a few years with living on the west coast and pregnancies. Still, my 3 year old can say he’s been to Aruba 3 times, which is an absurd amount of privilege.

Back in 2007, I wrote an article on how to save money in Aruba. I added a few more tips in 2009. Today, I’m going to try to combine both articles with some new thoughts from my most recent trip last week. It’s a journey over 10 years so some things may not be as relevant as they once were. For example, we’ve mostly avoided the casinos as it isn’t a place for young kids. (Random thought: Casinos are really missing the boat in not providing kid care. Even my wife’s gym has that.)

Let’s get started…

Save Money in Aruba

You are going to need a few basic things in Aruba… or any vacation. For example:

Aruba Timeshares/Hotels

I might as well start with the Marriott timeshare because that’s what I know most about. The timeshare can be used to sleep either 8 people for one week or 4 people for two weeks.

I’m on the fence as to whether the Marriott Vacation Club is a scam or not. A number of other people seem to be too as the article generated 110 comments. I’m going to defer to whatever I wrote in that article, but I haven’t reviewed it in a number of years, so I can just say it was my opinion at the time.

To understand how my opinion has changed, in 2007, I wrote:

“Before this trip, I considered the timeshare as an AT BEST a break-even venture. I would have recommended it to anyone. However, the same week now sells for $30,000 meaning that if my wife wanted to sell, she could make money (even though timeshare resales tend to depreciate). I’d say that $30,000 and maintenance fees are too expensive for the average person now.

In 2017, my view is very different. A few years ago, Marriott stopped selling weeks and instead sold “points” that you can use at any of their various properties. The unit we have would cost 3500 points nowadays according to this point chart. We didn’t do the sales presentation this year, so I don’t know how much they are selling weeks for now. However, I did find this information showing that it costs $13.84 to buy a point. Thus, to buy the same “week/value” today, one would have to spend $48,440 (3500 x $13.84).

It would seem like my wife’s $19,000 investment in the timeshare returned around 7.5% compounded interest over the last 13 years. Unfortunately, that’s not exactly the case. We can’t sell our week (or points) back to Marriott for $48,000 or close to that (as best I can tell). That same friend who bought and invited us there decided to buy a different timeshare and talked to me about getting rid of it earlier this year.

That may sound crazy, but it’s not. The maintenance fee in 2004 was $811 if my memory serves. Today, my wife says it is north of $1800. That’s around 6.5% compounded annually (by my rough math). The US government’s calculator of inflation seems to show that $811 has the value of $1047.92 today. So there’s a difference of around $800 (maybe less) a year. To make that even worse, we bought the property new – when presumably maintenance costs should be at a minimum.

So while Marriott sold my wife on “vacation ownership”, it feels to me like it was closer to “maintenance fee ownership.” I think that’s why my friend was looking to get rid of it, but I admit to being a little too Lazy to review the email conversations.

This is a long-winded way of suggesting that you should be very careful about timeshares.

Here are my tips to save money staying in Aruba:

  • Rent the Timeshare – Redweek.com has great deals on the very same timeshare that we have. You don’t have the upfront costs or the maintenance fee. We usually sell the smaller part of the unit of our timeshare on Redweek. It used to cover the maintenance fee, but it doesn’t come close now (hence the math rant above). If we sold our entire timeshare we might make $1000 a year or “break even” in 19 years. Of course if you bought now, you might need closer to 48 years of selling it.
  • The Mill – We had a reason to stay an extra day once and snagged a stay at the windmill property. I think it is called The Mill, but they don’t seem to have a website on a quick Google search. I believe it was around $100 and it included a full fridge and a few other things. It’s a budget place, but a great value for the price.
  • Take the Timeshare Pitch – If you are really good at saying no, then take the timeshare sales pitch. If memory serves, you will get gift cards that you can use at various restaurants around the island. However, I think some friends were able to use it to get a couple nights’ stay.

Aruba Food

You are going to want to eat on your vacation. Aruba has some of my favorite food. The Argentinian beef is the best I’ve had outside of Wagyu (too pricey for me). The Dutch cheese is simply amazing.

Groceries: Breakfast and Lunches

If you have a timeshare, like we do, you have a full kitchen. On the first day we always go shopping for a week’s worth of food. For many years we’ve been going to the Ling and Sons grocery store, but we had sticker shock this time around. Between prices in Aruban Florins (AWG) and weight in kilograms, it was a little difficult to shop. Fortunately, most items had some prices in US dollars, which made it a lot easier. Still, apples were around a $6 for a small bag. We ended up opting for carrots and oranges, which were closer to $2.

In the past, we’ve been able to get 2-liters of “Basic Soda”, which is a generic cola for around $1 or $1.50. This time they only had real Coke or Pepsi for $3.50.

It was a real exercise to find the items that were priced close to what he had home. Striking the balance between “We are on vacation” and “Wow! This hurts my wallet” was difficult. Still, at the end of our shopping trip, we ended up spending around $225. In the past it was closer to $150 and we got better quality food.

I don’t know if this pricing is everywhere on the island, but we’ll try something else other than Ling and Sons in the future. In any event, $35 a day for our breakfasts, lunches, snacks, drinks, alcohol, etc. is a bargain. Buying a 2-liter of soda at the resorts can be $6, so you really want to avoid that if you can.

It’s interesting to compare with what I wrote in 2007:

“If you have a timeshare rental like I mentioned in hotel section, you’ll have at least a small fridge and a microwave and other things necessary to cook your own breakfast and lunches. You may even have a small stove and some cookware as we did. Take the Arubus to Ling and Sons and stock up for the week. We spent around $60 for breakfasts, lunches, and snacks. We didn’t do any major cooking (it’s vacation after all), but cold cuts and bread is not exactly work – even if you are as Lazy as I am. I saw a lot of people spend $5.50 on a two liter of Diet Coke in the hotel’s shop, but it was only $1.25 at the store in town.”

We haven’t taken the AruBus in years, but I remember it being a very good value and very easy to use. I can’t believe we only bought $60 of groceries back then. I seem to left off the alcohol back then.

Restaruants: Dinner

You can certainly cook dinner and many people do. However, a sizable part of the Aruba experience is the restaurants. My wife and I agree that the two best places are El Gaucho and Texas de Brazil. We usually try one or two new restaurants during our stay. This particular stay we tried two. One was a tremnedous win. We will go back there every year. The other was tremendous loss. I can’t imagine going back.

Winner: Bavaria

This German restaurant was great. We loved everything and the kids loved the big fresh pretzels. There aren’t a lot of German restaurants around Rhode Island, but I’m tempted to try to find some more.

Loser: BLT Steak

My wife was able to get us a reservation which I guess is difficult to come by. I’m not sure why. We made the mistake of going here the first night after a long day of travel. The two kids weren’t on their best behavior which created stress from the start. That’s obviously not BLT Steak’s fault. However, the service was extremely slow. It might have been good for a leisurely date night, but when the kids are crazy 20 minutes before the main meal has arrived, it’s going to be a long night. Additionally, I wasn’t feeling well myself due to the travel. Again, that’s not on BLT Steak.

The pricing of BLT Steak was banana-pants crazy. The kids meal was $21. That consisted of pasta with butter and cheese and french fries. They had a hidden prix fixe sunset menut that my wife had to ask for (she did her research). For around $60 she got 3 courses, which a smaller entree. I decided to just get the $65 steak, which came with no sides. Sides are extra of course. I’ve had better steaks for $25. My 9 ounce local beer was $10 (or was it 10 ounces for $9?) Either way, I remember thinking, “At about a dollar an ounce, even ballpark prices would be cheaper.” I wasn’t particularly interested in the $17 glasses of wine.

The only way I see anyone getting value out of this place is if they wanted to show a date that they had plenty of money.

Where you decide to go for dinner it’s always best to get reservations. You can set many of them up online before you travel.

Aruba Transportation

Because we’ve been to the island so many times we don’t really need to drive around to see all the sights. It’s a desert and there isn’t too much after the first couple of visits.

In the past we’ve been able to rent a car for $40 a day. That’s a very small car. With our family of four and our luggage we need something bigger now. We also need car seats which is more money. One thing we’ve realized is that the cars are always are smaller than you think. Even our mid-size car was like a Honda Civic. My wife spotted a deal on a pick-up truck and we are considering that next time. It’s crazy enough that we might just do it.

On arrival, we always get a rent-a-car from the airport to save on the cab costs. That car is also necessary for getting groceries on the first day. There are a few good places to eat dinner that are far from the main resorts on Palm Beach. We like to schedule one of these dinners while we have a car. My recommendation is El Gaucho.

Aruba Gambling

There are quite a few casinos on the island. We can’t go there anymore due to the kids. Before the kids we’d go quite a bit (and gamble very small amounts of money).

The casinos compete heavily with each other, which means there are usually a lot of “match play” deals in coupon books and such. So for example, if you place a $10 bet with the match play on a roulette wheel (always bet on black), you’ll either win $20 or lose $10. You can do that at a few different casinos that are close together. With those odds we’d typically make $50 from the casinos. It’s not a lot, but it’s fun and essentially free money.

Final Thoughts

Aruba used to be a lot of cheaper than it is now. I know you can say that about a lot of things, but I’m usually able to limit the effects of the inflation monster. With some smart shopping it’s still possible.

In a few more years, the best way to save to money in Aruba might be to just try to make more money in other areas of your life and say, “Hey, it’s vacation!”

Some parts of this article originally published on Nov 21, 2007

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