Lazy Man and Money

My Hawaii Vacation During COVID

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I usually don’t aim to get hate clicks. Life is too short to make other people angry for no reason. I’m certainly not aiming for hate clicks now, but I wanted the title to be honest. I understand how “My Hawaii Vacation During COVID” looks. It’s probably an 8 of 10 on the Ted-(Can)Cruz-trip to escape the dangerous deep freeze and power outages of Texas last month.

I was hesitant to write about it at all, but in the end, I decided that it is best to be honest. This website is (partly) about my financial journey and a Hawaii vacation is a big part of that. However, before we cover the finances let’s get to the decision to travel during COVID. By now you probably know the drill. The three most important things during COVID (in no particular order) are:

1. Wear a Mask
2. No gather in groups
3. Don’t travel

One of my favorite quotes from Tom Brady is, “I didn’t come this far to only come this far.” I barely left the house for the first few months. Like most everyone else, I haven’t seen (non-immediate) family or friends in more than a year. While I’m near the bottom of the list for vaccines, it seems that I could get my turn within 2-3 months. In the grand scheme of things, that’s not too long.

So why, despite all this, did I spend the last week in Hawaii on vacation? When assessing the risk, all of the following came into play:

  • My Wife’s Expert Opinion

    My wife’s a pharmacist with the US Public Health Service (USPHS). USPHS does a lot of good work, but this their thing. She’s led a team that authored a COVID report that went to the Vice President. I try to follow all the news and details about everything, but she knows many times more than me.

    She was the one who came up with the idea to travel to Hawaii.

  • Hawaii is One of Two “Safe” States

    My wife said that there were only two states where we could go. Rhode Island had blocked just about every state. However, Hawaii has done extremely well limiting COVID. They have 10% of the case of Rhode Island, and a similar amount of people (~1,000,000). They have great testing, quarantine, and natural benefits like isolation (Pacific Ocean) and warm weather year-round.

    We had originally planned to go to Lake Placid, but it would have required driving through several quarantine states. We took that off the table because then the kids couldn’t go back to school when the vacation was over.

  • Planes are Cleaner than a Drug Lab

    My wife explained that it is a better environment for making IVs than many IV labs. Having made those IVs as a pharmacy technician 20-25 years ago, I know that this is a big deal. It turns out that planes are circulating all the air through HEPA filters every 3 minutes. Not only are planes well equipped, but everyone had to have a negative test 72 hours before boarding. Everyone was required to wear to mask (except for eating).

    Our plane was only about half full. My wife and one kid had the center four seats of one row. I and the other kid had the center four seats of another row. That happened both there and back. With the exception of the row in front of us and behind us, we had a good amount of distance.

The safest thing would obviously be to stay at home and never leave the house. With the kids having two weeks of no school, I don’t think that was likely to happen. As an alternative option, spending time in a state with 10% of the COVID cases seems like a defensible position.

Benefits of the Hawaii Vacation

It’s Hawaii. It’s vacation. Those benefits are a given in any year, but more so after the last year. I know that everyone has had to cancel travel. We canceled our March vacation last year as things were getting bad. (We’re also unlikely to be able to recoup our timeshare annual expenses, which we couldn’t use.)

Our kids have been fortunate to be in school this year. Private school has been a great value, especially this year. (It’s so much better than the end of last school year, paying thousands of dollars a month so I could run around a teach a 6 and 7-year-old different curriculums at the same time.)

However, the kids are also on a two week break. That’s a long time to be sitting at home watching TV and playing video games. Yes, I can try a version of my own COVID-19 homeschool, but the kids needed a break of some kind. I didn’t realize it until I was wearing a mask for 12 hours on the plane (plus all the time to and from the airport), but I’ve essentially only worn a mask for about an hour at a time to run a small errand like getting groceries. The rest of the time I’m at home. My kids have worn them for about 8 hours a day, almost every day. Maybe wearing a mask for long periods is something you get used to, but I now have a new respect for what they’ve been through.

My wife has been “virtually” deployed, which means she works from home, every day, even weekends. There’s been a little time off, but she’s running other pharmacist committees and other professional groups. Personally, I could have done without the vacation. I was stressed with deadlines and blogging before and after the break. (I’m stressed writing this now on Monday morning hoping to publish in a few hours.) Traveling always makes me stressed. I always say that flying is designed to make it as uncomfortable as possible so that you’ll pay for the comfort upgrades. For example, the cost to upgrade to first class was almost twice as much as the actual ticket itself.

This was also a unique opportunity. We had tossed around the idea of going to Hawaii again someday, but flying from Rhode Island with two kids is a whole different ball game than when my wife and I flew from San Francisco 13 years ago. I can’t remember what the price was, but it wasn’t very much. Now, the flight is twice is as long and we have twice as many people. I can’t seem to find what the non-COVID pricing would be, but I would guess that it would be between $800 and $1000 per person. At $3200-$4000 in flights, our vacation dollar goes a lot further elsewhere.

Hawaii became an opportunity because we got great pricing due to COVID-19… and it was one of the few places we could go and not have to quarantine either way.

Finally, we don’t live in an area of great diversity in Newport, RI. In fact, that is a big understatement, there is almost no diversity here. Hawaii is one of the few places in the United States with its own distinct culture. The kids can read about different cultures in a book or watch a YouTube video, but experiencing it “hands-on” is so much more valuable. There’s a big difference in the educational value of a week of Hawaii culture vs. watching reruns of Gumball on Cartoon Network.

The Costs of Our Trip

I don’t have all the numbers available unfortunately. My wife made most of the travel arrangements, and I’m writing this jet-lagged and close to when I usually publish my articles. However, I do know the following costs:

  • Flight: $580/pp
  • Hotel: $180/night
  • Car Rental: $700
  • Hotel Stay Before Flight: $120
  • Meals: One billion dollars.

I’m exaggerating the billion dollars for meals. We could have done it a lot cheaper, but we went out a lot. The kids wanted to experience malasadas. (They didn’t want to experience Hawaiian plates for some reason.) We couldn’t cook much because of the hotel room. However, we were able to eat leftovers with access to a microwave. We also had cereal as the kids prefer that to almost anything.

The flight was $580 per person or around $2400. We were able to cash in some credit card points for one ticket. I don’t like to count that because it’s like cashing in a gift card – we’re making an exchange of someting that has value for a flight.

My wife was able to get us the military hotel on Waikiki in Honolulu. The Hale Koa Hotel is right next to the Hilton that costs $500 a night or more. We stayed for 5 nights – $900 with all taxes included. I suspect most people would pay $2000 or choose to stay in a cheaper area of Oahu.

The car rental was the big killer. My wife planned a lot of this trip at the last minute and just got a car because she knew I wanted to stalk Jack Johnson we would want to see sea turtles on the North Shore. If we had to do it all again, we’d probably use a lot more ride-sharing. However, then again, that would increase the COVID risk. As it turned out my wife and kids took ride-share once in Hawaii. They woke up at 3 AM (due to the time zone difference) and went for a long, long walk to get coffee. The driver said he wasn’t going to get vaccinated, but my 8-year-old convinced him that his mother works with the experts and it is really safe and effective. I missed the whole thing, but I hear it was a convincing speech.

Finally, we paid $120 for a hotel the night before. There’s a hotel near the airport that includes parking (they shuttle you to the airport), so it’s actually cheaper to get to the hotel with free parking than it is to park at the airport.

Overall, I’d say we got about a $6,000 vacation for $4,000 (less if you count the points we used for one flight) not counting the meals. Yikes, even though it seemed like we were getting deals along the way, it still wasn’t cheap. That said, we had a lot of money in our travel budget after not traveling over the last year. We don’t have any plans to travel in the future either. If everything works out, we might take a road trip this summer.

What Did We Do in Hawaii?

We actually weren’t in Hawaii too long if you count the traveling. My wife had to be back for work the kids had to be back in case the school decided that quarantine was necessary anyway. We left on Sunday and came back on Friday.

Sunday – Due to the long flight and time change, it felt like nighttime to us. However, it was still early afternoon. We walked around the hotel and beach and then went to sleep around 6 PM local time (midnight our time). This is why my wife and kids became streetwalkers at 3 AM. (I had woken up at 11, worked a little, and went back to sleep.)

Monday – After my wife and kids’ journey to get coffee early, we went to an early breakfast and then drove to the Dole Pineapple Plantation soon after it opened. It was a bit of a drive as we had to go around the island to get to the north side. The place was packed, much more than it was 13 years ago when we were there. They have a big pineapple maze (like a corn maze), a train, and a garden. The train was a 90-minute wait in line, so we skipped that. Our whole family found the garden fairly boring. I think if gardens are your thing you’d like it? The 7-year-old and I did the maze while my wife and the 8-year-old opted to sample some pineapple and go through the gift shop. The maze took about an hour to get through and it got a little hot towards the end. My son wanted to do it all over again, but that wasn’t going to happen.

We went through the gift shop and I told my son that he couldn’t get the blue turtle at the pineapple store. There would be other places to get turtles, but this is about the pineapple. We all got Dole Whips. At age 7 and 8 my kids completed their quest to have Dole Whips at the only two places (to the best of my knowledge) that you can get them – Disney and Hawaii. They really have no idea how lucky they are.

Random side thought: Rhode Island recently changed its name from Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations to have sympathy with the negative connotations of “plantation.” The “Providence Plantations” were named in the 17th century to refer to being a “new settlement” and not related to any slavery activity. Somehow the Dole Pineapple Plantation is fine and no one has come after the company to change that name. It seems a little inconsistent to me.

After the Pineapple Plantation, we went to musician Jack Johnson’s town of Haleiwa to see some sea turtles and have a local lunch. The tide was high and there were no turtles. The lunch was good until a local chicken spooked my 8-year-old and jumped up and ate his lunch. Fortunately, he had chosen the nachos instead of his usual chicken tenders. That would have been awkward.

We got caught in a flash flood on the way back and everyone had a long day (having been up since 3 AM). We settled for a quick dinner at the hotel and everyone went to be early again.

Tuesday – We had a pool reservation for 11, but we once again woke up early. We went to Leonard’s for malasadas, which was a highlight of the trip for the kids. After watching Pokemon Sun and Moon, the kids have wanted to try the malasadas from Jessie and James’ food truck in the Alola region.

We decided to hike Diamond Head, a famous trail. My 8-year-old had a really bad attitude to start because he thought he would die. (He thinks everything will kill him.) Somehow he was able to turn it around during the hike as I held his hand and he talked about the souvenir he wanted after he completed it. Before long he was the most enthusiastic hiker of the whole group. He got very excited near the end when he saw the yellow steps that he recognized from the Pokemon anime.

After Diamond Head, we went to see the Halona Blow Hole, but it wasn’t doing too much. Maybe the tide was too low. We went back for our pool reservation, which was great fun. The lifeguards were very strict, but not for any particular COVID-19 reason, just regular procedure like making sure that everyone is in an exact line for the water slide. My 7-year-old is a decent swimmer and can stand anywhere in the pool. I was with him and they still made him put on a life jacket for the 10-foot swimming distance from the water slide to get back in line. I guess that’s what you get at the military hotel.

We went to the Rainbow Drive-In for a traditional Hawaiian plate lunch which was fabulous. The kids wanted to go a local cat cafe because they had never seen one. I’m allergic so I got to watch them play with cats from outside. Most of the cats were their typical cat-selves and wanted to sleep with no interaction with people. While the kids had a lot of fun, my 8-year-old wants to open up a therapy dog cafe with older dogs. I think that’s a much better business idea than a cat cafe, but I’m biased.

We had dinner back at the hotel at a place called the Pool Bar. It has a great sunset view of the ocean. However, it only has three hot food options, chicken tenders, a pulled pork sandwich, and nachos. The kids didn’t like virgin lava flows, but my wife and I did.

Wednesday – We had another 90 minutes of pool reservation, this time in the morning. The water was colder and we ended up not using the whole 90 minutes. (In case you were wondering, they limit the number of people to around 50 or 75 for the big pool area during this time. It isn’t like one family at a local hotel.)

We went to the mall and its amazing food court for lunch. They had food from everywhere – but specifically over a dozen Asian restaurants. I couldn’t decide so I went with the Mokoloco. My son got tricked by an Americanized restaurant called Holy Cow. It’s really Korean street food (we had no idea) where he had a mozzarella stick on a stick wrapped in a sugar dough outside. It was the highlight of the day. We’re going to try to make them at home with the help of this YouTube video:

The kids also had shave ice (for some reason Hawaii doesn’t believe in the “d” in “shaved ice”) and that went over well too. The food was the big highlight for the 8-year-old.

After lunch, we went out to the beaches. We tried Makapu?u Beach, but the waves were too crazy and it was far too dangerous for our swimming level. We went a little further down the coastline and found a beach with plenty of people. The waves were still big and crashed on the kids quite a bit. I got them far enough out (they had life vests on) so that the waves wouldn’t break on them. We didn’t stay out too long though, because I realized that it would be a bad situation if I got tired and had to fight the current to bring them in. I got back and rested and my wife took them out, but the lifeguard quickly warned them that they should come back in. They were fine at the time, but we were a little out of place compared to the locals who had older kids who grew up with these waves.

Before dinner, we tried to make reservations for Hard Rock Cafe, but it was closed until Thursday. We tried another place, but it turned out to be more of a club/adult place rather than a family place. We walked around and found the Yard House, but it was a two-hour wait. Ruth’s Chris was available right away, but there was literally nothing on the menu my 7-year-old would eat and I didn’t want to spend $200 to hear complaining. We left. Literally, every place was a bust and we had walked two miles, so the kids were in a very bad mood at this point. So we went back to the hotel restaurant. We figured it would be easy since you have to be military to go there. It was still an hour wait and the host chewed us out for not getting reservations.

Finally, we ended up at the same Pool Bar as we did the night before.

Thursday – We went to the beach in the morning. For having a hotel on the beach we didn’t spend that much time at the beach because we were always out and about. It was rainy though, so we ended up back inside.

We went to go snorkeling with the turtles (one of my kid’s favorite animals). It was windy and rainy and the captain decided the ocean current was too strong to let the kids snorkel. We ended up seeing one turtle up close to the boat and another a bit in the distance. The youngest kid loved it anyway. We were able to get the price changed to the observer rate since we didn’t actually get to go snorkeling.

At dinner time we went to the Hard Rock Cafe. Yes, it is a tourist trap that we would typically avoid, but the kids had never been. Also, this was my last chance to find anything related to Jack Johnson. I struck gold as they had his autographed Sleep Through the Static CD and a full-size promotional surfboard. This CD had been in my car’s CD player for the last month or more. I wrote about the first track, All at Once, last year for Earth Day.

The kids loved Hard Rock Cafe and the gift shop had everything deeply discounted. I got a T-shirt for $10. My son got a $50 sweatshirt that was marked down to $15. We didn’t need new clothes

Friday – Everyone was adjusted to the time, so I was the first one to wake up for a change. We started packing in the morning and then went out to the beach for about an hour. That’s all we had until it was time to check out and get to the airport. At the airport, I wandered off on my own and bought my 7-year-old the blue stuffed turtle that he wanted at the Pineapple Plantation, it turned out that we hadn’t seen another one. I surprised him with it when we got home.

In the end, we ended up packing a lot into a few days. I would have liked to do a little more slow travel and relaxed a bit more. Like many vacations, some things didn’t cooperate, but we’re fortunate to have any kind of vacation at all.

This is a long article and I think it covers most of everything. Let me know if you have any questions about Oahu or traveling during COVID. And if you’ve read the 3500+ words this far and still want to leave a hate comment, you’ve earned it.

Block Island on the Cheap

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Block Island Labyrinth

As you know, in 2020, vacations are rare birds. In Rhode Island we live in the smallest state, it can be a little cramped here. For a long time, we haven’t been able to go to another state without having to quarantine for two weeks. On the positive side, the system has been working for the most part.

As lucky we are to have a vacation, it’s hard to balance that it’s simply going to be a different type of vacation.

We had plans to go to Hershey Park in Pennsylvania, but when that wasn’t in the cards, we went to Plan B – Block Island. It’s still in Rhode Island, so we don’t have to quarantine, and but it is far enough from everyday life and chores.

My wife has spent the summer on a Facebook group about the hundreds of glass orbs that are hidden on the island. Of course just a few days before we go, The New Times has to publish an article about the orb hunting. At least I scooped them by writing about the glass orb hunting in early July

We’ve been to Block Island many times. While we don’t always look for glass orbs, we usually do. We haven’t found any, but we were hopeful that with the focus on it this time, we’d come away with an orb.

Did we find one? Before I get to that answer, let’s get to the personal finance aspect of the trip.

My wife has renewed frugality these days. Work hasn’t been the greatest this summer and early retirement in a couple of years looks good to her. Part of the retirement plan is saving up a nest egg. It had been going really well with COVID because our spending has been a lot less. I think that’s encouraged her to see what’s possible.

With that in mind, we wanted to go as cheaply as we could. That’s a bit of a problem because Block Island hotels in the prime time of summer are extremely expensive. Many of them were built in the 1600s. The rooms are typically very small, so we need a suite to fit two adults and kids. Our favorite place is usually $250 a night while school is still in session in early June. We’re able to get a discount because we have stayed there multiple times and book a few days at a time. We never book over the weekend when the price jumps up a lot.

This time, we couldn’t manage all the cost savings. Our trip is shorter and it’s prime summer, not the shoulder season. Prices were above $500 a night, so we went with a cheaper place. We didn’t think it would matter much because we would be out hunting orbs for a day and a half. We were wrong.

The Old Bakery Inn Review

We got a big place that was dog-friendly. For just under $390, that sounds like a lot, but it’s about the cheapest place of its kind available. We wanted the dog-friendly place because that’s an additional savings of around $40 a night of dog sitting. Also, the dog loves the nature and the kids thought they might be able to train him to sniff out the glass orbs.

That was the good part of the Old Bakery Inn. Unfortunately, the bad was kind of tough. The building itself was built in the 1600s, so I am grading on a curve. I don’t mind that the stairs are all twisted with centuries of a moving foundation.

However, the bathroom was a converted kitchen. Thus the place was both for us. This is important because we had a plan to cook our meals. Eating out at Block Island is very expensive. All the food has to be brought in by ferry. There’s no fast food or a value menu to be found. There are a couple of places that may have a slice of pizza that is cheap. I have to look into that next time, but we are rarely in the mood for pizza after a hot summer day at the beach.

Getting back to the cooking plan, my wife was itching to use her Instant Pot skills (read her Instant Pot Review). She’s been following a Facebook Group all summer where people seem to make only two things – cheesecake and Mississippi meatloaf. I think they probably make more in this group, but those are the only two things my selective hearing has registered. (Do I score points for honest?) The Old Bakery Inn’s bathroom/kitchen had only a small fridge. There were bowls, plates, silverware, or even a small microwave to reheat leftovers. There were 3 of the plastic disposable cups, not enough for the 4 of us. It wouldn’t have taken much for them to add a few of these cheap things. The other place we stay has all this and a big fridge and a stove – and the bathroom is separated from the kitchen.

Additionally, The Old Bakery Inn had no wifi. I don’t think I’ve been to a hotel that hasn’t had wifi in more than a decade. I had my mobile hot spot, but my data plan was quickly at the end of the 8GB before it gets sent to a crawl until the end of the month. I have to type this review up in Notepad and edit it with links later.

There was also no coffee maker. What kind of hotel/inn doesn’t have a coffee source? I’m not a coffee person, but my wife is. Fortunately, she brought a cold press cup of some sort and was able to make her own. I had suggested that we bring iced coffee with us, but my wife wanted to try this. (This is an old Aruba travel trick we’ve used in the past. There was no Dunkin’ Donuts in California where we lived, but then went on vacation to Aruba there was one. It was a long walk, so we’d get enough iced coffee to last for a few days.)

There are actually two televisions, so the kids could watch a Phineas and Ferb marathon, while the adults can watch something else. That was a very good feature. We weren’t out hunting orbs as much as I thought we’d be, so it became necessary. Ironically, the kids had been watching all the Phineas and Ferb episodes anyway since there aren’t too many Disney+ cartoon shows.

We ended up doing fairly well in saving money on food. We brought our own beer and drinks (Diet Coke, flavored squishes like Mio). We brought our own milk for cereal. We brought a couple of reusable “Dixie-Cup” material bowls, which was perfect for the dog to eat and drink (and the kids’ cereal). As we were running out the door, I switched out the cooler to an old Brookstone picnic one I had gotten in college. It comes with its own plates, cups, and flatware. It served us well.

My wife packed a bunch of dry goods like chips, pretzels, nuts, etc. She also packed some cheese, butter, some pasta, 1.5 pounds of ground beef, and Kraft Mac and Cheese. This was enough to make dinner for the kids with the InstantPot. We had simple peanut butter and deli meats for sandwiches on the trail. We didn’t need to eat a single meal out, but we ended up eating a couple of them out anyway.

The first meal was when we first arrived. We didn’t have access to our room yet and we didn’t have a place to settle down for lunch. We went to a Mexican place, Calavaras, which has been a highlight in the past. Unfortunately, this time they mixed up my wife’s and my burritos. They wrote shrimp on the one that was pork. So she started to eat that one and I started to eat the other. It’s a very good thing I didn’t have a shellfish allergy. However, between the ferry ride and the shrimp, my stomach wouldn’t be good for hours.

I felt like complaining about spending $50 for the burritos (and the nachos for the kids) only to get a mixed-up order, but everyone is having a tough 2020 and it wasn’t going to make the situation any better.

The next restaurant visit was for drinks and a brownie sundae. The kids simply needed a break from orb hunting. My wife and I had one adult drink and the kids had juice. That ended up costing us $45. I’m tempted to go spend $45 at Burger King and take a picture of what it would look like. For kids would have preferred all that Burger King (spread over a week), but that’s simply not in the cards at Block Island.

We could go to the single grocery store on the island, but that’s expensive too. Maybe I’ll do a cost comparison sometime. For now, if we can bring most of our food, it’s better to avoid it completely.

Glass Float Hunting

It may sound fun to take a 6 and 7-year-old on a treasure hunt. It is fun. However, their legs got tired in the hot sun. Sometimes I got tired myself. Other times our 11-year old dog got tired. Because my wife is super-human, she never got tired.

I think we were out hunting for orbs for around 16 hours over the 3 days and 2 nights. What did we find?

Nothing. We found a lot of places where hundreds of orbs out there could be hidden, but no orbs themselves.

This was incredibly frustrating for the kids because they had just assumed that we’d find an orb. Although we tried, we couldn’t limit their expectations. At one point we walked about a half-mile to a lighthouse (you couldn’t drive there) that we received a tip on. It was a tough walk on squishy beach sand or slippery rocks if you went to the ocean. Doing all that work for “nothing” was the last straw for my 7-year-old. That’s really when everything started to unravel… and understandably so.

That’s when we settled on the before-mentioned brownie sundae. Sometimes life doesn’t work out how you want, but you pick yourself up and continue on. Next year, they’ll be a year older and more prepared to search longer and better.

I don’t like to an article on a negative note. We ended up recharging our batteries well. We came back home energized to get back to our day-to-day lives.

What it’s Like to go on Vacation During Coronavirus

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kids smores
Our annual s’mores dessert.

Today’s article is brief… expect a couple of longer ones next week and in the future as the kids go to camp (if camps still happen as planned)

So like everything in 2020, this is going to be a weird article to write. It’s especially odd because coronavirus cases are spiking across the country… except for two states, Connecticut and Rhode Island which are declining. We’re lucky enough to live in Rhode Island. We never got a big spike in our area and now things are on the decline.

I still don’t see nearly enough people wearing masks, but what’s in place is working as well as… what’s working in many European countries when you see the charts.

It’s so strange here, that we did something that few Americans can think about – go on vacation. Last week, we went on our annual trip to Block Island – a small island ~15 miles off the coast of Rhode Island. It’s only accessible by ferry and has a tiny population of ~1000 people. It’s where (allegedly) Billy Joel and Christopher Walken sneak off to if they want to get away from the celebrity life for a bit.

Block Island hasn’t a coronavirus case yet. (Now that I think about it, their “hospital” isn’t really much and I can’t imagine they do testing.)

In a role reversal, the bed and breakfast that we stay called us up and asked if we wanted to come this year. Their usual clients from out of state, couldn’t come as a practical matter, because of the state’s 14-day self-quarantine mandate.

So we did what the 30-year old song said to do:



“Sail away on the Block Island Ferry, leave all your troubles behind… take a trip back to carefree times.”

For the most part, it lived up to its promise.

Our Own Block Island Gotchas

This section is likely to go over like a lead balloon. After all, we’re already in the win column by having any kind of vacation at all.

It seems we weren’t the only people looking to take this trip. While we were able to book the hotel easily enough, the ferry itself wasn’t taking reservations for awhile. When they finally started, car reservations were filled up for the first day except for the last one at 7 PM. That would be a loss of a whole day of vacation. That’s significant when you are only staying 3 nights/4 days.

We decided to park the car and go across ourselves in the morning. I took the ferry back at 2 PM to pick up the car and bring that across to the island. I was originally disappointed by this run-around, but it’s the first 6 hours I had without the wife and kids in about 4 months. I was only disappointed that when I got back, everyone (especially my wife) was ready for sleep. I can’t blame her with two kids and the dog.

Before our trip, we got the news that my wife’s friend’s father had died. The funeral was the morning of the last day of our trip. We had planned to stay the full day, but we were able to change our ferry time and leave in the morning. (Few people leave the Block Island first thing in the morning – the ferry was almost empty.)

A four-day vacation turned into about a two day one. That’s still 2 more days than most people have during these times, but it was disappointing nonetheless.

The Block Island Vacation Itself

There isn’t a lot to do on Block Island. That’s kind of the point. There are outdoor activities like hiking, kayaking, and beaching. There are some nice tiny boutique shops. Finally, there are the restaurants. The outdoor activities are exactly the same during coronavirus – except that you bring your mask with you just in case. There aren’t many people around, so there’s not a big need to use it.

We usually go hiking and hunting for glass orbs. There’s a deal with the tourism industry on the island and a local glassmaker to hide around 500 of these on the island every year. They are extremely hard to find, and we haven’t found one in 4 years now. This year they weren’t hiding them until late July. Instead of hiking, we brought an inflatable kayak and took that out for a little while.

We didn’t get to do any boutique shopping. I’m not a big fan, but sometimes there’s something in the 75% bin that’s a good deal. The biggest reason why we didn’t get to do any is that our 6 and 7-year-old kids wouldn’t allow it without ruining the whole vacation. There’s simply nothing fun for kids in boutiques. If we had a longer vacation, we could have split up, but it didn’t work out that way.

The restaurants are very different during coronavirus of course. They were just starting to open up distanced indoor dining when our trip started. It didn’t seem like any restaurant operated the same way. A few took temperatures. Some took our name and phone number. Some had menus. Some asked us to take a picture of a menu with our phone and use that to order from. However, once again, many people don’t have an option to eat at a restaurant.

At the end of the day, the best thing about Block Island is simply unplugging from day-to-day life. It’s nice to not have to worry about a to-do list that never gets done or laundry, dishes, cooking, etc.

If we wanted to be more frugal about the planning perhaps we would have come back the evening before and saved the last night at the hotel. That would have saved us a couple of hundred dollars. However, we would had spent a lot of the last evening cleaning and packing for our trip, which would have cut down on our vacation further.

Our Frugal New York City Vacation

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The words frugal and New York City are seldom seen together. It’s probably one of the most expensive cities in the world.

Nonetheless, we wanted to take the kids to see the big apple. Driving from Rhode Island, it was a little more than 3 hours away.

(Note: I originally had “staycation” in the title. I’m not sure if driving 3 hours and staying overnight at a hotel qualifies though? Are their “staycation” guidelines?)

The drive was a bit of a long drive for the kids, but with tablets, it wasn’t too bad. Unfortunately, I didn’t do the best job of loading up the two tablets with movies. I might have to consider buying another Amazon Fire 10 to replace my old Nexus 7. It’s much easier to get movies on it.

As with most vacations, the biggest expenses are travel and hotel. That was no different for us. It’s very hard to limit these, but we did save a few dollars over some other options:

  • Travel – If it was just one of us traveling a train may have made sense. With the four of us, train tickets get expensive. We opted to drive and park at the hotel. It was $60 for the night, which comes to about $20 per person when you add in gas. Back in college people would take the Fung Wah bus from Boston to New York for around $10, but I think it had about a 70% crash rate. I don’t think it’s still around, but it isn’t worth it anyway.
  • Hotel – This is going to be cheating a bit, but hear me out. My wife was able to get a government rate or deal by being a Marriott ranking member. However, the deal wasn’t a big savings. There were other hotel options for a similar price that maybe had a little less luxury or a slightly worse location. The biggest factor in getting a cheap price was that it was the middle of February. We lucked out and got great weather most of the time.

    Unfortunately, in our search for a dog friendly hotel, we didn’t realize that Marriott charges a $100 per stay pet fee. My wife said that when she was booking this was a hidden fee a few clicks away from the information that the hotel was pet-friendly. We were only staying one night, so this was a tremendous surcharge. Next time we’ll go with a Hilton that I think charges only $50. We might even be able to do better than that.

The big draw for us to go to New York City was the Pokemon store. My kids are completely obsessed with everything Pokemon. I’d tell you how many episodes they’ve watched, but it’s embarrassing. Did you know there are almost twice as many Pokemon episodes than Simpson’s episodes? There’s a reason why it is the the highest grossing media franchise. It’s just a little shy of being as big as Star Wars and Harry Potter combined.

There’s one lie in the previous paragraph… there’s no such thing as Pokemon store in New York City. It’s a Nintendo store with a section devoted to Pokemon. However, I believe it is the only Pokemon Center outside of Japan. The trip to Japan from Rhode Island isn’t something we are entertaining any time soon.

I wouldn’t have known there was a “Pokemon store” in NYC if my wife hadn’t stumbled upon it a last fall on one of her Broadway tours. She came back and reported that it was nearly a whole floor of Pokemon stuff.

Sadly, on our trip the Pokemon stuff had been reduced to around 20′ x 20′ area. They didn’t have any of the popular Pokemon… not even a stuffed Pikachu. It took awhile, but eventually the kids warmed up to a couple of the options that they had. I’ll have to get my Magikarp some other time. Overall they were happy at a cost of around $30 or so.

Pokemon Nintendo New York City

Next we went to FAO Schwarz. (Yes, it’s back in business.) The kids had a ton of fun in exploring all the stuff there. We spent hours there and they ended up only wanting to buy a couple of Kinder eggs for a few dollars. Compare that to Trolls’ Experience which was $30 a person for an hour show. We avoided that one.

Another frugal win was Dylan’s Candy Bar. Three floors of candy is fun for any kid. While it might not strike people as frugal, it worked out relatively well for us. It was a slow evening so they took us in the cafe without reservations. Fortunately they were still having happy hour, which meant cheap appetizers and drinks. I hear it’s not uncommon to pay $15-$20 for a glass of wine in NYC.

Our sour patch drinks (drinks with candy!) were $6 each. The kids mostly eat appetizers like mozzarella sticks and chicken tenders so it worked out. It was also helpful that we found that there were a lot of dollar a slice pizza places. The slices are quite big and four slices were enough for a late lunch for our family. Filling up on all that was key to avoiding the big ticket items at Dylan’s. The price of food and drinks at Dylan’s was $50. Factoring the pizza and lunch and dinner was under $60.

We also stopped at the Lego store, but it was a disappointment as well. Some of the things that their artists built were amazing, but it was small and not really that much to do other than look at the few big things and buy Lego sets.

The next morning my wife went to get some bagels to bring back to the hotel for breakfast. When in New York, you have to get some bagels. Unfortunately, they were surprisingly expensive. I think my wife said it came to around $20 for bagels and cream cheese. She said that next time it would have been cheaper to just get the cream cheese at the grocery store on the corner. One the bright side, the kids loved them and they were big enough for two meals.

Throughout the stay, we filled in some of the other time with Pokemon Go. I’ve become quite attached to the game (I’m 2-3 years behind everyone else), especially since it’s something the kids share in. Pokemon Go is, of course, free and all the famous places in NYC means that there’s tons of stuff to do in the game no matter where you are.

Next time we go to New York City, we’ll try to stay longer. I regret not having the time to coordinate a visit with a college friend. We’ll also bring the kids to museums, botanical gardens, and things like that. If there are any New Yorkers reading this who has tips for kids age 6, please drop me a comment.

Despite the efforts to save money, we probably still spent close to $500 (especially with the dog hotel charge) for the day. I understand it’s hard to call that frugal, but it could have doubled if we decided to splurge at one of my wife’s favorite restaurants (Mastro’s) and did the Troll’s Experience. Frugal in New York City is definitely a relative concept.

Do you have any tips for frugal activities in New York City? Let me know below. (You’ll earn 3,278 bonus points if they are friendly for kids in the 5-8 age range).

Travel for Free by Hacking Your Taxes?

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Many personal finance bloggers love to write about travel hacking with credit cards. As you can tell by that link, I’m one of those bloggers who have written about it in the past.

Hack Travel Taxes

Last year, we had a lot of expenses in renovating some investment condos. It required us to put up a significant amount of money into the projects. It’s money we had in our various emergency funds. My wife and I applied for quite a few credit cards that had bonuses for spending a minimum amount. Most of them earned us the equivalent of $500 in travel if we spent $3000. That’s the equivalent of getting more than 16% back as long as you use the points.

Back then, I would keep track of what all our points/miles and worth. It was around $6,000 which is pretty exciting! It wasn’t all from the credit cards. Some of it was from saving up Marriott points for years at our timeshare. Some of it was from my wife’s work travel.

We used some of them late last year and will use some more this year. We’re saving up a large portion for a potential return to Australia. Hopefully our trip won’t collapse the United States’ Financial system like it did 10 years ago.

You’ll notice that this article has been about my travel hacking last year. Why? We haven’t been able to do it much this year. Many of our expenses aren’t ones that we can pay with a credit card. Our mortgage can’t be paid with one. The kids’ school can’t be paid with one. We don’t pay for electricity due to our solar panels. I like to reduce our expenses on all the other stuff, so there’s often no guarantee that we’ll get to the minimum spending necessary to earn the rewards.

Then I read an article from Joe of Retire by 40. He’s hustling for free travel using credit cards. I’ve been following Joe’s blog for a long time and we have a lot of financial similarities. One of the differences is that he’s paying estimated taxes on his blog earnings. We don’t pay estimated taxes. I’m an employee of my blogs S-Corp (and have taxes taken out as part of payroll). My wife also chooses to withhold a little more money on her day job.

It turns out that you can pay taxes with a credit card. The processing fees vary, but it looks like it can be as low as 1.87%. (Why would anyone choose the other options to pay more?) If you had to pay $10,000 in taxes that’s $187 in fees. At first it sounds like a raw deal.

However, if you are putting it on three credit cards that have $3000 minimum spending, it could earn $1500 back in travel points depending on the credit cards. Would you pay $187 for $1500 in travel rewards? Of course, right? If you are going to travel anyway, that’s $1300 in free money.

I have to admit that I really haven’t looked at changing our withholdings. It’s been nearly a couple of decades since I even thought about how it works. I usually like, “Set it and forget it.” It fits with my whole Lazy Man brand. However, I’m willing to change my ways if it means an extra thousand or two a year in free travel.

I have to admit that I’ve never heard of anyone doing this. (That doesn’t mean it hasn’t been written about before as it is pretty close to Retire By 40’s plan.) Maybe there’s a gotcha that I’m not seeing?

So to recap, here’s the plan to hack free travel with credit cards and taxes:

  1. Increase withholding allowances so less tax is taken out of your paycheck. (Needed a correction there.)
  2. Get a credit card that offers a $500 reward for spending $3000 in the first 3 months. (That’s an example. I’ve seen a lot of these around.)
  3. Use the credit card to send a tax payment to reach the minimum.
  4. Pay off your credit card from the money that wasn’t taken out of your paycheck in step 1.
  5. Repeat steps 1-4 quarterly or as often as you can depending on how much tax you need to pay.
  6. Enjoy your reward bonuses (minus a little in fees for using a credit card) of travel.

What do you think? Does it work?