Lazy Man and Money

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

Ultra Frugality Mode Activated!

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From the beginning of starting Lazy Man and Money, I’ve been a proponent of both saving and investing. I’ve found that this is kind of an unusual stance amongst personal finance bloggers. While most everyone agrees that both are important, I usually see them lean heavily in one direction or the other.

I don’t think there is necessarily a right or wrong way to work. I know people who make six figures that begin with a crooked number, but they have little savings. There are others who don’t make a lot of money, but they find a way to squirrel it away and watch it grow to financial freedom.

The math is extremely simple, the different between what you make vs. what you spend equals freedom. You can create more freedom, or get freedom faster by making more or spending less.

I believe in the two equally, probably more than most personal finance bloggers. That’s why you can go from one article yesterday: Time to Buy Yahoo Stock? to today’s article about becoming extra frugal.

With that long-winded explanation out of the way, our family has embarked on a mission to kick the frugality up a notch for a couple of months… at least as much as possible.

Why the sudden change?

One of the tenants moved out of one of our investment properties. The kitchen cabinets and counters were the original ones from the early 80s… and I don’t think they were particularly well-made then. Even with a small kitchen and the most basic cabinets, the costs kept rising and rising. We thought it would be around $6500, but legitimate, though hidden costs started to creep in. And then there was the mold removal from a pipe that had been leaking for who knows how long. By the time we are done, we’re probably going to put 10-12K into this.

That’s a lot of money to spend in a month, especially when you don’t have a tenant in the property to pay rent.

None of this is really a surprise and I’ve created spreadsheets to depreciate and amortize most of the major maintenance. At the same time, it’s psychologically a big deal. That’s one of the interesting factors at work here.

Seeing a big drop in available cash is never a good thing. When it comes from one account it can seem worse than it is. My wife and I ran a comprehensive net worth that we tend to do every few months. The result was that we still had a plenty of accessible cash… it was just spread in a few different accounts (some mine, some hers, some shared). This was a huge step in mitigating the psychologically big hit.

The other interesting thing is that it triggered us to move into an “ultra frugality” mode. Well, maybe not “ultra”, but “very, very mindful.” Here are some changes we found we could make nearly right away:

  • Eat Out Less – We have an Entertainment-type book and though we feel like are getting a good deal, we are not saving money with it. We’ve been using it a lot this summer to “get out of the house.” By a lot, I’d say about twice a week, not five times or anything like that. We should be able to cut it down a bit.
  • Eat Down the Food – We have a chest freezer and it’s full of food. We also have shelving units full of food. I got most of this food by stocking on great deals. Now it’s time to eat it down. We’ve challenged each other to make each meal with something from this storage. Aside from staples like milk, the hope is to not have to spend money to bring in more food for little while.
  • Have “Limited Spend” Days – My wife had Friday off and we paid for day care anyway, so we took the kayak to the beach and paddled around a bit. (Now you know why there was no article last Friday.) Saturday we took the kids to a free playground. Little Man (2 years old) had a ton of fun. Mini Man (8 months) enjoyed watching and doing a little crawling. Sunday, I watched the Patriots play one of their worst 2nd halves of football in the last 14 years. As they say, “Two out of three ain’t bad.”

    We still ended up spending money on these days… but it was small amount.

We’re also trying sell excess stuff Ebay. In some ways, that amounts to drop in the bucket, and it can be a lot of work, but every little bit helps.

It sounds like a perfect plan except for two things.

The annual financial blogger conference is this month. That’s in New Orleans. Fortunately, I literally wrote the post on how to visit New Orleans on a budget. Also, finance companies sponsor lunches and the occasional libation. (Note to any such companies reading this, please send me your invites.)

The other thing is a two-week trip to Aruba a couple of months later. We have our Marriott Vacation Club time share that was bought a decade ago now. I’ll be applying everything from Save Money in Aruba and Save More Money in Aruba to minimize expenses.

I think what it comes down to is that I’ve always been frugal with my purchases, trying to maximize value. However, over the next couple of months, I’ll try to combine that with an eye towards not spending money at all, when it is reasonable.

Weekend Personal Finance Links (“Busted Vacation?” Edition)

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Our week-long vacation in Aruba is starting to wrap up. The bad news is that the weather in Aruba has been much worse than anticipated. We’ve had about 3 hours of sun all week. I went swimming as many times as I’ve had birds poop on me: once. Fortunately, a bird pooping on you is good luck and after it happened yesterday, we had our best dinner on the island, and walked away from the casino with double our money. (I’m not a big gambler, but a couple of times a year, I like to dabble in small amounts – usually $50-75.)

I’ll be shifting on to the Boston leg of the trip before too long. Perhaps I’ll have an article coming earlier this next week. I wonder if I can type while I’m in line at customs?

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Save More Money in Aruba

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Almost two years ago, I wrote a fairly comprehensive guide on how to save money in Aruba. My wife and I went back there a couple of weeks ago and I was surprised to find that I had more tips to share. We like to go to Aruba because it’s a lot like our Boston home due to the direct flights. Also, the weather is perfect, it has great food, casinos, and no hurricanes.

The best tip (and the first one) was one I got from a friend after I got back from Aruba:

  • Make Money in Aruba – As opposed to most of the things I write about, this is second-hand information from a trusted source. It’s even someone dated information from that source. Because of that, I’ll have to recruit a friend to try it out and report back the results. Here’s how it goes:
    • Go To Tomato Charlie’s for Pizza – Numerous reviews say it’s the “best pizza they’ve ever had” and it’s relatively cheap. My source says that you can get a pizza and pitcher of beer for around $20. I recall him saying that there’s something extra that they toss in as a special
    • While at Tomato Charlie’s grab a discount magazine – There are other places you can grab these, but you’ll have time to flip through one while you are waiting for your pizza. What you are looking for are Casino match play coupons. As About.com says, match play coupons are almost always a sure way to make money at a casino. You can use them for free money on tables where the house has a 1% advantage. The beauty of this? If you are like most people in Aruba (a couple), you can pick up two sets of coupons for 5-10 casinos in the high-rise hotel area (near Tomato Charlie’s). With coupons of around $20 each, you can go down the line playing one-hand at each where winning gets each person $40 and losing is only $20 gone. My source did this every night and came back with over $1000 in winnings (though I suspect he “gambled with the house’s money” when he started off well.)
  • Shop at the grocery stores – I mentioned this one in the article, but it bares repeating as much of this article will assume that you’ve taken that advice. Our favorite place to shop there is Ling and Sons which is hidden behind the Hong King.
  • Maximize Your Dunkin’ Donuts’ iced coffee dollar – Dunkin’ Donuts is the favorite coffee of my coffeeaholic wife. The problem is that they don’t have them in California. However, there are a couple in Aruba. Problem is that it’s a pain to wake up and walk 10 minutes from our Marriott timeshare to the Dunkin’ Donuts. As I’ve said before, laziness is the father of innovation. Order a mega-large black ice coffee with no ice (or two). Bring them back to your place and add the ice and milk (from your grocery store stop) yourself. It’s amazing how much ice and milk are in an iced coffee. By having just the main ingredient, my wife got three days of iced coffee without the long morning walk in 100+ degree heat. I was concerned the coffee might not be good after a couple of days, but she said it was fine.
  • Eat at cheaper hotels and resorts – A cheeseburger at the Marriott Timeshare we stayed at was $15. At the Holliday Inn next door it was $10. Everything was like that. It was worth walking next door and just eating there. (Of course grocery shopping for deli meats was by far the cheapest option.)

    As we talked to others we found that some places had happy hour specials of $1 for a drink. Marriott ran a 2 Balashis (local beer) for $10 happy hour “special.” The price of one Balashi any other time – $5. Marriott did have some “deals” where you could get a frozen for $6.50 during happy hour if you ordered two, but we rarely saw anyone drink at the bar by the pool. Instead, everyone had their own cooler that they got from their shopping trip. If you didn’t have a cooler odds were that the person next to you had more beer than they could drink and would offer you one (or 10). It’s not even mooching because you just talk to someone and they offer it. This is an appropriate time for me to thank Jim Gonsalves for his generosity yet again.

  • Plan your trip in advance – This might be hard to do if you don’t know Aruba. Now that we do, we know we’ll rent a car on the first or second day. We’ll use the car to do our grocery shopping for the week (it’s easier than taking Aruba bus system though that is a great value). We’ll plan to go to Flying Fishbone which is a good 20 minute or more drive from the high-rise hotels where we stay. We’ll also use it to sight-see on the island. We only need a car for a day or two to get this all done. We spend the the rest of the trip is generally around the hotel or on snorkeling tours. Speaking of snorkeling tours, as a bonus tip, we found that if you book those online in advance you can save some 15%-20% off them as well.

Best Credit Card for Foreign Travel? (Ask the Readers)

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Last week, I mentioned how my wife and I are going on ambitious trip to Phuket (and Australia). It’s been a little while since I went outside the US. Last year, we went to Aruba, but I’m so familiar with saving money in Aruba, that I didn’t feel the need to conserve every last cent. More importantly, they accept US Dollars so there’s no conversion.

Australia and Thailand are two different monsters entirely. I have no clue what to expect for prices. I’ve heard that credit card companies can play some tricks with conversion rates and fees. For example this article from Bankrate says that there are a couple of fees, one from Mastercard and Visa and another from the issuing bank. I’d like to be able to use my credit as a savings tool like I do in the US earning cash back when possible.

It looks like Capital One may have one of the lowest fees, but I don’t feel comfortable with them since they hate the environment.

In the end, we’ll probably take advantage of the USAA and their debit card. They promise no fees even abroad. Seeing how they are affiliated with the military, I think I trust them to get me a good exchange rate since they aren’t for big profits like other banks… Or else I’ll just check out some of these credit card reviews.