Lazy Man and Money

Fly Everywhere for Free?

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Imagine spending your life flying from airport to airport for free.

Sound like fun? No? Personally, it sounds like a special kind of hell.

As they say, “There’s something for everyone” and I think this Rolling Stone article proves it.

It appears that there’s a small group of people who make flying for free a game. It is fascinating to read exactly how great they are at it. It’s not like they simply fly coach, but they get great perks.

The obvious questions are, “How do they do it?” and “Can I do the same thing?”

They do it by taking advantage of every perk that airlines offer. For example, they may bumped on flights earning a free ticket. They may use credit cards to get airline miles. They often don’t care where they are going, so they can take the cheapest flight. They use a combination of all of these.

Sometimes they do things that others would consider unethical. For example, airlines have given passengers apology vouchers of $200-400 if there’s something broken on the plane. The idea would be to rack up these whenever possible.

At the risk of living up to my “Lazy” name, this simply seems like too much work to me. It seems like it becomes your life. I think it also helps to be obsessive compulsive, but I’m not a psychologist.

So can you do the same thing? I don’t think you’d want to. (If you do, you are probably already doing it, right?)

However, all is not lost. I know quite a few personal finance bloggers who sign up for credit cards to get the airline miles only to cancel them later. Racking up hard inquiries is not the best thing for your credit score, but if your credit is good in other areas, it won’t hurt it too much.

I don’t travel too much, so getting free flights is not that big of a deal for me. However, now that my kids are approaching the ages of 2 and 3 it’s going to be a lot more expensive to fly. Maybe I should put some time into racking up frequent flyer miles.

Save Money On Airfare

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Save Money on Airfare
Save Money on Airfare
Yesterday, I mentioned how the wife and I recently traveled to Boston for free on my wife’s frequent flier miles. I felt like that was a bit of a cop out. I should do better. I didn’t offer you any useful information for saving money on airfare – other than try to get a job that allows you rack up frequent flier miles. Today, I’m going to make things right. Below you’ll find some tips on saving money on airfare. Hopefully a couple of them will be helpful.

Save Money on Airfare with Online Tools

The Internet is packed with ways to help you save money on airfare:

  • Find the Best Prices – I’ve found Kayak to be the most complete online airline search. It’s not 100% and you still want to search sites it doesn’t cover like Southwest.
  • Name Your Own Airfare – If you are flexible on your travel time, you could take a shot at naming your own price with Priceline. This works best if you look for the lowest price first on something like Kayak first.
  • Know When to Book your Flight – Farecast tries to predict whether flight prices will go up or down. Enter where and when you want to travel and it will tell you whether you should book now or wait for a lower price.
  • Join a Wholesale Club – Yes, there is a wholesale club for airfare. For $50 a year you can join cFares. cFares has discount international flights that I’ve heard are exclusive. You can also set up a search for a flight and cFares will continuously look for the price you set. If it finds it, it will put it on 24-hour hold. This is not to be confused with Priceline, where you would be locked into the price you choose. Note: I have not tested this service as I do limited international travel.

Save Money on Airfare by Being Aware of Fees

Each airline has it’s own set of fees and charges. Here’s a good compilation of the most popular airlines.

  • Fly Southwest – Southwest has very few fees. They allow you to change flight times easily, perhaps the only airline with that policy.
  • Keep You Reservation – If you have to change a flight, you’ll pay a fee (except for Southwest as previously noted). If at all possible look to stick with the reservation you’ve already made.
  • Food – You used to get a free meal on a plane. That’s gone the way of the dodo bird. Now most people buy food on the plane or at the terminal. The prices there are not typically the best. You can bring food from home, just be careful about liquids (see next item for more information). You will get a drink on the plane, so you can take advantage of that.
  • Pack Efficiently – Nowadays you have to pay for almost any baggage you need to check. This is particular poor because you now have to follow TSA’s 311 rules for carry-on bags. I always try to bring sunscreen with me to save money, but that typically requires checking.

Other Ideas on How to Save Money on Airfare

  • Frequent Flier Miles – You can use frequent flier miles to get free flights. You can get frequent flier miles by flying, but you can also get them by…
  • Using a Reward Credit Card – Some popular cards include: WorldPerks Visa and Delta Sky Miles
  • Check Smaller Airports – When I lived near Boston, I would often fly from Manchester or Providence taking advantage of cheaper flights. Even though, I live 8 miles from the San Francisco airport, I often check San Jose and Oakland. It’s often well worth it.
  • Consider One Way Flights and Different Airports – You want to use all the options available to you if you can
  • Travel Off-Season – Everyone wants to go England when it’s warm, but you can save a lot of money by going during the winter.
  • Travel During Off-Peak Weeks – Traveling during school vacations and holidays can be pricey. Look to steer clear from these busy travel times. You’ll also save yourself a lot of travel stress with the reduced crowds.
  • Military? Fly for free – If you are in the military, you can take advantage of the SpaceA program. This allows you to fly for free with some restrictions.
  • Get the Most Leg Room – While not much of a money saving tip (unless you go for first class for extra leg room), give SeatGuru a look to find specific rows and seats that have more space on your particular plane.

So there you have it… the best tips I could come up with. What are your tips for saving money on airfare? Drop me a comment below.

Photo Credit: zen118

Ways Not Having a Job Impacts Our Personal Finances

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I read a post that made me think quite a bit this week. Madison from My Dollar Plan has a list of 15 tips for saving money while you still have a job. I looked down the list and saw things like 401k Matches, Tuition Reimbursements, Insurance – a pile of perks that people get with their jobs. Since I’ve been without a typical full-time job for a year now, I thought I’d go through the list and really see what I have given up.

  • 401k Match – I didn’t get matched funds in either of my two jobs dating back to 2004. So I didn’t lose this when I left.
  • Flexible Spending Accounts – None of my companies have offered this benefit as well.
  • Tuition Reimbursement – Two previous companies offered this. For the first one, I applied for a class on client-server technologies (I was a computer programmer). I was told that this wasn’t relevant enough to my job. I followed up by asking what class teaches FoxPro for DOS in 1999 (answer: none). At the next company the hours prohibited me from taking the class and I had to get a B+ to qualify for reimbursement. That was too much pressure for me. I didn’t want my job performance to suffer because I had to stay up doing homework to qualify for reimbursement.
  • Wellness Programs – My last two companies didn’t offer these either. Previous companies offered a gym membership which was really nice. However, I use the gym in my own apartment complex than I ever used my gym membership back then.
  • Frequent Flier Miles – Much of the time, travel isn’t big for a software engineer. I didn’t give up much of this benefit.
  • Health Insurance – This is the biggie for most people. I have been using my wife’s policy so this was no loss.
  • Employee Discounts – I didn’t get these with my most recent jobs, but when I worked for Papa Gino’s (a New England pizza chain), the discounts of 50% off your food were great. It wasn’t unusual for the manager to send you home with a pizza for the family if you worked a solid shift.
  • Investment Services – I’m in the minority here, but I found that much of the time, I could prepare myself as well as the people who were brought in to talk about 401Ks. Though I will miss grilling them whenever they say something slightly misleading.
  • Industry Subscriptions – I used to love getting PC Magazine and eWeek back in the day. I have found those publications of less interest. I would rather have Business 2.0 if it was still around.
  • Company Car – That would be sweet, but I never had a reason for one.
  • Free Events – Companies I’ve been with have had one or two yearly bonding days. These were great and acted as mini-vacations.
  • Free Meals – My last company was big on this. I never had to pay for lunch or dinner. I miss it greatly. However, since I’ve been on my own, I’ve been eating healthier and still fairly cheaply.
  • Employee Assistance Programs – I’ve never used one of these before and I haven’t had a need of one since. For some, they provide value, but not me.
  • Friends – This is another big one. I didn’t go out for beers on the weekends with any of my co-workers, but I felt like I got along with them well.

As I look through this list, I probably gave up less than most people. The biggest thing I can think of is about $60,000 a year in income. Wait, that’s pretty big. Let’s see what I’ve gained…

  • Freedom/Time – I’ve had the freedom to do a lot of the things that I’ve always wanted to do. I have time to fit in other things.
  • Health – With that free time, I’ve found more time for the gym. I’ve had more time study healthy habits. I’ve had more time to go grocery shopping and cook dinner. In short, I feel healthier than I have in some time.
  • Fun – The extra time has allowed me to catch up with some of the household chores: laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc. This means that my wife and I aren’t always catching up on the weekends. Instead we look to go to fun things like garlic festivals.
  • Extended Vacations – Before I took this time off, I’ve never had an employer act positively to the conversation of “I want to take a month off.” Now I don’t have to ask, the question becomes one of “Can we afford to go to Phuket?”
  • Save Money – I mentioned saving money by cooking and shopping, but I also save money by not driving to work. My transportation costs have gone way down.
  • Tax Breaks – I never would claim the home office deduction when I had a full-time job. Even though I use it for my alternative income, it was too much of a risk of audit. Now that I work out of home full-time, I’m sure the IRS looks at my home office as a more legit expense. There are other tax savings as well when you run a business.

My hope is that within the next two years, my income will be up to where it was before I left. At that point, I’ll have the best of both worlds, time and money. It’s a long road and it won’t be easy. As a friend said the other day, I’m still far away from where I need to be.