The Simple Dollar
Shelby Anderson plays in a tent at a campsite in Cabrillo State Park, Calif., in this May 2003 file photo. If you camp on vacation, you can go home well-rested and with money still in hand, Hamm writes. (Robert Harbison/The Christian Science Monitor/File)
The great (and cheap) outdoors
When Sarah and I visited the Pacific Northwest for our first anniversary, we didn’t stay in a hotel for most of the vacation. We camped, using borrowed camping equipment, first on Mount Rainier and then in Olympia National Forest.
When we went on our first vacation after having our first child, we didn’t stay in a hotel for any of the vacation. We camped, using our own camping equipment, on the north shore of Lake Superior.
Almost every summer, we spend time camping. We camp in state parks. We camp on private land (with permission, of course). We camp in national parks.
It gets us outdoors. It gives us an abundance of time to enjoy the beauty of nature. It gives us an abundance of fresh air. ( Continue… )
This 2010 file photo shows Coopers Beach in Southampton, NY. Hamm recommends taking more time off than you need for vacation travel. That way, it's easier to take advantages on deals on flights, lodgings, and activities. (Kathy Willens/AP/File)
A cheap vacation is a flexible one
During the last few years of my previous job, whenever Sarah and I began to plan a vacation, I would request time off in a block that was significantly larger than the length of the vacation we were planning.
Sometimes, I’d wind up with several days off before the vacation. Other times, I’d wind up with several days off after the vacation.
Why would I do this? I had to take time off pretty far in advance in order to get it off, but I didn’t want to lose the flexibility of vacation planning opportunities, so I’d schedule more than enough time off so that I could be flexible within that larger time frame.
This isn’t just a principle to apply to time off. The fewer things you lock into stone with regards to your vacation, the more opportunity you have to dig into better values when they come up.
For example, let’s look at flights. If you absolutely have to fly out on a Friday evening and then absolutely have to fly back nine days later on Sunday evening, you’re going to pay out the nose for those flights. Now, let’s say you have some more flexibility there and decide instead to have one of your flights on Wednesday instead of Friday or Sunday, you’re going to save a lot of money on your flight.
The same thing happens when you look at activities during your vacation. The more flexible you are with those activities, the less your trip is going to cost you.
Our usual plan is to come up with a large list of potential activities that we might want to engage in on our trip. We make a list that’s far longer than what we could possibly fit into a vacation.
From that list, we seek out bargains for each item on that list. Which ones are cheap on particular days? On which day does that baseball team have a “bobblehead night”? On which day does the museum have a “kids are free” day?
We’ll slot in activities on particular days, but we still don’t jump on tickets unless (a) there’s a genuine danger of a sellout or (b) we find an exceptional deal (50% off or more) that comes from buying right now.
Often, we’ll start our vacation with very few things firmly slotted in place.
Then, when we arrive, we’ll ask around for discounts. We’ll ask the hotel concierge if they have any extra discounts on the things we’re thinking about doing. We’ll read some local newspapers and local brochures.
Because so much of our vacation is flexible, if we find an activity is cheaper on a particular day, we can easily do it on that particular “cheap” day.
In the end, we find ourselves with a pretty low-cost vacation that ends up filled with things we enjoyed as a family. That’s a winning trip.
This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere.
A British Airways jumbo plane flies in to land at Heathrow Airport in west London in this October 2012 file photo. The more time you spend planning a trip, the better you’ll understand what travel options are available and the better the vacation will match what you want out of it, Hamm writes. (Toby Melville/Reuters/File)
Travel cheap by planning your own vacation
When Sarah and I were talking about our honeymoon in 2003, we were a little intimidated by setting up our travel plans. It was the first major trip either one of us had taken where we would be responsible for all of the planning, and it seemed like a ton of confusing work.
So, we paid for a travel agency to plan our trip for us.
They did a good job, don’t get me wrong. However, we realized pretty quickly that we could have planned the entire trip ourselves with some research and effort, and we would have saved some money in the process andbeen more flexible in terms of the activities we enjoyed.
Planning your own travel takes more work, but it pays off in terms of lower prices and options more customized to what you want out of your travel. ( Continue… )
In this February 2012 file photo, Kelly Slater competes in the Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast surfing competition in Gold Coast, Australia. The earlier you know where your vacation destination is, the longer you have to shop around for bargains on travel, Hamm writes. (Kirstin Scholtz/Association of Surfing Professionals/AP/File)
For cheap flights, hotels: Plan vacations far in advance
After a few weeks of discussing bill paying strategies in this series, we’re going to shift gears and look at vacations during much of the month of December.
Vacations? The kind of things that most people take in the summer? Why would we talk about them in December?
Frankly, right now is about the latest time you want to be planning your vacation for next summer if you want to maximize the bang for your buck.
Why would you want to plan vacations so far in advance?
For starters, the earlier you know where your destination is, the longer you have to shop around for bargains on travel. No matter what you’re purchasing, the longer you give yourself to find bargains on that purchase, the more likely you are to find a bargain. ( Continue… )
Hamm recommends scheduling payments on many of your bills in advance so that you don’t have to worry about paying them on time. (Ann Hermes/The Christian Science Monitor/File)
Late bills? Schedule them to pay automatically
As I mentioned yesterday, one of the big advantages of online bill pay is that you can schedule payments on many of your bills in advance so that you don’t have to worry about paying them on time. Online bill pay just fires them off for you at the correct time.
Of course, that really only works if you know the amount of the bill in advance. It works great for mortgage payments or car payments or insurance payments, but for many of us, our cell phone bill and electric bill and other bills vary a little (or a lot) from month to month.
For those bills, you can’t just type in an amount well in advance and call it good enough. You’ll either be drastically overpaying or, even worse, underpaying your bill.
Thankfully, many companies have a very useful solution already in place: automatic bill pay. ( Continue… )
Alysha Griffin works on a laptop computer in New Holland, Pa., in this November 2012 file photo. Online bill pay helps you be sure not to overdraft due to bad math, Hamm writes. (Blaine Shahan/Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era/AP/File)
Save time and money with online bill pay
Online banking and online bill pay is one of the greatest technological innovations for personal finance in the last few decades. Online bill pay makes it much easier than before to pay one’s bills and, in many cases, makes the whole process automatic.
Before online bill pay came along, paying bills meant addressing and stamping a lot of envelopes. It also meant writing out a lot of checks by hand.
That process took a lot of time, as you had to fill out envelopes, stamp them, fill out payment stubs, fill out checks, seal up the envelopes, get everything to the mailbox, and rebalance your checkbook.
It also had costs associated with it, since each envelope required a stamp and each check pushed you one check closer to reordering checks. ( Continue… )
A visitor sits at the YouTube stand during the International Record Music Publishing and Video Music Market in Cannes in this January 2012 file photo. Hamm offers a guide for turning your passion into income on YouTube. (Eric Gaillard/Reuters/File)
How to make money on YouTube
Over Thanksgiving weekend, I had an chance to spend some time with my oldest nephew, who has really impressed me lately with the mature young man he’s becoming. He works hard, has a good attitude, values his family greatly, and has an obviously strong relationship with a young woman who seems quite nice (though I don’t know her well).
One thing you’ll figure out about my nephew if you spend much time around him is that he has an intense passion for the outdoors and for hunting – and he excels at it.
Ask him about his successes at hunting and he can show you a large catalog of photographs and tell you a lot of great stories.
Ask him how he does it and he can tell you tons of little tactics and tricks for finding good locations, coaxing animals to come his way, and how to know when to move to a new position. He can tell you how to train for hunting in the offseason and many, many other little tidbits. ( Continue… )
Tourists in London's Parliment Square use a British Telecom red phone booth, in this April 2004 file photo. If you’re going to be a bit late on a bill, call customer service and tell them about it, Hamm advises. (Richard Lewis/AP/File )
Late on a bill? Call customer service.
It seems so simple, yet it works so well.
Sometimes a bill just falls through the cracks. We forget about paying it. We’re on a trip and don’t check our mail in time. A big unexpected insurance bill hits at the same time and we choose to pay the insurance bill first.
A bill slides up to its due date – and then past it. We’re facing a potential late fee – and possibly even a credit report ding.
What can we do?
Obviously, the best step is to pay that bill as fast as possible, but there’s another little step to take that will usually eliminate the credit report ding and often eliminate the late fee, too.
All you have to do is make a little phone call. ( Continue… )
In this July 2012 photo, Neta Homier looks over bills in her home in Toledo, Ohio. It takes some time and effort to establish a routine of paying bills weekly, Hamm writes, but this is one routine that’s really beneficial. (Carlos Osorio/AP/File)
The perks of paying bills weekly, not monthly
When Sarah and I first graduated from college and entered the “real world,” we paid our bills on a monthly cycle. I would just collect all of our bills in a basket and pay them on the first of the month.
It wasn’t long before I noticed that I was getting late fees on several of the bills, so I studied them and realized that the best date each month to pay the bills was the 20th as that would avoid almost all of the late fees. I moved to that day.
(Even worse was the fact that some of these “late” bills were actually dinging my credit report, though I didn’t actively realize it at the time.)
Eventually, we moved. We changed energy companies and internet service providers. We bought a house. We changed cell phone providers. ( Continue… )
A worker counts US dollar bills at a money changer in Manila in this August 2011 file photo. With persistence, you can get rid of unnecessary fees on phone bills and bank accounts, according to Hamm. (Romeo Ranoco/Reuters/File)
Unnecessary fees? Get them waived. Here's how.
Companies love to tack fees onto your bill, no matter what service they’re providing.
Why wouldn’t they? Fees are pretty much pure profit for them, and for most customers, fees are glanced at and forgotten. A couple monthly fees per customer times a million customers and you’re talking about a pretty nice chunk of change.
However, for most services, we live in a buyer’s market. There are usually several different companies competing for customers, and that means the customer has an advantage. A customer has the power to negotiate a bit.
What’s often available to negotiate with? Those fees.
Let’s say you’re thinking about signing up for a new cell phone service. You’re looking at the contract and you notice a few fees involved. Ask right then if those fees can be waived because, if not, you’ll look at another service. Chances are some or all of those fees will disappear.
This goes hand in hand with the idea I mentioned yesterday. Let’s say you’re looking at a service that you’re not under a long term contract for and you notice a fee on your bill that doesn’t seem to be for anything important. It’s probably well worth your time to call up that company and ask for that fee to be removed.
Simply put, if there is competition in your area for a particular service and you don’t have a contract, you’re in control. Ask for any and all fees to be removed and, if they’re not, don’t be afraid to shop for a different service.
A few tips:
If you’re calling a customer service number, don’t expect that the first customer service rep you talk to will be able to eliminate any fees. You might have to talk to a supervisor before you see any action.
Make it clear that you’re looking at competing services. It should be clear to them that you’re considering switching services because of cost issues. This often gets fees eliminated from bills.
If this is due to a personal mistake of yours, stand on your reputation. If you’ve been a good customer for a long while, fees such as overdraft fees or late payment fees can often be waived. Companies tend to be good at doing this unless you establish a pattern of late payments.
The fewer fees you pay, the better off you are. Keep an eye out for them, whether it’s when you’re signing up for a new service, shopping around for a replacement service, or fixing a mistake that you’ve made.
This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere.
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