Tag Archives: travel tips

Day 3292 – Road Trip Tip – Know The Tolls Before Your Go

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Last week, we took a short road trip to Long Island. We had a rough budget for this trip and our trip to California. One thing I only briefly thought about was tolls. Oh my, what a mistake. We ended up spending $82.65 just in tolls. I’m not sure if we could have gotten to Long Island without tolls, but I would imagine we could have saved some if we took a slightly different route. Little tip, you can set Waze to avoid toll roads. Boy howdy, do I wish I had remembered this! We will be attempting to avoid tolls on our road trip to Massachusetts for sure!

What’s the biggest total in tolls you’ve gotten on a road trip?

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Did you like what you read? Here’s some ways you can support us and this blog!
Join our Facebook group, Planning an Epic Road Trip on Any Budget
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Buy my book, Planning an Epic Road Trip on any Budget.
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Day 3131 – Southwest Credit Card And Rapid Rewards Tips – repost

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One thing I’m doing in the next few weeks is figuring out how many points we’ll need for our next Cali flight, then I can figure out how to get those points. Check out some of my tips below.

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originally posted 4/18/16
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We absolutely LOVE Southwest, the credit card and rapid rewards program. Seriously. We are not paid to say this! Though, people have asked if owned stock in them. Which wouldn’t be a bad idea! I love talking about travel and saving money (check out yesterday’s post on cross country travel for more on that!)

I wanted to share a few things with you!

First, there is a promotion going on where you can earn a nice bonus of miles:
If you’re interested in getting the Southwest credit card, let me know your email address and I can send you some info. There’s a promotion right now where I get 5,000 miles for everyone who signs up and hits a minimum. If you spend $2000 in 3 months, you get 50,000 miles, which is enough for 2 round trip tickets. We’re big fans of Southwest. We’ve gotten to fly almost free ($22 in fees/taxes), almost all the way to Cali to visit Bret’s family 3 times because of the cards. (We have two accounts with them). We’ve used the card for a while now, I’m able to pay it off online immediately (I’ve seen credit cards where you have to wait until it posts to the account before you can pay). lol, how else can I say I’m not trying to sell you something, we really do love Southwest and their credit card.

Tips to get more miles!

If you don’t have it yet, sign up for rapid rewards through Southwest. It’s free. I tell people, think of this like a grocery store’s membership card. And the credit card is like the store credit card.

First, log in to Southwest.com and check out the following:

Companion pass
Click on Rapid Rewards
The first window should show Snapshot. This is where you’ll see how close you are to a companion pass. It does look like it’s cumulative, but it’s only in one year. I haven’t hit this yet, but if you get a new southwest card and get that 50,000 AND follow some of these tips, I wouldnt’ see why you couldn’t get to the 110,000 miles.

Promotions
While logged in still, click on the promotions tab, you’ll see current deals.

Rocketmiles
You can book hotels through here and apply them to your Southwest card. They may be double/triple. Your first stay will give you a bonus 5,000 miles (not sure if that’s a constant promotion or not). Each night will give you about 1,000+ miles. These hotels cost a little more, maybe $20-30 more than we typically spend, but when we’re getting essentially $1000 worth of miles, it’s no biggie.

Dining rewards
Sign up here, you can attach up to 5 credit cards (don’t think they have to be a southwest card, but I haven’t tested it out). The points won’t count until your cards are attached. You’ll see that you can write reviews and get more points. The first time you go has a huge bonus.

A whole bunch of tips here!

A ton more ways to get bonuses can be found here.
Click through the different areas at the top – Travel, specialty, home, etc. e-rewards is found under Specialty – it’s an easy/free way to earn miles.

e-rewards
This is an easy and free way to earn miles. This is a survey site. Once you get to $100 worth of “survey money” you can transfer them to your rewards account. Last time I checked, $100 = 1000 miles! I haven’t done this in a while, but when I was, it didn’t take long at all to get to $100. This is a great thing to do while watching TV or waiting in line.

Do you have any good tips for quickly earning miles?

Thanks to Tif for my favorite airport picture, ever.

day_00793b

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Did you like what you read? Here’s some ways you can support us and this blog!
Join our Facebook group, Planning an Epic Road Trip on Any Budget
Join the Journey With The G’s email list (bonus – you get my Epic Road Trip Budget spreadsheet)
Buy my book, Planning an Epic Road Trip on any Budget.
Buy my book, Trusting God With 2 Cents: 22 Days To Becoming A Successful Christian Business Owner.
Shop on Amazon (no additional cost to you, this gives us a percentage of what you order).
Check out our resources page.
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel

Day 2705 – An Exciting Announcement And A Request For Help!

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I’ve been hinting towards something we’re planning on doing for a little while. I can tell you part of that plan today! Bret and I are starting a YouTube Channel! Stay tuned for our first video!

What will our videos focus on? We want to spend some time talking about traveling. One video I hope to make before Christmas will focus on how we travel to California for 7-10ish days each year with one carry-on each. Another video will show you how we make our bed for sleeping on the floor. We’ll probably do some videos about our most recent road trip and share a few videos we took.

What else? That’s where we need some help! If you’ve followed our blog for a while, you know a bit about us. What kinds of things would you like to learn more about? Are you interested in a tour of our apartment and ways we minimize? Do you want to see how I make some of our meals? You know we’re pretty open about things here on the blog, so go ahead and suggest something you think we might not do! 🙂

I can’t wait to share our videos with y’all!!

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Day 2473 – Southwest Credit Card And Rapid Rewards Tips

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We absolutely LOVE Southwest, the credit card and rapid rewards program. Seriously. We are not paid to say this! Though, people have asked if owned stock in them. Which wouldn’t be a bad idea! I love talking about travel and saving money (check out yesterday’s post on cross country travel for more on that!)

I wanted to share a few things with you!

First, there is a promotion going on where you can earn a nice bonus of miles:
If you’re interested in getting the Southwest credit card, let me know your email address and I can send you some info. There’s a promotion right now where I get 5,000 miles for everyone who signs up and hits a minimum. If you spend $2000 in 3 months, you get 50,000 miles, which is enough for 2 round trip tickets. We’re big fans of Southwest. We’ve gotten to fly almost free ($22 in fees/taxes), almost all the way to Cali to visit Bret’s family 3 times because of the cards. (We have two accounts with them). We’ve used the card for a while now, I’m able to pay it off online immediately (I’ve seen credit cards where you have to wait until it posts to the account before you can pay). lol, how else can I say I’m not trying to sell you something, we really do love Southwest and their credit card.

Tips to get more miles!

If you don’t have it yet, sign up for rapid rewards through Southwest. It’s free. I tell people, think of this like a grocery store’s membership card. And the credit card is like the store credit card.

First, log in to Southwest.com and check out the following:

Companion pass
Click on Rapid Rewards
The first window should show Snapshot. This is where you’ll see how close you are to a companion pass. It does look like it’s cumulative, but it’s only in one year. I haven’t hit this yet, but if you get a new southwest card and get that 50,000 AND follow some of these tips, I wouldnt’ see why you couldn’t get to the 110,000 miles.

Promotions
While logged in still, click on the promotions tab, you’ll see current deals.

Rocketmiles
You can book hotels through here and apply them to your Southwest card. They may be double/triple. Your first stay will give you a bonus 5,000 miles (not sure if that’s a constant promotion or not). Each night will give you about 1,000+ miles. These hotels cost a little more, maybe $20-30 more than we typically spend, but when we’re getting essentially $1000 worth of miles, it’s no biggie.

Dining rewards
Sign up here, you can attach up to 5 credit cards (don’t think they have to be a southwest card, but I haven’t tested it out). The points won’t count until your cards are attached. You’ll see that you can write reviews and get more points. The first time you go has a huge bonus.

A whole bunch of tips here!

A ton more ways to get bonuses can be found here.
Click through the different areas at the top – Travel, specialty, home, etc. e-rewards is found under Specialty – it’s an easy/free way to earn miles.

e-rewards
This is an easy and free way to earn miles. This is a survey site. Once you get to $100 worth of “survey money” you can transfer them to your rewards account. Last time I checked, $100 = 1000 miles! I haven’t done this in a while, but when I was, it didn’t take long at all to get to $100. This is a great thing to do while watching TV or waiting in line.

Do you have any good tips for quickly earning miles?

Thanks to Tif for my favorite airport picture, ever.

day_00793b

Day 2472 – Cross Country Travel Advice Updated

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A friend recently asked for advice on driving across the country. Since we’ve done this a few times and are planning a trip this summer, I was excited to share. As I wrote most of the following (edited slightly to make it direct to y’all), I realized I have a passion for this. I love talking about certain things and inexpensive travel is one of them.

An old blog post about the drive.

Tips on saving money using a Southwest credit card.

To my wonderful readers! If you’re interested in getting the Southwest credit card, let me know your email address and I can send you some info. There’s a promotion right now where I get 5,000 miles for everyone who signs up and hits a minimum. If you spend $2000 in 3 months, you get 50,000 miles, which is enough for 2 round trip tickets. We’re big fans of Southwest. We’ve gotten to fly almost all the way to Cali to visit Bret’s family 3 times because of the cards. (We have two accounts with them). We’ve used the card for a while now, I’m able to pay it off online immediately (I’ve seen credit cards where you have to wait until it posts to the account before you can pay). lol, how else can I say I’m not trying to sell you something, we really do love Southwest and their credit card.

I will write a post tomorrow with some tips on how to rack up the Southwest miles! Some are without having to spend money!

Information about getting cheap RV rentals. There are great deals, but they’re locked in by location and dates.

I would recommend getting an America the Beautiful pass. It’s $80 for a year and gets you in to pretty much all of the national parks. From what I’ve read, it’s good for you and another person AND everyone in your car. So, I could put down my name and Bret’s and we’d both be on the pass. Then we can take people in if they’re in the car. I don’t know much more than that, so check out the website. Since we’re looking into driving the northern route this summer, we want to see Rushmore and Yellowstone, just the two parks almost pay for the pass itself. Since we live in Maryland, we’re so close to SO many National Parks that would count (Fort McHenry, Gettysburg [I believe], etc.), so it makes sense.

Choice hotels tend to have good deals, last time I looked into them, especially if are a choice hotels member (it’s free) and you can book them at least 10 days (though, I don’t recommend booking hotels that far in advance on a road trip, you have NO idea what will happen on the road). OR, if you have a southwest card, you can use Rocketmiles to book your hotel. You pretty much always get 1000 miles on top of the points you earn for the hotel itself. They tend to range about $20-30 more than most hotels, but 1000 miles is like spending $1000, so it works out well! The first stay gets you 5000 miles.

I just found some great deals on Amtrack. You can take a train from San Francisco to Baltimore for about $300. We’ve thought about renting a car and then taking the train back….or maybe getting a flight close to where we want to go and then driving the rest. Maybe Chicago and then drive from there to the other places.

Some tips – If you’re driving, ALWAYS stop when you’re tired. Even if it’s just for a little bit. Having a cooler and food with you is GREAT. There are more tips on that first link. Though, I will say, we’re NOT going to sleep in the back seat this time. We’re going to sleep in the passenger seat….don’t think it’s too safe, really.

Oh! Little known fact, the states in the south are really bad at taking care of snow! So if you’re driving in the winter, know what the weather is. We were stuck in Texas for 10 hours because of ice. My internet wasn’t working well, but I was able to call my mom and she finally figured out what was going on by calling the highway patrol. So I would get the highway patrol numbers for all of the states you’re driving through.

If you camp, look into parks versus big name campgrounds. We regularly camp at a state park and it’s only about $20 a night. Or there are mini cabins, at our state park, for about $55. So that’s something to consider too.

If you sleep in the car, Walmart parking lots are good as are big name gas stations like Pilot and Loves. DO NOT go to the bathroom in a small dinky gas station. lol, there was one place we stopped at in Tennessee or Kentucky and I swear, it was like I was walking through someone’s house. Ha ha, I don’t think we stopped at a no name place after that!

I would also say, figure out the places you HAVE to stop, then the places you’d like to stop and then the, it’s ok if it doesn’t happen. So, know what’s absolutely important and build the trip around that.

Highlights in our travels:
San Antonio, Texas
Monterey, California
Grand Canyon, Arizona
Russells Truck & Travel Center, 1583 Frontage Road 4132, Glenrio, NM 88434 (lol, YES, a rest stop!)

Do you have any questions about cross country travel? Let me know in the comments!

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Did you like what you read? Here’s some ways you can support us and this blog!
Join our Facebook group, Planning an Epic Road Trip on Any Budget
Join the Journey With The G’s email list (bonus – you get my Epic Road Trip Budget spreadsheet)
Buy my book, Planning an Epic Road Trip on any Budget.
Buy my book, Trusting God With 2 Cents: 22 Days To Becoming A Successful Christian Business Owner.
Shop on Amazon (no additional cost to you, this gives us a percentage of what you order).
Check out our resources page.
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel