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In: wanders & musings
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I’m not a huge fan of New Year resolutions, but I do like to take a few moments to reflect on the past year. Since I now have a blog, that means these reflections now get to be shared with you. Lucky you! Lol. A lot of people are feeling less than charitable about 2017 and are more than happy to leave the year behind, but I try not to blame the year for the bad things that happen in it. Even so, I have to say that 2017 was one for the books – I flew on about 50 flights and visited 5 otherRead More →

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In: hotels, lodging, points & miles, wanderguides
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Partly because I’m based in California, Las Vegas is one of my favorite places for a short getaway. It’s a unique place, in that for all its international reputation for partying and crazy times on the Las Vegas Strip, the rest of Vegas is more of an affordable town  (caveat – I live in one of the most expensive areas in the United States) with a relatively close-knit community. This overview focuses primarily on the Las Vegas Strip. I assume most everyone has an idea of what the Strip is – if not, this is why we have Google. Google away! People who vacation in Vegas seem to fallRead More →

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In: airbnb, hotels, points & miles, wanderdiaries
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Back in 2016, I realized that the next year would feature an optimal set of travel circumstances. 2017 would be the year in which I’d have Gold status* with Starwood Hotels, Silver status with United Airlines, and a huge (to me, anyway) stockpile of points/miles in both loyalty programs. On noticing this, I set out to find the perfect new vacation spot that had a beach and a cool town to explore.** This perfect place needed to have a Starwood property, and had to be reachable by United (or one of United’s Star Alliance partners). As it turned out, Bali represented the convergence of a solidRead More →

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In: #StaySwanky, budget, lodging, planning
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The Perfect Accommodations There are many things in life to which I sometimes arrive very late (dinners, nearly all TV shows, most entries on Urban Dictionary…), but a hotel reservation is not one of those things – a late hotel reservation can mean spending hundreds of dollars that I could otherwise be using to eat delicious foods, or it could mean compromising on what I want out of my hotel stay. Neither is an acceptable outcome when both can be prevented. The two biggest expenses of most trips are flights and lodging. If you can control these costs, then the overall cost of your tripRead More →

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In: 'murica, rants, walk of a woman
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  Some of the most infuriating conversations I’ve had in the past few years have centered on this misguided notion that we should all strive for (figurative) colorblindness, and/or that talking about race in the United States contributes to a “divide.” To which I say:     F. That. Noise. and freely cast sideeyes all around.Read More →

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In: budget, credit cards, points & miles
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 The evil, dangerous, credit card myth tl;dr – Don’t be scared of credit cards. Learn to make them work for you. I want to address this notion I frequently hear – some variation on “credit cards are for irresponsible people,” or this sense of pride in being debt free because you haven’t fallen victim to the dreaded credit card. The former is just ridiculous – having a credit card does not inherently mean irresponsibility – and what would be irresponsible is miscalculating the difference between what you charge to a card and what you have money to pay for, or can reasonably afford to pay overRead More →