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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: 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 →

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In: budget, planning, points & miles
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“How can you afford to travel so much?” If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me this question, I could probably fund another trip somewhere. So far in 2017, I’ve been on 3 international and 12 domestic trips. I also have a full-time office job at which, contrary to popular belief, I actually do appear regularly. No, I am not a secret heiress, I don’t have a ton of extra income collecting dust in a bank vault, no sugar daddy in sight and I’ve never won the lottery. Read More →