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The world is a book and those who do not travel
read only one page
St. Augustine
St. Augustine said, “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”
Well, I love to read, and I certainly enjoy reading more than one page. I myself have been to 45 of our states, four of the continents and about 25 foreign countries. My wife and I have been fortunate enough to travel a lot. We have been to Honolulu, Rome, Athens, Paris, Monte Carlo, Amsterdam, Acapulco and Venice. I’m not telling you to boast. I’m telling you because we traveled to these locations for what it would cost you to take an annual trip to Disneyland.
We keep a lot of rebate credit cards. We charge everything on these cards, but we never pay interest or fees. We use these rebates for our travel. We have one Cruise Credit Card that we build up cruise dollars on. I am a financial planner, and we coordinate a lot of our cruises with my annual sales conference. In 2011, my sales conference was at the PGA National Headquarters, just outside Fort Lauderdale. This in itself would have been a great vacation, and tax deductible. But we timed it with a cruise out of Miami. We had $800 in cruise dollars accumulated. I found us a 5 days cruise to the Bahamas. After the credit, our total cruise cost for both of us was $1.89.
Another time, using our cruise dollars (this time it was $1600), we flew from Washington, DC to Barcelona, did a 7 day Mediterranean cruise, stopped in Paris for 2 days, and returned to Washington, DC. Our total cost for the 10 day vacation, for the two of us, came to about $2800.
How do we do this?
Well, as I said, we use our credit card rebates (very important though, you MUST pay the cards off monthly, never accrue interest on them), and I find great prices. I normally go to a site such as http://www.bookingbuddy.com/. The great thing about booking buddy is that I enter my information one time, then it will let me go to various sites and compare prices. When I look for cruises, I don’t think about dates or location, as much as I look for bargains. If I find a great deal, such as a Carnival 7-day cruise to the eastern Caribbean, I then go directly to the Carnival website, and see if they might be offering a better deal.
We have found cruises to be a wonderful way to see the world, and have to date taken 16 cruises from Alaska to Venice. Also, I usually book our flights differently, but again comparing prices. Sometimes the flights are cheaper if you split the trip up between different airlines. We travel lightly. It’s amazing how much my wife can get in one checked on suitcase, and we take discount airlines.
Send me a message if you’d like more travel information, and also share any great deals you have found on travel.
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