Travel – Page 4 – Physician In Numbers

Go Away or Staycation?

I have a 4-day weekend coming up, and I am having a hard time making plans. I love this time of year at home, and it seems a shame to go away in the middle of it. On the other hand, my husband and I love to travel. I thought it might help if I listed some pros and cons.

House of (Credit) Cards

Last month, my husband got in on the credit card rewards game. He has a new card, and has to spend $3000 in 3 months–or $1000 a month. If he does that, he will get a very nice sign up bonus: enough miles for a round trip ticket to Europe.

I figured this would be easy-peasy, considering our monthly expenditures. But it is turning out to be a little more challenging than I thought.

ACP in Numbers

I’m just back from ACP 2019, the annual meeting of the American College of Physicians, held this year in Philadelphia. I had a great time, and may talk about it all week.

Since I usually blog about financial stuff on Mondays, I thought I might write about some of the money issues around attending such a big meeting.

Wednesday Wool-gathering

I have some scattered thoughts, none really worthy of a full post.

Anticipation

I’m going through a tough time now. I’m working long hours, and I can’t say I am loving winter. In fact, Spring is welcome to drop in, any time it feels ready.

Normally when I start feeling like this, I’d start daydreaming about my next trip. I would browse the internet to consider various destinations, maybe even finding a plane ticket, or looking at hotels to stay in.

Stepping onto the hedonic treadmill

My husband and I have been traveling to visit family recently, and with one thing and another, have had the opportunity to go through the TSA Precheck line, and also to use Priority Pass membership (free with our credit card) to get into airport lounges. Benefiting from these programs was very pleasant, but also thought-provoking.

Our “free” vacation through travel hacking

I love to travel. My husband loves to travel. We both love to save money. We are a great team ;-). In the last few years, finally, we have been able to travel overseas, and have been getting better at money-saving tricks. There are so many posts on the internet about travel hacking, I was curious to see if we could take a nice vacation for free (or super cheap). I don’t profess to be an expert, but I tried to use as many options as possible on our latest vacation, and I wanted to lay the results out in one place. I might compare and contrast with our prior methods. Here goes: