Booking Air Travel? A Tip to Maximize Cash Back
While earning cash back on most internet stores is surprisingly easy, earning cash back on air travel has, at least in my experience, always proven to be a unique challenge. However, it seems that William Shatner can once again prove useful.
The Cash Back Challenge
As a general rule of thumb, any airfare results that you get on one travel website should also be available on other websites – in other words, that same fare you pulled up on Expedia should be bookable on Orbitz or even the airline’s own website (there are of course exceptions: student airfare, consolidator fares, special airline deals, etc.).
You may notice that the price sometimes varies by a few dollars — this is usually because major booking websites like Expedia, Travelocity, and Orbitz tack on a booking fee for your purchase raising the price by a few dollars.
This becomes problematic when you look at what sort of cash back is generally offered on travel sites. For the most part, very few airlines offer cash back for purchases made on their website; some offer a meager return, some (like American Airlines, which I frequently fly) offer nothing. On the other hand, booking websites like Orbtiz, Travelocity, etc. offer sizable cash back but that five dollar booking fee often wipes out (or worse) the benefit from potential cash back. Until recently, this meant that it was pretty much a wash: either get the cash back and see it get wiped out by a booking fee, or skip the cash back and skip the booking fee.
Enter Priceline
Priceline.com has changed the situation, though. Priceline.com is usually known for the “Name Your Own Price” feature, where you can bid on hotel and airfare; however, Priceline also offers traditional bookings just like any other travel website. What makes them different is that Priceline now does not charge a booking fee — so that itinerary you found on Orbitz that includes a $5 booking fee would cost you $5 less at Priceline.com. Priceline also offers generous cash back at several sites including FatWallet (4% back at time of writing) and EBates (2%).
I recently helped a friend book a $250 airline ticket that she found on United’s website. By choosing to book it at Priceline instead, she got the same itinerary for the same price that United.com offered, but also earned 4% cash back through FatWallet; that’s $10 saved - not bad!
So keep Priceline in mind next time you’re looking to book airline tickets.
Three Quick Steps Before Check-Out To Maximize Online Shopping
Just about ready to buy that new product online? Hold up - by taking a few quick steps, you could end up saving even more money on your final purchase without much effort.
Before making any purchase online, I always do three things: check for cash-back affiliate links, check for online coupons, and use a credit card that maximizes my reward.
Step One: Check For Cash-Back Affiliate Links
As I’ve mentioned previously in my post on cash-back affiliate websites, it is almost a cardinal sin to make a purchase at an online store without first checking to see if you can earn cash back by using one of the cash-back websites like Ebates, Cashbaq, or FatWallet. There’s little to no effort involved on your part — if one of the sites offers cash back for the store from which you are about to purchase, all you have to do is start your shopping session by using the link at the cash back site.
The website Rewardsdb.com makes this process even easier; when you’ve decided to purchase from a store — say Drugstore.com — all you have to do is go to RewardsDB.com, enter Drugstore.com, and it will tell you all of the sites that offer cash-back at Drugstore.com and what they offer, making easy to very quickly determine what your options are.
Step Two: Check For Coupons
The beauty of the internet is that there are very few secrets — and that is especially true with regards to any coupon or discount codes a store releases. There’s no need to search extensively, but a quick trip to RetailMeNot.com or a Google search for “ABC Store Coupon” can often turn up useful discount codes that you might otherwise not have known about. Never hurts to look!
Step Three: Use a Credit Card That Earns Rewards
Finally, you can make a further dent in the final cost to you by using a credit card that offers rewards suited to your purchase. For example, the Citi mtvU Visa Card offers (an equivalent) 5% back at a bunch of categories that includes Amazon.com. Even a general-purpose card that offers something like 1% cash back can make a dent.
These three steps really don’t take that long — a quick search of some place like Rewardsdb.com, a quick search of some place like RetailMeNot.com, and then using a rewards credit card — but the savings can really add up.
Any one else have any tips to share?
Gift Cards: Why I Hate “Open-Loop” Cards
Dear Uncle Robert,
I know you mean well. I really do appreciate the fact that you still send a gift over the holidays even though I am now old enough where it is no longer an “obligation.” But please reconsider giving me these Visa-branded $25 gift cards, otherwise known as open-loop gift cards since they can be used anywhere that Visa is accepted.
Open-Loop Cards Make the Buyer Look Silly
For one thing, it pains me that anyone, especially a family member of mine, would buy these things, given the activation fee associated with it. Yeah, it is only a few dollars, but it seems silly that you paid $3 or $4 dollars on a $25 gift card. I was looking at American Express Gift Cards the other day, and the most basic version has a $4 activation fee. Yikes. You really could have simply given me cash (which, last I checked, has no activation fee), or even a normal gift card to a major merchant.
Really, this point isn’t so much for me as it is for you. I hate to see you waste money. Read more
Scoring Cheap Hotel Rooms
A couple of times each year, two or three of my friends and I will end up taking a weekend trip somewhere to explore a city for a few days. We are always on foot — so always relying on public transportation — and definitely prefer to stay in the “heart” of a city for both convenience and experience. Thus part of the planning for these trips inevitably involves trying to arrange a hotel room. Unfortunately, hotel rooms in “the heart” of a city can often be quite expensive.
Sometimes I have found you can get lucky using a normal travel search engine — Travelocity, Hotels.com, Expedia, etc. — but these days I find myself frequently turning to William Shatner for help.
Enter Priceline
Well, not quite William Shatner, but the company for which he is a spokesman — Priceline.com. You may have seen their television advertisements, where they talk about “naming your own price” for hotel bookings. Priceline also offers airfare, but I’m going to focus on bidding for hotels. Priceline’s system is simple — they break their hotels into geographic categories (in New York City, for example, the categories incldue Upper East Side, Upper West Side, Times Square, Downtown-Soho, etc.), as well as star-quality rating (1 star through 4 stars).
To try to name your own price, go to Priceline’s website, click on “Name your own Price”, and tell it the city, dates, and number of rooms you are looking for. You’ll then be taken to a page where you specify which areas in your city you want to try to bid for, as well as the hotel star-quality level. You then name your own price, and click submit. Because of the auction nature of the site, you have to provide your credit card information upfront, because if the bid is accepted you will be charged immediately. If your bid is not successful, you will not be charged, and can rebid after a day or two.
Student Ticket Agencies
I needed to book a domestic flight for next month, and with such high airfare prices lately, I spent the last few days trying to find the best airfare deal. While I wouldn’t call the ticket I ultimately purchased a great deal, given the current economic climate I’m pretty happy with it, and, much to my surprise, I ultimately ended up booking it through StudentUniverse.com.
STATravel and StudentUniverse.com
There seem to be two major student ticket agencies out there — STA Travel and StudentUniverse. These ticket agencies target students and (in some cases) faculty, and employ some weak level of verification that you really are a student. In the case of StudentUniverse, my .edu school email address acted as verification . Both STA Travel and StudentUniverse heavily market international and “study abroad” travel services (flights, hotels, train tickets, etc.), but also sell domestic air tickets as well.
Trouble with STA Travel
Take this as anecdotal evidence if you will, but I ended up going with StudentUniverse partly because of the difficulty I had using STA Travel’s website, which seems to both be poorly designed and questionably functional. Read more
Earn Cash-Back For Your Online Shopping
There are a whole crop of websites out there that offer cash back when you shop at major online merchants through their site, at no cost to you.
Earn Cash-Back: A Primer
How do these sites work?
- Each cash back site, such as Ebates, maintains a long list of merchants, such as ProFlowers, Travelocity, BestBuy, Barnes and Noble, and many many more, with which they have affiliate commission agreements.
- Say you need to buy something at Barnes and Noble.com. Ebates has an arrangement with Barnes and Noble where they offer 4% cash back.
- To earn that cash back, you need to click on the link to Barnes and Noble at Ebates; when you do that, Barnes and Noble records that you came from Ebates.
- Shop as you normally would. Other than having to make sure that you complete the purchase in one session (without closing your browser window, for example), your shopping experience at Barnes and Noble will be no different.
- Complete and pay.
- Several weeks later, once Ebates has confirmed that the transaction went through and was not returned, you’ll get your 4% cash back.
It’s a win-win scenario — Ebates gets a commission for sending you to Barnes and Noble, and Ebates passes some of that comission on to you.
Cash-Back Sites
There are a whole slew of sites that offer cash back, many with initial sign-up bonuses. Some of the major ones include:
- Ebates.com - Earn $5 for free with your first purchase (If you use this link, I get $5, too)
- Cashbaq.com - Earn $5 for free with your first purchase (Again, if you use this link, I get a referral commission).
- Fatwallet.com
And many more, each with slightly different lists of participating merchants. Also, note that many airlines and hotel programs offer affiliate programs that offer rewards in the form of frequent flyer miles per dollar spent — unless you’re a frequent traveler, these aren’t the best deals — but they can be useful in extending the expiration date of your frequent flyer miles.
Comparing Cash-Back Sites
One of the most frustrating aspects of these cash-back programs is that the list of merchants is different at each site, and the same merchant at one site may have a different cash-back than a merchant at another site. Knowing which is the best cash-back site to link through is a lot easier when you use a website like RewardsDB; simply go to RewardsDB and enter the website from which you are looking for cash back, and RewardsDB will tell you the different rewards you can get at different cash back sites. Definitely useful.
Enjoy!
The Microsoft Office Burden
Term papers in Microsoft Word, lab reports in Microsoft Excel, presentations in Microsoft PowerPoint — if one set of software has become increasingly essential in a student’s world, it is the Microsoft Office suite. Unfortunately, Microsoft Office is certainly not free, and can at first glance seem incredibly expensive, especially to a student on a budget. There are steps that can be taken, however, to minimize the financial impact.
Do You Need Microsoft Office?
The first question to ask is whether or not you even need Microsoft Office. Almost every student should have an office productivity suite of some kind in order to perform various commonplace tasks; however, there are several free alternatives to Microsoft Office out there that might suit your needs just as well as the expensive alternative. Consider:
- OpenOffice – OpenOffice is a completely free product of the Open Source community. Once you get past the name differences, you’ll find an extremely powerful word processor, spreadsheet manager, and presentation designer, all of which interact almost seamlessly with Microsoft Office. For the types of tasks most students perform, OpenOffice should work great — only seriously power users of Microsoft Office products are likely to notice significant differences. Read PC Magazine’s Review or download OpenOffice at OpenOffice.org.
- Google Docs — Google Docs is a rather impressive service that operates entirely online. Google Docs can create presentations, spreadsheets, or presentations. While many of its features are still quite limited–especially its presentation service–it is becoming more and more comprehensive. In particular, it is quite strong at sharing documents with other users. It also makes it quite easy to upload or save copies to your computer. Check it out at http://docs.google.com/.
One thing to keep in mind when deciding whether or not either of these products would work as an alternative to Microsoft Office is that almost all schools provide free computer labs with free access to Microsoft Office. If that is the case for you, consider whether or not either of these services would work most of the time; if that is the case, you could do most of your work using your free alternative on your computer, and whenever you run into something OpenOffice or Google Doc can’t handle, you can run over to your computer lab.
If You Must Purchase Microsoft Office…
However, I will fully admit that Open Office or Google Docs are not for everyone, and that, for some people, Microsoft Office is a better fit. If that’s the case for you, read on…
- First, find out which Office products you need. It used to be mildly confusing when Microsoft Office came in a couple different versions. As of Office 2007, things have gotten more confusing — eight different versions! You can compare here, but for most students, Microsoft Office Home & Student will do the job, which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote — but does not include Outlook.
- Check out Microsoft’s tip page for students. It has some useful information, but I think this page is more helpful!
- In most cases do not buy it with your computer. Just because its packaged with your brand new computer does not mean you are getting the best deal. The last time I checked Dell, they wanted $149 for the Home & Student version with a new laptop, which is the full price, and as you’ll see, definitely not the best deal.
- If you can wait until August, and are a student, take advantage of Microsoft’s The Ultimate Steal program. It just ended for the academic year, but the program will be back again in the fall and offers the full Ultimate Edition for $60. This is -by far- the best deal for students, so if you can wait until it returns, do so!
- Your next best bet is to check your school’s IT department for school discounts - many schools offer the full Microsoft Office Standard Suite for $65 - $70 dollars through one of their online partners like e-Academy or JourneyEd. This is the route I went, and it worked out well.
- Also, check your school’s campus bookstore - but only after checking your school’s official resources. At my school, the bookstore is not affiliated with the University, and while it offers a Microsoft Office discount, it is not as nice as what my school’s IT department offers.
- If you can’t find a suitable educational discount, you can always buy it at full retail — but check around for the best price. The full retail price for Microsoft Office Home & Student is $149, but Amazon.com has it for $110 (plus, you can use an appropriate credit card to save 5% at Amazon!)
- Finally, and this is not so much a frugality tip as an ethical one - resist the temptation to steal Microsoft Office. I know plenty of college students do this, but regardless of how you try to justify it, it is wrong. Don’t compromise your ethics.
Hopefully these tips can come in handy. Anyone else have any tips for saving on Microsoft Office?
The Outrageous Cost of Movie Tickets
Last Friday, for the first time in a long while, I went and saw a new movie in theaters (Ironman, which was definitely an entertaining, if not lighthearted, movie), and I was somewhat shocked at the amount of money simply buying a ticket cost – $10.75 for an adult ticket, with no student ticket option, and that was before any sort of concessions.
Now, I realize that ticket prices are inevitably going to creep up, if for no other reason than inflation — looking at Box Office Mojo’s list of ticket prices by year adjusted for inflation helps illustrate the extent of this creep, though (As an aside, if you are interested in the economics of movie theaters, you might want to check out a pretty interesting article from Slate, “The Popcorn Palace Economy” by Edward Jay Epstein). Since 2000, ticket prices have gone up a little over 25%, to a current estimated average price of $6.88 for the year. That is a pretty significant increase in price. What can we do?
Do you need to see it in the theater?
The obvious way to save money on movie theater tickets is to simply not go. Over at the Get Rich Slowly blog, Kevin at No Debt Plan recently had a post “Dumb Money: The Movie Theater,” assailing the movie theater experience as largely a waste of money (as opposed to seeing movies at home), listing a variety of ways where movie going is an inconvenient and sometimes unpleasant experience.
If you’re willing to forgo the theater experience for your own living room, its not hard to see how microwaving your own popcorn and loading a DVD can save money. Some tips for saving while renting:
- If you watch movies often, give Netflix a try. I have been a subscriber for years, and have nothing but positive experiences. I stick with the 1 DVD at-a-time for $8.99 a month plan (so for the price of one movie ticket, you can get a good four or five movies a month).
- If you don’t watch movies often, check your public library. My public library offers movie rentals for only a dollar or two. While the selections are often limited, libraries are often quite receptive to suggestions for new acquisitions. (Better yet, you could read a book…)
- You can also check out Redbox, the new DVD kiosk service, which offers DVDs for $1 a night. The kiosks aren’t everywhere, and they often have a limited selection, but for new releases Redbox is a great option. Plus, with creative Google searches, you can often find coupons for free rentals.
- Try to avoid renting from major chains - at my local Blockbuster, it costs almost $5 to rent a movie, which is simply absurd. Try to find a local family-owned rental store, which often have cheaper prices and much better service.
Coincidentally, Mike over at Living the Frugal Life recently posted “Never pay to rent a movie again“, which has a much more extensive list focusing on getting free movies (one recommendation that Mike didn’t include - Hulu.com, which now includes some free movies in addition to their growing selection of free television shows).
If you need to see it in theaters…
While I understand and appreciate the arguments for avoiding movie theaters, sometimes it is just too hard to resist seeing a new movie in theaters, especially one that is generating a lot of buzz and excitement — it is never fun to be culturally out of the loop (I fully plan on seeing Indiana Jones 4 in theaters, for example). Plus, there is something to be said for the movie experience. So, if you absolutely must see a movie in theaters, here are some cost-saving steps that can help mitigate the blow from ticket prices:
Avoiding Airline Fees
I hate annoying fees. Which is why I was not thrilled this morning to read that effective May 12, American Airlines is charging a $25 fee for checking a second bag in most cases (excluding international travel). That makes them at least the eighth carrier to make such a change. Alaska, Continental, Delta, Northwest, United, and US Airways have all announced similar $25 second-bag fees. Even low-cost carrier JetBlue has announced a $20 fee for second checked bag.
When I travel, I rarely check a bag — it does not matter if I’m going on a one-day trip or a two-week trip, I can usually fit everything into my carry-on bag. Unfortunately, the only time I can’t avoid checking a bag is when I’m moving in and out from school for an extended period of time (summer), when I easily fill two bags to capacity. This means that now, in addition to trying to stay under American’s 50 lb limit, I’ll have to give careful consideration as to whether or not I’m willing to pay for an extra bag — $50 round trip.
Unfortunately, with soaring fuel costs and airlines filing for bankruptcy left-and-right (R.I.P. ATA, SkyBus, Aloha, Eos…), these added fees are becoming a common occurrence. Just last month, Delta raised or added fees for an astonishing ten different categories. Its becoming increasingly important to be aware of the changing fees when flying so that you don’t get caught at the airport.
6 Steps to Avoid Fees
- Always purchase from the airline directly if possible (up to $10 saved). Travelocity, Expedia, and Orbitz are great resources for comparing airfare — however, all three charge service fees for buying tickets through them that can range from $5 to $10 a ticket. You can usually avoid this fee if you book through the airline directly. If the itinerary is all on one airline, the airline often, if not usually, will have an equal or better price. Does your itinerary have multiple airlines? Sometimes you can still book through an airline by selecting an “All airlines” search.
- Always purchase over the internet from the airline ($10 or more saved). Most airlines are now charging fees for booking travel over the phone or at ticket counters at airports. Simply purchasing online from the carrier can avoid that fee.
- Check-In Inside ($2 or more saved). Or, better yet, check-in at a Self-Check In Kiosk. Just don’t use a skycap — several airlines now charge for curbside check-in on a per-bag basis.
- Know Your Airline’s Baggage Rules ($25, $50, or more saved). This is the big one that gets most people, and it doesn’t help that the rules are constantly changing. You need to know three different types of restrictions — limits on the number of bags, size of bags, and weight of bags.
- Number of Bags - As mentioned, the big news now is that most airlines are charging for a second checked bag. The going rate seems to be $25 each way. Some will still let you have a third bag, but that will cost you even more.
- Weight of Bag - The standard baggage limit for legacy carriers — American, United, and Delta, at least — seems to be 50 pounds, which is a surprisingly easy weight to hit, especially when you’re trying to avoid the last fee. Go over the 50 lb limit on Delta, and that will cost you $80 each way. Go over it on United, and they’d like a $100 for that 52-pound bag.
- Size of the Bag - This is a less common problem, but most carriers also limit the size of the bag. If you’re using a normal piece of luggage, you shouldn’t have a problem, but its worth checking.
It is hard to stress how quickly these fees can add up, especially given that they apply each way. On Delta, now, if you bring a third bag that weights fifty-one pounds and is oversize, round trip, those fees can add up to $610.
- Know Your Carrier’s Food Policy. Or Don’t Fly Hungry ($5 or more saved) - Only a few airlines even offer snack service these days in domestic coach (Continental being a notable example with coach meals on some domestic flights) — if you’re the type that is going to get hungry, plan ahead. Most airlines are more than happy to give you some food — but for a price. You’ll cringe when you pay $3 for a candy bar on American.
Airport food is usually slightly cheaper than airplane food, but for the best value — and most healthy meal — bring it from home. Over at the Beat of Hawaii and Beyond blog, there is a very informative piece on “How To Eat Well At 30,000 Feet” that talks about how to prepare a meal for a flight.
- Know Your Change Options - Unfortunately, on most airlines, changing airline plans can be expensive after ticketing. On United, to confirm a change in advance will now cost you $150. However, these policies are not uniform and some are quite generous. On Southwest, they won’t charge you a change penalty, just the change in price (you may even get a refund if its cheaper). On American, they’ll let you make a same-day change to an earlier or later flight for $25. Even more useful on American, though, is that on most domestic fares you can standby at the airport for free same-day for an earlier flight — if there is room on an earlier flight, they’ll put you on for free.
No one likes being hit with extra fees, but with a little planning you can work to avoid them.
Anyone else have any tips for avoiding airline fees?
Favorite Student Credit Card - Citi mtvU Visa Card
College students spend a lot of money. Friends of mine occasionally ask me what credit card I would recommend, and while it usually makes me cringe to say it, my answer is always the mtvU Platinum Select Visa Card for College Students from Citibank. Despite the annoying name and card design, this card has probably the greatest reward structure for college students, and has been the primary card I have used in college. What makes it special? The card offers rewards for book purchases, restaurants, good grades, and paying your bill on time.
ThankYou Points and the Citi mtvU Card
The mtVU card offers Citi ThankYou points as rewards — you can view the current catalog on the ThankYou Network website, but the best value usually comes from $100 gift cards, student loan rebates, or travel rewards. I plan on covering ThankYou Points in more detail later, but the bottom line is that if you save your points and redeem wisely, you should be able to get about $100 in rewards out of 10,000 points.
You can earn points for a variety of activities, but most significantly it offers 5 ThankYou Points per dollar at restaurants and bookstores — that is effectively a 5% reward on all your textbooks and restauraunt charges, which can be huge for a college student.
- Earn 5 Thank You Points per dollar for purchases at restaurants, fast food joints, bookstores, and selected entertainment categories.
- Earn 1 Thank You Point for every dollar spent on any other category.
- Earn up to 2,000 Thank You Points a semester for maintaining high grades
- Earn 25 Points a month for paying your bill on time (which you should be doing without any incentive!)