January 2016 | Ditching Normal

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San Diego for Rihanna. Rewards Flight in 12 Days

January 31, 2016

A few weeks ago, Lacey told me that she really wanted to go to San Diego to see an upcoming Rihanna concert. Being that we just used all of our flight and hotel rewards points to book our Final Four and Malta trips, I didn’t think this would be possible on such short notice. My initial response to Lacey was “I’m sorry, we just can’t afford it right now.” A day or two later I realized what an asshole response that was since I hadn’t even investigated our potential rewards options yet.

Rather than spending time on my acceptance speech for the shittiest husband of the year award, I decided to hop on the computer and see if there was any way to make this trip happen. After all, Lacey was amazing enough to let us use some of our rewards points and cash on our upcoming trip to Houston for the Final Four, so I needed to do my absolute best to return the favor. I began searching for any rewards programs that might help us get to San Diego for free or at a discount. Not kidding, it took me less than 10 minutes to find an option that would get us round trip flights from Boise to San Diego for $87 ($75 sign up fee and $12 taxes and fees while booking the flights). More importantly, this option was doable on short notice.

Below is the process I used to help us save over $400 on flights which ultimately made this trip possible for us…

…oh and spoiler alert, at the end of this post is a video of Lacey dancing to Rihanna on Halloween last year.

As usual, I started with Google. I typed in “Boise to San Diego Flights”. The returning results let me know which airlines we could use (Alaska, American Airlines, United, and Delta). I noticed that Alaska Airlines offers a non-stop flight, so I immediately Googled “Alaska Airlines Rewards Program”. I was looking for the current Alaska Airlines credit card offer and for the booking section on Alaska’s site that would show me if there were available flights on the dates we needed, and if so, how many rewards miles we’d need to book ’em.

I found that the current rewards offer for this card is 25k miles “upon approval”. That’s amazing! More often than not, rewards cards like this have spending requirements that can takes 2-3 months to achieve. This card gives you the points “in 2-3 weeks” following your application approval. Perfect for a short notice trip!

While snooping in the booking section on Alaska’s site, I found that there were round trip flights Boise-San Diego on the dates we needed that cost exactly 25k bonus miles. Heyo! I immediately submitted our applications for this rewards card.

We received the bonus points in 12 days and were able to book our highly discounted flights for $12. Again, the sign up fee for this card is $75, so our total cost is $87 for these flights. Still a lot better than the $500-ish we would have paid for full price tickets. We used the extra money saved on these flights to get some pretty decent seats for the Rihanna concert.

To keep the rest of the trip budget friendly, we’ll be staying at the Hampton Inn near the Gaslamp district. Why this hotel? I know it doesn’t sound super luxurious, but it has an airport shuttle, free hot breakfast, and is super close to the public transport station that we’ll be taking to the concert. This hotel is also within walking distance of all the restaurants and bars we’re hoping to check out. All of these perks combined will likely save us another $200-$300 on our trip.

So it looks like we’ll “shine bright like a diamond” with Rihanna in a few weeks down in San Diego. Hopefully the weather is beautiful and we won’t need to take an umbrella-ella-ella-ay-ay. …I’m such a dork sometimes I make myself want to hide under a table.

Hopefully you found this useful and can use the process outlined above to book your own vacay on short notice. For more tips and options, check our previous post relating to this subject here.

We’ll see you soon San Diego!

As promised, an awesome video of Lacey Killing it to Rihanna on Halloween last year. …dressed as a Day of the Dead.

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Lifestyle

Combat the Winter Blues

January 27, 2016

January is by far my least favorite month of the year. This year has been especially rough with doctors appointments, yearly reviews, stitches, a (ridiculous) cancer scare and a very stressful few days being on call for work. Combine all of that nonsense with cold, gray weather and it’s hard for this hot-weather-loving girl to even make it to Valentine’s Day without running away to Florida. I thought now would be a good time to list out ways to combat the winter blues, mostly to remind myself that winter isn’t all bad.

1.Get outside anytime it’s sunny

This means pulling yourself away from your work station for a quick walk outside, or bundling up on the weekends for a stroll to a nearby coffee shop. It will be good for your muscles and brain! Get that blood pumping and soak up some natural Vitamin D. If it’s way too cold (for me that’s single digits), at least get to a window and let it shine on you through the glass!

2.Participate in winter activities (snowboarding, snowshoeing, sledding, tubing, ice skating, etc.)

Now is the time to take full advantage of doing things that are typically only available a few months of the year. Don’t have any equipment for the above winter activities? Then rent! Or let you inner eight-year old out and build a snowman. 🙂

3.Exercise

What better time to start a new workout plan than the beginning of a new year? After all of the holiday indulging it shouldn’t be too hard to find the motivation. Produce those endorphins to fight off the winter blues!

4.Travel, even if it’s somewhere close by

A change of scenery is always a good thing, especially because winter can oftentimes seem so repetitive. Take a weekend trip to a nearby city. Explore a new part of town. I have never actually done it, but I have always wanted to try a “staycation”-rent a hotel in your town just to make it seem like you are on a real vacation and not distracted by the mundane tasks/chores at your house.

5.Better yet, travel somewhere warm!

This is obviously my favorite one, and I wish I could do this for the entire of months of January and February. I guess this year I will just have to settle for a quick weekend trip to sunny San Diego. 😉

6.Spend time with family and friends (have a party!)

Spending time with family and friends is my cure for everything. I love attending parties and although I’m a terrible host, I love having people over too! In fact, I think it’s about time for another game night…..

7.Laugh! (watch your favorite funny movies/shows)

This is the easiest and cheapest way to kick winter’s ass. Invite that hilarious friend over, watch your favorite comedy, watch YouTube…there’s always hilarious animal videos on there. Fortunately for me, this is easy to come by because I happen to be married to the funniest man on the planet.

8.Take Vitamin D supplement

They even make Vitamin D in gummies for adults. Seriously, the taste like gummy bears. I pretty much overdose on these November-April.

9.Volunteer

The best way to fight any sad feelings-get out and volunteer! Volunteering is a great reminder to appreciate what you have. Plus, helping others just feels good!

If you have any additional tips that will help make the cold winter months a little more fun, PLEASE let us know!

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Rewards Points Travel

How to Book a Free Vacation on Short Notice

January 21, 2016

Most of our “traveling for free with credit card rewards points” posts so far have focused on getting BIG trips for free. Trips that take months of planning and spending with various cards to achieve. Well what if you can’t wait that long? What if you want to get a free vacation on short notice? Spoiler alert…you can.

I’ve spent the last few weeks researching this topic as Lacey and I are trying to squeeze in another quick vacay before our upcoming trip in April to see the Final Four. The weather in Boise can be pretty gnarley in February, so it would be perfect timing to go somewhere warmer for a couple days. That being said, we don’t have a lot of extra cash laying around right now. The only way we’ll be able to book a trip for February is if it is either free or at least highly discounted.

Here are some options I came up with during my snooping around that I wanted to share with you guys. Hopefully this helps you guys get an idea of how you could book a trip of your own in just a few weeks!

Get a super cheap flight in about 2 weeks:

Apply for the Alaska Airlines credit card (25k miles for signing up and paying the $75 sign up fee)

You can book your rewards flight about 2 weeks after you get approved for the card.
Alaska partners with a bunch of different airlines which results in a ton of travel options within the U.S
In just a couple weeks, you could be flying to sunny Florida (for example) for about $100 (sign up fee and taxes). …which would cost us about $450 normally from Boise

Get a couple nights free at a hotel in 4-5 weeks:

Apply for the Chase Hyatt Credit Card and you’ll be ready to redeem your 2 free rewards nights in about 4-5 weeks (if you hit the $1000) spending requirement.

The Hyatt has a ton of beautiful properties around the world where you can redeem this reward.
The super lower spending requirement makes it easy to get the reward bonus quickly
$0 sign up fee for the first year. It’s $75 per year after that but they give you a free night every year on your sign-up anniversary.

The beautifulPark City Hyatt. Image from expedia.com

Cover Additional Vacation Expenses with Points

Apply for the Capital One Venture Card and take it with you on your trip. You will be able to use the reward points you earn from this card to pay for many of your additional expenses on your trip. You can wipe out up to $400 dollars of expenses with the 40k bonus points you’ll receive after hitting the spending requirement.

Details on how you can redeem you Capital One Venture rewards

While I know there are numerous other ways to book a free/discounted trip on short notice, hopefully the info I shared above will at least get your wheels turning. You CAN book a trip with points on relatively short notice. The next time you get that “I gotta get outta here for a few days” feeling, remember that you can do it…soon…with points!

Lacey and I will keep you posted on where we end up going in February. It’ll likely be somewhere sunny!

Please share any additional questions or tips you may have!

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Lifestyle

Game Plan for 2016

January 16, 2016

Instead of making New Year’s resolutions, we decided to make an entire game plan for 2016. A lot of our goals will require weeks or months to plan so we’re starting now to make sure we get as much of this stuff done as possible. From travel, to home remodeling, to learning new languages…our list is kinda all over the place. Check out our process and decide if making your own list might help you achieve more this year.

Right away we noticed some immediate benefits from making this list. First of all, making our list forced us to think about and talk about 1. WHY it was a goal? and 2. HOW could/would we be able to accomplish it? Adding notes to our goals helped us get an idea of how much time and planning each goal will require. Sharing our list with you guys is already resulting in us feeling a greater level of accountability for achieving these goals. We realized that now that we have this list, we can check back in on it every month to track our progress.

We set our sites on a few lofty goals because we want to do our best to keep up with the eventful pace we set for ourselves in 2015. You can read more about that here. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to top last year (cuz we got married!), but below is how we’re going to try…

Visit at least 10 different cities

With 7 cities already being booked (with rewards points), we should be able to hit this mark. So far, we’ll be visiting San Diego (for Rihanna), Houston (for the Final Four), New York City, Florence, Rome, Malta, and Chicago. If all goes well in the coming months, we should be adding Maui to this list
To make sure we get to the last few cities to complete our goal of 10, we’re going to keep learning about the points planning/travel hacking process through our friends at 10xtravel.com

very excited for Florence in May

Continue Downsizing junk and bills

Right now, we have 2 cars. While it’s pretty awesome to have 2 cars, we don’t need both and could eliminate about $4,000 in bills by getting rid of one of ’em. That being said, anyone wanna buy a suburu outback sport?
We’re about to do some major spring cleaning and plan on getting rid of any unnecessary items we find.

Haven’t worn it in a few months? Take it to GoodWill!!!

Continue Paying off Mortgage ASAP

We’ve been able to keep up with paying double on our mortgage for the past 6 months or so, but we’re hoping to paying a bit more once we ditch a car.
How are we going to do this? By utilizing credit cards rewards points to discount our travel costs. You can read more about this process here.

Hopefully we can pay off this little guy soon!

Spend More Time with Family and Friends

Travel, live events, and life in general is more fun when you’re spending it with loved ones. Get ready to spend more time with the Thompsons this year!
We’re going to reach out to friends and family to travel with us more along with other things.

excited to meet this crew in Malta this summer

excited to meet back up with this crew in Malta this summer

Improve our non-existent Photography Skills

This includes getting a decent camera and finally learning how to use one.
We’ll be bugging our friend Vlad from Radion Photography a whole lot for help!

A favorite pic from 2015

Bedroom Remodel

Our downtown condo was pretty beat up when we purchased it as a short-sale a few years ago. We’ve successfully remodeled every room except for the bedroom so far. A bedroom remodel, including some new carpet/flooring, larger bed, and a better closet space, are LONG overdue.
How are we going to do it? Well, with some help from YouTube DIY videos, we’re hoping to cut costs by doing the work ourselves. We’ll likely use the money from (hopefully) selling a car, to help us get a king sized bed.

More Collaborations

We’re looking forward to working with as many creative minds as possible this year. Photogs, bloggers, travel addicts, and anyone else that has a passion for making life exciting. If you fall in this category…hit us up!!!
How are we going to do this? By stepping out of our comfort zones and initiating communication with the talented folks we’ve grown to admire. Emails and social media messages will likely lead the way!

recent collaboration with Radion Photography, Ira and Lucy, and Next Adventure Studio

Save $15,000 or more by Traveling with Rewards Points

Wouldn’t that be awesome to say at the end of the year? We’re over half way there so far. It’s going to take some serious planning to finish out this goal though. We’re all ears to any tips you may have.
How are we going to do this? By continuing to plan a head with reward points traveling. The planning we did last year has resulted in us saving nearly $9k already this year.

Our recent trip we booked on points was featured on 10xtravel.com

Continue Gradually Learning a 2nd Language

Lacey’s going to be working on Spanish while Mat keeps puttering through Italian. The plan is to try and make traveling a bit more comfortable while visiting these countries. Comprende?
How are we going to do this? We have the Rosetta Stones for these languages and are going to start scheduling at least 2 days a week to sit down for an hour or two of studying. Once we get the basics, we’ll look for some in-person classes we can sign up for.

Start Mixing in Some Yoga

We’ve had a few more aches and pains over the past year that are likely due to our lack of flexibility. While lifting weights is fun, we need to start taking care of our joints as well. We’re thinking of trying out Sage Yoga in Boise.
How are we going to do this? This ones fairly straight forward. We’ll get signed up for classes at Sage! Stay tuned for possible review of Sage Yoga.

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Rewards Points Travel

Points Planning for Maui

January 9, 2016

One thing we’ve learned since getting into the reward points traveling game is that it takes a lot of planning ahead. So even though we just finished booking our big trip for May, it’s already time to start planning our next adventure. While we’d love to book another 2 week multi-city trip, it’s not very realistic with our work schedules to take this much time off in the same year. That being said, we are going to be working toward a free trip to a single location for this fall…Maui.

Being that Lacey and I have just begun planning for this trip, it would be perfect timing for any of you that are interested in taking a similar vacay, to start planning with us.

After receiving some excellent tips from our friends in regards to rewards traveling to Hawaii, Lacey and I have settled on our initial plan. Here goes…

Step 1: Getting free Hotels

We just signed up for the Chase Hyatt Card. The reward bonus for this card is 2 free nights at a Hyatt property. We’re looking forward to using these rewards to stay at the beautiful Andaz Maui. With Lacey and I both signing up for this card, we’ll obviously receive 4 free nights total. We’re only looking to spend 5-6 nights in Maui total, so this Hyatt card is going to take care of most of our hotel costs for this trip. This card has $0 in sign up fees and only has a spending requirement of $1,000 over 3 months to receive the 2 free nights. Pretty awesome! We’re still going to work on getting 1-2 more free nights for the trip but haven’t yet decided on where we want to stay. I have my eye on the Grand Wailea Resort from Hilton 😉

Andaz Maui from Hyatt

Step 2: Get Free Flights

Once we get the reward nights from the Chase Hyatt card for the hotel stays (likely 2 months-ish from now), we’ll start working on our free flights. The tentative plan right now is to use the British Airways card for our travel. British Airways partners with American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, as well as some others that should help give us some solid options for traveling from Boise to Maui. The rewards we’ll receive from the sign up bonus should be enough to get us to Maui, but if not, there are a few different cards we could get from partners of BA to help supplement our airline points. As we’re still a couple months out from signing up for the BA card, this plan could very well change depending on any new rewards offers that other airlines may come out with this spring. We’ll keep you posted if we find any better options.

Step 3: Get Free Stuff in Maui

Thanks to some awesome advice from our new friend Bryce at 10xtravel.com, we now know that if we take the Capital One Venture card on our vacation with us…and use it for all additional expenses at the hotel (food, spa service, excursions, etc.), the reward bonus of 40,000 points we’ll receive from this card will help us wipe out up to $400 of expenses during this trip. Pretty awesome tip! There are obviously exclusions and exceptions that you’ll want to read about before assuming the types of travel expenses this card will take care of, but if used correctly, this card will be a huge help.

To wrap it up for now, Lacey and I are super excited at the opportunity to travel more this fall. We’ll keep you updated on our progress towards Maui. Let us know if you have any questions, tips, or anything else you’d like to share.

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Lifestyle

We Got Married Again! Kind of…

January 5, 2016

So we didn’t really get married again, per say, but a couple of months ago our amazing wedding photographer Vlad from Radion Photography asked if we would like to participate in a promotional wedding shoot. Of course we said “Hell yeah!”. We said yes because we loved our wedding photos and Vlad and his wife became like extended family on our wedding trip to Mexico. Vlad is not only an amazing photographer, but he is an even better human. Plus, another chance for me to wear a wedding dress? Of course I will be there!

The shoot was styled by the amazing Heidi from Ira & Lucy, my hair was done by Shawna Hines and my make up by Jamie at Blush. There were also videographers with Next Adventure Studio from Sun Valley which made me totally wish we could have somehow squished videography in our tiny wedding budget. This also got me thinking we should probably plan mini-weddings and renew our vows every year. Who doesn’t want to go to another party every year?

It was really fun getting to see some of the behind the scenes work that goes on for a styled wedding shoot. Not going to lie, it was also fun getting to play “bride” again. Check out Oregon Bride Magazine for their feature on this shoot!

All photos below from Radion Photography.

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