Beating Broke

Take an Off Season Fall Vacation and Save Big

August 20, 2012 By MelissaB 6 Comments

The summer is rapidly drawing to a close, and you may think that your summer vacation window is closing. However, if you are looking to take a trip on the cheap, now is the perfect time to take a late summer vacation and save some serious money.

For many destinations, the summer is the top vacation season. Families pack up and take road trips to a variety of locations. Once school begins, tourism drops off significantly. In fact, “The Travel Industry Association says that 38 percent of trips are taken during the summer; the number drops sharply to 23 percent in fall” (MSNBC.com).

You can take advantage of this drop off by scoring better rates and benefiting from thinning crowds. Here are some trips you may want to consider:

Take a trip to the beach—in September. This isn’t possible for everyone, but if you don’t yet have children or you home-school, September may be the perfect time to hit the beach. It is still warm, but the crowds have left and you benefit from discounted rates. Great destinations include beaches on the coast of North Carolina or even Key West, where the prime tourist season doesn’t ramp up until November and December.

Visit Mickey—Take a trip to Disneyland. Disneyland can be very expensive, but if you plan a trip in the fall, you will benefit from reduced rates and shorter to no lines for rides. The trade off is that the park closes earlier and that there may not be as many shows being performed. However, I will take that trade off if it means I will save a few hundred dollars on accommodations and will save time not waiting in line!

Take a trip to the big city—Cities also experience a drop in tourism after the crisp fall weather sets in. While New York City, Chicago and Miami may be prohibitively expensive in the summer months, hotels often discount their rates in the fall, making a trip to the city a bit more affordable. Most of the big city locales, regardless of location around the country, still have relatively comfortable weather. In Chicago and New York City, you don’t generally have to worry about biting cold weather and snow at least until November, leaving you the entire fall to enjoy.

Go big guns and visit Europe—I made the mistake of traveling in Europe in August, and it was packed and expensive. Unbeknownst to me, many Europeans have August off and vacation with their families in addition to all of the travelers who come from outside Europe. Save yourself money and the need to fight the crowds by traveling to Europe in the fall. The only drawback? You may have to deal with some rain (or sometimes a lot of rain), especially if you are traveling to a Mediterranean country. You can defeat this drawback in part by scheduling museum days and other indoor attractions for the rainy days.

While the dog days of summer may be past us, there is still plenty of warmth left. Take advantage of the lovely fall weather to take an off season vacation and save some serious money.

_{img credit: librarygroover, on Flickr.}

Saving On Eyeglasses

August 17, 2012 By Shane Ede 2 Comments

If you’re one of the people who needs them, eyeglasses can be one of the most expensive medically necessary things you will have. Unless you need some other fancy piece of equipment, your eyeglasses can cost several hundred dollars up to a thousand dollars or more if you decide to go with the name brand fashion designer frames. (If you’re reading this blog, I fully expect you wouldn’t, but we all know there are those that do!) Before I go much further, I must admit to not being one of those people who needs eyeglasses. (yet.) I have, so far, been blessed with good vision and very few problems as far as my eyes go. My wife, on the other hand, is not so lucky. And, if either of the kids takes after her in the vision department, we’ll be looking at some not-so-fun expenses in the future.

Some people will go to the optometrist, get their prescription, and then order their lenses right on the spot. And, most of those people will spend a whole lot more for their lenses and frames than they really should. Depending on how often your prescription, and thus your lenses, changes, you might be buying new lenses and frames on a pretty regular basis. Add it all up, and the expense can be enough to make you actually consider cutting off the bottoms of coke bottles and super-gluing them to some bent coat hanger wire. Attractive image, no?

What should you do to save some money on your eyeglasses?

Start by shopping around. Just because your optometrist is your eye doctor doesn’t mean you need to purchase all of your eye related devices there. The doctor already has gotten paid for the visit. No other compensation for their time and the visit are necessary. Most towns will have at least two optometrists, and bigger cities will likely have 10-20 or more. Bigger cities may also have at least one of the new discount eyeglasses stores that have been popping up recently. Take your prescription home, then call a few of them and ask about prices for the eyeglasses you need.

Take your business online. If you know what style of frames you want, there are several places where you can purchase prescription glasses online. Places like Glasses.com (run by the same company that runs 1-800-Contacts), can offer discount prices on eyeglasses because they don’t have as much overhead as many physical retail stores have with employees. Also, because they aren’t in a physical location, they can tap into the wider customer base of the internet and get bulk discounts on the glasses that they pass along to the customers.

One last place to look that many people forget about are warehouse and membership stores. Places like Costco and Sam’s Club usually will offer discounted glasses to their members. Even some Walmart supercenters have vision centers in the building and can offer a better price on glasses because of their size and purchasing power.

Eyeglasses are an important, and often necessary, thing that many people will use over their lifetime. As your prescriptions and tastes change, you’ll want or need to pick up new pairs of glasses. Shopping around, both locally at other optometrists and at warehouse stores, and online has the potential to save you hundreds of dollars on your next pair of glasses, and thousands over your lifetime.

Use the money you saved to help pay off a credit card or some other debt!

What other tricks, tips, and hints to you have for saving on eyeglasses?

_{img credit: NCBrian, on Flickr}

I Quit My Job: Where I Went Wrong

August 15, 2012 By Shane Ede 13 Comments

I tried, through my previous posts, to adequately cover the reasoning, and process, of quitting my job. One thing that I didn’t cover, however, was the mistakes I made along the way. I think that, partially, I couldn’t because I hadn’t had enough time to ruminate on them. I also think that I couldn’t because I didn’t want to expose my weaknesses. Now, I’ve had time to think about it, and I think I can easily identify the things that I would do differently should I have the opportunity to try again. Maybe they aren’t all mistakes (I don’t count some of them that way).

Quitting Your Job The Right Way

One of the biggest changes I would likely have made would have been to quit the right way. The decision I made, while necessary, was made quickly (over two days), and without much fore-planning. Part of the motivation was that I had wanted out of the job for quite some time. How much I wanted out wasn’t really clear until after I was out. In hindsight, I should have started making moves well before I did. Unfortunately, I was mired in the comfort of a position that I had held for over seven years. Lesson learned: comfort is nice, but freedom is nicer.

Have a Full Plan B

Because of the hastiness of my departure from my position, I didn’t have a full plan B. I had no idea where the money was coming from to even partially replace my income. What income I had wasn’t dependable. In a way, I was smart enough to at least get a part-time job. But, without a full plan B, I think it was likely doomed to fail.

Get After IT

This is probably the biggest mistake I made through the whole ordeal. I quit my job, without a plan B, and then didn’t get after it nearly as much as I could have. I wanted to focus entirely on my blogs and websites and grow them to at least a part-time income. I severely underestimated the time it would take to do so, and should have spread my roots a bit and taken on other small projects to fill in dead time, and especially, fill in dead income spots. Towards the end of this round of self-employment, I started to realize that I needed to pick up my game, but by then it was too little, too late.

Have an Exit Plan

Nobody likes to think that they are going to fail. Just like nobody likes to think that they are going to get into a car accident or die, but we still buy car insurance and life insurance anyways. While you can’t just go out and buy entrepreneurial failure insurance, you can have an exit plan so that you not only know when it’s time to move on to the next thing, but you also have a plan on how to get there. I had none of that. As a consequence, I probably waited several weeks too long to even begin looking for a new full-time job, and risked not getting something in time to fill in the income I needed when our savings was depleted. I got lucky. My first paycheck at my new position came only a few days after the last transfer from the savings account happened. Even so, we’re still struggling to keep up without that cushion that we had grown accustomed to.

I Would Do It All Over Again

Despite all those mistakes I made, I would still do it all over again. I know the mistakes I made, and am better able to prepare myself to not make them again. I’m not afraid of failing. At least not to such a degree that it prevents me from trying. It’s a little bit like riding a bike. You’re going to fall off. It’s going to hurt. But, you’re going to get back on the bike because you like riding your bike. I like riding the entrepreneurial bike!

img credit : Crystl, on Flickr