Tuesday, February 11, 2014

February Trip booked and paid

I've been looking closely at travel since my brother will be graduating from Marines at the end of the month. Driving was the better option, at the low low cost of about 11hrs and $112 each way (or 22hrs, $224 just in the drive). This sounds like a lot, but a heck of a lot better than the $400 plane ticket. Right now, those tickets are up in the $500's, but when I was looking, it was $385 from my preferred airport. I had no idea on hotels, but I figured $65 or so a night for 2 nights. Yup, this was shaping up to be one expensive trip either way I looked at it.

I also started looking at Priceline, and found that if I fly out of other airports, it'd be cheaper. It's usually like that, but rarely with such a gap as this. A whole vacation package (flight, hotel and rental car for 2 days during a weekend) came out to this:
 
Not too bad, honestly. One of the cheapest, but closest hotels, a rental car for 2 days and flying from a different airport at decent times (if we can call 11:40pm arrival a decent time). I kept looking, and today I looked again. Same package, same place, same price.
 
For the heck of it, I tried it with a different browser and went InPrivate (so no cookies read or stored), and this came up:

 
Wow, talk about a difference in amounts!
 
I refreshed the old one, but it kept showing the higher rate. I decided this may be as cheap as it gets and bought it, $370 after taxes and all. If we want to consider the real cost of this... I used 9% cashback (~$30), plus 1% (~$3) from my credit card, then not having to drive for 22+hrs AND not having to use up a vacation day or take an unpaid day at work, and this may be the best I could do with such a short notice. It will all be paid for from my vacation fund, which still had $400 leftover from last year. Time to start working on that fund to get it up to $800, which was my target increase for 2014.
 
I also get to drive a rental car. Woo hoo! I've been wanting to do that for a while. That's one less thing on my list for the month.

10 comments:

  1. Dang girl, roundtrip flight to SC, 2 nights lodgings and a rental car for 2 days for that price is great!!!
    But you know, I'd have driven down with you if you had to go by car....... ;-)

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    1. That's a good price? Maybe I was being too cheap and thought I should cover it all with $300... glad it's a good deal! Good enough for me, that's for sure.

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  2. Funny how they can up the prices... I've heard people that search with a Mac pay more on average...

    HS

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    1. I've heard that too! My first search (expensive one) was in Firefox, the other one was InPrivate through Internet Explorer. Hum indeed... makes you wonder what sort of games are at play with these things.

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  3. I'd never heard of InPrivate before. I'm going to have to test it out the next time I am planning a trip!

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  4. Wow, that's an awesome deal! And not driving for 22 hours - priceless!

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  5. Ditto on the InPrivate browsing.. never heard of it! I need to check it google it. You got a great price!

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  6. Awesome Deal, Great Job! I'm already itching to start planning another trip. Been checking out all the travel sites, but it'll be awhile. Just something to think about.

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  7. That's a great deal! I've never heard that people pay different prices depending on what computer they are using.

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  8. You made a great decision. Good homework, Tanner!!!

    Peace <3
    Jay

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