SOMETIMES, IN MY MORE charitable moments, I feel a twinge of pity for the poor scoundrels who have volunteered themselves to produce articles on personal finance matters for Yahoo! Finance.
For those of you unfamiliar with the site, it serves as a news aggregator about happenings in the financial markets, and it does a good job at this. However, it does less good of a job at producing original content. Much of the content, at least from what I can tell, comes in the form of commentary, opinion and light news articles from a stable of experts, who write these articles with varying degrees of competence. A few of the writers -- Harold Maass and Ben Stein -- are actually quite good at what they do. Most of the contributors, however, write such absolute drivel that I think Steve Ballmer held them up as Exhibit A for why he wasn't paying $37 a share.
I don't necessarily blame the writers for this, as I don't know what exactly they are told to produce. However, there is clearly a mismatch between what the site's managers think they should produce and what the site's readers expect them to produce. This is most often seen in the user comments left in response to the articles, in which readers will regularly blast contributors for writing things any functioning adult should figure out on their own. (This may be true, but one can't necessarily fault the writer if he is told to write for a general audience).
Readers' responses to a recent column from Mr David Bach exemplify this reality. Mr Bach, a former executive with Morgan Stanley, writes about personal-finance matters in a column known as "The Automatic Millionaire." This week, Mr Bach wrote a column on travel that ... well, let's just say it left a lot to be desired, because there were such amazing howlers in it that it gave the impression Mr Bach has himself not traveled past the Triborough Bridge. These included the typographical error that identified Hungary as a city and the assertion it would take four to five days to drive from Los Angeles to Seattle. (This would only be the case if one drove a Model T, and even then, one might make it sooner).
Typical responses to the article were as follows: "I feel stupider after reading this article," "More useless drivel from this putz," and "Pretty good article, but he forgot to mention one of THE BEST money saving tips when traveling: PICKPOCKETING!" But perhaps the best was:
I'm planning to save a bundle on my family vacation this year with David's tips. We'll go to a third world country called the United States. Instead of pampering ourselves, we'll walk to all our destinations, cook our own meals and go somewhere that is cheap and close (say western Kansas) even though it is completely unappealing. We'll sleep in our car at rest areas and hire a couple hobos to take us on a tour of a downtown. Boy won't my wife just be so happy that we saved all that money. I might even be able to afford the ensuing divorce.
Now, with such forceful blowback, one may wonder just what Mr Bach wrote to garner such condemnation. In Mr Bach's defense, some of his tips were actually somewhat useful -- try alternative travel Web sites, or consider alternative lodgings that might prove cheaper. However, others were of limited utility: for instance, train travel, although I much approve of it, is slower and often not cheaper than air travel. Some of Mr Bach's ideas were just downright odd: for instance, the one about paying locals to offer tours of their areas. I don't know about you, but if you ask me, you can just go exploring for fun and not pay anyone anything. Also, they won't be insulted at your cheapo offer.
The idea of paying for a hotel kitchen on longer-term trips also didn't make much sense, at least to me; there are ways around the restaurant problem that are cheaper. And the bit about staying close to home also didn't seem to really fit in with the idea of a vacation. As Mr Bach wrote:
When the cost of gas, the rigor of air travel, and the hassle of packing up the kids is just too daunting, consider staying home and discovering nearby attractions you may never have seen.Tape a map of your metro area to a dartboard. Once a month, throw a dart at the map. Wherever the dart lands, that's where you go that weekend to explore, even if you've been there before (the obvious exception is areas that might be dangerous). You can still make some amazing discoveries in your own backyard, spend quality time with family, and recharge your batteries -- not to mention save a bundle of cash.
Don't do this. When I was living in Los Angeles, a colleague of mine who was heading out of town on a long weekend had his car break down, and he got stranded in Fontana, Calif. Let's just say the weekend in Fontana was not the optimal way for the guy to spend his vacation. Besides, the kids probably wouldn't be enthused if you suddenly announced the family was going to vacation in ... New Rochelle, N.Y. Or Pacoima, Calif. Or Jeannette, Pa. You get my drift.
However, as a travel enthusiast myself, here are my clever ideas for saving money while vacationing. I have divided them into two categories: Travel for the Single Guy and Travel for the Single Guy Who is Traveling With His Girlfriend. These separate categories are warranted because -- well, let's face it, a single man traveling alone can cut certain corners he wouldn't dare dream of doing if traveling with a woman. Conversely, while traveling with a lady, a man may want to entertain spending notions he wouldn't even consider if he was traveling alone. So let's get into them, shall we?
TRAVEL TIPS FOR THE SINGLE MAN:
1. Stay with friends for some or all of the journey. Hotels are expensive. Staying with friends is free, even if etiquette dictates you buy your friends at least one meal for the hospitality. Another option, instead of buying your friends dinner, is to help with the dishes.
2. Your hotel is a place to sleep. There is no sense spending oodles of money on a room when you're going to spend eight hours at most in it per day. Instead, go as cheap as you can on the hotel, while making sure it still has certain fancy options, such as working door locks and hot running water.
3. Eat cheap. Although travelers should always endeavor to eat at sit-down restaurants for their daily bread, this does not mean one has to be extravagant. If you're clever, you should be able to get a really good breakfast for like $5 or perhaps $7. This will allow you to take a light lunch (again, for about $5 or $7), and then get a decent dinner for less than $15.
4. On a road trip? Stop by Meijer or something. There is no point in stopping repeatedly for soft drinks and snacks while on your road trip. Stop once at a Meijer and pick up a cheap twelve-pack of soda (I like Diet Squirt myself) and a bunch of snacks. This will run you like $20 and provide plenty of sustenance for the trip. If you're clever, you can get breakfast stuff on the go or a cheap dinner as well, saving yourself bunches of money that you can spend instead on football souveniers.
5. Renting a car isn't such a bad idea. Car rental prices are so cheap that you can hire a car for as little as $20 or $30 per day. If you're putting bunches of miles on it, you'll still come out ahead on the deal compared to using your own vehicle once you factor in depreciation. For instance, on my recent trip back to Michigan, I drove about 800 miles. If you figure depreciation for a typical auto is 15 cents per mile, that works out to $120. My car rental cost was $144, meaning I essentially got the car -- a nice, new car with satellite radio -- for free.
6. Use loyalty programs. This goes hand-in-hand with Item No. 1 below, but when you're traveling alone, loyalty programs are a great way to build up credit for when you're traveling with your girlfriend and want to splurge without spending additional money.
TRAVEL TIPS FOR THE SINGLE MAN
TRAVELING WITH HIS GIRLFRIEND
1. Now is the time when you use your frequent flyer miles. There are two acceptable routes here. It is a good idea, for instance, to use your frequent flyer miles to buy the tickets outright. However, it is a better idea to use your frequent flyer miles to secure upgrades to first class. It can be difficult to actually buy tickets that you want with miles, so the upgrade option may well prove a better use of them. Plus, you're flying first class and your consumer acumen will impress your girlfriend accordingly.
2. Travel off-peak. For most young men (and younger women), the value in traveling comes in the traveling. It is not until you are older that the actual time of the travel becomes noteworthy amongst your peers. Simply put, going to Europe or the Caribbean is cool enough. The timing is less important. So save a bunch of money by going during the off-season -- if not the height of the low season, at least off enough so that you'll be able to snag some serious discounts.
3. Plan artsy/romantic things to do. These often do not cost a lot of money, but often your girlfriend will like them, which consequently means she will go along with your clever ideas, such as spending the whole day on Sunday watching football. Also, as I said, they don't often cost much. So plan ahead -- take in a museum or find some romantic movie or go for a walk on the Santa Monica Pier. The list of ideas is endless and dare I say it, you'll enjoy it as well.
4. Plan some of your eating out ahead of time. Plans change, of course, and you might have to scuttle some of the ideas you come up with under this one, but there's no better way to control expenses and wow your girlfriend through getting reservations at an excellent restaurant you've scouted out beforehand. Consider using a service like opentable.com to plan accordingly.
5. Stagger your hotel reservations. Hotels are expensive, but there is no reason to pay more for a hotel than you must. It may make sense to spend most of your trip at a mid-priced hotel and then spend the last day or two in some place really fancy, like a suite with an ocean view. This goes especially if you can finagle some great deals on your hotel stays -- do some searching around.
6. Black lingerie is proof from God that He loves us and wants us to be happy. I'm just saying.
Anyway, there are my Travel Tips for the Single Man. Hopefully, you have found them helpful and not just regurgitation of things any idiot could have figured out on their own, because it certainly would be embarrassing if that was the case. Also, I would like to apologize to Benjamin Franklin for borrowing a quote of his for the last item, although knowing Franklin's reputation, I doubt he would disagree with that statement.
Posted by Benjamin Kepple at May 7, 2008 10:26 PM | TrackBack