Average Guy Travels

 Exciting news!!!!! At some point in the last few months Capital One has modified their shopping experience to include miles multipliers! This can be a game changer for people who are wondering how to accumulate miles at a faster pace. For years, Capital One has been pushing its shopping ap at me and of course I not only downloaded it but I added the popup to my computer browser. Its not uncommon for me to make an online purchase at Walmart and by using the Capital One shopping ap I receive 3% of my purchase price back , not terrible. But now!!!!! by logging into my account in my card ap or on my computer I am presented with a link that adds miles multipliers to my purchase..... Just an example I've already used......I purchased a pair of reading glasses from Walgreens online for $30 to be picked up at my local Walgreens two hours later. The miles multiplier was 16X. For one pair of $30 reading glasses i received my standard 2x for using my Cap1 VX 60 miles and a bonus award of 480...

Today was a perfect example of what I am doing my best to teach…….   Scenario….My son, daughter in law and grandson are coming to Ohio from Texas on January 30 th and returning to Texas on Sunday February 2. The cheapest flights we were able to find was San Antonio to Lexington for $385 each or $780. When I searched this Delta flight as a rewards flight I was able to find the very same flight for 44,000 miles or at base 1/1 redemption…..$440 total….that’s a win!       Today we realized that my son did not book the exact return flight that I had recommended, he booked a return flight leaving Lexington at 5 AM!!!!! After a discussion with my in laws we decided neither of us wanted to drive them to Lexington at 2AM so how do we fix this ?   The Delta Fare was a basic economy so cannot be changed and they will only allow cancellation of entire reservation. The in laws did a quick search and found that a one way ticket at a decent time returning to San A...

 Those of you who know me, absolutely know that since retirement and maybe even a little before that....travel is my thing.  I consider myself lucky to live 15 minutes away from CVG (Greater Cincinnati Airport) as it allows me to be ontime for my departures. Now, CVG is not JFK, IAD, or ORD, you will not get the super cheap transatlantic flight you could find from those three major airports. You can however, find great flights and plenty of them on low cost carriers if you are not too picky about your travel. Many of them nonstop.  CVG is blessed with plenty of low cost flights from the likes of Allegiant, Breeze, Frontier, Southwest and I've just started seeing Sun Country flights leaving Terminal 1 at CVG. Im pretty experienced with Allegiant , Frontier and Southwest. Most low cost carriers have been pretty good to me as long as I follow a few cheap flight rules.....  I will only fly these airlines if its a nonstop flight. I dont give them the opportunity to lose m...

 If you've been following along on this trip, we just drove across Ireland from Galway to Dublin. It took about 2.5 hours and we had plenty of time to turn in the rental car, ride the tram to the airport and spend two hours waiting in the Priority Pass lounge for our 2.5 huour one way flight to Milan arriving at 9:40 PM. The cost of the flight was $86 each. This is where the trip gets a little more interesting so pay attention. Im a pretty experienced traveller so my plan was to arrive in Milan, walk outside to the cab stand, show the driver the address of my Airbnb and be tucked in by 11 PM.  Turns out Milan is a much larger city than I had expected. While we were waiting for our bags at the baggage claim, I happened to look up and see a sign that advertised cab rides to Milan City Center for 122 EUR....what??????? thats abour $140 . This was not in my plans! I quickly pulled up the maps on my phone to check the distance to our Airbnb and it was 25 miles away! This was a clea...

  Lets take a quick trip to Ireland!   So, you have been following the blog, reading the tips, saving your miles and you are thinking about your first trip to Europe! Maybe its not your first trip but Ireland is an easy fun trip with lots to see and do.  Ireland can be a budget trip and we will talk about how and why Ireland should be on your list. I always kind of wanted to visit Ireland but the actual reason I ended up there was a little more involved. When I was a young man, my grandfather told me about my family history. My family was from the Isle Of Man, a small island in the North Irish sea surrounded by Ireland, Scotland and England. He told me our family cam to America in the 1700’s and no one had ever gone back. For years I joked with him that I was going back!  In November 2022, I made that happen! While researching my trip and searching for flights to IOM, I found the average cost of that flight was between $1800 and $3600. I did not know then wha...

  So, you have read the blog and found some super saver tickets to Europe for next year but you have no idea what you will need on this trip! In this installment we will go over a couple of items Lisa and I have found incredibly useful and now we won’t go without them.   When I first travelled to Europe about five years ago, I was super thorough and looked up the plug I would need in each country, purchased them and carried 4 plugs with me for the trip!   We’ve come a long way baby! Now you can buy a universal plug that changes itself to fit every European receptacle. During our most recent trip, we found that most modern hotels were equipped with bedside and bathroom USB plugs allowing for seamless charging of your devices overnight. We split our time between hotels and Airbnb’s so we need the universal plugs. This year we were in Ireland, Italy and France, last year Ireland, Austria and Italy.   This plug has never let us down! This is an absolute must ...

  How do I use my points?   Ok, If you have followed the blog so far, I have told you how to earn points and how to maximize your points earnings with specific credit cards and programs. Now its time to look at how we use those points to get the maximum value. I will include some graphics in this post to help you understand. Lets talk about the Capital One Venture X card, for this example we will imagine I have a point balance of 45,000 points. This means with Venture X I have spent $22,500 without any bonus awards. There are several ways to use these points and we will discuss the value in each one. In this post the terms miles and points are interchangeable.   https://capital.one/3XHAQXQ     1.        Venture X will allow you to take a statement credit for any travel related expense and deduct it from your points balance. Example…..I purchased a roundtrip ticket on Delta Airlines using my Venture X for $225. I will be aw...