What the Why

GOBankingRates (00:00)
yeah, we're doing a podcast right now. Okay, well, hi guys, I'm Bryson. And I'm Sessi. And welcome to What the Why? We can never get this right. Hey guys, I'm Sessi. Hey, I'm Bryson. And this is What the Why? Welcome back guys to another episode of What the Why, the theme of our episode today, hacking your travel. Summertime.

It's summer. Let's talk about travel Bryson. Like I want to hear about your travel hacks. Are you traveling a lot this summer? Yeah. So I've been on like three trips so far. It's, it's, it's wedding season for me. Three bachelor parties. Wedding season, baby. I love weddings. You're nice. I hate them. You said three, three bachelor parties, three weddings. I have one back to back. Yeah.

How's that been on your wallet? Like we talk about the 50, 30, 20 rule in the last episode and like what, what the why? It hurts the wallet. Like thank God I do have a budgeting app. So like tell me about your budget hacks. I think that this is a great time during, I know that we're always spending money throughout the year, but during the summer, are we having a hot girl summer? Are we having a cold girl summer? Are we having a save your money summer? Like what are we doing? A hot save your money girl summer.

just bring it all. I mean, but you, it's actually funny that you said that. So we were talking before the podcast, you talked about like, you spent like, it was like $300 or something for like a pina colada recently when you were traveling, like at the airport or something. Yeah, so what, what - Let's put a picture of the pina colada. So like I, it was my mom's birthday. We went to a resort. It was really nice. Like I had been planning for that for, I don't know how many months, but months. I do a lot of planning. Naturally I'm a project manager.

And, yeah, this pina colada was 20 bucks and it was terrible. It was not taste good. It was not good. It was, it did the job, you know, but like, why am I spending $20 on a pina colada? That's insane. Was that at the airport? At the resort. Okay. No, it was at the resort. There's where we differ. And that's actually interesting that you brought it up. So like, one of the things that I noticed through my bachelor parties and like doing these travels for weddings is, you know,

Obviously flights are already expensive and then the airport, just everything has like an airport tax. Like, Lord. It's not really a hack, right? Cause I do. But one of the things I don't spend money on food and snacks, like we bring like every, every flight that I go on, I go to sprouts and I have them like make me a sandwich. I say, Hey Greg, can I have the same thing as last night?

He's like, yeah, you're here too much. You have a sandwich guy. He's a nice guy. You need to take a picture with the sandwich guy next time you will do. We'll do that. Our followers. Let's get him on the podcast. Next time you're out here, we'll do a video podcast where we go to different stores and have hacks of how to save money. Again, we're talking about travel hack. I love the idea of $5 sandwich. Then you can get a $12 glass of wine. I don't know if that's real. No, that's you actually know the opposite. I'm the opposite.

is it? I don't know. I save. I don't. I sit there and I go, I just sit there and I'm, maybe I get my steps in. So like that's something for free that you can do, walk around. If I'm, if I know for sure, cause when I travel, I don't know about you, my husband, he will work out while we're traveling, but me, I'll, I'm on vacation. Like I don't meet, I don't prioritize it as much, but my steps still got to get my steps in. You don't spend.

And you use that time. I sit my ass down and I either do that or I am doing laps like walking around. That's smart. Trying to look at, yeah, just like walk, get your steps in, walk around, you know, your wallet. You've already, the way that I look at it is I've already spent my money on this flight. And wherever I'm going, if my husband is paying for it, great. Then I don't think of it that way. Then I'm like, okay, let's go buy food or drink. But if I'm buying the flight, I'm like,

I already spent $500 round trip on this flight. Let me wait until I get to my destination and then I can chug my white claw. You actually brought up a really good point. You know, like so there's airport hacks, right? Like most of travel, at least for me, it sounds like for you is done. I'm flying somewhere. So airports, one of it, but you're right. Like the destination is what matters most. That's why you're flying. That's why you're going. Exactly. But you were talking about you're already spending, you know, a few hundred bucks on

the round trip and then obviously like Uber and all of these things. And I remember every time I get on my flight, like I'm one of those were warts until I'm on my flight and I've landed. And then I'm like, I get relief. You're talking about spending like hundreds of dollars and yeah, like I feel like I do it, we plan, we say, we do all these things, but then you get off the plane and that's where my anxiety, I'm just like.

okay, the Uber. and then like the hotel fees that they don't tell you about. And then all these extra things that come in. So what do you do? So, you know, we talked about airport spending, but I think that's a great segue into like balling on a budget. Like you still want to go have a good time. right. hell yeah. I love my vaca - my vacations are so sacred. They're so sacred. I'd love to hear your take on this because you had three back to back bachelor parties and I've been there.

I was at an age where everyone was getting married back to back. So that was a very, very hard time financially because I was like, I still have to buy the bridesmaids dress and get my makeup done and do all these things. So I get it. But I think as I've gotten more comfortable with saving and spending my money, in that first episode, I talk about paying yourself first and making sure you have that money saved away. I use that money for my travel.

outside of the flight ticket or the hotel price or things that I have to chip in for traveling, that money that I have saved or stored away in my Acorns app or Apple Pay app, that's my fun money. If I have to go buy wine at the airport, there you go, you've got that money stored away, because you walked all those steps, right? From the first step. The pay yourself. So, okay, so with...

That's my fun money. So when you, so okay, let's, let's walk through this. So you, you use your phone money for trip extra expenses, but you budget everything else. So like flight, all of those things. Exactly. So like, if it's not within that budget range that I have saved away for travel, I'm not going to use that money for anything else. But my fun money that I use, cause I'm paying myself every week, I can ball out. So

Airport hacks, you save money by not spending money and then you use... I sit my ass down and I say, you already spent this money. It's just discipline I guess. But then you have your fun money from doing those steps. You're like, I did a thousand steps in the airport. I am gonna put that into my fun bucket. I can give myself $20. And that could be your white clog.

You save money by not spending money. I do it a little differently where my hack is I don't buy food. I bring the food to the airport. Bring the sandwich. That's smart. You can do that. Don't worry guys, TSA, there's actually a funny video of dudes bringing a bunch of pizzas through TSA. They don't care. Bring your pizza, bring your food. Bring your food. Don't bring your booze. You can't do that unfortunately, but that's how I budget for that. I'm like, I can pay for this. I love that. So that was airport and then balling on a budget when you...

Do your travels. So when you look at your travels, right? So for me, one thing, and we actually have a link on this from our website and we'll share it in the dropdown, top 10 best travel hacks to save the most money. And there's one that I do is travel bundles. So like I used Hopper. I don't know if you're familiar with Hopper. I've heard of Hopper. Hopper is good. Highly recommend. It gives you points back, right? And then we use it because like,

when we went to another wedding in San Diego a few weeks back, we needed to rent a car to where we were going. And every single site we went to, the car was like 40, 50 bucks a day on Hopper was 30 bucks a day. Like super discounted, still same car. And then we bundled that with our flight and hotel and we ended up saving, we did the math. It was like two or 300 a night. We were saving overall because we bundled.

Amazing. I love that you can use like your points from Hopper. I know that points are a big hack too. It's great that Hopper is starting to like reward those points that you're using for the app. But yeah, credit card points. I know, you know, like a bunch of credit cards and stuff like that do the same thing. Like you pile up your points and

use it for something else. Is that what you do? So that's amazing. So I bundle that's like, that's my hack. What do you do when you travel? I love, I wish that we traveled more. We don't travel as much as we would like to say, but when we did travel a lot and we were using like, specific cards for travel. So like, you know, you have your cash back travel cards. I forget what, I think it's the chase Sapphire. It's really thick and heavy and metallic.

That was a really great travel card. The only thing is like those fees, right? You have to pay a fee to use the card. But the points out of that card were amazing. It probably makes it worth it, right? Like at the end? A hundred percent, yeah. But right now we're not traveling a lot. We're stacking, so it's not a priority for us. I love that you're right, your thought on the card points, because you're right. Like I have a Southwest card. I use that solely for my flights.

You gotta use your - But I really want a travel card. So you recommend that the Chase Sapphire preferred card really helps? Chase Sapphire is great. But you know what, again, if you travel a lot right now, we're not traveling, so that's not a card for us. But if you haven't thought about using your points for travel, you should definitely because that's a great way to save money is applying for a card like that and then using those points for help to pay some of the -

the stuff that you're doing. Airport spending, tax. Too much. Too much, not enough. Figure out what's best for you. Budget, kind of comes down to that quite a bit. Budget. Second one, when it comes to your actual travel. Spending. And spending, do your research. Get a card. And get a card. Get a card. Get a card that makes sense. Bundle, sometimes bundle doesn't make sense. Right now it doesn't make sense for us. Right. Right now it doesn't make sense for us because we're not traveling a lot. So we're using cash back cards.

Those are great for us. But if you're not traveling, why are you, why am I spending a hundred dollars to keep my chase Sapphire? I'll reopen it or I'll, you know, like I'll, I'll use a different card in the future, but you don't need, if you're not traveling a lot, don't use it. Yeah. This is actually a crazy thing that I saw again, another link about the top 10 travel hacks. Tell me, tell me, let me ask you and you search for flights, no matter where you search. It could be like on the person's website, on Google flights.

Do you just do it on your normal browser? Like whatever website you're using? Yes. my gosh. Please tell me that. Am I doing this wrong? So I didn't know this either. According to one of the travel bloggers that we interviewed for this piece, often times what a lot of flight websites will do is they'll track you. You know, you go, you accept the cookies and they will, if they notice that you're looking at the same flight, you know, a few times in a row, they'll actually increase, they'll increase the.

flight for you. Like they'll increase the price. Like it'll show up like maybe on someone else's phone that's never looked it up. It'll be a hundred bucks, but on yours it's 120, 130. So they recommended when you're searching for flights, I don't know if this is the same for hotels, but maybe just safe to say it is search in incognito mode. That way it's not tracking your cookies or anything, but that was like a, I had no idea that that was happening, which makes sense. But like, you know, that makes sense. The final tip, go to Sprouts and get your sandwich. No, I'm just kidding.

Make a budget. Make a budget. Make a budget. You set it yourself. You set it yourself, Ceci, when you do it. Budgeting is the best. Yeah. So, yeah, you have to stick to that budget. Like if it's not within that price range, like I can only spend, I don't know, $600 for this flight. I'm not buying it. And that's what you do? Gotta wait. So when you do your research and you're like, okay, I can spend this, this, this. I can spend this much money based on like my 50, 30, 20. I'm very disciplined with that. I got it.

make sure I have enough money to like pay for this. But yeah, make a budget and you make a budget. Do you use like any like app or like, you know, product or... Are we talking about rocket money now? I think we're talking about rocket money right now. Cause... Segway to rocket money. It's like... It has its own travel category, you said, right? Yes, I love it. I think you were telling me. Tell me. So I had, I was one of those people that had Mint. If you're familiar with when Mint was around. RIP Mint. Right? And it was great. Like I love Mint and I was trying to find a, you know,

a different solution. I came across Rocket Money and it was near identical to Mint with all of these different new categories. It would alert me about bills coming up and it would tell me like if bills change subscriptions. And the biggest one for travel is I had like a travel category. I loved that I could bucket and I could update it each month. Like if I knew I was going to travel next month or I was buying stuff this month to travel next month.

I could say, yep, my max is $1 ,000 that I could spend on this. I cannot spend more than a thousand. Exactly. And it would tell me like, you're coming close to your budget. You went over blah, blah, blah. But I love that. Use AI guys, use apps, use AI to like help you budget too. Like I love that you're using Rocket Money. I think it's great. They're our sponsor for this episode. When it comes to travel, this theme hacking your travel, first tip when it comes to airport spending, do it or don't do it.

If you do do it, find out what's worth it for you. Next one is balling on a budget while you're traveling. Do your research. Find out where you're going to fly to, how much it's going to cost. Maybe look at Bundle Labs, look at credit card points, Hopper, some type of travel rewards. Then the last one that we keep saying, make a damn budget. Make a budget.

We talked about in our last episode, there's a little article to make your own budget customize it. If you don't want to do that, like me and you're lazy, but you also want to keep in track. Rocket Money is a great alternative. Again, link below. We're going to have a little splurb on them at the beginning and end. It's going to tell you some of the deals that we got going on with them. They're our sponsors. Sessy, anything else? I think. And also, yeah, check out, we have a Summer of Savings Hub page on our site right now. We have a section on that page.

that highlights the things that you can save your money on, not only for a holiday like this week, but also the rest of summer. So if you want to have your hot girl summer, check out that Summer of Savings Hub page. You'll get a bunch of money tips and of course sponsored by our other client Betterment. So shout out to Betterment for giving us some really, really great Summer of Savings tips. Yes. Okay. Broke ass questions. Marissa said.

How do I pay down my credit card debt effectively? Ooh, that's a good one. I'd actually like your take on this because I think that it's okay to hold a certain amount. Like let's say you have a high APR card, then definitely pay that baby down. You do not wanna be paying those fees. In a future episode, I talk about calling your credit card company. You'll wanna tune into that as like a tip. Make sure to follow us to listen to that episode. But I think for this,

specific question effectively. I think it depends on the kind of card you have. If you have those fees, definitely pay down as much as you can. Yeah. And would you recommend so like setting up kind of like a payment plan for yourself or with the credit card company? right. Yeah. Put that payment. You don't have to pay the full amount. You can set up a minimum payment every month. Just as long as you have that running.

you'll be fine. You know, your credit score won't be affected. You'll be able to enjoy your inflatable or whatever else that you, you bought this are. Okay. I have another question for you, Bryce and not from Marissa, but from George. George asks, so how much should I keep on my card? You know, like, should I keep a full amount on my card? How much, I guess like this is very general of it. Like how much should I keep charged on my card? I think what you're saying George is, is how much you should like spend on your card, you know, month to month and

I think the better question to ask is what my credit utilization is. So the typical rule of thumb, George, for credit is one of the things that FICO looks at when it comes to like identifying your credit score is your credit utilization. So let's say that you have a $10 ,000 credit limit and each month on average, your balance is 3000. That means you're using about 30 % of your

credit utilization, anything below that you're not really gonna get dinged as hard with. So the less that you could utilize of your overall credit card, and by say that as if you spent 10 ,000 in a month on your credit card, but you pay off 7 ,000 of it, or you pay off all of it, effectively your credit utilization. That affects your score. Yeah, and it will affect your score, in a good way if you pay it off, but you wanna make sure if you're charging stuff to your credit card, the first question, how much I keep charging my credit card?

As long as you can pay it off at the end of the month without having to over, you know, start paying interest, that should be your goal. That should be your first goal. Now, for whatever reason, if you can't do that, if you're kind of in some, you know, tighter times and you have to put some things onto your card, I would recommend kind of what Ceci says. Ceci said is, is kind of understand like, you know, set up payment plans, you know, tune into our next episode to where we talk about this or, but try to keep your credit utilization under 30%.

So even if you can't pay off your full credit card at the end of the month, as long as it's 30 % or less of your total credit limit, that should help you not have too much of an impact on your score in a negative way. All right, guys. Thank you for joining us for another episode of What the Wild. Thank you. Goodbye.