Around the Blogosphere

October 4, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Last week I was featured in a few money carnivals. Each carnival has such a great post. It took me a while to check them all out. Sit back, relax and check out all the posts.

1) The Financial Blogger presented Money Hacks Carnival # 32: The Have You Ever Edition featured my Coupon of the 21st Century.

2) Funny About Money presented Carnival of Money Stories #78: With the delay, you get twice the stories this week. So it’s a great place to read about various money stories ranging from trying to have a baby, buying a house, getting rid of the house and living on the road, cooking on your vacation and even green cleaning products.

3) Value For Your Life presented Festival of Frugality #145: The Gratitude Edition has a great round up and provides a new perspective during this turmoil time, to be greatful with the positive things in your life.

4) Trip Delivery presented Carnival of Cities: I love this carnival. It gives me a chance to go around the world without even leaving my house. Check out trip from Chicago to Washington DC down to Atlanta. Then cross the Atlantic to London, Amsterdam and around Europe.

Filed Under: Blogging, Saving, Travel Tips

Around the Blogosphere

September 13, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I have been featured in a fews of the great carnivals this past week. Each of them has a great list of posts. It’s worth to check them out.

1) Living Almost Large is hosting Money Hacks Carnival #29, The Food Haven.. Check them out after your lunch or dinner. Otherwise, you might be drooling all over your computer.

2) Frugal Babe is hosting Festival of Frugality #142. Check out posts ranging from food, recession, saving, shopping, frugal living and everything else in between.

3) Family Travellogue is hosting Carnival of Cities. A great carnival with a lot of great posts of 2 weeks worth. Give you a chance to travel around the world from US cities like my submission of Chattanooga trip to Pattaya, Japan and London.

4) Georgia On My Mind is hosting Georgia Carnival #44. If you are Georgia blogger or plan to visit Georgia, this is a place to check out. Great round up of anything Georgia.

Filed Under: Blogging, Saving, Travel Tips

Around the Blogosphere

June 23, 2008 By 1 Comment

This Monday I want to do a quick round up on my participation in the Carnival around the blogosphere.

Georgia On My Mind presents Georgia Carnival Edition #38.

Perceptive Travel presents Carnival of Cities. Check out cities from Seattle to Beijing.

Credit Card Lowdown presents Carnival of Money, Growth and Happiness #49. With 22 posts participated in this carnival, you will learn great saving tips perfect for this economy.

Mrs. Nespy’s World present Money Hacks Carnival #17. A geat post with the Music of the ’80s theme. Very great round up from Money Hackers around the blogosphere.

Mrs. Micha present Carnival of Personal Finance #158. The Vampire Slaying edition is a great carnival for Buffy fan and non-fan. Lots of great posts here about saving, frugality and money in general.

Here we are people. My round up for this past week. Thanks for including my post to these carnival. How about you? Have you been on any carnival this past week?

Filed Under: Blogging, Saving, Travel Tips

Five Finds for Friday – New Blogs I Discovered

April 11, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I’m pretty much a newbie in the blogsphere. So everyday I discover brand new (for me) blog that has been around for a while. These are my new find for this Friday that I digg!

1) Money Hacker Network – A place for Personal Finance Blogger to share and discover each other. I just recently join this group.

2) Cheap Healthy Good – Great blog for food and tips on grocery shopping. With detail recipe and picture, I will sure go back to visit weekly.

3) Get Rich Slowly – Personal Finance blog that tells it like it is with no sugar coated.

4) Wise Bread – A blog community with a group of writers focusing on Frugal Living, Life Hacks, Personal Finance, Deals and more.

5) Are We There Yet – Away.com Family travel blog with loads of information.

Filed Under: Saving, Travel Tips

Five Finds for Friday – Travel Blogs I Love

March 28, 2008 By 1 Comment

I know that it will not do justice to have only 5 travel blogs since we all know that there are more than you can count blogs out there. But each day I only have limited amount of time to read so here is my top 5 right now. Ask me again 2 months from now and my list might have changed.

1) Family Travel See The World with Your Kids – This is a great blog with lots of information for traveling with kids. I love to travel and I know that having kids does limit my ability to just pack up and go in the moment notice. But I refuse to give up on traveling. I know it’s stressful, expensive and exhausting but it’s priceless! We have travel as a family but not as extensive as I would like. This blog gives me a lot of good ideas and tips!

2) Real Travel – The real story from the real traveler always inspire me. It’s nice to see how the real people travel not just the journalist. Plus I get to read about different places that will inpire me to plan my own trip.

3) Less Than a Shoestring – Travel can be expensive if you don’t know how to make it more affordable or if you just want all 5 stars hotel and service. But travel doesn’t have to be all about luxury. It is more about seeing the world and learn about new cultures, new cities or meet new people. This blog has a lot of great tips on traveling on a budget. Who wouldn’t love that!

4) Traveling Mamas – A blog by 4 traveling mommies. Each one brings a different view from different part of the counties. A great blog for overall traveling info, news, or ideas especially for places to visit with kids. It doesn’t hurt that they have giveaway on the regular basis. ;)

5) Everything Everywhere – An internet company owner turns world traveler. His blog is as fascinating as the man himself. I love to see where he will be the next day. What a fun way to see the world through other people’s eyes.

Filed Under: Travel Tips

Five Finds for Friday – Cruising

March 14, 2008 By 2 Comments

TGIF.. everyone!

This Friday I can’t help but talk about planning for a cruise. As I recently just got an email reminder from my cruise agency company for the rest of the balance on my cruise. During the process of planning this cruise, I have found several sites that are very helpful during my process. Here are my Five Find for Friday this week.

1) Cruise Critic – An amazing website and active message boards with load of information. Here from this website that I learn that people do cruise religiously! The information section is well organized. Best of all, the message board is full of active cruisers who are willing to share their wealth of information and answer any questions.

2) Cruise Compete – This site is like a Lending Tree of cruise booking. You submit your itenerary and they will send to cruise agencies who will respond with their quote. Even if you don’t feel like spend a large sum of your money to someone you have never met, this is still a good site to get your baseline and shop around with travel agent company.

3) Cruise Mates – Another online cruise information and community. You can never have too much information when it comes to plan your vacation.

4) Fodors – The destination guide website that provides information not only for land travel but cruise travel as well. It’s good to find out what other activities you can do at the port of call. If you are more adventurous you might even find it more interesting than follow typical port excursions.

5) Expedia - I didn’t use expedia at this trip because I have no need to find airline flight or hotel. But if you are the DIY type and plan to book your flight and hotel seperately then this is a site worth looking. But keep in mind that most travel agency will handle all your travel arrangement together which might be better choice and less headache.

Well, hope this will be helpful on your next cruise planning. Enjoy cruising!
Check out other tips from Frugal Friday here.
Filed Under: Cruising, Saving, Travel Tips

Can I ride?

March 13, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Today I stumble upon a great blog on Intelligent Travel about the great suitcase just for kid. Trunki – Part suitcase, part toy.. what not to love. Basically, it’s a suitcase that your kid can ride on it instead of just pull it. It’s the mix of ride-on toy and suitcase. I have to put this on my must-buy list for our cruise. Seeing that there will be a long line to get on a cruise, this will help entertain them for a while. Plus, we have bi-annual trip to Thailand so it will be a big help at the airport.

There are 2 colors for the original Trunki which created by British designer. And they even have a name for each color. How cute!! When I checked on the UK site, there are more designs but I guess for the US customer we will have to wait. Or you can order online and pay for the shipping for the second generation of this design.

So I checked out on Amazon and found the price here:
=> Trunki – Trixie Pink $39.84 for Pink color
=> Trunki – Terrance Blue $34 for Blue color

Well, there will be a test run soon. So more report to follow..

Filed Under: Shopping, Travel Tips

Five Finds for Friday – Budget Travel

February 29, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I want to start a new ritual on my blog. Five Find for Friday will be about five things I find useful for Friday. It will be something that will help in planning a great weekend trips or an upcoming vacation.

The first one for this Friday is about five websites for planning your vacation on a budget.

1) VRBO.com – The Vacation Rentals By Owner is a good and economical way to save on your accomodation. You will definitely get more for your money when comparing to book a hotel versus a villa at your destination. The site is in a simple design at best. Don’t expect any fancy graphic or feature but it gets the job done.

2) Wi-Fi Free Spot – With the new technology you can’t deny the fact that internet is part of everyday life. Even if you want to get rid of it but sometimes it becomes handy during your vacation. This site allows you to find out where the Wi-Fi free spot is on your destination. Save yourself from internet cafe charge for your souvenir.

3) Airfare Watchdog – Sign up for the weekly newsletter of home city for any deals during that week. There are deals that are unadvertised and you will be the first one to know. The site will take you to the booking site that has that promotion.

4) Budget Travel – Provide deals and round up of deal of the month. This site is easy to navigate. However, the destination information is not as extensive as other well-known destination guide site.

5) Frommers – This well-established destination guide website is based from best selling travel books publisher. You can literally find the information for any destination with well written information. I always go there first to check out the information about my destination.

So there’s my find for this week. There are plenty more that I’m sure are equally good. But hey! you can’t please everyone, right?

Let me know what is your find for this Friday! Check out more finds here at Frugal Friday.
Filed Under: Saving, Travel Tips

Smart Saving on Cruising

February 24, 2008 By 2 Comments

As our cruise vacation is approaching (Yeah!!!), I have learned so much during this process. A lot of people might wonder why since this is not our first cruise. True. But this is the first cruise that I handle all the booking and planning myself. Our Disney Cruise was handled by a friend so I didn’t have to worry about shopping for the cheapest one or learning other tips from other cruisers (much to my regret though). So this time, I determined to learn more and be a more educated traveler (or cruiser in this matter).

So here are some of the tips that I learned and did.

1) Book the cheapest stateroom available – This advice might not be for everyone since we all have different priority. For me, this trip my goal is to explore and enjoy ourselves outside our room. So room size or amenity is not my top priority. My budget on the other hand is on the top of my priority. For us, I went for the lowest catgeory which is IS. This is the Interior Stateroom – No Guarantee. It means we won’t know where our room will be yet. It’s a bit of the gamble at this point. I figure I will pack a lot of Bonnie and Dramamine.

2) Book your excursion yourself – The price of the excursion offering my the cruise company can be as high as 20% more than private tour at the port. However, I have to put a note here that I also book an excursion via cruiseline on certain port. It will depend on your comfort level. Some people just feel safer going with the cruise knowing that they will wait for you if there is any problem. For me, I book an excursion in Jamaica via the ship only because it’s cheaper than if I go directly with the resort.

3) Don’t try to do too much – Sometimes the best saving is to do nothing at the port. After all, the best way to explore is maybe wandering around. Again, make sure that you have good understanding on the safety in each port. I decided to forego any excursion in Mexico. We will take a cab to the park and enjoy a day on the beach.

4) Stay with friend before boarding the ship – If you like most cruisers who have to fly or drive to the port the day before, the hotel cost will add to your budget. We are lucky enough to have a few friends in FL so we will crash at their place instead of paying for a night in a hotel.
Filed Under: Cruising, Saving, Travel Tips
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