Weekend Reading – Saving and splurging on vacation

Weekend Reading – Saving and splurging on vacation

Hey Folks, 

Welcome to a new Weekend Reading edition, while I’m on vacation in fact, with saving and splurging during vacation on my mind. 

I’ll share more details about my trip once home but before the theme of this week a few recent reads:

A reminder I have this book giveaway running:

Everything but Money – Review and Giveaway

We hope to earn over $52,000 this year from part of our portfolio, that includes low-cost ETFs, shared in this update:

January 2025 Dividend Income Update

….Such that, we don’t need to worry about not having enough retirement savings:

Weekend Reading – Not Enough Retirement Savings

Weekend Reading – Saving and splurging on vacation

I’m always curious what others do to catch deals on vacations and travel. Here are my key resources and ways to start my vacation research:

1. Save on airfare

I like using Skyscanner (no affiliate) for deals. This site is a metasearch site for all major airline carriers. Navigation of this site is great and you can sign-up for automatic email notifications for price changes/drops. 

Another great site to save money on airfare?

Try Chris Myden’s suite of sites – YOW Deals for us (no affiliate).

2. Save on accommodations

Although I’m a huge fan of cash back credit cards (I use one in particular consistently), I have in the past signed up for a few hotel rewards credit cards to earn points for future hotel stays. We never really got into the credit card churning hack – it’s not like the companies don’t know folks do this and we have better things to do with our time. We now have enough hotel points/rewards for at least a week somewhere – destination to be determined! 🙂

3. Save on rental cars

We like Costco for a few visits per year but Costco is also an online home to rental car deals. In fact, many years ago when we went to Vancouver and then Kelowna for a week and this is what we rented – pic below. 

(You can use your Costco membership to rent your next luxury vehicle on your next vacation too!!)

Saving money for vacations is good of course (including the one I am on) but I avoid focusing on dimes over dollars. To help save money for any vacation, I’ve always tried to get the big financial decisions in my life correct or at least good enough, first. 

Two expenses stealing your early retirement dreams (that are not coffee)

We’ve been fortunate to visit many different countries and we hope to visit many more. 

We have a rainy day, emergency fund and we have a sunshine fund too. We like it that way. 

Vacations are important to us. 

They deliver some valuable downtime away from the office, time away from day-to-day routines, and vacations deliver new experiences out of our comfort zone too. 

fyi – our mornng view everyday recently!

What saving tips did you use for your last vacation?

More Weekend Reading – Beyond saving and splurging on vacation

Interesting to read from investor advocate and friend of my site, Ken Kivenko, that:

• Mutual fund sales in January saw net positive flows, a notable improvement compared to the same period last year when sales were negative.

• Bond mutual funds were the top-selling asset class, a position they have held for the past nine months.

• January recorded the third-highest ETF net sales on record, trailing only December and June 2024.

More to bond sales to come?? Are you buying bonds?

Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ific-monthly-investment-fund-statistics-173200752.html

The Globe and Mail (subscription) recently released their top digital brokerages rankings.

Here is a good comparison on just fees from their article:

Source: Globe and Mail.

Keeping your financial fees, low; avoiding financial piranhas, and focusing on owning diversified equity investments should tip the odds of long-term financial success in your favour. This has worked for me. 

That also relates to this: more than half of the people surveyed by this RBC Financial Flexibility Poll described themselves as “financially paralyzed,” and 50 per cent said they are spending all of their income on necessary bills and expenses. 

Yikes. 

What do you make of this data?

From Financial Independence Hub, a discussion about comsumption vs. investing.

Part of the thesis:

“There are no certainties in markets. Over shorter-term periods, you can diligently play the odds and still come up short, and you can bet against the odds and still get lucky. Even the best card counters regularly lose individual hands at the blackjack table. However, playing the odds will result in success over the long term. Short-term fluctuations notwithstanding, “Playing correctly means you’ve already won””

Have a great, safe weekend and enjoy your view from wherever you are!

Mark