Travel isn’t always perfect and we certainly aren’t either. This week on the show, Gunnar and Kyle cop to the worst travel mistakes they’ve made over the year. From rehashing Gunnar’s Avianca last name fiasco to entering birthdates wrong to over-scheduling trips, getting fleeced at an expensive restaurant, and even timing bathroom breaks on the road, the guys have screwed up a lot over the years. Join us as we discredit, debase, and humiliate ourselves!
Travel isn’t always perfect and we certainly aren’t either. This week on the show, Gunnar and Kyle cop to the worst travel mistakes they’ve made over the year. From rehashing Gunnar’s Avianca last name fiasco to entering birthdates wrong to over-scheduling trips, getting fleeced at an expensive restaurant, and even timing bathroom breaks on the road, the guys have screwed up a lot over the years. Join us as we discredit, debase, and humiliate ourselves!
00:00 - What’s the biggest mistake travelers make?
02:50 - Sylvia welcomes us to the show from Zion National Park
05:15 - The Gunnar Olson Olson Olson story
07:10 - Not checking airfare from more than one airport
09:20 - Think before you swipe: Using the wrong card to book flights
11:55 - Over-scheduling travel – Kyle’s slightly-too-much trip
14:00 - Not paying attention to open hours
16:15 - Birthday fiascos and infant reservations: Don’t wait until the airport!
19:40 - Getting a ski trip shuttered by the weather
22:30 - A word from our sponsor: Don’t miss the next great flight deals with Thrifty Traveler Premium
24:20 - Letting e-credits expire
26:15 - Leaving something in the overhead bin
28:30 - Swiping the same old credit card
30:40 - Check the menu: A crazy expensive meal in Singapore
32:35 - The pre-boarding bathroom break
34:40 - A listener asks: Why the “Yo?”
36:12 - Another listener asks: More on our rebooking strategy
43:05 - The biggest mistake Gunnar has made at Thrifty Traveler
Produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas
Video editing by Kyle Thomas
Show music: “All That” by Benjamin Tissot
Yo, welcome to the show. I'm Gunner, that's Kyle and listeners. I know you probably look at the two of us and you're like, wow, these guys are super polished, really handsome. Good podcasters with a good nose for the news. But today we're gonna tell on ourselves a little bit. We're gonna admit to some of the dumbest travel mistakes we've ever made and, and maybe just show you that it's not all as pretty and perfect as it looks over here.
You'd never know looking at your face.
We're gonna look at like the booking process, the traveling process, and some other tidbits as well. Just look at all these mistakes that we've made over the years that made us. Better travelers or hopefully better travelers. I don't know. You'd have to ask our wives to see if we've actually gotten better at this at all.
Oh, Kyle, I have a working title for this episode. Are you ready?
Hit me.
Okay. This is the episode where the rest of you lose your respect for me. You think that fits?
There are dozens out there that have not yet lost their respect for you.
There are people just hanging on. Alright. Uh, before we start debasing ourselves, Kyle, I wanna flip it around and ask you what's the number one travel mistake that you see?
Other travelers make before we go and embarrass ourselves. Let's turn it on the public here. What, what's the biggest travel mistake you see people make out there?
I think it's a tie between blind loyalty to one airline. Um, you know, whether they live in a, in a hub like Chicago, where you truly do have a lot of choice, even on nonstop.
Flights and you know, you're blindly loyal to one versus the other, and it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But especially for people who live in the vast majority of airports where there truly is one big game in town, there's one airline that is king, and being blindly loyal to that airline is one of the most costly mistakes that you can make second only to most people.
I think that the. Key change that most people come to in learning how to travel more for less has in many ways less to do with mastering points and miles and racking up a bunch of credit card points and all of the things that we talk about and more just about how you plan your travel. Do you go to your airline?
And you say, I need to fly on April 23rd and return on April 30th, and I'm going to this destination. And that is it. And if you do that, and if you, you know, do all of the things involved with your trip, booking your hotels, booking your rental car, booking your vacation package, whatever, and only then go to book your flights, you are going to pay more for your flights than you should barn on.
Yep.
The flight's first rule. That's an important one around here. Alright, that's a good one. I don't, I don't think I have anything to add. I think I can't top that one. That's a good traveler mistake.
The embarrassment starts early.
The embarrassment starts right now. Today on the show, we are admitting to all of our worst travel mistakes and hoping that it doesn't sewer our credibility.
I promise we're better travelers now than we used to be. All that and more.
This is Sylvia from Cols Canyon, Zion National Park. Welcome back to the 30 Traveler Podcast.
Okay. Introducing the show today was producer Sylvia. Sylvia, I want you to join us for a second, uh, for a quick question. How was Zion? It's some place I've always wanted to visit.
Oh, you have to visit. It was amazing. It was so beautiful. We were really lucky too, because we were camping, so we got to see the sun, like do all of its amazing.
Glory glows over the rocks and stuff. So yeah, it was a really. Nice quick trip. We were just there for a night, honestly. So we had the day before and then the day after, but it was amazing. You have to go. And I also, wait, I also wanna fact check myself because I think I say Cols Canyon in the video. It's actually Col Canyons.
So for anybody who knows the place. That's where it was. Call candy.
Do not come for Sylvia.
Do not come
for Sylvia. Saves her credibility in the video. Uh, Kyle, you've also been to Zion. Is is her, uh, is her description correct?
I think we need to, my wife and I need to do it again because we didn't, uh, camp there.
And the idea of waking up there and seeing the sunrise sounds. Incredible. We, my wife and I hiked the narrows going back like almost 10 years now, and it's one of the best hikes, if not the single best hike I've, I've ever done. It's part of maybe my single favorite trip that we've ever taken going through all of the, the national parks in Utah, but we paid for it, and I'm so glad we did Zion last because after that it was probably six plus hours of hiking nonstop.
Our entire soles of our feet were just 100% blister. Like we were both like wincing as we got back to Las Vegas, walking around the pool, like, oh, it was just pain, pure pain.
Oh, that's awesome. Maybe we'll have to do a, uh, podcast team retreat to Zion and go camping. How do you guys like camping with infants?
Does that sound fun to you?
Does it sound fun to you?
No, it does not sound fun to me. Alright, let's get into our booking mistakes. Thank you for joining us, Sylvia. I'm gonna go ahead and go first, Kyle. Why? Because I wrote the rundown so I get to go first. Um, the first booking mistake. Is one that I've talked about on the show before, and it's using autocomplete, the, the Gunner Olson Olson Olson story.
I'll tell it in short because some of you have probably heard it before, but, uh, basically I booked a flight with Avianca life, miles and I lazily used autocomplete to put my personal information in. And what that did was it added Olson as both my last name and my middle name on the reservation, which does not match my passport 'cause my middle name is not Olson.
My last name is Olson be, this is too much explanations. It
would be, it would be amazing if your initials were goo.
Um, so I called Avianca to remedy the situation. In Avianca style, it was not easily remedied. And the person on the phone said, uh, I've got you, sir. I'm gonna fix this for you right away. And he said, yep, you should be all good to go.
And I closed it and refreshed the page of my browser and he just added another Olson to the end of my last name. So then I had three Olsons on my. Potential future boarding pass. Um, and I had to go through many, many agents in order to remedy this and get it all back to regular. So I think the moral of the story is don't use auto complete to fill out important travel information.
Um, maybe the better moral of the story is don't use Avianca to book travel if you can avoid it. I don't know. That's my first big travel mistake.
Not, not an airline you want to have to call. No, we'll put it that way. Uh, of all of the airlines you could have screwed up with. Making this particular mistake.
This is maybe the worst possible one.
Yeah,
I, between the, the many times now you've shared this story on the podcast, let alone in just in the office. Like when this happened again and again, I've probably heard this story like 10 times. It never gets old. I love it so much.
Alright, your term for shame, Kyle.
What's your first booking mistake?
So the first big international trip that my wife and I ever took was going to Thailand, Vietnam, and Japan. And it, it was really a, a, my entry point into the logistics of traveling more for less and trying to piece together all of the various small amounts of points that we had and finding the cheapest way to fly all the way to Southeast Asia.
Yeah, and it was really, really fun. Uh, but I just very vividly remember, so we flew from, um, Minneapolis to Los Angeles. We booked a positioning flight. So I was just like, oh man, I've got this stuff figured out. I'm saving so much money by booking separately from LA to Taiwan to Bangkok. Then just searching from Minneapolis straight to Bangkok to get to start the beginning of our trip.
Mm-hmm. And I was like, okay, I got this. I'm saving so much money. This flight was 380, let's just call it dollars. One way per person to fly from LA to Taipei and onward to Thailand. But I was so laser focused on Los Angeles being the, the, the correct gateway to search from that I didn't search anywhere else on the west coast.
And lo and behold, like a couple of days after we booked, I searched from San Francisco and there was a Singapore Airlines flight for like $280 each. That would've been quicker and. Probably a better experience, let alone, you know, saving us a hundred dollars. So I just start, kept kicking myself. But it's funny because it, I think it wound up being a really happy accident because the flight that we booked was on EVA air, which, you know, this was a really formative experience.
And then when my wife and I were planning. Uh, to, to fly to, um, Bali for our honeymoon. A couple of years later, I was ev, I was laser focused on it, and that just became the introduction to what has become and still is my favorite airline in the world that we've had so many amazing trips on. And I don't think that would've happened had we not, had I not screwed that up?
Yeah. Well, happy accident, but moral the story is, uh, check as many gateways as you can. You know, right. Your, your flight search should never just end with, uh, your first look and keep an eye on some other things. But that's a good one, a good mistake as well. All right. My second booking mistake, uh, I just have it written here as think before you swipe.
Um. I had to pay, this was from two weeks ago. I had to pay baggage fees on inter island Hawaiian flights and on my Alaska flight from Kauai to San Diego. Despite holding both of those credit cards, they get you free bags because I didn't pay the taxes and fees using those credit cards when I booked the fair
Gunner.
Just. A crushing blow. A crushing blow. And just, yeah, if you think I lack credibility before,
you're right. You're right,
you're right. It's, uh, I was, I, you know, I just assumed with Delta Sky miles cards, when you just hold the card, just by having it as a part of your account, no matter how you pay for the flight, you get those access to free bags.
I actually knew this. About Hawaiian and Alaska, but I did not have either of those cards back when the taxes and fees went through, and I knew I wasn't gonna be able to change it. Um, but yeah, that's just, uh, just make sure you know exactly what card gets you, what, when you swipe it to book your flights.
And this is something I needed to think about. Like six or seven months ago when I actually booked this and not, uh, on the day when I'm heading to the airport with the card in my hand and then realizing, oh man, this doesn't mean anything.
How much did it cost you in bag fees between the different segments?
Uh, it was, I mean, 30 bucks a bag, um,
35 probably
right,
30 for inner island, and then 35 for the Alaska flights. And we had two bags and then a car seat, which they almost charged us for at one point because I stuffed it full of clothes and diapers and they were not happy about that. But, uh, moral, the story is I probably lost out on, you know, close to 200 bucks on the trip, um, because I didn't realize what.
Card I was using to book it. Devastating,
you know, you, you made this point, but just to hammer it home. This really does get to the nuance of how different airlines handle these free bag policies with credit cards. So Delta and American, there's at least one other major US Airline doesn't actually require you to book a flight with that card in order to get the free bags.
It's just attached to your account as long as you use your frequent flyer number or add it later. You're set as long as you still have that card open. But Alaska and Hawaiian United, I believe JetBlue all require you to actually charge to your card in order to get those free bags. Which yeah, buddy, I feel for you.
That's a rough one.
Yeah. Something that you probably should have known is the host of a travel podcast. All right, Kyle, back to
you. We never claim to be smart.
Back to you. What's your next mistake?
Um, so I have also shared this story before, less in terms of it being a mistake. But it clearly was, um, two years ago, my wife and I took an amazing trip to Bora Bora, New Zealand and Australia, basically three bucket list trips in one.
But it was only 17 days long including travel. So actually on the ground it was probably less than 15, so just over two weeks. And in that two week span, we took 13 flights, eight boat rides, a rental car, seven hotels, and one night in a tent. It was an amazing trip. No regrets, except we clearly hit our limit.
There were like multiple stops on that trip. Where we were both like, this is amazing, but we're doing too much. And it was kind of a wake up call of needing to, to practice what we, what we preach and what we believed we do, which we clearly don't, which is slow down, lean a little bit further into spending more time in one place rather than trying to cram everything in.
You know, when you're flying that far, it's, it's very tempting, but the reality is part of the reason why everything that we talk about. Is so important and great is that no place needs to be a one and done. You can always go back and spend more time somewhere and we really should have taken our own advice there.
Yeah, I, I was very jealous of that trip. And I do also enjoy myself a good old amazing race trip. And I know like our, some of the trips where we do. We review flights and hotels@thriftytraveler.com. Some of those trips are sprints, like flying to Singapore for 48 hours or whatever I did. And those are kind of exhilarating.
But man, it, it, uh, puts the body through something going through that many time zones and back in two days. And then also just the constantly shuttling back and forth to the airport unless you pack like an adult, uh. It makes it a little easier, but I certainly would over pack and make that even worse.
Yeah.
Uh, should we move on to traveling mistakes? Kyle, I'll let you go first in this. Category.
All right. Uh, this past fall, um, my wife and I were in London as the final piece of a trip where we went. We flew up to Edinburgh, went out to the Scottish Highlands. Um, eventually made our way back down to London, where the day that we landed in London was the start of a citywide tube strike.
So basically the entirety of the London Underground system was shut down. There were a couple of major lines, none of which were really convenient to us. So getting around the city of London was a real bear. And so we started thinking, you know, we kind of always have a rough game plan of what we want to do each day.
We had four nights in London and you know, one of the main things that we wanted to do to really kind of build a day around was going to Borough Market, but Borough Market was probably a, you know. 10 ish mile, 10 ish miles away, maybe a little bit less from the area in, in Trafalgar Square, where our hotel was.
And so we were like, you know what? Let's, let's change our plan. Let's, let's go to Borough Market on Monday instead. I think we had been planning on doing it Tuesday because there were a couple of things that we could loop in as a part of a walk or maybe get in an Uber or something. And so we're like, all right.
We're gonna walk our way to Borough Market, which again was, it was probably at least seven miles of walking there, and then another seven back. We were more than three quarters of the way there. After making a co a couple other stops before I was like, I wonder if Borough Market is open seven days a week.
Spoiler alert, it was not. So we walked all the way to Borough Market and only to find that nothing was open. Yeah, we, we made it back the following day. We, we kind of changed plans again on the fly and this time did our research to make sure that the plans that we were changing were actually going to work out.
Yeah, that's a good one. Pull up Google Maps. Take a quick look, you know, see what's open and what's not.
It, it wasn't easy. Fix it. We could have saved ourselves, I think in the end of that four days we walked more than 45 miles. It was nuts.
God, that's a lot of walking. Yeah. That was when the tube was down.
Um. I have kind of a two-parter. That's why I let you go first. Uh, and the moral of both of these stories is don't figure it out at the airport. Get it done before you get to the airport. Okay. So the first one is, I've had three different, now birthday fiascos. Uh, when it comes to. Uh, putting my birthday into a, an airline reservation.
Um, the first was also with Avianca, where I screwed up the international birthday where the day comes first and then the month and then the year. And so I had to call them and fix that again. Yeah. This is why I don't book with Avianca anymore.
Maybe Megan should just start booking your flight. So that might be the takeaway here.
Yeah. I think I need to, to offload my flight booking to someone else. Um, I did the same thing with, uh, Qatar and ba. Avio, when I tried to link my accounts, my guitar, nu my, uh, Myar birthday was different than my ba birthday 'cause I got the international birthday flipped again. Ugh. Unbelievable. And then this one was a, was a pretty brutal one 'cause it was so low stakes.
But I put my birthday in off by one day. On a Sun Country reservation from Fort Myers to Minneapolis. Just a simple, nonstop flight. And it was off by one day. I got up to the front of TSA and they were like, your birthday doesn't match your boarding pass. You gotta go back, you gotta go figure it out at the check-in agent.
So I went back to the checking agent and the entirety of the Minnesota Golden Gophers baseball team was standing in line in front of me, checking everything that they own, like buckets of balls, all of their bats and all of their equipment. Every single guy had like. Four bags to check in. And I stood in this line for like two and a half hours, almost missed the flight and got my birthday changed, and then raced on board.
But that was a bad one too. Always check your birthday and when you're booking with an international airline, remember that sometimes they do it day, month, year, not month, day, year like we do. So that was the, the first one. Uh, don't try and figure that out at the airport. Double check everything before you go.
I also had this, uh, happen with infant reservations recently. Um, infant reservations are tricky 'cause if you put the infant on too early onto your reservation, you can't change your flight online. Mm-hmm. For most airlines. Mm-hmm. So once the infant is attached, then you're locked in. So you'd have to like call, get the infant removed and then.
Change your flight if you want to, but if you do it too late, IE after check-in starts, then you have to do it with an agent at the airport. You can't do it by the phone anymore. So, uh, I've run into this where I do it too early and then I can't change my flight fast enough. I've done it where it's too late.
I did, this happened in Hawaii, uh, where I tried to add it after check-in and I had to do. With an agent, and I had to stand in like an hour long line at the Honolulu airport to try and get Emory back on the reservation. So don't figure these things out at the airport. Just double check before you go. I don't know why I didn't in all these cases, but add it to your, uh, your to-do list of things before traveling.
Just go through all your reservations one more time. You'll probably catch something.
I, I feel a little bad. Not, not for the amount of time that you've spent in lines and airports fixing your own mistakes, but. Honestly, you look so much worse than I do in this episode so far, and we're not even halfway done.
Kyle's like, oh, I over-planned my trip to Bora Bora. I'm like, I don't know how. I don't know the basics of booking flights. I don't know what my birthday is in the international calendar. Oh God, please tell me you have a, a mistake that actually puts egg on your face.
I maybe, I dunno. You beat the judge. I know, I know that you feel for me on this one.
Um, my, my friend Jim and I try to plan one big ski trip a year. We're both, and it's typically like the only skiing we do each year. Not like you, where you're a total nut and you're out on the mountain like 20 days a year plus. So typically that just means we drive up to Lutsen and we spend a weekend, a long weekend there and, and you know, get a two day pass.
But a couple years ago we were like, you know what, let's get outta here. Let's go somewhere really special. Let's find a good mountain. I talked with you, I got your input, and eventually we landed on White Fish, Montana. Which the town of Whitefish is amazing as a great like headquarters to spend as a part of a, of a ski trip The mountain couldn't tell you much about because while on the day that we landed, which we didn't do much skiing because we um, you know, got there pretty late, it was, you know, a good 30 ish degrees.
Every day after that, on the five nights that we spent there was negative 35 before wind chill, if not colder. So we got to the mountain one morning as early as possible. Right when the lifts opened, we got a grand total of four runs in the last of which. I had a brilliant idea and thought, hey, well, you know, the mountain's about to close because the wind is picking up and the temperature is dropping.
So let's take the big chairlift up to the peak just so we can see it once. Yeah. It was one of the worst calls I've ever made because, uh, the, their visibility going down was zero. We lost each other going down, and then both simultaneously had a panic that the other one like fell off into the deep powder and died.
And so we eventually both made it down to the base of the mountain and like found each other. Mid panic attack. This is still like a legendary story for the two of us. Um, moral of the story, early January. Not a safe bet for good conditions. Uh, up in northern Montana, maybe. I dunno. We just had really, really rotten luck.
Yeah, that's, that's terrible luck. I'm, I'm going to Whitefish, uh, this weekend and it's supposed to be 35 and sunny the whole time, so
screw you.
Um, no, that's a really good one too. Also, you know, you guys booked refundable flights. You could have, uh, you could have nixed the trip if you saw the forecast coming, but I don't know.
It's still fun to be in Whitefish, right?
It was, Whitefish is great. We spent a lot of time in the Bulldog Saloon.
Bulldog Saloon. I'll have to, uh, keep your bar stool warm there this weekend. Um, we have a few more mistakes to get to. We both have a couple more, and then I have something, uh, that I'm just calling really, really stupid.
It's a very stupid travel mistake. Uh, when we come back,
we've said it before, but I'm gonna say it again. If you want flight deals, you need Thrifty Traveler Premium 24 7 365. Our team is finding and sending out the cheapest flights and hardest to book business class deals that you can book with your points, and even as fares are going up with oil prices, the deals just keep coming.
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Man, I, I think the sky miles deal to Hong Kong that came right after the Taiwan deal for the same prices was just as crazy. I mean, some of those, the cash prices on basic economy tickets on those routes are like $1,500 round trip, and instead you're throwing 25,500 sky miles at it for, uh, a trip that long.
I mean, it's, it's just, it's an unbelievable. Unbelievable deal and the crazy value, and we were so excited to send that to some of our subscribers, and we heard from several of them who booked it for some pretty epic vacations.
Yeah, if you say that sky miles are worthless, you clearly are not a premium member, so let's change that.
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Okay. We've got more mistakes to admit to. I, I just, I, I actually don't think I want to do this anymore though. This is, this is getting embarrassing. I think I may have deas myself too much, especially looking at what I have left here. It's still not good. It's bad out there.
I can't wait. I'm ecstatic.
Alright. I hope this, I hope this podcast is two hours long.
Okay. Uh, I'm just calling this other mistakes. Um, I just wanted a little catchall to see if I can get Kyle to admit something actually embarrassing, but I'll start. Um, I lost track of two e credits to American Airlines, ECRs that I let expire, and that was a brutal mistake, something that I still don't forgive myself for.
I booked a. January trip, the, the May prior, and for some reason I thought I had until the following January to use it. Turns out it was May, it was a funky credit. It was a, uh, AA credit booked through Capital One Travel to use my $300 credit. Uh, so it was, I had to book AA through Capital One and there were just enough hoops and I had it written down wrong in my one little area where I keep everything and, uh, let it expire.
Uh, went and tried to book it. Kept getting errors called AA and someone had to break me the news that I was many, many months late, um, out a bunch of money. Luckily that credit kind of gobbled up most of it, so I wasn't out a ton of, uh, actual cash, but still really brutal to watch that money just disappear into American Airlines coffers.
So the lesson here is that the credit. The expiration date of the credit, and most credits last a year, but it's based on the day of the original booking, not the day that your trip is set to begin. So if you book a trip 11 months out. You may only have a month to use that credit if you wind up canceling it.
Yeah. Yeah. So it's, uh, that was a tough, tough lesson for me. Um, something that I knew deep down inside, but never made it to my, my, uh, organizational sheet, so it didn't get redeemed in time. Very, very sad. All right. It's your turn.
So on our, uh, for our fifth anniversary, my wife and I went back to Bali where we spent our honeymoon.
Yeah, flying EVA air business class from Chicago to Taipei and then down to Bali. And on that final trip, my, my wife had packed. I mean, we, we spent the entire trip in either Bali or in Singapore where you don't really need anything. More than a t-shirt and a pair of shorts. But my wife brought one article of like long sleeve clothing.
It was just a jean jacket that she would just wear with her 'cause it wouldn't fit in her bag well. And so we just put it in the overhead bin. You can guess what happened getting off the plane in Bali. I left it in the overhead bin because like an idiot. I put it in first. Or I put it into the side instead of what you need to do if you have a jacket in an overhead bin is you put it right in front of your stuff.
Mm-hmm. So it's always there and you don't miss it when you grab everything. Realize this about five seconds after getting through customs and immigration, which is the last point when you want to realize that. So that set off a. Two and a half hour process of trying to track down someone from EVA air to find the jean jacket, figure out how to get it back.
What ended up happening is we tracked down an employee. And they contacted someone who works in security at the Bali airport who escorted us not through the normal security checkpoint, but through like the inner workings of the Bali airport doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in the security process of Indonesian airports.
I'll be honest. Um. It brought us to the lost and found area within the baggage claim area. Finally got it. But it cost us two and a half hours of time after having spent, at that point, probably 20 plus hours already traveling. I was not at my best. It was not, uh, it was not my proudest moment as a husband.
Hey, I mean, you, you got the jacket back. I would've folded so quickly. I would've quit immediately and said, babe, we're getting another jacket some other time. I'm outta here.
Did I think the phrase, you can always buy another jacket. Yeah. Was I smart enough to not say that out loud? I sure was.
Oh man. I'm so proud of you.
That's good. Hard work. To get your wife's jacket back from the Bali airport. Um, all right. My, my next mistake in this other category is something I think a lot of people could probably relate to, and it's just swiping the same old credit card, uh, for about four years of my life before I really got into points and miles, I put.
Every single expense of my entire life on a Delta skymile Gold American Express card earning exactly one skymile per dollar spent except for on airfare, which is what, three, uh, so not a good earner, not smart use of my money for all those years. Um, luckily I was super broke then, so I wasn't spending that much anyway, so it's not like I missed out on millions of points or anything, but.
Um, it's just, you know, I think this is a, a very common mistake and we see it all the time. Actually, my wife just got sent a new skymile card in the mail and she had her old one memorized, but she doesn't have the new one memorized yet. And I was like, that's a good thing. I don't want you to memorize this card anymore.
Memorize your Venture X number please. Uh, but just putting your spend all on the same card, especially if that's just like a simple. Like a loyalty card, like a Sky Miles or a United, or an American or a Marriott or a Hilton card. Like that's just not smart spend unless you're doing it really intentionally for something like status.
But I, I think just, uh, mindless spending on the same old credit card is a mistake that I made for so long, and I just think back like, oh man, A lot of opportunities missed.
Yeah, that's, it's evergreen. And I also think there are times in your life where you just fall back into that and that's fine. You know, everything is, is a, is about a trade off of time versus reward.
And, you know, I have definitely started to skew more towards like my, my patience for thinking about this stuff all the time is starting to wear a little bit thin. But that just goes to, for those situations, you need that like go-to card, that is gonna at least get you. Two points per dollar, which the Venture card, the Venture X card, that is perfect to have if you just don't have the bandwidth or the patience to really care about this stuff day to day.
Yeah, well said. You have another mistake.
I got one more as part of that same, uh, jacket, mistake trip. After spending a week in change in Bali, um, my wife and I went to Singapore for the first time where as we got there, our friends were arriving to spend some time in Indonesia. So we crossed paths in Singapore and like very intentionally planned, let's spend a day and change in Singapore.
Let's meet up. Um, our Christmas present to our friends that year was to bring him on a food tour in Singapore. And so we planned out this, this big food tour the night that we got there, going to some of the Hawker centers, um, and then eventually going to Gardens by the Bay for the Super Tree Grove Light Show every night.
And we ended up in a little bit of a time crunch after starting at one Hawker Center and then going to another. And one of the main things that we wanted to do was go out and get chili crab somewhere. But we had like a grand total of 45 minutes to find a place. We ended up having to pivot, picking a new place that was closer on the way to gardens by the Bay, and it was just like walk in order chili, crab, start eating as fast as possible.
Didn't bother doing any research of. You know whether this was a good place to order chili crab from, it was, it was delicious. It was, however, $210 for basically a half portion of chili crab, I'm sure we got ripped off. But again, because we were cutting it so tight, we just like didn't have time to either look at the menu or push back about whether we got charged too much.
So the gift was to take them and pay for everything. And we got that check and I was like. Hey guys, we're gonna need to go halvesies on this one. We're enough to
split your Christmas present.
Yeah.
That's awesome. That's a good one. Uh, it's nice to know that you've lost out on some money over the years too.
Yeah. And it's not just me flushing it away.
You're
not the only idiot on this podcast.
Well, Kyle, you may spoke too soon. Let
me prove you wrong
because I have a section here called something really stupid. Um, this is a travel mistake, but it's, it's probably so stupid that we may have to cut it. We'll see.
Um. Kyle, I'm, I'm horrible at timing my pre-boarding bathroom break to the point where I think I have like a 10% hit rate. On, on getting my bathroom break before I get on the plane correctly. I feel like almost every time I fly, I'm sitting there staring at the seatbelt sign, waiting for it to go off so that I can get up and run to the bathroom.
I just can't get this right, man. I can't get this right. Do I go at the lounge? Do I go in the terminal? Before I get there both. Usually it's both. You know, sometimes people on this pod may know that sometimes I like to have a few drinks when I travel. That probably exacerbates things here, but, you know, then I break the seal and then all of a sudden I, I need to pee constantly.
I cannot get the pre-boarding bathroom break. Right. And I, I don't know what the solution is besides. Some more sobriety maybe.
I was gonna say drink less, but that's clearly not an option. I think the, if, especially if you're like traveling either in the morning or earlier in the day, the combination of alcohol plus coffee is just deadly.
You're just, you're setting yourself up for failure there. So maybe, maybe try out picking one versus the other and do the. The bathroom before you leave the lounge and then again at the gate?
Yeah. I mean, sometimes like, you know, I don't even think about it and then I'm three hours into a flight, I'm like, oh wow.
I did pretty great today. But most of the time it's just staring at the seatbelt sign, just waiting desperately for it to turn off.
I mean, uh, did. The, the closest I've come to peeing my pants was on a flight from Hong Kong to Vietnam years ago where I, I couldn't have sprung up faster when that light belt sign went off.
So, I'm, I'm with you there. Okay. You're not alone.
Do you have anything really stupid or am I on an island here?
No, it's just you
stupid island. Cool. Uh, I wanna hear everyone else's best travel mistakes. It'll probably make me feel a little bit better. If you could send your best travel mistake to podcast@thriftytraveler.com, we might do a little roundup in a future episode to see, uh, what you guys are doing wrong out there too.
'cause it's not just us, Kyle. Um. Let's help some listeners.
Yeah, let's,
okay. Dr. J sent us a question. Uh, Dr. J is what he described him hisself as. By the way,
that is a flex.
This is not a nickname that I gave Dr. J. Dr. J asks, why do you start the podcast with yo. People still say that. That's all. Love the podcast.
Okay. Thank you for the concise question, Dr. J. Um, a few reasons why I say, yo, welcome to the show. Uh, I like the greeting, yo, I always have, but when I started at Thrifty Traveler, Kyle always used it as a greeting in Slack at work. When Kyle wants something from you, he messaged you, yo. And that's how it gets everything started.
So I was like, oh, it's pretty pithy. I like it. Um, also, everyone on every podcast does some version of Hello or Hi or something like that. And I just wanted something a little different. You know, I, I don't know if you are all listening because of that, yo, but I wanted to try something else. Um. And you know, the first rule in audio is you want like a very sharp, explosive sound to kick off your show.
So, and everyone likes to be just alerted very dramatically to the beginning of your show. So I went with something sharp and loud.
Sylvia is shaking her head so vigorously right now.
I, I, I implemented yo before, uh, before we brought Sylvia on, so she didn't have any say in it. Um, and who knows, I might get her opinion on it later after we finish recording.
Um, anything else about, yo, do you like our yo enter or intro?
Keep the yo.
Okay. He likes the yo. Okay, another listener question from Denise and I'll read this once. It's a bit long. Kyle. Uh, Denise says, uh. I guess I'm part of the new wave of listeners you've added in the past couple of months. I'm also a newbie to points and miles.
I really appreciated your show recently with the steps you take immediately after booking a flight somewhere. Totally new to me and I love the specifics. Here's what I'm trying to figure out. I'm hoping to fly business class to New Zealand in November. Good news is it's not peak season. I missed the opportunity to book when Bookings first opened about 11 months in advance though, and I'm not seeing reasonable availability yet.
I think I've learned from your show that an option is to book something I can live with like an economy seat and then keep watching availability for business class, which might be. As late as in the last week or two before the trip. I would love to know how you approach this when book an economy seat with miles and then if a business class seat opens up, will I have enough miles to book it before releasing the economy seat?
How do you confirm the flight is bookable without already having the, having the miles transferred? I would love a step by step of how you would tackle this. Thanks much, Denise. Um. Denise, we've covered this on the show a few times, but, uh, I think you poked some holes in this strategy that I use. Uh, and I just wanted to explain a little bit more about, you know, some of maybe the risks involved in this kind of booking, a placeholder and then rebooking.
Um, I, I guess not necessarily risks, but more like, uh, some of the things you need to be aware of because it's not, you know, it's not as simple as maybe I made it sound the first time. Um, but you know, we both like this strategy, Kyle, uh. I guess, what do you do if you don't have enough points to hold both bookings at the same time?
You know what I'm saying?
Well, I think the ideal situation is that you have a pot of miles, preferably with a major US airline that allows free change in cancellation, and that is the pot of miles that you use to book the. Just in case I need it. The the okay, but not exactly what you want, because then if you are able to find something in the last week or two before departure in business class to New Zealand, for example, then you can cancel that, get those miles right back and do one of two things.
One is if you have enough miles total for that business class booking. You just book it in business class with your United Miles for example. When you find that better deal so that you know that 30,001 way economy redemption, you get those 30,000 miles right back, then you turn around and rebook the business class redemption for a hundred thousand miles, United Miles, whatever the example is.
Or the other thing you should have is a stash of transferable credit card points. Because in that situation, maybe you can book that same. It's business class flight for 75,000 miles that you transfer from an Amex or a Chase card to the program that's gonna allow you to book for that 75,000 mile rate, but you still get your 30,000 United Miles right back.
So having a couple of different pots of points to play with, I think is, is really important. The last thing I would stress is that in order to do this. Easily, you really need to book your one way flight separately because if you book it round trip and you only find one way in business class on the way to New Zealand, but it's not available on the way back, you're gonna have to cancel your entire round trip booking in order to rebook one way in business class, and then book another way back in economy.
Booking those two flights separately just makes it so much easier to unwind the pieces and rebook pretty quickly.
Yeah. Yeah, that's definitely smart. I, I'll, I'll walk you through my, my process here, Denise. Um, I book something that works and something that's flexible right away, and I try not to book anything else that's non-refundable or hard to change at all.
That's my first step in this whole process. Then what I do is I, I don't just kind of sit and wait for other options. I find my other. Preferable options. So like for instance, this Italy trip that I just finished planning, I knew that I wanted to find Air Lingus business class space flying through Dublin to Rome, and I knew approximately what days I wanted and I just kind of waited it out.
I stuck it out and I looked for it every day. And I had like five or six other options that I was pretty much checking, you know, every day, if not every week, to make sure that I got it. Um, and then I, you know, make sure that I have the points for that, for those bookings, or that I can earn the points in time to make those bookings.
Um. As you get closer, like within a few months, that's when I fill in like hotels and cars. Uh, unless it's like a really big fancy hotel, you need to book way, way out in advance. Uh, and then just staying ready to book, uh, keeping everybody who's traveling with me apprised of what's going on. 'cause sometimes people are like, what do you mean you're, you don't have this booked yet?
Um, and then nail down the details as you get closer. So that's kind of how I like to do it. And, um, I, I just some other considerations when you're doing this strategy. Uh, sometimes you need placeholder positioning flights based on those like most desirable outcomes. So I did this for my trip to Tokyo a few years ago where I knew I wanted to fly a and a the room.
I booked it at the last minute, but I knew those positioning flights would be really expensive at the last minute. So I booked a refundable positioning flight using miles as well, just in case I was able to get that. So it takes some like weird forethought. There. Um, and then you have to be willing to eat some of these change and cancel fees if you're booking with foreign partners.
So if you're gonna book a, you know, a flight with Air France, KLM flying blue, they're gonna ding you, what is it, 75 bucks now? Mm-hmm. To change or cancel that. Um, in some cases you get good agents that just waive those fees. Uh, that doesn't always happen though. You can't count on that. So you have to be willing to eat some change and cancel fees.
Um, and then just. Adding and subtracting random hotel nights because your perfect days might not be there. So you need to be able to have some flexibility or some, you know, hotel credits that come with your credit cards or some hotel points help you do that as well. But, um, Denise, I, I feel why you may have been confused a little bit, but.
'cause there is a little bit more to this than just, uh Oh yeah, book something. And then when the perfect business class flight pops up, then you have the trip of your dreams. There's a lot of other considerations, and I may have ma made it sound too simple when we did it the first time,
there's a lot of moving, I mean, there's a lot of moving pieces to booking flights to New Zealand, period.
But when you start layering in backup reservations and placeholders and positioning flights and hotels, if your travel dates wind up changing, it does get, there's a lot to keep track of, to try to piece these things together. I think the point is, is that it is not as simple. As just booking a round trip flight and calling it good.
It is however worth that additional work and the additional logistics you do just have to have some, some good planning in place to pull this kind of thing off as well as just being really organized.
Yeah, for sure. I hope that helps. Denise, thank you for writing in. If you want us to answer your question on the podcast or if you have any feedback, hit us up at podcast@thriftytraveler.com.
We might feature your question on next week's show to close this show. As always, we're going on the spot and Kyle's putting me on the spot. What do you have? Be nice. It's been a long show.
How scared are you?
I'm scared.
So. So you have fessed up to a lot of mistakes as a traveler, what's the biggest mistake you've made as an employee of Thrifty Traveler?
The biggest mistake I've made as an employee of Thrifty Traveler. Do you have something in mind?
No.
Oh, okay. Okay. I, I figured I should ask my boss if there's like a big glaring one. Um, I think maybe the biggest mistake that I've ever made was writing the rundown to this episode. This, this, this could be, this could lead to my termination.
Um. We'll see. I might not make it to the live show, so, uh, you might have another host at the live show, but, uh, I shouldn't have done this. Um, I've totally discredited myself and, uh, I hope at least you all can see that half of this table makes good travel decisions and half this table is learning in the trenches every day with you.
So, yeah, I think that must be the biggest mistake I've made here this week.
This week, just just so everybody's clear, you're not getting fired for this. This is a good episode. What happens next week, anybody's guess?
Yeah, there's always time. All right. Thank you all so much for listening to the Tur Traveler podcast.
Please rate us five stars on your platform of choice and like it, subscribe to the show on YouTube. Send this episode to someone you know who needs a vacation or who needs to feel better about their own travel mistakes that they've made out there. If you have feedback for us, send me a noted podcast@thriftytraveler.com.
I'd love to hear from you there. Kyle, tell us about the team.
This episode was produced by your favorite host who is making mistakes left and right, but we still love him. Gunner Olson. Olson was produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas and edited by Kyle Thomas. Our theme music is by Benjamin Teso. See you next week.
See ya.