You’ve earned the points, you’ve booked the trip … but how do you make your travels more enjoyable? On this (perhaps not final?) episode of Starter Kit, the guys walk through the little things you can do to improve your entire trip, from the planning process to booking lodging, rental cars, and trains to making your airport experience easier - and even how to beat jet lag and find activities to do abroad. And in the name of keeping things thrifty, they spill the beans on the best way to cover these extra expenses with points and miles.
You’ve earned the points, you’ve booked the trip … but how do you make your travels more enjoyable? On this (perhaps not final?) episode of Starter Kit, the guys walk through the little things you can do to improve your entire trip, from the planning process to booking lodging, rental cars, and trains to making your airport experience easier - and even how to beat jet lag and find activities to do abroad. And in the name of keeping things thrifty, they spill the beans on the best way to cover these extra expenses with points and miles.
Starter Kit is sponsored by Thrifty Traveler Premium, the world’s best flight deal service. Get $20 off your first year of Thrifty Traveler Premium flight deal alerts - use promo code “START” at thriftytraveler.com/premium.
00:00 - Has Kyle achieved travel nirvana?
02:50 - Tools & apps to organize your travel plans
07:50 - Make the airport easier: TSA, lounges & Flighty
20:00 - Lodging tips: Finding the best hotels & vacation rentals
26:05 - Saving on rental cars with Autoslash or Turo
31:00 - How to find other forms of transportation
32:45 - Tips for traveling better on the ground
45:30 - Your final flight plan!
47:00 - Kyle’s final advice to travelers: Get out there!
Volume 5 Flight Plan:
Related Episodes & Links Mentioned:
Ep. 31: Beating Rental Car Companies & Hotel Chains with Autoslash CEO Jonathan Weinberg
Bonus: Why Flighty is Our Favorite Travel App
TripIt — TripIt
Google — Google My Maps · Google Hotels · Google Maps / Street View
Saily — Saily eSIM
Airalo — Airalo eSIM
Thrifty Traveler Premium — Thrifty Traveler Premium Flight Deals (Use promo code START for $20 off your first year!)
TSA — TSA PreCheck · TSA Digital ID / Touchless ID information
CLEAR — CLEAR+
Global Entry / Mobile Passport Control — Global Entry / Trusted Traveler Programs · Mobile Passport Control information
Flighty — Flighty
LoungeReview — LoungeReview
American Express — Amex Global Lounge Collection
Airbnb — Airbnb · Airbnb Experiences ·Airbnb Reverse Image Search
Vrbo — Vrbo
AutoSlash — AutoSlash
Turo — Turo
Rome2Rio — Rome2Rio
Viator — Viator
Cashback Monitor — Cashback Monitor
Capital One — Capital One Offers · Capital One Travel · Capital One Miles redemption guide
Rakuten — Rakuten
Copenhagen Card — Official Copenhagen Card
Charles Schwab — Schwab Bank Investor Checking
AllTrails — AllTrails
Produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas
Video editing by Kyle Thomas
Show music: “All That” by Benjamin Tissot
Yo, welcome to Starter Kit. I'm Gunnar Olsen, a reporter for Thrifty Traveler and a flight deal analyst for Thrifty Traveler Premium, and joining me for this special series and every episode of the Thrifty Traveler podcast is Thrifty Traveler executive editor and our travel sensei, it's Kyle Potter. Kyle, welcome back to Starter Kit. To recap, in episode one, you were our cheap flights sherpa, and since, you've been our points earning coach, our points redeeming professor, our organizational muse, and now, by request of YouTube viewer Rally Cat, we're diving into the world of martial arts and making you our travel tips sensei this week. Do you like it? Little bit more cultural appropriation here. Uh, I also don't love that it's giving Splinter from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle vibes. But it's, it's ironically one of the better ones that you've come up with so far. Sensei is pretty good. It implies someone who has walked before you in considering all of your wisdom in travel and how good you are at martial arts. I think it's appropriate. What color belt do you think I am? Uh, I would say two or three down from black. You're not quite a, a white belt. That's the lowest level one, right? I have no idea. Okay. I don't know why I asked. We shouldn't have gone into that topic. Uh, in this edition of Starter Kit, we are doing the fun part, everybody. We're doing the traveling. We're giving all our best tips to make the actual traveling part better. But first, Kyle, I wanna find something out. What is the most blissed-out you've ever been while traveling, when everything came together, all the logistics worked, and you had, like, that perfect travel moment? Man, there's a few that come to mind. Um, you know, scooting around the island of Koh Kood in Thailand in search of the cheapest bottle of beer, which are record low. This spring was a buck 50. Um, you know, tooling around the bay of Bora Bora in a boat that we rented and drove around ourselves for four hours chasing stingrays. Um, and then flying back home from Southeast Asia this spring in Cathay Pacific first class, drinking Krug champagne, which I would never in my life buy because it costs, like, $300 a bottle, and eating champagne, sitting face-to-face with my wife. Um, these are the things that just really stand out to me. Uh, there's, one of my favorite authors, one of my personal heroes is Kurt Vonnegut, and he has this phrase that he repeats throughout his books. "If this isn't nice, what is?" And I think a lot about that phrase whenever I have these kinds of moments. Oh, wow. Well put. That's the kind of bliss that we are after today, talking about all of these travel logistics. On episode five of Starter Kit, we're going through all of our best tips from start to finish. We're gonna talk about how to get your travels organized, how to make the airport experience easier, how to get the right accommodations, how to get the cheapest and best rental car, and how to maximize your activities on the ground. All that and more. Welcome back to Starter Kit from Thrifty Traveler podcast. Okay, uh, last week we talked about TripIt, Kyle, and agreed that it is the first travel tool you should sign up for. It's completely free. What it does is it organizes all of your travel plans into one tidy trip timeline, helps you fill in gaps in your travel plans, get all of your booking confirmations in one place, and start to really piece together a trip. Uh, you can connect it to your email inbox, so you can just forward it all of your confirmation emails, and it does the rest for you. You can also connect it to auto-populate your plans in your calendar too. I've been using TripIt since the first time I stepped on a plane, and I still use both the website and app for every single trip. What's your favorite part about this app or website, Kyle? Just the ability to quickly scan through your entire trip and see any gaps or just get visual reminders of what's coming up next. What time are we supposed to check out of this hotel? What time is check-in for the last one? TripIt automatically pulls in all of these things on one really neat and easy to manage timeline. This is... E- every single person that I've ever recommended TripIt to has said, "Wow, this has, this is... Where has this been all of my life?" basically. Yeah, it's too easy to use. It's too free. Just go use TripIt. I, I promise you, it'll make your travels a lot easier to understand. It's too free. It's too free. Okay, another, uh, another product here that is also completely too free, Google My Maps. Um, we're gonna talk about a few Google products on today's show. I think Google My Maps is one of my favorites and the coolest. My Maps allows you to save all your travel research onto one easy to understand map, and it connects directly with Google Maps on your phone too. So I love this tool, especially for, like, finding and saving restaurants and bars that you're interested in visiting in a city you're going to, uh, various attractions that you wanna go to, wherever your lodging plans are, so that when you're out and about, you can see them right there on the map. Oh, here's how far we are away from home. And then also, you know, emergency services too. Throw on there things like the nearest hospital if things go really awry. I think Google My Maps is extremely helpful for... especially if you're sharing an itinerary with other people, if you're on a group trip, that kind of thing. Um, I, I just, I really use it all the time. I've used it for trips all over the, the world, and, um, I swear by it. Yeah. Uh, uh, incredibly powerful tool to get a visual representation of all the things you wanna do in a place, right? Um, one of our longtime podcast listeners, Carla, gave us the tip m- many, many months ago to take whatever you wanna do for a trip, whether you've just got a Word document or you've got a Google My Maps, and while I would steer anyone clear of using ChatGPT or AI to come up with recommendations for your trip, the greatest use of that is to feed it your Google My Map or to feed it your Word doc of all the things you wanna do, and come up with, you know, a plan of attack for doing all of these things so that you can structure your travel days in a way where you're not going across the city several times. Uh, that you can really kinda structure it in a smart way. I think using all of these tools to plan your days out is a really, really smart call. Yeah. That's called Google My Maps. Check it out. It's als- it's really fun to play with as well, especially if you love maps. Uh, let's talk about getting connected abroad, Kyle. Um, getting phone service on your phone, it doesn't always have to be expensive. In some phone plans it is. Sometimes you'll get charged, like, a flat $10 a day for international roaming. Sometimes you'll get charged by the gigabyte of data. I mean, it's, it's really expensive in some cases. Um, eSIMs are typically a cheaper method that people use, uh, to get your phone connected, um, while you're abroad. Some phone plans allow for international roaming that has it included. Some offer you a few days a year. That's what my phone plan has. And in other cases, an eSIM is gonna be the cheapest possible. I don't have, uh, kind of strict advice on this. You just kinda have to do the math on what is already included in your plan versus what an eSIM is gonna provide you, right? Right. You know, unfortunately in my case, my, my phone plan is one where I'm paying for the phone monthly, which means an eSIM isn't really a reliable option for me. I, I kinda wish it was. Being able to use something like Saily, which occasionally sponsors our show, that's not the reason why we're talking about it, there are certainly others like Airalo or Yesim and tons of others, is definitely the cheapest way. In my case, there are international plans where you can add international data for 10 to $12 a day. Others like yours, you know, if you can get at least a few days a year that, that will keep you covered throughout the entirety of your trip. I think the days of having to seek out, uh, an international SIM card when you get to your final destination, that's not what we should be doing anymore. It's just not worth the time, effort, or money. Yeah, definitely figure this out before you land. That, that kiosk at the airport that's trying to sell you an eSIM right there when you land in another country, that's not gonna be the best rate you get. So do your research ahead of time. Um, your phone plan might cover more than you think, so take a look there as well. Should we pivot to the airport, Kyle? Some tips for traveling itself. Let's go to the airport. I think the most impactful thing you can do to improve your time at the airport is to fly at the right time and on the right day. Um, if you wanna fly Sunday afternoon or Thursday or Friday evening, you're going to face the longest lines and the biggest crowds, and usually the highest fares, too. Um, I've been shouting it from the rooftops since we started this show. I hate flying on Sundays. I almost- I'll avoid it almost religiously. I actually have a flight coming up this Sunday, and I'm already dreading it. Uh, flying on Sunday's the worst. Everybody's going home. It's always stressful and tense. Nobody's excited for their next big adventure. This is going home day, and those are the worst days at the airport. Uh, do you do the same thing? Almost accidentally. And I think it is by virtue of the fact that the fares are almost always cheaper or there's more award space that you can book with your points and miles, departing instead on, like, a Tuesday or a Wednesday. Thinking back to basically all of the international trips that I've taken in the last, gosh, five years, I think all but one of them I- we've left for that trip on a Tuesday or on a Saturday. And man, the airport is just a blessed place on Saturdays compared to the chaos of, like, Sundays, Mondays, and Fridays. I absolutely love getting to the airport at, like, noon on a Saturday and feeling like I'm the only person there. It is. It's amazing. Everyone's got a smile on. Just a casual place to be, Saturday at noon at the airport. There's not gonna be a line at the lounge. TSA is never gonna be faster than at noon on a Saturday. Um, I think maybe the most important part of all this is that it's almost always cheaper to fly on these days, like you mentioned. Um, f- at Thrifty Traveler Premium, our flight deal alert service, we search for flights from 220-plus US and Canadian airports every single day. I'd bet you that the lowest fare on almost every single deal is on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or a Saturday almost every single time. You're just gonna save a lot of money doing things like that. I think our, our team of 12 flight deal analysts would back me up on that. We- we're constantly searching. If you're interested in signing up for Thrifty Traveler premium alerts, go to thriftytraveler.com/premium. Use our special promo code START to get $20 off your first year. But yeah, the point is we sent, like, 1,200 flight deals last year. I would bet 75% of them had the lowest fare or the best availability midweek, right? Right. Okay, let's talk about, uh, TSA security checkpoints, Kyle. To me, TSA, it's the threshold, it's the Rubicon between when your vacation begins, right? Once you clear security, that's when I'm on vacation. Do you agree with that? Do you think of yourself as, like, the Highlander when you get through the TSA checkpoint? I do, yeah. Yeah. That's good. If I could grow a beard, man, I would look like a Highlander, too. It'd be all over for everybody else. That's the only thing that's keeping you, holding you back, this no beard. Yeah, so that's why we've always been big supporters of TSA PreCheck. It's the pre-screening status you can get by paying as low as $78 for five years of TSA PreCheck. You have to get a background check from the TSA. It lets you get through the faster line when you don't have to take any of your items out of your bags, and in most cases, you barely have to break stride to get through. Um, there's also a new version of TSA PreCheck that all PreCheck members can access if they opt into it with their airline. It's called Touchless ID. Um, I know our, our video editor, Kyle Thomas, has done this several times. I've done it before as well. Touchless ID is truly allowing you to almost not break stride at this point. It just comes with a quick face scan right there at the, uh, at the counter. No, uh, swapping IDs with a, a TSA agent anymore either. So that's a really great one. You have to opt into that through your airline, though. The, the TSA doesn't actually know you have Touchless ID until you opt in with your airline when you're flying. Uh, and then finally, there's Clear, um, Clear Plus, which is the other security line that's usually staffed with those people in the blue blazers. There's always people standing in front of those funny little blue, uh, face scanners, too. It's just another pre-screening tool you can use to get through security using your face as an ID. You are kind of shepherded to the front of the line after you are scanned in at the kiosk. It's very nice. I have it, but it costs $219 per year for an individual and $135 per year for all other adults in a family plan. For this reason, I would not use Clear if I didn't have it covered by my American Express Platinum card every year. Uh, you can also get it covered by the Hilton Honors Aspire card, and if you're a top-tier invite-only elite with United or Delta, it's also covered. Um, otherwise, I would probably be just okay with TSA PreCheck. How often do you hit the Clear line versus the PreCheck line nowadays? I, I almost always make a beeline for Clear, which I wouldn't have said a year ago, but the rollout of these touchless kiosks, not just to TSA PreCheck, but also now to, for Clear Plus members, has just been a game changer. I think either way you're gonna be set, but, you know, if I didn't have an Amex Platinum card or a Hilton Aspire card to cover the now $219 a year charge of Clear Plus, I wouldn't even bother, especially because TSA touchless ID is so, so powerful. I think the $78 that you pay for five years of TSA PreCheck is the single best thing that you can do to improve your travels, period. And the fact that there are now so many cards from the Capital One Venture to now the Chase Sapphire Preferred card as well, not to mention all of the other far more expensive travel rewards credit cards that will cover the cost of either TSA PreCheck or Global Entry, which I imagine we'll get into Is just incredible. It, it makes your travel so much better. Your first time using TSA PreCheck, you will kick yourself for not getting it sooner. It is an absolute game changer. Yeah, I totally agree. Let's just talk about Global Entry right now because I would argue this is probably the second best valued travel perk that there is. Uh, if you can get Global Entry, it basically allows you to completely skip the immigration line, which can be a total nightmare depending on where and when you land. Uh, you know, if you're landing at, uh, JFK at 2:00 PM on a Sunday, I mean, you're looking at a very, very long line. But with Global Entry, you just have your face scanned, you walk right to the front, they say your name, and you're through. It's that easy. Yeah, the, my last, I don't know, three or four return trips to the United States using Global Entry at some really busy hubs, including JFK, including O'Hare and Seattle, I have literally not stopped walking. It's incredible. And I would actually say I think for the right traveler, one who travels frequently internationally, Global Entry is the single best tool because the best part about Global Entry is it's a two for one. You get that fast pass through immigration when you return through the U.S. But once you have Global Entry, that is also basically PreCheck. It gives you a Global Entry number that you can enter as your known traveler number for all of your reservations, even domestically departing from the United States, which gets you PreCheck. So it costs a little bit more at $120 for a five-year membership. There are a handful, I mean, a litany of travel r- rewards credit cards that also cover Global Entry. Most cards that cover TSA PreCheck give you a choice between the two. The one hang-up with Global Entry is it's more cumbersome to sign up for. It's a process that can take, you know, at least a couple of days at the very least, and in some cases take many months because it goes through a much more rigorous background check with the federal government, and it goes through several stages, including an in-person interview, and that part can be a real pain. But if you travel once a year, even once every other year internationally, Global Entry is the place to start. And you can do those interviews on arrival now at some airports, too. Check to see if you can possibly get one of those interviews then. I, my wife Megan did hers, uh, in Miami on our way back from Cuba. Uh, so we landed back from Cuba, and she immediately did her Global Entry interview there, and boom, she was good for the next five years. So, um, what is an alternative to Global Entry? What is Mobile Passport Control? Yeah, this is a free smartphone app that the federal government does at, you know, I would say the vast, vast majority of the biggest major international hubs in the United States where I- if you don't have Global Entry, you don't wanna sign up for it, you don't wanna pay for it, whatever, download the Mobile Passport Control app. You have to enter all of your details once you land, but it gets you into a designated queue that in many cases is, I would say if it's not just as fast as Global Entry, it's pretty darn close. So that is a great backup, and I think especially a great backup for traveling families who don't wanna go through the process of signing up their young children for Global Entry, which while it's now free for those young children, as long as, you know, there's an adult in the household that has Global Entry, they actually still have to go through that exact same application and approval process, which really compounds the pain of getting this really valuable program. It's also a pretty hilarious process when you're signing up your... I think when we took her in she was, my little daughter was like 12 weeks old when I took her in for her Global Entry interview. Uh, her photo doesn't even work because she was 12 weeks old, so. But anyway, it is free. Um, let's talk about Flighty. Uh, this is my favorite app on my phone, period. It's a flight tracking app. It just, it does so much more than just that, though. If you wanna go deep on Flighty, we did a bonus episode of the podcast in September 2025 with Flighty CEO Ryan Jones that was excellent, a ton of fun, and he kinda- Walked us through what it means to take all this data and put it in such a, a beautiful, uh, iPhone app. Uh, basically, Flighty tracks and digests every single piece of information related to your flight. It's i- incredibly powerful, really well-designed. It keeps travelers up to date on the status of their flights better than the airlines themselves in some cases, too. What's your favorite part about this app? You know, it, there's, it's a tie between the really practical of the number of times where I've gotten notifications from Flighty about delays or cancellations five minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, two days before the airline itself is incredible. That's why I keep it. On the nerdier side, their passport where you can pull up all of your travels over your entire lifetime and get stats about how long you've flown and the airline you've flown with and the aircraft type that you've flown on most frequently makes it really, really fun, too. It's, it is my favorite app by far as well. It's something that we both gladly pay for. We are not sponsored by Flighty. I think they understand that there's no point in paying us to sponsor them because we're gonna talk about them so much anyway. Yeah, long before Ryan joined the show, I was a Flighty lifetime subscriber. Um, Flighty Pro is how you get all of your flights and history tracked with their alerts. Your first flight is always free with Flighty Pro, so if you wanna just download the app and check it out on your next trip, um, you can test it out there. For Flighty Pro, an annual plan is $60 a year or $119 for a family. You can also get a week of it for $5 if you're just doing it for one trip, too. That lifetime membership that I got was $299. And, and notably, it is only available on iOS and Apple products. No Android Flighty app yet, so too bad for Android users. You're missing out big time. Yeah, I mean, I just wanna say information is power when things go wrong, and the sooner you get that information, th- it gives you an edge to change flights before other people realize that they need to get on a different departure because theirs just got delayed by six hours. That is why Flighty is really that powerful. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, our last thing at the airport here, Kyle, um, if you are a lounge creature like I am, you need to use a site and an app called Lounge Review. It's the best way right now to figure out what lounges you can access at airports all over the world. You can put in your flight information or what credit cards you have to filter what lounges you can access at airports big and small all over the world. I use this app every time I travel to get a sense of where I can go at the airport if I need to, uh, access a little buffet, have a drink, even amenities like showers and kids play areas and more. Um, this replaced LoungeBuddy, which used to be the gold standard of this, but folded up shop a few years ago. I assume you use Lounge Review. I do. The other thing that I use, uh, is because the Amex Platinum card, which we both have, generally speaking, opens more lounge doors than any other card on the market, just searching for Amex Global Lounge Collection and searching for the airport that you're departing from is a really good starting point as well. So either one of these tools I think is gonna serve people well. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, let's move on to some lodging tips, and we're gonna start with Google Hotels. Um- Uh, Google Hotels is, Kyle, just bear with me here. It's like Google Flights but for hotels. Wait, what? Can you believe it? Uh, the key to Google Hotels, just like Google Flights, is the ability to filter for super specific amenities and more. Uh, it can help you figure out which hotel to stay at based on things like, uh, do you need an airport shuttle, uh, is there free breakfast, h- how much are you gonna pay for parking, and more, more, and more. Like, i- is there a hot tub, is there a swimming pool, everything like that. Um, I don't always book using or starting with Google Hotels, but I always have a tab open to make sure that I have a full understanding of all the amenities provided at a hotel, uh, before I booked. And yeah, I, I just, I use this tool all the time, not necessarily always to push that final booking button, but just to see exactly what I'm getting. Yeah, it's, it is to my mind by far the most comprehensive starting point to start your search for hotels and really narrow in on exactly what you want. Do you only want a four or five-star hotel? Do you have a budget that's somewhere in the neighborhood of under $300 a night? Are there specific hotel chains that you wanna stay with? You can filter for all of those and really kinda narrow down on exactly what it is you want, and then I think you go off elsewhere and you book directly with Hyatt or with Hilton or wherever else. Yeah, exactly. Um, plus Google Hotels is connected to Google Maps very closely, which is another crucial stop to seeing, you know, where a hotel is located and how far it is from the places that you wanna go, which leads me to my next lodging tip, Kyle. Um, before I book any vacation rental or a hotel, I look the place up on Google Maps and zoom all the way in until I get to what's called the Street View. I, I use this all the time, and it's a tip I think goes underutilized with a lot of travelers. Um, before I go anywhere, I peruse the neighborhood on Street View just to see exactly what you're gonna get. The satellite view when you're looking above is helpful to get the lay of the land, but Street View can show you more or less exactly what you're gonna see when you get there. Uh, that way you can avoid a VRBO that's in a weird alley or a crazy busy square or, uh, book a hotel that doesn't have the view you were hoping for. It can also just help you if you know you're gonna b- get off a long overnight flight, you're gonna be jet lagged, where exactly is the entrance to this hotel? Mm-hmm. If I'm half a human walking up to my hotel begging for a room at 8:00 AM, where am I actually gonna go? I use this all the time. I spend a few minutes on Street View before I book any lodging. Do you ever use this? I use it primarily to look at your house and see how your yard is looking. Um, you've got some work to do this summer. Oh, I do. I do. It's been a long summer. I've been putting a lot of work in, okay? Yeah. You know. Next year. Check out Street View next year. Keep it up. Yeah. It should look good. Um, all right, let's talk about vacation rentals. Uh, there are some tips to save there, too. First, broadly, I would say just cast a wide net. I think a lot of people start and end their search with Airbnb, right? And, and there are other ways to book vacation rentals. What are some of the other top ways that you look at? I would say the top thing is whichever platform you're using, whether it's Airbnb or VRBO or searching through some travel portals or even airline portals that have increasingly branched out not just into booking hotels, but homestays as well, the single most important thing to do is to read reviews and read a lot of them and make sure that there are recent reviews and that there are, in fact, reviews and that you're not booking a place that has never been reviewed by a single guest, it's brand new, or it's had a ton of stays and it's got a five-star rating, but the last stay was in 2022. Those are all bad signs. I said this before when we did our hot takes episode earlier this year. I'm gonna say it again. Booking a bad Airbnb, booking a bad VRBO is a user error. You gotta do the work. I'm sorry, these are not hotels. If you want to make sure that you have that same kind of cut-and-dry cookie cutter experience, pay for a hotel. If you wanna book an Airbnb to get what you get from Airbnbs or these homestays with additional rooms and in a full kitchen, you gotta put in a little extra work, so you gotta read those reviews. Yeah, that's what they're for. That's why those platforms are so helpful is just having all those reviews right there from actual people. Um, yeah, make sure that you're doing your, your research. There is one tip around booking vacation rentals that is really better than the rest, and I've used this so many times and saved a lot of money on it. It's reverse image searching Airbnbs using Google. So you take that lead image on the Airbnb that you wanna see. You click and save or copy that image, and you put it into Google, and it... Once you reverse image search, so you can just press search, and Google will search for that image on the internet and usually bring up the other listings for that Airbnb. If it's truly, like, a vacation rental run by a vacation rental company, they'll likely have a way that you can book directly on their website, which can often save you a lot of money. These vacation rental companies will jack up the price on Airbnb because they know Airbnb is, one, gonna take a cut, and two, they're just doing a little fishing, seeing if they can find someone who's willing to pay a lot extra just to stay on the Airbnb platform. I've done this many times in ski towns especially, uh, where vacation rentals are often owned by companies, not people, and they're gonna offer you a way better rate, uh, if you book directly with them than they will on Airbnb or VRBO Always do your due diligence no matter what. That doesn't mean... Every vacation company is not, uh, uh, created equally too, so make sure you're doing all of your due diligence. Have you done this? I have. I have saved over $200 on the last few Airbnbs that we've booked just by doing this very quick... I mean, if you're on a desktop, you can literally, like, right click an image, search it in Google, and it will show you all of the places that this image of this property shows up. And if you're booking direct with it, I would say 8 times out of 10 it's gonna be significantly cheaper to book direct with whatever property listing that that property has. Yeah. Okay, let's move on. I think a lot of travelers have the same question as Angela, who wrote into our podcast inbox at podcast@thriftytraveler.com with the following. Angela said, "I've learned so much about maximizing my travel dollars from listening to you, and I'm getting the hang of it, finding deals, using points, et cetera, but... rental cars. How do you not get smacked in the face by a rental car rate that is about half of my entire travel budget? Beyond renting from sketchy agencies with one-star ratings, is there any way to save on rental cars?" What do you do for cars? I do one of two things, and I often check both immediately when I know I need a set of wheels. The first place I always look, what we always tell people is start with AutoSlash because this is Kind of the Google Flights of cars is I guess how I think about it, because it has a lot of the same features. It's gonna pull in listings from all of the major rental car companies and send you dedicated quotes for exactly what you need. You can add in, you know, "Oh, I've got an Amex Platinum card," or, "I've got a Costco membership." So you can factor in those savings that you might be able to get and whatever m- other memberships you might have. But most importantly, once you actually click through to book, whether it's directly with Hertz or through Priceline or whatever, AutoSlash is gonna track that listing, because the listing, or the, the rates for a rental car change just as much, if not more, than flights do. And when that drops, you will get an email from AutoSlash that says, "You can rebook this listing and save however many dollars." We saved more than $300 on a single car rental, uh, in, uh, the Big Island of Hawaii, you know, five, six years ago, just because we started that process through AutoSlash. Yeah, and car rental rates tend to go down sometimes as you get closer to your day too. So it, that, having that price alert really helps. Otherwise, you're gonna have to do this manually, like going and rechecking and rechecking. And often the, the cancellation policies on many of these cars are really, uh, flexible too, so you can cancel all the way up until about a day before. So go get that best rate if you can. AutoSlash, I think, is the best way to do it. AutoSlash CEO Jonathan Weinberg joined the show for episode 31 back in October of last year. It's a really good peek behind the curtain of how the rental car industry works. Um, Kyle, Turo, which I know you're familiar with, uh, is the Airbnb for rental cars. I think Turo is a, a really underutilized tool as well. You're typically renting someone's vehicle directly from them, which means that you can often rent more unique vehicles, some exotic vehicles if you want, something that's really specialized, like a passenger van for a big group trip. Uh, it also means you can save big compared to airport pricing of rental cars from like a Hertz or an Avis. Um, that doesn't mean that you can't pick them up at airports. Many of the Turos that I've booked, you can just pick up right from the airport parking lot where the owners of the cars will drop them off, and you can just drive away like a normal rental car too. Um, it's important to beware of the risks of Turo as well. Some car owners require weird things. I had one where they needed me to take it through the car wash before I returned it. That was a strange one. Um, some of them will make you pay for the parking at the airport when you pick it up, which can get a little pricey as well. Make sure to read over all the requirements closely. Um, but sometimes, you know, sometimes after I've done the math it makes more sense to just go with Hertz and Avis right there at the airport. Sometimes it makes a lot more sense to go with Turo. Um, what is your experience with Turo? I have rented, I think, now seven or eight cars through Turo. And every single one of them was far, far better than the best rental car experience that I've had because you know exactly which car you're getting. You're not just booking a mid-size sedan and they're gonna give you whatever they have on the lot. You book a Tesla, you get a Tesla. You book a Jeep, you get that Jeep Cherokee from that exact year that you booked. So there's predictability there. The biggest thing for me is the ease of it. If you book through any of the big box rental car chains, you gotta stand in that line, and even if you have status through one of your credit cards to save and get-- you know, basically walk out into the lot and pick your card, it is a process to get out of there, which takes, you know, at least 10, 15 minutes at the least. And in some cases, I've stood in line at airport, uh, rental car stands for hours. With Turo, you get out of the airport, you walk into the parking garage, your car is there, the key is inside. You take some photos of it, upload it to Turo to show that you're there and that what shape the car is when you picked it up, and you're off. Is-- Are there complications? Absolutely. But to me The ease of it, and maybe most importantly, the savings of going through something like Turo instead of one of these chains just far, far outweigh it. Yeah, when it started, there, it seemed like there weren't a ton of cars on it. Now there are so many car, uh, tiny airports all over the country. These little ski towns I fly into, you can find a Toyota Highlander in every single parking lot in America- Yeah ... it seems. All right, let's talk about some other transportation, 'cause if you're anything like me, you'll do almost anything to avoid getting in the car when you're on vacation, which leads us to this question from R. Simpson, who wrote to the email inbox, "I was wondering if you would include other modes of transportation for travel besides airplanes, such as buses, trains, or boats, since there are people who wanna find short, affordable trips using these forms of transportation, and sometimes there are deals on these kinds of trips as well." Kyle, where do you look when you're looking for alternative transportation while you're traveling? The, the question is always planes, trains, or automobile, right? And the m- number one resource for that question of how to get where you're trying to go is rometorio.com. This will give you all of your options for, you know, getting from point A to point B, and give you, at the very least, pretty accurate estimates of what these things may cost. So, you know, if you're trying to get to a smaller town and you're trying to figure out, "Well, could I get there by train?" Or, you know, "Should we rent a car?" Or, "Should we hop on a plane in order to get that?" You know, I, I think especially for things like traveling within Europe, this is where it's, like, absolutely invaluable. So Rome2rio is, and will always be, the number one starting point for me for these questions. Yeah, Rome2rio is really all-encompassing. Usually, I will start with Google Maps, but that's because I'm a little obsessive with Google Maps. Um, but if something doesn't seem right, like, "Man, is that really the only option between these two cities?" Then go to Rome2rio and be like, "Oh, actually, you know what? There's a nonstop bus that's not on Google Maps," or, "There's a ferry that can get me there in half the time for half the cost, too." So Rome2rio is really kinda all-encompassing. I love using that website as well. It's also a great way to help budget your trip e- even if you're not ready to book something, 'cause like you said, the pricing there is really accurate and, and usually pretty good. Uh, let's talk about some packing, some activities, and some traveling, and I wanna start with jet lag, Kyle. When it comes to jet lag, uh, you come at it with a little softer touch than I do. I think people are weak and soft, and maybe the best way to beat jet lag is just a little mental toughness at the end of the day. You, however, are actually helpful about this, so why don't you tell the people what your jet lag tips are? You subscribe to the Taylor Swift jet lag is a mindset idea. That's right. Yeah. I mean, I do think that there is an element to it, um, that I think there are a handful of things that you can do to make your jet lag better. There's no way to eliminate it entirely if you're skipping across eight-plus time zones. That's just not a reality. You're gonna deal with some of this. The first thing that I always do is I set my watch to the destination when I get on the plane. Because the biggest thing that you can do is start to adjust earlier and try to trick your mind to start living by the time in your final destination. That's not always gonna be easy, but if you, if you can force yourself to go to bed a little bit earlier or wake up a little bit earlier in order to get on that final time zone, the easier it's going to be the next couple of days. Maybe the best thing that we always do when we travel, my wife and I, is we plan something big for our first night in that destination. We book a food tour, or we make plans with friends if we're meeting up with friends there, or have friends that live in the city we're gonna be in. Because then that way, you don't succumb to the 3:00 or 4:00 PM nap that becomes, "Oh, I'm just, I'm too tired, I'm gonna sleep," and then you're up at 2:00 AM the next day and you're still stuck on Central or Eastern or Pacific Time. That is the most deadly mistake you can make, and by planning something to force yourself to stay awake, you're gonna make the next few days, weeks so, so much better. Yep. That's a really, really good tip. Uh, let's talk about tours. Um, what to actually do while you're on your vacation. In some case, people are looking for tours, they're looking for, like, guided activities of some sorts, maybe tickets to museums, other things like that on their trips. Where are some of the places you should look to buy those types of things, Kyle? The place where I tend to look now more than ever, it used to be Airbnb Experiences, which I still think can be quite good, but my go-to now is viator.com for a couple of reasons. I think that the amount of listings there now far exceeds what you can get through Airbnb, but maybe more importantly, there are so many ways to earn a ton of points by booking through Viator. If you time it right by checking Cashback Monitor first, or going through Capital One Offers, which is a- available to you if you have a Capital One Venture or Venture X card, or going through Rakuten, I mean, you can get 20 or more points per dollar if you time your purchase right. This is a great way to book a cool experience. The, the ratings and review system on Viator is really solid. Um, and then you can also, any purchase through Viator codes as travel. So if you want to, on the back end, go back and after you book something through your Capital One card because there's a Capital One offer to earn 20 or 30 points per dollar, you could then actually go back and erase that charge using Capital One miles because it codes as travel, so it's a great way to win on both ends. Yeah, definitely. You can also, uh, through Capital One's travel portal, you can now book activities as well. Mm-hmm. So you can use, if you have the Venture X card, for instance, you get that $300 credit to use in the portal every year, you can use that to cover activities. We used it to book a Vatican tour, uh, this year, uh, when we were in Rome, so that was a pretty good way as well. Um, I will shout out Airbnb Experiences, uh, did add what it's calling services now, where you can book, you know, things like a massage, uh, to come to your home and do something like that. So Airbnb has bolstered their, uh, experiences a little bit, and then there's also a website called GetMyGuide that's specifically for, um, you know, tours and things like that, walking tours of cities. And then of course, you know, book directly with the provider if possible. Sometimes, uh, booking with a- Or searching with Viator or one of these other, uh, websites can help you figure out what's out there, and then maybe you just take it and go book directly with the provider just to make sure you're getting, uh, the exact thing that you booked in the end. Let's talk about city cards. Um, this is pretty niche, so we'll be quick on this, but one thing to consider if you're going to a major city is looking into their city cards. Usually that's what they're called. They're kinda all-encompassing passes to major attractions around the city at their best. Uh, at their worst, they're sometimes just a coupon book, so be careful and make sure you know exactly what you're getting. The reason I always look into these is that they usually include at least a few of the things I wanna do, but most importantly, they also usually include access to public transportation and, in many cases, unlimited access to public transportation. I used the Copenhagen Card a few years ago when I was there for just a weekend. I think it was, like, $20 for a 48-hour card. I made all that money back just by riding the trains, and I went and saw many attractions while we were there, too. Um, do the math on these cards. Make sure it makes sense and it's gonna be worth it for you. Uh, sometimes public transportation is so cheap that it's not worth it to get the card if you're not gonna go see many of the other attractions as well. But always important to take a look, I think. Yeah. Uh, that, that Copenhagen Card is such a good call because that is the perfect place to spend... I mean, you could certainly spend more than two days, two nights there, but it is a great spot to spend two days and two nights, and being able to maximize it with the Copenhagen Card is a great shout. Uh, tell me about pulling cash out of an ATM when you're abroad. What do you do to save on all those annoying, pesky fees? Most importantly, I am not doing this at home. I'm not traveling with a wad of cash. I'm definitely not exchanging currency at the airport or paying, you know, the king's ransom exchange rate that those kiosks in your destination or at the airport charge. What we do, what we have had for years, since our l- literally our first big international trip, is we opened a Charles Schwab debit card. It's technically an investor checking account. You don't need to invest anything in order to do this. But we treat this basically just as our travel checking account. Before we head off on a trip, we, uh, transfer some money from either our checking account or through Zelle into our Charles Schwab account, and then it is fee-free ATM withdrawal anywhere in the world without paying foreign transaction fees or that, you know, $2.99 to $6.99 fee for ATM withdrawals. It is the single best card in our wallet, I think. We use it every single time we travel internationally. It, this is... I think if you travel more than o- once or more a year internationally, this is kind of a must. This is the one case, because of this card, where you can just get off your plane at the airport in a foreign land and just walk up to any old kiosk and still get the best deal possible. Yeah. Like, if any ATM it works for, which is just the best part. That's the beauty of it. Exactly. So I will say that the, the ATM withdrawals are not technically free. You will get charged for that, but at the end of each month or the beginning of the subsequent month, Charles Schwab will refund all the ATM fees you're charged. So those are gonna come through as free in the end of the day. Yeah. This is a really good shout if you're getting cash abroad. Um, I will do a very quick shout-out to a tool called AllTrails that I use on the ground when I'm traveling. It is a crowdsourced hiking app where people can put in their hiking routes. They give them ratings and reviews. Um, I found this is a very helpful travel tool. I love to hike, but it's more than that. There are walking routes in almost every city in the world that you can replicate. Uh, so you can basically do a walking tour by yourself if you have... If you're short on time or whatever, you just wanna see a few pieces of something. It also can give you, like, turn-by-turn directions as you go. Um, and it gives you a good sense on the map of where everything is as well. Uh, we used several AllTrails routes in Italy in May. In Matera, we did one for a city tour. Uh, in Sicily, we did one for a big rowdy hike up Mount Etna. So it kinda just shows you the, the dichotomy of what you can use it for there. Beware, it is crowdsourced. There is some misleading information on there sometimes. Uh, I'd recommend using it for inspiration. Maybe try and find evidence of a hike, uh, elsewhere before you go and book that. I had a very, very ill-conceived hike in Moorea by myself when I had our... I did a review trip to H- to Tahiti, where I was almost marooned on a mountain in Moorea and missed all my flights home. But maybe that's a story for another day. I couldn't have showed up to the airport in worse shape. I was drenched in a rainstorm, covered in mud, at the airport trying to get my flight back to, uh, the island of Tahiti so I can go check into the InterContinental and do a review there. I would pay for photos of that. There were no photos 'cause it was just me. If, if anybody was in the Moorea airport and saw a, a muddy redhead, send me photos. So AllTrails is great, but beware. Um, what are your favorite packing tips when you're looking for, to book a trip? I, I think first of all, especially because we travel pretty quick, we travel with maybe arguably too many connections, but we like to travel light. All of that says pack in just a carry-on. Give it a shot on your next big or even little trip. I promise you it can be done. You can figure things out with liquids. You can buy things in your destination for, you know, $3.50 for a bottle of contact solution instead of paying 35 or $70 for a checked bag that you may or may not need. To do that, we're strategic about how we structure our lodging. So we'll be like, "Okay, well, we're gonna probably need to do laundry at the halfway mark. Maybe that's the time when we spend two nights in an Airbnb to do some laundry, and make sure we search for an Airbnb that has a washer and dryer." Other little things I, I always pack. There are always a handful of dryer sheets in my carry-on bag to make sure that things stay fresh, and then if you need a dryer sheet in order to do some laundry, you've got it Um, I have a dedicated shoe bag, which one of the biggest things you need to do to pack in just a carry-on is pack light on shoes. Those are what take up the most, so having two versatile pairs of shoes and maybe a pair of sandals if you might need them, and that's it, and having them in a dedicated shoe bag so it doesn't get things dirty. And then the last thing that is always in my carry-on bag, there's always a rolled up rain jacket, and there's always a rolled up wet bag. So if we're swimming somewhere on our final, uh, day of vacation and there's not time to dry out a pair of swim trunks, everything goes into that wet bag. Just a little bit of planning ahead for what you might need and what might come up during the course of your trip to make sure you're at the ready. Yeah. I think my biggest packing tip would be don't have kids. Um, it's hard to hard to pack light when you have a child. Uh, also don't get into expensive hobbies, skiing and golf, not good for packing light. Um, but the upside of all those things is you can just jam a bunch of stuff into those bags, you know? With our, my car seat bag, we fill it full of diapers, and with my golf bag, you can put whatever you want in there. Uh, it's a pretty nice easy way to pack really heavy if you need to. But yeah, don't have, don't have a family if you wanna pack light. Super helpful advice for the parents listening. Good work, Gunnar. Okay, uh, last thing here. Becca in our Thrifty Traveler premium Facebook group asked us this question: "What are the best strategies for covering the other trip costs like lodging, food, and entertainment?" Kyle, we've brushed by this a few times on this episode now, but reiterate to our listeners, what is the best way to cover these kinda odds and ends, other travel expenses using points and miles? I mean, the biggest one that I turn to all the time is Capital One Miles because they are so incredibly versatile to book any single travel expense, so long as it codes as travel, which, you know, planes and trains and parking does s- typically, but also anything you book through Viator, anything you book for, through TripAdvisor or an Airbnb experience, all of these things code as travel, which means once that purchase hits your Capital One account, you can go back and cover the cost with miles. So if it costs you $100, you can go back a couple of days later and cover that cost with 10,000 Capital One Miles. I think that's the reason why I think of our Capital One Miles as, like, our travel slush fund. Can you use them to transfer to airline partners and book business class flights? You sure can, but I can do that with other points programs, too. This is what makes Capital One special. So it's really, really great for covering those other things if you want to cover them with miles. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I, I can't speak to it enough. I use Venture miles all the time. I use the Capital One travel portal all the time as well, uh, for this, these kinds of things exactly. Once you're already at your destination, Capital One is an easy go-to for most travelers, and should be for you, too. Okay, at the end of every one of these starter kit episodes, we're gonna give you a flight plan or a to-do list of the big takeaways from the episode and the things you should get going on right now to start on your travel journey. Uh, the first one, Kyle, I would say organize your trips using TripIt and Google My Maps and figure out a phone plan or an eSIM. What's your next tip? Get either TSA PreCheck or, especially if you're an international traveler, Global Entry so you get that fast pass through immigration and TSA PreCheck, and then look into some of these other apps to help make your airport and travel day smoother. All right, the third piece of the flight plan, cast a wide net when looking for lodging, including using Google Hotels and not just relying on Airbnb. Do that reverse image search. Yep. It is a goldmine of savings. Next up, uh, stop overpaying for rental cars. I promise you, any bargain you think you've got, you can do much better by using things like AutoSlash and especially Turo. And then fifth, uh, use our tips to find cheap but reliable tours and activities to make your experience on the ground better, and then use those Capital One miles to cover the cost. Maybe the best hack in all of on-the-ground travel. Uh, Kyle, I think our listeners here are well on their way to becoming official travel sickos like us, and that's actually gonna be it for our first five episodes of Starter Kit from Thrifty Traveler podcast. We are going to have more Starter Kit content coming in the future, so continue to watch this feed for the next installment. It might be coming even sooner than you think. But we have plans for more Starter Kit, and maybe even a, uh, graduation into 201 style content eventually. But Kyle, to close, I have a big question for you. If you could distill the first five episodes of Starter Kit down into 30 seconds, what would you say? What's the big advice that you have for people? Get out there. Start traveling more. Start trying some of this stuff. You know, I think we, we try our best to not just say, "This is the best thing to do with your miles. This is the best redemption. You gotta go book this business class trip. You gotta go do this experience." My hope is that this serves as a foundation for people to build on, because travel is really personal, and so that's why we focus on some of this basic stuff, is whatever level you're at in your travels, however much you've traveled, however many miles you've earned, hopefully there's a takeaway here for you to, to learn from it and go off and do something a little bit different the next time. But to do that, to make that happen, you gotta get out there. Yeah. Start traveling more. That was beautiful, and almost exactly 30 seconds. That's why you make the big bucks, Kyle. Do you have the stopwatch out? No, I didn't, but I, I have a good mental clock. News to me that I make the big bucks. Hey, y- your m- your money is that soft, leafy green stuff, not the stuff that makes sound in my pocket. All right. For now, thank you so much for listening to this episode of Starter Kit from the Thrifty Traveler podcast. Rate us five stars on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or your podcast platform of choice. Like and subscribe to the show on YouTube, where you can watch all our episodes if you're wondering what we look like. Send this episode to someone you know who needs a vacation. If you have feedback for us, send me a note at podcast@thriftytraveler.com. We would love to hear from you. Kyle, tell us about the team. This episode was produced by your favorite host, who needs to find less expensive hobbies and work more on his lawn, Gunnar Olsen. It was produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas and edited by Kyle Thomas. Our theme music, as always, is by Benjamin Tissot. See you next time. See ya.