Travel Hacking for the Fully Employed

Greetings from New York City!  I am in the middle of a 2 week travel blitz that will take me to four states (Massachusetts, North Carolina, New York, and Maryland) and it looks like I’ll be turning around in mid-April to head for Michigan.  I work from home, or the airport, or any bus with wireless internet, which makes traveling easy as I can work on the go.  But what if you have a job with a physical location and a commitment to work during the week? Are you confined to ten days of vacation and tied to your house for the rest of the year? You don’t need to be. Before I quit my job, I still managed to travel often and efficiently.

You can too. The secret? Figure out how travel hacking, even while employed in a “traditional” job!

It’s A Mindset

When I moved to New York, my main travel goals were: return to LA regularly and visit my family in DC often.  With those goals in mind, I crafted my plans.

I used to need a full day to travel and usually another day to recover, then I traveled across the US for two months, lived out of suitcases and hotels, and covered over 3,000 miles with a non-profit.  When you’re pulling ten hour drives in a bus, suddenly a five hour flight seems easy.  I embraced mini-vacations. Many people travel on three-day weekends so traveling can be hectic but the weekends are popular for a reason. Take advantage of them!

For weekend trips, my job was nice enough to allow me to leave early on occasion so I would head out at 2 or 3 PM on Friday, depart at 6 PM, and arrive in LA at 9 PM (thank you time zones!).  On the return trip, I took red-eyes to maximize my time in LA (and often save on airfare).  Stay with friends, raid their kitchens, it’s totally doable.

You can be most places in the US, with enough time left in the evening, even leaving after work on Friday. Rather than take one two week vacation, why not take a nine day vacation and then piece together five mini-vacations, which can be up to four days each if you combine them with extended weekends?

Think you can’t afford to travel?  Think again.

With advance planning, a round-trip ticket can be as low as $250. How did I afford the cost every other month? I skipped on cable television, for me it was an easy choice.  You could also skip on daily Starbucks coffee, eating out a few nights a week, or any number of small things.  Of course, you can choose not to also… just don’t say you can’t. Chris Guillebeau’s Frequent Flyer Master ebook is full of tips & tricks to help us figure out how to help make traveling more accessible by taking full advantage of the airlines’ frequent flyer programs (with a few travel hacks in there as well).

Do you want to?  I share some helpful tips below to make your domestic travel dreams an economic reality but first, where do you want to go?  The best travel plan is the one that works for you.

Make Travel Make (Financial) Sense

If I said it once, I’ll say it again: make it work for you.  My main objectives were LA and DC.  In Los Angeles, I love Long Beach Airport as it is small which makes getting in and out easy and it only takes slightly longer to get to than LAX from most places.  Plus, I have plenty of friends in Long Beach!  jetBlue flies from major cities into Long Beach Airport.  Their awards program isn’t the best but it works well for me.  For DC, I can take Amtrak in the same time I can fly (once time to airport and in security are factored in) and they have a solid rewards program as well.  That was my plan.  What are your travel goals?  How can you leverage them to make travel make sense for you?

Specific Tips

Trains

I love trains.  If most of your travel is on the same coast or along a train line, learn to love trains too. With planning, an east coast one-way ticket can be as low as $24, elsewhere they are even cheaper.  If you can’t get a low-cost ticket, here’s a tip I picked up a few months into traveling: watch for the Acela.  Amtrak increases ticket prices as seats fill up and the departure date nears.  That means, a full regional rail train might cost the same as an empty Acela.  However, with Acela, you get 500 rail points per ticket, with regional rail lines, you only get 2 points per dollar.  Points can add up quickly this way and once you qualify for Select, you get additional bonuses so they rack up even faster.

Planes

Here, the old advice rings true: pick a program and (whenever affordable) stick with it.  For years, my primary travel was between big cities and at the time jetBlue allowed 3 checked bags.  They also fly to Long Beach Airport (as opposed to LAX) and the small airport was super easy.  Long Beach Airport + checked bags + easy loyalty program = the right choice for me.

Today, I travel to more obscure locations and am willing to work a bit more at my loyalty program, so I don’t fly jetBlue as much and use the legacy carriers (United, American, Continental, Delta, etc) more often.  But again: go with what works.

Buses

If you live on the east coast, Bolt Bus runs between Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and DC. Surprisingly, they have a rewards program too. My Bolt Bus ticket from NYC to DC is usually cheaper than a cab ride to the station. MegaBus runs all over the place, even into Canada and they have a division in the United Kingdom as well. If you can handle the longer commute (and the bus seats), these buses can be great travel deals.

Now It’s Your Turn!

What are you travel goals? Write them down, research how much they will cost, determine what you can trade to make them affordable, look for tricks and hacks to make life easier, plan, execute, and then share with everyone here!

Photos: mtungate & boboroshi