I love to travel. The only thing about travelling that I like even more than taking the trip is planning a perfect getaway. So I decided to share with you in this post how you can put together a fantastic travel experience without breaking your piggy bank.

You don’t always have to plan ahead to find a good price

When I was a child, my parents always loved travelling. They were also very well organized and liked to book ahead for trips to get the best price. While that used to be good advice, often times it’s good to look at flight and hotel bookings seperately for this one.

When you take a flight, the rule of thumb says that the longer the flight the more advance purchase time you should allow to get a decent price. With most established carriers, that is the case, because if they can predict today how many seats they will have occupied on a specific date in the future it helps their load routings.

However, if you study the booking codes on airlines, you will see that sometimes it may pay to wait and use the strength of competitive pricing on major routes in your favor. Let’s assume you wish to fly from North America to Europe without a lot of hassle and you would like a good price and maybe collect points or miles from the carrier.

Here’s what I usually do: Use the Internet and find the booking codes for that carrier. They are usually in alphabetical order and the further near the end the letter ranks, the cheaper your seat will be. If you are somewhat flexible with your dates get a range of dates and find the price for your flight.

Next, find out if there is an alliance or code share with another airline on the same flight. For example, if you wanted to go from Vancouver to Frankfurt, you could booke the Lufthansa direct flight and spend maybe S1200,- in peak season, or if you knew that Air Canada also serves that route as a codeshare you may be able to get a booking with them on the same flight for $900,- .

In either case it always pays to look around.

Get to know the system before you book

Another thing you can do is find out if there are new flight routes being phased in, since those almost always give you more points AND lower rates to promote them for a few months.

And lastly, as far a flying goes, you should see if the airline you are focusing on give you points and how many ways you can use them to upgrade your travel experience on future trips. Going back to the Lufthansa example you get miles with their miles & more program which extends itself throughout the entire Star Alliance network. You can collect and redeem them for flights, hotel stays or rental car bookings with ALL major carriers.

If you have a choice of flying, make sure that you get points with them every time. That way, as you get towards collecting enough miles for an upgrade or a free flight, your status grows in the network and they will treat you like a star to keep you happy.

Since I became a Silver Member with them, they have upgraded me on long haul flight about 6 times in the past 2 years. Had I booked those flights on a regular ticket, it would have cost more than $20,000 alltogether.

The World of Hotels is at your fingertips…

With finding a great hotel at a reasonable price it’s a bit like with the stock market. If you follow the masses you will seldom be a happy traveller.

My rule of thumb is very simple:

I don’t typically look at hotels that have over 250 rooms (there are exceptions)

I stay away from the mass market chains

I don’t usually book via 3rd party websites (such as expedia or priceline)

I always do research in unusual places

One day a few years ago I stumbled upon a series of booklets published by the clothing maker Louis Vuitton. I got curious and bought the set. This turned out to be a great idea. Not only did I get 8 books on travel intelligence from a local viewpoints for all major European Cities, but it only cost me less than $90,- for them.

Subsequently I planned a wonderful 10 day trip to Paris, Germany and Athens with that knowledge and people where astonished at how I found the hotels I did.

For example, the untrained traveller will ask for a luxury hotel in Athens and end up with one of 2 things. Either a chain hotel of mediocre quality at an inflated price, or a true luxury hotel for a truly luxurious price. But what if I wanted a small luxury hotel in an unbeatable location for the price of a dinner for 2?

That’s where local knowledge and offbeat research help you get a great hotel room. one more tip I will share with you before I finish up this post:

Always do you research on the marketplace. The best deals on fabulous hotels are:

1) When few other people are travelling

2) During the soft launch, renovation or other special circumstances

For that reason, I am sunscribed to the newsletters of Four Seasons, Hyatt and Starwood, because they always inform their best customers and I have had mostly outstanding results from following the above rules for my travel.

I look forward to your feedback on this topic. Do if you have any comments, advise, or questions, just get in touch and join the conversation.

There’ll be more on the topic of travel and Lifestyle coming soon, so grab your RSS feed and stay tuned.

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I just want to send a shoutout to GBlogger at www.canigetrichonasalary.com for including my article in the latest edition of the Money Hacks Carnival.  If you want to check out the carnival, you can find it here:

Money Hacks Carnival #23 — It’s Gotta Be The Shoes!

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Just a few days ago marked the one month anniversary of this blog. One month hardly seems a timeframe to get excited about, but in the online world that is a big deal.

Most blogs these days are started with the best intentions and a lot of excitement only to have been abandoned by their creator in a matter of less than a month due to frustration or lack of traffic in the early stages.

I was fully aware of these statistics when I set out to make a mark with this blog, so I decided on two things right up front:

1) I would committ to do all the work needed to get my new blog through the fist month and beyond regardless of the stats it would bring

2) I enlisted the coaching services of a blogger that had turned his own experience into a successful online platform helping people and deriving a stable income from it.

So at first there is the creative but crucial phase where I had to decide what niche I would focus on with my blog. That was actually much harder than I thought, since I have many diverse interests and could think of so many topics that I can write about.

Then came the part when the actual work begins. Within a matter of hours, I had a domain, a hosting service and a ton of small tasks to install Wordpress with all the trimmings that make blogs tick. Countless plugins breathe life into the skeleton of every blog you read out there and finding the ones I need and would use turned into a major scientific project.

The next step was without a doubt the most important one of them all: setting my intentions and a timeline to reach them. Without those you will never know if you are on track and how well you are doing. I found it very important to set my benchmarks independently from other outside parameters.

That means I decided from within and just for myself what success meant at every step rather than comparing an infant blog like the one I just started to a super successful one and then end up being frustrated and not carry on.

I will never forget how exiting it was for me to write the announcement that I juts launched my vlog and to find out that somebody actually came to take a look. Even more fantastic is the feeling when I write about a topic that exudes passion for me and to learn in the comments I get on that post that my readers share that sentiment or even have advice flowing back to me that way.

Traffic and readers are the lifeline of every blog, because unless you are launching one to stay in touch with your parents while you backpack through India, it’s important to have a conversation with your readers. I found that a frequent posting schedule is best and that it’s also good to pack my posts with some good value that is useful right away to my readers.

Today, as I mark just over a month of blogging, I am still around, still writing content and loving it. I have so much more to share and offer that I know I will not run out of posting ideas for a long time to come. At this point I would like to thank all of you that have made a stop at my blog to read and I truly appreciate all your comments and feedback.

This blog is only getting started, so I’ll see you back here tomorrow and on the way to the top. I have reached and broken most of my personal targets but more are being set up to reach in the future.

Thank you very much for a super great first month online.

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Quite often when I listen to the news these days the outlook on so many issues is a rather bleak and pessimistic one. The economy is entering a recession, global warming threatens to change the face of planet earth and violence and crime are on the rise, not to mention terror attacks when you go on a vacation outside of Disneyworld.

Of course I am exaggerating a bit, but you get my point.

The second aspect I want to touch on in this post is the glorification of the past by many of us, because we somehow misremember and selectively delete all the bad and only keep the recollections of rosy days in our mind. Last year everything was better and 10 years ago, ‘Oh My’ gas cost only 35 cents and nobody would talk back to you if you asked them to pick up a piece of litter in the street.

So here is my question: “Are things today really progressively worse? Have we as a society lost the fabric of decency, respect and mutual appreciation?” I think not!

As I was driving home from work I always go through a part of downtown Vancouver that is called the Eastside, and unlike Manhatten, in this case eastside is not where the top real estate values and zipcodes are found.

It’s more of an area where police have a hard time dealing with drug issues and petty crimes as well as homelessness and vandalism to people’s property.

So as I enter this part of town, I am thinking what a warm and dry day it is and how nature is coping with the lack of rainfall we have had for about 2 weeks here. Now I know that this may sound crazy if you live in Southern California, but 2 weeks without rain is a big deal in Vancouver, considering we get about 200 days of it per year.

I drive by a row of newly planted trees that are very dry looking when I spot a rather rough looking individual mucking about with a container they are carrying out of an adjacent Starbucks. It turns out that this homeless man actually took the time to use his water container and ask at Starbucks to have it filled up so he could provide water to the row of trees that are in the street. The glance of caring devotion he had for these young trees was something you would normally see when a mother tends to her child.

As I am instantly feeling a warmth and comfortable feeling in my heart, I paused and thought about what I just saw back there. This man was more connected with creation and cared more about a city tree than he did about collecting pop cans or getting in line at the nearby soup kitchen to care for his own dinner. Instead he provided for mother nature what she couldn’t provide for herseelf at this point.

The key point to me is not the isolated act of caring or kindness, but the underlying proof it provides to show that small acts are still happening, that they are indeed a lot more common than we think.

I also know the other side of karma, for I have experienced it myself in cases of charity. Most people are very sceptical about giving to a beggar in the street for one reason or another. It may be that they are uncomfortable to be solicited for money. Or maybe they believe that even if they gave any change, it would only be wasted on alcohol or illegal drugs rather than food and shelter.

Until a few years ago, I too shared some of those beliefs, but then I read a very powerful book by Deepak Chopra. In that book, the author describes the concept of unconditional giving, or giving for the sake of giving rather than to make a point or further a certain goal.

This concept is one of the most uplifting and liberating concepts I want to share with you here. If you can give any amount or do any favor, not to be thanked or rewarded or even be concerned about the consequences of your action, you have truly experienced what it means to give.

I remember an autumn evening at the Seattle Pike market after the stands are closed and most tourists are gone from the area. We were in town just for the night and had been considering what to have for dinner. At that point my attention got drawn to a scruffy old man who sat alone at the far end of a roofed in area and ate a sparse supper. I couldn’t tell whether he was homeless or just looked that way because of the dirty work at the fish market or the boat docks during the day.

Either way, I felt my inner voice nudging me to give him some money. I actually didn’t have any change or small bills on me, all I had was a twenty and larger. But even that didn’t really phase me as an issue. So I walked over to him and handed him the twenty dollar bill and wished him a good evening as I walked away. I can’t even recall what he said to me at this point, but actually that is not important here anyways.

What was important to me was the tramendous sense of sharing and even accomplishment I received from giving away some of my dinner money. I didn’t care what he spent the money on, or even if he was deserving or not. I had learned to not be attached to my money and to share what was given to me to allow more of it to flow into my life.

Without a doubt, charity and other acts of kindness are one of the key foundations of success in my life because from my own experience, if I actually added up what I have given away and what I have recieved from totally unrelated sources in return, I would come up with at least a ten to one ration in my favor.

This is the way of the universe.  

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I’ll be honest with you on this one - I never really enjoyed math in school. But every once in a while there was a class I loved. The story I have chose to share today is from one of those classes.

The inventor of the chess game was sent a courier from the king he invented it for. The courier asked him to appear at the king’s palace because the monarch had a question for him.

So, of course the guy went to see the king and as he kneeled before him was asked this question: “What is it that you want in exchange for inventing this formodable game for your king? I can give you a bag of gold or anything else you desire. What would you like.

So the guy thought about it for a few seconds and said to the king: Could I simply ask you for some rice instead of gold? I would like you to reward me with one grain for the first field on the chess board. Then put double that amount, two grains, on the second one and double that again on the 3rd and so on.

The king, who was very amused by this request and thought the man before him was a fool for asking for a couple handfuls of rice, quickly agreed and ordered his treasurer to pay the man as he asked for.

Here is where the magic of exponential growth comes in. If you take the 64 fields on a chess board, and multiply that out by grains of rice, I don’t think the king was able to have a palace left after paying up.

As I said before, I’m no math expert, but the final number of rice was so staggering that it outweighed the gold he could have asked for many many times.

The lessons from this story are wonderful:

1) Never dismiss a small number that is rapidly growing. What that means for you life is that unless you have a sqare zero to start with, just start with anything. Make your first penny and then set an intention to double it in a short timeframe.

2) Always calculate what people are asking you for before agreeing to pay a certain interest rate or anything else that grows quickly (like compound or credit card interest). It is often deceptive to look at the starting number before you have an idea about the final tally. This will help avoid predatory lending practises and put a new face on your credit card statement.

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Why we do what we do

Our world of human behaviour is not a rational one. That can be seen as bad, because it makes bahvious hard to explain and predict. Or it could be a blessing, because it allows us to create Psychology and other studies that produce a ton of books on this topic each one promising to unlock the deeper secrets of our brain and emotional driving forces.

So what then is it that explains what we do? If humans were rational then a certain cause would always have a certain effect, and that effect would be a guaranteed outcome every time. In other words, if you do A you are guaranteed to get B as a result.

In the world of Science that may hold true, but when you introduce our brain and emotions into to equation it’s all different. So then, how can I claim in my headline that there is only a few simple things needed to win? Well, let me illustrate.

In Sports there is the clock that often seperates the first place winner from the runner up by mere thousands of a second. Or it’s a tenth of an inch that decides over victory versus being on the back bench. The difference between top stop and second is arguable very, very tiny.

On the flip side, however, the ’payoff’ the winner receives is almost exponentially larger than that given to the 2nd spot. Tiger Woods is slated to cross the billion dollar line in career earnings next year, while most PGA tour players will mostly break even for the year.

Let’s cut to the chase

In 99% of all of us, we know exactly what we would need to do to get ahead. But we don’t do it because we think that success is so far away that we can forsee years of slavery to our profession or calling before we get to reap the rewards. I’m here to tell you that is bogus.

Everything in nature (of which we are part as a human race by the way) grows in a non-linear fashion. It grows exponentially. Said differently, if you simply had to put in one more hour, or send on more email or do one more thing to improve yourself and your ‘product’  and deeply held the belief that it would put you over the top to spark that exponential growth, would you do it?

OF COURSE YOU WOULD !

Allow me to quickly give you an example from the blogging world. Darren Rowse over at Problogger has a little survey on his blog that asks this: “How Many Posts Did You Publish On Your Main Blog In May?”

Are you ready for the results? Here they are: Out of 10 possible answer ranges from zero to 81+ the overwhelming majority of nearly 1900 votes posted a whooping 1-10 posts in the whole month of May. I think that says a lot right there. Even more astonishing is the fact that 71 % or respondents have not hit the one post a day for their main blog and are topping out between 21-30 per month.

So if you ever wondered why 10 % of the bloggers make about 90 % of the money out there, here is your answer.

Want to turn this around in your favour?  

It’s easy - really!

Just follow the simple philisophy of one per day. Do one more targeted thing than the day before, or apply one more small idea. The results, I promise you, will not be simply one more dollar from this exercise, but over time they will create an unsurmountable lead that propels you to the top. Growth is exponential, your input is marginal.

Have fun winning !

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Let me be very clear about this right up front: I am NOT telling you that sharing is a bad idea - because it is not. I am also not telling you that charity is a bad idea - because it is not. What I am going to address in this posting is a more subtle but equally widespread tweak if you will, that could be the difference between financial independence and neverending poverty for YOU.

But first, a little story. A good friend and coach of mine, once told me about her background in Software support to merchants and end users. She was in a service oriented business and would answer various questions to troubleshoot issues for her callers.

One day she decided that it would make sense for her to adjust her rates and increase them, because she felt that she was always busy and many clients called back to ask her fos advise again and again. Since she was not the manager she sat down with her boss and informed him of her rate increase. At this point, not only did the manager not object to this idea, but none of the clients even mentionend that they were unhappy with the higher rates.

As a matter of fact she was even busier than before, except now getting higher pay for her time and expertise.

In Blogging and in many other business ventures, whether online or offline, some of use choose to get paid for our time and others for our performance. If you ever intended to really succeed in any business you have to know what you are worth to others and be prepared to charge them that rate. I know that this seems really obvious, but for every successful website I looked at in the past month I found at least 5 that are not ever going to make it in the way they are set up and run.

I’m not talking about the design, flashy code or banner spots. What I mean is a simple page that let’s people know the rates for advertising, reviews promotions and other services. You have to  remember that the customer will generally take the lazy route to get what they want from you. So if you have a clear and confident pricing structure with available space or time and an easy way to pay for it, you are half way home.

 And here is one other point that I cannot stress enough: Don’t be afraid to charge people for something that you are good at. Don’t pretend you are a charity, or that you are not worth the full price for some reason or another. I’ll let you in on a little secret from a marketing maverick that I greatly admire. His name is Donny Deutsch and he currently has a show on TV called “The Big Idea”. His background is the CEO spot of a large advertising firm so you better take note of his advise, since it’s battle tested.

He said: “When I submitted a proposal to a client, I always made sure that we were priced at the top of the competition. Firstly, because I knew we did great work and had success to back it up, and secondly because we could always negotiate and come down a little if the client had concerns or requests.”

I think that is a great philosophy that is totally underused today. How many times do you see businesses compete on the lowest this and the lowest that? Enough already ! If you are giving top tier value, charge a top tier price and leave the competition in the dust.

Everything else is leaving money at the table, and in my opinion, that giving your money away where you don’t have to.

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Money loves speed.

It’s a fact of life and a law of the universe much like the law of attraction. If you ever had an idea on how to make something that could solve a problem or simply make our life easier and then didn’t act on it, this post is for you!

Almost every time I go to the supermarket I get an idea for a food item that I wish they carried. Like so many times before, I tell myself that there is nothing I can do to initiate or speed up the inclusion of a certain ware in the lineup of a food store chain and so I simply don’t do anything.

Of course I also have many moments when I come back to an aisle only to find that at my next visit the very thing I was thinking about is *magically* on the shelf in front of me. This of course was no coincidence, but more like someone else had the same thought and bothered doing something about it to get the ball rolling.

And here lies the issue and it’s solution at the same time: When you are wishing on improving the world or coming up with a million dollar idea, chances are the universe will NOT simply deposit that money in your bank account. It most likely will give you a number of ideas which could all lead you along the path of success and eventually to wealth.

So, next time you get an idea, don’t dismiss it, don’t delay it. Write it down and then allow the creative mind inside you to find ways to act on your hunches.

Oh, and one morw thing: Every idea is given to many people at the same time, which explains the supermarket phenomenon. So the faster you act, the better your chances to succeed.

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Congratulations on making it to this page. I’m proud of you. The reason I say this is because most people have the faint wish or idea to improve something in their life but will never take action.

Others have identified what they would like to change or at least confirmed that they would like to change something, and thus go to educate themselves on what can be done about it.

And this is where I come in with my blog. I’m not perfect - far from it, but I would like to share my experiences and my resources with you. What the majority of people in life fail to realize is that it takes determined and consistent action to achieve almost anything.

There is no such thing as a free lunch or “buy this book for 99,- and make millions tomorrow without any effort.” However, on the flipside most people also don’t give themselves credit for how far they have already gone towards a goal and thus burn out from frustration before they get to see the sweet payoff.

Today I will keep post very brief, but I want to give you a pat on the back for anything that you have achieved already, whether you know it or not. Keep doing what feels right and remember that you are often closer to the finish line than you think.

Let’s celebrate success and motivate you and those around us not to stop before the finish line.

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Ok, I admit it, I am a metric kinda guy. I don’t do gallons or inches, cups (at least when I am cooking) and Fahrenheit means nothing to me.

 I was raised in Europe and I’m proud of it, but that is besides the point here. I will attempt to convert the above price to roughly US $2.10 per litre of gas. Still lower than in most European countries by the way.

So here I am reading through the daily concerns of the masses on the Internet and I came across a fantastic post by a writer over at the LA Times who took the time to find the positive sides of ‘high’ gas prices. His name is Joel Stein and the complete article can be found here http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-stein11-2008jul11,0,258677.column

So what could possibly be good about a high gas price that would prompt me to write this post for you today? Well, I can think of a few things…

In society change usually happens slowly and from the grassroots level up. Once the desire of the masses reaches a tipping point, extraordinary things are possible. Think for example of the French Revolution, where the people tumbled an empire to found a Republic which served as an exemplary democracy in Europe at the time.

Or take the Decleration of Independence in the US history and its three most quoted principles of:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

 But since then a lot has happened as well that may not be written in a historic document or carved in stone but be just as important for mankind. Change often happens when somebody is slightly out of their comfort zone and the options to adjust to this change are streching our imagination. Luckily, high gas prices are not usually a life or death type of scenario, but are mote subtle in nature because they affect the majority of things that we enjoy in life - at the status quo!

Now what if, just for the sake of argument we envisoned a life that was not so relient on fossil fuels and more focused on the human factor. That, my friends might look something like this:

You get up in the morning and in your Pjs you make some coffee before you go to your office. That office is a laptop on top of your desk in your home office overlooking the yard where your children are playing. It won’t be a very busy day, and that meeting you have scheduled in the afternoon will only require a phone line and some of your great ideas.

Your kids grab their backpacks and walk out the door, but instead of you having to drive them to school in your SUV, they can walk the 3 blocks and enjoy some fresh air and sunshine on their way there.

As your workday winds down, you feel like you need to do some shopping for dinner and maybe have a little workout to keep you in shape. So why not combine the two and get your bike which allows you to reach the neigherborhood store in about 10 easy minutes. You want to make a healthy dinner and visit a few stores which are all side by side on the same street and cater nothing but the feshest local ingredients.

You won’t need a car for this because likely you will be back the next day to pick up the stuff you need for the following days.

As you come home you cook dinner and after your spouse and kids have eaten with you, maybe it’s time for a game or a movie. Whatever it maybe, most likely you can enjoy it from your own livingroom, and chances are the kids in the row behind you won’t throw popcorn at you either.

The weekend arrives and you feel like going out of town. No problem, you load up your Hybrid car and take the family to a destination in the countryside. Quaint, close and most likely a hidden secret which is why you are getting the B&B at a very lovely price.

I’m not trying to recruit for Greenpeace here, because I enjoy the comforts of modern civilization as much as you do, but I am fully convinced that more good will come out of this current trend than bad.

Here is another point you can’t dismiss. Who is most affected by the current rise in prices? The poor and the middle class, right? Mortgage foreclosed, SUV sold, inflation is rising and nowhere to go…

I beg to differ on this one. It may have occurred to you that the rich will always be fine, no matter what the economy is doing and no matter who runs the country. Isn’t that alone an incentive to get marvelously wealthy and simply not worry about gas prices and all the other hype that is surrounding us? All you need is to adopt the thinking and the ways of the rich and you can be on your way.

Lastly, let me conclude with this. The sheer flood of innovation in new greener technology and adapted living for modern societies such as ours will far outweigh the current tipping point of whatever it may be that’s on the news. It’s time to realize that out potential as human beings is truly endless, only curtailed by what our ego tells us we cannot do. But no true leader is going to let that stop him. 

Remember, the leaders will always be fine soaring above the crowd, while the masses will always be complaying like lame ducks that are looking for someone to do it for them. Exercise your divine right to be a leader. Let me welcome you to it…

All the best

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