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Travel Tips

New Chase Sapphire Lounge at LaGuardia: Our First Impressions

We have been using travel reward cards to pay for travel, mostly because of their great benefits that include travel insurance. But with our Chase Reserve Sapphire card we got the keys to the coveted new Chase Sapphire lounges too.

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Travel Tips

Travel Tip: Opt for a Small Rental Car in Europe, Skip the Tempting Upgrade

We love doing road trips in Europe and one of the things we’ve learned along the way is the importance of renting a small car! We pack light so it’s never a problem to get our carry-on bags and personal items into the trunk or under a hatchback cargo cover. This way everything is nicely […]

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Travel Tips

Choosing a Travel Rewards Credit Card

Every year we review our travel rewards cards and reevaluate them based on upcoming travel preferences, our travel habits, and the choice of newly available credit cards. In doing so, we have learned a lot. Here are our tips on what to look for and how to evaluate the travel rewards credit card benefits and […]

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Travel Tips

Travel Tip: Always Wait for the Rental Car Return Receipt

This month’s travel tip is about car rental returns. My husband who is part of a major rental company’s affinity program enjoys benefits like quick check-in and check-out and paperless transactions where they send him an invoice by email. This is convenient and saves some time, but as he recently found out it does not […]

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Travel Tips

7 Items You May Not Have Thought of to Add to Your Packing List

We have a comprehensive packing list which is already quite long. We also love to travel with our carry-on bags only. This makes us think carefully about every item that we pack, and we are very selective about what comes along. That said, here are a few items which we’ve found handy while traveling that […]

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Travel Tips

Should You Get an International Driving Permit? 

In some countries having an International Driving Permit (IDP) is a must if you plan to rent a car. Not having one could certainly throw a curveball into your travel plans. Imagine showing up to pick up your reserved rental car only to be told that you can’t rent one without an International Driver’s License!

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Travel Tech Travel Tips

Preloading Maps to Use Google Maps Offline

While traveling you never know if you’ll have good internet coverage or if roaming charges will be high. And the car rental company still wants $15 a day for their GPS. What do you do? You can actually download maps while you are at home and then have them in Google Maps, even when offline. […]

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Travel Tips

Road Trip Tip: Get a Travel Transponder and Save on Rental Car Toll Charges

We have a convenient SunPass sticker that lets us drive through tolls on local Florida highways charging the fees to our credit card on file. Not only do we save money on the tolls but it is super handy! When traveling, the rental car companies charge an arm and a leg for tolls if you […]

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Travel Tips

Travel Tip: Check Your Luggage at the Hotel When Taking a Short Local Trip

On our recent trip to South America, we had organized a direct flight from Miami to Buenos Aires with a short stop before taking a local flight to Iguazu Falls and back. While American Airlines had a generous luggage allowance (even more so for elite members) we saw that our local Aerolinas Argentinas flight was not […]

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Travel Tips

Travel Tip: Booking Separate Internal Flights

Have you ever checked a round trip airfare to a small remote destination on one of the major airlines? We’ve often seen the price of a flight double by simply adding a small hop which could easily be done with a local flight for a great price with lots of availability.