Fancy But Frugal

Hola! Welcome to our Costa Rican honeymoon adventure. I can't believe its been over a year ago already! ❤ A little background (and budget trick): Jon and I got married right after moving back to the US from Singapore. We traveled across the world, bought a house, 2 cars, some furniture, etc. It was a crazy-exciting time in our lives, but what we really needed to fully enjoy this time was funds! So, instead of traditional gift registries, we did a Honeyfund ( link ). It was on Shark Tank ( link ) and basically is an online registry that allows people to pay for specific things on your honeymoon. It can help pay for anything you want: flights, excursions, meals, hotels, activities, etc! The Honeyfund is more personal than just giving cash, and it allows others to be excited and involved (from afar) in your honeymoon! It was the best idea ever and covered the majority of our costs.  💰💰💰   We are still so grateful! The trip : We flew United Airlines to Liberia, the s...

 This week, I thought I'd offer tips on sneaking in one last cheap ski trip before winter ends. Over President’s Day weekend, we took a very affordable, fun, and refreshing trip to Colorado. This trip had a few goals: ￮  Teach me how to ski (I’d never been before) ￮  Spend time with our good friends that we hadn’t seen in months ￮  Celebrate my hubby’s 30 th birthday 👨 ￮  Don’t break a bone or die while skiing We had started planning this trip last summer with one of our best “couple” friends – you know, that couple you double date with, go to concerts with, and drink good (and bad) wine with. We had recently moved to NYC and needed time with our people.Both starting new jobs, we had to book flights last minute (after clearing it with our new bosses). Needless to say, the tickets had skyrocketed to over $600 each. So what does one do? We used points , obviously (see my last post about how to get started saving points! Link here ). With this co...

I get asked various questions about travel and planning, so I thought I'd answer a few of them here, grouped into categories. I've also included tons of handy-dandy links to make it even easier for you! I tested out some of these tips on friends the last couple months and have gotten good feedback, so hopefully they'll help you too! Flights: There are a ton of resources out there to find affordable flights. I generally use sites like Orbitz ( link ) or just plain Google flights to get a feel for prices and the best dates, and then I’ll go through the actual airline... whatever's cheaper! We recently used Kayak ( link ) which did something really cool. They have a system where they search different airlines and allow you to book with different currencies. Depending on the exchange rate, this can save you alot (we saved about $100)! I was also recently told about secretflying.com (link here  - thanks Adam & MK!). This website exposes airlines mistakes...

This week on my Facebook page, pictures/memories popped up from a very special trip we took exactly two years ago. It was our first vacation as a couple and we went to…(drum roll please)… Maldives . Talk about setting the bar high! Panaroma. All pictures copyrighted and mine. Disclaimer: This is not going to seem “budget” to most of you, but trust me, it is. A family could easily spend $20k+ on a vacation there, but that's not feasible for us, so we did the trip our way. **Also, leaving from Singapore (where we were living at the time) cut out one major expense: flights. That alone saved us a couple thousand dollars.  💲💲💲 As I mentioned, this was our first real vacation as a couple, 6 months into our relationship. It was Chinese New Year weekend, so we knew most of our local friends would be busy with family gatherings and most local shops would be closed. We decided it was time to leave for the holiday! We went for 4 (but ...

For Christmas 2016, we decided we needed a warm , relaxing, and affordable vacation, so we chose Cancun. This trip surprised me in many ways. I was totally off my game that week and we forgot our GoPro, so we don’t have many pictures. 🙁 I like to think we were just living in the moment and enjoying ourselves. I don't come empty-handed though; I have a ton of tips about cheap accommodation, tours, and food! The first decision to make was “ Should we stay at an all-inclusive ”? All-inclusives are tricky. I know people who swear by them and stay at them for every vacation. I think there’s a time and place for all-inclusives, and you just have to decide what kind of trip you want. If you want to veg out with friends or you are on your honeymoon and don’t plan to leave the resort at all, then yes by all means, an all-inclusive is the way to go. Food, drinks, and bed all in one place. No judgment here. BUT , me and my husband usually aren’t that type of vacatio...