Fancy But Frugal

SURPRISE POST! Home! My in-laws recently came to visit us in Jersey City, NJ (and NYC).  The fact that Jersey City is the cutest place ever and has amazing food is not new to us, but I was really inspired and happy to see how much E+F (my in-laws) enjoyed it, so I thought I would share their experience! We had a great family weekend together centered around amazing food and drinks!  Disclaimer:   I did  not  intend for this to be a blog post by any means.  I am not claiming these are the "best" or nicest restaurants in Jersey City; we just wanted to take them to some of our favorite spots we've found living here over the past 6 months, and they loved them more than we expected!!   Friday, we met them at their hotel in Jersey City (the new Marriott near Grove Street, which I would give 5 stars btw!). We walked along the Hudson River to grab a pre-dinner beer at the brand new Lutze Biergardten . It is the cutest outdoor space ...

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...

Jon & I have been to Disney World separately, but it was on my bucket list to go together before having kids (so we could be kids ourselves). We planned a short 4 day trip to Orlando the first half of Thanksgiving week 2016. I'm so glad we did it, and I recommend it for all young couples. It's a totally different experience without kids. We didn't need to take it slow, stop for nap breaks, or avoid alcohol. We hit the parks hard and had a jam-packed fun trip. ☻ For starters, we flew JetBlue out of Newark airport – the first time either of us took JetBlue ( link ). I can’t say enough good things about this airline. They're the exact definition of fancy but frugal . We only paid roughly $80 per person for a 1 way ticket from NYC to Orlando. (I see many more trips to Florida in our future!!!!) For this price, I didn't expect much, but everything about it was awesome. The seats seem bigger and more leg room (good for my 6’3 hubs), we got legit drinks an...

Thailand is one of my all-time favorite countries. I've been around 11 times to various parts, but with Bangkok being a 2.5 hour flight from Singapore and around $150 usd, it was the perfect weekend getaway. I went atleast 5 times between 2013-2015. The first time I went with friends, and we did all the first-time touristy stuff: the Grand Palace, Wat Po, Floating Market, and Khoa San Road. I'm not going to spend much time on these because there are a million other blogs and guides that tell you. BUT I will share some pictures and share that these are a MUST DO if it's your first time to Bangkok! The Grand Palace is beautiful, with more gold than you can imagine. It's down by the river near Wat Po and many other temples and popular sites. Spend an afternoon walking around this area - It's so culturally interesting! Check out a few pics from the Grand Palace: So elaborately decorated The Floating Market was really cool. I recall it being more e...

 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 ...