Adventures in Traveling

In January I was given an opportunity to travel to Minneapolis Monday-Thursday to do consulting work for Target. Working in Retail has been my goal since starting at Accenture, but with zero Retail clients in Philadelphia, specializing in Retail means life on the road for me. 

My good friend Kathy and I posing with Bullseye (notice the large coffee)

Being gone four days a week can be exhausting - eight months of working in Minneapolis equates to $22,000 spent on 37 flights, traveling over 80,000 miles and spending 102 nights in my lovely Minneapolis W hotel room (I now have my very own SPG ambassador that gives me little gifts on my trips!?). Ouch! I took my first nap in two years last weekend! Can I do this for another five years!? When I reach my breaking point, it helps to reflect on all the awesome trips we have had this year (fo free).

Lovely Erica's bridal shower in Pittsburgh

Ocean Kayaking in St. Croix

Vegas.

DC Bike Race

San Francisco marathon

NYC Birthday Celebrations

Seattle Half Ironman

Yoga in Charleston

Summer and I paddle boarding in Minneapolis

Ok so why am I blogging about this when this blog is supposed to be about me buying a house? For a few reasons:

1) I want to remember all the fun we had this year - it's so easy to forget how lucky I am to have such great friends, family and memories over the past year.

2) The stress of traveling is going to play a huge role in the stress of buying an expensive fixer upper - I have become addicted to Core Power Yoga to help manage the stress (and work off the restaurant food)

3) Traveling like this is expensive! Especially when your husband incorporates triathlons into the trip (read: race fees, bike shipments, lots of food). That said, I have learned to be very thrifty, which will translate to buying things for our house.  

A few of my favorite traveling and shopping tricks:

Yapta Price Alert - I never know which city I am going to be in from month to month so, in the case that I am not able to flex, I make sure I have a good pulse on what prices are going to be for our planned personal trips. Yapta allows you to choose flights that you want to track and sends you email alerts when prices increase/decrease. I have used this app so many times and it has saved us hundreds of dollars.

 

POACH - This fun app is great if you like to online shop (who doesn't!?)! If you find something online that you love but don't love the price, simply click the "Poach" button in your web browser favorites bar. If the item goes on sale or if coupons are available, you will receive an email with your savings. I have used Poach a lot recently...

Pinterest - Anyone that knows me knows that I adore Pinterest. I love being able to collect all my ideas and loves in a very haphazard fashion so I can revisit later. The other thing I love about Pinterest is that it opens your eyes to so many websites you wouldn't find just browsing your usual websites.

One King's Lane - This daily email is great for beautiful house products at great prices. I also love this site because it was co-founded by Alison Pincus, who is married to Mark Pincus, the CEO of Zynga. Who doesn't love a strong woman who can grow a successful company!?

This past Labor Day we spent our first wedding anniversary appliance shopping and taking advantage of the Labor Day sales. Since we are spending a stupid amount of money, I have decided to make a game of it and track our savings. I am a complete nerd but it was nice to see that by buying over Labor Day and opening a Best Buy credit card, we saved over $500 on a washer and dryer!

I am writing this while sitting in my free first class seat to Vegas for Half Ironman World Championships. So, again, the perks of traveling  for work cannot be beat. My next blog post will go into detail about our recent tax discovery and why being thrifty is going to be super important over the next year if we want to put in our new kitchen.