Adventures in Air Travel

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had purchased my tickets to fly to my hometown for Christmas. I’m flying American Airlines, and you may have noticed that this past week, they announced that they were canceling a number of flights. I’m sure you can guess what happened next.

Well, actually, what happened next was that my parents called me to tell me that their flights to come see me and go to a football game in November got changed. Changed in a very strange way. They booked their flights into BWI (Baltimore-Washington International, a perfectly lovely airport in Baltimore). Their flights got changed to bring them into Washington Reagan (another perfectly lovely airport, this time here in D.C.). Not a big deal, since their plans involved getting a rental car and driving to D.C.; the flight into BWI had simply been cheaper. This way, they can just borrow my car instead of renting one and save a bit of money.

So I wasn’t surprised to get an e-mail from American Airlines telling me that my flights for Christmas had changed. I skimmed the e-mail. At first glance, it just looked like the flight times had changed and that I was connecting through a different city on the way back.

And then I took a good look at it. I was flying out of Washington Reagan. But then, flying home, I was going into BWI. Significantly further away. Not really even in the same city. Or state, for that matter. On top of that, I flew into LaGuardia, and then had to somehow get from there to JFK to get my flight to BWI!

Obviously, this was unacceptable. I called the reservations line and the agent I got laughed when she saw what had happened to my itinerary. Not surprisingly, the whole thing is done by computer, and somehow the computer had thought this was a good idea. Fixing the problem took less than five minutes, and she managed to get me on a direct flight back rather than connecting through any city. Not a bad deal. She told me that this didn’t happen often, but when it did, calling the reservation line was the easiest way to deal with it.

Given all the hassles in air travel, I can’t say this was a big one all in all. But it is a good reminder to always check and recheck your itinerary to make sure some little subtle change, like an airport change, hasn’t been made.

Abundant Life Spending Spree – $12,800
Like I said, this is getting tough. With $12,800 to toss in the air and dance around in, I would grab a group of my friends and go to Disney World. Sound silly? It’s been something that a group of us has discussed for years. We’ve talked about how it would be an incredibly fun trip, especially if we could go all out and eat in the fancy restaurants and stay in the fancy hotels. I think I could pay for everyone to fly in and go for $12,800. And then some!

Megan Smith

Megan is a 40-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:

In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance.  It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information.  It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck.  While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.

While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.

Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.

So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan.  I needed to budget.  I needed to know what I was spending my money on.  I needed to prepare for the future.

I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way.  I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.