walkerds

I recently finished up college and have begun graduate school at Stanford near SJC (and SFO, kinda). In this situation, I am 23, and have an income of approximately $30k a year, $10k of which goes to housing. I have a girlfriend in Austin, a family in Louisville, and I need a better plan to keep my travel costs down.

My needs:
Roundtrip flights approximately every 4-6 weeks (Usually Austin, sometimes Louisville--holidays).
Cheap fares when possible.
A way to use my spending to either help get these flights, or to save for more interesting vacations with the girlfriend (skiing in Tahoe, beaches, something!).

Basically I need a gameplan of who I should be flying, where I should be buying the tickets, how I should pay for them, what credit cards I need, what I should buy with them, and any other little manipulations like balance transfers, etc I can use to my advantage.

If you guys have any advice I'd appreciate it.

Also, while I will be traveling a lot, if you know any other general tricks or systems that would help someone just starting out in life to squeeze a little extra out of each dollar I spend, I'd appreciate it. (I heard of some guy transfering mortgage payment balances around some host of cards and getting points towards a lot of free things--maybe just rumor)

So far I've been flying Southwest, and getting 2 credits per way each time I fly, since I'm still a student (16 credits = free roundtrip flight). This works decently well, but will run out when I hit 24, and I will be down to 1 credit per leg. Also I haven't utilized any credit cards, etc.

I need a system! I know someone has got one figured out!

Thanks!
Dan

SchmutzigMSP

I think the combination of SJC, AUS, and SDF usually signals flying American Airlines, at least for the connecitons. Generally, most airlines will be matched by at least one other airline in a market (say, SJC-SDF will usually be priced the same by two or more airlines). That helps to keep the costs down. I would start researching historical fares on the routes you want to fly using farecompare.com and farecast.com to get an idea of what you might expect to pay.

tjl

Use search or travel agent sites to check flight availability for your travels (check Southwest on its own site). Check each airline's FF program and check which airlines have FF partnerships with each other. Check how much flying it would take you to get the awards you want from each program.

Note that FF partnerships can be used to pool multiple airlines' flight miles into one program. For example, Alaska has mileage partnerships with American, Continental, Delta, and Northwest, and United and US Airways / America West have a mileage partnership with each other (but American does not have a mileage partnership with Continental, Delta, or Northwest).

rar indeed

UA will give you bonus miles when you graduate.

dismal_scientist

Rats. How did I miss that?

vholic

I found some student fares on studentuniverse.com and statravel.com.

With Student Universe, the only requirement is .edu email account.
STA requires you purchase International Student Identity Card for $22.

epi231

I lived in Ausitn for two years (until this August), and my family lives North of San Francisco, so I've flown AUS-SFO/SJC/OAK quite a bit.

The SJC-AUS nonstops on American are very convenient; I believe they're three times daily. Otherwise, flying via DFW is not too bad. United has one nonstop SFO-AUS, but I've never taken it.

At times, I found that flying "the (very) long way" on NW or DL works out nicely because it allows for a red-eye on the SFO/SJC/OAK-AUS route and earns almost twice as many miles as the nonstop. With DL, flying via ATL, you earn 5856 for the round-trip vs. 2942 on the nonstop on American.

Alex

kennethfine

Not trying to seem paternal... but being not too far away from your age range and situation, my advice to you is to focus on the long term. Get your career going strong. Rather than strategizing about how you're going to maximize your FF miles, strategize how to take your salary from 30k to 60 or 80k in the next 5-10 years. That's going to take you more places than all the FF strategy in the world might do for you now.

The pursuit of miles and status can become a low-grade obsession and I'm not sure it's the best use of your time right now given your current income. When you find yourself with tens of thousands of dollars annually in CC expenses and/or a regular and consistent need to travel, then gaming this system starts to make more sense.

That all said, you might strategically look at opportunities to buy miles in unexpected ways. For example, when I was a few years older than you and in more or less the same financial situation, I took advantage of an opportunity to buy a few hundred magazine subscriptions and got ~300,000 miles on AA for it. It cost me about $2000 and was one of the better investments I've made. I used all of those miles to go to professional conferences and ramp up my career. Now the wife and I are spending enough on our credit cards that that spending is becoming a significant factor in our mileage earning.

Once you buy a house, you will get scads of credit card offers on favorable terms and you can start "churning" for miles. You do not want to do this until you have already purchased the place to live.

Summarizing my just-IMHO sanctimony:
+ grow your career
+ grow your salary
+ choose a mate carefully. It is the single most important choice for you happiness and prosperity. In a few years here, the good ms. fine will be able to buy me all the miles I could want
+ buy property, preferably a house
+ save for your Roth IRA first, and max out a 401/403b plan second
+ for now be on the lookout for opportunities that give you miles that won't distract you from the preceding stuff, which is bluntly a whole lot more important than mileage scheming.
+ keep reading FT, the advice here is gold.

When these ducks are in a row, you'll be well-positioned to join the rest of the loons on this board full-time, at least half of whom seem to pursue the miles thing as a kind of worldly hobby. Look around, there are a lot of very successful people here. For many here, it seems the financial rewards of their schemings are decidely secondary to their intangible enjoyment of travel and the pursuit of the good deal. Maybe a lesson to be had there.

Good luck! ^

-KF

const88

Yeah, what he said.

Solarmoon

Save your money. Invest in a pair of webcams and use the phone. Or, if you are feeling particularly romantic, write letters by longhand and pretend that you are living 50 years ago.

As a graduate student, your time is important and it might be better for you to not take off every 4 weeks on personal business.

In terms of flights, calculate what a frequent-flyer mile is worth to you (probably less than 1 cent) and factor that into weighing your options on hotwire, studentuniverse, and priceline.

epi231

Having just finished my PhD, I thoroughly disagree with you! The time of a graduate student is worth much less than the time of someone "in the real world." Also, graduate school can be (and often is) very stressful and isolating, and trips away, especially to see one's romantic interest, are very well justified, IMHO.

Alex

myfrogger

Southwest told me that there is an "in between" offer that you will get on your birthday. Right now it seems that southwest is going to be the best program for you because of the great awards they are giving you. No one else can match that.

You don't seem to be interested in status right now and in terms of price, you won't usually find another carrier that can beat southwest (and if they can, it's not by much).

On your birthday, southwest will still likely give you the best program. That along with the cheap flights seems to be the way to go all around for you.

Of course only you can decide what to do...but I would advise you to consider the cheapest flight rather than working a frequent flier program. Us flyertalk nuts usually pay more on our flying to earn miles. Most often our goal is to get elite status...which is not of much value to you right now.

FlyingBear

I feel you. I'm a grad student at your rival school in the East Bay. Grad student pay sucks, huh?

Sorry, don't have system designed for your setup. But these are some things I've picked up on travel since I've been here. Hopefully some of this will help you some, but it might be redundant too, in which case I'm sorry.

Southwest is probably your best option and basically designed for our situation. Low fares booking in advance and easy to pick up rewards. For this area, if there's someway you can make it out to Oakland, it might give you a bit more flexibility, since I believe WN operates more flights out of OAK. If you can't get to a car and you don't really care too much about time, you could get there thru CalTrain/BART. It'll probably cost you an hour more than getting to SJC by CalTrain. Oh yeah, get Ding! if you haven't already.

For some last minute trips, United E-fares can be pretty good. Every Monday night at midnight (actually, sometimes later. search for united.bomb) they come out with E-fares that apply for that week and the following week. Trips have to be Sat departures and Monday or Tuesday returns. Fares are around or slightly higher than early booking, but if your past that 14 day window, its worth checking out. Destinations vary from week to week, so its a bit of a crap shoot. The plus side is that since SFO is a United hub, there's usually a fair selection.

Don't know much about American, other than they tend to have cheap flights out of SJC. Hopefully another board member can comment on that.

I mostly use WN and UA. I have the UA MP College Visa. No annual fee, 1 mi for every $2. Not too useful at racking up RDM. Kind of like that jewlers axe in Shawshank Redemption. Maybe do a search for the Citi PrimierePass or other cards on the board with travel rewards points. Although, I usually try to defer to cards that give me cash back (ie Amex BlueCash)

I do look through the posts for UA MP promotions, like the NetFlix one a while back, or the 125 mi from Safeway. As mentioned in an earlier post, if your within 12mo of graduation they'll give you 10k miles if you mail them your transcript. You get 3k miles if you sign up, and if you do it via referal from a current MP member, they get something like 1k miles too. Through odds and ends, I have earned one short hop from SFO to LA saver award for an family emergency. Later on, if you end up flying to conferences though and the univ. or research money pays for trips and they end up being fairly long, it might be worth it to book it through a legacy carrier and pick up miles vs. segments. I'm earning about 10K miles from two conference this winter plus the miles on my card plus EasyCheckin bonuses.

Otherwise, Kayak and Farecast are my price searching friends =)

For Tahoe, IMHO, it's probably best to just find a group of friends and drive. The airport is in Reno and you'd have to get out to the lake. Not a total pain, but it's more fun and cheaper to all go up, rent a cabin (I think you guys might have a student one you can rent as well?) and go about it that way. Tahoe can also easily be a day trip as well.

That's my $0.02. Hope it helps you some!

thegeneral

I think you need to re-evaluate both your budget and your priorities. Making $30k per year while paying $10k in rent is going to leave very little for travel. I'd be more worried about being able to buy food and clothing. Remember, you will have deductions from that $30k even though you'll end up not really paying any income tax. If you're being paid bi-monthly, each check will give you about $998 take home. Your monthly budget will give you $1267 for your monthly budget. Out of that you'll need to pay for clothing, utilities, bills, transportation, food and other living expenses. That is also excluding medical insurance and any retirement saving.

My point is, you might want to re-evaluate the idea of monthly travel home or to your girlfriend. You also might want to stick with whatever airline gets you the cheapest flight. Not my normal advice, but given frugal you will have to be to get by it is a reality.

My advice in general for you would be to have your girlfriend ante up for some trips to So Cal. Also, skiing trips to Tahoe are pricey and given that you're a student might not be the best use of your money. You live in SF bay area, there are plenty of things for you to do there in terms of vacation. Stay out of debt, stay away from using credit cards and don't end school in a hole from the start. Remember that most FT people here don't pay for their own travel. Their employers do.

Solarmoon

I'm not denying the usefulness of taking trips or even going skiing as a graduate student --- I did all that when I was a graduate student. The problem is that the original poster wants to take these trips regularly in a very planned out fashion, and this strikes me as a very bad, not to mention expensive, idea. The student's mind should not be looking forward to their next trip a few weeks from now. The student needs to develop connections with his peers. And any time inspiration hits him, he needs to be able to go down to the lab or library and get working.

Basically, getting a doctorate is *supposed* to be an all-encompasing obsession and is hence inherently isolating. Why would anyone (from a developed country... I can understand how some people from poorer countries get PhDs in order to get their foot in the door immigration-wise) go for a PhD if they did not want to completely immerse themselves in the academic life for at least a few years? To get a job, it would be better to just go and get an MBA, MD, or JD.

My feeling is that he would be better off taking last minute trips as needed. Hence my recommendation to invest in a webcam. I actually think that it might be a good thing for him to have a romantic interest far away --- more time to concentrate on his research and less time spent in courting her.