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We'd all like to travel more, wouldn't we? But whether it's not enough money, not enough time... there's always something that seems to get in the way. How do we find more opportunities to get away on holiday, maybe have an extra trip every now and then, or just vacation somewhere more interesting?
Chris has a chat with three interesting humans who might be able to get you thinking about ways to overcome some of those barriers. From saving you money to saving you time, here's a couple of thought-starters to get you off the couch and onto the plane!
This episode features:
Chris has a chat with three interesting humans who might be able to get you thinking about ways to overcome some of those barriers. From saving you money to saving you time, here's a couple of thought-starters to get you off the couch and onto the plane!
This episode features:
- Brittnay from The Travelling Housesitters
- Chris Chamberlin from Point Hacks
- Liz Fleming from The Grants Club and The Efficiency Coach
Resources:
Britt mentions a few resources in this episode if you're keen to get started in house sitting:
How to Start House Sitting
Britt mentions a few resources in this episode if you're keen to get started in house sitting:
How to Start House Sitting
- (00:00) - Intro
- (02:29) - House Sitting with Britt
- (11:33) - Points Hacking with Chris C
- (23:19) - Taking care of your business with Liz
This podcast is recorded and produced on the traditional lands of the Bunurong people. We pay our respects to their elders, and the elders of the lands of other indigenous peoples where this podcast was produced.
Check In & Check Out is produced by Jet Streamer. If you'd like the same love and care that went into this podcast to be put into your podcast, visit us at jetstreamer.com.au
Creators & Guests
What is Check In & Check Out?
The best travel advice doesn't come from a guidebook. Or a review website. Or sponsored content creators. The best travel advice comes from real travellers. Whether you're sharing tips with other folks in a youth hostel kitchen in Bogota or swapping stories in an airport hotel bar in Auckland, every unforgettable travel experience starts with that one, beautiful nugget of wisdom from a fellow traveller.
Check In & Check Out is the travel advice podcast for real travellers. Each episode, host and travel newbie Chris Plumridge puts the call out to everyday travellers (with a few experts sprinkled in) to ask them for their best pieces of hard-earned travel wisdom. Whether they had an unforgettable experience, made a rookie mistake, or just learned something about themselves, our CI&CO travel community has plenty to share with you to make your next trip your best trip yet.
So what are you waiting for? Join us! Grab your tickets and let's go!
[00:00:00] It's 9:00 AM You shuffle into work, you heap some crusty international roast into a mug, and you say hello to your coworkers.
(conversation)
Hey, where's mm-hmm. Today?
(voice changer) Oh. Mm-hmm. He's off again this week on holiday.
(fade out office SFX)
(internal monologue)
Holiday again, wasn't just on holiday. how on earth are there some people that just always seem to be off somewhere ? And yet I am stuck at home?
(v/o)
All right, so yeah, I've had that internal monologue before. Multiple times in my retail job, in my office job. I always thought to myself, how come some people always seem to be jetting off across the planet while I'm stuck here doing the same thing I always do.
Not enough time, maybe not enough money. I mean, it's probably a combination of both of those things, and I would guess it's probably a combination of both of those things for you as well.
I was interested in answering that question and I thought you might be too. So that's the topic of this episode. How do we ask me [00:01:00] mortals, find more ways to get ourselves out into the world and onto that gosh darn plane.
(music fade up)
Like the people who always seem to be traveling. Well, I decided to ask a couple of people who always seem to be traveling, and they will tell us just that.
Britt: in France we stayed in a few little villages
Chris Chamberlin (Point Hacks): I was able to go to the US.
I'm Chris Plumridge and this is check in and check out
(theme)
Mo money mo problems they reckon, which is exactly why you should spend that money on plane tickets to escape your problems, right?
But seriously, traveling is an objectively expensive privilege, no matter whether you're hostile hopping and living out of a backpack or you're jetting between your summer home and your favorite private island, I feel like everyone's trying to stretch their travel budget further.
After all, saving money means you get to travel more, right?
Now. Just be aware right off the top here that this won't be a definitive guide to saving money or saving time or traveling for free because there's plenty of those out there already. But I'm hoping that maybe let's explore a [00:02:00] couple of ways that a couple of our travelers have made more space to travel in their lives
and in the same spirit, you might be able to creatively think out some ways to travel more in your own life.
During last episode about why we travel in the first place, you heard from Brit
Britt: I love just going to a new place and walking around a city or a town and just watching people
and I mentioned that she's gone to 12 countries and not spent a cent on accommodation,
that would certainly make a difference to how often I could travel, and I was pretty keen to find out how she did it.
Now, if I was mean, I'd probably put this at the end of the episode and make you wait until the whole way through before you found out what it was. But I've decided to be nice under this circumstance, so, Spoiler alert Britt's, a house sitter,
a traveling house sitter. In fact, at least according to her Instagram handle, by looking after people's houses and pets while they're away on holidays, it's allowed Brit and her partner Jay, to travel the world.
Britt: We were doing the old Aussies living in [00:03:00] London situation for two years. Met up one of my friends in the park and she came along with his dog and I knew we were all traveling.
And I said, where'd the dog come from? She said, I'm House City. And so we were all in these horrible share houses. And she's living in this beautiful part of London, looking after these animals. Had a great gig. So me and my partner at the time thought maybe we could do that.
So rather than staying in a crappy hotel in your chosen city's graffiti and siren district, you get a whole home in a usually pretty nice part of town for free,
all in return for maybe looking after someone's cute doggo and watering the plants every now and then. Does that sound insane to you? Because it does to me.
Britt: We had six weeks in Rome, so that was incredible.
Cause we'll kind of like about a 10 minute walk to all the sites and that. So we'd head out in the morning, we'd go see a side or two, and then we'd walk home and be able to just work for the afternoon and we wouldn't have to stress about seeing everything.
And we're also in a beautiful little neighborhood as well, so we could walk to this [00:04:00] lovely little gelato shop and the local bakery and the homeowner. He left us all his favorite markets and things to go to.
Or maybe you don't even get a house, maybe you get something else.
Britt: we got a message on Instagram asking if we'd wanted to come look after this woman's boat, and she was in the Caribbean.
And she had this lovely catamaran and a cat that lived on there
Oh, stop it. That sounds incredible. And rather than being stuck in the tourist traps, Brit says that she's seen a moral, authentic side of the countries she's visiting. Thanks to the fact that she's staying away from the tourists in a local's actual home.
Britt: We went to places that we would've probably not gone. So one of the house sits we did get was in Montenegro and we'd never been there, to be honest.
I don't know beforehand, I even really knew where Montenegro was. But it's right underneath Croatia. It's got the exact same beautiful coastline, but probably even better. I think It's got these beautiful mountains, these incredible towns. The [00:05:00] homeowner there, she showed us around all these little village.
and it was just kind of one of those places you would never have gone if it wasn't for house sitting. And then in France we stayed in a few little villages that were just places that we would never would've really visited had we not booked. The house sits there. So I think that's one of the best things we kind of saw out of the experience as well.
So this all sounds brilliant, right? Authentic local experience off the tourist path accommodation to yourself. What's the catch,
Britt: What some people do find tough is, I guess you are not in control. You are looking after someone else's home. It's not like an Airbnb where you book it and you show up and you know you can stay.
Brit says that this means that it's not like booking a hotel, right? It might mean that the dates the house sitters available might not fit with your perfect travel dates, or it might mean that the homeowner changes their plans and comes home early and your house sending services aren't really required anymore,
Britt: Think it's just luck of the draw. You never know what ones are gonna come up and you might be moving every couple [00:06:00] of weeks. So people who don't really like moving and packing up all their things and living out of a bag, or people who don't like the uncertainty, like homeowners might come home early. a homeowner might be coming home at two days earlier, you just don't know what, you know, the plane might have happened on their trip or something.
and that situation can actually mean you're out of pocket.
Britt: Sometimes there might be two or three days in between a house sit where you might have to go pay for an Airbnb. If you think about it though, of the grand scheme of things, it works out much cheaper to house sit. But there will be times where you might need to get an Airbnb.
However, Bri did say that even that situation can sometimes have a silver lining,
Britt: We did a house sit in Greece and it was just, 45 minutes outside of Athens, but on the coast.
So it had a very kind of Greek island vibe, but it wasn't touristy and just all these lovely locals with their little shops. And about halfway through the house it, the homeowners had to come home. For some reason, and [00:07:00] they already told us we knew what was going on. And on the Sunday she goes, we're gonna have a Sunday lunch.
We're gonna invite every everyone around and we want you to join us. So she had us in the kitchen all day. We were learning how to cook. We, oh, we learned all these recipes. And then we sat down with the family all afternoon and they, I think they put a whole lamb on. It was incredible.
and you are in someone else's home after all. Which means that their standards might not necessarily match with yours on some things.
Britt: I'm not a really big clean freak, but I just like to kind of have, you know, a cleanliness about the home. And some just kind of felt like you had to get in there and before you could settle in, you had to clean.
It's weird to come into someone else's house and clean, like, you know, I don't mind cleaning up, but like to feel comfortable. So I think that I always made sure after that we picked homes that just had a certain level of cleanliness about them.
But again, silver linings.
Britt: In the future when I want to, build my own home I've used so many different, layouts of kitchens and different appliances and [00:08:00] all sorts of things now, so you kind of get a good grip on what people have in their homes.
(music in)
So you've decided that the promise of free accommodation and an authentic live, like a local experience outweighs the potential drawbacks. How do you get started? How does it work?
Britt: We use a website you just jump on there. A lot of people, they'll kind of just look what's on there and. Might go to that destination. Whereas I kind of have places where I wanna go in mind. And the site I use, you can set up alerts. So you could set one up that says that I want House sits in the south of Italy for at least two weeks, and anytime one of those ones comes up, I'll just jump on there.
So once you've found your house set, it's time to apply as if you were applying for any other job.
Britt: I always make sure I read the person's listing. If they have large dogs, if they have dogs that use someone working from home, I always try to mention or try to show them like my skills and how I can kind of, , working with their needs.
I always like [00:09:00] to have a video chat with them. Because sometimes you might chat with them and think, oh, I'm not comfortable with this situation. Or maybe the dog can't be left for more than two hours at a time, and all these little things.
Once you're approved, you'll receive information from the homeowner about everything related to your state.
Britt: that'll have everything from their wifi passwords to when the animals. . And then I also have another little checklist that I send that has things like even where's the power box? Cuz we've had issues where the power's gone out you think that some power boxes is easy to find, but we're in a new house every time.
All the little questions like what days do your bins go out?
Once you arrive, maybe you might meet the homeowner or maybe they've already left, but then the house is yours to look after and enjoy.
Brit also has plenty more information you can access if you're looking into getting started.
Britt: We have a big Facebook. You can join us there. There's almost 25,000 people. So that's everything from homeowners to house sitters I could spend all day in there if I could because there's just so many questions.
But thank God like we have such a great community that [00:10:00] everyone's always answering everyone else's or also on the website we have heaps of information because I got a lot, lots and lots of fam, family and friends wanted to know what we were doing and how to get started themselves.
So we've saved our money on our accommodation. What about flights? Perhaps you've considered joining up to one of those frequent flyer programs, air Miles, points, whatever your favorite airline calls them. I know I've got a couple. Pretty sure most of my points expired. Chris Chamberlain, however, does not have expired points.
Chris Chamberlin (Point Hacks): I'm Chris Chamberlain from Point Hacks. I'm one of the very lucky people who get to basically travel the world on points and write about it, which is a phenomenal job, I must say.
That's right, kids. This is one of the occasions where I thought it best to bring in a professional. You see, I treat frequent flyer points like those tickets at the arcade machines. You know the ones you get enough for a couple of ghost drops or those sherbet bombs, but never enough for the silver razor scooter or the electric guitar sitting on the top shelf story of my life.
Chris, however, thinks a bit [00:11:00] differently.
Chris Chamberlin (Point Hacks): What we really love to do is to show readers just how much value you. From some of these programs, you know, you can earn points at the supermarket when you fill up your car and you know the points you earn on any one transaction might not get you anywhere. But when you're doing it enough and when you're earning enough points in enough different ways, they can really, really start to add up
okay, how much is add up?
Chris Chamberlin (Point Hacks): I generally don't fly economy on my holidays now because business class is actually more affordable to me when I spend points. Cause I'm usually only paying, even on a long haul flight, a couple of hundred dollars in taxes and fees versus thousands for an economy ticket.
Right? So you're not only on the plane, you're also closer to the pointy end of the plane too. This guy is living the dream. Chris's points. Addiction started early during the time that most of us figure out our own favorite money saving hacks. When you're at university.
Chris Chamberlin (Point Hacks): I was working part-time to pay my way and it happened to be in a, you know, in a cafe at the airport. And so obviously in an airport you've got a lot of business travelers. You've got a lot of frequent flyers. [00:12:00] And I might be showing my age a little bit, but it was back in the day when you had to take the credit card from the customer and put it through the terminal, there was no tap and pay or anything.
So I'd always be handed these. Shiny credit cards. They all had airline logos, they had rewards or what have you on the front. Some of them would be very heavy and made of metal from the people that like to earn a lot of points, which was quite impressive. But I, I would just be seeing everyone using these cards to earn points.
So in my mind, hey, all these people are earning free points every time they're spending their money. And I, I thought, well, why, why don't I do that? so I applied for my first credit card on my 18th birthday, and I've, I've just gone from there to, you know, to be able to earn points.
and once Chris got the taste of what he could do with those points, that is when the addiction started.
Chris Chamberlin (Point Hacks): It was mainly about saving money cuz when you're like a, a uni student working, part-time casual type of money, like being able to travel and being able to travel often is not something that's really, , within your prospect at that stage in life. So thinking that, oh, actually this points might be able to take me places, or if I do fly somewhere, they might be able to make the journey a bit more [00:13:00] comfortable.
Originally, might wanna do a domestic flight, you know, even a domestic flight in economy is, , quite a goal. Once you've only just started earning points, but then once you've reached one level, you wanna get to the next level and, and so on.
So it becomes business class. It becomes a longer flight, it becomes a long haul flight, and you know, you, you are just hooked. You just keep wanting to earn and earn and earn points.
so on my first long haul, trip, I was up through Brisbane to Hong Kong, actually back in the days when Qantas had that as an overnight flight, and I managed to get a points upgrade and a flatbed. So I was, I was like, okay, I'm sort of hooked on this now.
I definitely wouldn't have flown business class or first class in any sort of quantity that I've been fortunate to do over the years. A number of years ago I was able to use points to book our entire honeymoon when we went to Europe. , and that was all at the front of the plane.
Chris: That would've made you very popular with the spouse,
Chris Chamberlin (Point Hacks): very popular. I mean, especially, you know, one of the planes had a bar on it. There was a lounge you could use on arrival where you could get free spa treatment. So I was, I was very popular for making those, uh, those points bookings. Thank you. Virgin Atlantic for that one. But, I've, I've been able to do that.
I've been [00:14:00] able to upgrade , on work trips, which makes things more comfortable. Um, and I mean, over Christmas and New Year just gone. I was able to go to the US. Again with my wife, and I don't know if you've seen airfare prices at the moment, but to do that sort of trip, even an economy would've been thousands and thousands of dollars.
Right. I asked my wife Kate, if she could fly me across the world in business class, and she just laughed. Short of choosing your life partner based on their knowledge of airline reward schemes, how can I get me a slice of that sweet, sweet business class pie?
Well, the first part, as you might have guessed, is earning those points.
Chris Chamberlin (Point Hacks): Anyone can earn frequent flyer points. It's not very difficult. You know, , the airline frequent flyer programs in Australia have over 10 million members of them each.
So it's, it's very common and very easy to earn. Points. Where it starts to get interesting is when you realize the volume of points you might be able to earn. So if you're doing a lot of flying, of course that helps you earn points quite fast. If you are staying in hotels regularly, which comes with a lot of flying, then that's sort of a double dip to get things topped up.
Come on, Chris. I'm not loaded. [00:15:00] That's the whole point of this discussion. If I was already flying, I wouldn't need frequent flyer points, would I?
Ah, but you see that's where I've been going wrong. Rather than just getting points from flying, there's a whole bunch of ways to get points while you're still on the ground and points hacking comes in where you can use some of those ways of earning points to your advantage.
Now I'm an Aussie and Chris is also an Aussie. So we talk about Aussie supermarkets, Coles and Woolworths and Aussie Airlines, Qantas and Virgin Australia, and the rewards schemes that are associated with those four things. But no matter where you are in the world, there will be something similar that applies to you.
Chris Chamberlin (Point Hacks): One of the strategies I use is if I can help it, I don't spend money if it doesn't earn me points.
So that means putting as much as I can through point turning credit cards, and then, At least is what I do. Pay the bill off in full every month so that you're not being charged interest. Cuz quite often interest rates on those cards can be 20% or above. So it's kind of negates any benefit if you have to carry a balance from month to month.
But just [00:16:00] earning points, taking the opportunity to earn them is firstly what gets you those rewards. So, For instance, if you're shopping at Woolworths, they have everyday rewards and you can tie that to Qantas and earn Qantas points from your groceries, and it doesn't cost you any extra. You could just earn those points anyway.
And most of us buy groceries anyway, so I see those points as free. And similarly, if you shop at Coles, signing up to Flybys and linking that to Velocity can give you velocity points to spend on Virgin Australia and their partners. There are ways that you can sort of double dip in that sense. You can earn points through a retailer through their own program like that.
You can earn points through a credit card. If you're shopping online, you can click through the airline websites quite often to earn an extra, or sometimes it's 2, 3, 4 airline frequent fly points per dollar. And just getting in the habit of thinking, how can I earn points? What opportunities are there beyond just the credit cards?
(fade in pinball machine noises)
Boom. So you shop online with your credit card that earns your points. You use that card at a retailer that gives you a set number of points per dollar spent, meaning you get even [00:17:00] more points and then suddenly ...
(echo sfx)
multi ball,
and then your points balance starts to increase. The next bit is working out where to spend them, and that is where a true point hacker hits their straps. Knowing the way to squeeze the value outta the points is the real art of point hacking.
Chris Chamberlin (Point Hacks): So for instance, some credit cards earn points that are flexible. So they're not attached to one airline. They earn in the bank's loyalty program. And when you would like to travel, you can transfer them to, in many cases the airline of your choice. Some cards allow you to transfer them to up to. Different airlines and the way things work in the background is that airlines will have partners and you might be able to book a flight through more than one frequent flyer program.
And so some frequent flyer programs might charge, say, 20, 30, 40,000 points to book a one-way flight. But if you were to book the same flight through a different loyalty program, it might cost a lot less. So that's where it starts to get interesting because you can sort of look at the redemption rates for [00:18:00] each different flight in the different, you know, points, programs you have access to.
And every time you go to spend your points, you can choose the best one for your trip. And ultimately it means that you can fly more often, you can fly in more comfort because you're not spending as many points, but you're getting the same experience.
If your brain's about to explode at this point, don't worry. Chris advises against signing up for every frequent flyer program and every hotel loyalty program because yes, the hotels also have loyalty programs as well.
And yes, you can get points and yes, you should, but the advice he gives us is that we should focus on a couple of frequent flyer points or a couple of loyalty programs from airlines and hotels that have destinations that you actually want to fly to. So think about where you're gonna go on your next holiday and look at the airlines that fly there,
or even airlines that have partners that fly there.
Chris Chamberlin (Point Hacks): If you're a Qantas frequent fly, You can go out and book all of these partner airlines. You know, you can book British [00:19:00] Airways, you can book American Airlines. And similarly, if you're a frequent flyer of those airlines, you know you have an American Advantage account, something like that, you can book Qantas.
it doesn't really make sense to have five points here, 10 points there, 20 points there, because none of them are at a level where you can spend them on anything. If you really focus on, choosing your favorite airline Over time, you'll be able to build a balance of points that can actually take you somewhere.
(music)
One thing that I should remind you about here is that as with everything, there is no such thing as a free lunch here with points. Chris says, the frequent flyer programs often make airlines more money than actually selling tickets because other partners, like the credit card companies, the supermarkets and the energy companies that give you big sign up bonuses, they actually buy those points from the airline to give to you.
And while it means the airline will go to great lengths to tell you where and how to earn and spend those points, it means that their partners do want to return on investment for all the points they've bought.
Chris Chamberlin (Point Hacks): Make sure you're not [00:20:00] paying more to earn points in some places. So I, I mentioned the supermarket programs. That doesn't cost you any extra to , earn points on those sort of things, but there are a lot of other opportunities on the ground.
Things like electricity plans, gas plans, those types of things where you can earn points, but the price that you are paying. It can be more than if you didn't have the points attached. And so for me, if you're a beginner, it's probably not worth paying that extra because you could just take that money and spend it on a flight and remove all that complexity.
If you are looking to get super in deep with points hacking, like Kate and I are now, after talking to Chris.
I know Decathlon gives you like points per dollar.
We're buying petrol bp. Yeah. And that gets you like a couple points per liter.
Then Points Hacker, which is one of the websites Chris writes for, has plenty of guides of all the major frequent flyer programs that will make earning and spending your points way easier. The link will be in the show notes, but honestly, just Google Points Hacker right now and fall down the rabbit hole like I did.
So [00:21:00] maybe the problem isn't money. Maybe the problem is that you just don't have the time. If you like me and you run your own business, you know how hard it is to have that conversation with your significant other about the fact that you just might have to answer an email or two on your holiday, or just quickly upload this thing or edit a podcast, you know, purely, hypothetically.
No matter how important you think you are at work, there always has to be a time where we can step away and take some time out for ourselves without constantly being plugged in. But that can be hard, right? Enter Liz
Liz Fleming: I am Liz Fleming the Efficiency Coach, uh, based in Gippsland and Melbourne. And essentially I am a grants coach, business mentor, and chartered accountant helping small business to make the most of their time.
In addition to being an avid traveller, as we heard last episode, Liz has got 34 countries ticked off the list. She knows how hard it can be when you've gotta start letting go of [00:22:00] things in your business so you can take time off to travel, and she's got some advice if you happen to be in that camp.
Liz Fleming: I think it's definitely achievable for small business to factor and travel, but, um, you definitely. To be able to plan that out properly, know what's what, who's in charge, and uh, that takes a bit of work.
Even if you are not a business owner or you work for someone else, Liz's first tip probably applies in that eventually you will need to stop doing stuff so that you can go and enjoy your holiday, and that means planning for someone else to take on your responsibilities.
Liz Fleming: if you wanna take a break or have a holiday as a small business owner, you need to stop doing everything in your business. So the first thing you need to do is find, the stuff that you can delegate to others. And maybe in the first instance, you might need to find what those others look like, whether that's hiring staff or outsourcing to contractors, but working out what it is you do.
What it is that has to be done by you because you've got the [00:23:00] ip, you've got that inside. And often small business owners will say, Well, no, I have to do everything because it's all about me. But if you wanna travel and be able to get outta your business, for a week or on a regular basis, then you've got to start thinking about, okay, what are these tasks?
What are the manual tasks? What are the repeatable tasks that can be outsourced easily? So quite often I start with things like bookkeeping, , sales, keeping up with customers orders, things like that. Depends on your business, what it is, outsourcing your content, outsourcing your creation of your social media.
What can you eliminate from your business as well? What are you currently doing now that you don't really need to be doing? Is it something that you've done from the start and it was something that you enjoyed or needed to do and now that your business has evolved, you probably don't need to be doing it quite as frequently, and so what can we eliminate?
Then we need to think about what can we automate? So what are we doing manually? How many spreadsheets have you got? How many notebooks have you got?[00:24:00] Is it time for a customer relationship management system to track all of that so that someone else can log and see what you are seeing as well?
And then what else can we systemize? So how can we package up the work that is done so that someone else can do it? , you might need to think about getting a manager in and stepping away from the. In more ways than one so that you can work on other stuff. So, depends on what stage you're at in your business, but you definitely need to stop doing everything and start thinking about who can do some things in your business.
And what are the easiest tasks to outsource right now?
Then once you've had that emotional crisis and you realize that you are utterly replaceable, which is hard for a lot of business owners, ask me how I know you can start to figure out how things will work while you're gone,
Liz Fleming: It's about setting expectations. So whoever you put in charge while you're away, what are you expecting to do while while you are on holiday? Is it that you're gonna check your emails [00:25:00] for one hour every day? Or do you not wanna be disturbed for that two weeks while you are lying on the beach with your cocktail in your hand?
And then also setting the expectation of what is an emergency? Okay, If something is going really wrong in my business, this is when you can call me, or this is how you can contact me, because I still want to make sure that I have a business when I come back.
We absolutely do not wanna create more dread or anxiety. While you're on your holiday, if you're just gonna go on holiday and worry about what's happening in your business, it's not gonna be a holiday. So there's a lot of preparation to get ready for this holiday in more ways than one.
and then sticking to those expectations, maybe throwing your phone in the pool if you have to. To make sure that you have the holiday. You've been looking forward to all that time, and whether that is completely turning off, which is fine, or you can stay online for a little bit too, which is fine as well.
One of the great things about living in the time that we do is that we can do a little bit of work from wherever we are in the world, and maybe [00:26:00] that convinces you or the boss to maybe even take a little more time away.
Liz Fleming: I think sometimes when we're in a different environment, lying on the beach, you might actually have a really clear mind and come up with some great ideas for your business. So it's also making sure that you're capturing those ideas while you're on the beach as well, and not. Um, squashing them down and think, Oh no, I shouldn't be thinking about work.
So there's at least three ways you can perhaps think about creating some more opportunities to travel. I hope that it's maybe inspired you to think about ways that you can incorporate more travel into your life too, whether it's maybe looking into house, sitting couch, surfing, which is something we didn't even touch on.
Saving money in other places, working holidays, or like Kate and I have, trying to squeeze every frequent flyer point out of every purchase imaginable.
If you've got some more good ways of being able to incorporate more travel into your life, I'd love to hear them. You can get in touch via Instagram at check in and check out pod or head to our [00:27:00] website, check in and check out.net to send us a voice message or even apply to be a guest on the show. I'm sure we'd all love to hear about your experiences maybe working in hostels or farm stays or something I haven't even thought of yet, because we'll definitely do another app like this one.
And to cap off this episode, we're gonna return to our regular segment about the best piece of travel advice someone else has given you. If anybody's got any ideas on a better name for this segment, I am all ears.
This time Chris is gonna share with us a hidden gem that can save you even more money and get you even more perks.
Chris Chamberlin (Point Hacks): I didn't realize that hotels had lounges. I knew that airlines had lounges, the airports had lounges. I did not know that hotel lounges were a thing until I started talking to some other people who were really into their points and by extension really into their status.
And they're like, you know, if you stay with that hotel enough, you can earn Hilton on as Diamond and get the. Executive lounge every time you stay even on the cheapest sort of [00:28:00] room rate. And so I'm like, Hmm, actually these, I should pay better attention to these hotel programs cuz I can get, you know, free breakfast, free wifi upgrades and that sort of thing.
Which kind of got my toe dipped into the world of hotel points. It was probably a few years after I'd been, earning airline points that I kind of got into the hotel space as well. So I think just having someone tell you that it's possible, Makes you a bit more curious as to how you could achieve that for yourself.
(music up)
Next time on Checkin and Checkout. I wanted to do an episode about travel going wrong, but I thought that was a bit scary. So instead, we're doing, when travel goes a bit sideways,
Shannon Strong: I've had so many random mishaps happen even while traveling.
Christian Reeve: always do your research.
Mark Gresser: you run into trouble because you can't do that
If you are worried about things going wrong on your holiday, we've got a whole bunch of people who faced some different challenges and how they overcame them. That's next time on Checkin and Checkout. Make sure you're subscribed. So yeah, don't miss that episode.[00:29:00]
Checkin and Checkout was produced on the traditional lands of the Bunurong people. We pay our respects to them, their elders, and the other indigenous peoples from the lands where this podcast was produced. This podcast was written and hosted by me, Chris Plumridge with production by Jet Streamer, which seeing as we're talking about small business is also me.
This episode featured Britney Charman from The Traveling House sitters Liz Fleming from the Grants Hub, and Chris Chamberlain from Points Hacks, all of whom I would highly recommend you check out a huge thank you to all our guests for contributing to this episode. You can find out more about where to find them in the show notes.
Leave us a review on your favorite review site. It really does help me make the show better and it also spreads the word, but for now, the weather at our destination is a balmy 23 degrees, and we'll see you next episode.