Tag: money-saving

Track Your Travel Rewards and Book Flights With Frequent Flyer Miles with MileWise

by Mario Armstrong

So I was on vacation last week and it was awesome! A much-needed recharge and refresh for me and the fam. It’s great to be able to get away, and if you can find a way to make it happen I totally recommend it! And if you can make it more affordable using your frequent flyer miles or credit card reward points, even better! But trying to book travel with frequent flyer miles or points can be confusing, so try MileWise if you’re thinking about getting about out of town.

Basically MileWise is a search engine for flights, but instead of just showing you flight prices it also lists the cost of a flight in frequent flyer miles and reward points. You link up your frequent flyer mile accounts and credit card accounts so that you can see all your options.

There are some missing players: American Airlines isn’t there, and neither is Southwest. And rewards info is only available for four of the major credit card companies. But MileWise promises they’re adding more all the time, and even if you can’t use a particular card for price comparisons, you can still at least track all your balances in one place. That’s useful enough that it’s worth just signing up for that!

So I guess the takeaway here is that finding a way to recharge is important to your state of mind so you can stay positive and focused when you’re back at work. And it may seem tough to get away if it’s too expensive, so explore your options for using frequent flyer miles and rewards points to see if you can make it work financially, and check out MileWise to see just what you can afford.

Get a Free Credit Score and Monitor Your Credit Report With Credit Sesame

by Katherine Elsasser

credit sesame for free credit scores and free credit reportsThere are a lot of services out there that promise a free credit report, but are actually scams – remember all those free credit report TV and radio jingles? Everyone is entitled to a free credit report once a year through the website annualcreditreport.com, but if you want to know your actual credit score – the number that rates your credit-worthiness – you’re going to have to pay extra. Enter Credit Sesame, a new startup that will let you get both your credit report and credit score for free.

Credit Sesame has partnered with Experian to provide your credit score, so you won’t know what the other two major credit ratings agencies (Equifax and TransUnion) think, but it’s a good start. Credit Sesame will also offer you loan and credit card advice about the debt you already have, and can send you updates about changes to your credit report. If you’re actually in the market for a loan or credit card, they’ll send you offers from bank they think match your financial needs: if you choose to go with one of those offers, Credit Sesame makes a commission. That’s how they can provide their other services for free, but they promise that the offers will truly be helpful to consumers.

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New Google Flight Search Simplifies Finding the Best Fares

by Katherine Elsasser

Anyone who’s ever tried to book business travel for themselves knows how irritating the process can be. There are way too many sites that promise the best deals, but they can’t all be the best, right? Plus, many of the travel sites’ user experience is less than convenient. It’s too difficult to compare flights, or if your travel dates are flexible, it’s not obvious how to manipulate your search to find the cheapest flight. And let’s not even talk about the popups. Leave it to Google to find a completely bare-bones solution that works incredibly well.

Google Flights‘ strength is in its simplicity. To get started, just put in your departure and arrival cities and travel dates. It’s easy to add additional airports just by clicking on your airport and checking off airports you’d be willing to deal with, and Google shows you whether there’s any savings available by expanding your search before you even check off additional airports.

Google Flight Search
My Google Flight Search. Easy.

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