With the world being so easily accessible now many people will take to the skies instead of making a trip to their local state park. Most families will ponder if buying a cottage or vacation home is worth all of the hassle. Owning a second home or cottage sometimes becomes a pain in the butt because you have to make time for these properties. Otherwise they do not make sense to own. Most people that own a second home in the state they live in will own one that is relatively close or could be driven to in a matter of 3-5 hours.
The only time you can make it up there is on the weekend and you spend Friday night driving there, opening it up and cleaning it. You get to spend Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning actually enjoying it and then have to clean and pack up Sunday afternoon. Not that much fun. It sounds more like work.
So ditch the cottage or second home and start traveling. Nothing to clean up and you can plan ahead ot time when you want to go instead of feeling tied down to one piece of property. Hopefully your friends will have a cottage and maybe invite you up on a weekend or two.
When you start traveling you are going to want to get an airline miles credit card. What this credit card is it earns points, miles, or rewards towards your next plane ticket. These can be a life saver because ticket prices are starting to go up due to rising fuel pricwes. But traveling is still fun because you get to go out and see stuff that you would otherwise not be able to see.
You earn airmiles when you make purchases on your credit card. Depending on who you get your airline miles credit card from you will usually earn 1 mile for every dollar that you spend. You accumulate these miles and can redeem them at any time. The airlines have different ways of calculating miles and you will want to check with your card issuer to see when you are able to get a free airline ticket.
Most airlines will give you bonus miles when you sign up to get you in the habit of using the airlines credit card. This is a good thing only if you pay the entire credit card bill off every month. Interest rates on airline credit cards are typically higher because the reward they are giving you goes towards plane ticket that changes in price all the time. They would love to see you carry a a balance because then your basically eliminating any rewards you might have earned.
Earn more miles by using the merchants that the airline works with. Sometimes you will get extra miles if you use their website to make your purchase or the rental car company or hotel they partner with. These extra miles really add up and should be taken advantage of all of the time. Your credit card will probably have different types of rewards and you need to pay attention to these. Some will give you 1 mile when you use their merchants or half a mile at your grocery store. This is rare but if you really want to travel then use your airline miles credit card for everything.
