Free breakfast tomorrow at Denny's

Denny's is giving away a free breakfast tomorrow between the hours 6am - 2pm. Its only on Tuesday February 3rd. They had a commercial about it during the Super Bowl in case you missed that.

I'm guessing that they will be pretty crowded and it doesn't say anything about free beverage. But hey, its free food so who's to complain.

A few Frugal learnings from Vegas vacation

My wife and I recently went to Las Vegas for a short vacation. I'm always looking for a good deal in Vegas. In my mind, vacations are meant to be fun so I don't mind spending money on a trip. Why spend the airfare and hotel costs to travel somewhere fun and then sit in the room and play cards? However, theres nothing wrong with saving as much as you can doing the fun things you want to do on your vacation.

Below are the some cost saving ideas that I picked up in my most recent trip.


1) AAA discounts

I never think of asking if there's a AAA discount on goods or services but it can pay to do so.

We decided to see the Titanic : The Artifact Exhibition at the Luxor. Normal price tickets were $27 each but with our AAA card we got the tickets for $24.60. So we saved nearly $5 just by showing our AAA card. Not a bad side benefit at all.

I looked at the AAA site and I found a few more discounts in Vegas:

Blue Man Group: Save up to $40 on select tickets. Also, save 10% on merchandise at the Blue Man Group Retail Store in Las Vegas.

Hard Rock Cafe: Save 10% on food, non-alcoholic beverages and merchandise at all U.S., and select Canadian and international locations.

Papillon Grand Canyon Helicopters: Save 10% on all Grand Canyon South Rim Tour Departures. Save 25% on Las Vegas Night Flights and 20% on all Las Vegas Grand Canyon Departures.

2) Excalibur had a 2-for-1 deal in their Buffet.
The deal is only good for the hours of 2pm-6pm and there was a pretty long line at 1:55pm waiting. But this is a hard to beat buffet deal. Their dinner buffet is $18 per adult so two people can eat for $18. Not bad.

3) A taxi may be better than monorail for short trips for 2 or more people
Normally I take the monorail up and down the strip since a single $5 ticket seems like a bargain compared to a taxi. However a couple times we had to go a few hotels up and down the strip. For these short trips I figured a taxi shouldn't cost us more than the $10 in monorail tickets for two people and the taxi would save us a lot of walking. Turns out I was right. We were going about 1 or 1.5 mi. down the strip between 2 major casino hotels. The taxi ticket cost us just about $10 each way. And it was a LOT faster and easier than the monorail. The more people you have then the more economical taxi's are over the monorail. If we shared a trip with our friends then a trip for 4 two ways would be $20 or $5 per person and monorail tickets 2 ways would run $40. On the other hand if it was just one person traveling then the monorail would generally be the cheapest travel option for anything but the shortest trips.

4) Watch out for extra hotel fees
I booked a mid week stay via Orbitz in a 3 star strip hotel for about $51 a night. I as proud of the decent deal I'd found. But then when we got to the hotel they charged me an extra $1 fee plus a $7 'resort fee' to add another $8 to the bill. I'm used to and now accept the misc. $1-2 fee that hotels sometimes tack on for phone usage or 'energy' surcharge or whatever other random fee they decide to come up with to pad the bill. But a $8 charge is beyond what I'm happy to accept. Unfortunately at the time it was too late. When I got home I was going to give Orbitz a piece of my mind for not alerting me to this. I looked at the receipt from Orbitz and the $7 fee was spelled out right there. It was my mistake to not notice the fee in advance. The moral of the story is to watch for extra charges from hotels added at check in or check out.

5) Taxis may or may not be cheaper than rental car
Normally I do not get a rental car in Vegas. Usually I take a taxi from the airport to the strip and back and then take a few more taxi rides during my visit and use the monorail. Depending on how much travel you plan to do and how much the rental car rates are its possible that either renting a car or using taxis may be cheaper. On this past trip we went in January and rental car rates were dirt cheap due to it being off season. I could have gotten a rental for under $30 a day. What I would do is think about how much traveling you'll be doing during your trip and then add up expected taxi charges and compare to renting a car. Say for example you'll be there 4 days and plan to go to Fremont street one night and then take another side trip. You'd be looking at round trip from the airport, round trip strip to Fremont and round trip strip to off strip location. If each of those trips is approximately $20 each way in taxi fares then you'd come to a total of $120 in taxi charges. If your rental car is less than $30 a day it may be cheaper to go with the rental but if the rental is more then taxis would be cheaper.

Using Hotwire and Betterbidding.com for good hotel rates

I've looked at Hotwire in the past but normally I had decided against using it because I didn't like the blind nature of not knowing what specific hotel you were buying in advance. The other day though I was looking to book a weekend reservation and Hotwire said that the hotels would be like the Red Lion, Radisson or Holiday Inn and those all sounded fine to me. I got a little more curious so I did a google search for "3 star" and the name of the city in question and I found this website called Better Bidding. The Better Bidding forum is a site where users share information on which hotels are sold by Hotwire and Priceline for specific star ratings. With the Better Bidding site I was able to get some useful information on the hotels offered by Hotwire and this gave me confidence to go ahead and buy there. I ended up saving a lot in the process.

For example say you are interested in visiting Las Vegas. You go to Hotwire and they say that they have 4 star hotels on Center Strip for $76 a night. Thats a decent price for a 4 star hotel but you don't know what hotel you're getting. If you go to the Better Bidding forum for Vegas you find their sticky for Nevada and within that they list all the hotels people have reported. For center strip 4 star hotels in Vegas they list Paris, Planet Hollywood and Treasure Island. If I do a search on Orbitz for the same date I see that those hotels are much more. Treasure Island is $89, Planet Hollywood at $135 and Paris at $145. But I also see on Orbitz that Ballys is $65 and Luxor is $72. So in this case I can see that the price for the hotels offered by Hotwire is better than Orbits but I also find that there are cheaper comparable quality hotels at Hotwire. Maybe you like the prospect of TI, Planet Hollywood or Paris at a $76 rate or maybe you'd be happier paying $65 for Ballys or $72 for Luxor. Either way using Better Bidding forum gives you more information to make an informed choice.

While Hotwire isn't always a great deal I think it is usually very cheap compared to the other sites. When I made my bid I got a 3 star hotel for a 2 star price. The only hotels on Orbitz, Expedia or Yahoo Travel that were as cheap as the HOtwire rate were in the 1-2 star range.

BetterBidding is a great resource to use along with Hotwire.

One big thing to be aware of with Hotwire though is that purchases from their service are not refundable and you can't cancel or change them. That can be a big deal. If you think you might need to change or cancel your reservations then I'd recommend against using Hotwire. If you're fairly sure that you'll keep the travel plans then its a good way to save on rates.

Best of Blog posts for the week January 30th

Bargaineering (formerly Blueprint for Financial Prosperity) has a nice overview of the treasury bonds available Basics of Treasury Bonds & Securities Explained

Financial Fellow takes a nice look at Employee Stock Purchase Plans: Great Investments

My post on Entertainment Costs per Hour was featured in the Its Only Money Blog at The Oregonian.

From a post on FatWallet: Papa Johns pizza is running a promotion where they are offering a large pizza for 25¢ if the opening kickoff of the Super Bowl is returned for a touchdown. You have to register on their site before hand in order to be eligible for the 25 cent pizza and kickoffs returned for touchdowns are not very common.