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Brittany L. Bergman

Savoring motherhood, building marriage, and living simply

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How I’m Jetting Off to Seattle for Free (It’s Easier than You Think)

Mar 26 Leave a Comment

Travel can be crazy expensive—airline tickets, travel insurance, baggage fees, hotels, rental cars—and that doesn’t even include the food and activities. And let’s be real, food is certainly one of the main events when I’m on vacation.

For our first big trip of 2015, Dan and I are headed to Seattle for a long weekend at the end of April. We already have all our travel and accommodations booked, and so far, we’ve spent exactly $0. With just a little bit of flexibility and creativity, we’re able to do this trip practically for free. Here’s a breakdown of how we saved at each step.

How I spent $0 on airfare and accommodations for a trip to Seattle (it's easier than you think!) // More from TheNestedNomad.com

Airfare = $0 (kind of)

Dan and I use our Chase Freedom credit cards for pretty much every purchase we make. I know it’s not very Dave Ramsey of us, but it works for our budgeting style. We have our budgets set up in Mint and we make sure we stick to those so we never overspend on our cards. We treat them as finite and limited, just like cash. And we always, always, always pay them off each month. Chase Freedom offers 1% cash back on every purchase and 5% cash back on select categories, which rotate throughout the year. We’ve been banking these points for about a year now, and combined we had about $700 in rewards.

We watched a few travel websites (Kayak, Orbitz, and Expedia) and waited for airfare to hit a low point. Typical airfare to Seattle is in the $300–$400 range, so when we saw it dip to $296 roundtrip, we pounced. We ended up choosing a less-than-ideal time to fly back home on Sunday (11:00 am opposed to 3:00 pm, which would have given us some extra time to do one more thing that morning), but this saved us $30 per ticket.

We actually did book with our credit cards and not by cashing in the points directly, because when you book travel through the Chase Ultimate Rewards website, you get 2% cash back (as opposed to getting 0% back by booking with our points). After booking with our credit cards, we traded 592 points for $592 cash deposited into our bank account and paid off the balance. And we still had more than 100 points left over for future adventures!

We’re also planning to carry on our luggage, so that’s another $0 in baggage fees!

Accommodations = $0

My dear friend Jess and her fiancé, José, recently moved from Spain to Seattle. I’m still disappointed that I never made it over to Spain while she was there, but I’m thrilled to have them a much closer and cheaper flight away! They live in a little studio apartment near downtown Seattle, and we certainly didn’t expect them to host us. We were planning to do Airbnb or something similar, but Jess and José graciously offered to have us in their home on an air mattress or the couch. Perfect!

I know it’s not always possible to crash on someone’s couch when you’re traveling. (Well, actually, it is—if you’re into couchsurfing. I’ve never done it but I totally would.) But if you’re willing to be flexible and choose a couch over the comforts of a hotel, you can save a ton of money. And if you’re willing to be flexible and creative with where you’re going to travel, you can choose to visit places with you have friends or twice-removed cousins who would love to show you around.

Honestly, I wouldn’t choose a luxurious hotel room over staying with friends, especially a friend like Jess. I can’t wait to see her new hometown through her eyes, stay up late talking and giggling like we did in college, and soak up every silly moment.

Rental Car = $0

Much like accomodations, sometimes the rental car is unavoidable. But by flying to a destination like Seattle, we can easily do without it. The public transportation system is excellent and you don’t need a cab or car to get from the airport to the city center or to get around to the various sites. It’s a little more intimidating to navigate a public transportation system, especially one you’re not familiar with, but I think this is part of the grand adventure of travel. Living like a local. Figuring it out as you go. Seeing the sites along the way instead of shuttling yourself around, enclosed in a car. If you need to save some money on your next trip, consider choosing an urban destination that’s well-connected by trains and buses or that’s easily walkable.

Staying True to the Heart of Travel

Because we’re spending nothing on the commute and accommodations, we’re freeing up our entire budget for this trip to do the actual adventuring. I won’t feel guilty dropping a few extra dollars on daily specialty coffees (a huge part of the Seattle experience!), local food, and a whale-watching expedition. The things that are really worth splurging on. (And of course, we’ll treat our hosts to something special because we’re so grateful for their hospitality.)

Travel is all about experiencing new things and seeing the world from a new perspective, not about dropping a ton of money. I’d much rather go to more places and see more cities and experience more adventure by forgoing some of the luxuries usually associated with travel. Amazing trips can be done for so little if you’re willing to be flexible with destinations, give up some comforts, and do more planning on the front end.

What’s your best-kept secret for saving money on travel? When you’re on vacation, which items are worth the splurge?

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Filed Under: Money, Travel Tagged With: adventure, airlines, baggage, budgeting, creativity, experiences, freedom, hotels, money, priorities, Seattle, spending, travel, vacation

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brittanylbergman

Brittany L. Bergman
✔️ Kamala shirt ✔️ Kamala pearls ✔️ Ka ✔️ Kamala shirt
✔️ Kamala pearls
✔️ Kamala mug 
✔️ Kamala curls

It’s a great day to witness the shattering of a glass ceiling, to embrace empathy and decency, and to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The work is only just beginning, but today, we celebrate. Congratulations, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris! 👏🏼🎉💙
What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaki What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaking, cozy, chaotic-but-strangely-quiet Christmas we had. ✨🎄✨

That’s a wrap for me on 2020—I’ll be off social media until sometime in January. May you be filled with peace and hope as we close this year but still wait for the close of this chapter in our history. 💜
I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; d I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; depression and rage; exhaustion and loneliness. But I can honestly say this is the weariest Christmas I can remember. I say that not to shine a spotlight on me, but to say that I have a feeling this might be your experience too. I’m with you.
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And so the words to my favorite Christmas hymn hit me different this year. They resonate in a place much deeper, more tender and true than ever before. I rejoice in the giggles of my meltdown-prone child. I rejoice in stolen moments alone in the dark, the room lit only by the glow of the Christmas tree. I rejoice in every video and every social media post I see of a frontline worker receiving the COVID vaccine, our ticket out of this nightmare. I rejoice in the vision that next Christmas might look more familiar than this one does. I rejoice in the hope of Christ, whose universal, creative, motherly love holds the whole universe together.
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On this Christmas Eve, I’ll leave you with this quote from Howard Thurman. I hope these words bring a slant of light to your day.
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“The symbol of Christmas—what is it? It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when the clouds are heavy with foreboding. It is the cry of life in the newborn babe when, forced from its mother’s nest, it claims its right to live. It is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”
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Whatever and however you celebrate at this time of year, I’m sending you all my love and peace. 💫
I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in the nick of time.

I baked cookies with Selah without getting frustrated (first time ever?), took the kids on drive to see Christmas lights, and wrapped a bunch of gifts.

But here’s what I think did the trick, and please do steal this idea (because I stole it from someone else but have no idea who): Magical Movie Night™️.

On Saturday night, I stealthily placed a golden ticket under Selah’s pillow (which I printed from the internets and colored quickly with a yellow marker; good enough is good enough for Magical Movie Night!). We put Eamon to bed and got Selah ready for bed too, going through all the normal motions of brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, picking out a book. When we climbed into bed, I told her to look under her pillow.

She was confused when she found the ticket, and I told her it was for a Christmas movie night. “When?” she asked. “Right now!” I said. “What do you mean ‘right now’?” When it dawned on her that she was going to stay up past her bedtime to have a special movie night with Mommy and Daddy (sans Eamon), she lost her mind with excitement.

Bonus: Gramma was waiting downstairs with a bag of popcorn and Swedish Fish!

We snuggled under blankets, turned on Elf, and laughed our festive butts off. (This was her first time watching Elf, and it felt like the dawning of a new era. It’s such a big kid movie! And she loved it! Hold me. 😭)

Deck the halls, bring on Christmas, fill my mug with holly jolly goodness. 

I also acknowledge this has been a crappy year in so many ways, and I know many of you are not going to be able to access Christmas cheer this year. That’s okay. The real spirit of Christmas is light breaking through the dark, love making a way, and the beauty that can’t help seeping through the dirty, messy, horribly human moments of our lives. So you’re covered.

(And if you want to fake it ’til you make it, give Magical Movie Night a try. It’s the actual easiest.)
In which I couldn’t come up with a clever captio In which I couldn’t come up with a clever caption. There are signs of life but my brain is dead. 💀
“This is what I find most mystifying about Adven “This is what I find most mystifying about Advent: the period of waiting ultimately ends in great joy, but we can’t get to that great joy without intense, active, unbearable pain. In Advent we sense the mingling of anticipation and anxiety, excitement and disappointment, joy and pain, hope and fear.
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“On this side of history, we have the luxury of waiting with great hope, great joy, and great expectation. We know Jesus will be born, we know he will save us and redeem us, we know he will die and rise again, and we know he will set all things right one day.
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“But before Christ came, Advent was dark. It was lonely and unknown, as the Israelites waited in faith to hear from God, and all they got was… nothing. Silence.
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“Isn’t this more characteristic of the waiting we usually do? The waiting seasons of our lives are less often marked by joy and hope and more often marked by pain and fear. They are not often cozy or comforting but difficult and dark and even laborious.
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“We wait as a pregnant mother waits for her child to be born—there’s a vision of the joy to come, to be sure, but in the throes of gut-wrenching labor pains, we think we might actually die before we see that joy fulfilled. After a long season of pregnancy, when the fullness of time has arrived, the advent of labor ushers in the real period of waiting—and it is active and painful and raw.”
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// From “In the Fullness of Time,” a new blog post on @first15. There’s a link in my bio to the whole piece, with thoughts on pregnancy, Advent, and waiting well in an exceptionally hard year. 💜 Thank you so much to @first15 for publishing this post!
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Brittany L Bergman is a for-profit blog. Any company that I collaborate with is chosen by me and fits the theme and readership of my blog. At times, posts may contain affiliate links or sponsored content, which is never at any charge to you.

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