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Airfare is up 33% in 2022 compared with 2021. But so far, higher fares haven't meant a slowdown in the surge of people traveling this summer.
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Navigating Today's Tumultuous Travel Scene
BY STEVE DINNEN
Record flight cancellations. Piled atop record high airfares. Piled atop massive rises in hotel room rates, and tripled car rent rates, and record high costs to fuel those cars.
“This is not the prettiest picture we’ve ever had,” said Betty Sullivan, who has been in the travel business, at Budget Travel in Windsor Heights, for three-plus decades.
Summer travel has rebounded from pandemic days, plus some. Prices have bounced back accordingly, verging on what some might see as gouging. How better to label a $1,194 economy fare round trip to Portland, Oregon, later this month, a ticket that in calmer times would have cost perhaps half as much.
Avoiding these sky-high prices is tough to do, and impossible if you have kids and are time constrained to travel before school resumes in August. So maybe you’ll have to consider a lesser level of lodging, or maybe a lunch outing through the drive-through lane at McDonald's (the kids won’t care, anyway). On driving trips, my wife and I would always try to stop at a local grocery and load up on deli meats, then find a picnic spot. (In Europe, this often meant a cemetery. Honest. They’re quiet, well kept, and parking is easy.)
Sullivan said she has seen some clients book trips further in advance than might be normal, the thought being that buying now will lock in prices that could rise even further if reservations are pushed back. But, without those kids and locked-in schedule, even a little flexibility might help. The Drake Hotel in Chicago costs no less than $257 for any Friday night through the end of July, and on July 29, it and many other downtown hotels are simply sold out. Lodgers will encounter a reasonable $166 on Friday, Aug. 26. The cheapest stay at the Waldorf Chicago on any of those July Fridays is $693, while it fades to $585 on Aug. 26.
Airfare on that four-day trip to Portland drops to $522 if you can wait until Sept. 9 to take it.
Or what about foreign? I spotted a fare to Boston, economy plus on United, for a hurtful $964 traveling Aug. 2 to Aug. 8. But think about this: Des Moines to Athens, with United and partner SAS, Aug. 2 to Aug. 13, doesn't cost much more: $1,307. And the beaches in Greece are way better. Oopah!
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Hidden Stopovers Can Have Some Advantages
BY STEVE DINNEN
At first blush, a July 24 Allegiant-Frontier Air round-trip flight from Des Moines to San Francisco looks to be a loser. Forget the reasonable $326 fare. Why would you want to board a plane at 10:46 p.m. on July 24, only to spend 24 hours trying to get to California?
Because of Las Vegas. Hidden in this itinerary is a stop (and a switch of carriers, from Allegiant to Frontier) in Las Vegas. You can let loose at the tables, slot machines, or whatever else attracts you to Las Vegas, and all for a 20-hour free ride by the carriers.
Hidden stopovers often involve a switch of carriers, where flight schedules don’t align well. They’re much more common in Europe, where hops can be shorter and involve interesting city pairs. Try a July 25 EasyJet flight from Naples to Amsterdam, which includes a change of planes in Olbia, Sardinia. You’ll spend 18 hours there, arriving early enough for dinner, and leaving late enough the next day to afford a splash in the Mediterranean. Pretty easy way to check out Sardinia.
My favorite was a Shanghai-Paris run with Qatar Airways. I had a nine-hour layover in Doha, Qatar’s HQ. I would have never left the airport but the airline cheerily lugged me and 20 other people on long layovers all around the city.
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Investing With Confidence When Markets Are in Turmoil
BY ROBERT FARRINGTON FOR FORBES.COM
The stock market is down more than 20% for the year as of this writing, and this could not have come at a worse possible time. After all, inflation is currently at a 40-year high, so the purchasing power of every dollar we earn is worth less than just a year ago.
Meanwhile, the values of various cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens are dropping like a rock, and this is despite the fact that crypto has consistently been sold to the public as a hedge against inflation.
And, did I mention that even the best high-yield savings accounts are still earning just a little over 1%?
If you care about your finances at all, you already know that pretty much all news is bad news at the moment. What's even more stressful is the fact nobody knows when the pain is going to end. With all this being said, plenty of fortunes have been made during times when it seems like nothing is going right. READ MORE.
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How Much Money Does It Take to be Considered Wealthy?
BY MIKE WINTERS FOR CNBC.COM
Depending on where you live, a net worth totaling millions of dollars may still be considered merely “comfortable,” a new survey finds.
In the U.S. overall, it takes a net worth of $2.2 million to be considered “wealthy” by other Americans — up from $1.9 million last year, according to financial services company Charles Schwab’s annual Modern Wealth Survey.
However, if you want to be considered rich by residents of large metropolitan areas, it will require even more wealth. READ MORE.
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dsmWealth's Suggested Reading
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dsmWealth is published on the first and third Thursday of each month and updated on dsmMagazine.com.
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