Vacation, Travel & Airfare Tips

Travelers - This is the easiest Currency Converter you'll find. Offers exchange rates for 36 of the most common currencies. Bookmark this page for quick conversion throughout your travels.

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Get the Best Exchange Rate (Street Rate vs. Bank Rate)

When traveling abroad, it's important to know that there is often a significant difference between the exchange rate offered by the banks (or ATM machines) and the street rate. In many countries, you can often find street vendors (known as Cambios in Central & South America) who will offer you a much better exchange rate than a bank or ATM machine would offer you. The difference is often in the range of a 5-10 cent difference (or 5-10%). While this doesn't amount to much on a few dollars, the difference can become quite substantial if you plan on exchanging several hundred or thousands of dollars over weeks or months. In this case, it is quite beneficial to bring extra cash with you, which you can exchange at the going street rate, assuming you have a safe place to keep your money.

Commercial Exchange Rate

Another type of exchange rate is called the "Commercial Rate". The commercial rate is what banks use to calculate the exchange rate when doing wire transfers. This rate is usually just slightly better than the bank or ATM rate so if you will be converting a large sum of money, more than you are comfortable traveling with or more than is legally allowed on your international flight without claiming in customs, then a wire transfer will offer you the second best exchange rate.

Protect Your Wealth from the Crashing US Dollar

If the crashing value of the US Dollar scares you, it should because it is going to get much worse before it gets better. This is why I dedicated an entire page to this subject, which shows you How to Protect Yourself from The Crashing US Dollar and possibly make a bundle at the same time.

Cheap Car Rentals (half price)

If you plan on renting a car on your vacation, I have personally found that you can save a lot of money renting from a privately owned car rental company. I personally live in Brazil 6 months per year in my beach vacation home. During my first 6-month vacation abroad, I rented a car from Avis car rental and paid about $1200 USD per month for a simple (but new) 4-door Chevy Astra sedan with a 2 liter engine. It was nothing fancy by American standards but was apparently a very expensive car to rent in South America. It wasn't until my second 6-month stay that I met two different locals who owned private car rental companies who rented cars for about half the price of Hertz and Avis car rental. Since paying $1200/month for my first car rental, the value of the US dollar has dropped from 2.9 to 1.6 against the Real and the price of a locally owned rental car is still half of what I paid at Avis when the dollar was almost twice as strong. So, my point is, do some shopping around and ask the locals if they know of a small privately owned car rental company. Chances are you will find one and could save 50% or more of what the big car rental companies pay, such as Hertz and Avis.

Before traveling, it will pay to do a thorough search in Google for car rentals in the city of your vacation destination. Since the big car rental companies will take up the first few page results of your Google search, you'll probably find the smaller privately owned car rental companies deep into the search results so don't settle with a car rental company that appears in the first few pages. You'll find the best deals buried under the national car rental companies with million dollar advertising budgets.

Double Your Gas Mileage & Reduce Travel Expenses

With rising gasoline prices, airfare prices have increased exponentially. As a result, many travelers are resorting to vacation destinations that are within reasonable driving distance. But with gasoline prices exceeding $4.50 per gallon, vacationers (and anyone who drives a car for that matter) are looking to alternative fuel sources to save money and lower the cost of travel. One particular alternative fuel source that is rapidly gaining media attention is simply "water". Water contains the largest source of stored energy on the planet in the form of Hydrogen. Through a simple process using an electrical current at just the right amps, hydrogen can be rapidly dissolved from water as it is needed. This system is called "Hydrogen on Demand". The hydrogen vapor is fed into your car's air intake manifold where it mixes with gasoline in the combustion chamber. This airborne hydrogen greatly increases the combustion power of the gasoline within the cylinders, thus increasing gas mileage and horsepower. The beauty of this technology is that it is so simple, it can be implemented on practically any car or truck for under $150 in parts, including diesels. There are a few websites offering do-it-yourself conversion manuals but there are two in particular that have the best reputation for handling support questions. They are as follows:

2xGasMileage.com ($49 ebook with simplified instructions)

Water4Power.net ($97 for 2 ebooks, more detailed instructions with color photos of each step)

Both offer their do-it-yourself ebooks by instant download. My personal suggestion depends on whether you are curious about the technology or you're actually serious about performing the conversion on your car or not. If you're just curious about the technology, then I would suggest the $49 website. If you are serious about making the conversion on your car, then the $97 website provides much more detail with color photos every step of the way. Both websites offer excellent support and display several videos showing how the technology works.

More Savings (Hotels vs. Vacation Rentals)

In the face of a US recession and crashing housing & financial market, more and more homeowners are converting their weekend homes & real estate into vacation rentals for an additional source of income. For this reason, vacation rental websites like Mr Vacation .com seem to be exempt from the effects of exuberant oil prices while the rest of the travel industry tends to suffer. While there may be fewer vacationers traveling this year, there are many more homeowners seeking vacation rental income than previous years in an effort to offset the nation's rampant inflation. In short, there are simply more homeowners competing for fewer vacationers this year, resulting in a much more competitive market for vacation homeowners. This is why MrVacation.com couldn't have come along at a better time.

Launched in July 2008, MrVacation.com helps vacation homeowners generate rental income by providing them a targeted audience of travelers seeking a vacation rental home in their area. And for those homeowners looking to sell their vacation homes, Mr Vacation.com also provides one of the only targeted databases of vacation homes for sale on the internet. When a homeowner lists their vacation home on MrVacation.com, they can either list their home for as a vacation rental or as a vacation home for sale.

Airfare and Airlines

All I can say is avoid buying tickets from 1800cheapseats.com. Trying to change your airline ticket with Cheap Seats is a painfully expensive ordeal. $350 to change an international ticket and $250 to change a domestic ticket (OUCH!). It costs $700 to change international tickets for my wife and I, which is why I now only buy airline tickets directly through the airlines themselves. A good place to find the cheapest airline tickets is Kayak.com. Their website is a search engine that shops hundreds of websites for cheap airfare. I will usually start my air fair search here and then call the airline directly once I've found the airline selling the cheapest tickets.

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