Hallie Gay Walden Bagley was featured on Rookstool Interviews where she discussed how she first got into her industry.
It was providence. I used my interest in what goes on with others under the surface (you can call it psychoanalysis if you will) and my skill with words and belief in education to give me the idea of what I love to do, helping coach students through their college process. It’s the combination of the two that really elevates my execution. However, certainly those 6 years at The Paris Review, as managing editor putting out a literary quarterly and working with very talented writers, that certainly had a lot to do with everything.
With so many credit cards to choose from, it can be hard to decide what kind of rewards you want. While most reward cards are going to require a high credit score, one of the best rewards you can choose are travel points. Not only is this great for those that already travel a lot, but it’s also really good for those that want to earn points for future vacations with every day purchases. With that being the case, this article is going to look at 5 of the best credit cards for travel points that are recommended by leaders of the industry, like Grand Canyon Advisors.
The Platinum Card from American Express
Even though this card has an annual fee of $550, it’s well worth it. Not only is there the chance that you’ll get a welcome bonus of 60,000 travel points, but you can also get 5x membership rewards on flights booked through American Express and prepaid hotels through the American Express travel site. In addition, the card has a yearly credit of $200 for airlines, $200 for Uber, $100 for Saks Fifth Avenue and a Global Entry or TSA Pre Check fee waiver every 4 years.
Chase Sapphire Preferred Card
You could also get the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card. One of the biggest benefits of this card is that the rewards can be transferred to several different frequent flyer and hotel reward programs. This means you can use your points on more than just one spot. In addition, if you redeem your points for traveling, you get a bonus of 25%! After you spend $4,000 in the first three months of having the card, you’ll get 60,000 travel points. That’s around $750 of free traveling!
Bank of America Travel Rewards Visa Credit Card
The rewards for this card are extremely easy to earn. If you spend $1,000 in the first 90 days of having the card, you’ll get 25,000 bonus points, which equals about $250. In terms of earning, you can earn 1.5 points for every $1 you spend. There aren’t any specific categories or caps for earning either! If you’re a Bank of America Preferred member, you’ll be able to earn an additional 25%-75%, depending on what tier you are.
Capital One VentureOne Rewards Credit Card
Another great card for travel points is the Capital One VentureOne Rewards Credit Card. The great thing about this card is that you can transfer your credits to 12 different partners. This means you can redeem your rewards with multiple different companies. If you spend $1,000 in the first 3 months, you’ll get a bonus of 20,000 reward points, which equals to around $200. Just like other cards on this list, there aren’t any specific categories or caps you have to worry about. You’ll earn 1.25 reward miles for every $1 you spend!
Discover it Miles Credit Card
This card has some pretty nice benefits. For starters, every $1 you spend means you’ll get around 3 reward miles for the first year. This means you can wrack up your rewards pretty quickly. In addition, Discover will match the rewards you earn in your first year. For example, if you earn 35,000 miles in your first year, you’ll actually end up with 70,000! After the first year, you’ll earn 1.5 miles for every $1 spent.
If you want to get a card that’s recommended by well-known companies, like Grand Canyon Advisors, then you should give these a look. While they’re all going to get you travel points, some are going to have better rewards than others. You want to make sure you choose the one that will fit your needs the best
With wanderlust becoming a trend amongst 20-somethings and millennials everywhere, more and more people seem to be booking international rendezvous as they jet around the world to dream destinations. Despite this growing trend, many seemingly-happy travelers are taking on debt to fund their adventures. Thankfully, there’s a better way. If you’re interested in seeing the wonders of the world without going into financial ruin, the following four strategies will help you learn to travel while staying debt-free:
1. Save More to Fund Your Travels
The idea of paying out-of-pocket for your travel fees may seem uncomfortable right now, but with a bit of planning and saving, the expenses for your upcoming travel plans will be just another drop in the bucket. Wink Capital shares that financial savvy travel plans should always start with a large chunk of savings. Make sure you have at least three months worth of savings as you gear up for a big trip.
To save more effectively, make a savings account solely dedicated to travel. As you work to grow this savings account, make sure to cut back on some of your everyday expenses so you’re able to save even more for trips.
2. Minimize Costs Where You Can
Another way to afford to travel like a jet setter is to cut back on expenses when traveling. While flying first class and staying in 5-star hotels is indeed a nice way to travel, these aren’t absolute necessities. By making it a point to reduce your basic travel costs, you’ll be able to get more sightseeing in and even divert more money to future travels.
3. Use Credit Card Rewards Wisely
The truth is that most travel bloggers and Instagram influencers aren’t spending their own money to travel. With the right credit card rewards programs, these travelers are transforming their perks into hotel bookings and tickets for flights. If you hope to travel to your heart’s content without shelling out a fortune, Wink Capital recommends looking into the most rewarding credit cards to start earning reward points. Eventually, you’ll earn enough to cash in for flights, hotels, dining experiences, and more.
If you already have a credit card, it’s likely that you’ve already accrued quite a few points. Log into your card’s online portal to get a tally of your points or miles. If you’re lucky, you might already have enough to cover all or part of an upcoming trip.
4. Earn Money as You Travel
The reason why debt becomes a problem for so many world travelers is that a majority of them take off of work while they travel. For those of us that have limited or no paid vacation time, this isn’t an option. If you hope to travel extensively while remaining employed, it’s best to earn money while in the process of traveling.
Whether you work as a freelancer or you take a job abroad as a language teacher, finding a way to fund your travels while you’re actually traveling is one of the best ways to stay debt-free on your adventures. If this is your goal, be sure to search for jobs that allow for remote work. With this kind of freedom, you can work anywhere you have your laptop and access to the Internet.
Debt and world travel don’t have to go hand in hand. If you want to check the world’s hottest destinations off your bucket list, the opportunity is yours. With this guide in mind, you’ll be able to live out your travel fantasies without breaking the bank
Looking at some of the most extreme deck and dock construction, the following is a list of the world’s most unique outdoor observation decks. All provide jaw-dropping views of our natural world. Some of them will get your adrenaline pumping as well.
Arguably, the greatest set of observation decks in the world, the Great Wall of China took 2,000 years to build and snakes over a distance of 5,500 miles. In a really great travel article by the Los Angeles Times, an author explains that the best portions of the Great Wall to carefully climb are the portions of “wild wall” where the wall is in disrepair and crumbling.
Tour guides will supply transportation, countryside lunches, and hikes that take tourists up these sections of the wall, rain or shine or snow. In one of these wild sections of the wall, the author described finding the remains of two brick walls that ran parallel, each 24 feet tall, joined by being filled in with dirt and rock with a layer of brick on the top for a walkway. Spare guard stations occur at each quarter mile. In some locations, tourists can camp overnight on the wall.
A trip to Vancouver, Canada will afford you the opportunity to hike high above Vancouver forests on a series of suspension bridges. According to The Metro Vancouver Convention and Visitors Bureau, the first bridge was constructed of hemp spanning 450 feet, suspended 230 feet above a river canyon.
The 27-acre park now has a few more attractions, including Cliffwalk, where visitors negotiate bridges, stairs, and platforms above the river canyon. Cliffwalk is suspended at only 16 points in the granite cliff. Treetops Adventure is another sky trail system that is 100 feet in the air in the Douglas Fir tree canopy. In order to make the sky trail environmentally friendly, a compression system is used around each tree to suspend the trial, with no bolts or nuts. Treetop has viewing platforms and seven suspension bridges interconnected between the trees.
Aurland Lookout
Sitting 2,000 feet in elevation above one of Norway’s largest fjords, this is basically half a bridge. It juts out from a cliff and ends with a thin pane of glass overlooking the massive fjord. This structure is 14 feet in width and extends out 110 feet horizontally before it makes a downward curve that provides an illusion of falling. The lookout is made almost entirely of wood with a simple pipe handrail.
The Grand Canyon Skywalk is a cantilevered bridge that extends out over the Grand Canyon in Eagle Point, Arizona. The Skywalk is a tourist attraction that generates income for the Hualapai Native American tribe. Its U-shaped walkway is glass and has glass siding that can withstand high winds. The walkway extends out from the side of the canyon at 4,770 feet in elevation over the Colorado River below at 1,160 in elevation. Tourists must leave their cameras in a locker but can purchase professional photos in the gift shop. In addition to the gift shop, Eagle Point has an amphitheater that offers Native American dances and a Native American village. In the future, the tribe hopes to add a museum, a VIP lounge, a few restaurants and a movie theater.
Sierra Buttes Fire Lookout
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, although it is only a 2 and a half-mile hike, the trail to the Sierra Buttes Fire Lookout in the Tahoe National Forest in Northern California ascends 2,400 feet of elevation to the summit and lookout that tops out at 8,587 feet of elevation. The last portion of the hike takes you up very steep sets of metal stairs that are attached to the top pinnacle. The stairs rattle and move a bit as you climb. At one location, the stairs float over the air, making it hard to look down.
If you can get to the top of the stairs and have not gotten too dizzy on the cantilevered steps, you can circle around the lookout on a grated walkway that allows you to look straight down through your feet into the canyons below. You will have a view of the Sierra Nevada with the twin Upper and Lower Sardine Lakes below and the tiny town of Sierra City on the other side. You will see the Yuba River Canyon, French Meadows Reservoir and Bowman Lakes. In the backdrop, you will see the Crystal Basin that John Muir called the “Range of Light.”
For those who prefer a much more tame, but spectacular adventure, the border between Brazil and Argentina boasts the world’s largest waterfall system. Waterfalls cascade from both sides of the Iguazu River at heights from 200 to 270 feet, 275 drops in total and 1.7 miles wide. The trail, Paseo Garganta del Diablo, is a series of walkways that takes tourists directly over the falls that are the highest and deepest. There are other walkways along with the forests of the Argentinian side.
Top of Tirol Viewing Platform –
Tyrol, Austria has a viewing platform located at the top of Mount Isidor. Visitors can take a gondola up from the Stubai Glacier ski resort that is at about 10,000 feet of elevation and walk about five minutes beyond the top of the gondola platform out to the top of the mountain. There, they will find a viewing platform that takes the visitors from the summit and out about 30 more horizontal feet into thin air. The platform has a view of over 109 peaks that are over 9,000 feet in elevation. The viewing platform is made of Corten steel.
All of these structures, whether made of hemp, wood, steel or aluminum, are examples of extreme deck and dock construction, and have been designed to withstand nature’s fury. All provide visitors a unique vista into some of the most beautiful places in the natural world
Colby Lee Burke, Hilton Head resident doesn’t see his travel bug diminishing anytime soon. In fact, in a recent interview, he said,
“The plan is to continue traveling and writing for the foreseeable future. At some point or another, I may release a guide of some sort about my favorite locations to visit.”
If you are that person who loves traveling, you should know that not every company will provide you with traveling opportunities because working hours and the earning you get may be a big limitation. However, according to Chrissy Weems, most people who work for direct sales companies are believed to have high chances of traveling or doing other activities they love without pressure. In this case, if you are considering joining a direct sales company, you might be able to meet your traveling goals in the following ways.
1. Flexibility Of Work
Direct sales involve selling goods directly to people through one-on-one meetings, exhibitions, home parties or through social media. This means that you can work from anywhere and do not need to have a specific place where people must come to buy from. Maybe you have wanted to travel to other cities and countries but your working hours cannot allow you to do so. The good news is that working for a direct sales company may give you a chance to travel and work at the same time because you will still be active on social media and as you meet new people, you can introduce your products to them. Also, making direct sales means that you can work a few hours in a day and reach your target, giving you extra time to travel.
2. Personal Growth
Some people are shy or do not have enough courage to talk in front of many people. Others are worse to the extent that they can’t converse effectively with even an individual and this hinders them from doing a lot of thing around other people. From working with a direct sales company, you will be able to meet, blend and interact with a lot of people either as individuals or in groups. While it might be challenging at first, it will get better with time. Eventually, you will gain the courage and confidence to meet people everywhere and anywhere. It will not be an excuse anymore as to why you don’t like traveling to new places.
3. Your Duties Will Involve Traveling
When working with a direct sales company, some of your duties would involve going on business trips. For instance, your employer can tell you to represent him in a party or exhibition where your company’s products are being sold. It can also be a training seminar on how to use your products, and your employer may need you to meet customers from different places, and you will get chances to travel more. This means that you will travel more while still on duty.
4. More Income
You can make more money from a direct sales company because apart from earning your salary, you will earn a commission after meeting your target. The good thing is that as you build a strong connection with other people and create a wider network the more your sales will be and hence higher incomes. Chrissy Weems says that there are direct sales companies that provide free trips to marketers who are doing well in their jobs and your hard work will allow you to win such trips. Also, by making more money, it means you are going to afford a vacation that you couldn’t afford before and therefore meet your traveling goals. Jump to top
