All of our Sunday Success Stories serve as a living example that all of us average Americans can, indeed, see the world at prices we all can afford. We can do this by working together and sharing our stories. Send your story to me at rick@frugaltravelguy.com. Include your first name and last initial, along with your occupation and a photo, if you wish. - Rick

Dear Rick:

I’d like to take the time to tell you how much the information that you give out on your site has changed our life.

My daughter is an extreme couponer  (food, personal care, beauty, household, toys, drugs and pet products).  She stretches a dollar beyond your wildest dreams.  We were watching TV together one night, and she said that I needed to find an extreme couponer for travel. About that time the trailer for the nightline feature that you appeared in crossed the screen.  We both sat there, Dumbfounded, looked at each other, our mouths fell opened, and we started laughing.  She said. “There you go mom!”

I was impressed by the segment, and started following your blog.  Somewhere along the way I picked up Mommy Points also.  She’s practical, down to earth, sensible and awesome!

We live in Oklahoma and are not really big travelers, but my elderly parents and family live in California. We are always going that way to visit. We also spend a lot of time in Vegas (hey its on the way lol).  Since being introduced to your blog we haven’t paid for an airplane ticket in the last year and a half.  Those trips used to be a big expense for us and would set us back 6 months.

We recently went on a train pub crawl (Free train/with points) with our Parrothead friends to Fort Worth, and made it a mattress run, staying at both the Radisson and Country Inns (combo points and cash); we chalked up approx 150K Carlson points … and had a place to crash until the train came with shuttle service to the station!  That was a fun and awesome trip.  I also wanted to take a Spanish class, but I didn’t want to take money out of our budget to take the class so I used points.  It may have not been the best use of points, but It was something I would have felt guilty about spending the cash.  The class was magnificente and I learned mucho!  I also used points to pay for an auto repair we recent encountered. The UR Points are like emergency money in the bank.

We are Flying out to Vegas Saturday, with some friends, and staying a week in a two bedroom condo (thanks to the armed forces family vacation plan $200 per couple), sitting by the pool in the warm, dry, dessert with a little fruity drink, soaking up rays and enjoying life.  Plan on catching the gospel brunch at the House of Blues on Sunday, gotta get my religion in somewhere!  Later in the week we getting a rental car and driving over to California for my fathers birthday. Airplane is free everything else is cheap or extremely reasonable, and what we do have to pay for is earning us points.  We are having a lot of fun these days, and not dreading the cost, thanks to you!

We previously had a challenge with credit due to a bad co-signing; we now have that under control, and my husband’s credit score has risen from the low 500′s to 685 in the last 18 months.  We’re monitoring with Credit Karma and Credit Sesame which helps as we can see improvements as they occur.

We’ve been able to stop paying high interest on credit card balances, we transferred to 0% cards, and that has saved us about 600$ so far this year, and we are actually getting them paid down.  Just got a great offer from our US Air Barclays card, 1% on the transfer and we are good until November 2013.

After revamping our finances and cleaning up our act, thanks to your information, we have been able to save $13,000 and are looking at buying a small home in the spring of next year.  Non Poverty Retirement with travel (thanks to you) and food (thanks to my daughter the couponer) is looking like a real possibility!

Rick you do a lot of good for a lot of people.  And you have helped change our life in such a positive way.  We are not rich people, probably never get to Paris, we are just ordinary people trying to get by in life have a laugh here and there in a nice environment, and buy our grandkids hula hoops every now and then, through some point earning portal of course. Our dreams are simple like maybe someday we can get the whole family to Disney World.  It could happened with points!   I’d like to thank you again for all the positive work you do, and the information you give to people, and want you to know you have made the quality of our lives much richer!

Thanks

Kitty and Frankie in OKC

Kitty and Frankie … I told you this when you sent this in, but this story still makes my day.  Let this be a true life lesson to everyone that you really can do this!  A little here, a little there, some planning and a take charge attitude can save you thousands and at the same time get you to that vacation with family.  It isn’t all about first class to Sydney for everyone, but rather its about being happy and Kitty and Frankie I’m honored to have had the opportunity to be a part of your story. -Rick