Cruises, a Frugal Vacation?

When I got married last year, I had this brilliant plan for a honeymoon - a cruise. It simply couldn’t miss - seven days of all inclusive lodging and food for $542 a person. While we could have looked at more expensive cruises. However, the bargain cruise included everything we were looking for - transportation to the following islands: St. Maarten, St. Thomas, Barbados, Antigua, and St. Lucia.

Is it really that cheap? Yes!

I could eat $400 or more alone of food alone in 7 days at a restaurant. While the lodging was small and had no windows, it was adequate for the amount of time that we were going to spend there. I enjoyed many free activities that I never tried before, such as rock climbing and roller blading. We got to see comedians and musicals for free. Seeing Bowser from Sha Na Na was worth the price alone.

Is it really that cheap? No!

Like any good business, they do their best to upsell you. Upselling is when they make you buy more than you originally intend. While food and drink were included, soda is not. I’ve got an addiction to diet soda that I can’t shake. I sprung for a $48 package for all-you-can drink soda. Of course, alcohol is not included and you are not allowed to bring it on board. If you want to drink, you have to pay restaurant/bar prices.

We didn’t think about the biggest cost of all - what do you do when you get to the islands? The cruise company is happy to set up excursions on the island. Excursions ranged from $40 to $200 per person. When you go to five islands, you are looking at spending $200 to $1000 per person. We spent around $250 to $300 in excursions. We found that this is the one extra cost that was unavoidable - the quality of the vacation significantly declines when you don’t get to visit the island.

There is a lot of tipping. It is usually done at the end of the trip, but you tip various people for each day of service. At the end, we spent over $100 in tips.

The Internet still costs money and you pay by the minute. It was very, very difficult for me to keep up with my Internet businesses without feeling my wallet getting lighter and lighter.

Lastly, there is the shopping. It’s not surprising, but the cruise company employs a full-time Director of Shopping. His job was to be an expert on watches, jewelry, nearly anything that you could buy on the islands that you visit. When you turned on the television, they have a cruise channel and his sales pitch was constantly on. We stayed away from these “bargains”, channeling our inner Cap.

When you add up the drinks, excursions, and shopping it certainly can get expensive.

How Can I Save Money on Cruises

We found a few tips that can you help reign in the cost of cruises:

• Drinks - I certainly didn’t drink $48 worth of soda on the trip. I didn’t even come close. Much of the time, we were away on an excursion. As for alcohol, the cruise’s policy is extremely strict - they are happy to drop you off at the next port if you violate it. However, we talked to guests who rebelled and snuck alcohol in. On one excursion, we purchased a small bottle of local rum. While we should have announced it and checked it before going back on the ship, we simply forgot. While they checked our baggage, must have missed it. An hour later we realized that we had accidentally thwarted the system.
• Excursions - It’s really difficult to save on these trips. We found that we could save money on many islands if we planned ahead. For instance, if we knew the bus system, we could avoid taxis. Sometimes we found our own excursions like going to the Mount Gay Rum factory tour.
• Internet - On Royal Caribbean, you can buy a package of minutes. When I logged on, I would open up a pile of Firefox tabs and load pages rapidly. I would then log off until I had read all that I could, before logging on again and continuing. When we were in US Territories, like St. Thomas, I made use of my cell phone’s Internet. The best way I found to save money was simply to realize that I was on my honeymoon - I shouldn’t be on the Internet anyway.
• Food - When you are on an excursion, you have to pay for your food. However there’s all that food on the ship that is free with the price of your admission. We decided to location-shift that food. That’s a fancy way of saying we made sandwiches to bring with us on the excursions. We ate a hearty breakfast to carry us mostly through the day.
• ATMs - There is an ATM on the ship, but it’s extremely pricey - up there with some casinos. We were able to avoid fees by using our USAA card. I highly recommend belonging to bank that reimburses these ATM fees.

To Cruise or Not To Cruise?

This was an extremely difficult question to answer. We came away with feeling that there was simply too much to do on the cruise. It sounds like a good thing, but it is exhausting. The excursions started early and took through most of the afternoon. There was a little time to shower and get ready for dinner. After dinner, we caught some entertainment before it got late and we had to consider going to sleep to do it all again the next day. You might not believe this, but I prefer Lazy vacations, sitting by the pool, maybe reading a magazine.

If you have never taken a cruise vacation it may be worth looking into. You never know if it’s for you if you don’t try.

Recommended by Lazy Man: Lending Club - Make money by lending money it to others

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Comment on Land Registry surcharge could fund free OS data surprisingly cheaply by Charles Arthur

@V Yates:

Have you read the full Cambridge report - I have. The case is very poorly made indeed and the assumptions are many. It would only take a very small change in some of the assumptions to make the arguement come down strongly in favour of the status quo.

Could you specify? That would be useful. I think a number of the assumptions grew from the fact that the trading funds couldn’t, or wouldn’t, split their “raw” and “refined” duties (or “public” and “extra” tasks.

Where does this cross subsidy idea stop? This is in effect demanding that private individuals pay a TAX when they buy or sell their house so some entrepreneur can make millions out of free data. This is totally wrong and totally contrary to the well established principle of the "user pays". This will in effect distort markets by removing this important principle.

This cross-subsidy idea is one we’re examing in this campaign because it’s politically more welcome than suggesting government just finds an extra £12m=£30m from Treasury to fund the idea.

Private individuals already have to pay when they buy (not sell - there’s no charge for discharges, which is why one estimate above excludes them) a property: registering is obligatory under law, with Land Registry. The surcharge suggested is small compared to the LR fees, and miniscule compared to the price of the typical house - moreso once you factor in other costs such as moving and solicitors’ fees.

Entrepreneurs making money? And presumably employing people in a creative industry using information (which the government keeps telling us is important); and presumably also people won’t pay money if they don’t think the service has value. (It’s the Adam Smith principle.) And competing with other entrepreneurs with access to the same data, who might push the price down. Users benefit.

The principle of “user pays” is not well-established in the field of taxation and government. In fact, it’s non-existent. I pay for schools in Wales and hospitals in Scotland through my taxes. That’s fine: society benefits. In this case, a large group (7m transactions, notice) pays a small charge, because they’re doing a transaction which is based around OS data, which benefits wider society. They’re the user, the beneficiary and if they make those millions, perhaps they’ll be paying for it too through those LR surcharges.

The Cambridge report uses flawed ecomnomic arguements (the terms of reference specifically excluded consideration of these and other important factors) and ignores many other equally important principles (both economic and otherwise) which are against the FOD idea.

Please cite them. It would be good to have some debate about the study.

The Free our Data campaign is poorly founded in that it is NOT in many cases "our data". In many cass the taxpayer has not paid for it but a business, albeit a government owned one, has - a business which is funded totally by the customers of that business who have NO CHOICE but to trade with that part of government. If the OS were a private sector company no-one would suggest the data would be free - why should they simply because the government owns, but importantly does NOT fund, it.

Who elects government? We, the citizens. Who funds government? We, the citizens. Who therefore owns the government’s businesses? We, the citizens. We are trying to decide what the best way to organise those businesses is. There isn’t just one way to do it.

And government *does* fund OS. Just indirectly, by buying its products. Some departments can’t afford to, and the quality of their output suffers as a result. Others can’t share results because of “crown copyright” and restrictive use. Does that really benefit society?

We don’t like the idea of OS being a private-sector organisation, for reasons we’ve cited here many times.

The idea that Land Registry fees are increased to that OS data can be free is absurd. Part of the report also suggests that Land Registry fees are increased so as to fund free access to the LR data itself. If these two things are added together then the TAX on home buyers wil become outrageous.

We’re suggesting £6 on a transaction that is worth thousands of times more. The wider benefits have been evaluated (though you’re welcome to submit your own calculations, pointing out where the Cambridge study went wrong) as being more than £100m.

There are also other issues with Land Registry data in conection with privacy where LR have recently been forced to reduce access to information to reduce fraud. The FOD campaign would provide a field day for fraudsters not to mention the above points.

The FOD campaign has always insisted it’s about non-personal data. We don’t want more fraud. Our suggestion relates to OS and its mapping products specified in the Cambridge report, not LR data (though sensible free release of that would be part of the campaign).

I am sure we can all think of some "inelastic" goods which we could TAX to subsidise our favourite hobby horse - why not add much more to LR fees to fund the health service for example - once this idea is taken up there wil be no end.

Putting “tax” in capitals might make it look scarier, but the obvious retort to your suggestion is that LR transactions don’t have any relationship to hospital admissions. However, every LR transaction is related to an OS location: they’re symbiotic. That’s why geographers think it might make sense to use that connection in this way.

Also, you misattribute the inelasticity of LR demand. It’s inelastic not because it’s essential (we can live without buying a plot of land) but because its charges aren’t deal-breakers in the transaction. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that its charges show a large degree of inelasticity. If they got to the levels of stamp tax, that would change. But we’re definitely not suggesting that.

Hidden Street Maple Story

Hidden Street - The Database Takes FlightAre you the Game Masters (GMs) of MapleStory?” No, we are not the GMs of Maple Story. Hidden Street is not affiliated nor an associate with Wizet, Nexon or AsiaSoft.

Religion Calendar: 04/05/2008 (Traverse City Record-Eagle)Religion Calendar is published weekly by the Traverse City Record-Eagle. Information may be mailed to Record-Eagle, P.O. Box 632, Traverse City, MI 49685; fax to 946-8632; e-mail sbeach@record-eagle.com . Items should be sent at least two weeks in advance.

Easter weekend hoppenings (Journal Inquirer)The annual Downtown Manchester Special Services Districts spring celebration will be held in downtown Manchester on Saturday, March 22, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Free activities take place throughout the downtown area. A new feature this year is old-fashioned trolley rides along Main Street.

Comment on Ticketmaster sucks by Feed up with TM

For those TM employees that try to discredit those that are fed up with this BULL#&!@. Facts….

1-TM is a monopoly since it is the only first sell ticket distributor for almost all major concert and sporting events period. All the other outlets are simply sites for the scalpers to resell their tickets such as stub hub ticketnow etc.

2-Most venues box office will still charge the processing and service fees because they are going through the very TM system you would if you were home. Job security for TM.

3-You will almost never be able to get the premier seats because of the corruption that this company has with the secondary resellers…that is my opinion but Last years debacle with the World series tickets showed the hold these scum have on the concert and sports goers and we continue to throw our money at them. Have Aerosmith not be able to sell out and then shit will change.

Boycott TM by only going to venues that are GA. That is the only way to see concerts without paying them. Support local bands and make the big names lose money and make it change.

Homebuilders Emerge From the Penalty Box (pfblogs.org)

Daniel Andres Jacome submits: Amid increasing cancellations, declining land balances, and shrinking cancellations, something funny is going on among the nation's homebuilders: their stocks are going up! We view these stocks as "canaries in the coal mine" and just as they first signaled how bad things were going to get last summer, they may be telegraphing an improvement in the broad market. Many homebuilders have "V bottomed" and unless it is a cosmetic relief rally induced by gleeful short covering, the recent sponsorship behind these stocks is impressive. Fist, a word on the major index: Although the Dow is still well under the 200 moving day average, the MACD reading shows the first climb above zero since right before the Dow topped north of 14,000 in the early Fall. We attribute the latest relief rally to the fact that people simply "feel better" about stocks right now and shorts are winding positions, even as headline after headline continues to evade negativity. A 5.1% unemployment rate, a legion of write offs among financials, and sordid home sale data is not enough to wreak havoc across the tape, apparently. Complete Story » ...

Pasta with cauliflower and toasted breadcrumbs

Filed under: Dinner, Recipes, On the Blogs, Roasting, Comfort Food

You probably won't win any nutrition awards for this meal (its painfully whitish-tan color reminds us that there aren't many rich nutrients hidden in the dish), but no matter - it's still a delicious dinner choice for meat eaters and veggies alike.

The recipe does call for anchovy filets, so simply omit those if you're a vegetarian (unfortunately, though, anchovies are known to produce a certain je ne se quoi in foods that is hard to reproduce). But there's nothing wrong with a simple pasta and cauliflower dish, too.

One of the keys to this recipe is the roasted cauliflower - you cook them until they're just browned, which is sure to bring out their best flavor. And don't forget the parmesan cheese at the end for an added salty kick.

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