Airport lounges are a great way to get away from the hustle and bustle of a busy airport, enjoy a complimentary cocktail and bite to eat, and just relax before your flight. Lounge offerings and size vary by chain and airport, but most standard lounges have free drinks (including alcohol!) and food along with nice and comfortable seating to relax and charge up. Bigger lounges I've seen offer extensive food menus, showers, massage and nail services, and even rooms to nap in! From what I've seen, lounge entry prices range from $45-$100 depending on amenities.

 I'd never stepped foot in one before getting a credit card that offers free lounge access (you can read about that credit card and ALL its perks HERE) and now I always try to get to the airport a little early to enjoy one. While you can pay your way into one, here are a couple ways to get into a lounge for FREE!

This is how I can now get into airport lounges for free! My credit card comes with a free membership to Priority Pass, which is essentially an airport lounge membership. There are a number of credit cards that offer a complimentary Priority Pass membership, including Amex, Chase, and Capital One.

Many airlines (including Delta and United) provide lounge access for their top tier, frequent flyers. It really pays to book directly through an airline and stay loyal to one! 

I know I know, if you are already paying up for a business or first class ticket you probably wouldn't bat an eye at paying to enter an airport lounge, but if you got a free or cheap upgrade you are still eligible to enter the lounge for free so make sure to advantage of that perk!

A variety of brands of lounges offer free access to military members. Some lounges offer free access to dependents while others only offer to active duty members in uniform for the complimentary access but it never hurts to ask for their policy!

A lot of credit cards offer airline credit where you are credited back a certain amount of money per year when you pay for amenities directly with an airline (baggage, seat upgrades, drinks + food onboard, etc). If the airline you select to receive credit from has lounges you can get credit back for buying a lounge pass through them! 

A lot of people with credit cards that allow them to enter lounges are allowed to bring two complimentary guests with them into the lounge. If you are flying with others, see if they have this perk! Chatted with a stranger at bag drop off and see them entering the lounge? Maybe they'll accompany you in as their guest. You never know!

It was the end of December, and my husband and I made a discovery - he hadn't earned his 2022 companion pass through Southwest yet! He flies so much that we have had no problem earning it the past couple years, but with the pandemic he has been flying less. But the pass was super close in reach, less than 1000 points away!

We have a Southwest credit card that also earns us points towards the companion pass, but unfortunately for us the last statement had already closed so we couldn't make any more purchases that would count towards this year. So, we did what any other sane person would do - we bought a $300 ticket for Bjorn to fly up to Oakland and then fly directly back home so we could earn enough points. He didn't check a bag or leave the airport - he didn't even leave the terminal. It was a pain in the butt but it will only take one roundtrip flight with the companion pass to pay off.

The companion pass allows you to travel with one designated person every time you fly for free (aside from fees which are around $12 bucks). You can even switch the designated person a couple times throughout the year.  There are no limits or black out dates, no locations that Southwest flies you can't go. You still get two free checked bags, and the check in process is the exact same. If you are familiar with how Southwest does their ticket tiers, there are three different levels of tickets you can buy depending on what kind of refund you want, and if you want to board earlier. There are only a certain number of each type of ticket. "Wanna Get Away" is the cheapest ticket type, but you can still book a ticket with your companion pass even if the "Wanna Get Away" tickets are all booked out. You have to earn 125,000 points in one calendar year to qualify for the companion pass, but there are other ways to get it which I will take about more down below.

I've been flying with the companion pass for years, and honestly it hasn't been any different than flying with a ticket you paid for. I've never been denied a flight, or taken off a flight to allow for a paying customer. When I check in for my flight 24 hours ahead of time (if you are not familiar with Southwest, this is how you get your boarding position since you don't pick a seat ahead of time) I still get great numbers with my husband. Now that we have a baby, I can even add Stella as a lap child with my companion pass ticket. It is such an amazing perk that we have totally taken advantage of, so that is why it was so important for us to get it again in 2022!

Earn 125,000 Points In One Calendar Year By Flying

When you are a part of Southwest's rewards program, you get points for each flight you book directly through Southwest. The amount of points you earn depends on the price, so if you book a more expensive ticket tier you will get more points for the same flight. 

​Fly 100 One Way Flights In One Calendar Year

Pretty self explanatory - for every one way flight you book you can work your way up to 100 and get your companion pass. 

Earn Points Through Purchases On The Southwest Credit Card

If you link a Southwest Chase credit card to your rewards account, you earn points with your purchases that go directly to your rewards points amount. You get 1 point for most purchases, but for special purchases, like Southwest tickets, you get bonus points. 

Southwest Credit Card Promotions

One of the years we had the companion pass, we weren't going to earn it through points or flights. At the time, when you open a Southwest credit card and spend a certain amount of money within a certain time frame, you will automatically earn the companion pass for the year. We used the credit card to pay for things we already needed anyway so it worked out great!

Southwest Rapid Rewards Promotions

Keep an eye on promotions available on your account! Once we received a promotion where if we flew 5 one way flights (2.5 round trips) through the rest of the year we would earn the companion pass for the next year. I believe at the time we received this promotion it was October so it was pretty easy for my husband to earn it through flying for work. 5 is a lot less flights than 100! More recently, last year Southwest had a promotion where if you booked a flight and flew before mid November, you would earn the companion pass for two months. 

Every time I am crammed into an economy seat on a 10 hr flight to Europe I always regret not doing more to figure out a way to be in a big comfy seat in the front of the plane. I follow a lot of travel hack accounts that show themselves in fancy airplane suites, but the points system always seemed confusing and I wasn't really sure how it worked. 

Fast forward to summer 2020 when we had all the time in the world and we were trying to plan a trip to Europe for 2021 *fingers crossed* My business bank account is only a debit card, and I really wanted to find a way to take advantage of all the money I was spending for my business. I started doing more googling and found a lot of websites and blogs about taking advantage of credit card points for travel, and the most straight forward credit card with a lot of travel perks I kept coming across was the American Express platinum card. 

The first thing I saw was the big $550 annual fee. 0__0 Honestly, I've never had a credit card before with an annual fee. It definitely sounds like a lot of money, and it is if you don't take advantage of all the perks and offers they have. Keep scrolling to see all the perks and why it makes $$$ sense to get it!

Once you add your amex card to your Uber account, you will automatically receive a $15 credit on the first of every month which you can use either on rides or eats. In the month of December you actually get $35 because of an end of the year $20 bonus. On top of all that you get the Uber Eats pass for free, which is regularly $9.99/month. With the UE pass you get free delivery and an extra discount on your food.

When you use your amex card to pay your phone bill through a carrier, you get a $20 statement credit to your account. What I've done is just make a $20 payment with the amex card, and then the $20 credit pops up automatically. 

Twice a year (once Jan-Jun and Jul-Dec) you will receive a $50 statement credit to your account when you make a purchase at Saks Fifth Ave. There is no minimum purchase requirement so you can literally get free items (like makeup or skincare!) I used my credit to purchase my favorite perfume, Coco Mademoiselle. This stuff is so popular and is never on sale, but I got it half off thanks to this credit.

Similar to the phone bill credits, if you use your amex card to pay for your streaming membership (Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, Disney+, etc) you get up to $20 a month back in statement credits. Doesn't everyone have at least 3?

You get up to $100 credit for either TSA Pre Check ($80) or Global Entry ($100) when you use your amex, which is good for 5 years. Global Entry is for international travel, but also includes TSA Pre Check so I will be registering for that one. 

Every year you get $200 credit towards money spent with airlines, which can include upgrades, luggage fees, and even service on the plane (cheers!) The one catch is you can only select one airline to receive this credit with. 

At this point you already have over $1000 in credits and free stuff!

When I signed up, the promotion was that if you spend $5000 in the first 3 months, you receive 75,000 bonus points. With all the work we have being done on our house now, we already had a plan for this and that wasn't too much for us as we were planning to spend it anyway. 

This is a perk I am very excited about! Bjorn has travelled first class for business so he has spent some time in airport lounges, but unfortunately I have not. With the Amex card you get into over a thousand airport lounges all over the world for free, along with two free guests. Free drinks, free food, and some have showers and rooms for sleeping! Generally one ticket into an airport lounge is anywhere from $60-$100 depending on the types of amenities. 

You are automatically placed into Marriott and Hilton gold status, which comes with a lot of perks, which includes free upgrades, free breakfast, free parking, and a lot of other great perks!

So essentially for most purchases you get 1 point for every $1 spent, but on purchases for plane tickets (booked directly through an airline or amextravel) or hotels (booked through amextravel) you get 5 points for every $1 spent. 

When redeeming points for travel, you generally get 1 cent for every point you have. So for the 75000 points I got for spending $5000 in the first 3 months, I get around $750 I can redeem towards travel with amextravel. Another nice perk is that if you book an economy ticket, you. can use your points through amex to upgrade your ticket if it is available. 

I think what drew me to this particular credit card was the points to $$ for air travel and the lounge access, especially since hubby and I are hoping to spend a lot more time between Germany and the US in the coming years. If you see some value in this card for yourself you can use my link to also take advantage of the 75,000 bonus points HERE! (I also get a 15,000 point referral bonus :))

** Disclaimer ** Credit cards can be scary and bad bad bad if you spend too much and don't have the money to pay them off. Make sure to use credit cards responsibly.

IWhether it's for work or fun, hubs and I have the pleasure of traveling around a lot. We are really lucky! We've definitely seen our fair share of rental cars, and they are NOT created equal. They typically start out generally cheap (for something that barely fits the two of us), but once you start making your way up to anything relatively special or fast, they can get expensive SUPER quick. Hubby likes to race cars, so it is usually pretty important to him to have a decent auto if we are gone for a while. We have been lucky enough to get some fun/fast/husband approved cars so I wanted to share some of our experiences with getting great rental cars without spending like we did. Keep scrolling!

I would say most of the luxury cars we have driven were through Sixt (including the BMW above!) This rental car company mainly focuses only on luxury vehicles. I've never seen them on an Expedia or Kayak style website, so if you want to book them you have to go through their website directly. And yeah, they have really great prices on luxury cars. However, there have been a number of times where I have vowed we are never using them again. We have waited hoursss in line to pick up a vehicle. Sometimes the vehicles are not in the greatest condition on the inside and outside. Often their prices are pretty basic and don't include any sort of extras (ie insurance). They make you pay extra per day for any additional drivers. (**however I recently learned that there are a couple states that require rental car companies to allow spouses to be able to both drive the car without any additional fees and California is one of them! But if you are driving across multiple states make sure to check those laws**) Our most recent experience with Sixt in Germany was actually really great though (and there's a funny/crazy story about that I'm sharing down below) so I guess it is a hit or miss, but definitely worth considering!

Since Bjorn travels a lot for business, his work often pays for a rental car for him. I think it is super important to stay consistent with loyalty programs instead of bouncing around from cheapest company to cheapest company because a lot of companies have really great reward programs. We have had completely free vacations just from utilizing flight/hotel/rental car points. For domestic rental cars, we generally use National. When you become one of their top tier rewards members, a lot of times you will have your own check in/concierege whatever helping you get your car. I have found these people to be super generous with upgrades when they are available because they want you to feel special and keep coming back to them. Our most recent free upgrade was a Mercedes suv! <3

Most of us book our rental cars online in advance, so the price may seem pretty fixed. But there have been many times when we rolled up to the rental car lot, and were able to negotiate a lower price on an upgrade. If the counter is pretty abandoned and the car lot is pretty full (especially of higher end cars) the likelihood of you haggling a cheap upgrade is very plausible! The car makes the company nothing if it is just sitting there, so they are really willing to get a couple extra bucks in exchange for putting you in a nicer car. Either we ask how much extra the upgrade would cost, or the associate will say they can give it to us for $x extra amount of money. We've often told them ok, we are willing to pay so and so amount extra for this car. They usually have to "check with their manager" but they usually meet us quite close to what we are willing to pay extra. Win win!

So...really funny story about our Sixt rental car in Germany XD We had been picked up from the airport, and then the day after we arrived we were being dropped off at the rental car facility to get our car. So we get dropped off and run in (it's raining btw) and they can't find our reservation. After searching through our emails we realize we are at the wrong Sixt pick up location. Great. So we call our ride and have them drive us 30 minutes across town to the correct location. We run inside (still raining). This guy also can't find our reservation...turns out we had made it for pick up as the next day. Not only did we go to the wrong location, we came on the wrong day! #winning Luckily the customer service guy was super cool. We had originally selected a BMW 1series (the smallest BMW) as our rental car, but they were not getting one returned until the next day. BUT he did have a BMW 4series convertible available, and he gave it to us for the exact same price! Moral of the story? Not really sure, can't guarantee anyone that if you show up at the wrong location or on the wrong day that you will get an upgrade, but it happened to us!

If you are following along on Instagram, I went away for a little girl's trip to Santa Barbara over the weekend (my first time there!) and we had the most beautiful time! I picked up the cutest little spring dress at a great price for the trip so I wanted to share my outfit details + what we did in case you are looking to plan your own SB trip!

I took the Amtrak Surfliner from Los Angeles, which is the most amazing train ride that takes the California coast between SoCal and NorCal. You get the most breathtaking beach views! The train was pretty nice and clean, and there were a lot of big groups having a great time, so it would be a lot of fun to take this for a weekend with a group of friends. The Santa Barbara train station was located really close to the beach and downtown so you can plan to walk straight to wherever you were going once you set foot off the train. 

We were only there for one night so we spent our time exploring downtown, the beaches, and eating our way through a couple really good restaurants. We ate lunch at the Sandbar, which is a really fun Mexican restaurant with yummy food and drinks! A lot of the restaurant is out on a patio so it's a great place to enjoy the weather, people watch, and enjoy a frozen marg.

For dinner we ate at Chucks Waterfront Restaurant, which is out on the water next to a boat dock. I recommend sitting on the patio! You have a great view of the water, plus we got the most fun table with a fire in the middle! We had seafood and steaks, which was all really yummy. A great place to chill and watch the sun set!

Below you can find the cute dress I wore, along with my favorite classic bag and a few slides on sale that are really similar to the ones I'm wearing above! (The ones I'm wearing are from Banana Republic but no longer in stock :() I really loved this dress because it's a high quality linen blend dress with cute buttons and a nice sturdy belt, plus even though I wore it on the train for a couple hours it didn't wrinkle! This is so surprising for a linen dress! I've also linked the best selling apple watch band below that looks just like the Hermes Apple Watch band! I've had mine for a couple months and it still looks brand new, and I get so many compliments on it. Shop everything below by just clicking the pic!