Luxurious Living on a Budget

Luxuries For the Rest of Us
So maybe we can't afford private jets or vacation homes. Still, it's possible to mimic portions of the rich-and-famous lifestyle -- at reasonable prices.
By Liz Pulliam Weston

Living in Los Angeles exposes one to a lot of luxury-spending opportunities. Most of them are wasted on me. I don't get the appeal of a $500 T-shirt, a $2,000 purse or a $100,000 sports car with a trunk smaller than the overpriced handbag.

But the appeal of some perks the rich enjoy is obvious even to skinflints like me. In fact, when I can get a taste of the luxe life at fraction of the price, I go for it -- because what I envy most is the luxury of less hassle. And there are ways to buy that without being Leona Helmsley.

Richie Rich perk No. 1: A Private Jet
No security lines. No set schedules. No wasting hours on a tarmac or at a luggage carousel. Just zip to your destination -- and would Madame like her prime rib rare or medium?

The appeal is obvious even to fellow cheapskate Warren Buffett, who for years resisted buying a private jet before caving. Now the investing superstar understands the appeal. In his latest letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, Buffett declared that "once you've flown (private), returning to commercial flights is like going back to holding hands."

Of course, Hollywood's greenest types now frown on private airplane transportation, citing the contribution of increased carbon dioxide emissions to global climate change. So we can solace ourselves that we're doing less damage to the planet stuffed back in coach.

But here are ways for fliers to get a taste of luxury:

Be elite.
If you fly a lot, concentrate your trips on one airline to qualify for its elite frequent-flier status (typically 25,000 miles flown a year). That will qualify you for shorter security lines at many airports and win you more-frequent upgrades to first class.

Invest in an airport lounge.
Again, if you travel frequently, consider investing in your airline's lounge pass. Most are quiet, comfortable places to read, work and get a free snack.

Get a pass.
Even if you travel infrequently, consider buying a day pass to an airport lounge if you have a long layover. Day passes typically cost $25 to $50.

Pick the right flights.
Choose nonstops and flights that depart early in the day to minimize hassles. Because airports and airlines are so overbooked, any weather or mechanical problem can touch off a cascade of delays that get worse as the day progresses. The later you leave and the more connections you have to make, the more likely you are to get caught in the gears.


Richie Rich perk No. 2: A Personal Assistant
Someone to mail your packages, pick up your dry cleaning, wash the dog, fill your prescriptions and listen -- for the 100th time -- to your complaints about your ex.

Personal assistants are a de rigueur accessory in La-La land. Their full-time pay ranges from $40,000 to $120,000, said Jack Lippman, the owner of the Elizabeth Rose Agency, a Los Angeles placement agency for domestic help. The more experienced the assistant and the more intense the job, the higher the pay.

Wannabes who can't quite shoulder those costs turn to services that provide assistants for as few as four to eight hours a week, usually for about $30 an hour.

Can't quite swing that? Here are ways to shed some of the hassles of daily living:

Investigate which businesses near you will deliver.
In my neighborhood, for example, are several dry cleaners that pick up, deliver or both; independent pharmacies that bring medicine to your door; and a delivery service that picks up food from most area restaurants.

Schedule pickups for packages.
This isn't just a perk for businesses. The Postal Service and most delivery companies will come to your home to collect packages if you schedule in advance. It sure beats standing in long lines to ship holiday packages.

Hire an errand service.
These businesses have cropped up in many areas and do everything from waiting for the cable guy to stocking up for your New Year's Eve party. Craigslistis one way to find them.

Check out the world of virtual assistants.
If your task can be handled on the phone or the Web, a virtual assistant can do it. They can buy movie tickets, wrangle with customer service departments, research airfares and write letters. There are a ton of sites to choose from, including Elance, Workaholics4Hire.comand GetFriday.
Timothy Ferriss, the author of the best-selling book "The 4-Hour Workweek," extols the value of virtual assistants and recommends considering one anytime you can pay less for the outsourced task than your time is worth. A quick way to assess the value of your time, he says, is to knock the zeros off your annual pay, then cut the result in half. Thus, if you make $50,000 a year, your time is worth about $25 an hour.



Richie Rich perk No. 3: A Full-Time Housekeeper
Imagine never again having to pick up your socks.

No more spousal nagging about the unwashed dishes in the sink, the overflowing laundry hampers, the fact that you're out of milk -- again. A full-time housekeeper keeps your house clean, tidy and well-stocked.

The pay scale for the housekeepers Lippman places typically ranges from $30,000 to $60,000, with the higher end reserved for "executive housekeepers" or house managers who typically supervise a staff of domestic help.

Or you can pay six figures to have a real live butler. He won't scrub the sinks, but he'll supervise the staff that does -- and serve tea at 4 p.m. and draw the blinds at 5 p.m., if that's what you want.

If your budget won't stretch that far, there are other ways to get some domestic relief:

Consider part-time help.
If you can afford it, think about hiring someone else to do the cleaning tasks you hate or that take up the most of your time. You can employ someone for regular cleaning -- once a week, once a month, once every two weeks -- or for the occasional deep clean. Depending on where you live, a housekeeper can cost anywhere from $10 to $40 an hour. If you hire someone yourself, you typically must pay household employment taxes (check guides at the Social Security and Internal Revenue Service Web sites). Hiring from an agency usually costs somewhat more, but it handles the taxes for you.

Get others involved.
If you share your household with other people, they should carry at least some of the load. Kids can learn to pick up their toys by age 2, help with laundry by 3 and tackle more-complex chores as they get older. (You can find free chore charts all over the Web; just type "chore chart" into any search engine.)

Speed it up.
If you have to do it yourself, at least spend less time. Jeff Campbell's helpful book "Speed Cleaning" teaches plenty of tricks and tips for quick cleaning that isn't slapdash.
Make a system. Well-run estates have schedules for making sure all necessary tasks get accomplished. You can create a similar system by scheduling certain tasks for certain days: laundry on Monday, dusting and vacuuming on Tuesday, meal planning and shopping on Wednesday and so on. If you need help creating household systems, check out homemaking sites such as FlyLady.net.



Richie Rich perk No. 4: A Vacation Home in an Exotic Place
Need some R&R? If you were superbly wealthy, you could swoop off to your ski lodge in Aspen, your penthouse in Manhattan or your villa on Lake Como. At each place, you'd have a full household staff to keep the place ready whenever you decided to drop in.

Here's something to consider, though: Owning a second (or a third, or a fifth) home may not make economic sense, even if it's staff-free and closer to a shack than a lodge. Buying, insuring and maintaining a home are expensive, and, especially in today's real-estate market, there's no guarantee price appreciation will offset those costs. Plus, it's another piece of property to worry about; instead of enjoying the sunset while sitting on the porch, you'll be worried about replacing the steps and making sure the storm windows are up in time for the next big freeze.

Better solutions:

Rent somebody else's vacation home.
If you'll be in one spot for more than a few days or are traveling with a large group, a vacation rental home can save you money or give you a lot more space for the same cost as a hotel. You'll find vacation rentals virtually everywhere tourists go, including big cities. There are typically options for virtually every budget, and the home/condo/apartment will have a kitchen to keep down food costs. Just type "vacation rentals" and the name of your destination into any search engine to get started.

Turn your hotel into a home.
Travel with small scented tea candles to banish hotel room smells, and bring along your portable speakers so you can set the mood music with your MP3 player. Stock the minibar with a few groceries, including a selection of teas, hot chocolate mix and instant oatmeal, so you're not at the mercy of room service; use the in-room coffee maker to heat the water you need.



Richie Rich perk No. 5: Doing Major Good
When you're donating megabucks, you can hope to effect serious change -- and maybe even solve some problems.

You could be the person who provides college scholarships for every graduating high school senior in a blighted inner-city neighborhood. Or the one whose contributions finally wipe out polio, malaria or illiteracy.

Everyone who contributes to charity hopes to change the world, or at least a little corner of it, for the better. You don't need to contribute billions, but perhaps you can get smarter about your donations.

Here's how:

Do your research.
If you want your dollars to do the most good, you'll skip the charities that spend more on overhead and administration than in carrying out their missions. Charity watchdogs such as GuideStar.org can help. For more details, read "How to tell a good charity from a bad one."
Concentrate your donations. Scatter a little money here, a little money there, and you'll just encourage charities to spend precious funds soliciting you for more. Either that or they'll sell your name to other charities, hoping to get a little more yield from you. The more you can give to one cause, the more valuable a donor you'll be. (For more details on planning your giving, read "How much should you give?")

Consider your own foundation.
Most folks who have their own foundations start them with seven-figure gifts, but a number of financial-services companies, including Fidelity, offer foundation access to folks with $5,000. Read "You can be your own charitable foundation" for details.

Liz Pulliam Weston's new book, "Easy Money: How to Simplify Your Finances and Get What You Want Out of Life,"is now available. Columns by Weston, the Web's most-read personal-finance writer and winner of the 2007 Clarion Award for online journalism, appear every Monday and Thursday, exclusively on MSN Money. She also answers reader questions on the Your Money message board.
Published Dec. 20, 2007
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/SaveMoney/LuxuriesForTheRestOfUs.aspx?page=2

Have Budget Airlines Killed The Glamour?

A Brief History of Cheap Air Travel

From the 1950s flying became increasingly glamorous. A pilot or an air hostess were the coolest professions. Everyone wanted to fly but few could afford it. Being a hostess was more like being a supermodel.

Popular belief had it that cabin crew spent most of the flight smiling amiably at the passengers and occasionally providing a nice drink or a tray of delicious food. The rest of your time was your own and you could sleep at the back for most of the flight.

The Girl in the Jet Engine

Airlines were all about glamour and new technology. So publicity shots often combined the two. Hence the cliche shot of the hostess inside a jet engine.

A cunning icon for what air travel was all about.

007 Style

Airlines began to move from a traditional cosy image to something more cutting edge. Hostesses changed from smart suits into clothing more reminisent of a Bond Movie. Flying became more edgy and exciting.

"Shaken not stirred, Mr Bond?"

In the Swinging Sixties the whole thing became more extreme. Airlines embraced pop culture and dressed the 'trolley dollys' in miniskirts and trendy hats more reminisent of Carnaby Street than an aircraft. But the airlines still loved the iconic 'hostess in a engine' pictures.

This is Tammy. The original Trolley Dolly?

"Just a small one, I'm working ..."

Tammy was, If not 'trolleyed' certainly very happy during and after every flight. In the days before litigation and health and safety legislation, Tammy often helped the groundcrew refuel and often unloaded most of the baggage single handed.

Tarnished and Tarty. Pimp my Plane?

"We're ready to party ..."

The trendy, swinging image continued through the 1960s but by the end of the decade the iconic 'swinging hostess' had became tarnished and tarty. The girls became less efficient and service-oriented so the airlines responded by putting more and more of them onto their planes.

Here we see a typical mid-priced airline where over half the people on board are femail cabin crew and the passengers can't get any rest during the flight because of the din of the partying hostesses.

Fly Me?

This seedy, degrading image of women in the air climaxes in pictures which are more reminisent of a massage parlour than the interior of an aircraft.

Jane, pictured here, learnt her skills in pole dancing dives and lap dancing clubs and is quick to solicit cash from her eager punters before delivering the goods.

Cut Price Pilots

"Shouldn't you be looking the other way?

As the glamour and uprightness of the hostesses declined so too those at the controls began to look less trustworthy.

These guys have pimps written all over them. Would you buy a used car from either of them?

Come to think of it, would you trust them to get you to Honolulu yet alone Bangkok in one piece?

More Hostesses in Jets

Meanwhile the more repectable airlines were still herding their girls into jet engines in a pathetic attempt to salvage their image and bring back the glamour of flight.

These pictures were taken so often that it was not unusual for the girls to have to climb into an engine after an 18 hour flight, with the thing still turning, just to generate still more cheap publicity.

Standards continued to fall and, by the early 1970s, the airlines suffered from a dramatic fall in the number of passengers and a significant reduction in staff discipline and behaviour.

One of the Better Airlines in Steep Decline

"The Business passengers have retreated into Economy" "Great, lets break open the champagne..."

All Time Low in Airline Standards of Comfort

Meanwhile, standards continued to fall until in the 1980s when budget airlines were born. The glamour had finally gone from the airline business.

The cabin crew now relied on alcohol to see them through the flight and had to endure uniforms so totally unfashionable that even women on death row refused to wear them.

The Good Old Days of Flight

http://hubpages.com/hub/Have-Budget-Airlines-killed-the-Glamour-of-Flying

Flying Just Isn't What It Used To Be...

The Land of Lost Luggage

The Land of Lost Luggage

Ohhhh, nothing is more frustrating than arriving at your destination only to find your luggage took a side trip to the Bahamas. Luckily, most lost luggage is reunited with its proper owner within 5 days (5 agonizing days!). However 1% of all lost bags, 100 bags per day and 36,500 per year are forever lost. But what exactly happens to those lost bags? Are they doomed to an endless purgatory on a baggage conveyer belt in some random country? Or do they find themselves magically transported to the land of missing dryer socks? Actually the find themselves in Alabama.....yes, Scottsboro Alabama!

Scottsboro, Alabama is the lost luggage capital of the world. It is the home of the Unclaimed Baggage Center where you can buy a lost $1000 Versace dress for $48, a tube of slightly used Japanese toothpaste for 50 cents, a $15,000 sapphire and diamond bracelet for $7500, or a laptop for $69.

Usually after 90 days an airline will finally fess up to the fact that your 6 pairs of jeans, 7 pairs of underwear and 4 shirts are not coming home and will then compensate you. On the other side, whichever airline or airport has your lost bag in their hands sells it to the Unclaimed Baggage Center. In Scottsboro the luggage is opened, sorted, cleaned and priced. All items are then put on display and sold to the public.

The Unclaimed Baggage Center has become the number one tourist attraction in Alabama with over 800,000 visitors a year. They come partly for the bargains and part for the entertainment value of peeking into someone else's stuff. (Kind of like looking through someone else's medicine cabinet.)

About 1,000,000 items a year are put on sale on the floor of the Unclaimed Baggage Center. Sixty percent of the items sold are clothing. However almost daily there are new interesting discoveries--a 40.95 caret emerald, Egyptian artifacts from 1500 B.C, a live rattlesnake, a full suit of armor and a Barbie doll with a roll of $500 in bills hidden inside it are but a few of the daily encounters.

Bryan Owens bought the company from his mother and father in 1995. He says, "It's a little bit like Christmas every day, we get these bags that come in and we never know what we will find."

http://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/

Glamour On the Road

Glamour On the Road

There was a time when traveling was glamorous. When ocean liners still crossed the Atlantic with nightly ballroom dances and men donned a suit and tie to fly. Fast-forward to our present day of roaming backpackers and jam-packed tour buses and one might secretly long for a bygone era. Luckily there are a few tricks of the trade to adding a little glamour to your next trip without sacrificing your comfy in flight sweat pants.

• Stock up on Samples — prior to traveling, swing buy any beauty or makeup counter for samples of beauty products, skin care & perfume samples. In place of your full sized drugstore anti wrinkle cream, you now have a free small portable 7 day sample of an oh so expensive department store cream.

• Indulge in Decedent Chocolate — every airport duty shop is filled with stores that sell the specified country’s national gourmet chocolate. Pick up a piece or two, and when your fellow air passengers are eyeing their unidentified lump that suffices as desert in the land of airplane food—whip out your gold wrapped chocolates and enjoy.

• An Elegant Pen — invest in a nice pen, you will find you use it often—postcards home, immigration forms, journal entries, etc. A classy pen is much more pleasurable to use than the old BIC pen buried at the bottom of your purse.

• Duty Free Shop — feeling a little travel worn at the airport, head to the nearest duty free shop—try out the lotions, makeup, perfume and every other beauty product known to man. You’ll kill some time, freshen up your look and board the plane feeling like a million bucks.

• In Flight Reviver — ask anyone who has just gotten of an overseas flight what they want to do, and they will inevitable say “take a shower”. Combat, or at least postpone this overwhelming desire by packing baby wipes in your carry on bag. Shortly before the plane begins its decent (and getting up from your seat becomes a no-no) head to the restroom and give yourself a quick “bath” with your baby wipes. Wash your face and wipe as much of your body down as you can manage in the confines of the airplane bathroom.

• Fresh Flowers Weekly — for the price of a latte or two you can have a pleasurable addition to your hotel.

• Red Lipstick is a Must — light, bright, dark or pale—find your shade of red and never leave home without it.

• A Sparkle or Two — a distinctive piece of jewelry or two can take any outfit from road rumpled to casual chic.

• Silk Scarves — how to the Europeans manage to look so pulled together even in the dead of winter? It’s the well-worn neck scarf; it dresses up any outfit while still keeping you toasty warm.

• Evian Facial Water — work past your qualms about paying for water in a bottle, and pick up a travel sized spray bottle of Evian water. You will be amazed at how refreshing it feels in hot weather, and your makeup will not smudge or budge, as is the case of a quick splash of water from a sink.

• Arrange an Airport Pick Up — shell out a few extra dollars and arrange to have a car service waiting for you when you get off the plane. Seeing a driver waiting with a sign with your name on it makes life not only a little more glamorous, but easy and reassuring as well.

For more ideas on how to add a little glamour into your life and other travel tips visit Glamour Getaways at: http://www.glamourgetaways.com