020: Organising holidays

Life Admin Life Hacks

This episode will help make planning and preparing for your holiday more efficient so you can get away smoothly and make the most of your time away

While many of the listener survey respondents didn’t feel that booking holidays was life admin, Dinah and Mia firmly believe it qualifies, given all the research, comparing, booking, planning, communicating and organisation involved.

This episode includes a heap of hacks in four areas relating to holidays: planning, booking, preparing and enjoying a holiday.

Mia and Dinah give tips on planning a holiday including:

• booking in advance and taking into consideration public holiday opportunities
• setting a budget and saving to meet your goal
• websites to use to assess the impact of timing on costs
• how to efficiently plan trips with friends and family.

They discuss tips to do with:

• Using frequent flyer points
• using travel insurance provided with credit card accounts
• Using boutique travel agencies that really know your destination
• storing all your holiday booking info.

When preparing for a holiday Mia and Dinah talk about all the hacks they use to make leaving the house as stress-free as possible including:

• Packing Lists and other To Do Lists
• packing techniques
• Making the most of the facilities in a hotel
• How to remember all the things you need to do before you head out
• Getting activities for your kids organised before you leave.

While on holiday they discuss Dinah’s hack of giving an allowance to her kids at the beginning of the holiday.

LIFE ADMIN HIGHS OF THE WEEK

• Dinah talks about finally embracing Siri to add to reminders on her phone
• Mia talks about reserving library books online to encourage her to read more and foster her daughter's reading habit

LIFE ADMIN LOW OF THE WEEK

• Dinah talks about the hassles or returning internet shopping including her dread of the post office

POWER TOOL

• Google Maps Commute

RESOURCES

• The Art of Travel - Alain de Botton
• Point hacks website - website on how to earn and make the most of frequent flyer points
• Seat Guru website - website to find the best seat on planes
• Life Admin Life Hacks episode on Scheduling
• Life Admin Life Hacks episode on To Do Lists
• Life Admin Life Hacks episode on Shared Cloud Storage - Going Paperless
• Tripit - App to store travel itineraries
• Lonely Pets Club - Pet Sitting Service

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