Vacation Deals: Buyer Beware

Taking a summer vacation is beneficial in so many ways.  Time away from work or school is known to lower stress, increase creativity, improve mental health and develop personal relationships and family bonding. And it’s not like you really have to go anywhere. Staycations can be just as beneficial.  The important thing is to take time off of work to recharge your batteries.  But if you happen to be one of the lucky ones who’s actually planning on going away somewhere for a summer vacation, there are some financial pitfalls that can take place during the planning/booking phase of your vacation you should be aware of.  You’d hate to have many of the benefits of taking a vacation be wiped away because you accidentally blew your budget and returned from vacay stressed out about the unexpected debt you incurred. 

When estimating the cost, don’t be lulled into a false sense of security by prices quoted online, oftentimes taxes and fees aren’t included.  Take airfare for example. I recently booked a flight to Hilton Head for a destination wedding my husband and I are attending at the end of August.  Trying to stay ahead of things, I set up an alert on my phone so I would be notified if airline prices went down. Nice, right?  Well, I got an email saying ticket prices were down to $240.00 round trip. Sweet!  But after taxes and fees were added, I actually ended up paying over $300 per ticket—an increase of 25 percent. And that’s before paying for checking our luggage.  Fortunately we are packing light and will only be checking one bag. That added another $50.00 ($25.00 each way) to our total.  So, the $480.00 price (for two people) that was quoted on my phone, ended up actually costing us over $650.00. Ouch!  Of course some airlines let you check luggage without additional fees and others make you pay if you want to sit next to your traveling companion. The important thing is to keep your eyes open to these additional costs—they’ll nickel and dime you to death!  Same thing happened when booking our hotel room.  I went to the website of the resort where the wedding is taking place and checked to see if there was a block of rooms reserved at a discounted rate.  After finding out those were already booked (procrastination bit me again) I clicked on ‘best available rate’.  It was a little more than what I wanted to spend, but since we want to be a part of all the destination wedding festivities I decided to book it anyway.  After receiving my confirmation email I had to gulp, an additional 18 percent was tacked on to the quoted price for taxes, resort charges, and destination fees. Of course we all know taxes will be added, but the additional resort and destination fees really hurt.  Don’t even ask me about the rental car.

Of course, my experience isn’t an isolated event. I recently read an article in Forbes that said that travel-related taxes can increase travel cost by more than 58 percent!  According to the Global Business Travel Association, the most expensive U.S. domestic destination by travel taxes is Chicago, followed by New York City and then Minneapolis.

With all the fees, taxes, and other sundry charges tacked on to travel charges, it seems like they are going to get us one way or another.  The important thing is to plan for them that way you can keep your vacation costs within your designated budget—forewarned is forearmed.

Hope you have a great summer vacation.  Safe and happy travels! 

A. Alliance Collection Agency, Inc. is a full service, licensed accounts receivable management and debt collection agency providing highly effective, customized one on one management and recovery solutions for our business partners.  Founded in northern Illinois in 2005, we have been proudly improving the bottom-line on behalf of our business partners in and around Chicagoland for over 12 years.

Being Grateful…Even When It Hurts

I was in for my semi-annual dental checkup the other day and the dentist, while generally complimenting me on the state of my dental hygiene, observed that ‘we’ needed to watch some hair line cracks developing in some of my teeth.  “Do you grind your teeth?” she asked.  I replied that, no, I did not, at least not to my knowledge. 

I should know, too, as my Dad was the champion teeth grinder of all time.  No kidding: when I was growing up I could hear him grinding his teeth in his sleep behind two closed doors and a wall.  As you can imagine, it was an awful sound and I can only imagine what it did to his teeth and jaw.  Asking my wife if I ever did that, she replied that, while I could on occasion snore like a banshee, no teeth grinding went on.

Then one day I was watching a news program of some sort and became aware that my jaw was clenched tight and I was, in fact, grinding my teeth together.  Ouch!  Heck, I was letting politics, world affairs, vacillations in the financial markets, and sundry other events, impact the state of both my dental and mental health!

Do you have such moments?  Apparently most of us do.  Yet almost universally experts say that refocusing our thoughts away from adversity, anger, resentment and fear, to thoughts of gratitude and thankfulness make for a more emotionally balanced life—especially when events cause us hurt and pain.

Bertolt Brecht once famously said: “What a miserable thing life is: you’re living in clover, only the clover isn’t good enough.”

That certainly sums up what I was feeling as I was grinding my teeth.

So, I thought that it would good to share some great quotes about gratitude, if for no other reason than that they reinforce the many blessings that come our (my) way each day regardless of how much ‘bad’ is thrown at us.  Rare is the day in which nothing good happens. Perhaps today it is just getting this blog finished! 

If some of these help you as they help me, then this brief note will have fulfilled its purpose.

Here we go:

“If you would be loved, love, and be loveable.” –Benjamin Franklin

“All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind.” –Abraham Lincoln

“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.” –Thornton Wilder

“In ordinary life, we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.” –Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Gratitude is the music of the heart, when its chords are swept by the breeze of kindness.” –Author Unknown

“I feel a very unusual sensation — if it is not indigestion, I think it must be gratitude.” –Benjamin Disraeli

“When eating bamboo sprouts, remember the man [or woman] who planted them.” –Chinese Proverb

“Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours.” –Marcus Aurelius

Yes, there are more.  Just Google ‘gratitude’ and a virtually endless list of thoughts and quotes can be found.  One thing I do in order to stay centered is to make it conscious effort to seek and recognize at least one thing each day for which I am grateful.  That usually turns into a longer list as it is a rare day that only one thing appears for which I am grateful.

Of course, here at UCS we are very grateful for all of our clients, associates, family and friends.  Without you we would have no reason to write this blog and be able to express our thankfulness for you each and every day.

What are you grateful for?

A. Alliance Collection Agency, Inc. is a full service, licensed accounts receivable management and debt collection agency providing highly effective, customized one on one management and recovery solutions for our business partners.  Founded in northern Illinois in 2005, we have been proudly improving the bottom-line on behalf of our business partners in and around Chicagoland for over 12 years.

         

10 Bizarre Interview Questions: Useful Hiring Tools or Waste of Time?

Last weekend my husband and I were looking for something to watch on TV and stumbled across the movie, The Internship. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a feel-good Bad News Bears meets Silicon Valley kind of movie.  In the beginning, the wannabe interns (Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson) have a video-chat interview with Google where they are asked this question, “You are shrunken down to the size of nickels and dropped into a blender. What do you do?” Playing off each other, Vince and Owen’s characters launch into an amusing diatribe about how they would handle the situation.

Google has been the company most notoriously known for bizarre, brainteaser interview questions like this one. These types of questions are said to test an applicant’s creativity and intelligence. And are given to see how quickly an interviewee can think on their feet when given an unexpected question. Over the years, they’ve gained popularity and books have been written to advise applicants on how to answer these thinking-outside-the-box questions.

Glassdoor.com compiles an annual list of oddball questions from the hundreds of thousands of submissions they receive from job candidates.  Below are several of the highest ranking questions from over the years. The name of the company that asked the question is provided in parenthesis.

  1. If you were a pizza delivery man, how would you benefit from scissors? (Apple)
  2. Are you a hunter or a gatherer? (Dell)
  3. On a scale of 1-10, how weird are you? (Zappos Family)
  4. You’re a new addition to the crayon box, what color would you be and why? (Urban Outfitters)
  5. What would the name of your debut album be? (Urban Outfitters)
  6. What’s your least favorite thing about humanity? (ZocDoc)
  7. Do you believe in Bigfoot? (Norwegian Cruise Line)
  8. Would you rather fight one horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses? (Whole Foods)
  9. If you were a Muppet, which one would you be? (TicketNetwork)
  10. Why is a tennis ball fuzzy? (Xerox)

As popular as these types of bizarre interview questions have become, research has proven they are actually less useful than traditional ones.  Google themselves say they no longer ask these types of interview questions since they’ve found they really do not predict how well someone will do on the job.

I, for one, am happy these types of questions are being phased out. Job interviews are stressful enough for applicants without adding ridiculous questions to the mix. In my opinion, in many cases, the only thing questions like these do is allow the interviewer to feel smug.

A. Alliance Collection Agency, Inc. is a full service, licensed accounts receivable management and debt collection agency providing highly effective, customized one on one management and recovery solutions for our business partners.  Founded in northern Illinois in 2005, we have been proudly improving the bottom-line on behalf of our business partners in and around Chicagoland for over 12 years.