Lazy Budget Travel Tips

Introducing the Lazy Budget Travel Tips Podcast!

Genni Franklin Season 1 Episode 1

Welcome to Lazy Budget Travel Tips! 

In this episode, Genni discusses the podcast’s mission to help listeners travel more affordably without compromising on comfort or quality. 

From her personal journey in the hospitality industry to becoming a budget travel expert, Genni shares how she uses loyalty rewards and credit card points, and other strategies to travel on a budget. 

Stay tuned for future episodes featuring practical budget travel strategies, real-life experiences, and guest interviews. 

Timestamps:

  • 00:00 Welcome to Lazy Budget Travel Tips
  • 00:37 Who is This Podcast For?
  • 01:11 What is Lazy Budget Travel?
  • 02:15 Meet Your Host: Genni Franklin
  • 03:17 Discovering Budget Travel Strategies
  • 06:45  What to Expect from This Podcast
  • 08:39 - Final Thoughts and Encouragement

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Genni Franklin: Welcome to the Lazy Budget Travel Tips podcast. I'm your host Genni from the Traveling Franklins blog and the Lazy Budget Travel Tips Facebook group where we're all about finding ways to travel more for less without the stress. Thank you for being here for this intro episode where I'll explain what lazy budget travel tips is.

A little bit about who I am and what you can expect from this podcast, but first, who are you and why are you here?

Are you someone who loves to travel or wants to travel more but thinks it's out of reach because it's too expensive to travel the way you want? Or maybe you look at all these people on social media and think there's no way that I could travel like that within my budget. You find it hard to find strategies for a situation that you can actually relate [00:01:00] to, and you might even feel like you don't have the time to figure it all out, and that's okay.

If that sounds like you, then you are in the right place, and I'm so glad you're here. Lazy Budget Travel Tips is all about simplifying points, miles, and budget travel without sacrificing comfort, quality, or whatever your style of travel. It's for real. People like you and me who are busy with life but still want to be smart about how you're spending money on travel.

You wanna make the most of your points and your cash without getting bogged down by complicated strategies. It's about traveling away that works for you without spending a fortune or stressing out. But why lazy budget travel? If I'm being honest, life is busy. There's so much happening. Wouldn't it be nice to be lazy about something?

I believe that learning to afford [00:02:00] travel shouldn't be stressful. It should be liberating, and that's exactly what this podcast is all about. Simplifying budget, travel, and finding ways to do it for less while still enjoying the experience. So who am I? I'm a hotel girly who grew up traveling every year on family vacations.

My dad was all about Hilton and Marriott, and honestly, some of my best memories are from those trips. Flying on airplanes, staying in hotel rooms, eating great food. Vacation was always something I looked forward to. That love for travel led me to a career in the hospitality industry where I worked with major hotel chains like Hilton, Marriott, and Hyatt.

One of the major perks of working in the hospitality industry is the team member discounts. But while I was getting great deals on hotels. I was also missing out on experiencing the [00:03:00] destinations themselves because work-life balance in the hospitality industry is just not a thing. So I made a shift and transitioned to tech where I had a better work life balance, but lost those discounts, which was a huge bummer. That's when I thought, there's gotta be a way to travel without painful price. So I dove into research. I stumbled upon loyalty, rewards, and credit card points.

Now, I was already familiar with hotel loyalty programs, but I had always thought that you had to spend a lot of money or travel constantly to get enough points to cover a one-way flight or one free night at a hotel. But what I discovered was that there were actually strategies that didn't require tons of travel or tons of money.

I started reading blogs and joining Facebook groups, and honestly, these people were intense with all their terminology and their [00:04:00] complicated strategies. At first, I didn't feel like this was for me. I didn't fit in with this crowd. I thought it was too complicated and overwhelming.

But my travel partner now, husband, Brandon and I were planning a trip to Europe and we were already spending a ton of money, so I thought, we're already spending this money. Let me just get this credit card everyone's talking about. Use it to pay for this trip and just see how this works. I got the card, earned the welcome bonus, and had enough points for three free nights at a Marriott in London, and that was it.

I was hooked. I thought I just did this one thing. I got one credit card, used it for expenses I was already paying for. And it worked. I realized I didn't need to do everything. I just needed to do something. Of course, looking back now, I did all the wrong [00:05:00] things, although there really is no such thing, but at the time I had no idea and we had an amazing experience that I wouldn't change for the world, and it gave me the confidence to just keep going, learn at my own pace.

That was nearly a decade ago, and since then I've slowly built up my skills. I've earned tons more points, discovered strategies that have nothing to do with points, and I've traveled to many places without paying full price.

Here's just a few things that I've done and experience in a decade of doing this. Round trip business class flights to spaying for under $300. Normal cash price was over 4,000. Three nights at a luxury ranch in Colorado for $0. Normal price is $1,700 a night. I also used points and paid only $11 for a one-way flight out of Dallas, Fort Worth [00:06:00] instead of Dallas.

Love for the sole purpose of checking out an amazing airport lounge because Yolo and I've done countless weekend getaways, trips to visit family one night, stays at airport hotels just so that I didn't have to drive early in the morning or late at night.

Of course, I've made a ton of more mistakes. If you can even call them that, but if I hadn't and grown from them, I wouldn't have traveled and experienced all of these amazing destinations I otherwise could never afford. And you can too. And that's what it's all about, helping you experience more for less.

So what can you expect from this podcast?

In the first few episodes, I'll cover the basics of loyalty programs, points of Miles, because I believe that understanding those concepts are a crucial foundation to learning to travel on a budget without sacrificing. Your chosen [00:07:00] travel style. I believe that in combination with other budget strategies, points of miles can take you anywhere you want to go.

We'll go over everything from how to get started. We'll decode the jargon, debunk myths, and learn how to implement these strategies into everyday life. I'll share practical, easy to follow tips on how to save money, use points effectively, and travel smarter.

You can expect to hear from me flying solo just like on this episode. But I'll also bring in some amazing guests who are just as passionate about simplifying budget travel as I am, and later episodes we'll build upon these fundamentals over time and dive into more advanced strategies.

I'll be interviewing people, sharing real life stories while putting these tips into practical use. Concepts are great, but I believe hearing how these tips play out in real life makes the biggest [00:08:00] impact. you'll hear how these strategies actually play out when people take real trips, whether it's two weeks in Europe, a weekend getaway, or a trip to visit family.

We love it all and we're here for it. There's no one size fits all approach, and that's one of the things I love most about travel and budget. Travel. We'll explore all types of trips, big and small, and no trip is too ordinary to talk about. This podcast will be practical, relatable, and inspirational, all while giving you the tools and mindset to get out there and travel more for less.

I'm so excited to have you along this journey with me. Remember, there's no right or wrong way to save money on travel, just the best way that fits your life. Make sure to subscribe and I'll see you in the next episode.