The Deal Mommy

Chasing the Points had a fun post recently about how successful travel hackers lean towards the entrepreneurial.  I’ll go a step further and introduce you to my hero: Angus MacGyver. MacGyvering is the skill travel hackers all share.

For you millenials out there, MacGyver was a pre-CSI super spy/mystery solver/hero of all trades. His special quality was the ability to take ordinary objects and “MacGyver” them into something life-savingly spectacular. His toolkit included paper clips, salt packets, and duct tape.

Hence my favorite term: “MacGyvering”. I use MacGyver as a verb to describe the skills in the travel hacker’s toolkit, which while not including duct tape, often contains items just as disparate and odd to the untrained eye.

A recent example, Camp Mom Spring Break 2015, MacGyver style:

• Alamo has a terrific one-way deal driving cars home from Florida after April 1st.
• This deal stacks beautifully with Daily Getaways and together they make my rental car as low as $5/Day.
• To get to Florida, the best tickets fly into Jacksonville, $64/one way from DCA on March 31. Tickets go up from there to $112.
• The tickets are on American Airlines so are $0 out of pocket Amex Platinum’s $200 airline credit.

However, the drive out deal doesn’t work from Jacksonville AND doesn’t start till April 1, which doesn’t give us much time on the ground before we have to turn around and come back.

Here’s where normal folks might give up, and here’s where MacGyvering comes in:
Most car rentals in Florida allow one way drop-off for no extra charge. We can fly into Jacksonville on the 31st, pick up a rental car for $40 (1/2 of crazy high spring break price of $80 with a Daily Getaway cert), and trade it on the 1st for a $9.99 car in another Florida city.

Spring Break, MacGyvered.

This is but one tiny example of what successful travel hackers do everyday.  It’s just how we think: when faced with an obstacle we pull out the duct tape and make magic.

How have you MacGyvered lately? Please share in the comments.

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