Making Any Travel Plans This Summer??

The summer travel season is upon us, so where are you planning to go? How do you plan to get there? Well if you plan to travel by car, all I can say is good luck. Gas prices are at an all time high. It may be worth looking into flying to your destination. The average full size car holds somewhere between 16 to 18 gallons of gas. So let’s say you are planning a trip from Atlanta to South Florida you could be looking at fuel costs of $90-$100 one way. If you drive something bigger like a gas guzzling SUV, I don’t think I want to know the cost for that trip.

There are some ways to travel this summer without going bankrupt. Last month I spent a few days in fabulous Las Vegas, and although I’ve been several times this trip was different than the other trips. I spent a lot less to get there, especially in an economy that has gas inching close and in some places past $4 a gallon, it’s now cheaper to fly than drive long distances. I have to say I’m pretty proud of myself on keeping the cost down on this trip. I learned a very valuable tip a few years ago. Even if you are not a frequent traveler sign up to as many airline frequent flier programs as you can find. Make sure to sign up for their e-mail alerts on fares. If you are not a fan of a cluttered email inbox, create an email account just for this purpose.

Airlines will send their frequent fliers emails when they have airfare sales. I’ve found that sites like Expedia.com and Cheaptickets.com don’t always beat the online prices of the airlines. Always check both, sometimes you can find great deals on the airlines websites that go unadvertised. While planning my trip to Las Vegas for 6 people, I found roundtrip non-stop tickets from Atlanta for only $218 with taxes and fees included on Delta, my preferred airline. Obviously I jumped on it. The cool thing about this deal was there were several departing and return flights to choose from. The sale wasn’t announced or emailed, I just happened upon it. I found the sale by checking the site pretty regularly. The cheapest price listed on the discount travel websites started at $340 and up so I saved $122.

The next deal came through what else an email program. Just like I did with the airlines, hotels have programs for frequent travelers and email alerts. When we first decided to go to Vegas I signed up to as many strip hotels I could think of. The Las Vegas Strip is pretty much the center of the action in Vegas. I found two great deals one at the Luxor and one at New York New York. Both of the deals were for the same price, $129 a night, the only difference was one hotel offered more freebies than the other. So we booked New York New York., which offered a room upgrade with a great view of the strip, free drinks, and 2 for one roller coaster rides and 2 for 1 breakfast at its restaurants.

While we were in Vegas I figured we would need some wheels… so I shopped for rental cars. My plan was to reserve a car to pick up between 30-45 minutes after arrival and return 2 hours before departing. I found that booking cars through the rental car companies I would be paying a lot more for not keeping the car a full day. We would arrive in Las Vegas Just after 6pm on Saturday, so my reservation was for 6:30. We would be leaving on Tuesday at 12pm so I was going to return the car at 10am. The rental agencies counted Tuesday’s partial day as extra time and was going to charge me more than $60, that's more 3 times the base rate of $19 a day. I found out that booking my rental on priceline.com, they counted Tuesday as a whole day and calculated at $19.

So I paid $218 for Airfare. The Hotel was $129 a night per room for 3 nights at a total of $423 with taxes. The rental car cost me $133 with taxes and fees. So my grand total for travel to Las Vegas came out to be $774. That was cheaper than the vacation packages on any of the websites and a lot cheaper than I paid on previous trips to Vegas at the same time of year. Now I’m not a travel expert, but I do like to save money where I can. Find deals on travel is like putting a puzzle together, it takes a good eyes and patients. In the end it was worth saving more than $300 on my trip. You can apply the same techniques to planning road trips, the money you save finding deals on hotels can be put towards the high price of gas. I just wanted to put that out there in case you had started to rethink that much needed vacation. Be sure to drop me a line if you found any of this info useful and how much money you were able to save.
Safe travels!

Disappointing Test Results For Some Georgia Students

On Monday Georgia state school officials released a statement in an effort to prepare parents and students of poor test scores on the Criterion-Reference Competency Test. The Criterion-Reference Competency Test also known as the CRCT is a test that is suppose to diagnose an individual student’s ability to comprehend the state’s curriculum of reading, mathematics, science, social studies and English/language arts. The preliminary test results show that 40 percent of eight grade students failed in math and could be at risk of repeating the eighth grade. Eight grade students must pass the math and reading sections of the test in order to move on to high school. If they fail one or both parts of the test, they are giving prep classes and may retake the test during summer school.

The statement also said that 20 to 30 percent of sixth and seventh graders passed the social studies exams. Those results are very alarming to say the least. I can only imagine the reaction parents will have when they learn that their child could be held back. So how does something like this happen? The CRCT is supposed to be more difficult this year than in previous years. That’s because there was a gap in test score for the NAEP or National Assessment Of Education Progress and the CRCT.

The tests showed that about 83 percent of Georgia eight grade students who took the CRCT were proficient or above however only 23 percent scored the same level on the NAEP. Officials blame the lack of a national curriculum as the problem. Parents are complaining that some items on the CRCT were never taught to students. Now that the test is more difficult has the curriculum reflected the change in the test? More focus is being put on teaching the curriculum and less time on review, we need to make sure that all areas of tests are covered.

These test scores may illustrate a need for the state to review it’s current curriculum and other issues that have long been areas of concern such as smaller classroom sizes, more teachers, teacher pay, etc. I definitely think that some kind of a review is warranted if straight “A” students are at risk of repeating the eighth grade. It’s obvious that something is broken in the system and something needs to be done to fix it. However I don’t think a solution will come soon enough for some parents and students as the school year draws to a close.