Will Do Strange Things for Travel Funds
I have a confession to make.
So we’re on this trip and yeah we do a lot of cool stuff and we’re livin large with our oceanfront beach hut at the moment. It’s the stuff of a classy millionaire’s dreams. But there’s a flip side to it.
We’re not millionaires (or classy). Ray and I are actually just really, really ghetto I mean resourceful.
To live the good life with oceanfront porches and massages and scuba trips, we do a few things to counterbalance the expenses. We eat Ramen noodles at night (and you thought you outgrow that after college!).
Ok, actually we just eat whatever’s around and cheap.
We don’t go out on the town – we get a bottle of local rum for like a buck and a half and drink it out of…that’s right, our hotpot. (Afterwards, we’ll go cook our Ramen noodles in it).
We amuse ourselves with the free things. Like giant streetside fish in aquariums. For hours.
Maybe best of all, we whore ourselves out to the whims of our family, coworkers, strangers, exes, friends, enemies, and hockey teammates (which can prove to be worse than enemies on this one!) and accept “dares” to eat, drink, or otherwise subject ourselves to all sorts of evil and disgusting things all in the name of earning an extra buck to keep this dream interesting, unconventional, and chuggin along for as long as we can. That’s how we ended up with those scorpions in our mouths in Bangkok. Totally disgusting. But for 35 bucks? Totally worth it.
Putting together the funding for a big ass trip like this gets you looking in every corner and under every rock that you can to scrounge up a bit more cash. After all, once you wrap your head around the idea that six bucks could be either a crappy fast food meal back home that makes you fat and gives you zits, or it can be an hour-long full-body massage on the beach in the Philippines, money takes on a whole new meaning. You get more resourceful.
Well when I logged into my account the other day to download our statements for the trip so far and make sure we’ve been as cheap resourceful as we need to be to make it eventually to Mongolia and beyond, I saw a great opportunity that is good not just for us, but for others too and I wanted to share it.
The bank Ray and I use – and love, ING, is offering a promo until April 30th where if we refer a friend to open an account with a deposit of $250, YOU get a free 25 bucks as a welcome bonus added to your account and WE get a free 20 bucks (double what we normally would get) put in ours for referring you. We signed up for ING more than a year ago when we consulted our accountant friend Andrew for a good place to put our trip savings and got the same deal when we signed up through his referral. It all went through as promised, so we know ING is good for it on both ends. Some things really are that simple. We have since made ING our primary bank and have been very, very happy with them.
The account – you can choose checking, savings, or both; we use both and have been very happy with it – is free to open, maintain, close, transfer fees to and from, dance the funky chicken with, etc. There’s no catch. It is all done online and is very safe and secure, and we can – and do – personally vouch for it with great enthusiasm and satisfaction.
We each have 50 referrals we can give out – so this chance could be HUGE for us! $2,000 would effectively “buy us a country” (and save us from eating a LOT of scorpions).
You’ve got nothing to lose, 25 bucks to make, and 20 bucks to give to us without spending anything. It’s a good deal for you and a good deal for us. If we can make use of all our referrals by the 30th, we can fundraise $2,000 for our trip without anyone having to pay out a cent, and in fact our friends, you guys, can make some money yourselves. ING will deposit the bonus when you sign up for the account and you can withdraw it (and close your account if you wish, though I think you’ll end up liking it as much as we have) after 30 days. If you’d do this, we’d consider it basically a donation to our trip and would be most grateful! Please no more scorpions?
You get 25 bucks and we get 20 bucks. See, you CAN make the Man work for you, if you know where to look (or if you’re desperate to avoid putting any more arachnids fried in soy sauce in your mouth)!
Please leave a comment or shoot us a message right away if you’d be willing to help us out before the 30th! You have to let me know before you go signing up though so I can send you the actual referral email or else no one gets any bonuses and we’re back to eating scorpions. If we do manage to make some funds from this, I promise to eat something disgusting for everyone who signs up.
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This is a great post. I’ve been wondering recently how you guys manage your money. Back when I traveled in China, you basically had to carry all your money with you. I can’t imagine bringing 3 years worth of savings on a trip. So, do you guys just find ATMs to withdraw money from your ING account? Are there fees for doing so? Do the Paypal donations get funneled into the ING account so you can withdraw from there? Does it have a bank card so that you can charge a hotel to the bank account?
Andrew
Hey Andrew! Yeah basically we utilize a lot of insect eating and puppy dog eyes and – oh you mean the money we already have! :)
Yeah Ray was smart and signed up for the checking account as well before we left so he got a debit/ATM card. Works at every ATM we’ve tried I think (that takes foreign cards). We still get slapped every time we withdraw though – no matter what amount you take out, at LEAST about 8 bucks gets lost to conversion rates and fees, which makes us die a little inside each time, but we’ve compared with Chase and BofA, and ING’s got the best rate.
The Paypal donations are linked to the account, so yeah we put them right into ING so they can start earning their interest right away (we make about 50 bucks a month in interest on the savings account) and we can pull them from the ATMs as well via Ray’s checking account (instant transfer between the checking and savings).
It’s a regular debit card so yeah theoretically we could charge a hotel and stuff to the account no problem, though we don’t. Most budget places don’t take cards or charge fees to do so.
We’ve also been using the credit cards we already had for online purchases like flight tickets or big purchases like rafting trips just to keep building our credit (we pay it off every month so we don’t have to pay any interest).
I’m so glad we don’t have to carry all the money around on us. It’s hard to imagine that that’s how it was! But I suppose you adapt to your circumstances?
P.S. Should I send you a referral email? :)
Great idea, I’ve had an ING account for years and would encourage anyone who doesn’t to get one. I love it. Much luck. :)
I sure hope those were soaking in tequila first.
Hey, scorpions and rum ‘sounds like a metal band’ are a great source of energy. Looks like you are having the time of your life. Good luck.