I travel all the time. Most actors do. The dirty little secret that I will tell you now is this, we are most of the time paying for ourselves. When one does a show in say, NY, and I live in Los Angeles, we are technically “relocated” to NY, with a one-time fee a the beginning of the series. On my current show, “White Collar”, we ALL live in Los Angeles, and most of us….Matt, Tim, Sharif, myself, and now Tiffany (what up Harper!), all live in LA. That makes for a lot of commuting, on our, and especially my, VERY frugal nickel.
The sight of us all running to our computers the moment our shooting schedule gets changed is hilarious. Usually we check JetBlue and Virgin America, the two with generally the lowest costs, and one-way purchases available. I believe all of us have now gotten the JetBlue credit card, so I pretty much use that for everything to get miles (by the way, credit cards should be thought of as “DEBIT” cards, to be paid in full ASAP, if we have learned anything over the last 5 years it’s that ‘credit’ is a fool’s game, but that’s a topic for another day….)…..Airline loyalty cards are great, use them, stick with them, be aware of them…..”but I have to leave a day earlier”, “but the points expire”, “but I forget”…..ummmm, shut up, shut up, and shut up. OK, partially kidding—-but they DO have value and as someone who spends a ridiculous amount of time on an airplane, I swear they are worth it.
“Business” class……it’s in the name——if you are flying somewhere and it’s PAID FOR by a BUSINESS (other than your own), that’s who it’s for. Economy Plus, or Extra Legroom are great, in my case usually bought AT THE AIRPORT if possible (but be careful, if the flight looks very full, go ahead and spring for it earlier)……
The other thing for me to talk about today is car rental. I will talk about hotels, vacations, resorts, adventures, later……For car rentals, I use Hotwire, a consolidator that doesn’t tell you who the car is from until you purchase it. By the way, WHO CARES….I type in the city, the prices come up, all “in the terminal”, they are like half or MORE off the other prices, I book it, and away you go——does it really matter to me if it is Hertz, Avis, Dollar, or Bob’s Cars? When my mother was ill in NJ and I was commuting alot, I sometimes got cars for like $12 a day at Newark Airport, and during that emotional time I didn’t even CARE what it cost…….also, the obvious things that everyone knows, have a credit card that covers insurance so you can waive that, and don’t pre-pay for gas, but those are obvious ones for even the most casual traveller…….(another great tip, pack a portable GPS, I’ve been using mine for close to 10 years and its awesome to have, instead of the 10-15$ per day the companies charge)….
And now a sidebar…….people reading this written by an actor they may know of might wonder, “isn’t he wealthy, I mean what the hell does he care about saving money?” Actors are PERFECT to know about these things. We struggle for years, in my case LITERALLY living on Ramen Noodles in an apartment with SIX ROOMMATES…and we all are moments away from struggling again. Actors always know the cool local hipster CHEAP restaurants, the closest Vintage stores, and where the free concert in the park is. Do you honestly think that’s because we are so ultra-cool? Well in my case, absolutely, haha, but the reality is, it came from need to survive when there was absolutely NO income coming in……so keep reading, keep forwarding, and keep commenting, I swear you will get SOMETHING out of this, whether you notice it or not……(I happen to know alot of you are, thanks to your awesome comments…..)
See ya tomorrow,
WG
