SXSW—most of us are over it. But I can’t stop myself from reading stories about doing something on the cheap, like this piece by Chris DeVille on Stereogum:

I shaved more than $200 off my airfare by flying into Houston and catching a $2.50 round trip Megabus to Austin. Rather than spring for lodging in the middle of the madness, I crashed with a friend south of downtown. I took the bus instead of cabs. The goal: to consume as much free music, food and beverages as possible. The constraint: spend less than $20 a day, including transportation, and see how it stacks up to my experience roaming Austin with a badge. What follows are highlights both glorious and mundane for your edu-tainment. It’ll be long, but that’s how SXSW is. Come along with me hunting, looking for a come-up; decide for yourself if this is fucking awesome.

It’s a fun time—especially if you’re young, can run, and bring plenty of sunblock.

1. Social Costs

Please know that if you choose to travel by cargo ship, you will have to suffer many crimes against your sanity, the most prevalent of which will be that you will soon discover that every single person you know and their grandmother has always wanted to travel by cargo ship.

At first you will enthusiastically engage these people, but then you will come to understand that they really just want to talk about their own travel adventures.

Be prepared: Some women will express their concerns about you safety traveling alone. This you will take in stride because it is evident that they care about you. Your male acquaintances will laugh when they joke about how “popular” you will be with the crew and about being alone with so many men “without escape.” A coworker will tell you that you might get raped with the same gravity he would use to chat about how it might rain overnight.

As the time left until you leave ticks down, you will no longer talk to anyone about your trip. It will be your secret.

2. Financial Costs

If you’re going to make this adventure happen, please disregard that your 1,100€ a month job can barely cover your living expenses. Empty your Spanish bank account to pay for the deposit (you can eat light at the end of the month). Empty the bank account back home that you’ve been slowly draining for the past four years to pay for the remainder.

You’ll contact three different companies, all offering the same trip on the same ship, right down to the same cabin, for three different prices. When you ask why the first two are quoting you such high prices, the answer isn’t clear. When you ask one UK-based company if you can pay in US dollar or Euros, the answer is not clear. When you ask if they can price match, they stop responding to your emails. The fare includes the room, all meals, port taxes, deviation insurance—which covers the cost of the ship having to make an emergency stop because you have a grave illness—and the booking fee.

3. Mental Health Costs

When you do settle on a company and itinerary, the “invoice” they send you doesn’t even include your last name and is actually just an excel sheet with a picture of a boat on it:

Your head will scream, international money transfer scam! You will be extremely stressed about sending all of your money away. You will wire the money anyway.

4. More Mental Health Costs

You are required to have insurance to cover any medical expenses you might incur abroad; insurance for repatriation of your body if you happen to die; and travel insurance. Your school’s group policy definitely does not cover anything outside of the country and expires five days before your departure date. You try to figure out if you can get back on your mother’s U.S. insurance—it’s complicated and confusing and you abandon this plan. You settle on a Diver’s Alert Network policy that your dad renews every year. It’s just evacuation insurance and not full-on trip insurance or health insurance, but you give the travel agents that information anyway, and hope for the best. They don’t say anything.

5. More Financial Costs

The cost to get from your home in Madrid to the port in Le Havre, France is about 200€. This involves a 14 hour bus ride to Paris and then a train to Normandy.

You will use your internet skills and Couchsurfing.com to find a family that is willing to host you in a tiny village outside of Le Havre as you wait for your ship to come in. You’ll give them a bottle of wine ($40) and help their teenage daughter with her Spanish homework (free) as a meager thank you for their hospitality. A storm will delay the ship, you’ll have time to explore Normandy while you wait for the go-ahead to make your way to the port. And of course, each of those days will be spent watching the last of your cash dwindle until you aren’t sure if you’re going to have any money for the actual trip itself. Spoiler: You’ll have a little bit. Next time: Where your money will go during a month-long trip in which you are confined to a boat on the water for 90% of the time.

Liz Rush lives in Portland, Oregon and co-authors a tumblr comic strip.// photo by michael bentley

In this installment of “WWYD,” a flight voucher for a flight you weren’t on:

This past weekend, I booked a cheap, last-minute flight to visit my parents in Florida. When I arrived at the gate a bit early, I saw that my connecting flight through Atlanta was delayed, and that I wouldn’t make my flight to Tampa. I spoke to the agent, who was able to put me on a flight to Atlanta that was already boarding. My new flight had been scheduled for 6:30 a.m., but had mechanical problems that didn’t put us in the air until 10:30. Worked for me—I was leaving earlier than my scheduled 11 a.m. flight, but my fellow passengers were understandably grumpy. I made it to Tampa without a hitch.

While I was there, I got an email saying I had been awarded a $100 voucher for the delayed flight. I figured I got lucky because while I was on the very delayed flight, its lateness was an advantage. Then I get the voucher, and it includes an apology for an incident involving a flight to Detroit, where passengers were seated, but then had to deplane for a mechanical problem. I definitely wasn’t on that flight. Do I keep my mouth shut? While this is not the airline I use most often, I have flown with them before, been delayed by them before, and have received apology vouchers about half the time. I know that my justification (It’s not real money! They’ve burned me before!) reads like excuses to keep the voucher, but am I wrong to think this is a rare occasion where I should just reap the benefits of their automated error?

It’s a voucher to fly with them, with the usual limits—expires in a year, not valid for certain cities, there are blackout dates … It’s not so much a refund as an incentive to book with them, a marketing strategy! That’s my other vein of justification, ha. — G.

You know, I’d keep that voucher and happily use it. I’ve read and heard so many stories about travelers who have had their flight delayed for a number of different reasons and received a travel voucher after they politely complained to the airline. The flight you were on had mechanical problems and was delayed for four hours—that seems like a good enough reason to file a complaint for a travel voucher. You’re usually out of luck for weather delays, but you can justify a complaint when it comes to mechanical problems. So, really, this saves you the trouble of having to complain—something that a lot of inconvenienced travelers don’t bother to do. Here’s Kate Hanni, the founder of FlyersRights.org, in a Times article last year:

In general, she said, airlines try to offer each passenger the same flat compensation — say, a certain number of miles (the amount generally differs between coach and business class), a discount voucher for a future flight or a drink ticket. But because actual damages vary from traveler to traveler, it’s up to the consumer to pursue proper remuneration and “really go after the airlines,” she said, adding that it’s crucial to save receipts and documentation.

According to Ms. Hanni, most passengers don’t go after the airlines, and the airlines are aware of this. But it’s really not that difficult. All you have to do is write a letter to customer service or the airline’s chief executive.

I also totally understand the “making justifications based on previous bad experiences” too. I’ve had flights delayed or cancelled or rescheduled that have caused me to miss rehearsal dinners and birthdays, or shortened already too-short vacations, and when I’ve politely complained, I’ve received travel vouchers about a third of the time. I’d consider this a way to even the score. Have a wonderful time on your next flight.

Email me your WWYD experiences to me with “WWYD” in the subject line. See previous installments.

I was gone for a little more than a month during the holidays—visiting family out West, and then housesitting for a few weeks for a friend. During that time, my rent was paid in full, but my place was unoccupied. I considered subletting it while I was away, but a friend of mine who works in the city’s legal department advised me against doing it. Unless I found someone to stay for a full 30 days, renting out my apartment for a short-term rental would be illegal. Plus, according to my lease, I’d have to notify my landlord that I’d be away and that I would be subleasing my apartment for a month. I ended up deciding to avoid the hassle and leave my apartment empty.

Of course, not everyone takes the time to take all of these things—city laws, fine print on leases—into consideration when making their homes available on sites like Airbnb. Back in November, the Times told the story of 30-year-old Nigel Warren, who was hit with nearly $40,000 in fines for illegally renting out his East Village bedroom for three days while he was away in Colorado.

WNYC has an update to his story today: Warren has learned that he can admit to the violations and get his fines reduced to $6,000, or let his landlord deal with the violation notices and get evicted from his apartment.

But Airbnb also has a huge stake in Warren’s case and sent one of their lawyers to observe the proceeding, which has been delayed until later this month. The company has reportedly paid $30,000 to a lobbying firm to speak to New York lawmakers about changing the law to make it legal for people to rent out their places for short-term stays.

Not everyone wants these laws changed, of course. Neighbors are often concerned about having a revolving door of strangers in their building, and short-term renters, unlike traditional hotels and hostels, aren’t required to provide information or backdoor instructions on what to do in case of a fire or other emergency.

I may not ever list my apartment on Airbnb, but I’d certainly consider using it when traveling to find a nice, affordable place to stay (Chiara and Edith reported at The Hairpin that they used Airbnb recently while traveling to Paris and London respectively, and both had very positive experiences). I like the service Airbnb is trying to provide. Is it contributing to higher rental prices in cities like San Francisco and New York and pushing out locals? Unclear. Does it provide an unsafe environment for neighbors concerned with strangers coming into buildings—another maybe, and Craiglist has filled that role for some time now. We’ll have to see what happens to Warren, and what the lobbyists end up accomplishing.

Photo: Samantha Bell

The day before I was scheduled to fly to Ireland, I was photocopying my passport and basking in the short-lived feeling of being a faintly together adult who takes basic precautions before embarking on international travel. Then I glanced down and realized that my passport had expired four months ago.

I felt like I’d just been slimed in my heart. I was hopelessly screwed.

Or was I? I decided to ask the Internet, which told me to ask the U.S. Hotline for International Travelers, where I reached an official who informed me that there was a loophole specifically meant for slackers and woolgatherers and hopers and prayers and magic-bean buyers. If I got in line early enough at the passport agency with the right materials in hand, and if I was willing to pay $170 dollars, a last-minute, do-or-die passport could be mine. 

Which is why I rolled out of bed at 5 a.m. on Dece. 31 and prepared to head to New York City’s U.S. Regional Passport Agency, one of 13 branches scattered throughout the states. The doors opened at 7:30 a.m. I wanted to be sure I would be toward the front of the line.

I zipped up my suitcase and did one last check to make sure I had everything I’d need at the passport office: Several sheets of 2 x 2 inch passport photos; a completed DS-82 form for passport renewal, filled out in careful black ink; my expired passport; and a copy of my flight itinerary to prove that I was not just a space cadet, but a desperate one.

By the time I got to a silent stretch of Hudson Street at 6 a.m., a few people were already waiting in line outside the passport agency. It was too dark, early and cold to do anything but try to distract one another. Soon we were swapping tales of travel disaster.

Laurie, a sophomore at Elon College, was waiting in line with her dad, a barrel-chested man with a handlebar mustache. She was scheduled to fly to Athens on Wednesday for a three-week study abroad program focusing on the economies in Greece and Turkey. But the last time she’d seen her passport was when she slipped it into the backseat pocket of her parents’ car, which appeared to double as a portal to another dimension.

Ben, dressed in a sporty windbreaker with gloves built into the sleeves, had wanted to keep his passport secret and safe. So he chose a location in his Manhattan apartment so secure that even he couldn’t find it again. His flight to visit family in New Zealand was in two days.

Behind me was a family on their way to Cancun: two exhausted parents shepherding a tiny boy and girl wearing matching pom-pom hats. The parents hadn’t realized that childrens’ passports expire every five years. They were turned back at the airport, and they’d already missed one flight. “It was an expensive mistake,” the father said.

There was a special, sheepish camaraderie in the early-morning line. We all understood that we’d messed up. Now, filled with humility, we were throwing ourselves on the mercy of the U.S. government. Ron Swanson would have completely hated us.

At about 6:30, a man in his late twenties wandered over. He was wearing a striped scarf and had an accent we’d later learn was from Panama. “Hey,” he said, “are you guys all waiting to get into the passport office?”

“Nah,” said Ben. “It’s just a cool place to hang out.”

We all cracked up, including the man in the scarf. He joined the back of the line.

I wasn’t the only person with a same-day flight. Jason, a New Jerseyite with an expired passport, had already missed one flight to the Caribbean. His rebooked plane left JFK at 12:40 in the afternoon, which he figured meant that he needed a new passport in hand by 9:30 a.m. He had a cab scheduled to wait for him back at his apartment.

“Everyone’s already written me off,” Jason said. “My boss was like, ‘See you at work on Wednesday!’ But I keep telling him, I won’t be there.”

As opening time neared, the line swelled and stretched to the end of the block. The man in the scarf took pictures with his iPhone. He asked Jason to save his place and ducked out to McDonald’s, returning with a thank-you coffee for Jason and extra hash browns for anyone who wanted them.

“Is it getting colder?” I asked Laurie and Ben, doing a two-step to warm up my feet.

“I think it’s just hope getting closer,” Laurie said.

Shortly before 7:30 a.m., a State Department official with a reassuring dad-like presence appeared to answer our questions and tell us what to expect inside. We would go through an airport-style security scanner, he told us; no food or beverages were allowed inside the building. I had a package of chestnuts and half a burrito with me for the flight. I gobbled down the burrito and stashed the chestnuts behind a nearby fire hydrant.

Past security, there were two lines: Line A, for people who had appointments, and Line B, for people who didn’t. Two women worked at the booths, taking about one person from Line B for every three or four people from Line A.

As long as our paperwork was in order and our plights sufficiently desperate, the women in the booths sent us to the tenth floor with a call number. Upstairs, I sat in a plastic chair and stared at the screen at the front of the room, willing my number to pop up. I watched Laurie and Ben get waved through and trot off with their passport issues resolved. The dad-like government official appeared again to tell the waiting crowd that we could pay for our expedited passports by cash, credit, or money order, but to save our counterfeit bills for McDonald’s. “We get at least one counterfeit bill a week” he said. “This is the worst possible place to try to pass one off. We’ve got detectors in the back.”

While I waited, I ran over the advice my friend Ryan had given me the night before. He was coaching me on the best way to ask people for help.

“Remember,” he said, “you’re asking them for a favor. So never suggest anything specific you want them to do for you. Just say, ‘Hey, I’m in a jam. Here’s the problem. Is there anything you can do to help?’ Most people want to be the good guy. But if you demand something, forget about it.”

Ryan was a wise man! But as it turned out, I didn’t need to use any persuasive tactics. When my number was finally called, I just handed over my folder. A quiet, smiling agent looked over my paperwork and ran my passport photos through a face-detection scanner. Then she handed me a claim number. “Your new passport will be ready for pick up after 12,” she said.

I could have hugged her, but there was a wall of glass between us. So instead I just handed over my debit card.

On my way out, I passed the father of the family heading to Cancun. “Did it all work out?” I asked. He said it had, and wished me luck. We shook hands. Then I passed Jason, who was looking pale.

“They say they’re expediting me right now,” he said. It was 9:35.

While I waited for my new passport, I hid out in Il Cantucco, a bakery in Little Italy that offers free samples of warm, salty bread shaped like grapevines. I sipped a glass of black coffee and thought about all the lessons I’d learned. First, passports are not like magical free Carvel ice cream for life cards. Much like makeup and good girls, they go bad. Second, the State Department is fully aware of the travel pickles that goofballs like me get into and even has a secret unofficial plan to deal with us, which is comforting from a faith-in-government point of view. Third, fire hydrants are not good hiding places for unopened bags of chestnuts. (Somebody took mine.)

But it was my friend Christine, one of several pals on emotional support standby throughout the passport ordeal, who pinpointed the most important lesson of all.

“However frustrating it seems,” she texted me while I waited in the bakery, “it’s still somewhat comforting to have problems that can be solved with money.”

She had a point. I was lucky that I had money to bail myself out, and very lucky to have the money to go abroad in the first place. 2012 was a year that reminded me how many problems, personal and otherwise, won’t go away no matter how much money gets thrown at them. I’d do well to remember that I’m pretty damn lucky anytime my issues are smaller than the size of my checking account.

In fact, that was true of all of us waiting in line outside the Passport Agency. We bonded over our blunders and our shared commitment to talking about travel plans in the conditional tense. But we didn’t talk about how fortunate we were just to be standing on Hudson Street in the pre-dawn cold on the last morning of the year, listening to the clang and rumble of garbage trucks, passing around greasy bags of hash browns. For the moment we had clarity of purpose. In daily life, most people try to wrangle a hundred duck-sized horses. Now our worries were winnowed down to a simple horse-sized duck. We wanted to begin 2013 on a white-sand beach, by the steps to the Parthenon, surrounded by family in Auckland, walking down the cobblestone streets of Galway just as the sun settled into a definite rise. We had hastily assembled forms and runny noses and a last-ditch plan that depended on the benevolence of government workers. We did not have appointments. We had hope that our dumb mistakes might yet prove reversible, that the new year would take us wherever we wanted to go.

Sarah Todd blogs about feminism and popular culture over at Girls Like Giants.

You guys seemed to really enjoy the idea of a WWYD series yesterday, and I received a few situations from readers in my inbox last night. Here’s one from J.—it’s a good one!

In 2003 my (now) wife and I took our first overseas trip. We were going to go to London, where her cousin lives, and in the middle of the stay we’d go to Barcelona. At her cousin’s suggestion we booked the Barcelona trip via a British travel agency that specializes in combined airfare/hotel package deals. I made the arrangements by phone, which included giving them my credit card information, then got an email confirming everything was set. Three nights in a hotel plus round-trip airfare—I don’t remember what the cost was but it was on the order of $400-$500.

Right before we left for Britain I realized that I hadn’t seen any of the charges show up on my credit card. When we got there, my wife’s cousin had the plane tickets and other paperwork (they had requested a local address), which had our names on them, but the receipt had somebody else’s credit card number. (Like, it wasn’t one or two digits off, it was wildly different.)

So: What would you do? We decided not to say anything. Our thought was that, if a charge that large showed up on somebody else’s card, OBVIOUSLY they would call and dispute it. Once that got back to the travel agency, they would figure out what went wrong and contact us (which they had multiple methods of doing). But I felt guilty about it. Then while we were in Barcelona we BOTH got our pockets picked within 12 hours of each other and lost more than 200 euros in cash, which I always suspected was karmic payback. (But, on the plus side, we never heard anything from the travel agency, ever.) — J.

Okay, it’s Mike, again. I would have called the agency and said something because: Catholic guilt. WWYD?

Email me your WWYD experiences to me with “WWYD” in the subject line.

Photo: Platform London

Whenever I fly to Los Angeles to visit my folks, I usually go with Virgin America. I’ve never experienced delays (or ones that I can recall with a shudder), the inflight experience and service is solid, the Wi-Fi usually works, but most importantly, the flights are affordable. My ticket from New York to Los Angeles during the week before Christmas was $131, but cost $2.50, because I was able to exchange flyer points for it. I’ve also had a great experience flying on Virgin Atlantic, which is a completely separate company owned by Richard Branson who has a 51 percent stake, and by Singapore Airlines, which has a 49 percent stake.

But as Kevin Roose (whose writing I adore, read all his stuff!) explains over at Daily Intel, Delta is making a move to acquire Singapore Airlines’ stake in Virgin Atlantic, which may result in a deterioration of the airline’s service (consider American Airlines today after all those mergers and acquisitions), and is probably part of a larger tactic for Delta to get into more airport hubs.

Branson intends to keep his majority stake in Virgin Atlantic, but I’m waiting for the day when every airline is equally terrible and every airport has a room specifically where people go to cry out their frustrations.

I’ve been fortunate enough to spend the majority of my twenties traveling across five continents and temporarily living in some of the most exciting cities on earth: London, Los Angeles, and New York City—with long stints in Paraguay and Belize. I’ve been able to afford this, not because of a trust fund, but because I rarely have to pay rent. Before you get super excited about reading this article and fantasize about all the places you’ll jet off to, let me explain that I have made almost the equivalent of no money. I’ve learned to be savvy. The trade-off for my wanderer’s lifestyle has been that I’ve never owned a car, maintained a rental lease after college, bought furniture (maybe a table, once) or seriously thought about having children. My bills consist of student loans, a smartphone, health insurance, and a subscription to a streaming yoga website. I don’t own much besides my laptop, camera, and clothes that would not be considered business casual. Still, for anyone with insatiable wanderlust, check out the following ways I’ve traveled on the cheap:

Scholarships
Back when I was in community college (I’m serious about having no money), I got a financial need-based scholarship to study James Joyce in Ireland where I encountered a lot of retirees who had a difficult time walking uphill and seemed slightly afraid of the Irish. I vowed to travel while I was young and work while I was old. A reverse retirement, if you will. If you’re in college or graduate school ask the financial aid office about scholarships for study abroad programs.

Moonlight
Coat check attendant. Babysitter. Waitress. Author’s assistant. These are all unglamorous jobs I’ve logged thousands of hours doing. In Los Angeles, I made a few grand working as a temporary nanny (while the stay-at-home mom recovered from surgery) and used the money to check out art museums in Buenos Aires and the beach scene in Uruguay. Craigslist and asking friends for connections seem to be the best way to find short term, cash paying gigs between trips.

Peace Corps
Aside from the free round trip airline ticket, the two-year commitment to helping communities in developing nations, and the character development of living on eight dollars a day, the Peace Corps offers volunteers $6,000 cash at the end of service. Of course, this money could be used for a security deposit or a car back in America. I used it to bike in China, swim in Thailand, and get cheap spa treatments in Indonesia. Applying for the Peace Corps can be competitive and take anywhere from three months to a year.

Freelance
I’m a freelance travel writer. I’ve been paid everything for my work from exposure to a few thousand dollars. Better, I was the writer-in-residence for Belize as part of a social marketing campaign with the Belize Tourism Board. That means I was paid (not a whole lot, $30 a day) to travel around Belize for three months, while scuba diving and blogging. I’ve also gone to Micronesia, San Francisco, Miami, and Mexico on press trips. MediaBistro offers online writing courses, including several focused on travel writing. Or, WordPress has free blogging software.

Glammy
I don’t like to refer to myself as a babysitter, because that’s a job for teenagers. Bethenny Frankel calls her fill-in nanny a glammy, or glamorous nanny. So I’m comfortable referring to myself as that, too. I’ve gone to France, Newport, and Virginia with a lovely family whose full-time nanny isn’t always willing or able to travel. Being a glammy also means I’ve been stuck with a screaming baby in the back of coach for several hours and cleaned up his vomit at a gas station. Still, I never could have afforded a trip to the South of France during high season otherwise. Nanny agencies in urban centers are usually looking for babysitters (glammys) as support for clients who already have full-time nannies.

Frequent Flyer Miles
I was way too late to the frequent flyer miles game. It’s heartbreaking to think about all those flights I took across the ocean without accumulating anything. I’ve since educated myself and got a Delta credit card. Last week, I flew to Denver for five dollars and 25,000 miles. Sign up for the free miles program with every major airline carrier. Remember that the individual whose butt is in the seat always gets the miles, regardless of who paid for the flight.

Vouchers
Even more precious than frequent flyer miles are airline vouchers. Travel enough and the airline will eventually screw up. You’ll get bumped off an oversold flight or it will get cancelled and the airline will give you a voucher (usually worth $250) towards a future flight as an apology. Apologies are how I’m going to Costa Rica over Thanksgiving and to Wisconsin for Christmas for next to nothing. If a flight attendant asks for volunteers to be bumped onto the next flight in exchange for a voucher, for God’s sake, volunteer.

Friends
How was I able to live in Los Angeles for five months? My best friend had a guest bedroom. When my boyfriend swapped his apartment in Brooklyn for one in the Bay Area, I went with him. I just got back from a road trip through New Mexico because a friend works for the Marriott and got us incredibly cheap hotel rooms. I’m happy to return the favor (that is, once I settle down). For now, I’m looking into spending the summer volunteering for the National Park Service, housing and stipend included.

Megan L. Wood wrote this shortly after returning from the airport, and filed it before she left again. Photo: MikeBaird

Logan Sachon: Hey Mike, have you ever kept extending a weekend trip so that it lasted two weeks?

Mike Dang: No, up until I was working for myself this year, I never had the luxury of extending any trips—just cutting them down because of work.

LS: So you’ve taken a two-week trip and shortened it to a weekend?

MD: Yes!

LS: :(

MD: When are you flying back again?

LS: Sunday!

MD: Clear skies ahead! (Finally.)

LS: This has been a good trip for me. I’ve reconnected with my cousins. Made some new friends. Seen a new city.

MD: Yeah, you spent like half a month there!

LS: Ha well the main reason I kept extending my ticket—”main reason”—is that every time it’s been time for me to fly back, I think of having to get home from LGA. And it’ll either take me two hours or cost me a million dollars. So when the cousins are like, “Just stay longer,” I’m like, “Okay.”

MD: Ha. It’ll cost you $65 max. Just do what you did when you first came to stay with me in the city. Pay $13 to get on the express bus to Penn Station. And then take the subway from there.

LS: Haha, I have zero recollection of ever doing that. But that is so many steps!

MD: “So many steps”—Two steps! Girl, this is how you save money.

LS: So first I have to get cash. And then I have to find the bus. And then I have to pay. And then I have to find a seat. It’s a lot of steps.

MD: Haha, I’m sure you’ll be able to find $13 in Minnesota.

LS: Okay, so real talk, OBVIOUSLY I know I am capable of getting home from the airport and figuring it out. I’ve done it before, will do it again! It’s just … the THOUGHT of it that exhausts me. It’s like taxes! Not that bad when you do them! HORRIBLE when you THINK about doing them! So when I’m sitting here on this couch in Minnesota and it’s like, well, I guess I better pack up all my stuff and get on a plane and a bus and train, it feels stressful.

MD: Which is why you’ve turned your initial weekend trip to Minneapolis into a two-week trip! You managed to escape the city while it was (and still is) in turmoil from Sandy. Tell me what life is like there and how it compares to living here.

LS: WELL. My cousins who got married (they weren’t both my cousins when they got married, only one of them was my cousin, and now I’m just calling them my cousins because that’s easier than my cousin and her husband or my cousin and cousin-in-law) live here. And I’m staying with them with my other cousin. And also three big dogs. And so I’ve really just been hanging out in this cozy house with cousins and dogs and the house is kind of on a little hill and you can see a lake, because there are lakes everywhere, and it’s really fun! And eating meat. So much meat. It’s a really good thing I stopped being a vegetarian because if I still was one I would either starve or require a separate meal every meal.

My cousin grew up on a farm, and this is Minnesota so there are a lot of farms? And so they do that thing where they buy like, half a cow or and a pig and get it butchered and put it in a deep freezer. It’s laughable how much meat they eat.

And it’s not just like, “Oh, this pasta sauce has ground beef in it,” it’s like, “This ground beef has some pasta sauce in it.” Last night I made dinner—sauted kale and then this bean and squash thing–and my cuz was like, “Oh, an appetizer.” ALL MEAT ALL THE TIME.

MD: Haha. Is food cheaper when you live near a farming community? Or is it cheaper because your cousins seem to be buying in bulk?

LS: I think it’s because they buy in bulk, and they have the opportunity to do that because there are farmers here? I mean that’s actually something you can do anywhere. I’M SURE there are folks who do that in NYC. I had friends who did it in Portland. COW SHARE instead of veggie share.

MD: Right, except it less likely that we have giant freezers here to store half a cow.

But you mentioned that haircuts are also a lot cheaper in Minneapolis. Have you noticed other stuff like that? Whenever I leave New York and go back to visit my folks, or go anywhere that’s basically not a big expensive city, I see these tiny differences. When I was in Dallas last month, I noticed that the coffee I bought at a Starbucks was cheaper because of the lower local sales tax there.

LS: Yes, Starbucks is def cheaper. I’m in one now actually and my hilarious SALTED CARAMEL MOCHA (grande) was $4.55. I think in New York it’d be $10.

MD: But, you’re coming back to the city this weekend (maybe? You’ve been changing the dates on my every time I ask you). What will you miss about Minneapolis?

‪LS: ‬Sunday. SUNDAY. I’ll miss the fireplace and the dogs. And the company, OF COURSE. Someone making me dinner even if it is real meaty. But today I was walking down the street, and I remembered I live in New York, and kind of smiled and did a little dance and really embarrassed myself … in front of myself. That’ll last about until I land. And get on a bus, is that what we decided? A bus to a train. Or a car to a house. One of the two.

On a recent three-day weekend, I flew from Portland, Ore. to Oakland, Calif. to visit a friend I hadn’t seen in a couple of years. We were both motivated to keep costs down, so we cooked at home and went on walks. The entire trip, including my ticket, was $300.

As I was waiting at the gate to fly home, an airline rep got on the intercom and announced that the flight was overbooked. She offered a $300 travel voucher to travelers willing to take a flight just two hours later. I knew that I’d be flying home for the holidays, so I decided that it was well worth the wait to essentially recoup my costs for the weekend. I volunteered and sat back down, content with a $300 voucher and a ticket on the next flight back to Portland.

But somehow in the confusion, the agent rebooked me to Seattle. By the time my original plane was rolling away from the gate and I was explaining that I didn’t want to go to Seattle, there were no more seats on the flight for which I volunteered. I was put on a standby list for the booked flight and on the list for another later flight, also booked. They also offered to fly me to Seattle where I could try to get on a plane to Portland, or to stay in a hotel and fly in the morning, but I just wanted to get home.

The gate agents were visibly stressed, so I waited and texted my best friend, my roommate, and my mom with the little battery I had left on my phone. My best friend provided me with the opportunity to gossip about my roommate and my trip while my mom texted me advice about the situation, which annoyed me. The agent came up to me and apologized for the mistake, saying she’d see if she could give me more benefits for the inconvenience. My mom told me to ask for more money on my travel voucher, but I wasn’t quite comfortable doing that.

It’s pretty common knowledge that women are taught to nurture relationships in lieu of being taught to aggressively negotiate on our own behalf. We lose out when it comes to salary negotiations. Despite all the interviews I’ve done, research I’ve read about the pay gap, and books about negotiation and the gender divide, I still find myself cripplingly inarticulate when it comes to asking directly for what I want.

I waited in front of the gate for the other volunteers to get their tickets rebooked. Watching their situations play out, I thought about how the men in my life take advantage of my willingness to compromise my needs and desires in order to accommodate their insecurities and immaturity. I thought about how I will have to negotiate with my boss about my job and salary in the very near future.

And then I explained to the agent that the late night flight, if I could even get on it, would mean another six hours at the airport, plus an arrival in Portland after the MAX, Portland’s public train system, closed. She immediately offered me $20 in food vouchers for dinner, which I accepted. I asked if I could be moved to the top of the standby list for the next available flight and explained once again that I didn’t want to arrive after public transit stopped running. They told me the standby list can’t be rigged. While the agents were busy clicking away at their consoles, I looked down at my phone and saw one of my mom’s texts again: “Ask for cab fare.”

So I did. It turns out they couldn’t issue a fare voucher for a taxi at a different airport, but they did give me another $10 in food vouchers. Regardless, I was proud of myself; I had directly asked, “Can I get money for a taxi?” I stopped explaining my situation and started asking for what I wanted. I smiled and thanked them sincerely. As I was walking away, the agent blurted out, “Wait! Actually, there may be a way we can do this.”

She pulled up my traveler info and started annotating my entry. She explained in five lines of shorthand that I was bumped by her error and that upon arrival in Portland after midnight, the customer service agents from the airline should issue me a travel voucher. I was delighted.

I spent my food money on chicken strips, bottled water, a slice of cheesecake, and a large hot cocoa. The food was exactly the quality you’d expect in an airport, which ruined my “negotiator’s high” and made me feel fat. I walked around the terminal and meandered over to that flight I had originally volunteered for and check out the standby list.

I went over to the gate agent to ask about the standby list. Feeling I had nothing to lose, I explained everything that happened and asked what he thought my chances were of getting on. He said it wasn’t likely, but we made small talk about moving; he had just relocated to San Francisco with his boyfriend. He asked me if I was flying into Portland for a meeting the next day and I joked, “No, but Girltopia at C.C. Slaughter’s is tomorrow night!”

Two hours after the scheduled departure time, the original flight to Portland was still in the gate due to weather, and I was dead last on the standby list. I was restless and annoyed at being in the airport, sure that I had hours to go even if the next flight didn’t get delayed, too.

I was paged on the intercom. They found a seat for me on that original flight.

I thanked the gate attendant as I gave him my ticket and he said, “Well, my coworker said you were just so nice to him that we had to find you a seat on this plane.” Asking for things certainly seemed to be paying off. Why hadn’t I been doing this my whole life?

I arrived in Portland around 10:30 p.m. As I was walking over to catch the MAX, it occurred to me that the agents in Portland would still have my taxi fare request on file. I walked up to the nearest airline representative and explained that the SFO agents had put in a request on my file. He looked it up and said it was really out of the ordinary to have a fare request from another airport, but that it might be something he could do. As we waited for the computer to load my information, we made small talk about the weather. Then we made small talk about small talk about the weather, which I’ve discovered is the formula for nearly all conversations in Portland. He seemed happy that someone was willing to talk to him about something other than flight delays.

In the end, I made it onto the flight I volunteered for with a full belly and $300 dollars towards my next flight. I even got a taxi from the airport—something I don’t think I’ve ever actually done before. I’d originally planned to get home at 8 p.m.—I managed to get there at 11 p.m. All it took was an extra three hours and a mostly pain-free lesson in learning to ask for what I want.

Liz Rush is an amateur cartoonist who recently relocated to Portland, Oregon. She makes $15/hour and has $7,353 left to pay on her student loan. Her go-to karaoke song is “Mr. Roboto” by Styx.