How to get the cheapest flights to Amsterdam

I'm a huge traveler. A large part of my small student budget is spent on travel - last year alone I spent over $5000 going to:

Buenos Aires and Ushuaia, Argentina in January

Toronto, Guelph, and Newfoundland, Canada in May

China (travelled to multiple cities) in June and July

Saskatchewan, Canada in September

Miami and Las Vegas in November

Switzerland in December

Air travel especially can be incredibly expensive, but smart planning can allow you to get the lowest price possible on your trip to Europe.

For example, I got a flight from Vancouver to Amsterdam for $640, taxes included. This route typically costs $950.

Ways to getting the lowest airfare possible

1. Earlier purchases don't necessarily equal cheaper. Knowledge is the key. The best way to do this is find out the airfare trends for your flight. This is where Bing Travel's remarkable services come in handy. They have a historical price tracker for every flight within the last 6 months, and can show you how much your flights cost. So you can go online and search for your flight, then see how prices have changed in the the last 6 months.

2. On Bing Travel, search for similar flights to yours (the same departure and destination cities) but for a date very close to today, and a date very far away. That way you can "predict" how your flight prices will increase or decrease as you get closer to your departure date.

3. Most flight companies change their prices on Tuesdays. Therefore, don't buy your ticket on a Sunday, or you might find yourself regretting the $300 lower fares that appear a couple days later.

So using these tips, I saved over $300 off my flight to Amsterdam.

Good luck!

Get your clothing fixed for $0 - pull out the needle and thread

Forget the tailor's - you can do most mending and sewing yourself, and all you need is a needle and thread.

A week ago, my favorite red dress ripped. It's a beautiful knit jersey dress that I wear in the winter. A huge gash of a line from the shoulder down to the sleeve.

So what did I do?

I took out my sewing needle, thimble, and red thread, and fixed it.
For free.

If I were to take that to a tailor, it would have cost me at least $20.

You can get needles/thread everywhere - many hotels have them readily available. I got a great set the last time I went to Las Vegas, right beside the packaged soap and shampoo sets.

Got a couple of loose buttons? Fix them yourself for free - or get them fixed for $6 each at the mall ($6 x 5+ buttons = $30+). I always reinforce my buttons when I buy a new jacket, because the jacket manufacturers almost never do a good job themselves.

Got a rip in your favorite jeans? Cut a piece of fabric, loosely sew it inside and then take it to a sewing machine for free - or spend $25-$35 at the mall. This has saved my favorite pair of Club Monaco jeans from sure destruction. For a great how-to, go to www.ehow.com.

The slip of your dress is 2 inches too long? Pop it on the sewing machine and in 2 minutes you've got a nicely tailored slip that won't ever peek out from under your dress.

Bringing a needle and thread set with you on your travels is always useful for those on-the-road mishaps. I find this incredibly useful.

For another how-to, check out how to make yourself fashionable high-waisted shorts for $0.

Total money saved: about $50/year.

You're welcome!

Miss Dior Cherie for $0

There's nothing like the smell of an alluring perfume to subtly attract attention.

For me, the smell of the moment is Miss Dior Cherie.

Image Credit: Dior

Francois Demachy, the perfumer who conjured up this smell, says on the Miss Dior Cherie website that this is "a fragrance that smells like spring".

Other places like Sephora describe the smell like this:

Miss Dior Cherie combines pure couture spirit with the audacity of youthful, playful notes for a fresh approach to a timeless classic. Notes of chic, green tangerine, violette, and pink jasmine mingle with soft patchouli, musk, and delectably sweet strawberry leaves and caramelized popcorn.

Caramelized popcorn? Yes please!

Now Smell This, my favorite perfume blog, thinks that this is perfect for the younger 20s generation (where I am right now), and I have to agree.

But the perfume starts at between $60-70 for 50mL. I don't like spending so much money just to smell like a bunch of caramelized popcorn (and I'd rather eat it).

Three ways to get Miss Dior Cherie (and other perfume) for free

1. Ask at the nearest department store like the Bay in Canada. If carded samples are available (the sample vial attached to a paper card), the salesperson would be happy to give you one. If they don't have it right then, sometimes they'll have a sample of something similar that you can try, which usually works out really well.

2. Usually when a new perfume comes out, there's a lot of promotional material around it. Miss Dior Cherie came out in 2008, and the website was mailing out free samples for over a year! Keep your eyes open for more opportunities like this.

3. Sephora or Nordstrom are two stores which will not only give you carded samples, but will also make you samples if the carded ones are not available! This is a little-known secret, but the salespeople are so helpful and always glad to give you a sample of anything they have in stock.

Using these methods, I now have a nice little collection of perfume samples, which I use when I go out or want to smell nice at work.

Note that Sephora and Nordstrom don't stock Chanel perfume, which is too bad because they have some of the nicest fragrances and are one of the best-known perfume houses besides Dior. But other than that minor loss, I get my perfume for free. Sorry, LVMH.

Further reading:
Cuffed, high-waisted shorts for $0
Are you spending too much on makeup?
Why high-savings department stores are not your friend

Are you spending too much on makeup?

Some girls look great with makeup on.

Others just look like they overdid it.

Know what I mean?

I was helping a woman deliver a baby the other day in the middle of the night. The pregnant woman looked great - glowing skin, the full, fresh look that mothers have. But her sister was standing beside her, looking SO obviously made up with a full set of false eyelashes, dark smokey grey eyes, lipstick - the works.

At her sister's delivery?! Give me a break!

So, besides the obvious social detriments of looking like an Andy Warhol painting (and not the good kind), let's look at this from a financial and time perspective. Are you spending too much money and time on makeup?

Here are some things I think cause this kind of epidemic:

1. WEARING FOUNDATION. It makes you look so cakey. This applies to both liquid foundation and mineral foundation, both drugstore products and high-end products. Foundation makes your skin look ... leathery. And it's so obvious. Foundations cost upwards of $15, and I say save your money and buy a good concealer instead.

2. TOO MUCH MAKEUP. Period. Don't overdo it for the occasion. It will deplete your paint pots faster than you can say "cougar-like pedo-hooker".

3. BLUSH: Many people have naturally rosy cheeks, so this doesn't make sense at all. If you do have a blush, make sure you can double it as a rosy eyeshadow or a bronzer. Not worthwhile otherwise. Natural colored blushes also run quite expensive (like the Benefit blush boxes for $30!!).

4. "Brow kits". In my opinion, the perfect brow only requires three items: a tweezer, a brow color that matches yours (likely a light grey or brown) in powder or pencil format, and an angled brush (if you want to get fancy - otherwise just use the brown pencil). This together should cost you less than $10. You don't need designer brows.

5. Doubling up on concealer, eyeliner, etc. Do you own more than one tube of mascara? Ask yourself why. Products have an expiration date, and you're not helping yourself by buying more than one. You should treat your beauty products like you treat your groceries - respect the expiration date and increase longevity by buying only what you need. Would you buy 3 cartons of milk to sit in your fridge?

EBAY. Amazing fashion heaven or bane of my wallet's existence?

After a large online adventure through the halls of eBay, I'm convinced this site is a huge waste of time and money if you're just looking to buy.

I discovered eBay in January.

I obviously knew it had existed for a long time prior, but I never put much thought into it. Bidding online and paying for things online seemed like such a dirty concept.

Anyways, I discovered a beautiful pair of Salvatore Ferragamo shoes on the site. You know, the Salvatore Ferragamo Vara shoe. You know, the shoe. The shoe of shoes.


This shoe.

Let me just elaborate. This is the perfect shoe. Although this looks a bit boring at first, this shoe is the ultimate chameleon - great for work, great for going out at night, great for every single possible occasion except the beach in Cabo.

And someone was selling a used pair - my size - for $15.99.

Did you just drool on your keyboard? I thought so. I thought I had just died and had to pinch myself. If you were in my situation, what would you have done?

Well, being my first time on eBay, of course I didn't win (eBay snipers, damn you to hell!). After the appropriate mourning period, I went right back to eBay to look for more. That initial bidding was enough to hook me.

In a matter of 2 weeks, I had bought a pair of Ferragamo heels, a Marc Jacobs shirt, and a pair of Cheap Monday skinny black jeans.

In total, this didn't cost me over $80 including S&H. But the dangerous prospect behind it scared me. No longer did I have to bus down to the Salvation Army in Kitsilano - I could bargain shop from the comfort of my own home. No longer did I have to go out of my way to shift through heaps of smelly clothing for the one thing that looked great - I could virtually gallop through the aisles of designer heaven with a click of a search term.

I needed to stop.

So I've gotten off eBay, and I've gone back to the thrift stores. It's just too expensive to continue shopping on eBay. I'm quitting after one month - it's for my own good.

That is, right after my shoes arrive.

The Business Side of Medicine

"In medical school, you never learn about the business side of medicine."

How many times have you heard this? My ears are sore from hearing about it. But despite all the harping and all these BiM clubs sprouting out of the ground, my entire Business in Medicine education in my 3 years of medical school still boils down to the following two points:

1. Incorporate yourself so you can pay lower taxes.

2. Consolidate your debt so you can pay less interest.

To me, #1 is interesting, and #2 is a no-brainer. Besides, there are a number of parent-like financial companies out there who will continue to goad you about #2 until you do it (like MD Financial for us in Canada, for instance).

Can that possibly be all? If that's all we need to know, what on earth are they teaching those students for a whole year in the halls of B-school?

More importantly, how will I find out:

1. Appropriate salaries for your MOAs/nurses.

2. Appropriate salary for yourself (negotiating this if you work in a hospital or medical conglomerate, as most city docs will)

3. "Customer service" - i.e. how to be a responsible doctor that doesn't schedule patients for appointments at 8:30 and then see them at 10:30

4. Entrepreneurship - i.e. establishing your practice with your priorities, or even creating and selling products, such as books, or your own line of hair gel, or a new cardiac stent, even. (Hey, I can dream.) This of course would include all the finicky details of entrepreneurship, including marketing, advertising, online presence, oh my god.

Anyways, I think there's a lot to be learned here.

I think I'm going to try and discover more.

How I got a 50% raise - just by asking for it

So because I was talking about salary negotiation in a previous article, I decided to muster up some girl power and practice salary negotiation myself. And I found that negotiation is an essential skill, and you have to practice to become good at it.

Because of my negotiation, I just negotiated a 50% increase (from $20/hr to $30/hr) for a part-time contract job!

So let's back this up. I'm a medical student, which means big debt. Plus, I love to travel, which means more debt. I've started living at home to save money to pay for this lifestyle, but that doesn't begin to dig into my $15,000/year tuition.

That's where the part-time job idea comes in. I looked around for something that could be:

1. Done from home.

2. Very flexible in work hours.

3. Good pay.

So I applied to a couple places, and got one reply, from a company's HR department. She said she loved what she saw and offered me a starting salary.

This is where it got smart. Before I had applied, I had already established in my head my lowest working rate, which was 50% higher than their offer.

At first HR Woman said it wouldn't work for her company. With HUGE butterflies in my stomach, I said that my stated salary was the lowest I was willing to accept given my level of expertise, and we ended the phone conversation. I thought I had blown it, that it was the end - but somehow I held myself back from calling her back and begging her to give me the job for the lower price.

Yet just an hour later, HR Woman emails me back and says they agree to my salary- 50% higher than what she had offered in the beginning!

I think this worked because:

1. I knew they wanted me
2. I had expertise for a specific project that no one else on their staff could efficiently handle
3. I was willing to walk out.

Ladies (and gentlemen) - negotiation works. Use it. This is also fabulous practice for bigger fish later when I graduate.