frugal underground

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Ever since I posted a quick blurb about going to a Trendwest presentation, I’ve been getting comments, emails, and searches about Trendwest. It’s clear that people are looking for info, so I’m going to do a short series on Trendwest and you.

This first post is kind of an overview designed to help you understand what Trendwest does.

Trendwest is basically an improved timeshare program. In a traditional timeshare setup, you buy partial ownership in a property, and then are guaranteed a certain amount of time each year to use the property (a week is common). Typically, you have the same week each year at the same property. It’s much cheaper than owning a vacation home, but provides many of the same benefits.

Timeshares were really big in the sixties and seventies because of their affordability and convenience. After a while, though, some of the owners decided they wanted to mix it up a little, and started trading their weeks (”my week in Arizona for your week in Florida?”). This made the timeshare idea a bit more flexible.

Trendwest has effectively formalized the trading system and abstracted it from the “my week” concept. With Trendwest, you buy points, not time at a specific place at a specific time. Your points can then be spent for time at any of the Trendwest locations (of which there are many). This improves on the timeshare idea because you have more flexibility with less hassle.

When you buy Trendwest points, you’re buying them permanently. For instance, if you buy 12,000 points, you get 12,000 points each and every year for your one-time cost (plus an annual maintenance fee). Trendwest emphasizes this (as they should) because of the long-term value. They like to point out that you can even leave your Trendwest ownership to your kids. The comparison is “owning vs. renting”, and it mostly holds up.

In addition to their core program, Trendwest also offers some other associated perks. The one that interests me the most is something they call Bonus Time, which allows you to pay cash (instead of points) at a drastically reduced rate. You can also save up points over time and borrow ahead, both of which are convenient options for longer trips at more exotic locations.

The bottom line is, Trendwest is very convenient. In the next post, I’m going to help you consider the value they offer, and whether it might be a bargain for you.

Popularity: 36% [?]

Menu Plan Monday has rolled around once more, and I have a plan. I was originally expecting to not shop this week, but last week’s shopping trip found the store completely out of the lettuce I wanted, and my husband—very sweetly and completely unaware of my plan—used my apples for an apple pie. So if I’m going to stick with the plan for Friday dinner and Saturday potluck, I’ll be going back in to get those items.

Monday: Pizza

Tuesday: Spaghetti

Wednesday: Sandwiches

Thursday: Mac & cheese

Friday: Haystacks

Saturday potluck: Apple Lasagna, Buttery Bread Machine Rolls, some brownies (from a box)

Saturday dinner: Creamed eggs on biscuits

Sunday: Leftovers

Popularity: 38% [?]

It’s Menu Plan Monday!

Because I’ll be out of town Thursday through Sunday, and because my husband is perfectly happy eating Spicy Black Bean Burger sandwiches (I stocked up!), the meal plan is a bit bare.

Monday: Burritos

Tuesday: Lasagna

Wednesday: Penne with Rustic Lentil Sauce (we ended up not making it last week)

…

Sunday: Tuna Noodle Casserole

Popularity: 35% [?]

I know I just posted about Dreamhost’s deal yesterday, but today I’m going to post about a completely different kind of web host, and the permanent deal they offer you.

NearlyFreeSpeech.net is a very unusual host. To start with, they don’t offer any hosting “plans”. They do something that’s almost unheard of instead: they charge you for what you actually use. Specifically, they charge a penny per megabyte of storage you need each month (this covers the files you put on their system) and a dollar per gigabyte of traffic (the “traffic” is the amount of information your website sends over the Internet to reach your visitors—the more visitors you have, the more traffic).

Let’s do a little compare-and-contrast. Dreamhost offers a truly insane amount of storage space and included traffic. 99.9% of people will probably never use the full capabilities of this account.

For example, let’s look at my usage. I wanted to see how NearlyFreeSpeech would shake out for my actual sites, so I looked at my stats for storage and traffic over the last few months. Right now, I’m holding pretty steady at about 77 MB of storage each month. Since I’ve been a Dreamhost customer (around 7 months), I’ve used about 4.5 GB of traffic. I didn’t sign up for a really great deal with Dreamhost, but it’s not bad at $7.95/month. That’s about $56 over the time I’m looking at.

Now what would this cost me at NearlyFreeSpeech? Let’s look. 77 MB/month * $0.01 = $0.77/month. 4.5 GB (not measured per month, just total) * $1 = $4.50. My total for the last seven months would be $9.89.

Now beyond cost, there’s another upside. Because I’m paying for actual usage, it is definitely in the best interest of NearlyFreeSpeech (hereafter refered to as NFS) to keep my site up and running. All hosts try to keep sites up, obviously, but NFS has an extra motivator: if my site’s down, they stop earning money. If no one can visit my site, I don’t pay for traffic. NFS has every reason to try very hard to keep my site operating.

Similarly, if my site takes a long time to load, visitors won’t necessarily wait around. If they leave, again, I won’t be paying for traffic, and NFS won’t make money. So you can also bet that they care deeply about keeping equipment modernized and optimized, and will rapidly look into any issues that are hurting the performance of sites.

From a technical standpoint, I’ll also point out that NFS has a very sensible load-balancing setup designed to keep both slowness and outages to an absolute minimum.

Obviously, I think NFS has a lot of “pros”. There are a few “cons”, though.

First, they don’t seem like a “hand-holding” kind of company. They expect their setup to appeal to people who have some experience with web hosting, so while I hear that provide great tech support and a members forum, I would sincerely doubt that they have a lot of “touchy-feely” tutorials or techs. If you’re starting from scratch, and have never done the web thing before, and don’t have a web developer helping you, another host might be a better option.

Second, there are some technologies they don’t support. These are clearly stated in their Frequently Asked Questions and include (sorry for the geek-speak!) SSL, FastCGI, cron, and Ruby on Rails. If you want something outside of normal hosting, you should make sure you read the FAQ before signing up. (Actually, it’s a pretty entertaining read, regardless…)

Other than those two items, I see no downside. When my contract with Dreamhost runs out, I’ll be moving my sites to NFS.

I know this was a pretty nerdy post, so please, if you’re confused-but-curious, or have questions, leave a comment and I’ll do my best to help you out!

Popularity: 31% [?]

If you’re considering starting a blog of your own, or a website, or anything where you need web hosting, you should check out Dreamhost’s excellent offer. Until midnight Pacific time, you can get $99 off of their already-ridiculously-cheap prices when you pay for one or two years.

Seriously, if you’re thinking of a blog, go for it. You’ll get your domain name for free, and you really can’t beat the deal. They also have a one-click tool to set your blog up, and it works great. This blog is hosted on Dreamhost, too, so you’ll get to join the cool kids! (HA HA HA…)

Popularity: 27% [?]

Getting in at the tail end of the day… If you’d like to participate in this meme, check out Menu Plan Monday. Here’s my plan for the week:

Monday: Subway sandwiches (unusually eating out!)

Tuesday: Gardenburgers

Wednesday: Gardenburgers after biking

Thursday: Penne with Rustic Lentil Sauce

Friday: Haystacks

Saturday: Pizza

Sunday: Tuna noodle casserole

Popularity: 18% [?]