While oftentimes happiness can be discovered through chasing ambitions, sometimes happiness means simply accepting who you are. This is a lesson that 29-year-old Michael Welmon learned recently when, after years of pretending otherwise, he finally made peace with the fact that he’ll never be one of those people with enough energy to snag a good deal on a flight.
Throughout his adult life, Welmon has made periodic attempts at scoring cheap airfare, occasionally signing up for email lists that send out deal alerts and sometimes even reading up on travel hacks from blogs with names like The Thrifty Nomad and The Points Wiz. But again and again, Welmon could never quite bring himself to put in the legwork to figure out how to effectively game the flight-booking system and would ultimately just end up buying his tickets through the airline’s website or perhaps Travelocity. Amazingly, he’s now come to terms that he’s probably paying 10 to 15 percent more than a savvy traveler every time he purchases a plane ticket.
“I wanted to believe I was a smart traveler, but every time I actually needed to book a flight, I’d try a few tricks unsuccessfully, get flustered, and sort of just give up on finding a deal,” he said, moments after booking a $390 round-trip flight from Philadelphia to Minneapolis. “It’s all just so complicated. You always gotta be watching those websites and stuff, and you can’t take time to think things over or else the deals sell out. I’m pretty good at the trick where you clear your cookies, but other than that, I just don’t have the gas in the tank to toy around with this shit anymore.”
“A man can only kid himself for so long before he’s gotta hang up his hat,” he continued. “Oh, well.”
Wow. This is truly a brave concession to make, and you’ve gotta hand it to Michael for recognizing his limitations and moving forward with his life.
