Making money via Vacations?

Ever have your spouse come house with a handful of bags and say " Look how much I saved" ?   You know, buy things on sale and attempt to convince you they did the right thing?

Well, today I made ... I mean saved .. I mean ... got refunded about $2500!   That' like what ... $600/hr working at the keybaord for the 4 hours I spent on it???   Okay okay ... lets be honest.  We've got a lot of trips planned this year, but ....  after joining UVC last year, I'm really focusing on squeezing $$ out of it all.  And they way you 'make' money is by tracking your reservations and verifying you've got the best price.   When I book them, I book the 100% refundable rates.  Then weekly ... or worst case .. monthly .. I do a quick check to see where the prices are at.  If they go down on the UVC site, a quick 5 minute call and .. fixed.  Refund in the mail.  If I find a lower price out there that there is less than a 25% delta, a 10-30 minute call (todays was brutal), screenshots in an email to them and ... refund in the mail.    I found several price reductions out there today and they paid off!   In addtion, we've got a weekend trip coming up, modified the reservations ... and saved on a night ($200!) in the checkbook.   Hey ... I SAVED $$ .. lol

Now .. here's the cool thing .. and I guess the reason for this post.  I've got a system.  Initially my plan was to bookmark the URLs for various sites to visit and verify pricing but it is still a pain in the ass because you have to drill down through muliple pages picking the resort .. then the dates .. then the room ...then the final bill ...   Shit gets painful!.  

Well, I've put togehter an indepth multi tab spreadsheet that I track ALL our vacations costs with .  Resorts, airport hotels, airline costs/points, .. you name it.  BUT ... once I do my initiatal research I create the data to track, THEN ... the most important part .. copy / paste the important URLs within it all so a single click, copy then past in my browser .. and .. walllaaaaah ... I'm looking at the pricing for the resort.  Now, most would say 'duh .. really?"    Hey ... this is huge!  Most folks I know that are UVC are in the blind doing all this.  Many don't even track for price reductions.  Did I mention I "MADE" $2500 today?   LOL

Kicker is ... I never thought I'd want to do all this. But now that I have the fucntioning spreadsheet and the cheat tools to simplify checks and balances.. I sorta live for this shit.  As I type this I have at least Six trips planned with all the pertient info on the XLS and in folders tucked away.  I swear, every week or so ... after 30 min or so of work, I'm calling and changing things up and getting $100 .. $200 .. $500 back.  NOW .... yes, you have to spend the dollars first (trips!) .. but ...   damned I'm hooked on this new lil 'side job'!