Paper Doll
Organize Your Life for More Reading Opportunities
If you love reading, summertime means finding a good beach read. Thanksgiving and the December holidays may mean finding books to read for when you finally escape the hubbub. And the darkest part of winter gives you a great excuse to snuggle up with a good book.
However, whether you’re a reader or just want to be one, chances are that you’ve found yourself too busy doing too many things (and probably things you like less than reading) such that you make it to the end of the year with more books on your TBR (To Be Read) pile than your already-read list. And you aren’t be alone.
The American Time Use Survey (ATUS), put out by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, measures the amount of time people spend doing various activities, such as paid work, childcare, volunteering, and socializing. An analysis published this summer in iScience recently found a downward trend in reading for pleasure over the past 20 years.
In fact, per the New York Times:
Researchers from University College London and the University of Florida examined national data from 2003 to 2023 and found that the share of people who reported reading for pleasure on a given day fell to 16 percent in 2023 from a peak of 28 percent in 2004 — a drop of about 40 percent. It declined around 3 percent each year over those two decades.
I don’t think it’s because people don’t want to read; prior research found that during early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, people spent significantly more money on recreational reading material than they had in 2019. Indeed, consumer spending on recreational reading went up almost 23% in 2020 and another 1.8 percent in 2021. When people have the time, they do read.
To borrow from an old phrase, the spirit (to read) is willing, but the flesh (of our eyeballs? of our tushies?) is weak.
People are busy — with work, parental obligations, sandwich-generation obligations to kids and parents, volunteering, and with anxiety over [Paper Doll waves her arms around, frantically] everything going on in the world. Studies, particularly from the pandemic era bear this out, as people living in households without children and people 75 and over read (for pleasure) significantly more than those in the middle categories.
So, as you make up your wish lists for Santa, I’m hoping this post will give you confidence that if you asks for books, you’ll have read them by this time next year.
HAVE BOOKS, WILL TRAVEL (OR SIT)
It’s easier to be inspired to do something specific than something vague. Start by figuring out your options.
Be a Book Collector
Walk around and gather up every unread book in your home. Use a laundry basket, if you have to, and drag everything to a central location. You may have enough for a bedside table, a bookshelf or an entire library, but once you’ve got these all together, divide them into three piles:
- books you’re excited to read now — They may be in your favorite genre, by an author you adore, or just books that if you had the time, you’d grab a hot cocoa and a blanket banish everyone while you read them.
- books you’re somewhat enthusiastic about, but daunted by — Maybe this is because the book is thick, the writing is complex — hello, 19th-century Russians — or you just don’t have the focus right now, but with some situational support, you could/would embrace the books.
- books you have no desire to read — These might be books that once appealed to you, or that were lent or given to you with great glee on the part of the person who loved it and felt it necessary to press it into the hands of everyone (no matter their tastes). You have this random internet stranger’s permission to move the book along (to a friend who is a voracious reader with varied tastes, to used book stores, or to Little Free Libraries).
You may have to rearrange your bookshelves a little, or create a reading shelf out of a deep windowsill or mantle or the back or far side of your desk (with the help of some sturdy bookends). This is where you will keep your To Be Read books. Put the most desirable books front and center so you’ll be more inclined to read them! (The more daunting books can go on a lower shelf for once you’ve tackled the ones with more sparkle.
No books at home? Visit your public library (in person, or digitally) to pick two books that get you excited. (If one fails to spark, you’ve got a backup.)
CREATE A READING ENVIRONMENT
Earlier this month in David Kadavy’s Love Mondays newsletter, in a piece entitled “Why I bought a $600 Lamp,” notes that while, “Lots of people with a scrolling habit would rather have a reading habit,” it’s hard to really break that habit of grabbing your phone to scroll (when you’re bored, when you’re anxious, when you are procrastinating doing something that will take you toward your goals).
Longtime readers have heard me say many times that developing an organized system for being productive, whether at home or in your workspace, requires eliminating friction; as Kadavy says, “you need to remove the resistance.”
Kadavy writes:
Invest in reading. Buy all the things that make reading comfortable, easy, even luxurious. I bought a $600 lamp, which was more than enough to get me to say, “Well, I spent all that money on this reading lamp…”
I’m not going to encourage you spend $600 on a reading lamp; I’d rather buy more books. But what could you more reasonably buy, make, rearrange, or otherwise revise in your environment to make reading more inviting?
What’s your resistance to reading, and how can you get rid of it?
Don’t assume that the space you’ve assigned yourself for reading, by default, is a good reading space. For example, I have a bonus room that the blueprints for my apartment designate as “the library.” There’s one overhead light, a door to the balcony, and a window. However, the door is mostly glass, so during cold months, it’s chilly, and during much of the rest of the year, it’s too hot and sunny. I never read in there.
Conversely, the outer “wall” of my kitchen cabinet that faces my carpeted dining room-turned-office has ideal lighting, and I often enjoy sitting on the floor with my back to that end of the kitchen. I’m similarly comfortable reading when sitting criss-cross-applesauce at my desk chair, turned 90° from my desk and computer.
What would make your reading environment more inviting?
- Seating — First, where are you comfortable sitting to read? Some people can dive into a book anywhere, while others need a squishy sofa or chair. Conduct an experiment, and every day for a week, pop into a different seating option in your home. You might be surprised to find reading comes naturally in an unexpected location, like the bottom of your steps or in your guest bedroom.
- Ambiance — Can you read in the middle of a coffeehouse or university library? Are you able to delve into a story while your kids are running circles around you? Or do you need to control the environment so that you can concentrate? There’s no right or wrong, but the more easily you can fall into your book, the more time you’ll spend reading rather than adjusting the variables.
- Lighting — I’m an overhead-lighting girlie. My mother and my sister can’t stand light from overhead, and prefer lamps. I have clients who prefer soft lighting, and have known a few who prefer to read in the dark with the adult equivalent of a night light.
Have you ever seen these LED neck lights? For under twenty dollars, you can get six levels of brightness and three different colors of light from a rechargeable, bendable light that fits around your neck!
For readers with sensitive eyes, having a reading light that comes from your direction toward the book, is key, and more comfortable than the more traditional overhead approach of the descendants of clip-on Itty-Bitty Book Lights.
- Bookmarks — It may seem small, but an appealing bookmark might be exactly what you need to bring you back to your book. Sure, you can dog-ear a (non-library) book or use a CVS receipt to mark your page, but a bookmark that reflects your passion, whether it’s kittens or Doctor Who, fine art or a silly catch phrase, is likely to level up your reading experience, and motivate you to get back to your book.
- Beverages — Depending on your personal style, you may prefer to read in a snack-free environment or devour sweet or salty goodies while reading. Paper Doll does not judge. However, if you’re developing a cozy reading habitat, consider investing in a corded or cordless coffee (or tea) warmer.
DEVELOP A READING HABIT BY SYNCING TIME AND SPACE
In her recent piece, The 10-10-10 Plan for Reading 50 Books a Year, Laura Vanderkam suggested finding forty minutes per day to read, six days a week, to achieve 240 minutes (four hours) of reading per week, or possibly about an average-sized book each week.
Of course, finding forty minutes in your day — when you’ve got in-person meetings and Zooms and carpool leaves very little buffer space in your calendar — might seem impossible. Beyond the larger issue of time management, Vanderkam’s 10-10-20 approach says that in lieu of finding 40 consecutive minutes, get the same effect with smaller doses of reading time.
She suggests finding two ten-minute blocks you can comfortably commit to and put them on your schedule, and then add a 20-minute reading slot before bed.
If you feel that you truly don’t have forty minutes of potential reading time in your day, whether all at once or in chunks, I challenge you to set an alarm on your phone to remind you to put your phone down or on airplane mode for a fixed amount of time (say, a 25-minute Pomodoro), and set another alarm to let you know when your self-commitment is complete. Chances are good that you merely replaced doom scrolling with reading.
Scheduling the time is one thing; sticking to it is another. If you do all of your reading on an e-reader, or in an app on your phone, you’ve only got one thing to keep at hand. However, if you (like Paper Doll) prefer the heft of a traditional book, there are definitely ways to use those books to tempt you.
And if you’re never without a book, at least you never have that excuse for not being able to read.
- Keep a book in the kitchen and read while you wait for the coffee and your breakfast to be ready. (If the book is good, you’ll likely to continue to read while eating.
- Place a book on your vanity to read while you dry your hair. (Obviously, there are hygiene concerns with leaving a book in the bathroom, but having a book in one hand while drying your hair with the other not only evenly builds up the muscles in your arms, but it gives you something to do while you can’t listen to anything.)
- Tuck a book in your purse or work bag to read:
- on your commute (if you’re taking public transportation)
- in the driveway or parking lot (if you arrive at your appointment early, or — and here’s a nifty idea, to read when you return to your car before driving home or to your next location!)
- when someone (your doctor, the friend meeting you for lunch, etc.) is inevitably late
- Keep a book in the trunk of your car — Imagine you get a flat or some other vehicular annoyance and you won’t merely be waiting ten minutes, but perhaps an hour. A book you can dip in and out of — perhaps a collection of short stories or a memoir that doesn’t require that you recall details from chapter to chapter — is perfect.
- Stash a book under the crib, next to the changing table, or anywhere in your child’s room so whether you’re called to rock an infant or keep a toddler company until they nod off, you don’t have to count tiles on the ceiling. While we tend to sleep in the dark, it seems a lot of kids nod off in a soft glow, so you may find that you can read either a traditional book or a phone/e-reader.
- Keep a small stack of books for professional reading in your workspace. — Most of the above ideas are best used for fiction or light reading, but if you’re trying to keep up with reading in your professional life, you’re most likely to pay attention when you’re in your workspace. Put three books within reach of your desk. Use reading time as a transition: read for ten or fifteen minutes before you leave for lunch, or spend your last 15 minutes of the workday (or fifteen minutes after your work is done) to get ahead on reading professional journals or books. Read with tape flags or a highlighter nearby to capture important concepts.
- Load audiobooks and ebooks onto your phone so you can listen when you can’t look. (It’s hard to read print while folding laundry or walking on the treadmill.) I’m not going to get in the middle of the debate over whether listening counts as reading. But I will suggest you check your public library for access to audiobooks (and ebooks); even if you prefer reading text, if you’re stuck for a while without the book you want to read, catching up with a few audio (or virtual) chapters will keep your committed to your reading plan.
Yes, that’s a lot of different places to stash books. You don’t necessarily have to keep moving your books from place to place; you can keep a few different books at the ready in various places.
If you only read fiction, it may be difficult (or impossible) to read multiple books simultaneously, especially if they’re in the same genre. However, reading a novel before bed and a non-fiction book in small bites throughout the day may keep your brain sharp.
I generally read one fiction book and two non-fiction books concurrently, with each assigned a different “home.” It’s less like trying to keep the plots and characters of Grey’s Anatomy, Chicago Med, Doc, and Brilliant Minds all straight in your head, and more like keeping up with both The Diplomat and The Great British Bake-Off.
MOTIVATE YOURSELF TO READ MORE
Zig Before You Zag — You Don’t Have to Tackle Reading Head-On
One of my friends is an eager reader, but due to work has strayed from the habit. However, he really enjoys Shakespeare, and goes to monthly communal Shakespeare readings where participants take turns reading sections of the plays. While that counts as reading, it wasn’t helping him tackle his backlog.
Last year, I got him Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent, a memoir of sorts by Dame Judi Dench, where she regales the interviewer with tales of her decades of performing Shakespeare on stage.
The idea was that independently reading something easy and fun, but in the same neighborhood as his monthly group readings, made the leap easier.
If you plan to start reading books by a particular author (or on a non-fiction topic), try short stories or essays to whet your appetite. Be creative. If you want to carve out time to read a biography of the Founding Fathers, pay closer attention to who’s who and what they do in Hamilton, or musical grandpa, 1776!
If you haven’t read books with long chapters since college and feel wobbly, try picking books with short chapters. Ask your friendly librarian for some recommendations, or pick titles from 50 Books With Short Chapters at Keeping Up with the Penguins.
The key is that if you want to read, but aren’t feeling up to the task, it’s OK to find a back door. With classics, read a character description on Wikipedia. With modern books, read professional reviews, which are far less likely to reveal spoilers than reader reviews.
Give Yourself a Challenge
Just as with any habit you want to establish, sometimes you need to give yourself a push. I participate in the Goodreads Reading Challenge annually, setting a goal for how many books I’ll read each year. If I hit my goal, I increase it for the next year; if I fail, I set the same goal again. (I’ve been stuck at 39 books for a few year’s running.) I’m often reading three books concurrently, so my reading achievements lag for a while and then jump forward.
Because I not only log, but review, each book after I complete it, it forces me to really think about what I’ve read. This makes it more likely that I will remember the book (for my own purposes and to recommend to friends), but it also makes the challenge more real to me.
Other reading challenges encourage not just volume of books read, but types. If you’re looking for a challenge that’s more, well, challenging to the diversity of your reading endeavors, check out The Candid Cover’s 2025 Reading Challenges: The Ultimate List.
The More (Readers), the Merrier
Join the Club
Joining a book club is one way to inspire you to invest more of your time in reading. In small groups, you may feel obligated to speak up and put your take on a book (perhaps one you didn’t like) on display; if you’re an introvert, you may find the whole idea distasteful. However, there are a variety of book club options that don’t require you to meet in person; these existed before 2020, but since the pandemic, online book clubs have proliferated.
Whether you prefer time travel or romantasy, classics or graphic novels, business books or psychology, there’s a group somewhere that’s reading and discussing what you like to read. Just use your favorite search engine (or AI, cough, if you must) to point you in the direction of a group — in person or virtual — up for discussing your preferred author or genre. Or try the suggestions in these articles:
The 15 Best Online Book Clubs to Join (Reedsy)
These Are the Best Online Book Clubs to Read More (Good Housekeeping)
What are the Best Free Online Book Clubs for Adults in 2025? (BookBrowse)
Read Along
Of course, not all book discussions are book clubs. You may want to look for something billed as a “read along.”
My favorite (classic) novelist is Jane Austen. I’ve read all of her novels (multiple times), but this year, I’ve participated in the Austen Connection’s Jane Austen Read Along in honor of 2025 being the 250th anniversary of Austen’s birth.
Janet Lewis Saidi (going by the non-de-plume Plain Jane), author of the recently released Jane Austen: The Original Romance Novelist, is our fearless leader.
We do “close reading” of a handful of chapters each week; we’re rounding out the year having just hit the middle of our final book, Persuasion. Plain Jane’s weekly essays are a lively mix of her personal wisdom, erudite academic resources, and pop culture references, and subject matter experts share wisdom on related topics and diverse perspectives.
In the comments section each week, we heartily discuss and debate everything from geography to the in-joke of “shrubberies,” from why every man seems to be Charles or Williams or Thomas to (and I have to admit I think I started the whole kerfuffle) which of Austen’s heroes and cads are the most, um, bed-able. (My take? In the novels, it’s Mr. Knightley from Emma. In the adaptations, it’s Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy in 1995’s Pride and Prejudice.)
A read-along provides the benefits of an in-person book club, but doesn’t obligate you to pipe up. You can just, quite literally, read along, reading the book, the leader’s thoughts, and the comments. But you may find delight in eventually sharing your thoughts.
Shhhh, We’re Reading
Some people want company when they are reading, but don’t want to have to actually interact with anyone, or at least not interact about the book. Have you heard of the Silent Book Club, sometimes (not-so) jokingly called Introvert Happy Hour?
If grabbing ten minutes for yourself here-and-there makes you feel unproductive because you really crave serious reading time but the people in your life don’t respect your need for isolated reading time, Silent Book Club might be a better bet. From the site:
Silent Book Club is a global community of readers with 2,000 chapters in 60+ countries. There’s no assigned reading — it’s bring your own book.
More than a million members gather in person, online, and in destinations around the world to read together and swap stories. All readers are welcome!
Celebrating it’s tenth year, Silent Book Club gives you the opportunity to show up, socialize or not (with friends or strangers) for a bit, and then read for a solid block of time. I found three different groups within a dozen miles of my home!
Read more in the blog post, Highlights from 10 Years of Silent Book Club.
Over the last 18 years, Paper Doll has covered a variety of reading-related posts, including:
- 12 Ways to Organize Your Life to Read More — Part 1 (When, Where, What, With Whom)
- 12 Ways to Organize Your Life to Read More — Part 2 (Reading Lists, Challenges & Ice Cream Samples)
- Blending Libraries: How To Organize Books with Your Sweetheart
- A Professional Organizer’s Take on National Library Card Sign-up Month
- Organizing Your Reading Space for More Reading Time
- 12 Tips for Organizing Your Reading Time
- Ask Paper Doll: How And Where Can I Donate Lots of Books?
- Paper Doll To the Rescue: How To Save Wet Books & Documents
When was the last time you got lost (and found yourself) in a good book?
When Your European Hotel Room Feels Like an Escape Room — Conquer Confusing Showers, A/C, and Light Switches
You may have noticed that Paper Doll has been on an extended hiatus. Some of it was because I was traveling in Portugal and Spain for several weeks. But be assured, even when I am away from Paper Doll HQ, I am always noticing organizing challenges in my surroundings and seeking solutions.
Are you thinking, didn’t Paper Doll recently share a travel-related post? And that’s true, back in August I did write How to Stay Organized When Travel Goes Off the Rails (or Runway) with advice for dealing with travel kerfuffles, explaining how to organize your travel information, deal with technology failures while traveling, and assert your travel rights. It was a great companion to posts like:
- Paper Doll Organizes Your Space, Money, and Well-Being While Traveling
- Paper Doll’s 5 Essential Lists For Planning an International Vacation
- Paper Doll on the Smead Podcast: Essential Lists For Organized Travel
Drawing on my Portugal and Spain trip, this post narrows the focus to organizing yourself to deal with the smaller, mosquito-bite-level annoyances of hotel travel.
WE CAN’T CONTROL EVERYTHING
Sometimes, there are issues we can’t control. For example, when we arrived in Santiago de Campostela, I seemed to be cursed. We stayed at the oldest hotel in Spain, the Parador de Santiago de Compostela, a 500+ year-old building that was originally a hospital for the those on the Camino de Campostela, a pilgrimage across northern Spain to the Cathedral of St. James.
Though the building itself dated from the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, we’d been assured that it was up-to-date, and in fact, the bathrooms had been remodeled as recently as last year. This remodel did not prevent me (and my college friend and girls’ trip traveling buddy, whom we’ll call Dr. V) from having a Lucy-and-Ethel experience.
Upon our arrival, I went to wash my hands. I barely touched the knob with my ring finger to turn on the water and the entire knob housing fell off into my hand!
Our suitcases were then brought up to the room, so a hotel staffer was nearby; I flagged him down for help, and he sent the engineer, who looked at metal and plastic doodad in my hand, made a face that I inferred meant I was a troublemaker, and communicated to Dr. V in Spanish that he was off to find an essential tool. Within minutes, some spring or other was replaced, and we were back in business.
But wait, there’s more!
Before dinner, my ankles were a little swollen, and because we had both a separate shower (with side-by-side overhead shower heads, which seemed to assume that two people would be showering simultaneously, but in parallel!) and (way across the bathroom) one of those freestanding bathtubs that looked a bit like a gravy boat.
Every since having watched the “Never Bathe on a Saturday” episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show as a child, I’ve always been very cautious in my interactions with hotel bathtubs. So I can assure you, what came next was also not my fault.
(It’s worth watching the entire episode for great belly laughs, but starting from here shows you how Laura Petrie went wrong.)
I turned on the water in the tub, very gently, to ensure that if water was sent to the handheld shower wand, it would not start snaking around and get me soaked.
The joke was on me, however, because although the water did come out of the faucet, a river of water also came out from the (right) knob!
Was I on Candid Camera! (Does that reference dates me?)
While the water from the faucet poured into the tub, the water pouring from the knob gushed over the edge onto the floor, flooding the bathroom. By the time Dr V responded to my shouts, I was in chaos.
I handed her the trash can to collect the water and ran to the room phone to call the front desk. But dialing zero did nothing and I couldn’t get the QR code on the front of the phone to pull up the hotel’s information. I ran back to the bathroom and found that Dr. V was trying (and failing) to wedge the trash can between the wall and the bathtub, so it wasn’t collecting any of the gushing water.
I lifted the can up so that water was pouring directly into the can, and balanced it on the edge of the tub; meanwhile, Dr. V figured out how to call the front desk and spoke in fluent Spanish to explain our predicament. As we waited, I posted in our tour group’s What’sApp group; a more experienced traveler suggested we look for a switch or button near the ceiling for turning off the water.
(Not our shut-off valves, but this is what you should seek in a similar situation.)
Just as I spotted two silver fixtures near the ceiling (and well beyond my reach), the same engineer who’d fixed the sink arrived, looking at us as though we were stupid to not know how to turn off a bathtub faucet. He stormed into the bathroom, attempted to turn the knob from which the water was gushing, and (according to Dr. V) began swearing quietly in Spanish.
The engineer had to turn off the water to the entire bathroom (using the magic shut-off valve fixtures), so we couldn’t use the sinks or the facilities; we just went down early to dinner and used the restrooms there. Happily, by the time we had finished dining several hours later, the front desk was able to tell us that the problem had been fixed, and we returned to a dry bathroom with all the towels replaced. (I did not venture another attempt at the tub.)
TOTO, I DON’T THINK WE’RE IN KANSAS ANYMORE
Traveling exposes us to a wide variety of new foods and cultures, and that’s almost always a good thing. But sometimes, you may find that your travels bring you in contact with mystifying differences.
Three main confounding aspects were showers, air conditioners, and electric lights.
These Are Not the Bathrooms You’re Looking For
If you have never traveled abroad, you might not be aware that European bathrooms are often quite different from ours. For example, most bathrooms include bidets.
In many places, such as Italy and the UK, you’ll generally find that there are no electrical plugs in the bathrooms so as to ensure that visitors do not drop their hair dryers in the sink and electrocute themselves.
But there are other bathroom-y things that confuse North Americans, enough that PBS travel guide extraordinaire Rick Steves’ site has a guide, Europe’s Hotel Bathrooms: What to Expect, covering situations far more complicated than I have faced.
In one least-fancy (though still charming) hotel bathroom in Italy in 2018, the shower was so small that Dr. V could not fully stand up in it (and she’s only 5’8″) and when I raised my arms to wash my hair, at least one elbow hit a wall or escaped the confines of the shower curtain. And in many European bathrooms, non-tub showers have only half doors, so unless you stand immediately under the shower head (or handheld shower) and make very few movements, you will soak your bathroom floor. (Allegedly that this makes things easier to clean, but it’s a source of much moaning by Americans abroad.)
In yet another 500ish-year-old building in Porto, Portugal (this time a former monastery adjacent to a former palace), we had an otherwise modern room until you pulled back the curtains to find stone walls.
However, I’m sure the 16th-century monks did not have to deal with the window built into the wall shared between the bathtub and the bedroom, complete with Venetian blinds on the bedroom side, allowing someone in the bedroom to view a person using the bathroom, and vice versa. (This is apparently a global design trend?)
Organize Yourself for Hotel Showers Abroad
The aforementioned design styles require more acceptance than organizational skill (and I doubt there’s a way around organizing the water not to flood beyond a shower’s half-door). However, figuring out how the showers actually work can require diligent effort.
At home, I pull the handle toward me to turn the water on, turn it left or right to adjust the temperature, and pull up on a doodad on the tub faucet to route the water from shower to tub. In other countries, and particularly as you go from hotel to hotel, the possibilities for “grabbing a quick shower” can seem endless. I advise the following:
- When you arrive at the hotel, test the shower. Unlike in US hotels, due to the “half wall,” you will probably not be able to lean/reach in and turn on the water without getting yourself wet, so don’t do this right before you head to a fancy soirée.
- Figure out which knobs do what. This may or may not be difficult. For example, instead of pulling a knob fully toward you, you may find there’s a metal “lollipop” stick extended from the knob, allowing you to tilt the knob toward you to turn on the water. While extended at that angle from the wall, you may be able to turn it right or left to change the temperature. (Or, sigh, you may not.)
- There may also be flat buttons on the knobs.
- You may need to wear your glasses when examining the shower to look for tiny, sometimes microscopic, writing and/or symbols. (Consider using the magnifying feature on your phone.)
- Look for red marking or C for hot or a blue marking or F for cold. However, know that the C may be Italian or Spanish for caldo/caliente but could also mean calor/central for controls. Or, there may be no markings, or ones that are meaningless to you.
- If experimentation fails you, look for the name of the manufacturer and Google “[the name of the manufacturer] + shower + manual.”
- If you are in the UK and unable to achieve hot water, check for a switch outside the bathroom door. Really.
Few of our bathrooms in Portugal and Spain (or on our trips to Italy and the UK) had tub showers. Instead, one knob determined whether the water came out of an overhead “rainforest” shower head or from a slender handheld shower wand that looked more like a microphone.
In less fancy hotels, the handheld wand is your only option. It sits in a holder along a narrow vertical pipe, with a knob to loosen or tighten, allowing you to raise or lower the wand without having to hold it. The advantage is that you can use both hands to lather up; the disadvantage is that at least half the time, the hold will loosen and the wand will slide lower and lower.
On the rare instances that we had a tub, switching between tub or shower (or allowing both) also involved turning a dial affixed to the inside side-wall of the tub. Seriously, you don’t want to face these options first thing in the morning, without coffee or daylight.
One morning, I could not get the water to turn on at all. Eventually, I had to call on Dr. V to help, and we stood — and this is not hyperbole — for five minutes, working as scientists and discussing the variables, turning the top knob to the left and then the right, turning it to the left while pulling on it, turning the top knob and the bottom one simultaneously. Finally, blasted with scalding water but momentarily excited to have any at all, I eventually cried, “But I don’t know what I did!”
When I finished, I noted that the top knob’s lollipop stick was flat with the wall and pointed to the 3 o’clock position; the bottom was also flush with the wall (once turned off) and pointed to the 7 o’clock position, and gently pulling it toward me would turn the water on without changing the temperature.
I conveyed this to Dr. V, but the next morning, I was awakened by her shouting that she could not get the water on, and I sleepily croaked, “Top flat 3 o’clock, bottom toward you and 7 o’clock.” I encourage you to figure out the showers as early as possible in a hotel stay and then write the instructions with a Sharpie on a sticky note and post it near the shower.
I acknowledge that if you live in Europe, I may sound like the proverbial ugly American, but each morning in a new hotel, our group would meet for breakfast and discuss whether we had figured out the various amenities, with the shower (almost) always being the most difficult.
Take Sides — Advice for Peace in Hotel Bathrooms
When traveling with others, assigning sides, particularly of bathrooms but also sides of the closet, the in-room safe, the mini-fridge, and the top surface of the hotel room desk will prevent confusion and loss of items.
In nicer hotels, we found that bathrooms have two sinks, making it easier to organize our toiletries without getting in one another’s way. Where bathrooms are smaller and there’s only one sink and limited counter space (even with some storage below the sink), dividing the bathroom into “yours” and “mine” may seem like something out of a sitcom, but you’ll thank me later.
If you’re traveling to multiple locations, your side of everything is always on the left or right; if your traveling companion tends not to pay attention to boundaries, separating your own towels (even moving them to the closet until you intend to use them) can help keep the peace. Let’s just say you don’t want to end up like Steve Martin in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.
Keep Your Cool with Hotel Air Conditioning
Air conditioning is not quite as big of a thing in Europe as here, but the hotels in which we stayed promised the availability of A/C through early October. In many hotels, it was as simple as conquering the language barrier (or the pictogram barrier) and figuring out what functions did what.
When you arrive in your hotel room, try to adjust the temperature to what you’d most like it to be when you are sleeping. Almost anyone can muddle through a too-warm or too-cold room for the few minutes you’re in the room during the day, but a trip can be ruined by sleepless nights.
- Make sure you know whether you are turning on the heat (often indicated by a flame or a red thermometer) or the A/C (indicated by a snowflake).
- Adjust the language and change settings to Fahrenheit unless you want to calculate the difference yourself. Officially, the formula is F=(C×9/5)+32, but you’ll get close enough if you double the Celsius temperature and add 32.
- Use the arrows to raise or lower the temperature, usually by half degrees.
- Look for an icon of a running man. In six of the seven hotels at which we stayed during our trip, there was an icon of a running man in the upper right corner of the thermostat display. While traveling, nobody could tell us what it meant. We hadn’t bothered to Google it, but during a post-trip dinner with organizing colleague Ramona Creel, she felt compelled to research it, and found: “The running man icon on a hotel thermostat, often mistakenly thought of as a “running man,” is the “man walking” or “walking man” icon, which indicates that the thermostat is in manual mode. This mode means the temperature is set manually and will not change based on a schedule, unlike other programmed settings.”
- Recognize that in some hotels, the air conditioning units do not turn on if the sensors indicate that the hotel room windows are ajar. (Yes, European hotel room windows open!)
- Know that if you have not turned on the electric power to the room (see the next section), the A/C won’t turn on.
- Sometimes, you will be given a helpful sign. However, you may find that the sign and the thermostat do not match. Note below that three of the five icons in the bottom center of the sign, below, do not appear on the actual thermostat. This, we later learned, was because our hotel in Bielsa, Spain, in the chilly Pyrenees Mountains, did not actually have the A/C turned on. (Possibly in September. Possibly ever.)
If you have difficulties, address the problem with the front desk. In Bilbao, Spain, we failed to check our A/C until the evening, when we found that we could not adjust the temperature more than 3 degrees.
About 11 p.m., I had a complicated conversation with a woman at the front desk in my halting Spanish, followed by a more extensive one with her colleague, in English. He insisted that the default temperature could be lowered by nine degrees; I insisted that it could not. Eventually, he accompanied me to the room, where he pressed the down arrow and pointed victoriously to the screen with whatever the Spanish version of “Ta-Da!” might be, only to realize that it had only lowered three degrees.
Deflated, he said there were no engineers on duty overnight, and we would have to wait until the next day to have the A/C repaired. (And then they forgot to communicate this to the staff. Another piece of organizational travel advice? Double-check everything the night shift promises before you depart for a morning’s travels.)
The next evening, the lovely and charming Eduardo, who spoke no English but seemed to enjoy my Spotify selections while he worked, employed a ladder and drill, took apart the ceiling of our hotel room, and after the better part of an hour with his torso and head invisible to us, replaced a mysterious cylindrical doodad.
As women of a certain age know, sleeping temperature matters.
Traveling is NOT as Easy As Flipping a Light Switch
Having traveled abroad before, Dr. V and I have learned some tricks. For example, we knew that in many hotels, there is no power in your room upon your arrival. You must insert your room key, vertically, to turn on a sensor and allow electricity to flow to the room.
When you check in, make sure that you and your traveling companion each have your own key. Otherwise, if the first person to leave the room departs while you are in the shower and takes her key out of the slot, you will be plunged into darkness. Often, the power does not cut off until ten seconds after the removal, decreasing the likelihood of the departing person recognizing the cause-and-effect.
You, plunged into darkness in a slippery shower will, however, recognize the cause-and-effect.
Also, you may find that in some hotels, in lieu of using your actual hotel room key card, a grocery store loyalty card may work just as well. In four of the five hotels in which we stayed that used key cards and not old-fashioned keys, the cards from prior hotels served our needs.
As with showers and air conditioners, the light switches (which are more rocker panels than switches) in some hotels can be mystifying. Our fabulous tour director for the trip warned us as we arrived at one hotel that although he’s stayed there multiple times, he had, on more than one occasion, had to call the front desk and have someone come up and turn the lights off so that he could go to bed. He was not joking.
In one hotel, Dr. V and I had to sleep with the bathroom light on; elsewhere, one of us had to cope with bright overhead light in the room being on while the other took her (pre-dawn) morning shower because we could only get ALL the lights on. And once, we had to have someone from housekeeping re-program the lights in our room because none of the bathroom lights would come on.
When you arrive in your room, note the following:
- Many hotel rooms have a master switch (whether or not there’s a key card sensor) that turns on the power to all of the other switches (and the A/C). Turn it on, and then you should be able to turn on (and off) the other lights at will. However, anticipate that the cleaning staff will turn this off, and you’ll be starting from scratch when you return to the room each evening.
- There are often duplicate light switches for overhead lights — one by the entry and one in the bedroom area.
- There are sometimes semi-master light switches near the bed that will operate overhead lights, along with the lights that work the bedside lamps. Sometimes, only your companions switch will work the overhead lights…or your bedside light.
- If you have a lamp that you can’t turn off from any switch (even the switch that turned it on), look for an outlet. You may just be able to unplug it.
- Once you figure out what the lights are for, seriously consider labeling a sticky note with what the light does. It may save you from stubbed toes, sleepless nights, and the embarrassment of having to ask Housekeeping for the equivalent of night-night service.
ONE LAST BIT OF TRAVEL ADVICE
Aside from the aforementioned bidet, using your hotel bathroom’s facilities probably won’t be difficult. But public restrooms are a different story altogether.
In Italy and Spain, depending on the quality of the bathroom (bus station vs. fancy restaurant), you may find yourself in a stall without a toilet seat. (Ladies, practice your hovering skills.)
More often, you may find yourself without toilet paper. Once, a bus station bathroom was the only public facility open on a Sunday afternoon. No toilet paper. While awaiting (dreading?) my turn, I shouted to the “the husbands” as we collectively referenced the men on the trip. One hubby pulled a long strip of TP off and handed it to us to parcel out. A moment later, a different husband had jiggled the machinery and pried loose a giant roll of toilet paper, the diameter of a large pizza, complete with the inner metal and plastic fittings, and handed it off to the women.
Paper Doll‘s advice:
- Never pass up an opportunity to use the bathroom.
- Don’t go to the bathroom by yourself. You never know when you’ll need assistance, especially if you’re traveling where you don’t speak the local language.
- Always carry tissues, toilet paper, napkins, or something that approximates their function in your purse, pack, or jacket.
Thank me later.
Organize and Lower Your Medical Bills: Spot Errors, Negotiate Costs, and Save Money
Last week, after I shared How to Track, Lower, or Cancel Your Recurring Subscription-Based Bills, a number of readers and clients were curious about the bill negotiation services listed, and quite a few wished there were a similar service for other types of expenses. In particular, I kept hearing that people wanted help negotiating (and fixing) bloated medical bills.
Estimations vary widely, but according to the latest medical billing statistics, upward of 80% of (non-pharmaceutical) medical bills contain errors that end up resulting in extra costs. This is problematic for everyone: you get bills you can’t afford, the providers don’t always get paid what they are due, and it all leads to widespread mistrust of the healthcare industry, per Medical Billing Errors Statistics: Impact on Patient Trust – A Complete Analysis.
WHY ARE THERE SO MANY ERRORS IN MEDICAL BILLING?
- Complexity — The US healthcare system has a hugely complex set of billing procedures. The more complex any system, the more you introduce the possibility of mistakes. Errors could be made by healthcare providers in billing or by insurance companies in the process of reimbursing medical costs.
- Failure to verify insurance — Although every doctor’s office and medical facility asks you for your insurance card, photocopies it, and queries whether your insurance has changed, that doesn’t mean that the person whose job it is to do the typey-typey will actually enter the information correctly. I’ve often seen clients have their old insurance companies/plans billed even after they’ve changed policies or gone on Medicare.
- Data entry errors and poor medical coding — Did you know that 52% of denied claims are due to coding mistakes? And almost 70% of billing errors are related to coding mistakes!
When you go to the doctor or to a hospital, various staff members are responsible for documenting what happened (what lab tests were run, what medications were given, what procedures were performed, etc.).
Next, someone has to enter the codes for each of those tests, medications, or procedures by selecting the proper code (from thousands) and then typing that code.
Bad handwriting, mistyping, or miscommunication on the part of the healthcare worker(s), and mis-coding are all possibilities for introducing mistakes. In terms of miscoding, it can be an issue of typing the wrong code, outright, or unbundling (where they mistakenly bill for multiple coded procedures or services that should be covered by one comprehensive, collective code).
- Poor training, disorganized billing procedures, and delayed filing — Healthcare provider offices generally do a great job at providing healthcare, but often struggle with hiring and maintaining a back office that handles billing and insurance issues.
One of my clients owned a (let’s call it) healthcare-adjacent office; a staffer involved in billing was unsure of some insurance procedures and had somehow failed to submit insurance billing for an entire subsection of patients for more than a year before the behavior was uncovered. How would you feel about getting a healthcare bill 18 months after services were rendered? How likely is it your insurance company would pay it?
- Red tape — Every year, changes in the software (and now, introduction of artificial intelligence) in medical records software means new opportunities for someone, somewhere, to make a boo-boo.
It’s not just the billing department’s fault!
On top of the creation of such errors, the perpetuation of them is, sadly, laid at the feet of healthcare consumers (i.e., patients).
Yes, it’s the job of the various levels of administration in the healthcare community to stop making these errors, but in the end, it’s our responsibility to know what our insurance policies cover, review our bills when they arrive, compare the bills with our insurance coverage, research whatever seems like an overage, and question excess charges.
Yes, I heard you groan.
None of this means you’re stuck with massive bills. You have options for verifying the charges, lowering costs, and even getting help reducing and paying for correct bills.
According to a 2023 University of Southern California study, 25% of individuals “who reached out for any reason had their bill corrected,” and a significant number were able to acquire a payment plan or lowered rates. 74% of those who sought help for a billing error reported the mistake was corrected, and of those who sought help with an unaffordable bill, 76% received some kind of financial relief. Among those attempting some kind of price negotiation, 62% got a lower bill.
So, it’s worth trying to solve the problem, but it all starts with organizing yourself to set the record straight!
HOW TO DIY ASSESS AND NEGOTIATE YOUR MEDICAL BILLS
When a medical bill arrives, don’t be too quick to pay it. Instead, follow this path:
- Know how your insurance plan works. If don’t have a handle on it, read Paper Doll Explains Your Health Insurance Explanation of Benefits.
- What’s your deductible (and have you reached it yet)?
- Have you reached your out-of-pocket maximum for the year?
- Examine your bill — Yes, you have to open your mail. I know it can seem scary, but just like you must see the doctor rather than just hoping an illness or injury will go away, you have to investigate your bills.
- Are the dates of service accurate? Are you being charged for services on dates you weren’t even there?
If you’re in the ER on a Friday night and the hospitalist (the doctor who oversees your case while you’re there) writes orders to admit you, but there’s no room available until Saturday at Noon, you might get billed for an ER visit on Friday night as well as a hospital room for Friday, Saturday, and however many more days you’re hospitalized, even though you never had a room on Friday. That can be a multi-thousand-dollar mistake!
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- If it says why you were treated or seen, does the description of services, procedures, or tests seem right?
- Is there something weird on the bill? People have been charged ridiculous amounts for “mucous recovery systems.” That’s a box of tissues.
- Are there outsized charges for toiletry items or “administering” over-the-counter medications? An overzealous keystroke could turn a 1 into a 10 or a 10 into 100 count, dramatically increasing costs.
- Request an itemized bill — If you’re dealing with a hospital, the initial bill they send you is a big, fat summary that gives you no indication of what they’re saying they provided. Immediately call to request an itemized bill; if they give you guff, send a request via Certified Mail. Once you get the itemized summary, scrutinize it like it’s your job.
- Review it in detail, line-by-line. Can you square the referenced services with your experiences? If you were unconscious or otherwise unaware of every type of treatment you received, you should still be able to note anything egregious. Are they saying they amputated a limb that you still have? That they removed an appendix that’s still inside you (or that you had removed several years previous to this claim)? I recently read about a woman who fought a hospital charge for a circumcision — for her infant daughter!
- Do you see any duplicate charges?
- Were you charged for something that should have been included? Most insurance plans don’t let surgeons charge for follow-up office visits within 90 days of a major surgery or 10 days of minor surgeries.
- Check to see if the coding is accurate — In addition to incorrect codes due to human error, fraudulent charges may come from “upcoding” where a procedure or treatment is coded as something more complex than what you received. Coding includes:
- Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes for procedures (developed by the American Medical Association)
- ICD-10-CM for diagnoses
- HCPCS Level II for supplies, drugs, and services not covered by CPT codes (developed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
- Cross-reference your bill and your Explanation of Benefits (EOB), whether on paper or in your insurance plan dashboard.
- Has your medical provider already (and properly) billed your insurance company? If your bill seems Daddy-Shark-sized, it may be that the provider sent you a bill without having already processed the claim through your insurance.
- Check to make sure the healthcare provider filed the claim with the right insurance company.
- Look at your EOB to see if your insurance plan has rejected the claim. If so, you’ll likely see remark codes, letters or numbers next to why the claim was not paid. Somewhere in the EOB will be footnotes corresponding remark codes, clues to potential errors in the coding. I once helped a client figure out that her doctor’s office filed a claim stating that she’d had two flu shots, 30 days apart. She’d actually had one flu shot and then, the next month, the first of two Shingles vaccinations.
- The remark codes may also tell you that the reason your claim was not paid is valid. For example, most insurance companies only cover an A1C blood test for people with diabetes every 90 or 120 days; while your provider’s office should know this and not perform tests more often, it’s ultimately your responsibility to make sure you know what your insurance plan will cover and call your provider’s attention to conflicts before you accept service.
- Research the average cost (in your state) of whatever medical procedure you had done. Both the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project and the Healthcare Bluebook have databases spelling out these costs. You can also use FairHealthConsumer.org to find the fair market price of medical procedures.
- Make a list of the issues in bullet-point form so that you are clear on what you want to explain and challenge. Take note of the claim number(s) so that the healthcare provider billing office and/or insurance company knows which claims you’re discussing.
- Call your healthcare provider’s billing office.
- Be polite. It’s the old, “You get more flies with honey than you do with vinegar” routine, although nobody ever wants flies. But you do want fewer pesky charges.
- Stick to the point. They can’t help you if they aren’t clear on the problem.
- Detail what looks wrong, using your list to guide you. Let them know you think there are (or may be) administrative or medial errors in the billing and specify your evidence.
- Ask for clarification — in writing, if necessary.
- Don’t agree to pay if you still don’t understand a charge, or think they’re still mistaken.
- Dispute bills you think are still wrong with your provider and/or insurer. Consider seeking outside assistance (as described below).
- Negotiate payment options, if necessary — If the bill is correct, you still have alternatives if you can’t afford to pay it now and in full. Many providers, particularly hospitals, will work with you to arrange payment plans, lump sum discounts, or even financial hardship assistance (also called charity care or uncompensated care).
SEEK ASSISTANCE NEGOTIATING YOUR MEDICAL BILLS
DIY is great, because you reap all of the cost savings.
DIY is also awful, because you have to spend your precious time on the phone with medical billing department phone trees, weary employees, and insurance providers. If you’re still recovering from whatever caused you to need medical care, or if you have a chronic condition, this may use up all of your time, energy, and spoons.
And, of course, if you are recovered and back to work, you’re probably trying to maximize your time to catch up on everything you missed while being waylaid by illness or injury.
How do you decide it’s time to bring in outside help?
- If you’re feeling so overwhelmed by the process that you procrastinate on even picking up the phone, that’s a good indication that progress won’t be made without support. The longer you go without addressing bills that seem wrong, the less likely you’ll be to recoup mistaken or excessive charges.
- If your bill is enormous or your insurance issues are complex, and you’ve got no idea where to start, get help.
- If you suspect that the crazy-huge bill isn’t merely because they forgot to bill your insurance company but because there are errors or overcharges for which you don’t feel confident about your investigative skills, call in the experts.
- If you’ve already attempted to negotiate wackadoodle charges or resolve disputes and all you’ve got to show for it is an empty bottle of Tylenol for your headache, sore throat, and cauliflower ear from battling billing departments by phone.
How to Find Experts to Help with Negotiating Medical Bills
If you’re overwhelmed by the DIY process, seek a professional. As a Certified Professional Organizer, I have done the legwork with clients to help them handle the DIY portion of the medical billing nightmare. I’ve sorted and collated paperwork, helped clients draft letters requesting itemized billing, and sat by their side on speakerphone, helping interpret medical billing language and supporting them while they ask questions.
However, this isn’t my area of expertise; while I’ve racked up many hours in solving my own and my clients’ medical billing headaches, it’s always best to call upon an specialist. Similarly, just as many of my NAPO colleagues who specialize in financial organizing may be able to offer support, so too may our fello specialists in the American Association of Daily Money Managers (AADMM).
But your best bet, particularly if you’ve got frustrating, complicated, or huge medical billing issues, is to work with an expert.
Medical Billing Specialists
In general, seek someone using the professional title of medical billing advocate or medical bill negotiator.
This kind of specialist can review your bills for both obvious errors (like billing an elderly man for removal of an ovary or billing you for medication you never received and which would never be used to treat whatever you had) and mystifying coding errors, as well as instances of overcharging.
Then, with your authorization, they can negotiate with healthcare providers and insurance companies on your behalf to reduce costs.
Medical billing advocates and negotiators specialize in reviewing medical bills, cross-referencing them with insurance, and identifying errors (and instances of fraud). Their services also include negotiating with healthcare and insurance providers to correct the errors, obtain discounted rates, and sometimes get more beneficial payment arrangements.
To find a medical billing advocate to analyze and potentially negotiate your errant healthcare bills, start with the professional directories in this field:
- National Association of Healthcare Advocacy (NAHAC)
- Alliance of Professional Health Advocates (APHA)
- UMBRA Health Advocacy
- Greater National Advocates
If the sticky wicket of the billing problem is your insurance company, an associated organization is the Alliance of Claims Assistance Professionals and Advocates (ACAP), whose members provide medical claims assistance and patient advocacy for a fee.
Note: some advocates and specialists will work on a contingency basis, taking a cut of whatever they save you; others will charge a flat fee. Before engaging the services of a professional, make sure you understand their billing methods.
Related Specialists
Additionally, the Patient Advocate Foundation (PAF) connects healthcare consumers and their families with case managers who can help with both health and expense-related support, including access to care, assisting with applications for health insurance and related government programs, appealing insurance denials, getting support for co-pays and insurance premiums, applying for free or low-cost healthcare programs, and obtaining billing discounts or setting up payment plans.
Other professionals may also be able to provide support. For example, patient advocates (whether independent, associated with healthcare systems, or provided by your employers’ Employee Assistance Program (EAP)) may be able to walk you through the wonkiest parts of the billing and insurance and help you resolve questions and problems.
If you suspect fraud or are dealing with a particularly complex legal dispute, you may need to hire an attorney specializing in the legal side of resolving medical billing claims. And, if you do believe you’re dealing with an instance of fraudulent medical billing, you might want to contact the offices of your state’s attorney general or insurance commissioner.
ENGAGE A BIG MEDICAL BILL NEGOTIATION COMPANY
Between the time I started researching this post and publication, a number of the larger billing negotiation companies, designed to take advantages of scale to negotiate billing on a patient’s behalf, like CoPatient, have ceased operations. Still, you do have options.
Medical Cost Advocate
Medical Cost Advocate (MCA) — In addition to medical bills, MCA also negotiates dental bills and health insurance claims. They also provide on-call advocacy for employer groups, and concierge healthcare advocacy services for families and executives needing more ongoing insurance and billing assistance than they have time to address.
Once you create a personally-identifying account profile (a step you can skip on future visits), use your login ID to share billing information, check the status of any bill negotiation, and review a final report of any achieved savings.
Start with some data entry. Confirm information about the patient (whether that’s you or your dependent), like date of birth, mailing address, phone number, etc. Include your insurance provider’s information (if you have coverage) to cross reference who has responsibility for which costs.
Next, either upload the bill or enter the billing information in their system so MCA has information about the medical provider, the procedure or services to be assessed and negotiated, the amount already paid and/or still due, and the status, such as whether you have submitted the bill to your insurance carrier.
You’ll also enter payment authorization for MCA’s negotiation services, approve the terms and conditions, and authorize a credit or debit charge (equal to the percentage of the savings they negotiate).
MCA charges 35% of the total savings achieved on negotiated medical bills, and takes nothing if not successful. When everything is complete, you’ll get emailed a savings report.
Note that Medical Cost Advocates won’t take on billing negotiations for costs under $600, so this is better used for big bills related to a hospitalization or root canal, not your doctor’s office co-pay.
MCA claims that their services typically save their clients anywhere from 20% to 50%. While there’s no guarantee your bill will be lowered, bill submission process is easy enough to make it worth your (small) effort.
Goodbill
Goodbill offers similar medical bill negotiation services but specializes in hospital billing.
Goodbill’s user interface is intuitive. You start with a simple screen that asks you basic questions about your experience and the billing.
After you authorize Goodbill to access your hospital bill and medical records, they combine team expertise with Goodbill’s AI software to review and analyze your bill and medical records with the goal of identifying bogus, unnecessary, or inflated charges, bad coding, or related mistakes.
If Goodbill finds discrepancies between what they should have billed and what they did bill, they’ll sent you a draft of a formal negotiation letter, enumerating the mistakes and the possible savings. If you approve, Goodbill will forward the letter to the hospital and follow-up with negotiations as necessary until the problem is resolved.
Goodbill charges a fee only if they’re able to negotiate a discount. While I could not identify the specific fee structure on their site, it’s a percentage of the savings, with a cap of $1,000.
If you’re unable/unwilling to follow the DIY approach to negotiated your costs in the first place, there’s no monetary risk to you to turn the problem over to either company.
DollarFor
Although DollarFor previously offered medical bill negotiation services, they have suspended this offering. However, they have a robust library of DIY negotiation tips and resources, including a hardship letter template, a sample negotiation script, and settlement letter template, worth your exploration.
MEDICAL BILLING IMPACT ON CREDIT HISTORY
Finally, know that medical debt no longer has the same impact on your credit score as before. As of April 2023, the major credit reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) have made the following changes:
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Debts smaller than $500 aren’t listed on credit reports and no longer impact credit scores.
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Consumers have a one-year grace period before medical bills in collection appear on credit reports, providing ample time review, negotiate, and resolve disputes over medical billing and insurance errors.
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Repaid older debts should be removed from your credit report. Unpaid medical debt older than one year and greater than $500 will still show up on your credit reports for up to seven years, potentially damaging credit scores. However, if you (or your insurer) repay medical debt already in collections, the credit bureaus will remove the debt from your reports.
How to Track, Lower, or Cancel Your Recurring Subscription-Based Bills
Subscriptions aren’t just for magazines anymore. Financially speaking, a subscription is anything for which you have an ongoing expense for a non-essential service. And I bet you have a bunch of them.
According to a recent study by CNET, American adults spend an average of $90 per month on subscriptions. Additionally, another study found almost one-half (48%) of those surveyed registered for at least one free trial and then forgot or neglected to cancel.
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
WHAT IS A SUBSCRIPTION MANAGER?
A subscription manager is an app or platform that centralizes information to help users gain better control over their finances and make more informed spending decisions. Most track, organize, and manage recurring payments for subscriptions by:
- scanning bank and credit card information to identify subscriptions
- listing all subscriptions in one place
- tracking expense increases over time to help analyze spending patterns and identify opportunities to reduce costs
- organizing and sorting by subscription name, cost, billing cycle, or due date
- identifying redundancies (like a standalone subscription for a streaming service as well as one acquired through an Amazon Prime 7-day trial)
- setting up payment reminders before renewals or payment due dates (to help avoid late fees or unintended renewals of free trials or forgotten subscriptions)
Additionally, some subscription management tools and apps can negotiate costs or assist in canceling subscriptions, making it easier to terminate services you no longer need.
CONSIDERATIONS FOR CHOOSING A SUBSCRIPTION TRACKER
Price
Look for free options, or free tiers (or trials) on platforms that offer multiple levels. You can always upgrade if a premium tier offers a feature you find beneficial once you’ve mastered the free plan. Too often, we sign up for paid software-as-a-service plans and don’t them; a tracker will reverse that habit, so don’t go to all the effort to get rid of your other recurring payments only to end up with one for a tracker you don’t need!
Remember: platforms with services to negotiate a discount or rebate for a forgotten/unused subscription will take a portion — like a finder’s fee — of what they’ve saved you for the coming year. There’s no such thing as a free lunch; in return for picking up your lunch tab (that is, negotiating the refund after cancelation or price reduction) the app gets your pickle or a handful of your fries!
Security
In order to track your expenses to find recurring costs, these platforms must access your bank accounts and credit cards. Thus, protect your online safety by verifying that whatever platform you choose uses:
- bank-level security
- end-to-end encryption
- two-factor authentication
Once you find a service that passes those tests, dig into their boilerplate security and privacy language to make sure the app doesn’t sell or share any of your personal information.
Features and Functions
A subscription tracker will analyze the data in your bank and credit card statements to identify recurring charges and create reminders about them.
More advanced trackers should be able to cancel subscriptions with minimal input from you, negotiate lower bills on your behalf, and if part of a larger financial dashboard suite, help you quickly and easily create a budget.
Ease of Use
The point of a subscription expense tracker is to make your life easier. You want an app that’s intuitive so you’ll be able to add, delete, or change information or navigate your way around without much study. If an app is has so many bells and whistles that you have to consult Google or Chat GPT for instructions so managing the software becomes a second job, you won’t use it.
Read reviews to make sure it will be relatively easy to:
- set up and sync the app with the information in bank and credit card accounts
- identify recurring payments and set reminders to pay them
- navigate the app
- negotiate billing with relatively little input on your part
- cancel accounts with minimal effort
DO I REALLY NEED AN APP TO TRACK, LOWER OR CANCEL SUBSCRIPTION COSTS?
Short answer? No, you don’t.
I call SiriusXM every year to lower my costs, and help clients do the same. I can’t fathom why anyone would actually spend the exorbitant full price, but the “negotiated” lower cost feels reasonable.
How to DIY Your Subscription Management
Canceling a subscription-based service (unless it’s a gym membership) is also fairly straightforward, but not fun.
If you’re organized, patient, and diligent, especially if you don’t have a lot of subscriptions, you can handle the process yourself:
1) Create a spreadsheet with columns for the subscribed service or license, how you pay for it, when it renews (monthly, quarterly, annually), and the cost.
2) Pull up the past year of bank and credit card statements.
Why a year? Although many subscription-based transactions are monthly, some are paid quarterly or annually. Streaming services generally charge monthly, but I have a marketing-based service for my business that, until last year, charged me quarterly. And once a year, I pay Apple for ongoing Applecare and an online service to protect this blog from the thousands of attempted comment spams. These subscriptions are easy to forget!
3) List your recurring expenses, starting with your most recent statement.
Run your fingers down the transactions, and each time you spot a new one, log the key elements.
4) Work your way through a statement until you’ve captured every recurring expense until you’ve reviewed a year’s worth of statements and aren’t finding previously un-logged subscriptions. You will find more than you realized.
5) Repeat the process with every bank account and credit card statement.
6) Group the recurring expenses in an appropriate category. For example:
- Entertainment — streaming video and audio, paid podcasts, Patreon memberships
- Utilities — telephone, cable, internet, security systems
- Fitness — gym, online workout classes, premium apps for devices like Fitbit or Peleton
- Health — supplement subscriptions, concierge medical services
- Food — meal prep services, food delivery services
- Professional expenses at the paid tier — Zoom Pro, Evernote, AI tools, Microsoft 365
7) Evaluate each item by category.
- Are there duplicates, like an ad-supported Hulu subscription offered through your cable company as well as a paid bundle for Disney+ and Hulu?
- Do you have unnecessary subscriptions, like a membership to a gym where you no longer live?
- Do you have subscriptions that you never use? Are the apps are no longer appealing? Does something make them difficult to use? Do you just need someone to guide you until you master it and take advantage of what it has to offer?
8) Contact each vendor to negotiate costs or cancel services you don’t want to accept as-is.
Whew. There are several disadvantages to this process.
- It takes time. If you call, you may have to navigate a complex phone tree, repeatedly hearing how important your call is, and sit on hold for eons.
- They may give you a hard sell or push you to upgrade, convincing you that your cable and internet costs will decrease if you add cell service through them, but then you’d have to port your number from your original cell company, which you may like, lose your legacy status, and have to deal with those annoyances, and may find your rates going up a year hence. Be strong!
Recently, I worked with a client with cognitive decline; they sign up for services the don’t need; we call, they authorize me to speak on their behalf, and usually, we accomplish our goals fairly easily.
However, one company that keeps calling and tricking her has a habit of asking invasive and unnecessary questions, over and over, about why we wants to cancel and attempts to scare us into what will happen without this expensive auto part protection on the 11-year-old car that’s almost never used.
Having more moxy than Chandler Bing, I just keep insisting that we does not want the service anymore, and by law we have the right to cancel. (Occasionally, I have to invoke the possibility of calling the Attorney General of the state in which they’re headquartered.)
- It involves talking to other people. If you’re an introvert (or a young millennial or GenZ), the idea of having to talk to someone on the phone may nauseate you.
- It’s frustrating to talk to a bot (or an online agent typing from a bot-like script).
- You’ll still have to monitor your bill to make sure that your charges are reduced or stopped.
- You’ll have to schedule reminders to prompt you to cancel free trials before you get charged.
Can you pause subscriptions instead of canceling them?
Maybe you’d rather temporarily stop paying for a subscription while you can’t use the service. For example, when my car was stolen [Organize to Prevent (or Recover From) a Car Theft], I didn’t want to pay for Sirius XM for the two months my Kia was being repaired. I paused my subscription, but they sent me a notice after four weeks that they were going to start charging again, and I had to call to re-pause it.
There are a few reasons you might want to pause instead of cancel:
Maintain your viewing or listening history — Got a busy few months at work and won’t be able to watch your favorite shows? Maybe you’ll be traveling in the Australian Outback and won’t have cell signal to listen to streaming music and podcasts? When you’re ready again, you want your apps to show you what episodes you left off at and what’s on your to-be-watched lists.
Avoid the re-subscription process — If you can pause your subscription, returning to the service will be much easier and you won’t lose any of your preferences settings.
Eliminate guilt over paying for services you don’t use — Whether it’s a gym membership you can’t use while healing from a knee replacement or a streaming service you won’t watch while traveling or working, this can be a pause that refreshes.
Use a pause to “churn” streaming television services. When you’ve watched everything you want to see on Netflix, pause your subscription for six months and binge all the streaming Star Trek Paramount+ has to offer. (Strange New Worlds is fabulous!)
- Hulu lets you pause for up to 12 weeks.
- Amazon Prime Video lets you pause indefinitely during the cancellation process. Note: you must pause all of your Prime benefits.
- Netflix has no official pause feature, but canceling your subscription provides a 10-month grace period for your account and viewing history.
- Disney+ is rolling out the ability to pause subscriptions
- Sling TV, Fubo, and YouTube TV all have pause features.
Be creative! Call any service you’re paying for but underusing, and ask whether you can pause instead of cancel. You never know which companies will be eager to keep you on with hopes and expectations you’ll return.
Call any service you're paying for but underusing, and ask whether you can pause instead of cancel. You never know which companies will be eager to keep you on with hopes and expectations you'll return. Share on X
Pause Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Does this DIY approach give you a headache?
Reduce pain points by dealign with the subscriptions on one credit card at a time, or make one call a week. Or change all recurring expenses so that they go to just one credit card on which you otherwise never charge anything, making it easier to manually track expenses going forward.
But you’ll still have to call and negotiate on your own.
YOUR SUBSCRIPTION MANAGEMENT OPTIONS
If you just want someone to cancel your subscriptions but your mom isn’t willing to do it for you, try:
Billshark
Billshark — will cancel or negotiate internet, wireless, streaming TV and satellite radio, and audiobook subscriptions. They even handle Dollar Shave Club and StitchFix! It costs $9 per canceled subscription, and 40% of your total negotiated savings, capped at two years (so check the value of what you’re canceling against the costs of using the service as a personal expense hitman).
Billshark doesn’t track expenses; rather, you upload a bill and they negotiate on your behalf; for cancellations, they try to negotiate credits or refunds. They claim a 90% success rate and take no fee if they don’t succeed in saving you money. They also track your savings’ expirations and automatically restart negotiations to keep you at the best rate.
Billshark may uncover better rates if you change plans, but seeks your authorization to make changes, and will never lower your service level, though sometimes, they can “expand services (higher speed, more channels, etc…).”
If you want it all — an entire financial suite for tracking your recurring expenses (and more) but also want help negotiating or cancelling services, try:
Rocket Money
Rocket Money (iOS, Android, web browser) — Previously called TrueBill, RocketMoney is one of the biggest names in this realm. Rocket Money’s basic plan is free; the Premium tiers are $6-$12/month with a 7-day free trial.
The basic level links bank and credit cards to the app, identifies recurring payments, and sends alerts if your checking balance goes below, or your credit card spending exceeds, a pre-arranged amount.
Rocket Money Premium include negotiating bills, canceling unwanted subscriptions, and tracking net worth and credit scores (VantageScore 3.0 credit score and Experian credit report), as well providing auto savings, customizable savings categories, and unlimited budgets.
Rocket Money retains 35% to 60% of the savings earned on bills it negotiates.
In terms of security, Rocket Money uses an encrypted token to access transaction data and uses Plaid API (so login credentials aren’t stored in the Rocket Money system). It hosts its servers at Amazon Web Services and provides bank-level 256-bit encryption.
(This video, from when Rocket Money was still called TrueBill, illustrates the cancelation process.)
Hiatus
Hiatus (iOS, Android, web browsers) — The basic Hiatus plan is free, while Hiatus Premium costs $9.99/month or $35.99/year. Unlike many of the other apps, Hiatus does not take a percentage of the saving you get from its bill negotiation services.
Hiatus is designed primarily as an app for budgeting, letting you set limits on spending for streaming services and displaying spending over the prior week/month/year. However, its free tier includes a subscription tool for tracking streaming services; you can manually input anything not pre-set in the app.
To use the subscription cancelation and/or bill negotiation service, upgrade to the Premium.
Hiatus protects user financial data with 256-bit SSL encryption.
Trim
Trim (web browser) — is free, but it isn’t a traditional app. Instead, you access your account via the web and communicate with Trim agents via SMS text messages or Facebook Messenger.
Trim links to all of your credit and bank accounts and then locates and cancels unwanted subscriptions (including phone, internet, cable, streaming services, and gym memberships) and will negotiate bills with a service fee equivalent to 33% of any savings recouped.
For a separate fee, Trim will identify less expensive auto insurance rates and negotiate bills. There’s also a Trim Simple Savings high-yield savings account with a 4% annualized bonus on the first $2,000 you save.
Trim employs 256-bit SSL encryption and two-factor authentication.
Trim has an intriguing approach, but I advise against using Facebook Messenger to communicate about your finances!
This the least informative but most adorable of all the subscription tracker videos.
Albert
Albert (iOS, Android, web browser) — In addition to budgeting and investing services, Albert has bill negotiation and cancelation services. It automatically scan bills found in checking or credit card accounts for extra savings, or you can submit a bill for the expert negotiators to process. Albert costs $14.99/month after a 30-day free trial for a Basic plan, $19.99 for a Standard plan including data protection, credit score monitoring and more; a $39.99/month Albert Genius plan is required for subscription negotiation and canceling.
If you really want a subscription tracker to keep you focused on how much you’re being charged, for what, and when, but don’t need help with canceling or negotiating, subscriptions there are a variety of options:
Pocketguard
Pocketguard (iOS and Android) — PocketGuard has a free 7-day trial and a free version that’s kind of hard to find (see video below); for unlimited categories and bank connections, rollover budgeting, subscription tracking, and customized financial goals, upgrade to PocketGuard Plus for $12.99/month or $74.99/year.
Pocketguard is primarily a budgeting app, picking up where the late, lamented Mint left off. It links to your various accounts to track income, ongoing expenses, and savings goals and provide guidance on suggested daily spending limits in the “Leftover” section. It tracks expenses and categorizes them (though you can customize the categories). Pocketguard also alerts you to approaching billing due dates and potential fraud situations.
Pocketguard partners with Billshark to negotiate lower bills and takes an undefined cut of the savings.
PocketGuard uses bank-level encryption, and limits access through both PINs and biometric methods like FaceID and TouchID. Users can automatically connect and import data from their accounts to Pocketguard using Plaid or Finicity. At the Plus tier, add cash accounts manually and track them, and get a debt payoff plan.
The guidance page for how you log and mark Pocketguard’s bills makes it seem possibly more laborious than my DIY model. Your mileage may vary. For more, financial coach Brittany Flammer has a great updated review.
Track My Subs
Track My Subs (web browsers) — This Australian app lets you track up to ten subscriptions on the free plan; paid plans range from $10/month for unlimited subscriptions to $30/month for enterprise-level plans for multiple users.
Track My Subs is marketed for small business use, but the website can can be used by individual consumers, making it an interesting option for solopreneurs. There’s no mobile app; instead, it’s browser-based, and you do the labor: enter your subscriptions, periodic costs, and due dates. It supports multiple foreign currencies, and your own bills can be converted to a “home” currency.
Categorize subscriptions however you like, and use the color-code calendar view to track payment dates and the generated graphs of subscription expenses to analyze your costs. You’ll have to do your own negotiations and canceling. One of my favorite tech guys, Steve Dotto of Dottotech, explains why he likes Track My Subs:
Pocketsmith
Pocketsmith (web browsers; mobile apps are not fully-functional) — Not to be confused with Pocketguard, Pocketsmith has a free level with six months of projections for two accounts and twelve budgets, and you must manually import expenses. For $9.99/month, on the Foundation level, you can automatically import transactions, and have unlimited accounts and budgets. There’s also Flourish ($16.99) and Fortune ($26.66) levels for finding and organizing transactions, as well as budgeting, projecting, cash-flow forecasting, and reporting. If you miss Mint, this finance-management option is robust and has bank-level security with 2-factor authentication.
Quicken Simplifi
Quicken Simplifi (iOS and Android) — There’s no free tier or trial, but you can request a refund within first 30 days of your $5.99/month for a month-to-month subscription or $2.99/month for an annual subscription (billed annually at $35.88).
Simplifi is a budgeting app that can track subscription spending; it also offers automatic budgeting, shares spending insights, and tracks goals. Customizable reports track income, savings, and spending, income and your personalized spending plan adjusts in real-time. There’s also an investments dashboard, refund tracker, and credit monitoring function.
Simplifi syncs with bank, credit card, and investment accounts, loans, and financial data from bank servers transmitted using 256-bit encryption.
Monarch Money
Monarch Money (iOS, Android, web browsers — Identifies and tracks recurring bills and subscriptions, and alerts users to upcoming payments. Monarch Money is designed as a comprehensive financial planning tool, with a focus on budgeting, investment and net worth tracking, and long-term financial goals. There’s a 7-day free trial, after which it costs $14.99 per month or $99.99 per year. (There’s a 50% discount for the first year with code MONARCHVIP.)
Other apps and financial dashboards for tracking subscriptions include:
Subtrack (iOS and Mac only) — This privacy-focused app lets you quickly add subscriptions from a pre-existing list of 300+ options or create your own and manage them by tag. Customize themes and icons, get detailed spending insights, drag-and-drop information, and sync with iCloud.
Origin (iOS, Android, MacOS, and web browsers) — This is a full financial dashboard with elements for investing, net worth tracking, forecasting, and estate planning. After a free trial, the monthly plan is $12.99; an annual plan is $99.
Subscriptions (iOS, MacOS) — Focused solely on subscriptions, this app organizes subscriptions using categories, due dates, tags, and payment accounts, and offers comprehensive analytics with summarizing charts. It supports more than160 currencies with daily updated exchange rates, and has a widget for reminders of upcoming payments. It’s $1.99/year, $7.99 for a lifetime license, or $14.99 for a lifetime Family license.
Subby (Android-only; don’t confuse with similarly-named Apple App Store app) —The basic level (with ads) is free; an ad-free tier is $2.99. A customizable interface makes it easy to manually enter an unlimited number of subscriptions, record which account they’re associated with, and get notifications about upcoming payment dates.
Credit Card Subscription Management
Finally, you may find that your credit cards have subscription managers embedded in their mobile apps. For example, Capital One’s app has a full suite of subscription management tools through which you can track or block expenses, and even cancel subscriptions.
How do you manage your subscriptions?
How to Stay Organized When Travel Goes Off the Rails (or Runway)
Summertime is a high travel season. If you’re ceaselessly online, when you hear “travel,” you’re probably stuck on the non-stop loop of “Nothing Beats a Jet 2 Holiday.” (If you just got the jingle out of your head, I’m sorry.)
Otherwise, you’re either traveling, yourself, or comparing travel horror stories. But as you’ll see, a little organization can make these experiences a little easier to stand.
ORGANIZED TRAVEL IN A DISORGANIZED ERA
Trapped on the Tarmac
A few weeks ago, I did my own little version of Planes (No Trains) and Automobiles. The plan was to fly to Buffalo (by way of Atlanta) for my 40th high school reunion, and after a week with Paper Mommy, rent a car to drive to a friend’s combination vow renewal/housewarming/birthday party in Massachusetts, followed by a short drive to an airport in Connecticut and a flight home (again, by way of Atlanta).
Any trip with that many moving parts leaves a traveler open to a few kerfuffles. There was a one-hour delay on the New York State Thruway near the village of Canajoharie when one 18-wheeler sheared off the back of another 18 wheeler that was carrying giant bags of cat food, littering the highway with both bags and actual loose cat food.
On the return trip from Connecticut to Atlanta, the gate agent seemed particularly surly as she informed us that the airline had oversold the flight, and nobody would be boarding unless three people agreed to give up their seats and fly the next afternoon or evening, and agree to be without their luggage until they did fly! (This came after I circled the airport twice, passing the “Rental Car Returns” sign each time, because my GPS insisted that I should continue further along and return my car to an empty field.)
However, the anecdote that prompted this post was my connecting flight from Atlanta to Buffalo. We boarded on time, but passengers immediately noted how warm the plane was. After everyone had fastened their seat belts, and had their tray tables locked and seat backs in an upright position, we heard the various bing-bongs, but went nowhere. Eventually, a weary voice intoned, “This is your captain speaking…” and we learned that there was a “minor mechanical problem” and we would be delayed fifteen to twenty minutes.
(This wasn’t my flight. But in a way, don’t we all feel like this was our flight?)
The temperature continued to rise. Passengers were polite and resigned, except that after about half an hour, an announcement was made that there would be another delay of about twenty to twenty-five minutes. This continued for about an hour and a half, when we were assured the problem had been fixed and that pending ten minutes of “paperwork,” our flight would take off. But it didn’t.
We were then told that there was a lightning strike on the field and that all ground crew were ordered inside, so we needed to wait until the weather cleared. At this point, our phones’ weather apps told us it was in the 90s outside the plane; you can imagine how high above 100° it reached inside.
After two hours, a small rumble of rebellion fomented. We were hot, thirsty, late, and cranky.
Over the course of time, passengers started air-dropping and sharing Department of Transportation regulations (of which, more later) about traveler rights regarding delays. After more than 2-1/2 hours boiling inside this elongated metal hot box, we were told that we would de-plane and it would be decided whether we would re-board or be assigned a new plane. (This made us wonder whether the weather issue had been valid at all; had our plane truly been fixed as reported, why would we have needed a new one?)
Long-story-short, we deplaned, had our re-boarding scheduled and canceled multiple times in a short period, and then we were assigned a new plane — which would take off a little more than four hours after our originally scheduled flight.
Welcome to airline travel in 2025.
The Chaos of Air Travel
Of course, my experience is one of many, and a relatively insignificant one. A few days after this, Alaska Airlines grounded its entire complement of planes — 200 flights in all — over a Sunday night and Monday computer glitch.
Because travel has become more chaotic (and more controlled by digital systems), it’s increasingly necessary for consumers to organize their resources to prepare and respond to this chaos. In this post, I will highlight some of the essential information you need and actions you can take to guard against travel frustrations.
Pre-Trip Prep: The New Administrative Burden of Travel
Do you recall the days where you’d call a travel agent, explain where you wanted to go and when, and be presented with a nifty little itinerary and all the information you might need until you arrived at the airport (with your non-wheeled suitcase and traveler’s checks in hand)?
Online check-in and e-tickets began in the 1990s, and though it’s shocking to think how recently it actually was, we didn’t have mobile check-in until 2007, and it wasn’t widely adopted for several years after that. (For those interested, CNN’s Final Call for Paper Boarding Passes: A Visual History of the Beloved Memento offers an interesting look back.)
Book Your Travel Arrangements — With Padding
This is not a travel blog, but one focused on organizing and productivity. If you want good advice on booking travel, I direct you to:
- The Points Guy (especially for using credit card, airline, and hotel reward points for booking)
- The Blonde Abroad (focused on solo traveling for women)
- Nomadic Matt (great for coverage of wide-ranging travel tips and news)
- Budget Traveller (particularly for adventurous but cost-cutting travelers)
Travel is messier than ever. It’s not uncommon to hear tales of canceled flights and travelers sleeping in airports, even when weather is not a factor. My advice is to always book your travel with at least one day of padding in case things go awry.
I discourage you from ever scheduling a flight the same day that you need to be anywhere or do anything; that will guarantee more stress than is necessary.
Log all of your travel information
Those 1970s-era travel agents? They provided tickets, itineraries, and nicely organized lists with every date, time, and confirmation number. You are your own travel agent now.
Whether you create a digital, analog, or hybrid record of all of this information is up to you. However, whatever you do to log your essential travel information, provide a copy to loved one or trusted assistant. If technology fails and/or you and your documents are divided, having someone able to see your travel arrangements (and possibly help you alter them from afar) can be the real golden ticket.
Confirm everything a week in advance
During our junior year in college, my boyfriend was seeking a placement for a summer and semester in engineering co-op (basically, a fancy science-y internship). He painstakingly wrote down the details arranged by the company’s office, and arrived on-time at the airport — a day late.
It’s easy to mis-remember details, or to misread what you’ve logged or see in an app. Check your dates and times, even if you’re 100% absolutely, positively sure.
Check in when prompted
Nowadays, check-in has become a part-time job for travelers. I traveled extensively up through 2019, but must admit that I hadn’t traveled (by air or stayed in a hotel) since the start of the pandemic, and was by turns surprised, annoyed, and flummoxed by all the different types of checking in to be done. You will be asked to check in a day prior for:
- Flights — You’ll generally get a prompt to check in 24 hours in advance of the first flight in whatever sequence of flights you have. If you haven’t booked via an airline co-branded credit card, you will likely have to pay a fee for your baggage; do it at this time and it will be one fewer thing to worry about when you get to the airport.
- Hotels — I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting to have to do this and was surprised when my hotel sent me a text and email to prompt my check-in.
This is where another travel kerfuffle took place. I clicked on the link in the text, which took me to the hotel website, but the page was insistent that my booking did not exist and suggested I call. (I was just delighted that I wasn’t routed to an AI bot.) The phone system immediately recognized my cell phone number and the automated attendant asked if I was calling about my hotel reservation for the next day — at least the robot lady knew that I had a reservation, even if the web site did not.
It took twenty minutes with a lovely gentleman to accomplish the digital check-in; eventually, I had to download the app, log in (twice) and (I think) spin around three times and bow toward the ocean, but eventually it worked.
For this reason, having your confirmation number and reservation information logged and handy will help ease whatever pain the process requires of you.
- Rental cars — Yup, I wasn’t expecting this, either. Admittedly, every time I’ve had to rent a car in the past 5 years it has been (sigh) because someone has hit (or stolen) my car, so the reservations have been handled by insurance companies, and the car rental companies have called me to confirm, so I have never had to check in.
- Tours, transfers, etc. — Basically, any arrangements you have related to travel, whether it’s a car service, a tour, a transfer (like from plane to bus for a group booking), etc., will likely have a booking. Anticipate your check-ins so that your busy day-before-travel workload is not interrupted unnecessarily.
What happens if you don’t check in?
Wondering what happens if you just don’t bother to do a digital check-in as prompted? Consequences vary.
On a flight, your seat may be given to someone on the stand-by list, particularly if you arrive late to the airport. You might miss important information or changes to your reservation, causing you to be late or miss the trip altogether. Your hotel room could be given away, or your priority level could be reduced.
ORGANIZING YOUR TRAVEL INFORMATION
The New Tech Landscape of Travel: Apps You Can’t Escape
I’m not going to tell you that you have to have all of these apps, but I can tell you from recent experience that downloading travel apps and having the passwords accessible in a digital password manager will save you headaches on a rough travel day. So, at least consider downloading the following apps and saving them all in one travel folder, moved to your phone’s first page on travel days:
- Airline apps – Although you can check in to a flight in your computer, phone, or tablet browser, airline apps are pretty much de rigueur for managing check-ins, downloading boarding passes (or sharing them to your digital wallet), keeping abreast of gate changes, arranging re-bookings, etc. The app makes everything smoother.
Across the four flights on my trip, but particularly that hot-box delayed-flight experience, the app alerted me to each change (and even to the location of my suitcase each time it was relocated) long before the pilot or gate agent informed us of anything. Because the new plane was larger and had a different layout, my boarding pass and seat assignment changed, seamlessly. I just had to consult the app.
- Hotel apps – You may be wondering why you need an app to basically rent a tiny piece of real estate for a day. (You may also be wondering why you book a hotel “by the day” but can only check in at 3 p.m. and must check out at 11 a.m., getting only 20 hours of any “day.” Sorry, no clue.)
Hotel apps now not only have digital check-in and check-out, but keyless entry and the ability to control the TV, thermostat, and lights, order room service, request amenities (like more towels or toilet paper) or to chat with front desk. If you are an introvert, hotel apps must be a saving grace!
Note, however, that like most of modern travel, boo-boos occur. My Hampton by Hilton digital key on the app should have allowed me to hold my phone against a plastic square above my doorknob to unlock the door. However, after several attempts on my own and multiple re-settings by the front desk dude, my digital key never worked to enter my room. (Strangely, it operated as expected if I wanted to use the fitness center, pool, business center, and laundry room. Apparently, the app felt strongly that I should be a fit, productive, and clean traveler; it just didn’t want me to sleep or be well-dressed.)
I was given a plastic key card, like the kind we’ve been using at hotels for thirty years; however, instead of inserting it anywhere, it required waving it in front of the aforementioned doorknob plastic square thingy at just the right angle or speed.
(For germaphobes like me, being able to control the TV from my phone instead of having to touch the hotel’s remote was a nice feature.)
- Car rental apps — Whether you opt for the old standbys like Hertz or Enterprise, or have embraced peer-to-peer car rentals like Turo (basically an AirB&B model for car rentals) – an app may be necessary for everything from rental check-ins and returns to unlocking the vehicle.
- Ride share apps — If you spend more time in Ubers or Lyfts than in your own car, you’ve probably got the apps already, but if you only use them to get to/from airports once every few years, you might want to re-install and make sure your saved credit card info is right.
- Master itinerary managers — If you prefer a formal platform to DIY-ing your trip, an app like TripIt allows you to gather all your hard-won trip-planning successes in one place. You forward all of your travel confirmations to the app, and it automagically arranges everything into a comprehensive itinerary. TripIt also includes seat trackers (in case a better place for your tush becomes available, fare trackers, point trackers, and document storage. Wanderlog is similar, but includes functions for creating checklists, tracking and splitting expenses, collaborating with fellow travelers, and adding travel guides.
- Note-taking and cloud apps — You don’t have to use fancy apps to track your itineraries if you prefer DIY. Just print your travel itinerary info to PDF and save in a trip-specific note in Evernote, Notion, AppleNotes, or OneNote, or upload your confirmation documents to iCloud or GoogleDrive.
- Your photo and camera app — These other apps are convenient, but if you really want a failsafe digital backup, screen-shot or make a PDF of mission-critical travel details, like confirmation numbers, boarding passes, airport maps and hotel/resort directions, and important contact info that’s too lengthy to type into your contacts app.
- Flight tracking sites/apps — Some people are comfortable trusting the airlines to keep them informed. The rest of us obsess and need to know if our connecting flight is leaving late or if there’s weather that’s going to make our plans go kablooie or if our travel companions coming from other locations meet us on time! Two great site app options for knowing about flight and airport disruptions are FlightAware and FlightRadar24.
Organize in Case Your Tech Fails
Apps and the internet are modern and cool and essential for many things. Except, and I’ll hold your hand when I say this, tech can suck. For example:
- Some apps only work when you’re online. This is bad news if you’re in a cell tower dead zone or, as happened on my hot-hot-hot delayed flight, the promised Wi-Fi melted down.
- You phone may poop out, because the more travel kerfuffles you experience, the more time you’ll be spending on the phone.
- Yes, you should probably travel with a hand-held charger, but if you’ve had to re-charge your digital devices many times, your charger may be weary, too.
- Yes, there are chargers on planes, but if your charging cable is the modern USB-C format and you’re not traveling with an adapter, you may be out of luck, as the weird little charging ports down below the seats and the ones (on larger planes) in the seat-back “entertainment system” are all USB-A.
- Digital keys often fail — that front desk clerk is still your best chance at getting into your room. (When you get to the hotel, request key cards. You don’t want to schlep up to your room with all your luggage, only to find the digital key doesn’t work.)
- Notifications overload is real — Sometimes, it’s worse if all your technology works than if it fails. There’s too high a chance of important messages getting lost in a sea of “Rate Your Experience!” notifications pinging your phone.
So, as Old School as it sounds, and with apologies to the trees, print your master itinerary with all of the dates, times, and confirmation numbers.
I printed every confirmation email and arranged them in the order in which I would need to use them over the course of ten days. I popped them, along with a pen and one of my beloved purple legal pads, in a zippered Container Store document pouch. It kept my notes dry when I needed to dash a few places in the rain, and the cardboard backing of my legal pad kept the papers from getting wrinkled or squished.
A printed boarding pass works when your phone is freaking out. If the airline or car rental place is having a computer meltdown, your printout will verify your booking and the rates and service levels you were promised.
And Don’t Forget the Telephone
Save yourself the headache of having to Google or look on the back of your frequent flier card — program important numbers for your airlines, hotels, rental car agencies, etc., into your phone.
WHEN TRAVEL GOES SIDEWAYS: KNOW YOUR RIGHTS
The United States Department of Transportation has developed a variety of passenger rights, but many people misunderstand or get them wrong. Some highlights:
- There’s a maximum 3-hour domestic tarmac delay at which point airlines are required to “de-plane” you (unless the pilot feels that passenger safety would be compromised).
- Airlines must provide food, water, working lavatories, and climate control after 2 hours. During our first two hours on the tarmac, we had only working bathrooms. Just before the 2-hour mark, we were each offered a tiny puddle of lukewarm water, and it took almost half an hour to disseminate those.
- Passengers must be notified about the situation every 30 minutes.
- The airlines must provide flight refunds if the airline cancels or significantly delays your flight, but only if you decline whatever alternative they offer!
So, if they delay you by four hours but put you on a plane (or get you onto a competing airline’s flight), you aren’t due a refund; but if you had a “non-refundable ticket” and the airline’s delays ruin your trip such that you reject their offer to get you where you’re going a day late and many (airport snack) dollars short, you can be refunded for your non-refundable ticket.
Airplane Photo by Gerrie van der Walt on Unsplash
However, if you have a bad experience, I encourage you to contact your airlines rewards center; they have a chart for depositing extra miles for delays and bad experiences.
You have other rights, too. For example, airlines must refund baggage fees if your bags are lost or extensively delayed. There are also rights regarding compensation for voluntary and involuntary “bumping” due to overbooking. For further reading and resources:
Department of Transportation Dashboard for Airline Commitments
DOT Fly Rights: A Consumer Guide to Air Travel
Keep a PDF copy of these rules on your phone.
During a bad experience, log problems as they happen so you can request compensation later. As we never took off during that hot-as-h-e-double-hockey-sticks flight, my phone wasn’t yet in Airplane Mode, so I was live-texting Paper Mommy, yielding contemporaneous time-stamps for every frustrating occurrence. This made it easier to have my upgrade fee refunded and to secure rewards points.
Experts and seasoned travelers with whom I’ve spoken advise being polite but firm in quoting regulations if you believe your rights regarding tarmac delays (or, y’know, anything else) have been denied.
If the airlines fail to satisfy your complaints, read section 13 of the DOT Fly Rights document (above) to know how file a complaint with the DOT if needed.
Finally, always have a backup plan. Know what other options you have for flights, rental agencies, or hotels are nearby.
For more on organized travel:
- Paper Doll’s 5 Essential Lists For Planning an International Vacation
- Paper Doll on the Smead Podcast: Essential Lists For Organized Travel
- Paper Doll Organizes Your Space, Money, and Well-Being While Traveling
- Ultimate Guide to Organizing the Passport Process: In Person, By Mail, & Now: Online!
We can’t control the skies, but we can control our systems. Organized travel isn’t about being perfect, but about considering what we will need and having appropriate plans and backups. Feel free to share your trips (and travel horror stories) in the comments.
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