From Corporate America to Thrifty Traveler Entrepreneur: How Jared Kamrowski Built A Flight Deal Subscription Service

00:00 Danielle Desir Corbett Welcome to the Thought Card, a podcast about traveling money where planning, saving, and creativity leads to hoarding travel, building wealth, and paying off debt. We are the financially savvy travelers. Hey, financially savvy travelers. Welcome back to another episode of the Thought Card I am here with Jared Kamarowski, who is the founder and CEO of Thrifty Traveler. Now, this is a big moment for me, y'all, because I've been following Jared since 2015, maybe before that, because he quit his job and did Thrifty Traveler full time. And I was actually reading that article when he posted it. So I'm very excited, Jared, to have you on the show today to talk all about cheap travel and cheap flights and how for us to be able to just see more of the world, even if we're on a budget. I'm very excited to discuss it all. Those are my passions. Excellent. All right. So I kind of preface this a little bit. And I mentioned that, you know, you did take the leap to really pursue Thrifty Traveler full time. So can you tell us more about what you were doing before you founded the company? And also, what was that deciding factor that, you know, pushed you to say, you know what, I'm going to take this leap and I'm going to just really go after my dreams here.

01:25 Jared Kamrowski Yeah. So, you know, I came out of college and like many of us had just a mountain of student debt. So I went into corporate America and the banking for about eight years. And I was on the road over 100 nights a year traveling all over the US. But I really just loved travel. I loved planning travel. So what I did is, you know, for as long as I could, I worked in corporate America and I made as much money as I could. And I banked as much as I could, paid off my student loans. And then, you know, as a side hustle, I started Thrifty Traveler in 2015. And then I created a service alongside Thrifty Traveler called Thrifty Traveler Premium, which is a flight deal notification service in 2017. So two years later, and then that really took off. So then I was confident enough to turn my side hustle into a full time job in 2017 shortly after launching that service. So it sounds easy. And it sounds like a straight path. But it for sure was not because I think the day that I quit my corporate

02:37 Danielle Desir Corbett job, I pretty much felt like I was having a panic attack. So it's not easy, but it has been a blast. You made it sound and also look easy. And I think as a loyal reader, I was very like supportive. And I was very excited when you did post that on your site. And I do remember that. And it was for me, like, I actually created my blog in 2015. So it was awesome to see someone who I had admired to be able to take the leap. So behind the scenes, you are motivating a lot of us. And we do really appreciate it. Another thing that I really wanted to touch base on is how did you like have the tech skills to actually create such an intricate service? Because you said you were a CPA prior in corporate. So did those skills transfer over to finding flights? Like how did you develop those skillsets?

03:27 Jared Kamrowski You know, I think that's just, you know, when you start your own business, you know, you need to quickly determine what your strengths are. And then also on the flip side, figure out what your weaknesses are. And when you don't have certain skill sets, you have to reach out and find people to fill in those gaps. And, you know, a lot of that technical stuff like creating a system to send out alerts. Yeah, we had to bring in developers pretty quickly, because it went beyond, you know, my normal skill set. I mean, I can do some HTML, but that doesn't get you far.

03:58 Danielle Desir Corbett The drag and drop. That's it. That's it. Yes. So how did you discover this service was needed? Like, did you any market research? Or was it really based off of what you felt was missing in the industry?

04:13 Jared Kamrowski In 2015, when I first launched Thrifty Traveler, it was more about points and miles, because that was the thing that I got really excited about and was passionate about. And then I started posting some flight deals in 2015. And those just were so much more well received. Obviously, there's a market for people in points and miles. But the market for flight deals is so large. And I think it was Christmas Day of 2015, I posted a Dubai flight deal from like five cities. And it went viral, and it crashed the site for three days. And it was right after that, that I was like, I need to start pivoting from points and miles a little bit more into flight deals. And I did that. And then created a subscription service around that later on. And that's really been the ticket and

05:05 Danielle Desir Corbett the key to growing. I love that. I love that. There's a viral moment there, right? So that viral moment was the kind of the light bulb that said, hey, this is something that could really work. So I do appreciate that. So since we're kind of like talking about what Thrifty Traveler Premium is, can you share with the listeners what the service is all about and how you've helped so many financially savvy

05:26 Jared Kamrowski travelers? Yeah, so Thrifty Traveler Premium is just a cheap flight notification service. So we find cheap flights, domestic in the US and Canada, as well as international flights. So we find flight deals departing from over 150 US and Canadian cities to every destination abroad. And yeah, we've been doing this for, man, now four years, Thrifty Traveler Premium specifically. But yeah, we send those cheap flights, you know, right to your inbox. And we do that all for $45 per year.

06:01 Danielle Desir Corbett Now, you know, as a financially savvy traveler, and especially as someone who's been with you guys as a loyal customer for years, I see the value because I spend, let's say $45 a year, and I get hundreds of flight deals throughout the year that get sent to me. But for those who are on the fence is like, why should I pay for a flight deal service? Do you have like any pushback or anything that you would say to be like, this is why it is absolutely worth paying for a service like that? Because there are other free services as well.

06:32 Jared Kamrowski Yeah. And obviously, I'm a little biased given given the situation. But there's really no other service that finds flight deals like we do. We find cash flights, but we also find flight deals with points and miles. You know, right now, Delta Sky miles are a great source of value. And a lot of times in the points and miles community, people roll their eyes at that. But anyone that subscribed to our service would see that. And, you know, we ask our followers, we do a lot of surveys, we're always trying to make it better. We're like, you know, how could you explain it? Turkey traveler premium to somebody that's new to it. And they're like, it's changed the way I travel. You know, it's really that easy. You know, a lot of times people will have this idea that they only want to go to Hawaii every single year. But then they'll sign up for premium. And they'll be getting flight deals, of course, to Hawaii. But also, they're like, you know, I can go to Ireland for $350, you know, nonstop from a lot of US cities. I never knew I could do that. So it just really broadens people's horizons. And that is for sure a goal of mine and everybody else at thrifty travelers to just broaden your perspective to visit new places to, you know, have unique interactions. And that's what we're all about.

07:48 Danielle Desir Corbett Yeah. And you know what you all helped me to develop my travel style where I was following the flight deals. And it's something that a lot of people do. They literally just follow the flight deals. Like what you mentioned, it opens you up to discovering new places that perhaps you may not have ever thought you could afford. And also, it's within budget. So why not? So for me, it's like you literally book one flight, and it pays for itself like 100 times over. And even if you don't end up booking a flight, because you know, right now is the pandemic, a lot of people aren't flying. For me, I use thrifty traveler premium as a way to establish a flight price baseline. So by you sharing with me emails that lets me know, hey, this is on sale. Hey, this is on a discount. Hey, hey, hey, hey, I start to see numbers over and over. And I can determine, okay, I'm not flying to Europe for more than 350 pre pandemic. Like that was my number because I seen the deals so many times. So do you have any stories of like other financially savvy travelers who have gotten way more strategic because they do follow your service?

08:55 Jared Kamrowski I mean, there's no question there are a broad spectrum of people who follow us from, you know, retired boomers to Gen Z. It's pretty wild. There's people who follow us. We just had some calls with some of our super fans, we call them. And one of them is like a nomadic. They're based out of the US, but they don't have a home. And they're millennials and they're traveling with their two kids. And they're just traveling like off of our deals, which is it's crazy to think you know, not owning a home, traveling with a family, coming back to see their parents every once in a while, but to come in back and see their parents, they're using our flight deals and then bouncing back wherever they're going, even during the pandemic, which is pretty wild.

09:38 Danielle Desir Corbett I love that. Listen, I want to be in those conversations with your super fans. I'm like, I want to be in those rooms because that is definitely on par with what I would be doing for sure. Another thing that I really love about Thrifty Traveler Premium is that you don't send out these last minute deals, right? So can you share with us the reasoning behind why you've taken this stand and how it has served your customers?

10:02 Jared Kamrowski Yeah, so that's, you know, one of the travel myths that we go to so many travel events and travel fairs or at least we did pre pandemic. But you talk to so many people, and they always assume that the only good flight deal is a last minute flight deal. And the truth is, at least until recently with the ways that flight pricing has changed with the pandemic, there used to be no good last minute flight deals, like it just didn't exist. So we're all about finding flight deals up to 11 months out. That's how far you can book flights. And yeah, we don't like just giving people last minute stuff, because we realized that 99% of us need time to plan. We don't want to book last minute flights. And we want to be able to send you an email or a flight deal to your inbox that you know, you can book and actually fly. We always say that, you know, I would never send out a flight deal that my mom couldn't book or, you know, it wasn't like complicated, or, you know, it was just simple enough and easy enough to book and it was a great deal. So we just were all about keeping it simple.

11:09 Danielle Desir Corbett Yes. And that is what I love, especially like for someone like me, I travel a few times a year, I have I think I do pretty well, but I do have a full time job. So I love that I'm able to plan strategically out and I don't feel pressured to have to book the flight. The other thing that I really love about your service also is that you share business and first class fare. So can you talk a little bit more about that? Your cheap flights are not only for economy, which probably the most of them, but there's also business and first class as well.

11:39 Jared Kamrowski You know, there are some flight notification services out there that are just first class and business class. And to be honest with you, there just are not that many business and first class deals out there. The flight pricing just doesn't change that much. But for economy tickets, flight pricing can change so, so much. You know, a flight to India might be $2,500 in economy, but you can sometimes find that for $400. So it's like crazy pricing. So yes, we do see business and first class flights on sale and we send those deals out, you know, we probably see a couple of those a month. But for the most part, you know, it's really going to be just the realistic nature of flight deals. There's just going to be more economy flight deals than there are business and first class. But I think we all love sitting up front. So when we find those deals, we send them out, you know, as quickly as we can.

12:30 Danielle Desir Corbett No, I love that. I love that. By the way, this is like a moment for me. I'm just having a moment because again, I'm a really big user of the Traveler Premium. The other thing that I wanted to ask you is, how have you seen the pandemic like shift? Because even people like me, like, we love to travel, but we're not necessarily flying right now. So I'd just love to get your insights on like how the pandemic has changed the airline industry and specifically if it's impacted your business in any way.

12:59 Jared Kamrowski Yeah, no. And you know what? A year ago is when things really changed. The World Health Organization, I think, you know, announced that COVID-19 was a worldwide pandemic that changed travel. Then all these countries started shutting down, understandably. And as the owner of a travel business, I will be honest with you, I was very, very concerned, not just for myself and my wife who works for Thrifty Traveler. At that time, we had seven full time employees and I'm concerned for them as well. So yeah, it was not easy for a while. And I was pretty concerned. And you know, as a business owner, we did the only thing that you really can do is pivot as quickly as you can try as many things and throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks as far as you know, stuff working and changing and promotions and pivots to the service itself. One of the saving graces for us is a flight deal subscription service. People didn't want to give up on travel. You know, we don't charge $100, $200, $300 a year or some really large sum of money. So most people were, you know, from what I can tell, you know, most people were willing to stick it out for us or stick it out with us. They didn't want to give up on travel. They didn't want to give up that perspective that you talked about, as far as knowing what flight prices are doing. Because, you know, as we are, hopefully exiting this pandemic in the next few months or through the end of the year, I think a lot of people want to know what that perspective is like on flight pricing, so that when they are ready to travel again, what is the new normal? What does a flight to Europe cost post pandemic? I think that's what has allowed people to really stick around. You know, that's really how it's impacted our business. And thankfully, we're almost exactly the same business as far as, you know, our product and service and our employees as when we came in as when we've come out. So

14:47 Danielle Desir Corbett I think we were one of the lucky ones. Yes. And I mean, you hit it on the nail in the head, because for me, I'm like, I do not want to be out of touch. I want to be getting by the minute updates. And I think you guys do a very, very good job. You have YouTube videos, you have blog posts. So I also wanted to touch on the other side of thrifty traveler as more also as like a hub for resources. Yes, you have the service, the premium service, but also, you have tons of articles and tons of YouTube videos. So can you talk more about the content that you create as well?

15:19 Jared Kamrowski Yeah, we are kind of an interesting hybrid. You know, obviously, we have this flight till notification service, Turkey Trailer Premium, the site that I started thrifty traveler.com back in 2015. I mean, that's still really the core of our business. And most of our employees actually work on the website itself. They're not finding flight deals every single day, which is kind of crazy. So we're able to have a diversified revenue stream. So you know, money coming in from ads, and then there's the whole credit card, affiliate space, you know, source of revenue. So that's one of the things too, that's really helped us survive is having just multiple sources of revenue, because the economy, it goes up and it goes down. Obviously, this pandemic is a very strange anomaly. But we've been able to be diversified, which has helped us kind of survive. But yeah, go to thrifty traveler.com, we have so much content news every single day, whether it's travel deals or news about changes with the pandemic, you know, how is that impacting travel, vaccine passports, etc. points and miles, just deals in general, it's all about how to save and how to be informed, I think about travel at this time as well. So we try to be a lot of things for a lot of people. So if you want to be an informed, savvy, thrifty traveler, essentially, you know, traveling the world on a cheap and knowing, you know, what's up, where the spot to get it.

16:44 Danielle Desir Corbett Speaking my language, absolutely travel more for less. Yes. So Jared, I also wanted to ask you, what are your thoughts and your perspectives on like, how you think flight deals are going to change in the near future? Like I know we can't 100% say, but I do think that you are in a good position to kind of share with us and let us know like, what you're seeing some insights and what for us to

17:11 Jared Kamrowski be aware of, because maybe things are so different that like, for me, I haven't traveled since 2020. So I have no idea what to expect. Yeah, I look at flight pricing every single day. So the one big thing that's, well, there's a few things that have changed. But probably one of the biggest things is, you know, I've kind of touched on earlier, you never used to be able to find cheap last minute flights. And that was primarily due to business travelers were the ones buying last minute flights and airlines knew that they could charge, you know, really whatever price they wanted, because those business travelers are the companies that they worked for would pay those prices. But now with business travelers, you know, not on the road anymore. There's no one that's willing to pay exorbitant prices, nor is there demand for flights in general. So last minute flights, you know, even a week or two out, you know, let's say that you wanted to fly to Vegas, or you wanted to fly to Phoenix or Florida, you know, in a week or two, you can probably find a cheap flight last minute where normally flight prices could be like two to 300% more than if you had booked 30 to 60 days out. So that's one of those things that I don't think will stick around forever, you know, maybe through the end of the year, but as, as demand starts to normalize a little bit more, I think that that a lot of that stuff will disappear. But there's no question. I mean, business travelers aren't going to be coming back right away. So flight prices are going to remain low. It's all supply and demand. It's basic econ 101. It'll be very interesting to see but cheap flights are here to stay at least at

18:45 Danielle Desir Corbett least for the next several months. Woohoo! I am so excited about that. You know, just like when the pandemic hit, a lot of us were thinking like, are their credit cards going to change? Are they going to like not be as lucrative anymore? But I feel like they've been doubling down. And literally, I feel like my inbox is flooding with so many opportunities to earn. So I would love to hear your perspective also on the points and miles front. Have you seen any interesting trends? Is there an uptick that we should know about?

19:13 Jared Kamrowski No. And yeah, obviously, I'm hooked into that as well. Because it's the points and miles base at thriftytraveler.com is we discuss that stuff every single day. So what we are seeing, obviously, credit cards, points and miles, everything's tied back to these credit card banks, whether it's Chase, you know, American Express, Citi, you know, those are the big ones. So you know, when the pandemic hit in March, that scared those banks, because they don't want to have issuing new credit cards to borrowers who may be losing their jobs, you know, etc. Just there's a lot of economic and credit risk there. So a lot of those banks stopped, they made it more difficult to get credit cards. And they also pulled some of those offers to entice people to apply. So for a long time, you know, like six months, these banks were pretty scared, because we didn't know what was going to happen, we didn't know what was going to happen with the economy. But as things progressed, and obviously, Congress has stepped up, and we've seen several rounds of stimulus, people didn't default on their loans, like they had expected, or their credit card debt. And things generally are, I mean, they're not okay. But the economy itself is doing a lot better than most banks had expected. So what we're seeing now, just like you said, the banks are making up for lost time. And they see the economic numbers, there's new stimulus coming out. And obviously, everything seems to look good for the present time, as far as COVID numbers and trends, and vaccines are obviously just spilling out everywhere, which is which is amazing. So we are seeing increased offers. And you know, American Express, especially super aggressive with new features with cards, new offers, increased offers, it's relatively easy to get approved for an American Express card right now based on the numbers that we see, you know, where Chase has kept things a lot tighter. And it does seem to be loosening up a little bit with Chase. And I would expect them to start offering a little bit more to compete with American Express. And then Citi's in the background. I don't know what Citi's doing. But apparently, there's still a bank that issues credit cards, but there's not a whole lot happening on the Citi side of things.

21:24 Danielle Desir Corbett Yes. Okay, I have another personal question for you, because I have like so many credit cards. And I realized that during the pandemic, I needed to get super organized because the offers were coming in super quickly. So do you have any like tips? Or do you have like a spreadsheet that you custom built for yourself that you can keep organized of like what credit card to use when?

21:46 Jared Kamrowski Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I've been in this whole crazy points and miles space. I got my first job out of college and I was traveling in 2009. And that's when I got pretty deep into this stuff. So I have an old school spreadsheet. And obviously now you know, there there are sites online that you know, you can track like for Chase, like their 524 rule as far as how often you know, you can get approved for their cards. But for me, I just again, I use an Excel spreadsheet, obviously, you can use Google Sheets now. But I think like you said, getting organized with anything finance or credit cards or anything organization is just key. If you want to be successful at it.

22:29 Danielle Desir Corbett Yeah, I mean, I took my Excel spreadsheet and I actually have it in my notes on my iPhone now. So it's more mobile now. So when I'm at the grocery store, I'm like, wait, which of the five cards I use and I have like a list. So I just think that it's just again offered just ways to be more creative. And I think that it's fun, too. It's fun, too. And also lucrative. So Jared, this has been extremely fun for me and a huge honor to have you on the show. Do you have any upcoming features that you would like for my audience to know about when it comes to either thrifty traveler or the premium fight deal service?

23:10 Jared Kamrowski Yeah, yeah, one of the features we just launched for our premium service is text message alerts for mistake fares. So for those of you out there who are like, well, what's a mistake fair or what's difference between mistake fair and a normal flight deal? Mistake fairs are just like they sound fares where the airline has made a mistake. And usually, like instead of a flight costing $1,000, it'll cost you know, maybe $50. So those are what mistake fares are. In the last month, we've launched text message notifications, you know, directly to your phone, because those deals, we always say the hotter the flight deal, the shorter it lasts. So getting notification of those via text message is just so key and then booking as soon as possible. So we are pretty excited about that. Now, is that built in there ready to the premium service? Or is that like an additional? So that is built in like when you sign up for thrifty traveler premium, and you go into your login, there is now a new box to enter in your mobile phone number. And there's no extra cost or anything like that. Yeah, we're just trying to get that information to you as soon as possible. Because sometimes these deals, these mistake fares, you know, last minutes, not hours. Clearly, I'm asking for myself because I wasn't aware of this launch. It just launched on Friday. So you might not have checked that in your inbox yet.

24:27 Danielle Desir Corbett Oh, OK, I'm going to go and log in ASAP. ASAP. Well, Jared, again, thank you so much for joining us for this awesome conversation. And please let everyone know how they can connect with you. And also, if you are a Thought Card podcast member, we're going to have Jared share bonus content where he's going to be answering his favorite resources for planning trips. So stay tuned for that. But in the meantime, Jared, please let us know how we can connect with you. Yep, you can find us at thriftytraveler.com or follow us anywhere on social media. Excellent. Thanks again. I hope you enjoyed this episode. But don't forget, there's way more where that came from. When you become a supporter of the show, you'll get bonus episodes, additional tips on affording travel, real time updates, as well as strategies for building wealth and creating multiple income streams. Head over to thoughtcard.com for join to support. Also, be sure to follow me on Instagram. I'm at the Danielle DeZere. Slide in my DMs and share with me your thoughts about this episode. What did you enjoy? What stood out to you? Let me know. I'd absolutely love to connect with you outside of the podcast. See you in the next one.