Saturday, November 12, 2022

Best Credit Cards for International Travel - GOBankingRates

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Many of the offers appearing on this site are from advertisers from which this website receives compensation for being listed here. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site (including, for example, the order in which they appear). These offers do not represent all available deposit, investment, loan or credit products.
If you are counting down the days until your next international destination, the right credit card could make all the difference. With the right piece of plastic in your wallet, you can rack up credit card rewards to pay for your next trip. Plus, the best credit cards for international travel protect your wallet from excessive transaction fees.
As you wait to head to the airport, consider adding a premium credit card to your wallet for a smooth international travel experience.
Here’s a quick guide to help you learn more about the best credit cards for international travel.
The Capital One Venture X Rewards card makes international travel more enjoyable and more accessible. Flexible travel redemption options are available through the card, which comes without a foreign transaction fee. Although there is an annual fee of $395, frequent travelers can use this card to stretch their international travel budget a little bit further.
The United Explorer MileagePlus card offers a wide range of perks. It’s especially useful to travelers who frequently fly with United Airlines. But since United Airlines is a part of the largest international airline network, the Star Alliance, racking up United miles can come in handy for world travelers. With the fee waived for the first year, you can see whether or not this card is the right fit for your wallet.
The Chase Sapphire Reserve puts a VIP-level travel experience within reach for those with excellent credit scores. As a cardholder, you’ll start building up points based on your spending. Depending on your spending habits, these rewards can quickly turn into a helpful sum for your next international destination. You can breeze through airports with Global Entry, courtesy of your credit card. And if you are stuck with a long layover, use your credit card to access one of over 1,000 airport lounges worldwide.
With a $695 annual fee, the Platinum Card from American Express, Member FDIC, doesn’t come cheap. But a lengthy list of benefits can make the price point worth it for frequent international travelers. The card comes with access to a Platinum Travel Service, which can create custom itineraries based on your unique interests to help you get the most out of a vacation. And the Premium Global Assist Hotline can come in handy to help you sort through medical, legal, financial or other emergency issues while away from home.
If you happen to be a business owner, the Business Platinum Card from American Express can open up doors for your international travel experiences. It gives you the chance to tap into extensive travel perks as a result of your business spending. Help from the Business Platinum Travel service can lead to unforgettable trips with itineraries designed for your specific interests. Plus, you’ll get access to many premium membership levels at hotels and car rental providers for a top-notch travel experience.
The best credit card for your international travel plans varies based on your goals. As a baseline, you should opt for a credit card with no foreign transaction fees. Plus, you should ensure that the credit card of your choice is widely accepted in countries you regularly frequent.
Beyond those basics, selecting the right credit card comes down to your specific plans. You might choose the flexibility of a travel rewards credit card or select an airline-branded card for your favorite airline.
Additionally, look for a credit card that offers the most rewards for your spending habits. For example, business owners might get the most out of a business-specific credit card. But frequent travelers that stick to a specific airline might get the most perks by selecting the airline’s branded card.
Rates are subject to change; unless otherwise noted, rates are updated periodically. All other information on accounts is accurate as of Oct. 6, 2022.
Editorial Note: This content is not provided by any entity covered in this article. Any opinions, analyses, reviews, ratings or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author alone and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any entity named in this article.
All information about American Express card offers has been collected independently by GOBankingRates and has not been reviewed or approved by American Express. These offers are not available through GOBankingRates.
The information related to Chase United Explorer and Chase Sapphire Reserve cards was collected by GOBankingRates and has not been reviewed or provided by the issuer of this products/cards. Product details may vary. Please see issuer website for current information. GOBankingRates does not receive commission for these products.
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Sarah Sharkey is a personal finance writer with a desire to help readers improve their own financial balance sheets. After earning a bachelor’s degree in biology, she went on to business school. With a master’s degree in Management from the Hough School of Business at the University of Florida, she loves diving into the details of personal finance. With years of experience as a personal finance writer, she helps readers grasp the concept and take control by breaking down complex topics filled with jargon down to their basic components. After all, a little bit of knowledge can go a long way in the world of personal finance.

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Friday, November 11, 2022

Want to help the planet? Rethink your lawn - WBUR News

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When Erica Tharp and her husband bought their home in Framingham four years ago, the lawn needed some work. Tharp looked at the scraggly grass with its dying tree, and decided she wanted something that was less work and more eco-friendly.
"That was the goal — minimal maintenance and as least harm as possible," she said.
So Tharp, a yoga teacher, decided to rip out her front lawn and replace it with drought-resistant grass and native wildflowers. Now there’s waist-high goldenrod, orange butterfly weed and black-eyed Susans.
It's not all free and easy; Tharp is fighting back some overly ambitious clover, and even the native plants are suffering from the summer drought. But it's a lot less work than a traditional lawn, she says: No weekly mowing, no fertilizer, and lots of happy bees.
"My lawn is much more wild than I think the average lawn is," said Tharp, who also posted signs reading "please excuse the weeds, we're feeding the bees" in case the neighbors wondered what was up. "It's not neat and tidy right now, not at all. But neat and tidy isn't always good for us, right?"
Lawns may seem like a trivial place to focus your eco-energies, but they cover about 40 million acres of the United States — that's about the same land area as wheat. (And that estimate is from 2012; researchers say the amount of lawn has almost certainly increased as the suburbs have sprawled ever outward.)
To keep all this grass green, Americans use about 59 million pounds of pesticides on their lawns and gardens each year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and an astonishing 9 billion gallons of water outdoors each day.
"It sucks up resources, whether it's money, whether it's gasoline, whether it's fertilizer, whether it's pesticides," said Uli Lorimer, the director of horticulture at the Native Plant Trust. And when there's a big rainstorm, all those extra chemicals wash into local waterways, prompting algae blooms and other hazards. "So there is real environmental harm that comes from the average stereotypical suburban house."
While interest in alternative lawns has been growing for decades in the drought-stricken Southwest, it's been slower to catch on in New England. But that's starting to change.
"There is real environmental harm that comes from the average stereotypical suburban house."
"In the beginning I was having to explain things a little bit more, now it's people coming to us wanting what we're offering," said Andrew Whittaker, the owner of the eco-landscape company Green Abundance by Design, which did Tharp's lawn. He started the business in 2016 and has seen sales increase 50 to 100% each year. He says greater Boston is primed for a "suburban reformation" — a rethinking of the traditional lawn.
Whittaker says most of his clients are motivated by a desire to attract and support pollinators and other wildlife. Other lawn-watchers say the growing interest stems from several factors: the alarming decline of bees; the sudden popularity of No Mow May; and the extreme heat, drought and torrential downpours becoming more common with the changing climate.
Dorchester resident Estella Mabrey had another motive: she grew up in rural Alabama and longed for that proximity to nature. "My mother had flowers all the time. Big, beautiful flowers. And we always had the monarch butterflies coming and hummingbirds," she said.
So, over the 28 years she has lived in her house, she's replaced her yard with a colorful array of flowers and vegetables. "It's just a breath of fresh air," she said. "You can sit out here and just enjoy the beauty of nature."
Other people, like Racy Cardosa, just got fed up with lawn care.
Tips to make your lawn more eco-friendly:
1. Set your mower blade higher
2. Leave the lawn clippings
3. Stop pouring chemicals on your lawn
4. Water it less often
5. Don't be that sprinkler guy
6. Mow less frequently
7. Don't mow the weird parts
8. Leave the leaves on the lawn
"I wasn't getting anything out of it," she said. "It was just a big waste of time. Like, what am I getting out of grass? Nothing."
Her house in Dorchester had grassy yards on the front and side. They were small, but there was enough room for a vegetable bed. She installed one a couple years ago, and over time added another, then another. Then two pear trees, grapes, strawberries, flowers for the bees, and peppermint under the flowers.
"I just kinda went crazy with it," she said.
Now instead of a time-sucking lawn that gives her nothing but grief, she has huge heads of broccoli, heaps of tomatoes, enough collard greens to last all winter and a beloved blueberry bush. Because she chose plants that thrive in our climate, she uses only a little organic fertilizer and no pesticides.
Cardosa said she gets a lot of positive remarks from the neighbors — especially when handing them free organic vegetables. "They always walk by and they go, 'Oh, it looks great!' " she said. But so far none of them have followed suit.
There is, of course, a place for lawns — it's hard to have a family cookout or slip-n-slide without them. Lawns also suck up rainwater and store some carbon (though far less than deeper-rooted plants). And having a green lawn in New England is less disruptive than having one in the desert Southwest.
But most of the lawn around here is non-native turf, so it needs a lot of water, fertilizer and pesticides to stay green. And it doesn’t offer much food or habitat to native animals, especially when cut very short.
So scientists who study how people manage their lawns — yes, there are such people, many associated with the federally funded Yard Futures Project — are looking for ways to encourage alternative lawns, or at least alternative lawn care.
In other words, "how do we make things less bad?" asks research ecologist Susannah Lerman, who works for the U.S. Forest Service in Springfield, Massachusetts.
So far, social science research has found that most people want mainly two things from their lawn: They want it to look neat and they want it to be easy. Lerman's most famous study is a case in point.
For the 2018 study, she convinced 16 families in Springfield to let researchers mow their lawns at different intervals — either every one, two or three weeks. She found that mowing every other week increased the number of bees and wildflowers in the yards. (A follow-up study found that the longer grass didn't bring more ticks.)
"When you really let it go, it kind of looks messy. And so it's really trying to find that sweet spot."
But she also found that people kinda freak out if their lawn is a mess.
"The yards that were mowed every three weeks, they just did not look nice," said Lerman. "The homeowner would run out to the car to meet us and be like, 'I am so glad you're here! My neighbors were getting so upset with me!' "
"That, to me, was an indication that ... people aren't ready for that three weeks," she said. "When you really let it go, it kind of looks messy. And so it's really trying to find that sweet spot."
There are lots of small things people can do to make their lawns more eco-friendly. For instance, clover helps enrich soil with nitrogen, so maybe you don’t need to kill it with pesticides? That part of your lawn on a hill that’s really hard to mow, maybe don’t mow it. And if you get really ambitious, put in some native wildflowers.
If you're worried about letting the lawn look too wacky, Katrina Crocker, lead horticulturist with Belmont's Landscape Collaborative, suggests using "cues to care" — visual signals that your lawn "isn't just a wild place of mayhem." For instance, you can grow a patch of wildflowers, but mow a border to show you're actually doing it on purpose.
As for No Mow May, experts I interviewed were unsure how much it actually helps pollinators who feed off spring flowers — it depends where you live and what's growing in your lawn. But they all loved the idea of shaking up lawn care for a month, and getting people to see their lawns differently.
Framingham homeowner Erica Tharp feels the same way. "If we all did something little, we could maybe change future generations' concept of what a housing tract could look like, what lawn care should be," she said.
It starts with changing our idea of a lawn from something that takes and takes, to something that gives back.
This segment aired on August 22, 2022.
Barbara Moran Twitter Correspondent, Climate and Environment
Barbara Moran is a correspondent on WBUR’s environmental team.
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‘No Recipe Road Trip with the Try Guys:’ How to watch episode 3 on Food Network, stream online for free - MassLive.com

The Try Guys hit Atlanta, Georgia in the newest episode of “No Recipe Road Trip” airing on Wednesday, September 14 at 10 p.m. ET on Food Network.
The Try Guys, Ned Fulmer, Keith Habersberger, Zach Kornfeld and Eugene Lee Yang, have millions of followers and are well-known for their curiosity, humor and willingness to try anything under the sun, often with hilarious results. New episodes of the series will air on Food Network weekly but viewers without cable can stream it on Philo, DirecTV and fuboTV. All three streaming services offer free trials for new users.
According to Food Network, In each episode, the guys hit a new city and visit two local establishments where each guy must attempt to make the restaurant’s best-known dish with no recipe or instruction. In the end, the Try Guy with the most successful dish as determined by a local chef and guest judge wins and gets the chance to have their dish put on the restaurant’s menu. Here’s a look at the series so far:
Episode 3 is titled “Atlanta: Vegan Burgers and Thai Noodles” and according to fuboTV, “the Try Guys hit Atlanta, where guest judge G. Garvin sees them get down and dirty in a vegan burger food truck challenge; they improvise the five flavors of high-end Thai noodles in a desperate attempt to impress a chef who beat Bobby Flay.”
The series kicked off in Nashville and also visits Los Angeles, Charleston, Atlanta and Santa Barbara.
You can watch the new series on Food Network, Wednesday night at 10 p.m. ET or on FoodNetwork.com by logging in with your cable provider.
Channel finders:
Streaming platforms are always available if you don’t have access to cable. Philo, DirecTV and FuboTV will have access to the show and will be available for streaming. All three services offer free trials.
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Thursday, November 10, 2022

Shoppers Say This Cooler Bar Table Keeps Drinks Ice-Cold in 100+ Degrees - Food & Wine

An ice-cold drink is a crucial part of any summer gathering, and even for chilling solo in your yard on a hot summer day. But how do you get your drinks to stay cold in temperatures breaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit without pulling an unsightly ice chest out of storage? 
Amazon shoppers say this modern Keter Cool Bar is the answer. The portable bar doubles as a cute patio side table with a hidden 7.5-gallon cooler underneath. When you're ready to grab a cold drink, just pop the tabletop up and secure it easily in place with a quick twist of the lock. The lid elevates 10 inches above the rim, which also happens to be the perfect height to reach while lounging in a hot tub. 
To buy: Keter Cool Bar, $90 (originally $100) at amazon.com
You can keep up to 40 12-ounce cans ice-cold in the cooler portion, which Amazon shoppers confirm is "perfect for parties." When the gathering's over, draining melted ice is as easy as pulling out a plug. But this stylish cooler is more than just a party trick — with a lowered lid, it functions as a chic side table to rest snacks, books, and even your phone on. The best part? The resin exterior prevents corrosion and peeling in all weather conditions so you'll never have to pull another rusty ice-box out of storage again. 
The cooler has more than 1,200 perfect ratings, and happy customers can attest to just how versatile and well-built this cooler is."This product is so incredible I've purchased four, and recommended [it] countless times," one wrote, adding how lightweight and portable it is. Several others also commented on how quickly it assembles and effectively it drains. 
RELATED: The 12 Best Coolers That Can Hold Onto Ice for Days
But shoppers are most impressed with how long it's able to keep their drinks chilled. Two days after using this outdoor cooler for a party, this customer was "stunned to see it still had quite a bit of ice that hadn't melted." And this Arizona resident, who is no stranger to extreme heat, was impressed to find that his drinks stayed cold in 100 plus degrees "all day and night." 
August begins the end of summer countdown but there's still plenty of time to make use of this unique cooler. Fall is still full of opportunities for outdoor gatherings, and considering how hot September is across most of the country — you might be chilling drinks in this Keeter Cooler Side Table until the leaves start to change.


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