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I’m Kate
For more than a decade and a half, I’ve helped people create a life by design through my lifestyle and travel blog.
I’m a mom of 3, a full-time romance author, and I’ve been to more than 40 countries and nearly all the states.
I’m happy you’re here.
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Latest Blog Posts
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What Children Actually Remember from Family Vacations — and Why Parents Almost Always Get It Wrong
Parents spend thousands engineering the perfect trip — the Disney parade, the Eiffel Tower photo, the resort pool. Research on childhood memory says almost none of that is what sticks. What kids actually carry into adulthood from family travel will surprise you, and probably change how you plan your next trip.
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Americans Who Got Seriously Ill Abroad: What the Medical Evacuation Process Actually Looks Like
Medical evacuations from foreign countries cost between $50,000 and $250,000. The logistics involve local hospitals, air ambulance companies, insurance authorization desks, and U.S. embassy staff — and they can take days to coordinate while someone is in a foreign ICU. Here’s what actually happens, from the first hospital visit to the flight home.
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Theme Park Ticket Prices Have Been Rewritten Five Times Since 2019 — Here’s What You’re Actually Paying For Now
Disney World, Universal Studios, and Six Flags have each restructured their pricing models multiple times in the last five years — not just raising prices but fundamentally changing what the base ticket includes and what it doesn’t. The result is a ticket economy that looks dramatically different from what most families remember. Here’s the actual math of a 2025 theme park visit.
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What Happened to the People Who Bought ‘Travel Club’ Memberships in the 2010s
Between 2008 and 2018, hundreds of thousands of Americans paid $3,000 to $15,000 to join travel clubs that promised lifetime access to wholesale travel rates, luxury properties, and insider deals. A decade later, many of those clubs have folded, restructured, or quietly stopped delivering. Here’s what the buyers found out — and why the model keeps reinventing itself.
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Airport Currency Exchange vs. ATMs vs. Your Credit Card — Someone Did the Math So You Don’t Have to
The gap between the best and worst ways to access foreign currency at an airport can be 8–12 percentage points on a single transaction. On a $1,000 travel budget, that’s $80–$120 gone before you’ve eaten a meal. Here’s the actual math on every option, the specific fees involved, and the setup that costs almost nothing.
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Missed Your Connection — Here’s What the Airline Actually Owes You and What You Have to Fight For
Missing a connection triggers a web of rules, responsibilities, and rebooking options that most travelers don’t know exist until they’re stranded at a gate at 10 p.m. Whether the airline owes you a hotel, a meal, cash, or nothing at all depends on a specific set of factors that play out in the first 30 minutes after your inbound flight lands late. Here’s the actual framework.
