Living a king’s life - Ten things you can (or can’t) do with your Per-Diem earnings in Raleigh/NC
Thomas Hampel
3 November 2014The joy of business travel is a tough business these days. Beside messing around with airport security, save big bucks for your company who forces you to fly wood class (aka 'Economy') and fighting jetlag within meeting rooms that don't even have windows nor serve free beer, traveling will at least make you rich, ...well almost.
Large enterprises pay employees an extra per-diem amount of incredible ~50 USD per day which you can spend on your luxury business-man lifestyle as follows:
1. Rent a car, at max. you can go with category "B", they're cheap but...crap.
2. Buy a pair of shoes in a mall, same as for cars they look good at first but probably wont survive your flight back home.
3. Get fat on Fastfood, at least for a day. Easy as a pie: taking an extra 1000 calories just requires half a kids burger.
4. Buy 'cheap' electronics
Packed and presented in wonderful shape, it turns out to be more expensive than in your home country but lacks the two year warranty offered at home.
5. Enjoy the nature, there is a lot around Raleigh, hiking tours are a great no-cost idea...if just the recreational area would not have been closed due to winter.
Remark: temperatures below of 70 F qualify for the winter season
Unlike those enjoyable experiences above the wannabe cosmopolitan of today is dreaming of an even better lifestyle that unfortunately the lovely per-diem amount wont ever cover. Some of those are
1. Get an iPhone 6, eventhough some say it bends, it is an acceptable compensation of an international travel assignment
2. Taking a helicopter ride to your meeting instead of car pooling.
3. Rent a muscle car, which sounds like a strange idea when you can have an helicopter ride but being in america its one of those must-have experiences.
Unfortunately you cant really make use of its horsepower because someone invented speed limits over here.
4. Have a good steak, despite fastfood being cheap, a good steak comes with its exclusive price tag.
Making up a whole dinner for the real man, can easily cost a fortune because of side orders and tips quickly adding to the total.
5. Find good French wine in a supermarket
For the fate of feeling exclusive, you must spend serious money on foreign products just to predend you can.
Conclusion : Living from per-diem is fast, good and cheap... just pick any two.
If thats not enough the bonus air miles collected on your journey is seeding the dream of flying business class once upon the time
What are you spending your per-diem earnings on? Share your thoughts with me on Linkedin , Twitter or Facebook, or leave a comment to this blog post.
PS: Special thanks to Bruno, Catalin, Shiva, Daitoku, Fabio, Saumil, Hans-Juergen, Holger, Mari, Michal N, Michael S, Thomas A, Kurt and Simon for this creative week.