Money Travels: The Eternal Baggage Question

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1:57Hello! Welcome to Slate Money Travel, a special episode of Slate Money devoted to travel something. I'm Felix Salmon. I'm here with Emily Peck of Axios.

2:12Felix Salmon: Hello. Who's sitting at home in front of her bookshelves. We're doing the bookshelf thing, but Elizabeth Spires of the New York Times has made it all the way into the Brooklyn Studios of Slate. Hi, Elizabeth. Hello. Was your commute okay in the heat? It was fine because I was in a car. Oh. Wait, did you drive yourself? No, I was worried I was going to be late, so I hopped in an Uber. Oh. Wow, fancy. We are going to talk this week about checking bags. I think everyone has an opinion on this. I do too. but emily why don't you bring us up to speed on the debate uh the debate felix is actually quite simple to check or not to check that is the question all right let's okay so fine you've brought us up to speed let before we before we go into the pros and cons let's just have a quick like gut check here in general do you check or not check i like to check i like hillary uh fry the slate editor has a whole piece about this debate and she comes on this on the side of of checking bags um and the simple reason is it's nice to be unencumbered by literally your baggage right you just want to be baggage is baggage breezy breezy yeah you want to be easy breezy you don't want baggage you want to like sidle up to the airport bar if you have time and have no chunky suitcase like that you have to figure out where to put it and keep an eye on and all that.

3:51Felix Salmon: It's a lovely thing to just travel without baggage schlepping all around. Elizabeth, are you a checker or a carry-oner? It depends on how long the trip is. So if it's less than a week, I will carry on. And then if it's more than that, I usually end up having to check a bag. But you only check because you have to because you've got that much luggage. Given the choice, you will always not check. Yeah, also, because I've mastered the art of packing almost nothing and carrying almost nothing with me. Because I'm a super light packer, the not checking is not difficult. So when you don't check, just to be clear, are you doing that thing that people do where they take a full-on wheelie suitcase, which is like the maximum sized thing that you're allowed to bring on the plane, and you bring it on the plane and you put it up in the compartment on top of you?

4:42No, because that annoys the hell out of me. I'm usually taking like a small weekender bag, or I have one hard case, suitcase, that's literally like 18 by 18 inches. It's designed really for a laptop and a couple of things. And that easily fits in the overhead, but it can also go out under the seat. So, and I'm like a small person. I don't need a lot of stuff.

5:04Felix Salmon: What are you packing though? That stresses me out. Another reason, another check in the bring a bigger bag and just check it box is that you can bring more stuff with you and have more options for what to wear when you're on your business trip or your holiday. Because for me, what you just said really freaks me out that you're like, I don't pack a lot of stuff. It's like, well, every time I go someplace, I'm like, oh, I didn't bring the right, whatever it is. Everyone's wearing dresses. I have pants. Everyone needs a pair of espadrilles. I didn't pack my espadrilles. I didn't pack my espadrilles or I have the sneakers, but no sandals or whatever.

5:38Felix Salmon: So, I mean, how do you deal with that? I have a broader question for Elizabeth on this one, which is Emily's question, but like broadened out, which is what it sounds to me that you're doing is a bunch of layers of optimization. You're optimizing for minimizing the amount that you pack. And you're also optimizing for minimizing the amount of time you spend doing things like waiting for luggage at the airport. So you're trying to optimize your travel. And one of the reasons why you pack very little is precisely so that you don't need to check a bag because checking a bag is like some kind of an obstacle in your perfectly optimized vacation.

6:27Yeah. Also, if I'm going on a long flight, the last thing I want to do is wait 45 minutes for my baggage. So I just, I enjoy being able to like walk off the plane and just get right in a cab or whatever.

6:38Felix Salmon: Also, it's stressful waiting for your bag. Hillary in her column says she enjoys this, like the suspense of will it, won't it come down the chute. But I, I'm an anxious person. And the idea that like, where's my bag? Where's my bag? Why isn't it come yet? Why isn't it come yet? I'm watching people walk away with their suitcases. And I'm like, where is it? Maybe I don't see it. Nope. No, it's not there. you know oh no i'm also really impatient like my 10 year old and i have the same level of patience and attention span for things that are really tedious so if i have to sit and wait for 30 45 minutes i just lose my mind so so elizabeth just give me give me some numbers here when you're saying like if you're on a long flight you don't want to wait for your bag um and you want to just walk off the plane.

7:26It strikes me that you can't walk off the plane if you're on a long flight, because you have to go through all of the immigration meshuggahs anyway. I'm not talking about international flights. I'm talking about New York to LA. Okay. So New York to LA is the one where you want to be able to just walk off the plane. so my feeling is that there are two pieces of technology that solve a bunch of these problems and my sympathies are more with emily than they are with elizabeth my feeling is that we shouldn't always be trying to optimize stuff and that an optimized life is a suboptimal life in some weird kind of paradoxical way oh my life is not optimized in most areas felix so why are you trying to optimize your travel like this?

8:18As I find travel, the process of travel a little bit stressful. Like I hate the sort of security aspect of going to an airport. And so I want to basically get stuff that I know is going to stress me out out of the way. But I am not generally an optimizer. I just think that travel specifically is one of my sore spots.

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12:54way of putting your mind at ease and always knowing where everything is. And I find that it really does do a great job of relieving anxiety. And besides, you know, if you do start wondering, where's my luggage, and it's not coming out, and then it turns out to be 1000 miles away at the airport, you left it out and didn't make it onto the plane. Like, it's very easy to work that one out without having to wait for the very last piece of luggage. And you can, you know, go to your hotel and call the airline and work it out from the hotel but that hillary would have no dramatic tension at the baggage that was the most puzzling part of the column i just was like wait what is she saying i i like it i i vibed with that one i was like yeah the the excitement if it's next bag gonna be my bag it's a little mini you know that that little endorphin rush you get when you finally see your bag it's an endorphin rush i'm into it i did relate um because i i like

13:48Felix Salmon: the feeling of the satisfaction of like oh now i see my bag and that does you're right it does feel good and it reminds me of when i get my laundry out of the dryer and i match up the socks i was just telling my daughter the other day oh i love when the socks they match again like they found each other they found exactly i love that um but there's another there's another piece of technology which is not really technology technology but it's something which is much underrated if we are living in a world where there are all manner of ways that airlines charge us extra for things they often charge us extra to check a bag they charge us extra for extra legroom they charge us extra if you don't have extra legroom but you're just sitting close to the front of the plane which by the way is also this like optimizing thing that people are like i need to get off the plane more quickly there's they that you know there's all of the money you spend in there but there's just a bunch of random ways in which money leaves your wallet whenever you're traveling and i would like to propose that in that in that context there's a way that money can leave your wallet that is not a huge amount of money and it's totally worth it which is just pack the bag and send it on ahead of you so it's waiting for you in your hotel room when you arrive this is not hard there's a bunch of different services that will do this luggage free my baggage who knows there are millions of them and it's easy and it normally costs maybe 40 50 bucks it's not a huge amount of money and all of your anxiety just dissipates you get to walk onto the plane with just your handbag or whatever and and it's and you don't need to worry like even if you check a bag you still have all of the hassle involved in schlepping it to the airport schlepping it from the airport just get rid of all of that i'm like send your luggage in advance i love that why doesn't everyone do that i mean i guess they don't want to pay 40 50 on top of already there i might do that if it were you know a very long trip yeah something but for a two or three day turnaround there's no point the amount of effort involved in schlepping luggage back and forth is the same i mean again like elizabeth for you as the optimizer who never packs anything then you're fine but like just think about it all of that effort you're putting into optimizing and minimizing the amount you pack you can lose all of that effort and just pack absolutely everything into a massive suitcase and send it ahead of you i would argue that i'm spending less effort because i minimize what i pack i throw some things in the bag and go so you're you're packing for four nights in la what are you bringing just nothing just one outfit i don't understand No, I just, I wear, I bring a lot of stuff that you can sort of go from very casual to a nice dinner.

16:39Day to night. And I bring like one or two pairs of shoes. So you're wearing one pair of shoes and you're packing how many more? One. And you can fit that into your little 18 inch by 18 inch laptop case thing.

16:52Felix Salmon: And your little tiny clothes because you're tiny. Yeah, I think this is Elizabeth like just like gloating that she's short. Yeah, this is what it is. that's exactly what it is so felix you always send your luggage ahead even for a short trip like for two nights you wouldn't do that no for two nights i just have a shoulder bag i don't always do anything i'm not one of these people who has rules about i always check or i always carry on or i always send my luggage in advance i always but the one the one thing i i pretty much always do do is is throw an air tag into everything air tags are just the best i don't have any air tags now i want to buy one i don't have one but i want to get some because we keep forgetting where we park the car yeah yeah air tags are good for locating your car that i keep an air tag in my car sometimes it chirps at me the one in the car i don't know why it chirps but yeah they're great things and they just take very standard those little circular batteries and they're great let's uh all start sending more luggage ahead of us i think this This is, of all of the solutions that exist in this, to this problem of to check or not to check, I think this is the least utilized and the one that most people would benefit from.

18:08Felix Salmon: I don't know. I'm kind of coming around to the idea of packing like one outfit, like Elizabeth, and just like raw dogging it through my trip. Like, this is all I got. I got this jeans and t-shirt and that's it. There's also the Japanese way of doing it, which is you just go into the local 7-Eleven, which is a great store in Japan, and buy the T-shirt and the pair of trousers or whatever you need for while you're there, and then just leave them where they are. And just instead of bringing everything that you need with you, just buy whatever you need when you get there. I do that with toiletries because it's such a pain to pack them.

18:45You just find the nearest CVS and get the travel stuff when you're there, or get them in the airport.

18:49Felix Salmon: One of the actual good policy maneuvers from the current Trump administration is they're getting rid of the rule where you have to take your shoes off. And I was just reading that they're also looking to get rid of the rules around liquids, which is exciting. Nice. That would be great. These are actual great innovations in policy, and I'm very impressed by both and looking forward to them. The greatest villain of the 21st century is Richard Reeves, the dumb English shoe bomber, who tried to bring a bomb onto a plane in his shoe, and he had a bottle of Lucozade. I can't remember. It's all merged into one.

19:28But basically, there was some dumb guy who tried to blow up a plane with a shoe, and then some other dumb guy who tried to blow up a plane with a bottle of Lucozade, and both of them failed. But from that point on, we have caused probably billions of dollars of wasted human time looking at people's shoes and looking at people's liquids. And getting rid of that would be amazing. What would the policy have been if he had smuggled the bomb in his pants? Exactly. Everyone needs to take their pants off.

19:58Felix Salmon: I don't understand that because neither of them succeeded, which is good. We didn't want them to succeed. So why do we have to have a policy? Obviously, whatever policies the airplanes had or the airport had was fine and caught these people. So why did they need to step it up even more? Exactly. Exactly. It's a travel show. We're not talking about counterterrorism measures. It's a travel show. So, yeah, guys, try to be zen about all of the security theater. And, yeah, just don't stress too much about your luggage. It's not worth stressing about.

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