La Vida MIAMI!

 

TPG’s ultimate guide to Miami and South Florida

 Nick Ellis

Dec 28, 2021

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Miami has been a magnet for travelers from all over the world for decades.

Its main draws, of course, are the beaches and great weather the city — and all of Florida — is known for. But below the surface, Miami is an incredibly dynamic city, one with a rich and unique culture, a red-hot food and bar scene, a proliferation of art and museums, and so much more.

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While Miami is the largest and most economically important city in the region, it’s also part of a larger area known as South Florida, which is unofficially defined as an area that stretches from Palm Beach County to the Florida Keys and includes cities like Palm Beach, West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Miami.

From the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, South Florida immediately became a hot spot for Americans stuck at home in colder climates. Florida’s comparatively relaxed pandemic-related restrictions combined with its reliably pleasant weather resulted in a crush of people vacationing or even relocating permanently as an escape from more densely packed cities with strict pandemic restrictions.

And it’s easy to see why: This area has something to offer to just about every kind of traveler, from the golf courses and pastel-hued waterfront mansions of Palm Beach to the beachside sports bars in Fort Lauderdale to the cafecitos, mojitos and booming nightclubs of Miami.

Here’s what you need to know to plan a trip to South Florida.

In This Post

When to visit South Florida

South Beach, Miami. (Photo by Alexander Spatari/Getty Images)

Typically, the best time to visit South Florida is around November through May, after hurricane season and before the weather gets unbearably hot and sticky.

However, the winter months — December, January and February — are the most popular, which means you’ll pay top dollar for accommodations and likely your flights. March, April and May are a little slower (though not this year, when the city of Miami Beach was quite literally overrun with spring breakers), so you’ll find at least somewhat of a break on the price of hotels or home rentals, and the weather is equally as great.

Hurricane season spans from June to November, and while it’s not unheard of to visit the area during the summer, be advised that it does get very hot and humid, and there’s the threat of possible storms. If you do decide to travel during hurricane season and your trip investment is hefty, consider buying trip insurance that covers named hurricanes. But if you want more flexibility to cancel your trip based on the threat of bad weather, purchase a policy with a cancel-for-any-reason add-on.

Related: Florida’s top 10 vacation regions for different types of travelers

How to get to South Florida

It’s simple to get to South Florida from many points across the United States, Canada, Mexico and more. The region has two of the country’s busiest airports in Miami International (MIA) and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL). And north of Fort Lauderdale is West Palm Beach International Airport (PBI), smaller than the two behemoths to the south but still well-connected to many U.S. carriers’ hub airports.

Miami International Airport. (Photo by Debbie Ann Powell/Getty Images)

Miami is a full-blown connecting hub for American Airlines, meaning many cities across the country have nonstop service to the airport. If your city isn’t connected with Miami, there’s a good chance there’s service to Fort Lauderdale, a large base for Spirit Airlines.

All three of these airports can be used for destinations in South Florida, though obviously, the perfect airport will depend on several factors, including your final destination, price, timing, etc. When searching for options in Google Flights, you can add each one of these as the destination in your search to get a complete look at availability and pricing.

And while this is The Points Guy, prices to the region are usually reasonable enough that paying for the tickets outright makes more sense than using miles.

Related: TPG releases brand-new points calculator to make award bookings easier

Where to stay in South Florida

In such a large region, there are predictably almost unlimited options for accommodations. Making things harder, the area is home to some of the country’s finest hotels and resorts.

While there are numerous beach communities up and down the southeastern coast of Florida, we focus on lodging options you can book on points in the three principal areas: Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Miami.

Palm Beach hotels

• The Ben, Autograph Collection: From 30,000 Marriott Bonvoy points.
• Palm Beach Marriott Singer Island Beach Resort and Spa: From 70,000 Marriott points.
• Canopy by Hilton West Palm Beach Downtown: From 70,000 Hilton Honors points.
• Hilton West Palm Beach: From 60,000 Hilton Honors points.

Fort Lauderdale hotels

The W Fort Lauderdale. (Photo by Benji Stawski/The Points Guy)

• Hotel Maren Fort Lauderdale Beach, Curio Collection by Hilton: From 70,000 Hilton Honors points.
• The Dalmar Fort Lauderdale, a Tribute Portfolio Hotel: From 30,000 Marriott points.
• W Fort Lauderdale: From 40,000 Marriott points.
• The Ritz-Carlton, Fort Lauderdale: From 50,000 Marriott points.
• The Westin Fort Lauderdale Beach Resort: From 30,000 Marriott points.
• Hollywood Beach Marriott: From 40,000 Marriott points.
• Hyatt Centric Las Olas Fort Lauderdale:15,000 World of Hyatt points.
• Kimpton Goodland Fort Lauderdale Beach: From 25,000 IHG points.

Miami hotels

The Confidante Miami Beach. (Photo by Benji Stawski/The Points Guy)

• The Gabriel Miami, Curio Collection by Hilton: From 15,000 Hilton Honors points.
• Hilton Bentley Miami/South Beach: From 82,000 Hilton Honors points.
• Gale South Beach, Curio Collection by Hilton: From 63,000 Hilton Honors points.
• Hilton Cabana Miami Beach: From 62,000 Hilton Honors points.
• Kimpton Hotel Palomar South Beach: From 29,000 IHG points.
• Kimpton Surfcomber Hotel: From 28,000 IHG points.
• Kimpton Angler’s Hotel South Beach: From 25,000 IHG points.
• Kimpton Epic Hotel: From 38,000 IHG points.
• Hotel Indigo Miami Brickell: From 27,000 IHG points.
• Hyatt Centric Brickell Miami: 20,000 World of Hyatt points.
• Hyatt Centric South Beach Miami: 20,000 World of Hyatt points.
• The Confidante Miami Beach: 15,000 World of Hyatt points.
• Lennox Miami Beach: 25,000 World of Hyatt points.
• The Plymouth South Beach: 20,000 World of Hyatt points.
• W Miami: From 40,000 Marriott points.
• JW Marriott Marquis Miami: From 40,000 Marriott points.
• AC Hotel Miami Midtown: From 20,000 Marriott points.
• The Ritz-Carlton Coconut Grove, Miami:From 40,000 Marriott points.
• Marriott Stanton South Beach: From 50,000 Marriott points.
• Moxy Miami South Beach: From 30,000 Marriott points.
• Royal Palm South Beach Miami, a Tribute Portfolio Resort: From 40,000 Marriott points.
• The Ritz-Carlton, South Beach: From 70,000 Marriott points.
• W South Beach: From 70,000 Marriott points.
• The Miami Beach Edition: From 70,000 Marriott points.
• The Ritz-Carlton Key Biscayne, Miami:From 50,000 Marriott points.
• Cadillac Hotel and Beach Club, Autograph Collection: From 40,000 Marriott points.
• The St. Regis Bal Harbour Resort: From 70,000 Marriott points.
• The Ritz-Carlton Bal Harbour, Miami:From 70,000 Marriott points.
• JW Marriott Miami Turnberry Resort and Spa: From 40,000 Marriott points.

What to see and do in South Florida

Even though you may be perfectly content with doing so, there’s more to do than just hit the beach in South Florida. Each area in the region has its own museums and cultural institutions, of course, but there are a few common themes, no matter where you are.

Golf

(Photo by Gary John Norman/Getty Images)

Golf is serious business in this part of the country, and South Florida alone is home to hundreds of courses, providing endless opportunities to perfect your game while in town.

The Everglades

If you want a break from the city or the beach or pool, get out into nature in the Everglades, a massive swath of natural tropical wetlands at the southern tip of Florida. Explore on foot, by bicycle or on an airboat and marvel at the abundance of nature around you. Hundreds of animal species call the Everglades home, making it a paradise for any wildlife lover.

Museums

Back in town, there’s plenty to keep one occupied, no matter where you find yourself in South Florida. Get a dash of culture at one (or a few) of the numerous museums in the area, including the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens and the Perez Art Museum in Miami or step back into the Gilded Age at the Flagler Museum, named after Henry Morrison Flagler, an oil tycoon who resided in Palm Beach.

Little Havana

If you’re spending your time in Miami or its suburbs or even in Fort Lauderdale, you shouldn’t miss the city’s Little Havana neighborhood, which maintains its distinct Cuban culture and the incredible foodtraditions that come along with it.

Wynwood Walls

The Wynwood Walls. (Photo by Boogich/Getty Images)

And no visit to Miami would be complete without a visit to the Wynwood Walls, a display of public art created several years ago as this neighborhood began its transformation from a zone of derelict warehouses to one of the city’s trendiest districts.

Riverwalk Arts and Entertainment District

If you find yourself in downtown Fort Lauderdale, be sure to take a stroll along the Riverwalk Arts and Entertainment District, which continues for 22 blocks and holds some of the area’s top institutions, including the Broward Center for the Performing Arts and the Florida Grand Opera as well as the shops and restaurants found on Las Olas Boulevard.

Bottom line

South Florida is one of the country’s most attractive destinations. It has a perfect mix of urban excitement and laid-back beach vibes. The region offers something for everybody, whether you’d like to hit the links in Palm Beach or the clubs of Fort Lauderdale and Miami.

And luckily, if your ideal vacation is to simply sit by the pool or beach and be pampered, the area is home to some of the best hotels in the country, ensuring you’ll return home rested, refreshed and rejuvenated.

Real Estate

Wenston DeSue is a realtor, organizational consultant, design, construct, build expert and developmental networker.  Real estate is the business of exchange and affects every person on the planet.  Real estate on all levels represents resources, access and ultimately, power.  Knowledge is power…

FLORIDA IS CONSUMER BOOMING!

 NEWS & MEDIA

Jon Feingersh Photography, Getty Images

JUNE 28, 2022

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Fla. Rise in Consumer Confidence Surprises Experts

By Kerry Smith

At 62.9, June’s Fla. consumer sentiment was 2.1 points higher than in May. A UF economist says it “comes as a surprise” given inflation and other challenges.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Consumer sentiment among Floridians ticked up for the first time in 2022, rising 2.1 points in June to 62.9 from a revised figure of 60.8 in May.

In contrast, national consumer sentiment sank to its lowest level on record.

“The increase in June’s consumer confidence in Florida comes as a surprise, considering the persistently high inflation,” says Hector H. Sandoval, director of the Economic Analysis Program at the University of Florida’s (UF) Bureau of Economic and Business Research. “In almost every consumer category, prices are rising, but energy prices are particularly high, squeezing consumers at the pump. Statewide, gasoline prices have reached record levels in recent weeks.”

Sandoval also noted that May’s numbers were revised downward to 60.8, so June’s improvement is coming back from the second-lowest index number ever recorded in Florida.

Among the five components that make up the index, four increased and one decreased.

Current conditions: Floridians’ opinions about current economic conditions were mixed. Views of personal financial situations now compared with a year ago decreased by one-tenth of a point, from 54.8 to 54.7.

On the other hand, opinions as to whether it’s a good time to buy a major household item like an appliance increased 3.2 points from 50.2 to 53.4 – a view shared by Floridians across all sociodemographic groups.

Future expectations: The three components corresponding to Floridians’ expectations about future economic conditions were more optimistic in June. Expectations of personal finances a year from now showed the greatest increase in this month’s reading, up 3.9 points from 74.1 to 78. 

Expectations about U.S. economic conditions over the next year rose 1.9 points from 58.6 to 60.5, while the outlook of U.S. economic conditions over the next five years increased 1.2 points from 66.4 to 67.6.

“Overall, Floridians are more optimistic in June,” says Sandoval. “The increase in consumer confidence is fueled by improvements in Floridians’ expectations about their personal financial situation one year from now, and their opinions about whether now is a good time to buy a big-ticket item.”

But Sandoval says those “views contrast with the current economic outlook. As inflation is running at a four-decade high, the Fed has approved the largest interest rate increase since 1994 and has indicated that it expects to raise it further this year, increasing the risk of recession. Even though the labor market has remained strong, higher interest rates will increase the cost of borrowing and slow business growth, which will weaken the job market. Looking ahead, the outlook for consumer sentiment in the near future is pessimistic.”

The index used by UF researchers is benchmarked to 1966, which means a value of 100 represents the same level of confidence for that year. The lowest index possible is a 2, the highest is 150.

© 2022 Florida Realtors®

Real Estate

Wenston DeSue is a realtor, organizational consultant, design, construct, build expert and developmental networker.  Real estate is the business of exchange and affects every person on the planet.  Real estate on all levels represents resources, access and ultimately, power.  Knowledge is power…

HUD Lending Drops in 1Q22

 

HUD Lending Slows in Q1 as Inflation, Labor Add Pressure

By Austin Montgomery | June 27, 2022

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The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funded far fewer loans in the first quarter of this year compared to last year, recently published Trepp datashows.Factors such as omicron, high expenses and labor shortages kept firms on the sidelines. 

HUD funded 346 loans totaling $6.04 billion for 1Q, and that was down substantially from 404 loans totaling $8.92 billion funded in the quarter ending December 2021. For fiscal year 2021, which ran through last September, the agency funded 1,578 multifamily loans with a balance of $29.48 billion, up 55% from the $19.02 billion it funded in fiscal 2020. 

In FY21, Greystone was the most active lender with 157 loans totaling $3.23 billion, followed by Dwight Funding with 157 loans totaling $3.1 billion and Berkadia with 127 loans totaling $2.66 billion. 

In terms of health care and senior housing, Greystone saw 79 loans totaling $676 million in 1Q22, the firm told Senior Housing News. 

Lending volume appears to be slowing with the latest data analysis, and those at Greystone have taken notice. 

“We have seen about half the application volume we saw in the first quarter of 2021,” Greystone Head of Healthcare FHA Production Scott Thurman told Senior Housing News, while the dynamics of the lending space have continued to change since early 2021.

Real Estate

Wenston DeSue is a realtor, organizational consultant, design, construct, build expert and developmental networker.  Real estate is the business of exchange and affects every person on the planet.  Real estate on all levels represents resources, access and ultimately, power.  Knowledge is power…

HEY…Drop A Latte?!?!?!?!?

 

Just stop buying lattes’: The origins of a millennial housing myth

Financial gurus want young home shoppers to stop complaining and cut back on small luxuries. But there are broader affordability issues at play.

Mark Dent

June 18, 2022 

Consider the 21st century’s most ubiquitous piece of financial advice: “Can’t afford a house? Just stop buying lattes.”

Every millennial has heard some kind of variation of this myth. It’s peppered all over Twitter, dispensed on personal finance blogs, and uttered from the mouths of pundits on national television. Sometimes, “latte” is exchanged for a different millennial trope, like avocado toast.

The idea that fewer lattes could solve millennials’ financial woes has been around for more than 20 years and can be traced to one man: a financial adviser and author named David Bach. 

“Are you latte-ing away your future?” Bach asked in a 1999 book. “Everyone makes enough money to become rich. What keeps us living paycheck to paycheck is that we spend more than we make on stuff we don’t need.” 

In the 23 years since then, we’ve witnessed a dot-com crash, a Great Recession, a global pandemic, a housing shortage, 40-year-high inflation, and the massive growth of student debt.

Yet the latte is still a flashpoint for arguments about personal finance — a stand-in for any small luxury that could be given up to boost wealth, and a recurring subject in Bach’s 12 bestselling books.

David Bach wants you to stop buying lattes (Photo by Dominik Bindl/Getty Images; illustration by The Hustle)

“There’s this enormous attraction as a culture to it, and I don’t think any of us are above it,” Helaine Olen, a Washington Postopinion writer and author of Pound Foolish, a critique of the personal finance industry, told The Hustle. “I think we all believe it on some level.”

Perhaps it’s surprising that latte advice has proliferated when sweeping economic forces have put retirement and home ownership further out of reach for young workers.

But the latte advice exists because of these issues, springing into existence just as the idea of retirement seismically shifted, wages stagnated, and the price of a ticket to the middle class increased substantially. 

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When pensions died and personal finance boomed

David Bach grew up in the financial advice industry. His father ran his own planning practice, The Bach Group, as part of Dean Witter (now Morgan Stanley). In the early ’90s, when Bach was in his 20s, he joined his father’s practice. 

The industry was thriving. In 1995, America had ~30k designated financial planners, a number that had increased 50% in the previous 5 years.   

Before the personal finance boom, most people received “defined benefit” pensions. These plans required employers to guarantee and fund set payments to their workers after they retired, placing the burden of saving and investing on the employer. 

Estimates vary on the amount of workers once covered by pensions. But according to data from Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research, ~88% of Americans employed in the private sector had defined benefit retirement pensions in 1975.

“Americans both needed [financial] advice less and had less reason to invest because it was assumed for most people that there would be a pension,” Olen said.  

But changes were afoot: 

• IRAs and 401(k)s were introduced by federal legislation in the 1970s. 
• Dovetailing with a hot economy in the mid-’80s, the 401(k) replaced the defined benefit pension as the most common retirement strategy. 
• By 2005, ~33% of private sector workers had defined benefit pensions, according to Boston College. 

Zachary Crockett / The Hustle

The concept of retirement saving was rapidly transformed. Over time, the burden shifted from employers to employees, who had to make more savings and investment decisions on their own.   

In the aftermath, financial planners and money managers became a hot commodity — as did self-help advice presented in books and on TV.

But because telling people it was important to invest earnings while not overspending could be summed up in half a sentence, catchy strategies were a requisite for making waves in the financial advice self-help sector. 

Enter the latte.

Like the 401(k), the American specialty coffee scene was on the rise in the ’80s and ’90s. Local shops and massive chains like Starbucks exploded. By the mid-’90s, the specialty coffee market was estimated at $1.5B.  

Specialty coffee was also instantly associated with financial decision-making — just not the way we’ve become accustomed to thinking. 

Although lattes were richer in taste and price than a cup of Folgers, the beverages were seen as an alternative to excess.

Analysts hypothesized that espresso drinkers consumed lattes because they wanted to avoid nightclubs or couldn’t afford an expensive pair of jeans from Nordstrom, describingspecialty coffee as “an affordable luxury in a society of downsizing incomes and expectations.” 

“People are watching their money in the ’90s,” a Washington, DC coffee shop manager told the Baltimore Sun in 1994, “so coffee shops are becoming meeting places.” 

The Hustle

To people who enjoyed lattes — largely urban young people and women — coffee culture was linked with fiscal responsibility.

But for older generations and suburban residents who had yet to get the first Starbucks store in their neighborhood, lattes were a mark of frivolous luxury, made famous in 1997 by opinion columnist David Brooks’s use of the phrase “latte town” to describe America’s elite bubbles. 

The cultural connotations and generational divide, said Meghaan Lurtz, a professor of practice at Kansas State University who has researched the psychology of money, made the latte “an easy thing to point to.” 

And plenty of people were ready to point.

Latte math doesn’t add up

“The Latte Factor” was first used by Bach in 1995, according to a trademark he later filed for the phrase. 

He claims he came up with it after hearing how a 23-year-old woman in one of his investment classes bought a latte every day and never had enough money to invest. He featured the advice prominently in his 1999 book Smart Women Finish Rich, calculating how this woman could one day be a multimillionaire if only she’d curb her latte habit.

• Bach estimated the cost of a latte (plus a Diet Coke and other treats) at $5/day. This placed the woman’s monthly latte expenses at $150 a month, or ~$2k/year, in Bach’s estimation.
• He told her if she skipped the latte every day and invested the $5 in stocks she would make more than $2m by the time she was 65, assuming an 11% growth rate.

Zachary Crockett / The Hustle

Bach’s formula featured some questionable math. (The annualized returns on the Dow Jones, for instance, were ~9.7% between 1949 and 1999 — not 11% — and even assuming the latter rate, Bach’s own “Latte Factor Calculator” shows that saving $5/day for 40 years wouldn’t produce anything close to $2m.)

Nonetheless, his latte advice took off. 

Smart Women Finish Rich became a New York Timesbestseller and Bach soon landed on The View and Oprah, emphasizing that cutting back on lattes or similar small luxuries were the key to saving enough for a good life.

He eventually created something he called the “double latte factor,” telling people to reduce spending on other items he deemed to be expensive luxuries —  cellphones, gym memberships, and cable TV.  

The schtick has attracted its share of critics.

“I don’t love that narrative,” Cliff Robb, faculty director of the consumer finance and personal financial planning programs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, told The Hustle, “where we’re basically saying, ‘OK, we’ve made social safety nets weaker, we’ve taken away a lot of employee benefits that people used to get, and more stuff is on you. And you should feel bad about what you’re doing.’”

Preston Cherry, founder and president of Concurrent Financial Planning, describes the latte advice as a smart entry point to helping anyone understand how to better assess financial health. 

But it works, he said, if evaluated as part of a big picture encouraging people to strive for greater abundance so they won’t have to worry about cutting back on every little thing. Without getting into the bigger picture, he said people won’t even want “to engage with [their] financial goals.” 

Zachary Crockett / The Hustle

Plenty of newer personal finance experts would agree. Several business books released this year have been marketed as being “not about the latte.”

But Bach, who did not respond to multiple interview requests, has remained resolute in targeting the elimination of small expenses as a “secret” for achieving wealth even in the context of America’s economic downturns.

“Who stole the American Dream?” he asked in the 2016 edition of his book The Automatic Millionaire, noting that old approaches to saving for retirement were unsatisfactory. 

Prime among his handful of solutions for attaining the dream was his most steadfast approach: “The Latte Factor®.”

What really drives the loss of wealth

The real root causes behind average people gaining or losing wealth are, of course, a bit more complex than lattes. 

Going back to the time of Thorstein Veblen and “conspicuous consumption,” the answer has often been stated as being contingent on how much money you spend.

Veblen’s thoughts were updated by people like Bach, Suze Orman, and Juliet Schor, who wrote in the 1990s that “millions of us have become participants in a national culture of upscale spending.”  

In 2012, Jeffrey Lundy published a dissertation questioning this long-held rhetoric, finding scant research had been conducted on what drives wealth loss and accumulation. Lundy studied patterns of spending from the US Consumer Expenditure Surveys and compared them with household wealth loss from the prior several years. 

His answer? Above average discretionary spending usually didn’t lead to major changes in net wealth — but larger forces did, like divorce, job loss, high interest loans, expensive health emergencies, and being widowed. 

“Americans are hard on ourselves,” Lundy told The Hustle in a message, “but it seems less of it is about frivolous spending and more about unexpected negative life circumstances.”

Another thing Lundy found was that Americans had spent a declining or steady amount of their total incomes on things like entertainment and recreation in the prior three decades. That was also the case with food and beverages outside the home.   

We may be eating out a lot and drinking more lattes (~67m in 2017) than in the 1990s, but the share of after-tax income Americans spend on food and drink outside the home has hovered at ~4%-5% every year since 1980.

Zachary Crockett / The Hustle

Yet despite being similarly conservative with their discretionary expenditures as generations ago, Americans, aside from a change at the height of the pandemic, are not saving as much as they did in the ’80s. 

To Olen, there’s a clear explanation: “People very well know how to save money. They [just] have a hard time doing it.”

In other words, the problem is a bit harder to swallow than a latte.

Real Estate

Wenston DeSue is a realtor, organizational consultant, design, construct, build expert and developmental networker.  Real estate is the business of exchange and affects every person on the planet.  Real estate on all levels represents resources, access and ultimately, power.  Knowledge is power…