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Travel isn’t the same for owners and employees of smaller companies as it is for people working for large corporations. Most of the time, travelers from small businesses pay for their travel expenses out of their own pockets, with no generous expense accounts to fall back on. While that used to mean travelling on a shoestring, noncorporate travelers recently started stepping up in the world. No longer are they willing to accept inconvenient flights; small, dark hotel rooms; or clunky, old rental cars just because they’re inexpensive. That’s not to say independent travelers are out there burning dollars. But as their businesses grow, they’re increasingly willing to spend a little more money on travel if they feel they’re getting more value.

Travel suppliers are taking note of that trend. As a matter of fact, some are even changing their names to reflect a focus in that direction. For example, the Budgetel hotel chain recetnly changed its name to Baymont Inns & Suites and spent the past year upgrading its offering and its image as it migrated from the “economy” to the “midmarket” segment of the hotel industry. Also, major airlines have recently launched programs offering small businesses added value in the form of discounts and perks that were traditionally reserved for large corporations.

Remember our awards do not constitute a formal or scientific survey–they’re just our highly subjective choice of suppliers with offerings of true value for independent travelers.

AirTran Airways has continued to grow and prosper since we first recognized the upstart carrier in our awards three years ago. Travelers seeking to avoid the increasingly rapacious fares charged by major carriers for midweek business trips are flocking to AirTran. That’s because the airline never requires a roundtrip purchase or a Saturday-night stayover.

AirTran also recently bought the first 16 of 50 brand-new Boeing 717 aircraft. In addition, the airline offers last-minute upgrades to “business class” seats at the front of the plane, where travelers will find enough room to spread out and get some work done–or relax–for just $25 more than its standard coach-class fares. And for small businesses, AirTran’s A2B Corporate Travel Program offers upgrades, reduced restrictions, lower change fees and bonus frequent-flier points.

Last year, American, Delta, Trans Air, TWA, United and US Airways signed interline” agreements with AirTran, meaning passengers of delayed or cancelled flights can be reaccommodated on the other airlines for no additional charge. This is good news not only for AirTran passengers, but also for the airline, as acceptance from the big boys shows that they no longer see AirTran as a struggling upstart.

Systemwide, AirTran now operates 310 daily flights between 34 cities, mostly in the Midwest and on the East Coast, with its major hub in Atlanta.

Great fares, or farewell to online booking? You decide.

The recent launches of three new Web sites promising to find you the lowest air fare are giving business travelers new hope of cutting travel expenses. But is it only hope? The three projects, AirlinesGuides.com, FareChase.com and QIXO.com, belong to a new breed of search sites that query multiple booking engines at the same time, helping travelers compare prices more easily.

* AirlineGuides.com, which modestly describes itself as “The Internet Travelers’ Best Friend,” searches sites such as Expedia.com and OneTravel.com to find low prices. However, response times are sluggish, and, once you find a fare, you have to repeat the search on the particular site where the fare was found.

* QIXO.com says that it’s many travel sites in one and tries to prove it by culling from a number of airline Web sites, Travelocity, Cheap Tickets and others. It’s only slightly faster than AirlineGuides, and it also forces you to run two searches–one on QIXO, and another on the airline or travel agency site–unless you register and fork over a service fee of 1 percent of the purchase price.

The government’s got its hands in your travel expenses-and you may never benefit.

Feeling overtaxed lately? That’s probably because you are if you travel often on business, according to Alexander Nikoloff, a research analyst for Michigan State University’s World Travel & Tourism Tax Policy Center. His research suggests travelers are carrying more than their fair share of the tax burden and rarely benefit from the levies they pay. “It’s taxation without representation,” contends Nikoloff.

We live in a fast-paced world. If we don’t watch out, it’s easy to go through life without establishing long-term goals and values to guide us. Our society seems to stress the importance of short-term results–it’s easier to think about the upcoming weekend than it is your long-term future.

Good financial planning considers short-term, immediate, intermediate and long-term time frames. If you’ve been following our series of features over the past couple of issues, you’ve learned to inventory what you currently own and owe, take stock of your cash flow, and manage it in order to live comfortably in the present. Now is a good time to take a quick long-term look forward to see what’s really important to you over the next 3, 5, 10, 20, 30 years and more.

What personal, educational and business activities are you interested in participating in? How do you want to spend your personal time? Business time? Family time? How will you dress yourself? Who do you want to spend your time with? What kind of lifestyle do you want to live? What kind of car will you drive? Where will you live? Where do you want to travel? What do you want to see and experience? Whom do you want to meet? What do you want to accomplish? What would you like to do for your community?. What would you like to contribute to our world? Or receive from it?

Setting goals is a worthy and useful task. Goals help you hone your expectations and give you targets to work toward. Without short-term, intermediate and long-range goals, you might just wander through life and discover one day–only too late–that you didn’t really get a chance to accomplish what you wanted to.

Goal-setting doesn’t have to be difficult and can actually be a lot of fun. All you need is some private time to let your inner thoughts run free. Reflect on the values and things that are important to you. Decide which targets motivate and inspire you, then aim for them.

Your lifestyle goals are composed of personal and financial objectives. Personal goals include your ideas about family life, self-improvement, level of sports abilities, community activities, health and physical fitness, hobbies, special interests, recreation and travel.

Do you yearn to cook in an upscale custom kitchen? Do you like to drink designer coffee or premium wines? Own a vacation home in a warm and sunny luxury golf course resort? Do you like to wear trendy designer clothes? Drive collectible sports cars? Would you be sorry if you never took that dream trip? Do you need a larger home?

Your financial goals may include funding your children’s college education, becoming financially independent versus just getting by, or generating family wealth so your kids will have the time to make this a better world.

You will need to make and save financial resources to accomplish most of your goals. Your needs and desires provide the fuel for sound financial planning.

You may not generally think of the financial aspects of your life as being driven by your goals, but they are. Like many of us, you may find yourself reacting to financial situations more often than planning for them. This is precisely why formulating your financial goals NOW can make a world of difference for you. By setting goals, you can become more proactive in your life than reactive.

WHAT REALLY MATTERS FOR YOU

It’s important to put your goals in writing. If you don’t establish and solidify your own goals, other forces will influence you: peer pressure, intense advertising and merchandising, or just plain bad habits.

Begin looking now at your individual lifestyle and financial goals, as well as those of your family members and loved ones. Follow the accompanying checklist for developing your own “goal planner.” Make copies, fill one out yourself and give one to each family member, asking them to fill it out. Then schedule a family meeting to discuss and develop a set of goals for the family as a whole.

Take time to consider alternatives. You may redefine your goals once you understand your family’s and as you learn more about your financial position and the financial planning process.

If you or your partner or your children are not able to complete the goal planners the first time you try, don’t worry about it. You can also consider this to be a good way to introduce your children to personal finance.

It is a good idea to review your family and personal goals at least annually, such as in January or February. That way you can see what has been accomplished, and determine whether any goals need to be adjusted, dropped or added. Remember: Your financial planning is an ongoing lifelong process.

Once you have spent some time thinking and jotting down your goals, you may feel better about where you are in your life and where you want to go. Even if your goals are not yet as clearly defined as you would like, you have at least escaped the procrastination pitfall–the most common downfall in financial planning. And, you have probably started to identify a few items you would like to accomplish.

After you have some initial goals in place, you will be prepared to approach your financial planning in a simple, systematic manner using the Your Financial Partner six steps.

1. Review Your Goals

2. Gather Data

3. Analyze Your Situation

4. Develop Your Strategies

5. Implement Your Plan

6. Track and Monitor Your Progress

As you work through the different subject areas of comprehensive financial planning continue to ask yourself what’s important to you. If you keep your goals in focus, you will greatly improve your chance of successfully reaching and maintaining them.

The term “soccer mom” defined perhaps too well how many mothers lived the child-rearing parts of their lives in the 1990s. They hated that researchers could predict their voting and buying patterns just because they drove slab-sided Dodge Caravans and repair-prone Ford Windstars. That—and clunky design—helped dampen enthusiasm for the minivan.

Fast forward 15 years, add a slew of energy-saving technology, and you’ve got a near-perfect minivan-replacement vehicle for parents who chauffeurs kids to lacrosse matches: the Lexus RX 400h hybrid-drive SUV. The superb audio and Bluetooth phone technology make traffic jams en route to the office more bearable, too.

In the RX 400h, Lexus mated a V6 gasoline engine with a continuously variable transmission and placed a bank of nickel metal hydride batteries under the back seat. It also put electric-drive motors both front and rear for great fuel economy in town, reasonable acceleration, passable fuel economy on the highway, and as-needed all-wheel drive. If the majority of your driving is done around town and you need some (but not a lot of) cargo space, the RX 400h could be ideal. Just realize you’ll spend $50,000 to get good gas mileage.

As with other hybrids, the motors that help drive the vehicle also work as generators under deceleration, resisting the energy from the forward motion and converting it to electricity. More than half the kinetic energy is recaptured in the NiMH batteries. As a side benefit, regeneration saves wear and tear on the brakes; and the energy is available the next time you step on the throttle. On the interstate, there’s very little stop and go, which is why fuel economy with hybrids is lower on the EPA’s highway rating. The RX 400h is rated at 31 mpg in the city, 27 mpg on the highway for the 2007 model; the 2008 will be 1 mpg to 2 mpg lower because of revised EPA testing standards, which should be more realistic.

By installing an electric drive motor at the rear wheels, Lexus provides all-wheel-drive capabilities without the need for a bulky driveshaft. Under heavy acceleration or on slippery roads especially, the rear propulsion kicks in. There’s also an electric motor up front, which is important for regenerating the most energy, since more weight is on the front wheels under braking. That’s why the nose of a car pitches down when you step on the brakes and goes up when you accelerate.

How Safe is Silent?

Having electric propulsion up front as well allows for one of the RX 400h’s neatest impress-the-neighbors tricks: When you start the engine, there’s no sound, vibration or exhaust smoke, only a Ready light that comes on after a second or two. Then the RX 400h motors off silently under electric power. If you avoid tromping the throttle or turning on the air conditioner, you can get up to about 20 mph before the gasoline engine kicks in.

Long-time hybrid users may have adapted, but I’m still uncertain about the real-world impact (so to speak) of silent vehicles on kids playing in the driveway or the none-too-bright family pet when you back noiselessly out of the garage. You can order a backup camera as part of the $2,650 navigation package, but there’s no backup sonar, which I believe can be more important than the camera for proactively detecting objects in your path.

I also fear new owners may not realize a hybrid is in gear when they pull into a convenience store or gas station and begin to step out. There is a warming chime, but it’s polite and no more urgent than the chime for an unbuckled seat belt or still-on headlights. Obviously, RX 400h owners would be paying stiffer insurance premiums if roll-away incidents happened a lot, but I think Lexus and others need to think more about this downside of hybrid technology before people get run over.

The $2,650 navigation package also includes the backup camera, energy and consumption monitors, and Bluetooth. Each feature is problematic in minor ways.

The view provided by the backup camera is dim at night. Other automakers have more sensitive cameras or brighter backup lights; on this Lexus, you need to back up with your foot on the brake pedal. There’s also no backing lane overlaid on the display that superimposes the width of the RX 400h as two straight lines and curved lines . And there’s no sonar backup option, which is a valuable adjunct to any backup camera: It’s possible to miss seeing an obstacle on the monitor, but you can’t avoid hearing the warning ping of sonar.

The energy and consumption monitors paint a dazzling, full-screen portrait of where energy is coming from and going to: the gas engine, storage battery, front electric motor/generator, rear electric motor/generator; and the direction the electricity travels. There’s a second screen showing how much energy you’ve used and regenerated in minute-by-minute increments. It’s dazzling for about a week, or when you’ve got a green-loving neighbor on board. But there’s no satisfactory way to tone it down to just a corner of the display, once the initial thrill is gone.

The interior finish is flawless, but what did you expect? It’s a Lexus. The RX 400h has a nice rear-entertainment system for kids; the standard audio is fine, and the upgrade audio is superb. You can play MP3 and WMA files, and there’s a line-in jack for music players and an optional iPod interface. If you have the navigation system and the LCD, the audio or climate controls momentarily drop down across the top inch of the display to show a new station or temperature setting. It’s a nice feature, although Infiniti integrates multiple features better on its LCDs.

The Lexus Web site is simple to use, and you can easily configure your vehicle. Some people use automaker sites so they can avoid salespeople at dealerships for as long as possible, but in the case of Lexus, the dealership experience is about as good as it can be. That’s the advantage of setting up a new dealer network in 1990.with the requirement to treat customers well, rather than take over the corner of Toyota showrooms and put Giant Lexus Sale-A-Thon signs in the window.