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CategoryDear Friends: No, I Haven’t Won Lottery. Yes, I Still Work Full Time
This article is for my non-travel addict friends who see my pictures on social media and think I either won the lottery and/or quit my job. In fact, I haven’t accomplished eithe..
PSA – Use Your Old Citi Cards, Avoid Involuntary Closure (Resets Bonus Eligibility)
A few months ago, I got several emails from Citi with the title “Notice of account closure“. They were closing several of my no-fee cards for inactivity. There was no warning o..
Travel hacking with less manufactured spend
It seems that the travel hacking community has been thrown into one of its periodic panics, first over the loss of a popular gift card reselling opportunity and then an
Indexed annuities are bad
To call the finance industry a “mixed bag” would be a gross understatement. There are a few functions essential to industrial capitalism that banks, bill brokers, and financiers ..
AA Flies to Iceland – Best Use of Miles for Business Class
One Mile at a Time writes that AA will start flying seasonally between Dallas (DFW) and Keflavik (KEF) in summer 2018. I’m excited for 3 reasons:
- It’s a fully flat bed in busin..
Maximizing Limited Vacation Days for Travel – My Dos and Don’ts
You have a full time job with limited vacation days. Time is of the essence – but so is enjoying your trip. Cramming a bunch of activities in a short time is great – if you enj..
Get 5+ Expensive Nights from One Obscure Hotel Card Signup
I’m talking about the Best Western Rewards Premium Mastercard from FNBO, which has a sign up bonus (SUB) of 50,000 points after $1,000 spend. The landing page advertises it as “..
Welcome to Points Adventure!
Hi! I’m italdesign from Saverocity forums (great community). I decided there weren’t enough points & travel blogs, so I am starting my own blog.
Actually, here’s what happened. ..
Sapphire Preferred, Sapphire Reserve, or Ink Preferred for Ultimate Rewards transferability?
I am on the record believing that much of the caterwauling about the end of travel hacking is essentially an artifact of individual travel hackers aging and having more responsib..
Five questions about tax “reform”
Back during the Affordable Care Act repeal debate I wrote pretty extensively about the threat repeal posed to entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship by preventing self-employed peopl..
On mutual understanding
I think that, to a degree that sometimes seems unusual in these heated times, I enjoy reading and listening to people who don’t just disagree with me, but fundamentally disagree
The right ways to get to Evian-les-Bains
I recently wrote about my trip to Europe which involved a very expensive cab ride about 50% of the way around Lake Geneva, from Lausanne, Switzerland, to Evian-les-Bains, France…
The low-hanging fruit of personal finance
On Friday I wrote about how people making payments in excess of the minimum to student loans need to make sure their student loan servicers have instructions to credit the
On compound interest (and peeking)
There’s no subject personal finance bloggers love gushing over more than compound interest. Conjure up a conveniently “assumed” rate of return, give it a few decades or a few cen..
One weird old trick to save money on student loan interest
Back in September I wrote about how structuring your borrowing and investing decisions properly in the first place is superior to continually trying to optimize and re-optimize t..
Doing Good, Join us for Happy Hour on 30 November, and bring a toy!
Last year, I partnered with Richard Kerr and Travel Hacking Award Travel 101 to host a Toys for Tots Happy Hour.
Frequent Travelers Do Great ThingsLast year you (the travel hacki..
401(k)’s are a bad idea, poorly implemented, that doesn’t and can’t work
Status quo bias is one of the most powerful forces in American political life, and to overcome it a party or faction usually requires some combination of internal unity, lobbyist
American Express's new co-branded Hilton credit cards
I’ve been reading with interest this morning about the revamped lineup of co-branded Hilton Honors credit cards American Express will be launching soon. Since I earn a lot of Hil..
On the dryness of powder
I sometimes come across a moderately sophisticated intuition, and find that while I don’t strictly speaking agree or disagree with it, I do find it basically meaningless without ..
How to make Delta's (bad) squeaky wheel policy work for you
If you spend much time around here, you know that I like flying on Delta. There are some catches, of course: if you prefer flying on Delta you’ll probably want
How you might be, but probably aren’t, affected by the TIAA “scandal”
A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, and last week the New York Times published a pearl-clutching article that contained a little bit of knowledge. They reported that
Anatomy of a (partly) award trip: France, Switzerland, Germany
This week I’m on my first big vacation since last summer’s Club Carlson-financed trip around Central Europe, which means it’s time for one of my patented anatomies of an award
Walmart Money Center debit limit problem solving; gone vacationing
I have never felt the impulse to constantly repeat, here on the blog, every manufactured spend technique that still works. People periodically send me e-mails or leave comments o..