American Express Archives - Page 14 of 21

Checks, laptops, marijuana, and the country’s most expensive real estate listing

May 21, 2013 By pfdigest

LAST DAY FOR FREE BLUEBIRD CHECKS: Thanks to Deals We Like for reminding everybody that today is the last day you can order free checks for your Amex Bluebird account. Starting tomorrow, you’ll have to pay over $20. Bluebird is generally awesome when it comes to fees, but those checks are expensive, so order now or forever hold your peace.

WHY YOU SHOULD HOLD OFF ON BUYING A NEW LAPTOP FOR A BIT: Gizmodo makes a good case for why you should delay a laptop purchase for a few months. Intel is coming out with a new chip called Haswell in a couple of weeks which promises much better battery life, speed, and graphics. So you’ll get more bang for your buck on a new model, or else you can pick up the older technology at a discount.

HOW MUCH DOES A MARIJUANA HABIT COST?: Now that marijuana has been legalized in two states, it’s as good a time as any to look at it from a personal finance perspective. A study at Colorado state university puts the habit at $650 per year, although it seems to be a YMMV situation:

How much the individual actually winds up spending on marijuana will depend on several factors, most obviously the quality (and price) of the pot and how much one smokes. Researchers used the crowdsourcing site PriceofWeed.com to get the $185-per-ounce figure. As of early April, an ounce of marijuana was averaging $206 on the black market, and because the price is expected to drop once pot is legal, the study landed on $185. If the smoker is opting for higher-quality, $300-per-ounce marijuana, his annual pot bill would top $1,000. That’s for someone smoking the average of 3.53 ounces per year. A heavy smoker who goes with $300-per-ounce pot and uses, say, half-an-ounce monthly could expect to drop $1,800 annually on his habit.
That may sound like a lot. But a pot-smoking habit is probably cheaper than a cigarette-smoking habit. Colorado is one of the cheaper states for cigarettes, but a pack still goes for around $5.19, according to one state-by-state price check compilation. So a one-pack-per-day habit—purchased one pack at a time, not by the carton—comes to $1,894 for a year.

Interesting stuff, but I’ll stick with my rum, thank you very much.

THE NATION’S MOST EXPENSIVE REAL ESTATE LISTING: Go on. Click this. At $190 million, this Greenwich, CT house is worth a look:

Single-family home is rather a misnomer for this estate, as it consists of so much more than just the home itself- a 13,519 square foot French-renaissance mansion with 12 bedrooms, seven full baths, two half baths, library, solarium, wine cellar and entire floor for staff. Special features include 12-foot ceilings, multiple carved fireplaces and balconies, plus huge windows and glassed-in porches for taking in the panoramic Long Island Sound view. The property straddles 50 acres spread over two islands, and outdoor features include a 75 foot pool with spa and pool house, grass tennis court, stone carriage house and guest cottage, plus abundant rolling lawns and gardens.

A few pictures:

I’m pretty sure crepe myrtles and palm trees are not native to Connecticut

It’s slightly more than we’re willing to pay, but maybe some of our wealthier readers might want to put in a lowball offer. The worst the sellers can do is say no, so go for it!

Citibank cracks down, Amex throws us a bone, and French healthcare is both awesome and broken

May 9, 2013 By pfdigest

CITI CRACKS DOWN: Yesterday we briefly recapped the story of Chase getting burned by offering unlimited 5% rewards. Now it’s Citi’s turn: there are many reports on Flyertalk of Citi closing down people who have been churning a lot of gift cards on the Citi Preferred 5% gas/grocery/drugstore offer.

It’s a cliche, but…

Question for discussion: is the pigs/hogs metaphor more applicable to Citi or its customers?

What makes this very amusing to us is this isn’t the first time Citi has shot themselves in the foot with unlimited 5% rewards. Does anybody remember the Citi CashReturns card which offered unlimited 5% cash back for the first 3 months? Citi apparently does not, but we do, and frankly it’s surprising Citi or another major issuer has not hired us to evaluate offers, because we’d be awesome. “Yes, you did something like this in 2007 and it ended badly for you, though it was frickin’ awesome for your customers” we’d say.

“Not only that, but you let people get the same ‘intro’ offer a half-dozen times consecutively until you finally caught on a year and a half later. And you’re darn right there’s a Fatwallet Thread on this debacle, too.”

“And you know what?” we’d add. “You’re probably going to do something like this again in a few years.” Then, as long as we’re dreaming, we’d collect the six-figure check Citi is paying us to dispense such great advice and be on our merry way.

Given the way high-level bank executives move around so much, it wouldn’t surprise us if nobody from L’affaire CashReturns is still around at Citi to impart their wisdom. And given all that Citi’s been through since the credit bubble burst, it wouldn’t surprise us if employee morale were in terrible shape and nobody even cared if anybody was collecting thousands of dollars per month in credit card rewards unless the problem got so big it was costing Citi millions per month and somebody very high up the food chain started squawking. Who knows…

HILTON SURPASS INCREASES REWARDS VERY SLIGHTLY: The Amex Hilton Surpass is now offering 6 HHonors points for restaurant spending. Our response is a shrug–the Citi Forward offers 5 ThankYou Points (which can be exchanged for 7.5 HHonors points) and the newly revamped AARP card offers 3% cash back. After the recent Hilton devaluation 3% probably represents the ceiling of the value of 6 HHonors points per dollar.

Still, it’s good to see there’s some concern from the card marketers at Amex about the competitiveness of this particular product. Hopefully there are more changes to come?

SOCIALIZED MEDICINE–AWESOME OR HORRIBLE?: Okay, enough about credit cards! You’ve no doubt heard about Obamacare, and have probably formed your own opinion on it, and we have no interest in trying to change it, or even in making any intelligent commentary on the situation because frankly the entire topic is simultaneously perplexing and boring.

Love it or hate it, we do seem to be moving more toward the European model, so Pauline at Reach Financial Independence–a native Frenchwoman who lives in Guatemala and therefore has one of the more interesting personal finance blogs out there– gives her account, both the good and the bad, of life with France’s healthcare system. She describes it as “so awesome and so broken at the same time.” Conclusion:

Good or bad, we manage to have one of the highest life expectancy in the world, well over 80 years. But that may be due to wine.

We can only hope she’s made her peace with rum or guaro or Casillero Del Diablo or whatever they drink in Guatemala. Our five words of advice for anybody who’s in Central America or planning to go: Flor de Caña Siete Años.

HOT DEAL: Amex Business Gold 75,000 points

May 8, 2013 By pfdigest

Thanks to Delta Points for bringing this to our attention: the Amex Business Gold card sign-up bonus is now up to 75,000 Membership Reward points. The minimum spend is $5,000 and the annual fee is waived the first year.

This is a very good deal and who knows how long it will be around, so if you’re in the market for a business card, grab this one soon.

(Note: this is not our affiliate link and we do not stand to benefit in any way if you sign up for this card, though Delta Points will, assuming it’s their affiliate link we used. It’s just a good deal, which is why we’re hyping it.)

Commuting is expensive, easy Bluebird loads, $100 bank bonuses, financial independence, and a fascinating stock pick

April 19, 2013 By pfdigest

COMMUTING IS EXPENSIVE: You know driving to work can be stressful and take a lot of time, but do you realize how much money it costs? A couple of recent studies have tried to pin down the cost. AAA came up with $9,100 per year, or $0.61 for every mile driven, with SUV drivers doing even worse at $0.77 per mile. Here’s a breakdown of the costs:

Note that 40% of their estimated cost comes from depreciation. If you have an older, cheaper car, then congratulations, you’re almost certainly doing better than average in keeping your transportation costs down.

On a related note, Dough Roller cites another study from the Telework Research Network which concluded that workers could save anywhere from $2,000 to $7,000 per year by working from home. And DR correctly points out that not only would you save money, you’d also save a lot of time–time which you could use to save or earn more money. Or pursue hobbies, or sleep, or spend time with loved ones, or pretty much anything that’s not related to work, or driving to work.

We have coworkers in the NYC metropolitan area who have commutes on the order of 90 minutes each way, and we cannot figure out why on earth anybody would subject themselves to that. Life’s too short.

AN EASY WAY TO LOAD YOUR BLUEBIRD: Thanks to Frequent Miler for pointing out that you can load your Amex Bluebird at the MoneyCenter ATM machines–see his post for detailed instructions on how to do so. One caveat: apparently the machines have a reputation for being out of order frequently. We tried to load our Bluebird and the machine froze up on us–a worker had to reset the machine, which he said would take 20 minutes, so we didn’t stick around. Other commenters have reported issues, though when it works, it’s great.

$100 FROM GROW FINANCIAL FCU: Maximizing Money reports that there are multiple accounts at Grow Financial with $100 opening bonus. You know what to do.

HOW TO BECOME FINANCIALLY INDEPENDENT: The Simple Dollar has a nice article answering a reader who wonders how somebody making minimum wage can ever become financially independent. There’s a lot of clear-headed thinking about what costs to cut, where to live, how to set up your life, how to save, and so forth. And obviously everybody’s situation is different and some folks are in legitimately difficult situations, but for a lot of people it’s a matter of making up your mind to do the right thing:

Still, the point is clear: anyone can do this if they choose to make savings a priority in their life. If you choose not to do that, you pay for it over the long haul. Every frivolous thing you throw your money at pushes financial independence further and further away and, if you have a low income, every little bit matters.
It’s not a matter of “I can’t do this.” It’s a matter of “I choose other things instead of doing this.”

Indeed.

AN INTRIGUING INVESTMENT IDEA FROM UP NORTH: Another great article from Oddball Stocks, this one on a Montreal-based asset manager called Senvest Capital. Blogger Nate Tobik makes a convincing case that the company is trading at a substantial discount to its actual value, and he’s long on the stock:

Investing in Senvest Capital isn’t a normal value investment, it’s more of a mutual fund, value stock, and hedge fund hybrid investment. An investor gets the chance to own pieces of Senvest’s mutual funds, along with some of their private investments, all at a 2/3 discount. Along with this the common equity investor pays no fees, rather they are a beneficiary of the fees that the company’s fund investors pay. Even with all these things investors are still provided a margin of safety, they’re buying at 2/3 of a very tangible and liquid book value.

If you’re interested, here’s the full report.

That’s all for this week, we’re back on Monday.

Checks, laptops, marijuana, and the country’s most expensive real estate listing

Citibank cracks down, Amex throws us a bone, and French healthcare is both awesome and broken

HOT DEAL: Amex Business Gold 75,000 points

Commuting is expensive, easy Bluebird loads, $100 bank bonuses, financial independence, and a fascinating stock pick

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