FLY FOR FREE: Did you know that you can get a free one-way flight appended to your frequent flyer redemption? We didn’t. Courtesy of Point Me to the Plane, we found a presentation from Scott at milevalue.com which explains how this works and how you can make your redemptions 50% more awesome. Even if you don’t have miles to redeem, you should take a look–we are always inspired by clever way of exploiting loopholes.
TIME-LIFE OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY: Frugal Travel Guy discusses a question which probably isn’t discussed as much as it ought to be: is it worth it to take so much time to rack up frequent flyer miles, chase deals, cut coupons, track bank bonuses, and so on? One thing we like about his take is that he spends a good deal of time dicussing Pudding Guy. If you don’t know who he is–well, you really should, so please do pay attention. As FTG summarizes the story:
Once upon a time, while doing his routine grocery shopping, David noticed a promotion that Healthy Choice foods was running. For every ten UPC codes he mailed in, he’d receive 1,000 frequent flyer miles in the program of his choice. When he realized that an individual pudding cup actually had its own UPC code, and only cost 25 cents, he raced into action. He cleaned out his grocery store, then upped the ante by jumping in a van and emptying out every single Grocery Outlet in California’s Central Valley. If you lived in Sacramento or Modesto, and had a hankerin’ for some pudding on that May weekend, you were out of luck – David owned it all. He had cornered the pudding market, turned himself into a modern-day Pudding Rockefeller. With a little help, he cut off all the UPC codes from 12,150 individual pudding cups, and when the custard settled, David had earned a total of 1,253,000 miles, for about $3,150 in cost, not including his tax write-off for donating the pudding to charity. And thus, he was elevated into the Pantheon of Miles Godhood. The story made national news. It actually partially inspired an Adam Sandler movie.
In this case, it’s a no-brainer–a weekend spent hoarding pudding is definitely worth a million miles and lifetime gold status. But FTG makes the point that you have to consider not only the value of your time but the opportunity cost of it as well. We here at PFD see deals we’d like to go after but darn, there aren’t enough hours in a day. There’s a particular deal we passed up for time reasons involving cash for 20% off at Best Buy which has been eating at us–more on that in the future. Alas…
In a similar vein, Jim Wang at Bargaineering reminds you that time is your most valuable asset. If you have kids, you probably already know that, but it’s good to be reminded of it all the same.
HEALTHY, WEALTHY, AND SLEEPY: Honestly, this stuff bores the heck out of us, but we feel obligated to educate ourselves about healthcare costs because whereas in the past healthcare was expensive and complicated, it now stands to be expensive and more complicated. So let’s buckle down and eat our personal finance vegetables, shall we? Kristin Wong at Get Rich Slowly explains what’s the deal with Health Savings Accounts. If you’re young and healthy have a look, but if you have kids who get sick regularly, you might want to skip this one. Miranda Marquit at Bargaineering lays out the details of the new Medicare tax coming in 2013. It only affects The Rich, defined as: “modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) that exceeds $200,000 for those who are single, $125,000 for those who are married filing separately, and $250,000 for those married filing jointly.” (Does anybody else tend to get sleepy when they read the words ‘modified adjusted gross income’? Is that just us?)
AND STAY OFF MY LAWN TOO: Justin at Young and Thrifty would like to remind you youngsters that owning a house can be a drag on your career. He’s absolutely right as it’s important to be mobile when you’re younger–making a few strategic jumps can give you big boosts in salary and responsibility early on.
CONFIRMATION BIAS: It’s not, strictly speaking a financial topic, but it’s very relevant to your financial being. Seriously, if you only learn about one cognitive bias in your life, you should learn about this one. Trent at The Simple Dollar explains what it is and how it affects your decision making. The Wikipedia entry is pretty good too. Our own summary of what you should know about confirmation bias: you will make better decisions by trying to prove yourself wrong than by trying to prove yourself right.
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