Forward Shifting is a concept that allows us to prepay for certain items now, in order to reap present day benefits. A good example of this in personal finance is to over pay state income taxes, because your annual Federal deduction is calculated by the question “How much did you pay this year?” rather than “How […]
Archives for April 2015
Considering award space inventory and point valuations
Here’s a question I’ve been pondering recently… how much does the availability of award space directly impact the valuation of your points strategy? Most people will come up with some sort of theoretical value per point based upon redemption value. Some will claim that a $25,000 flight gave them a whopping 25 cents per point value […]
How much MS do you need for 5 years of fancypants travel?
I asked this question last night on twitter, and got a couple of responses, and I’d like to dive into it further in this post. Let’s say you are starting out today with zero miles and want to cover 5 years of travel like a rockstar.. how much do you need to MS to achieve […]
Check your RedBird accounts for unusual activity
This is one of those things that I don’t want to blow out of proportion, but I’ve heard enough weirdness in a day to suggest you go out and take a look. Earlier today esteemed twitterer Saianel mentioned that his accounts had unusual entries in the phone number field. This has been corroborated by many […]
Understanding cognitive bias in the Travel game.
Cognitive bias refers to the topic of how your logical approach to a topic may be influenced by factors surrounding it. There are many manifestations of this phenomenon being explored by much smarter folk than myself, today I’d like to play with loyalty program devaluations and the bias of Anchoring.Anchoring is the bias that means we focus […]
Currency Arbitrage Thoughts
I’ve been watching the rise of the USD against a number of currencies recently, and it has got me wondering about how to game it. My initial thoughts were that currency arbitrage must happen swiftly. And I think to an extent there is truth in that.Currency arbitrage, like all forms of arbitrage seeks to take […]
Club Carlson Carnage… Just book it.
I heard this morning that Club Carlson is removing the most valuable part of their award program.. the last night free. I’ve pretty much got all my travel for the next year booked up already, but I decided to book a new vacation based on this news. I decided that Aruba sounded like a great […]