I’m in a bit of a pickle, and wanted to share some of my thoughts on spend with you today. The challenge is to accept clean, or dirty spend, and to explore the nuances of each. My scenario is twofold. Firstly, I’m setting up a new business that is turning out to cost a ton […]
Did I make a mistake with Club Carlson Aruba?
In a flurry to book last minute reservations with Club Carlson I went for 4 nights (2×2) at the Club Carlson property in Aruba for February 2016. The theory was that I could push it so far out that our availability has time to ‘fit in’ around it and I didn’t have to worry about flights, […]
Tech Solutions to Estate Planning for Manufactured Spenders
Estate Planning seems to be a terribly boring subject, however, it really comes down to being something that many people either don’t understand, or don’t want to understand and therefore find ways to avoid.You need an estate plan.I’m not talking about some complex dynasty trust, or other technique to avoid taxation, I’m just talking about […]
Confession: I copied a post by Gary Leff
I still remember it. It was back when there was an American Airlines devaluation. Leff broke the news (well I think he broke it, but regardless I learned of it from his post). He made an award chart showing some differences in the old and the new.I read it, and I recreated it.My take might have […]
Forward Shifting Spend
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 […]
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 […]