I’ve been running this site for a little over a year now, and have strived to combine several different aspects, whilst keeping things interesting and enjoyable for the readers here. Recently I have made some changes to the structure of the site so that you navigation is easier and keeping current on what matters to you is simpler than before.
Saverocity was designed to be able to combine my two passions in life, Personal Finance and Travel and furthermore is contributed to by both myself and my wife Allison. Originally, from a Travel perspective we had thought to have Trip Reports written by Allison, and Travel written by myself. Within travel I talk about things I find interesting in this subject, just one of these areas is something called Travel Hacking, an area that I think many couples find that one party is more interested in, and the other wants to wash their hands of. However, since we both started contributing to the site we have found that the boundaries we set up for who would add content to each section have changed, and we now cross post when we feel we want to.
Travel Hacking is a term that causes some debate in the travel hobbyist field, as some people feel that the term ‘Hacker’ has a negative connotation, however the practices are for the most part legal, though they can from time to time push the boundaries of ethical behavior. Credit cards form the larger part of accumulating miles for ‘free’ travel, and keeping track of the signup bonus requirements and upcoming annual fees can be too tedious for many people, though it is rarely the case that the other half of a ‘travel hacking couple’ finds Business Class flights and 5 star hotels tedious at all!
A large focus for me is Personal Finance, and I consider the points and miles earned from Hotel Loyalty Programs and Airline Frequent Flyer Programs to be a tangible asset. When earning these things I try to keep a high level view of things and bring them into the family budget. I do think that a large risk that comes with focusing on Travel for ‘free’ can be that people still spend beyond their price range, and can get trapped ”keeping up with the Jones’s”. It is important to keep a firm eye on your overall financial perspective first and foremost, and if you are not in a strong financial position rather than focus on using these points and miles for travel, use the tactics this community employs to instead earn Cash Back for supplemental income.
An example of this is my current plan to create a $5000 Brokerage Account, for free, based upon spending on my Fidelity Cash Back Credit Card (offering 2% on all spending) this can make a huge impact to a low income family, though truthfully it does require a certain amount of disposable income to carry out the plan to earn $5,000 in a year, for low earners even $500 in extra income can cover Christmas expenses, or even better, start building a retirement account when otherwise it would be out of their grasp.
The front page of Saverocity is designed to collate all of the posts as they are written in each sub blog, so you can drop in here to see what we are up to in general, or if you specifically are interested in just seeing a specific aspect of the site you can drop into that sub blog using the navigation menu at the top.
I hope you enjoy the site, and please leave comments and thoughts when you can, the feedback is very important to us and we love to hear from you. And if you have a moment to complete it I am currently running a survey on this site asking people who do Travel Hack about their personal finances, I’ll be publishing the results shortly. The survey is anonymous and only 10 questions in length and can be located here: Saverocity Survey.
Matt and Allison from Saverocity
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