Category Archives for Finance.
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I’ve been posting these piecemeal but wanted to get them all on the same page.
Yep, save real money
As you guys know, I’ve been getting into FIRE (financial independence, retire early) and am try to cut costs wherever possible.
So I’ve been exploring new websites and apps beyond the usual points and miles stuff, and wanted to share them.
I was reading an article called “How to invest even if you’re treading water financially” via Get Rich Slowly and a certain part jumped out at me (bolding and links mine):
“Don’t despise small beginnings.
The first steps in any endeavor are humble. Gustave Eiffel, famous today for his tower in Paris and the Statue of Liberty, started as an unpaid assistant in a foundry. Setting aside $10 a month might feel meaningless: “What difference can that ever make?” That’s wrong. It makes a difference in many ways:
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I have an out-of-control flaming emergency, according to Mr. Money Mustache
I recently wrote about life changes that I thought might happen… soon.
Well, even though Mercury was retrograde, nothing stopped chugging along. In fact, everything got a swift kick in the butt. And now life is different.
I’ve been getting used to the new rhythm. It feels so different. And it’s given me a chance to review where I’m at and how I want to move forward.
So… I’ve been getting into coupons lately. And ways to get cashback or maximize my spend as much as possible. I recently wrote about Paribus, which has already saved me some money on Amazon purchases.
And today, in my internet wanderings, I kept seeing this app mentioned over and over: Ibotta.
Loving Ibotta
I’ve already added it to the Services I Like page, but wanted to do a quick article about it, too.
<3
Sorry for the hyperbole slash clickbait-y title. I thought I was being on trend.
But seriously, I love this card. I’m close to being obsessed with it:
We all love our points and miles. But I’ve been reading about straight cashback cards for a sec now, and the poor Fidelity Amex always gets swept under the rug.
Well no longer. This card is a gem. It has so much going for it. And it might just be the ace in the back pocket of cashback cards, which by default makes it the best cashback card in the universe.
I forget where I saw the link. I think I clicked through something from Twitter and fell into the rabbit hole of the internet. But it ended up being a good thing, because I found this new service called Paribus.
How Paribus works
Paribus is a service that monitors price changes for you at 18 (so far) popular merchants. If there’s a price drop, Paribus submits a price adjustment claim on your behalf. And the merchants included are some good ones:
To get started, you can sign up for free. You connect the email account where you get your receipts. It monitors your inbox for receipts and keeps a log of your purchases.
All my Amazon purchases
If there’s a price change on anything you bought, they ask for an adjustment for you. The service is free to use. You link a credit or debit card to your account and they’ll issue the refund in the form of a statement credit (they use Stripe as a payment processor).
This can be easy – and maybe unexpected – money coming your way.
The fact that it’s free to sign up makes it a no-brainer. And I must say I’m impressed with the merchants they are starting with.
I could see this being super useful around the holidays when so many prices are being slashed left and right for Black Friday shoppers.
Keep in mind that Paribus still has to follow the price adjustment rules of each individual merchant.
CamelCamelCamel is a website that tracks items for sale on Amazon.com. They keep records of historically low prices for everything. So you plug in the item you have your eye on and it tells whether or not the price might drop based on previous trends.
If you buy your things from Amazon while they’re at their lowest, you won’t have to even utilize Paribus. You’d simply save the money upfront, which is always good too. But even if the price of something you bought drops even more, Paribus would be there to get a price adjustment for you.
I can see these 2 services being super useful for savvy web online shoppers when used in conjunction with one another.
Thought I’d share what I learned about Paribus. It’s free and easy to sign up, so you really have nothing to lose.
Does anyone else already use Paribus or CamelCamelCamel to track prices and shop? Would love to hear thoughts about either service as I am still new to both. And of course any others that are super handy slash in the same vein as these. Let me know in the comments below!
10% of everything!
I’ve started a new savings routine that is blowing me out of the water. That sounds weird to say, but it’s true. It’s an idea I directly lifted from a book called “The Automatic Millionaire” by David Bach.
The crux of the idea is that you put 10% of everything you make into a savings or retirement account. Everything.
If someone hands you a dollar, you put a dime into savings. You make $1,000, well, $100 goes into your savings account. 10%, all the time. From the savings account, you can distribute the money in a few ways:
After I read “The Automatic Millionaire” I started putting this into practice. It’s been about 2 months by now, and I’m kind of amazed at how much I’ve already been able to save – automatically.
It also signaled a shift in my mindset.
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Since I’m without REDbird and just have Serve as an option here in NYC, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to best use Serve following its move to Amex-only cards after April 16th.
They’re really not leaving consumers with a whole lot of options, but there are a few ways to get some great value and/or handy uses out of Serve using just American Express cards.
In this post, I produced a list of all the Amex cards that are not issued by American Express.
Why?
Credit cards issued by American Express will not earn points and will not count toward minimum spend when used to load Serve. Which is so lame. I’d love to be able to use the Amex EveryDay Preferred to load this puppy up.
But alas, we take what we can get.
Why don’t other bloggers talk about this card more? This is my number one use of this card following April 16th. I’ve written about this card in detail many times before.
The transactions post flawlessly and are coded as purchases and earn free money.
I loaded up my Serve this month with my Barclays AAdvantage Aviator Red MasterCard for $990 to take AAdvantage of the 50% bonus that I was targeted for a few weeks ago to earn some extra free miles.
But then I loaded up the remaining $10 to my FIA Fidelity Amex to see how it would post.
Serve reloads code as purchases with FIA
And points post without any issue
What does this mean?
You can earn an extra completely, totally 100% free $240 to credit toward an IRA, brokerage account, or checking account for 1 minute of “work” each month. I use the Serve iPhone app to blearily load up my Serve account from bed the first 5 days of each month. It takes me literally seconds. This is the easiest money I’ve ever earned in my life, I think. I consider this, by far, the best use of the Serve card after April 16th.
Why?
The FIA Fidelity Amex has no annual fee and earns an unlimited 2% cash back on every purchase… including Serve reloads.
Say you get the FIA Fidelity Amex, which is free, and the Serve card, which is also free, and load up $1,000 each month and then pay it off.
You’d be stashing away a free $240 annually into a retirement account with very little effort.
I plugged in my own numbers into Bloomberg’s retirement calculator, and, assuming I contribute nothing but the $240 each year (and it grows at 7% annually) between now and when I’m 68, I’d have a totally free $40,000+ waiting for me on the other side.
My $240 a year would grow to over $40,000 for my retirement
This whole Serve reload thing probably won’t last for the next 38 years, but take the free money while you can. I like to stash away at least $200-$400 per month into my IRA, and the extra $20 isn’t much but with compound interest on your side, a little truly goes a long way. And this is completely free money. Which is awesome, and there is no reason not to take advantage of this if you can.
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A few of you guys have asked for an update on my Airbnbs. There is a strong, thriving, and supportive community of Airbnb hosts here in NYC that I am happy to be a part of. My original articles about my foray in Airbnb were meant to analyze the financial investment/business sense behind setting it up, and were met with a good amount of interest. I received some messages spurred by curiosity, some seeking advice, and others that were downright nasty (which is fine).
The atmosphere surrounding Airbnb in New York is definitely a hot topic, and I deal with that on a daily basis. For the purposes of this article, I’m gonna treat it as I do daily: as a business, by a passionate traveler for other passionate travelers.
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I haven’t fallen off the earth or anything like that. Real estate in NYC is heating up, and my past few days have been pretty crazy with gearing up for the busy summer season.
I still intend to post the remaining 2 reviews from my recent NOLA excursion and have a few other things in the pipeline for ol’ Out and Out. And of course I’ve been keeping up with the latest points and miles news.
And here is a post in which I clutch at straws.
Boo hissss
After having a terrible time reloading the REDbird card at my local Target in Brooklyn, I brutally dumped it and opened a new Serve account.
So, I was pretty dismayed when I found out they were going to restrict credit card reloads to only include American Express cards starting April 16th.
“Manufacturing spend” in New York City is already hard enough, and this is definitely an added blow. But there are 2 things I can find here that still might make Serve worth it for some people.
1. Even without earning points, this is a great way to pay bills that would not otherwise accept credit cards
2. There are at least 2 Amex cards that are NOT issued by American Express that may still earn points
The first point. Although there are better ways to pay rent than with Serve, if you need to float your payments through a charge card for a month or so, you can still use your Serve account to pay your bill and give you a little extra wiggle room, which could help a lot with cash flow from month to month.
The second point. It is up to the individual card issuers about whether or not to issue points for a purchase. American Express has decided they will not issue points for their own credit cards. But what about Amex cards that are not issued by American Express?
Two that I can think of right away are the FIA Fidelity Amex and the Citibank Platinum AAdvantage Amex. Both banks do not currently impose cash advance fees for Serve reloads (someone correct me if I’m wrong here), and both banks should continue to issue points since the reloads code as a purchase.
American Express may not give you points, but FIA and Citi still might. And this might continue to be a good way to get either 12,000 AAdvantage miles per year for minimal effort or $240 free dollars contributed toward an IRA with Fidelity.
Then, going back to the first point, you’d still earn miles and/or points for loading up your Serve card, and then can pay rent, student loans, mortgage payments, etc. to merchants who wouldn’t otherwise accept credit cards.
Just a quick note.
I was poking around last night and came across a mention on Rapid Travel Chai’s Week in Points about a new way to earn some extra points via manufactured spending from a service called Flint (HT to Miles Remaining – I just discovered the blog and loved it! I instantly subscribed on my feedly).
I toyed around with the idea of signing up for the service for about 1.5 minutes before I decided to go for it.
I downloaded the app, got my US Bank Club Carlson Visa Signature card ready, snapped it in, and ran up a purchase for $750 (the max daily allowance).
This was after I entered in my bank info for direct deposit.
I saw the charge on the US Bank website. There it was, for $750, and it looked like it was gonna code as a purchase. Sweet. 18,000+ Club Carlson Gold Points for free? Yes, please.
The Flint charge at US Bank
So I was going to use the same plan as Miles Remaining to run $750 through 5 times in 30 days: on Days 1, 8, 15, 22, and 29.
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From the I-knew-if-was-too-good-to-be-true files…
Well, consider this a data point if anything.
Oh, kwitcher cryin’
Tonight, I decided I was done messing with the REDbird card in New York City. It’s just too hard. The closest Target to me is the one at Atlantic Terminal, and they no longer accept credit cards for reloads – only cash and debit cards – which makes this product useless to me.
I’ve heard the one in Harlem is still accepting credit cards, but from my vantage point in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, it might as well be on the other side of the moon. I will go far for points and miles – but not that far.
At about 6 hours round-trip (yes, I am serious. New York City is huge and the MTA is a nightmare), I have to weigh my opportunity costs as well as my time. And while loading $5,000 per month is obviously more than $1,000 per month, at least I can run my Serve reloads from the app on my phone while I’m still lying in bed.
Time required: seconds. Opportunity cost: slight delay on coffee in the morning.
Hello and welcome to Out and Out! My name is Harlan – I’m a points and miles enthusiast who loves to travel. I am interested in personal finance, the power of positive thinking, and the extraordinary journeys that make life worth living.