Year: 2019

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Goals Looking Forward to 2019

I could not have asked for a better end to 2018! Peak performance of my company increased 40% YoY and I was able to lead the charge ensuring the company didn’t have operational challenges preventing us from driving online sales. All in all, it was a wild end to the year and I forgot I haven’t put together a blog post quickly detailing out what my goals are for this year! I posted this on my Instagram a few weeks back but thought I would also supplement it with a blog post!

Believe it or not, this is the first time I have ever written out my goals and had to sit down to think about them in detail. I reflected on how 2018 went and now it is time to drive results for 2019! I have decided to break my goals out this year into three different categories: Financial, Personal/Relationships, and Health/Spiritual. At this moment in my life, these are the things that are important to me and I want to try to push myself to be the best version of myself I can be. Here we go!

Financial Goals for 2019:

  • Max out my 401k at $19,000 by 3/31
  • Max out HAS of $3,000 by 3/31
  • Max out Traditional IRA by 3/31 Having to remove this goal as I no longer qualify to invest money into either a Traditional or ROTH IRA due to my income. I didn’t realize this last year, but after speaking the firm doing my taxes this year, I am happy to take this off the list.
  • Keep both rooms in my home rented out for 90% of the year. One bedroom renting for $1,000/month and the second renting for $900/month.
  • Increase my W2 total compensation to $250,000+
  • Increase savings rate to 80%
  • Optimize taxes through tax loss harvesting, and payroll deductions for HSA
  • Invest $100k in my cousins bar, Whiskey Row, in Denver
  • Purchase a second house hack

Personal/Relationships

  • Spend $100 per month going out with friends with the focus being to create more deep and meaningful relationships
  • Be open and outgoing to others. Seek to make a new connection with at least one person per week.
  • Randomly perform one act of kindness each week and keep a journal of each
  • Document my path to financial independence through blogging and Instagram
  • Grow traffic to theyoungretireeby33.com to 100 unique visitors per week

Health/Spiritual

  • Find a new diet to get on that will help with inflammation of my arthritis
  • Meditate twice per day for at least 10 minutes each.
  • Calm the mind, become less stressed and always kill Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANT’s)
  • Perform a S.A.V.E.R.S. Miracle Morning at least 5 days per week. Silence, Affirmations, Visualization, Exercise, Reading, Scribing
  • Each morning wake up and write 3 things I am grateful for

I am sure this might seem like a task that shouldn’t take long to perform and really think out, but I can tell you from going through this exercise I am not good at getting this down on paper.

Actions: I plan to read this at least twice per week and keep myself in check to see if I can stick to these goals this year! Will be very interesting to see how everything ends up going.

Let me know what you think and as always don’t forget to add me on Instagram @TheYoungRetireeBy33.

Continue reading Goals Looking Forward to 2019

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Redeeming Travel Rewards – Barclays Arrival+ Card

Travel hacking is something I first learned about at the end of 2018 and I am happy to say I am trying to go all in this year and want to document my journey for you to see! One of the big things I believe stops individuals from travel hacking is their worry of what will happen to their credit score if they open many cards at a time. For that reason, I will also plan on documenting what my credit score is along the journey. The other main thing I want to point out before diving into my first travel rewards redemption is ensuring you hear this one thing. Do NOT, do NOT, do NOT begin travel hacking unless you can pay off your credit card statements in full every single month. The only individual who should do this is one who has enough liquid capital to be able to pay off each statement in full without carrying over anything. If you are not able to pay off each statement in full, please please please don’t do this.

Credit Score

Credit Karma Score 2.17
Credit score as of 2/16/19

Now time for the fun! The first card I have opened this year and already hit the min spend on is Barclays Arrival+. This card promised $700 in free travel redemption after a $5k minimum spend in the first three months of having the card. Many may say that it is extremely difficult to spend $5k in the first three months of opening a card, especially if you are on a path to Financial Independence and are living the frugal life. My feedback would be, I have tried designing my work life around being able to spend a lot of money on my personal cards so I can take advantage of travel hacking. I have been able to negotiate into work the ability to use my personal card for all traveling expenses incurred. I have also had the ability to step into a role where I travel approximately 80% of the time for work trips. My hopes are to hit the absolute jackpot this year with travel rewards!

Within the first month and a half I spent a little over $6k on travel expenses which I put all on my Barclays Arrival+ card. To this point, this has earned me over 90,000 points towards their rewards program!

Barclay Pic 1

Now let’s figure out how to go about using my points to wipe out over $700 of expenses! Below is a list of expenses I have incurred during the last two weeks of traveling.

Barclay Pic 2

Instead of picking something that won’t max out my points, I am going to go ahead and move on down to an $1,100 flight and redeem my points against that. Let’s click ‘Redeem now’ and see where this takes us.

Barclay Pic 3

Dang!! I don’t know if this is a good redemption ratio but looks like I am able to receive $1 for every 10 points. Let’s go ahead and select to use 90,000 points to wipe away $900 worth of transactions!Barclay Pic 4

And boom goes the dynamite!! Really exciting that within the first month and a half I was able to make $900 in cash back based off this card. Can I get a cha-ching!

Barclay Pic 5

If you haven’t already, you are able to pay off the entire balance of the card, and you can frugally spend $5,000 in three months, and the offer for the Barclays Arrival+ card is still around, I would highly recommend opening the card.

The next card I have decided to open is the Gold Delta Amex card! I had something popup on my search yesterday offering a bonus exclusive for the card of 70,000 miles after a $3k spend in the first two months when the original card normally offers only 30,000 points! Talk about a steal! I already got approved for the card and now I am just waiting for the physical card to arrive at my home soon. Looking forward to tracking my next card and showing what I was able to travel hack it to!

Can’t wait to see what the year has to offer from a Travel Rewards perspective. Let me know if there are any cards you are specifically excited about and what you are planning to use them for this year!

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How To: Post on Instagram From Your PC

I thought this would be something interesting to quickly write about as most of my posts don’t look very clean compared to others who seem to have been doing this for a while. The one way I thought of on how I could make this look cleaner was by figuring out how to post things on Instagram from my PC. This would be cool to figure out because all of the things I post about are typically pictures taken from my phone and then uploaded to Instagram. Here is a quick guide on how to do this!

Step 1: Login to your Instagram account on your computer

how to pic 1

Step 2: Anywhere on your screen, right click and Select ‘Inspect’

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Now your screen is going to look very strange, but don’t be intimidated!

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Step 3: On the top right of your screen, select the ‘Toggle Device Toolbar’

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Now your screen should look similar to a device.

Step 4: Select ‘Responsive’ and select iPhone 6/7/8

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Step 5: Ensure you are selected to select an element on the page. You can do this from the top of the screen by selecting the below highlighted button in red

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Once your cursor moves to the circle, you now have control of the screen and where you click would be just like accessing your Instagram account from your mobile device.

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If you don’t see the Plus sign as you would on your normal mobile device, simply refresh your web browser and it should show up!

I am now looking forward to my posts looking more professional moving forward! If you already have an account and are posting, this is something I recommend giving a shot!

Let me know what you think!