Tag: money

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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 yea

Time to provide an update on one of the boldest things I have done to this point on my investing journey. Early on when I started speaking with my cousin on the potential opportunity to become an investor in his bar business for a new location in Denver, he mentioned I would have to purchase units in chunks of $106,000. This is a large chunk of change ($$$), but my cousin has been opening and running bars for the last 10 years and has continuously expanded his business. He started out with one concept in Scottsdale called El Hefe and quickly expanded to 6 different concepts spanning the entire country. The major brand having the most notoriety at this point is Dierks Bentley Whiskey Row. I mean if you can get a big-name Country Music artist to go in with you on a bar, you must have great potential for it to fly off. This concept started in Scottsdale and has expanded to Tempe, AZ, Gilbert, AZ, Nashville, TN The newest of the locations would be the brand new one I would be investing in in Denver. My cousin is the president of the company and recently had the owners of the Colorado Rockies reach out to him asking if they were interested in putting a location in downtown Denver across the street from the Rockies stadium. The land is owned by the Colorado Rockies and the bar that was there is called Lodos which was one of the hottest bars in Downtown Denver; however, my cousin worked out a deal with the Rockies owners and they are going to be taking over Lodos and revamping the building entirely. This will entail knocking the building down and building a brand-new building entirely.

With the looming talks of a down market soon, I have heavily debated keeping money in the stock market or looking to place it elsewhere. I was originally going to invest the minimum $106,000 to get 10 units of ownership in the bar, but due to the wildness of the stock market, I have decided to try and up the ante a little bit. Why think small though when I can think big!!! After recently receiving a large $50,000 bonus check from work due to being rated the highest performer on my annual evaluation, I have decided to purchase 20 units instead of 10. This has been a very difficult decision and I have been working to figure out how I would come up with the money. Now let’s figure out how I am going to get to the $212,000 dollar amount I am going to need in the bank to purchase 20 units!

Account 1: Vanguard Taxable Account ($165,734.05 balance as of 3/24/19)

For this account I am going to wait until I get the dividends for Q1 before selling off my money. The only downside of completely liquidating this account is I have already seen a significant capital gain this year after the market rebounded coming off poor performance at the end of 2018.

This is a part of the investing rollercoaster though. I took advantage of the EOY with tax loss harvesting and now I will have to take the gains out this year.

To make things a little simpler once the dividends come through, I have updated my distribution options to keep the money in my Settlement Fund versus re-investing. This will allow the selloff to be much easier than having to wait a few more days for everything to go through.

Account 2: Merrill Lynch Vested Stock ($8,943 as of 3/24/19)

This is a unique account that I have access to based off how I am compensated at work. My total compensation at work is broken into three different parts.

Base Salary – majority of compensationYearly bonusCompany Stock – this account. The only downside to this account is the grants vest over the course of 4 years, 25% each year. For example, this last year I will be granted $52,500 in stock; however, I won’t get any of the stock until next year at which I will have vested $13,125 of the grant.

With the latest vest I received on 3/21/19, I now have 91 shares I can sell. Below are some snapshots of going through the process of selling these shares on Merrill Lynch.  

Account 3: E-Trade Taxable Account ($6,901 as of 3/24/19)

This account was something my parents opened for me when I was in High School and they had a financial advisor determine what I to invest in. Ha, wish I would have known what I know now and told them I would take control of everything because the advisor was picking random stuff that I would have not agreed to. The Walmart and Amazon stock were items I purchased once I had control of the account. Time to liquidate!

Account 4: Bank of America Savings ($11,627 as of 3/24/19. $10,000 to be used to invest)

Since I received my bonus check, I decided to only invest a little bit of it knowing that I would be going through this liquidation process to invest in my cousin’s bar. I have one reimbursement check for my last travel trip for $2,100 coming through in a few days which will take me to roughly $13,700. Of this money, I will take $10,000 to invest.

Now let’s look at where we currently stand from a total cash perspective after these accounts are liquidated.

AccountMoneyVanguard Taxable $      165,734Merrill Lynch WM Stock $           8,943E-Trade Taxable $           6,901B of A Savings Account $         10,000Total $      191,578Deficit to $212,000 $        20,422

I need to figure out how I am going to come up with $20,000 to hit the $212,000 target needed to purchase 20 business units of the business. I am in a fortunate situation where my parents are on the verge of retiring and I have spoken with them to see if they would lend me $20,000 at a 6% interest rate. I don’t want to take advantage of the situation, so I want to ensure they know I am willing to pay for it. After this loan, I will be right at the $212,000 mark and will have enough to invest in the business! SUPER PUMPED!!! I know putting all my eggs into one basket is risky, but my goal in life right now is to invest in assets that will produce cash! This is a risk I am willing to take at such a young age and early on in my investing life. I should complete the paperwork at the end of this week and everything will be official!

Making progress in acquiring assets instead of liabilities as that is the goal in life!

Have you ever made a significant amount of money for the hours dedicated to your profession? What if I told you there was a way to make more than you have ever made in your life? Most would be sceptical, but this is no get rich quick scheme. Now let me ask you a few questions about a normal expense I recently had. Getting your oil changed.

This is a common expense every car owner will have to ensure your car doesn’t break down. Most individuals would simply go to their local oil change shop by their home and pay for whatever the cost is of the oil change. Seems the logical thing to do. You need an oil change for your car, so why waste any time. Get in your car and head to the shop. This seems logical, but this is not optimized for your personal finances.

What if I told you there was a way to quickly save money by doing a simple google search for coupons in your local area for oil changes? Upon a simple search that took less than 5 minutes on my phone, I was able to find a $20 off coupon for Jiffy Lube.

Many would argue I didn’t make any money in this scenario, but I would challenge your thinking. I recently read a really interesting Instagram graphic someone posted that said something along the lines of “If I have a coupon for $200 off spending $500 or more at a Macy’s, how much did I save?”. This is something that is extremely interesting to think about. Have you ever found yourself getting a coupon to a store and you think to yourself, dang I am going to save so much money? Are you really saving money though if it wasn’t something you actually needed in the first place? Did you really save money? Or just spent money on things you didn’t actually need in the first place?

For this particular type of spending, which I would consider an expense of car ownership, it is something that you must do in order to keep your car running. For that reason I have the mindset that any spending that is absolutely necessary would be saving money versus spending money you don’t need to.

Now let’s calculate how much money I just made on an hourly basis!

It took me 5 minutes to find a $20 coupon for the oil change. There are 12 5 minute intervals in 1 hour. If you multiply $20 (coupon savings after searching for 5 minutes) * 12 (5 minute intervals in 1 hour) = $240/hr.

I would say this was a good value for my time!! I am sure there are a lot of people who would argue that I didn’t actually make $240/hr and I am fine with that. Just keep paying full price for your next oil change 📷