Credit card points can be used for many things, depending on the program, and the top things to consider are redemption options that fit your needs, existing wants, and budgets…air miles, hotel points, student loans, mortgage payments, and the biggest, cash. It’s a long term game, and if you can plan ahead a year or two as far as what you need miles and points for, and strategically get cards in certain programs/airlines/hotels you can get free access to otherwise unaffordable experiences.Having a partner/spouse you 100% trust you can play with doubles your effect, I mention the trust because ID theft is all too common as is financial fraud within the family. You also need to be flexible about where and when you travel to get more out of your points, if you’re using points for that
I’ve been in the churning game for 10 years and paid off the last $13k of my school loans, and didn’t pay for an airplane ticket or hotel for 10 years while flying around the world several times and taking many trips(miles redemptions are so bad after COVID and dynamic lricing for awards I bought a plane ticket with cash last month and just felt dirty.
I feel the need to counter this comment and point out that while churning is a cool thing, it shouldn’t be on anyone’s list of ways to save or make money.
For all the planning, opening and managing new accounts, fulfilling requirements, and then jumping through hoops to take advantage of those rewards, you really have to be committed and give up some sanity and freedom for a pretty marginal gain at the end of the day.
It shouldn’t be on anyone’s list of ways to save or make money if they’re not capable of organizing a basic spreadsheet, and if you don’t have a solid understanding of the world of credit and finance, as well as the willingness to learn the ropes of how to get higher returns for your time and credit score, yes the juice is not worth the squeeze.
My returns have been anything but marginal, but I devoted a lot of time early on to reading it as a hobby and curiosity. Like everything else, if it were super easy everyone would do it–but I’ll say it’s not THAT hard to get really decent results for marginal organization. 20 hours of startup reading and you’re looking at free flight and hotel vacation in perpetuity most places on the globe every year once you get going, on-going time is an hour or two a quarter at most.
Strangest thing that has worked for me is finding out that deposits are sticky: money tends to stay where you put it. So, switch your direct deposit to your savings account and then transfer out what you need for bills. More of it will tend to stay in savings than be the “i have extra money this month, maybe I’ll go shopping” money you discover at the end of the month. This is related to pay yourself first, but it makes it much easier. If you automate your bills – from your checking account, not through the biller’s site – you will very quickly start to see your savings grow. Change that savings account into an investment account and things start to build even more.
Any purchases more than $X should take more than Y days to actually do. And the higher the cost, the most days to think about it. Impulse buys tend to be bad financially and many of times are regretted, so if you wanted to buy a certain item on Monday, wait till Friday and see if you still really gotta have that item. If you are being honest with yourself, you’ll know of you really need that item.
Another tip is to either buy everything in cash or everything on one credit card. Cash is obviously best since once it’s gone, it’s gone, but in today’s world cash isn’t convenient. So instead pay for everything kn your CC. Then st the end of the month, you know exact how much you spent and where it went. There’s no question at that point because one of the hardest things to do is actually track everything - sometimes you forget to write it down, sometimes you lose your list, sometimes the value is written incorrectly. Well your CC will do all the math automatically for you.
I do the first and it’s great. I don’t have a fixed length of time to wait, but generally I try to wait at least a few days for anything “big.” A lot of the time, I realize I don’t want/need it, so I save that money for something better.
For your second point, I just use an account aggregator so it’ll pull in all the transactions I made across accounts. So to know how much I spent, I don’t need to care which card I used, it’ll pull it all in.
Learn to repair your own car, and when buying a car, estimate the cost of repairs over the remaining life of the vehicle.
I paid ~$10k for my car (Prius) when it had ~60k miles, and now it has ~140k miles after ~9 years, and I’ve paid ~$2k for repairs and maintenance. I do oil changes, replace spark plugs, brakes, and even replaced a coolant valve. It’s not hard with YouTube at my side.
Had I taken it to the shop, I would’ve easily spent double that, perhaps triple. Had I bought new, I probably would’ve spent even more in depreciation (car was $25k new, so it would likely be <$10k by now).
Re phones, I also have Tello and it’s great! I pay <$10 for my phone because I don’t use much data.
There are better options if you use more data though, such as Mint or Google Fi (Google Fi for family plans where you expect to travel internationally).
Visible is pretty great. I don’t really have any issues with it. I pay $25/month. Spouse has upgraded Visible plan of $45/mo and an Apple Watch $5/mo. My 3 kids have Tello $9 plans which gives the unlimited text/talk and 500MB of data. That’s just enough to track their locations, Otherwise they tether for free on our phones. Everyone has an iPhone.
25+45+5+3x9 = $102 all in. No additional fees or taxes.
Hi OP. Keeping your spending from getting out of control is important. But most people, especially in today economy, don’t have a spending problem, they have an income problem. There’s a finite limit to the ability to cut expenses. Once the “rice and beans” answers you’ve already received are implemented the only viable strategy is to find ways to increase income.
i had cut all costs i was willing to, and just started a side hustle the last couple of months. the breathing room is sooo nice, and the work is easy enough (per sitting at other people’s houses via rover).
About half of my coworkers buy food at a restaurant every day for lunch. I can’t speak for the rest of the meals since I grew up in a frugal family and my wife and I are fairly frugal. We still eat out more than I like, which is about 4-5x/month, and I think a lot of people eat out like for half or more of meals.
And the worst part is, people who eat out a ton often go to fast food, which is incredibly unhealthy. We go to fast food maybe once a month, the rest are to more interesting restaurants.
I think the average American will have breakfast cereal or a muffin or donut (i.e. with their coffee) for breakfast, then fast food for lunch, and either fast food or a prepared meal from the grocery store (e.g. freezer section) for dinner. Cooking is a rare thing on weekends or even guests come over, if it happens at all.
Especially in large cities like New York, where there's an endless amount of very good food, most apartment kitchens are very small, and many people make a pretty decent amount of money. plenty of people cook very little or not at all.
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