Lazy Man and Money

Ten Things I Think I Think (and Personal Finace Links)

by 3 Comments

  1. Steven Wright Performance and a Financial Joke – I’ve been huge fan of comedian Steven Wright since I saw his first HBO special when I was about 10. I just loved the dry humor. I’ve probably see that special a couple of dozen times (it’s second place to Serenity on my all-time watched list. Last night, I got to see him in person for the first time. The seats were awesome (second row in a small theatre), and “relatively” cheap at $40 a ticket. I had 1985 Steven Wright in my head and I wasn’t prepared for the 2011 version. He’s still very much the same, but like anyone – they don’t look they did they 25 years earlier. The jokes weren’t quite as good as HBO special, but there were some good laugh-out-loud moments. I took care to note the one financial joke for this space: “24 hour banking? No thanks. I don’t have that kind of time.” The part of me that loved linguistics a decade ago just gets a mental workout during his routine. (Mr. Wright, if you are reading this, get some new web hosting. I would have linked to you, but your website was down.)
  2. Amazon Kindle Fire and Privacy Concerns – I mentioned it over at the The Soap Boxer’s on their Kindle Fire Review (check the comments), but I was surprised that no one brought up the privacy concerns of the new Amazon Kindle tablet. Well my own congressman, Ed Markey seems to be on the ball: Congressman raises privacy concerns over Amazon Silk. I like that he’s taking the extra step and not just letting Amazon allow people to opt out of it, but making sure they know issue and choose to opt-in. Too many times technology companies give the “opt-out” method to appease the people realizing that 99.99% of people won’t know to opt-out or figure out how to opt-out.
  3. Chase Sapphire perks at the Eater’s Choice SF Event – My wife and I ventured into San Francisco for a food truck event this weekend. I don’t know if food trucks are a big trend everywhere else, but they are big here in San Francisco. The event had the top 10 in the area as voted by the people. We got there knowing that my Chase Sapphire card was going to get us early entrance and a VIP seating area. Chase surprised us with better perks than promised. We got special menu items, a dollar off of most items, free “high-end” beverages (such as Coke in a bottle made with cane sugar not high fructose corn syrup), and a Chase Sapphire picnic blanket to bring home. I particularly liked the fact that there was a Bacon mobile. One items ingedients list was just bacon listed 6 times.
  4. Retirement in Focus – This week, the plan is to focus on retirement – specifically my wife and my own early retirement plans. I wrote about it almost three years ago: Our Early Retirement Plan: Introduction (Part 0). It’s time to re-evaluate and see where we stand.
  5. Cobb Salads – While on the topic of bacon, I have to say that the Cobb salad is my favorite “new” food. It’s not that new, but it’s new to me in the last year or so. It’s like they took everything I like and said, “we are going to actually make this healthy for you.” I’ve never had it with salad dressing – it simply is unnecessary.
  6. Craigslist Frustration – I’m 0 for 2 over the last week in getting a fitness item that I’m looking for on Craigslist. The items are sold out within a few hours from posting. The prices have been around 40% off of Amazon’s, which is pretty low to start with. I’d tell you more about the item in future weeks, but I really don’t need any more competition from my fellow San Francisco readers. I’ve got time and I’m going to wait for the right price.
  7. NFL Thoughts – I heard today that about 66% of America watches the NFL. This gives me a little confidence that I can put forth a few thoughts here. I’m content with where my favorite team, the Patriots, are. Given the 5-1 record, it “content” shows how spoiled I am now. It will be hard to see Tom Brady retire. While on the topic of great QBs, it looks like the Colts are in position to “Suck for Luck” as the saying goes. For those not into football, Andrew Luck is expected to be the best QB to come about in a decade and it just so happens that the Colts could replace what is arguably the best quarterback of all-time with the next great QB in a few years. In other thoughts, the locals are starting to fall in love with the 49ers. It’s almost like when the Giants won the World Series.
  8. World Series – Since the Yankees got eliminated, I haven’t followed a single game. It turns out that baseball isn’t all that interesting to me anymore when the Red Sox or Yankees aren’t involved. I can’t give a real reason – maybe I’m just more involved with my businesses. My pick for the series is Texas in 6. That’s not so much an educated guess, but it’s more of a wish. It would be good to see those Rangers fans get a title.
  9. Red Sox drama – There’s a lot of drama involving the Boston Red Sox of late. I’ve watched an average of 130 Red Sox games a year since I was 9 and I haven’t followed any of it. I guess Josh Beckett ate some fried chicken and everyone is up in arms. (Note: It’s actually a lot worse than that and it seems that people should be upset, but I’m in some seriuos denial and don’t want read the drama.)
  10. Financial Fixit Friday – I’m curious if anyone actually got any financial fix-its done this Friday or if it was just me. I got about 1/3 of the main things that I was looking to do. Considering my previous progress, it was very substantial.

And now for the personal finance links…

Top PF Posts:

Who Wants $500?

by 1 Comment

That’s essentially the question that Chase Cards asked a few months ago. They didn’t word it exactly like that, but instead said that if got their credit card and spent $3000 in 3 months, I’d get the equivalent of $500 in points. I did a little math and found out that Chase Sapphire Preferred Card was Giving Me 17% Cash Back.

Today, was a joyous day as I saw those 50,000 bonus points roll in and I promptly converted all my points into a $550 statement credit.

Spending $3000 in 3 months was not as difficult as it seems. Of course, I don’t want to encourage money to earn rewards points, but I found that cable and cell phone bills can run up to around $300. Then you start adding in gas, groceries, and other incidentals and the $3,000 was hit pretty easily.

I want to stress that these were purchases that I were going to make anyway. I am pretty disciplined with my spending and using a credit card doesn’t make me spend more. You may be different. Part of me is torn between just suggesting that you do what works for you (a phrase that I attribute to J.D. from Get Rich Slowly), but the other half of me suggests that sometimes it is worth trying to change.

Sometimes change has its rewards. For me, those added up to extra $550 in my pocket in three months. Who wants $500? I do. If you want $500 as well, consider getting the Chase Sapphire Rewards card.

P.S.

In addition to the $500 that Chase Sapphire gave me, I’m getting VIP early entry into San Francisco top 10 voted food trucks event this upcoming weekend. It will be one of the few times that I actually use one of those credit card perks.

My Ten Year Run of Ripping Off Chase is Over… Time to Rip Off Chase… Wait, What?

by 4 Comments

For more than 10 years I’ve been skimming money off of Chase with their credit card rewards. I’ve had this blue card that offered 5% cash back on gas, groceries, and drugstores. Getting 5% off what you’d buy anyway, is a no-brainer if you are disciplined enough to pay your credit cards on time. Chase makes paying on time easy though, they have an auto-pay that just grabs the money from my bank account as necessary (I check each month to make sure they aren’t grabbing any extra).

This worked well until about two years ago. Chase switched over my wife’s version of the rewards card to Chase Freedom, one with fewer rewards. (You can read more on that: Chase is Chasing My Business Away). I was fairly sure my letter of the switch was coming as well. Well, it must have got stuck at their processing plant. I just received it last week.

It was a nice letter touting all the additional items I could save money on, but I would only get 3% on them and they’d change all the time. I had to call every three month and opt into the special categories of the quarter. The new program offered me no real benefits. So I called them up, thanked them kindly for the new program and attempted to “opt-out.” They politely told me that it wouldn’t be possible. It’s funny how cordial such conversations go. (Note: sentence pertaining to an orifice is deleted to keep this family friendly).

I understand where Chase is coming from. I really do. They’ve been giving me all this free money for all these years. Frankly, they should have phased out the program long before now. It still doesn’t make me have to like it… or the way they are pitching it as being helpful to me. I would have just canceled the card, but those credit score people like to see a long history of credit and canceling my oldest and most used credit card is not a good idea.

So what I am going to do about it? I’m going to take Chase for even more money than before. How am I going to do it? Well, I’ll use my post from a few months ago: Chase Sapphire Preferred Card Gives You 17% Cash Back?. In fact, since I’m planning a couple of flights next year, this will be similar to getting 22% cash back on all my purchases.

It works like this. Sign up for the credit card and when you spend $3000 in 3 months (something that tends to happen with our family expenses), you get 50,000 bonus points. Those points can be converted to $500 in cash back or $625 in the form of airline tickets. Spend $3000, get $500 or more – not bad. Even if I’m a little close at the end, I can stock up on non-perishables like canned food or replace some outdated socks.

I realize this is a limited time promotion and since the card has an annual fee, I’ll be canceling it as soon as I cash in. Still, it’s a lot more than I would have gotten from Chase if they just left me alone. In three months, I can look for something more permanent or maybe switch to another offer.

Chase Sapphire Preferred Card Gives You 17% Cash Back?

by 12 Comments

A tipster emailed me and told me there’s a hot new credit card out. Often times, I don’t pay too much attention. However, since I am working on a big write-up of last week’s Finovate conference, I thought it would be worth looking into to keep the flow of information going here and possibly help a couple of readers score some rewards points.

Well, I’m glad that I looked into it. I’m almost hesitant to post it, because it seems too good to be true. I’m sure you’ll agree if you’ve read the title. I mean 17% cash back is crazy, right? Of course, there are a couple of conditions. For me, they aren’t major gotchas, but your situation may be different.

Enough beating around the bush. Here’s the deal… The Chase Sapphire Preferred Card is offering 50,000 bonus points when you spend $3000 in three months. What can you do with 50,000 points. Well there are numerous rewards to choose from. However, I personally have this card and I noticed that there’s an option on the Chase rewards site to cash them in for $500. I’m quite likely to use this option.

Some of you out there may be taking to me take for my math. If you spend $3000, you’ll also get 3000 points in normal points earnings (at least how I understand it). At the end of the 3 months you’d have 53,000 points for your $3000 spend… a cool 17.66% back.

However, you might even be able to squeeze this deal for more value. If you use the points for travel, you can get $625 in flights for your 50,000 points. If you go that way and use the other 3000 points via the cash back option on the website (perhaps buy yourself a meal and some drinks on that flight) you would have $655 of value for the $3000 you spent. That comes out to a whopping 21.83% in value for $3000 spent.

I realize not everyone spends $3000 in 3 months on their credit card. However, I think that many families could do it. Chase usually allows cardholders to add a spouse to the card, so a family could put all their expenses on it. My wife and I don’t even have kids and I think we would probably be over $3000 in 3 months. We might get close towards the end, but purchase some canned foods and filling up our chest freezer may get us there. We might also do a few other projects that we put off.

The other gotcha is that this card has an annual fee. It’s $95 a year… but the first year is free. From what I can tell it isn’t that amazing except for the bonus… I would cancel it after I’ve soaked it dry for its bountiful bonus.

I know some people hate the promotion of credit cards. I think that for those with the discipline to control their spending, they provide a great opportunity to get more bang for your buck. This is one such case where discipline pays off… and pays off handsomely.

I use Chase Credit Cards almost exclusively. You can see proof of that when I showed you What’s in Lazy Man’s Wallet. One of the things that I like about Chase Cards is that you can set them up to take money from your bank when your bill is due. I never have to worry about sending them a check. I never have to worry about missing a deadline and incurring any fees. I don’t know if I can explain in words how much peace of mind that buys… it is astronomical.

So readers, please tell me… am I missing something here? Doesn’t the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card sounds like a great deal?