Hello! And welcome to the next phase of my attempt to become a travel hacker. For anyone who's not familiar with that term, “travel hacking” his when you get to travel for free or at a seriously reduced price by strategically signing up for various credit card offers and optimizing the value of your points. In my last post on this topic, I wrote about what a steal I got by scoring free flights for the entire family next year to Orlando! All it took was signing up for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card where I was awarded nearly 60,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points as part of the … [Read more...]
Could This Be a New Safe Way to Use 4 Percent Rule?
Who says you can’t have your cake and eat it too! If you’d like to use the 4 percent rule as your safe withdrawal rate but are terrified that it might leave you with nothing a few decades down the road, then I may have a great solution to offer you! As I’ve been doing more and more research for my latest ebook (which will be all about optimizing “how much” you need to save for retirement), I’ve been getting really excited about some of the cool stuff I’m finding out. For example, there was the post I did a little while back about how the updated Trinity Study showed that you could use a 7 … [Read more...]
How I Got Free Flights and a Great Travel Hacking Resource
Guess who just scored a set of FREE flights for next year’s vacation? That’s right – me! And I’m very excited about it. This year, after spending almost $2,000 on just the flights alone for our annual family vacation, I became extremely determined to find a way to do better when we book our trip to Orlando next year. And I wanted to do this without sacrificing the quality of our travels. You know … do more with less! Just like we did already this year with our mortgage refinance, Sprint cell phone bill, and even our property taxes. That’s when I found a pretty incredible … [Read more...]
How Soon Can I Refinance My Home Mortgage? I Just Did Within the First Year!
It’s something every new home owner thinks about the minute they sign on the dotted line… If mortgage rates go down, how long do I have to wait to take advantage of that opportunity? How soon can I refinance my home and lower my monthly payment? When you’re a frugal son-of-a-gun like me who’s heading towards financial freedom like a locomotive that’s full steam ahead, the answer is: As soon as it makes financial sense to do so! More specifically: Right away! Yes, that’s right. After having moved less than a year ago, we’ve already successfully completed a refinance of our … [Read more...]
Last Week Tonight’s John Oliver on Retirement Plans – Hilarious!
It's not very often that I find shows on TV that appeal to my financial nerdiness; let alone comedies. So you can imagine my excitement when I saw HBO's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Retirement Plans special. This one HITS THE JACKPOT! It's absolutely hilarious! I've never heard anyone talk about retirement plans quite like this before. It's everything the personal finance community blogs about, but a whole lot funnier! Don't worry if you don't have HBO. You can watch the entire thing on YouTube below. In case you've never heard of it, Last Week Tonight is kind of like … [Read more...]
Is a Safe Withdrawal Rate of 7.0 Percent Acceptable? The Trinity Study Thought So!
Do you think a safe withdrawal rate of 7.0 percent is reasonable for retirement planning? Unanimously, I can already hear the entire personal finance community scream “NO! Absolutely not!” But what’s interesting is that three of the most-often quoted people in retirement planning seemed to think so: Cooley, Hubbard, and Walz. Just in case you’re not familiar with the names of those personal finance rock stars, they are the three authors who penned the historically important, ultra-popular “Trinity Study”. Yes, the same Trinity Study that validated Bill Bengen’s 4 percent rule and … [Read more...]
Do Buy and Sell Signals for Stocks Really Exist? The 10% Experiment
Ever since reading “The 3 Percent Signal” by Jason Kelley (and unfortunately de-bunking its claims in my post here), I’ve been very curious about whether or not buy and sell signals for stocks really exist or not. For anyone who doesn’t remember, the 3 Percent Signal was an interesting concept where you effectively buy or sell shares of an ETF to effectively lock yourself into a 3% gain per quarter. I, unfortunately, somewhat fount this strategy to be a bust when I tried to validate it by reproducing the results. At its basic level, I do believe there is some merit to a “buying or … [Read more...]
Is Sprint Total Equipment Protection Worth the Cost? The Numbers May Surprise You!
When it comes to your cell phone, do you have some type of insurance or equipment protection plan? If you do, you’re definitely not alone! With as much as phones get dropped, wet, cracked, sat on, or just plain lost, you almost can’t afford NOT to have some type of coverage. There’s nothing more annoying than having a phone that’s not working 100%. And with as much as they’re charging currently for an iPhone, at first glance, it seems almost crazy not to have some sort of protection for your device. The first time we got my wife her iPhone, we added a coverage plan to her account, and I … [Read more...]