Fake News? It almost seems like fake news to me.  In 2019 I started becoming interested in the FIRE (financial independence retire early) movement.  The great thing about concepts in FIRE, like high net percent paycheck savings and consistent investing, are wonderful attributes for anyone to implement.  They teach people discipline, how to conserve...

Bye Bye Today I received an email from Rakuten stating that starting on February 15th, Rakuten would no longer payout an extra 3% cash back on purchases from GiftCardMall.com, GiftCards.com, and Raise.com.  Instead, Rakuten will be offering just 1% cash back for those sites and purchases.  The email states: and the bad news detail: For

Cold Water Another bank shutdown happened last week related to money order deposits from manufactured spend.  This time it was BMO Harris.  What’s kind of weird about the shutdown is that I’ve had the account for under 2 years now, and received a call from their risk department in Wisconsin several months after opening the account. 

Winds of Change My points and miles goals are starting to pursue a different path.  Like many in the hobby, when I first started collecting travel rewards, I had very specific goals.  Initially, I just wanted to sign up for a travel rewards credit card and earn a nice stack of bonus miles.  From there

More Plastic Several months ago I did my largest round of credit card applications in many years, applying for 7 new rewards cards.  Fortunately I was approved for all 7, but they weren’t all instant, and it also created a near shutdown for me with one of my banks.  Until being banned by MoneyGram this

Bannishment It was only a matter of time but the MoneyGram hammer has come.  On Friday while trying to process a $4k transaction at a local Walmart, I got MoneyGram’s generic message of death. …”Please inform the customer that the system is unable to process the transaction.” In other words, you’re screwed, see you lat...

New Old News Over a month ago I wrote about changes that were thought to be coming to Walmart stores nationwide that would dramatically effect those who use the store for manufactured spend (MS).  Those changes made a lot of sense, but for whatever reason, seemed to be lying dormant.  The manufactured spend landscape in