Extravagant If you haven’t read this piece in Business Insider about Brian Kelly, aka “The Points Guy” or “TPG” as many call him, you may want to check it out.  It’s been out for awhile, but many in the points, miles and travel space haven’t read it yet.  If you don’t have access to Business

Possibilities This might be an manufactured spend (MS) bone, but that bone also may not have any meat on it, not quite sure.  So I was listening to a podcast about a month ago and a commercial came on that talked about a new “cash back debit card”.  I had to rewind the commercial because

On Fire As the stock market started tumbling in the past couple of weeks, I thought more about my long term goals both in terms of points and in dollars.  As a step toward saving money, I redeemed 1 million Chase Ultimate Rewards for cash.  That cash-out was about the same time that I was

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