The writers over at Travel Codex recently announced a new miles/points event that will be taking place on November 7th this year and I’m excited to say that I’ll be attending. This will be my first “travel hacking” meetup of any kind, so I’m excited to meet a lot of fellow bloggers that I’ve only […]
Mattress Running Potential of the IHG Accelerate Promotion
IHG has been doing custom promotional offers since last year and their latest “Accelerate” promo is no exception. I took advantage of their “Into the Nights” promo late last year to turn ~$350 in hotel stays into over $1,000 worth of value. At first glance, my targeted offer might have mattress running potential, but the […]
Snippets: A Brief Hiatus, Hotel Promos, and Credit Card Offers I’m Looking At
It’s been over a week since my last post, so I’m going to just hit some highlights and hopefully go a little deeper into them in individual posts in the near future. This summer has been particularly busy for me with trips and all of the sports leagues I participate in, so I’ve barely had […]
Tax Implications of Reselling and MS
Let me start off by stating that I’m am NOT a tax expert or certified in any way to consult on your personal or business taxes. My plan with this post is to go through the different statements the IRS has made on the taxation of miles, points, and cash back and how this may […]
Financial Beginnings, A Shift In Travel Strategy, and My First “Premium” Credit Card
About 16 months ago, I got serious about my finances and it wasn’t long after that I discovered the world of churning credit cards. A few months later I applied for my first credit card with a signup bonus and it’s only escalated since then. Those signup bonuses have gotten us numerous free flights and hotels and I have […]
$20k Spending Challenge Complete: Profit Breakdown and Thoughts
Almost three months ago, I set out to spend $20,000 within 3 months and flip whatever I bought into as much cash as possible. Personally, I have more experience reselling gift cards than using anything else to manufacture spend, so I decided to do the entire $20k by flipping gift cards and hopefully come away with […]
Getting Creative to Maximize Return on Grocery Spending
Personal finance is one big optimization problem that I’m constantly running through my head in order to think up new tricks that can save or earn me more money. This is what I refer to as the “Money Metagame” which inspired the name of this blog. How much I spend is one of the components I have the […]
The Value of an American Express Credit Card
When signing up for credit cards, the time comes a year after each application that you need to evaluate the value of a card to determine whether or not you want to keep it and pay an annual fee. I started churning credit cards just under a year ago, so I’ll be asking myself the […]
2015 Mid-Year Financial Independence Report Card
Financial independence is one thing I’m just as passionate about as credit card churning and maybe even more so. I discovered both around the same time last year and have found that they fit quite well together for our lifestyle. They may seem contradictory on the surface as financial independence encourages you to save money by not making […]
United’s Gift Card Exchange – Use It To Buy United Miles For Cheap?
I recently received an email from United advertising their own gift card exchange and decided to check it out. A quick google search shows a version of it existed in 2012, but this is the first I’ve heard of it. From what I’ve gathered, the back end of that old exchange system was Plastic Jungle […]