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Redeeming rewards is generally â but not always â a seamless process, and some redemptions have more value than others.
Redeeming rewards is generally â but not always â a seamless process, and some redemptions have more value than others.
When shopping for credit cards, you may be surprised at the steep annual fee for some of the premium cards out there. Those gold-star perks do come with a price: in some cases, several hundred dollars and upwards. So when is the annual fee worth it? Weâll walk you through some of the factors that
The post Credit Cards with Annual Fees: Are They Worth It? appeared first on MintLife Blog.
Hello! Today, I have a great guest post to share from Alex Kroeger from ViaTravelers about how they grew a travel blog to 100,000 monthly pageviews in less than 12 months. Enjoy! If you read travel articles or follow travelers on social media, chances are you’ve deliberated about starting your very own travel blog. But, […]
The post How I Grew a Travel Blog to 100,000 Monthly Readers appeared first on Making Sense Of Cents.
Managing your money and paying off debt can feel like a never ending process. And, if you have a long term debt repayment plan, you may find yourself wondering if you can realistically take a vacation without feeling guilty and/or potentially wrecking your financial progress. Whether or not you travel while having debt is a […]
The post Should you go on vacation if you have debt? appeared first on Making Sense Of Cents.
For today’s edition of “back to basics” month at Get Rich Slowly, we’re going to talk about credit scores. What is a credit score? Why should you care?
As you go about your life, you leave a trail of transactions. You take out a mortgage, you buy a new car, you use your credit card to buy new clothes and your debit car to purchase groceries.
Every month, your creditors — the companies to which you owe money — send info about your recent activity to a variety of credit reporting agencies (commonly referred to as credit bureaus). Each agency collects this info into a file called a credit report.
Your credit report is a history of how well you’ve managed your credit. It contains info about where you’ve lived, how much you’ve borrowed, and whether you tend to pay your bills on time. It also notes if you’ve ever filed for bankruptcy.
The credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion — sell your credit report to other businesses so they can decide whether to lend you money, sell you insurance, rent you a home, or give you a job.
Credit reports may be boring, but they’re vitally important because they provide the basis for your credit score.
How to Get Your Free Credit Report
The U.S. government has mandated that consumers be allowed to view their credit reports from each of the three major reporting agencies once every year. This is easy to do via the free AnnualCreditReport.com website. (Beware of scammy lookalikes. This one is the official government-sanctioned site.)To get your report, you need to provide some basic info like your Social Security number. You might also need to answer some questions about current and/or past accounts. Sometimes these questions get tricky if you don’t have quick access to your files. (When Kim had to check her credit report recently, she couldn’t remember the amount of her mortgage payment from 2005. Her request was denied.)
If you’d like, you can obtain reports from all three credit reporting agencies at once. Or, you can stagger your requests, possibly requesting one report every four months from a different agency.
While your credit report collects info about your debt history, your credit score is a single number that summarizes all of that data.
I’m in Florida for ten days to attend a couple of weekend early retirement retreats. At Camp FI, about 50 or 60 people gather for three days of what Mr. Money Mustache calls “crazy rich people talk” — real estate investing, travel hacking, gift card arbitrage, 70% saving rates, and the rewards of frugality and thrift.
One afternoon, the conversation turned to clothing. Given that so many people in the room had a net worth of more than a million dollars, a surprising number of us still bought our clothes at thrift stores.
“I can’t bring myself to pay more than ten dollars for a t-shirt,” one guy said. We all nodded in agreement.
“I don’t pay anything for t-shirts,” said another fellow. “I travel a lot for work. When I go to conferences, I often come home with three or five or ten t-shirts. There’s no point in ever paying for them.” Throughout the weekend, I noticed that a lot of us wore t-shirts we’d picked up for free. (Because we’re money nerds, Choose FI t-shirts were prominent.)
“But what about quality clothes?” asked one woman. “I get why we’re all so cheap on the everyday stuff. But sometimes, I want clothing that looks good, that I can go out in.”
“I’m a long-time thrift store shopper,” I said, “and it’s taken some effort to allow myself to shop in regular stores. For quality stuff, I think it’s important to find a store with styles you like where the clothes also fit well.”
“I’ll give you an example. In the fall of 2016, I made a trip to New York City. The forecast was for warm weather, so I took warm weather clothes. Turns out, temperatures were much lower than expected. And it rained. I was unprepared. My hotel was next to a J. Crew store, so I stopped in. I had never shopped there before in my life, but I discovered I liked the stuff they had and their clothes fit me well. I didn’t like the prices, but I managed to find a few things on sale, so I bought them.”
I paused and looked down at the clothes that I had on. “Ha,” I said. “Right now, I’m wearing the dress shirt and sweater I bought that day in New York.”
“I don’t shop at thrift stores,” said the man standing next to me. “I don’t like to have a lot of cheap clothes. I like simplicity and minimalism. So, I’m willing to pay more for my clothes because I buy only a handful of items and expect them to last a long time.”
“Can you give some examples?” somebody asked.
“Take this shirt I’m wearing now,” he said. “It’s a wool t-shirt from Icebreaker. And this jacket is from the same company. It’s more expensive — probably a lot more expensive — but it lasts a long time, looks good, and is very versatile. Merino wool is warm when it’s cold and cool when it’s warm. Plus, I can wear it for days on end without it stinking. I think that J.D. likes Icebreaker stuff too, right?”
“I do,” I said. “I brought two of their wool t-shirts with me on this trip. And because it’s freezing here in Florida right now, I brought an Icebreaker jacket.”
“I try to keep a small wardrobe too,” said another friend. “For me, that means always wearing the same thing. I have like four or five of the same t-shirt. I have two pears of pants, and they’re both the same. And all of my socks are the same. I don’t even fold them. I just throw them all in the drawer loose since it doesn’t matter which ones I pull out.”
Sidenote: I didn’t mention it during the conversation, but you can find quality clothes at thrift stores. They’re more expensive, sure, but not nearly as expensive as buying them new. The key is patience. Sort through the racks. You might only find one or two items per trip, but that’s okay. To increase your odds, find a thrift store in a nice neighborhood. Kim and I, for instance, recently discovered a consignment store near us called Simply Posh. It has lots of nice clothes at great prices.
“You know, I read a great article recently,” I said. “I just shared it with the Get Rich Slowly mailing list. It’s all about how to shop for high-quality clothes. One of the points it made is that quality doesn’t have to be expensive — and that expensive doesn’t always mean quality.”
Although I fly several times per year, I’m not a sophisticated traveler. Many of my friends are top-notch travel hackers, but I’m just a beginner. Still, I’m getting better.
On my recent trip to Florida, for instance, I booked both my initial hotel and my rental car using travel miles. That’s a big step for me! And it saved me from using actual cash, which is in short supply around these parts lately.
I didn’t do such a good job with my airfare. I booked my flight for January 4th on December 5th. I paid cash. Luckily, thirty days in advance turns out to be in the sweet spot for finding cheap airline tickets, so I got an okay deal — even if I didn’t book the trip with points or miles.