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And just like that, another year is in the books. Hard to believe how much fun and exciting 2020 was. In total, I did about 138 miles walking around my apartment in 2020 and I’ll hopefully do a few more this year! In all seriousness, 2020 was an odd year that completely changed all of…
Chances are, over the years you’ve received a few Starbucks gift cards as gifts. My guess is that you’ve also managed to give out a few as well. After all, if you have no idea what to get someone as a gift, a Starbucks gift card is a great fallback option. While I love getting…
For anyone new to personal finance and credit, credit scores can be incredibly confusing. On the surface, FICO credit scores seem like a fairly easy thing to understand. If you have an income and pay your bills, you should have a pretty good credit score. However, it doesn’t exactly work that way. Instead, credit scores…
A friend of mine (let’s call him Joe) recently took his car to a mechanic and, as expected, got some bad news. His car was in need of some fairly extensive repairs which ended up being quite expensive. After the mechanic provided a repair quote, he had to make a difficult decision to make. How…
Starbucks was one of the first global restaurant chains to roll out a loyalty program a few years ago and I think they’ve done a great job with it over the years. Sure, it used to be a lot easier to earn rewards (“Stars”) and sure they watered down their coffee rewards, but overall the…
A few days ago I wrote about a high yield savings account from American Express. See, last week actually opened one of these accounts and so far the account has worked exactly as I’d imagined. I put money into the account and it continues to sit while collecting interest. This is because American Express pays…
As I mentioned in a prior post, I’ve made a strong effort this year to book travel in advance. That means that toward the beginning of 2020 I actually booked about 80% of my travel for the year. Unfortunately, it seems like nearly all of it will need to be moved or canceled over the…
Yesterday, I wrote about how American (and other airlines) have largely waived elite status requirements for 2020. Following the announcements from American and other airlines, it’s finally time for me to address some of my upcoming travel. Until now I’ve largely been holding off making changes to any previously booked travel. I’ve avoided making changes…
As I’m sure you are well aware, the world is currently experiencing a pandemic the likes of which haven’t been seen in a very long time. Each day the numbers of confirmed coronavirus cases continues to grow and with the increase come large swings in the financial markets, government involvement and directives, and as it…
For my first post of 2020 I thought I’d take a final look back at 2019. A few years ago I did a year-end summary post (2017 in way more than 17 photos) which I enjoyed writing, but the whole thing felt a bit empty. Looking back at that post and I realize it was…
