Monday, August 29, 2016

100,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points with the Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card

Edit: The Chase Sapphire Reserve card sign up bonus is now 50,000 points.  The 100,000 point offer is over.

We’ve been playing the credit card points game for a while and have applied and been approved for all of the best offers.  There hasn’t been an exciting credit card offer since May 2015, when American Express briefly had a 100,000 point offer on the Platinum charge card.  The AMEX Platinum card has some excellent benefits such as free lounge access, Hilton Gold status, Starwood Preferred Guest Gold status, $100 Global Entry credit, and $200 airline fee credit yearly.  Other than those benefits, I’ve never wanted to keep my Platinum card long term.  The card only earns 1x points on every purchase and really isn’t useful for daily spend. 

Last Monday, Chase introduced a brand new credit card: The Chase Sapphire Reserve.  It will likely be the number one most popular premium travel credit card.  I am excited! 

All the credit card blogs and forums have already discussed the features of the Chase Sapphire Reserve in minute detail.  This card earns 3x points at restaurants and on travel purchases.  The card offers a lot of unique benefits including lounge access with unlimited guest access, $300 yearly travel credit, free Global Entry or TSA Precheck (up to $100 value), roadside assistance up to 4 times a year with $50 credit per incident, and much more.  See this Chase Sapphire Reserve review from Doctor of Credit for a complete rundown of benefits and features of the CSR.  The best part of this card is the hot new 100,000 point sign up bonus after spending $4,000 within 3 months.  I would value this sign up bonus at over $1,500. 

The annual fee of the Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card is $450, which is quite a bit if you look only at the fee itself.  Looking deeper into the benefits, I would give this card more value than the American Express Platinum card, which also has an annual fee of $450.  Owning this card for the first year is definitely worth it.  You effectively get $600 worth of travel credit ($300 per calendar year).  You get Global Entry, a $100 value.  You get an unbeatable 100,000 point sign up bonus.  Lounge access is also much better with the Sapphire Reserve than the Platinum card because the CSR allows unlimited guests while the Platinum card only allows the cardholder lounge access. 

When the card was first announced last Monday, I had to have it.  I applied for it first thing Monday morning.  I did not get instant approval and the following message popped up on my screen:
I was bummed.  Immediately I called the Chase automated line at 800-432-3117.  When prompted, hit #, then 3, then 1, and enter your social security number.  The automated response will indicate the status of your credit card application.
  • 7-10 day message is likely a denial
  • 2 weeks message is likely an approval
  • 30 day message means Chase is still reviewing your application.  Many users report 30 day message means approval.

Knowing this information, I was especially bummed out to hear the “7-10 day” message, which meant that I was likely denied. I immediately called the Chase reconsideration number at 888-245-0625.  

I spoke with a live representative who looked more closely into my application.  I explained that I was excited about signing up for this new Chase card.  I was told that I had too much credit with Chase.  I do own 4 other Chase credit cards currently including the Freedom, Freedom Unlimited, Ink Plus, and Ink Cash.  I told the rep that I would be happy to reallocate my credit limits around if I could get approved for the CSR.  He put me on hold for a few minutes and then tentatively approved my application.  My application was put into a queue for review by a senior lender.  I anxiously waited one week and today I found out that I had been approved for my Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card!

When logging into my Chase account, this new account already shows up:
The Chase Sapphire Reserve is the ultimate travel credit card.  I can’t wait to get my hands on mine.  You can apply for your own here. 

Sunday, August 21, 2016

Why do high earners still live paycheck to paycheck?

When I first started working part time in high school, things were great.  I could finally earn money to buy the things I wanted.  I no longer needed to ask for things from my parents.  If I wanted something, I just had to put in more hours.  

I continued to work part time and hustle on the side during college.  I signed up for my first cash back credit card in 2000, the Citibank Dividend card.  At one point that card earned 5% on all purchases.  I used that card on every expense possible.  I pretty much ate out for 80% of all my meals.  My diet was unhealthy.  If I got a bonus, I bought something nice like a new palm pilot or a new digital camera.  Every time I received money, it would go towards paying my credit card bill.  My motto in college and even in professional school was “spend now, save later.”  I spent plenty of money going out to eat at nice restaurants, drinking at the clubs, and buying the latest gadgets.  I kept telling myself “I’m going to start saving as soon as I start making more money.”

I got my first full time job making 35K a year in 2008.  I moved to Reno, Nevada and rented a room out of a big house for $500 a month with all utilities included.  Life was good; I was making real money!  This was when I first heard about 401K retirement plans.  I went to the HR of my office and then found out that first year employees were not eligible to participate in the company 401K plan.  I gave up thinking about investing and told myself I would start contributing to my retirement when I made more money.  I paid off all my credit card debt and started saving a little bit of money with each paycheck. 

Then the new Apple MacBooks came out, and I had to have one.  Then the new Apple iPhone came out around that time and I had to have it.  I started getting too lazy to cook for myself at home.  I convinced myself that eating out saved both time and money.  I often treated friends to drinks at the club.  It wasn’t long before I was living paycheck to paycheck.        

My next big income jump was from 35K per year directly to 80K.  This was in 2009 and I did not negotiate too much on my offer because our US economy was in recession and I was just happy to have the opportunity.  I was now making some big bucks!  Before I even started my 80K job, I purchased a brand new Lexus IS250 for around 36K.  My 1999 Honda Accord (given to me by my loving parents in college), which was running smooth as silk at over 100K miles, suddenly wasn’t good enough for me.  I was making big boy bucks and I thought it was time to upgrade my car.  This locked me into 3 years of monthly car payments.   

As my income jumped from 80K a year to 85K and then to 90K, I was finally able to start contributing some post-tax money into a Roth IRA and some pre-tax money into my company 401K.  I also had the sweet opportunity to live at home rent-free.  For the first time in my life I could really start to save some serious money. 

In 2010, not long after the US housing crisis, my family told me it was time to move out.  I took a big personal loan from them to use as a home down payment.  I went to a mortgage broker and bought as much house as my loan would qualify me for.  At the time I thought “if they will approve me for a loan this big, my finances should be fine.”  Plus everyone kept telling me that a “home was the best investment.”  This caused me to buy much more home than I needed, a 4-bedroom home for a single person.  One good thing that came out of the purchase was the low interest rate (4.25% at the time for a 30 year fixed mortgage).  In hindsight, I should have looked for a smaller and cheaper home. 
 
With a new house came some new expenses.  I had to get new furniture.  I needed a new bed, so I figure why not buy the best bed possible?  I ended up buying a $4,000 Tempur-Pedic bed.  At the time I thought I got a great deal on my bed: no money down and 0% APR for two years!  I bought a freaking bed on credit – this locked me into 2 years of monthly payments. 

Making mortgage payments really kills your cash flow when you’re used to living rent-free.  To increase my income, I quickly found 3 housemates to rent the 3 extra rooms to.  This worked out well, as the housemates were students at the local professional school.  They paid for the majority of the house expenses and my rent was effectively reduced to around ~$300 a month!

Time passed.  I met my woman.  She moved in and our housemate situation changed.  One income now became two incomes.  We started eating out more frequently.  We signed up for DirecTV.  We went to Starbucks all the time, almost on a daily basis.  We both felt good about setting aside 10% of our income into retirement accounts.  We leased a Toyota Prius for $0 down and locked in 3 years worth of lease payments at $342 a month.  We started saving up for our wedding.  Money got tight but we always seemed to find ways to come up with more cash flow.  We always found one or two professional students to rent out rooms to.  I did some teaching at the local university on the side for more income (I still do once or twice a month).  Even with extra income, we still ended up living paycheck to paycheck. 

Then everything changed.

We realized that we were still struggling with our finances, despite both having good incomes and steady raises.  By now we were almost pulling in 200K a year.  And yet we had a pathetic amount of savings and investments.  Every time we seemed to start saving up some money, something would come up and deplete our cash stash.  Something needed to be done or else we would find ourselves working forever.  That’s when we started reading about the FIRE (Financial Independence and Retiring Early) philosophy of handling money.  We discovered amazing forums such as Bogleheads.org.  We discovered amazing bloggers like Mr. Money Mustache and Jlcollinsnh; they taught us that life was not about this never ending stressful cycle of working and spending.  When living paycheck to paycheck, you don’t have any freedom.  Reading articles from bloggers that retired early (or are on their way towards early retirement) gave us the drive to start on our own financial journey.    

Newly motivated, we started making big changes to our finances.  We cut out frivolous expenses like eating out every day and satellite television subscription.  We stopped going to Starbucks every day.  We switched to cheaper car insurance.  I finally paid off the car I purchased in 2009 and the bed I purchased in 2010.  It felt good to not have to deal with those monthly payments.  When our lease ended, we were able to purchase another car in cash so that we would not have to worry about any more car payments.  We started to save and invest more.  We discovered the benefits of credit card points to help us save money on travel expenses.  I started this website to share our financial tips and progress with friends and family. 

I used to think that making more income would solve all of our financial problems.  It’s not just lower income families that find it hard to save money.  A recent study finds that 1 out of every 4 families making $150,000 a year or more is living paycheck to paycheck.  1 out of every 3 households earning $50,000 to $100,000 per year live paycheck to paycheck.  And 1 out of every 2 families making $49,999 or less per year live paycheck to paycheck.  Spending without thought will easily ruin your financial security.   

We have friends that live in nice houses, drive nice cars, and yet are always complaining about money.  Having nice things doesn’t make you successful or wealthy.  For example, one of our mutual friends brings in over 500K a year, yet is always complaining about not making enough money and needing to pay bills.  They lease 3 vehicles and spend over $1,500 a month on cars.  They have high student loan balances.  Their child has a lot of after school activities.  They live in an area that has a high cost of living: higher mortgage payments, higher property taxes, higher home insurance, higher car insurance, and even more expensive gas.  Depending on your expenses, how much you spend can easily kill your budget. 

While having more income definitely helps, changing our lifestyle has made the biggest difference in our finances and our quality of life.  Bogleheads are constantly advocating others to LBYM, or live below your means.  We found that cutting back on expenses and investing more wasn’t difficult to do once we made a commitment to work towards financial freedom.  We’ve been saving 50% of our income over the last year and it’s definitely pulled us out of our paycheck to paycheck lifestyle.  We have an emergency fund that will cover 6 months worth of expenses and we are working to increase that fund to cover 1 year of expenses.  We’ve both worked hard and continue to advance in our careers.  Recently we started investing in our son’s 529 college fund. 

Everyone’s financial situation is different.  We all have different struggles.  Once you start saving more and paying yourself first, you can break the cycle of living paycheck to paycheck and work towards financial freedom.  Life gets much better after that.  Financial emergencies may always continue to pop up, but you will be better equipped to tackle those situations.  We are working hard and can’t wait until we hit financial freedom.  This will allow us to work less, travel freely, spend more time with family, and volunteer more.  Life is long, plan accordingly.    

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Free round trip flight to San Francisco on Southwest

One of my friends is getting married in San Francisco in November.  This time I am attending the wedding solo, while the wife and baby stay behind.  Time to book another free flight!  Since I don't want to be away from the family too long, I'll only be spending one night in San Francisco. 

I like flying Southwest Airlines because they offer very reasonably priced (cash or points) flights and also include 2 free checked bags.


I simply logged onto my Southwest account and picked the flights that I wanted.  Luckily for me, Southwest was having a sale.  My flights cost me: 3,408 points and $5.60 to fly from SNA (Orange County / Santa Ana) to SFO (San Francisco) and 5,685 points and $5.60 to fly home from SFO to SNA. 
I did not need to transfer any Chase Ultimate Rewards points since I already had enough Southwest Rapid Rewards points in my account.  To make the deal even sweeter, I did not have to pay any cash for the flight either, since I still have plenty of Southwest Airlines gift card credit from my American Express Premier Rewards Gold card airline fee credit.

The total cost for my free round trip flight was 9,093 Rapid Rewards points and $11.20.


If I were to book the same round trip flight with cash, my total would have cost $163.96.  
$163.96 doesn't seem too bad for a round trip flight, but I'd rather save the money and use my points instead.  I just love having points available to use towards free flights!

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Free flights for the family from Osaka to Taipei

We are still planning out our Japan and Taiwan trip in March 2017.  So far we’ve booked free round trip business class tickets from Los Angeles to Tokyo on Singapore Airlines.  We also just recently booked free flights from Taipei back to Tokyo.  Today I will document the free flights that I booked for us to fly from Kansai International Airport / Osaka Bay (KIX) to Taipei (TPE).

We will be spending time with my father in Japan and so we needed to book flights for 3 adults and one infant to fly from KIX to TPE.  I checked United Airlines, American Airlines, and ANA and could not find any good flights.  Those award options all included stopovers and we were looking for a direct flight only.  

I turned to BA.com, the British Airways website and was able to find us a flight on Cathay Pacific, bookable with British Airways Avios miles.  The total cost for the 4 of us came out to be 23,250 Avios and $93.21 - an excellent deal.  The cost in miles for each adult was only 7,500 and for our son was only 750 miles.

I went to www.ultimaterewards.com, and transferred 24,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points over to my British Airways account.  Points must be transferred in 1,000 point increments.  The process was extremely easy and the Avios showed up in my account instantly. 

Less than 2 minutes later, our flight was booked!

If we were to book the same Cathay Pacific flight and pay cash, it would have cost us an incredible $2052.70!  
The price was probably that expensive due to limited seats on the same flight.  Checking Kayak.com, I could find a similar flight on Eva Air for $1001 for the 4 of us.  This is pretty expensive for a 3 hour 10 minute flight. 


After taking into account the $93.21 in taxes and fuel charges, we saved $907.79 by booking these flights with points!  I’ll never stop saying it: Chase Ultimate Rewards points are my favorite of all the different programs.  Note: American Express Membership Rewards points also transfer to British Airways Avios miles.  Next on the list: planning our trip including where to stay.

Monday, August 8, 2016

Free flights for the family from Taipei to Tokyo on Cathay Pacific

We are still planning out our Japan and Taiwan trip in March 2017.  So far we’ve booked two round trip business class tickets from Los Angeles to Tokyo on Singapore Airlines.  We haven’t yet booked our flight to Taipei (from Japan), but for now I was able to book flights for the three of us (me, wife, and son) to fly from Taipei (TPE) to Tokyo (NRT).

First, I checked United Airlines, American Airlines, and ANA for available flights.  I could not find any good flights.  Most of the award flight options we wanted had 1 stopover, doubling our travel time. 

Luckily I was able to find an appropriate flight on Cathay Pacific Airlines, booked with British Airways Avios miles.  The total cost for the 3 of us came out to be 21,000 Avios and $33.98. 

If we were to book the same flight in business class, it would have cost 42,000 Avios, which is still pretty cheap.  For a short 3.5-hour flight, I think we can tough it out in economy class :).

Since I already had 1,000 Avios in my British Airways account, I only needed an additional 20,000 Avios.  I just went to www.ultimaterewards.com, and transferred the Chase Ultimate Rewards points over.  The process was extremely easy and the Avios showed up in my account instantly.  

Less than 2 minutes later, our flight was booked!

If we were to book the same Cathay Pacific flight and pay cash, it would have cost us $785.46.  
After taking into account the $33.98 in taxes and fuel charges, we saved $724.48 by booking these flights with points.  Chase Ultimate Rewards points are still my go to favorite of all the different rewards programs.  Note: American Express Membership Rewards points also transfer to British Airways Avios miles.  

Monday, August 1, 2016

July side hustles 2016

The great thing about doing side hustles to generate extra income is that you can hustle on your own terms.  The more hard work, time, and creative effort you put in, the more extra money you can make.  You can hustle as little or as much as you want, whenever you want.  It’s your extra money, and you can choose how you want to spend it.  Instead of focusing on what ideas don’t apply to you, try focusing on different side hustle ideas that you can implement to work for your situation.

Welcome to August.  I know I say this every month and I’ll say it again: July just flew past us.  It’s been a great month filled with activities for our son, get-togethers with our friends, and family meet-ups. 

Our son is growing so quickly.  He has so much curiosity and energy.  He is crawling around really fast.  He is starting to stand up more and cruise around on his two feet while holding onto the couch or baby gate.  He is always picking up things on the ground and putting them into his mouth.  He likes to flip through cabinets, throw things around, and explore all parts of our home.  It’s getting hard to keep up with him.  He’s been babbling a lot and we think he’ll be talking soon.  Time is limited but we try to spend as much time with him as possible.  He loves exploring the neighborhood as we go out for long walks with our dog.
Benjamin loved looking at the clouds in the sky on his flight.
We took our son on his second round trip flight to San Jose, CA for a wedding.  We were nervous how our son would act on the flight but he did great!  On the way to San Jose, he just slept the entire flight.  On the way home, he spent the time playing with us, looking out the window, and snacking.  Even the passengers behind us complimented us on how calm our son was during the short flight.  We have another wedding to attend in San Francisco in a few months and hope that he also does well on that flight.  The real challenge is going to be our Japan and Taiwan trip coming up in March 2017. 

Work has been extremely busy for both of us, as we both have a lot of new projects to deal with.  With how busy things get at work, I have no idea how some people are capable of working full time for 40-50 years.  I love my job, but I would love to reduce the amount of working hours per week.

Here’s our monthly summary of side income that we have generated in the previous month of July.  We’ve been so busy that we have not had a chance to do too much side hustling.  With all that’s been going on, I’ve been putting off writing articles for this site.  Family comes first.  I promise, new articles are on the way!

Award Travel
No award travel booked this past month

Cash back
No cash back earned this past month

Paid surveys
On 7.8, I received $5 Amazon gift card from Pinecone Research
On 7.18, I received $5 PayPal deposit from Pinecone Research

Side Job
On 7.25, I received a check for $275 for teaching at the local university

Rental Income
On 7.1, I received a check for $600 from our temporary housemate
On 7.4, we received a net profit of $430 from our rental property

Monthly Totals:
I earned $10 worth of Amazon gift cards from Pinecone Research
I earned $275 for teaching at the local university
We earned $1,030 from rental income

All of this totals $1,315 from our side hustles for the month of July.   It’s been a slow month. 
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