Singapore Airlines new business class 777-300ER Los Angeles to Tokyo

On March 16^th, my family boarded the Singapore Airlines Boeing 777-300ER aircraft bound for Tokyo (NRT) from Los Angeles (LAX).  We got to experience the Singapore Airlines new upgraded business class.  This was our son’s first international flight and we figured Business Class was the way to go!  We were on the waitlist for First Class but unfortunately no availability opened up.  We still had an amazing experience from flight check in to departing the plane.   

Checking in at the airport was a breeze.  We arrived at the airport early for our 10:15am flight because we didn’t want to deal with traffic.  Since we arrived to the LAX airport early, we didn’t have to deal with crowds of passengers lining up to check into their flight.  That being said, even if we were late, Singapore Airlines offered a dedicated First Class and Business Class flight check-in line.  After dropping off our luggage, we got to pass through the “family line” for shorter processing time through security.  

Next we headed towards the Star Alliance lounge on the 6th floor.  This lounge was extremely large, clean and quiet.  Having First or Business class tickets automatically grants you entrance into the lounge (if you’re flying economy, you can access the lounge with Priority Pass).  

 Espresso machine ground us fresh coffee to start our day.  

This lounge was a great place to enjoy breakfast.  We scarfed down some tasty scrambled eggs, turkey bacon, pork sausage, chicken congee, and Vietnamese noodle soup.  This lounge even offered shower suites!  

My family found a quiet room where we could enjoy some privacy and enjoy our breakfast.  Lounges make arriving at the airport early a fun part of our trip.     

As soon as we got to our gate, attendants came to take our stroller onto the plane.  First and Business Class passengers get to board the plane first.  We walked past the First Class seating area towards our Business Class seats (11D and 11F) and what I noticed was that Business Class looked surprisingly like First Class.  There weren’t many stark differences; the television displays were slightly larger and the length of the First Class seats was longer – that was about it.  Being seated in Business Class felt very much like being in First Class.  

March side hustles 2017

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 April.  I hope no one gets pranked by any April Fools jokes today.  Did everyone have a good March?

We started off the month with a $1,000 financial setback.  Other than that, the rest of the month was great.  We hung out with friends and family.  My work had a team-building event at the Staples Center where we got box seats and enjoyed the Lakers versus the 76ers. 

We had our taxes professionally done this year and already received our tax refund totaling $2,235! 

The best part of March was that from the 16^th through the 30^th, my family went on an international trip.  We got a chance to visit Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and Nara in Japan and then Taipei, Taiwan.  All of our flights were covered with points and most of our hotel and Airbnb stays were covered with cash back. 

The family outside Todai-ji Temple in Nara, Japan 

Our son got to experience his first international flight – in Singapore Airlines business class!  Using points towards airfare and accommodations really helps us travel without breaking the bank.  We had so much fun and I can’t wait to post a few trip reports and pictures of our experience.      

Our son sitting on the armrest of his business class seat.  The seats were quite wide and we could have fit our whole family in one seat!

Here’s our monthly summary of side income that we have generated in the previous month of March.

Cash back

On 3.29, I received a $274.30 statement credit on my Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card.  This was to offset a purchase I made for hotel stay in Taipei, Taiwan.  I’ve already received $600 total in Chase Travel Credit from my Sapphire Reserve credit card over the last year.  The Sapphire Reserve is my current favorite credit card.

 

After factoring in the Chase Travel Credit, we got to stay in the luxury suites of this 4 star hotel in Taipei for 5 days for only $55.45.

Paid surveys

On 3.1, I received $3 PayPal deposit from Pinecone Research

On 3.9, I received $3 PayPal deposit from Pinecone Research

On 3.28, I received a $6 PayPal deposit from Pinecone Research

On 3.29, I received $3 PayPal deposit from Pinecone Research

On 3.30, I received a $20 Visa debit gift card from M-panels research group.

Rental Income

On 3.1, I received a check for $700 from our temporary housemate.  This will be the last check we receive from this person as she finally found her own place.  Total of income from this roommate was $9,043.75 over a period of just a little over one year.  It will be nice to have the house to ourselves again.  However, we are still open to the idea of having another roommate in the future if the opportunity arises.    
On 3.4, we received a net profit of $430 from our rental property.

Website Income

On 3.1, I received a direct deposit of $36.96 from Linkoffers for income generated by this blog.

Miscellaneous Income

On 3.2 I received a check for $37 from Midwest Refineries for selling an old 1-gram gold bar I won years ago. 

On 3.5, I received a net profit of $33.80 after selling an old 1-gram platinum bar I won years ago on eBay.  This profit was after eBay, PayPal, and shipping fees.  The 1-gram gold and 1-gram platinum bars were just sitting around in a desk drawer and I decided to get rid of them for some cash.  Midwest Refineries would have charged a $25 “platinum processing fee”, and that’s why I decided to sell the bar on eBay.

Finally got rid of these things.

On 3.5, I received $10 cash for selling an old and unused set of snowboard goggles on Nextdoor.com.

On 3.6, I received a net profit of $31.02 after reselling a Nintendo Switch on eBay.  The eBay fees, PayPal fees, and shipping fees really take a big bite out of your profits. 

On 3.8, I received a $5 PayPal deposit from iRazoo, a search and win website.  You can earn points for watching videos and doing searches.  If you enter my referral code: 4PWJUR, then you can earn 500 points to start.  3,000 points = a $5 PayPal deposit.

Monthly Totals:

We earned $274.30 cash back

I earned $35 from paid surveys

We earned $1,130 from rental income

We earned $36.96 of website income

We earned $116.82 of miscellaneous income

All of this totals $1,593.08 from our side hustles for the month of March.  It was great to log into my accounts after coming back from vacation to see all this extra side income add up.  For the foreseeable future, we will no longer be receiving any rental income from any roommates.  We will just have to come up with other ways to increase our side hustles.  Are you working on any side hustles?         

Our $1,000 financial setback

My family just suffered a $1,000 setback.  Here's what happened:

Last week, I was slowly backing the car out of the garage and onto the street. One of my neighbors was driving extremely fast down the road.   The other driver tried to swerve out of the way but could not do it in time, and we collided into each other.

As soon as our cars crashed, my first thought was about my son; he was in the back seat of our 4Runner, strapped into his car seat.  While the sound of the crash was pretty loud, the impact barely moved our car.  My son was fine, happily flipping through a book he was looking through as I was backing out onto the street.  My second thought was about the occupants in the other vehicle.  I quickly went to check on them.  I was glad to see that everyone was fine.  There were no injuries and no air bags went off.  However, the other car had quite a lot of damage where our cars hit each other. 

My neighbor was very nice about everything and we had a nice chat. We exchanged our licenses and vehicle insurance information (we both had GEICO auto insurance).  When I called GEICO, a representative explained to me I was likely going to be found 100% liable for the accident since a car already driving on the road has the “right of way.”  She told me “it doesn’t matter how fast a car is driving down a street, a person backing up into oncoming traffic has to stop.”

I didn’t want to accept fault completely without at least trying to dispute the charge.  Our home driveway has kind of a blind corner for incoming traffic. That's why I always back out extremely slowly whenever leaving the house.  I gathered and sent several photographs of my neighborhood and even used images from Google Maps to demonstrate the blind corner for oncoming traffic to my insurance adjuster.  I wasn’t trying to prove that I was not at fault at all for the accident, but I was hoping that the adjuster would side with me and conclude that maybe I was only 50% or 75% at fault.

After a day, GEICO still held me 100% liable for the car crash.  The rep reminded me that if I wanted to get our vehicle repaired, we would have to pay out a $1,000 deductible.  Ouch!  After getting off the phone, I immediately felt a rush of emotions hit me like a punch to the face. 

I felt anger at how stupid I was to not back out more carefully.  I felt annoyance towards the other driver for driving too fast down the street. I felt regret for increasing our deductible to $1,000 instead of keeping it at $500.  We have a great rate on auto insurance currently ($596 per 6 months for 2 insured vehicles).  My pride was hurt.  Then I started thinking about all the things that we could do with $1,000: invest it in index funds, go on a week long vacation, put it in our savings account, contribute more to our son’s 529 college savings plan, or donate to charity.  There were so many great options for spending $1,000 compared to using towards a deductible towards repairs. 

After a day or two of feeling upset, I finally accepted the $1,000 setback.  A few glasses of whiskey definitely helped☺. I’m glad that no one was hurt.  Although I spent quite some time cringing about it, I realized that there was nothing else that could be done.  The crash happened, and it was time to move on.  Spending anymore time dwelling on the details would just be a waste of my imagination.  We do have a very healthy emergency fund, and $1,000 is not a lot in the grand scheme of things.  It’s less than 0.1% of our net worth.  We make over $1,000 a month consistently in side hustles.  While this is a minor financial setback for us, the cost of repairing our vehicle out of pocket would have far exceeded our deductible.  I’m glad our car is fully paid off and we don’t have any monthly auto loan expenses. 

2017 has started off as a good year with our spending cut back considerably and both of us receiving nice salary increases.  We are still on track to save a ton this year, and this helps us handle thousand dollar setbacks without too much stress.  If this accident happened many years ago when we were living paycheck to paycheck, then we would have certainly gone into credit card debt for this.

I have already changed my deductible to $500; it's only an increase of $43 for a 6-month period to cover both of our vehicles.  Psychologically, a $500 deductible is less upsetting than a $1,000 deductible.  My wife and me have now agreed to ALWAYS reverse park our cars into the garage and so we will be forward facing when exiting our driveway. This will never happen again. Lesson learned.

On a side note, now that we are reverse parking our vehicles, it reminded of this interesting discussion I heard on NPR radio years ago titled “Parking behavior may reflect economic drive.”  Drivers who took “elaborate effort to wiggle in [to] reverse” park their vehicles delay their gratification.  When they “back in and pay the price at the beginning, [they] don’t have to wiggle [their] way out when they leave.”  One researcher actually found a correlation between parking behavior and economic growth rate.  In China, 88 percent of cars are parked reverse.  In the United States, it’s less than 6 percent.  All I know is that heading out of the driveway in the morning is much smoother (and safer).

Having an adequate emergency fund makes sure that thousand dollar setbacks aren’t financial emergencies.  Back to saving and investing more.