The Miles Game is really a three step endeavor. Step one: apply for a bunch of credit cards and accrue a bunch of miles. Step two: apply manufactured spending techniques to satisfy miles bonus spending requirements for each credit card. Step three: book awards to exotic locations with your accrued miles. We’ve already talked about […]
Archive | October, 2013
Bondage
We’ve now talked about all four factors that have been shown to correlate with higher returns in the stock market. The market (beta), value, size, and momentum factors; we’ve covered them all. It may have been a little bit econ 101, but it was probably necessary in order to frame the next part of our […]
Keeping Track Of Credit Cards
One issue that comes up when you start churning credit cards is how to keep track of them all. What do you need to keep track of? 1. When to pay the bills to avoid late fees. 2. Your progress towards meeting all of your minimum spend requirements in order to get your sign-up bonus. […]
Inertia
Newton tells us that things in motion tend to stay in motion and things at rest tend to stay at rest. This law appears to hold for the financial as well as the physical world. In looking for different asset classes to combine to improve the returns of our portfolio, we’ve already discussed three of […]
On Bluebirds and Wolves
The first principle is that I must think about something new every day, and write something new every day and post something new everyday. The complicating factor is that I’m at a hotel in Medford Oregon tonight getting ready for a talk tomorrow. So this post will be less structured Than normal. Mea culpa. I […]
Small Packages
In the post the Value Of Value, we discussed the value premium. This classification is based on the observation that cheaply priced companies (low stock price relative to the earnings or asset value) outperform other stocks over the long-term. The size premium refers to the observation that over the long term small size companies outperform […]
Money Laundry
As we discussed in the post, money for nothing, The goal of manufactured spending is to spend money on cash equivalents (ie “nothing”) so that your spending rate goes up on your credit cards, enabling you to earn more points/miles. Stated differently, manufactured spending enables you to put every dollar of spending that you might […]
More Math
Note: the post here is just plain wrong! I have a more accurate approach to this issue here, please enjoy this one instead. I got a question today about calculating the number of years until retirement. The question was based on the posts, “warning this post may change your life,” and “I was […]
Untangling Miles
There a lot of reasons to play the miles game. Being able to go to exotic destinations in style for free is chief among them. It’s also one of the few endeavors that’s both cheap and luxurious. It’s quite simply a value added proposition. But it’s not a free ride. There are some monetary costs […]
The Value of Value
The goal is happiness right? And freedom. To that end we’ve already decided to kick up our savings percentage, and to take those savings and invest them. We’re probably going to invest in the stock market. And we’re definitely going to invest in low-cost funds. We’re going to rebalance our portfolios regularly, (knowing that it […]
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