We bring you Norway in a nutshell, visit Singapore playgrounds, marvel at Soviet architecture, FIRE commentary, go on mountain peaks and summits, learn what news sources in America are trusted or not, catch up on our last day of vacation and lots more for you. For Freeeee!
TBB Blog Mission: To Entertain. Educate. Inspire. In That Order!
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Warning, this is in a slideshow kind of thingie, you need to keep clicking to get through all 31: Peaks and Summits: 31 Photos of Majestic Mountain Adventures.
Norway in a nutshell experience. Good report if you plan to do this one day.
All the playgrounds in Singapore. Amazing!
Jim Plunkett, former Raiders QB at age 69: “My life sucks”. Get your kids to play soccer, not football!
The best things on the internet don’t make me any money. Yeah, tell me about it. This blows, the ad model is phucked up. Maybe people get what they deserve…
Talking about people… Texas man shoots armadillo, bullet ricochets back into his face.
The Soviet Architecture Nerd’s Guide to Tbilisi, Georgia. Love these buildings…
The Least and Most Trusted News Sources in America.
Oldest photos of 15 famous cities around the world. Pretty cool!
BLOG BUZZ
This section is for advanced level hobbyists and veteran blog readers & personal rants & stuff
I have mentioned here many times that there is a crazy amount of money in selling travel rewards credit cards. And the smartest sellers are the ones who have avoided hanging around travel hackers (especially educated ones like the ones reading this blog!). Why? Well, in a week in my blog I have had just one of you get a credit card here. Limited audience? Sure. But a huge factor is we are all limited in what cards we can get these days plus you know how to get the best offers out there. But NEWBIES don’t! And that’s where the dinero is. So, here is another one of these sites. Of course, don’t plan to see any offer listed if it does not offer a sales commission and see the best offers!
Don’t get me started on all the FIRE blogs (Financial Independence Retire Early). Like that Money Moustache guy who earns about $400k annually in his blog. You know, many can “retire” after busting their ass to get the blogs to that level.
And yes I am a moron slaving away here making less than minimum wage. Something has to give…#enterTBBwhiningmode Now with violins lol.
So I did not have a great experience at the Hyatt Carmel Highlands that all bloggers rave about. I think this property is wildly over rated!In my own opinion of course. Breakfast food quality was great, view from standard room was good (after we downgraded from a suite with full garden view of the leaves of a tree), burning wood at fireplace was kind of unique and daughter liked the hot tub.Other than that, one night here at 25,000 was enough. We took a drive then down to the Big Sur, the northern part and this is one of my favorite pics off Hwy 1.
And I leave you with this…Behave!
Check out my updated blog lists: Blogs I Love, Blogs I Like, Blogs To Ignore
TBB
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Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.
Still haunting this place. Firsts only.
Miss that guy.
Bizarrely, I miss Ingy too 🙂
Brandon and The Mustache guy should merge. Or at start hat tipping each other.
So many FIRE guys out there…
working their ass off marketing their blogs 🙂
They REEEEEEETIRED
For FREEEEEEEEEEEE!
The Plunkett story is both so common and so terrible.
Yeah. I am thinking to quit watching football. I have managed to do so for college. I need to work on NFL next…
It is sad. But is anyone really surprised that when a 250 pund person spends years running into another 250 pound person, there is lasting damage to the weakest part of the anatomy?
One just hopes these card selling titans are saving their money for retirement. 😉
Lol, good one!
Retirement Plan = 97% unused credit utilization on their portfolio of CCs.
Then, new scam:
“REEEEEETIRE for just pennies on the dollar!!!!”
Dont give them more ideas, thanks!
Is the Internet really broken? I don’t see it. My business – until I got the office and an employee – had virtually zero overheads except my time. Google sends me all my readers – for free. If this isn’t the best business model of all time I don’t know what is. Even if I lived off just ad revenue, which I don’t, I would do ok.
Bloated overheads are the curse of these companies.
Maybe that example is actually proof of the brokenness. The low overhead is what allows 80000 people to decide they can become thought leaders by selling credit cards and teaching people how to travel for free, which has contributed to the killing of dozens of deals and the devaluing of points and miles opportunities, and encouraged every Tom Dick and Harry that if they just sign up for the right cards, they will be able to get 6 business class tickets to Australia on the exact dates they want on 4 weeks notice. Which has ruined much of Flyertalk.
Barriers to entry can serve good purposes, if you measure good in things other than individual blogger makes lots of money easily.
You both make valid points regarding the overhead importance and way too many bloggers out there getting into as the barriers to entry being so low that contributes to so much shit online.
I still say bloggers have destroyed The Hobby. In the US at least where it used to thrive 🙂
If you don’t enjoy Hyatt Carmel Highlands there’s always Hostelling InternationaI Pigeon Point Lighthouse. Location is unbeatable, right on the cost. Fantastic bunk beds. Great “breakfast”. Interesting customers. Some may sleep close to you! The highlight is a hot tub right next to the light house that gives you fantastic views of the coast. If you’re lucky, you won’t be alone in the hot tub. A fantastic 2-star “hotel/hostel”, 50 min from SF and only $35 for a bed (no resort fee)!
http://www.norcalhostels.org/pigeon
We enjoyed the hotel. But expectations were so absurdly high that, when compared to reality, it did not measure up.
Did I ever tell the story about how I got into a hostel in Santorini as a teenager and there was one psycho guy starring at me. Looked like a serial killer. Got the hell out and have not been back to a hostel since 🙂
1. Best gif ever.
2. I’ve always wanted to stay in that area but was put off by the 25k/night. I spent 30k on the park Hyatt Tokyo last year, and was extremely unimpressed, just a few months after using free nights at the park Hyatt Milan, which completely blew me away.
3. Should I buy delta gc’s for $800 to get the amex offer on my platinum card?
dildo………….er, I mean ditto Brenton………………….which reminds me, where’s John
It is unique. One night to experience it is more than enough imho.
We are all different of course.
First impressions are important. And we were taken to a nice suite and our window faced the leaves of a tree, no water view whatsoever. Changed to a higher room with a better view but room was just standard. I guess with Hyatt you can not have both. On a low capacity night. C’est la vie.
On the positive, no resort and valet parking was charged. At checkout anyway. We ‘ll see if a charge happens later.
The balconies and the views, burning wood in the fireplace, the food quality at breakfast and the hot tub are great. Rest, not so much. I could do a review but it may lead to firings and I just could not sleep at night, we all have bad days. I tipped well as I usually do.
We came, we saw, we left. Eating breakfast back at the Country Inn at Sunnyvale. Had sushi with son last night.
And now Delta has texted me twice that departure is delayed…two hours. Getting in at 11.15 pm instead of 9.30 pm. Oh shit, this does not look good!
Ramsey-
I’ve been busy with your sister. Then I moved on to your wife.
Of course George lets you call people dildo without a word.
To all: TBB does not approve this stuff!
Warning to both of you, knock it off!
I was minding my own business not saying anything to this guy. As usual he started it. That’s on you for letting this moron continue to attack someone unprovoked. If you don’t want a response then don’t let him start.
Attack?? LOL
John you in middle school?
Are you? Because only a child would think randomly calling someone a dildo is acceptable behavior.
sb u got issues sticking up for ramsey
How did I even get in this conversation? I wasn’t posting a single word about anyone. That nutjob called me a dildo out of nowhere. Blame the cause of the problem not the guy who was sitting silent. I haven’t talked to him or about him in months. This is all Ramsey as usual. If he leaves my name out of his mouth, I sure as hell won’t have anything to say about him.
not sticking up for Ramsey but
“Ramsey-
I’ve been busy with your sister. Then I moved on to your wife.”
leaves Johnny open for the unclean hands doctrine argument.
The FIRE blogs are also going in to the credit card selling. The money is too good.
Did you see MMM going to be a entrepreneurship incubator?
I’m sure he wants to fund the next Facebook.
Years ago he had a post about how he was done with Chase blah blah blah…
A bit later there was another pump credit card piece by a guest writer. I called that out and he came here and argued with me with some BS excuses. Never came back. Time is money baby 🙂
I blame the news media for perpetuating “experts” like these…
You should consider start a 2nd blog on finance /FIRE . You need to increase your readers beyond Hobbyists.
This is going to be my project if I’m ever offered a pile of £ for the current job. Take the frequent flyer blogger approach but morph it into a personal finance site.
I went to a meet-up of UK personal finance bloggers recently. I really could not believe the low quality of what is on offer. These are all sites focusing on – to be frank – the low-to-middle-income sector. Articles on how to get cheap cinema tickets mixed in with article on investing.
No-one in the UK is targeting the wealthier 30% of the market, who are also those who would respond to a well written site. Usual income streams – credit cards, savings accounts etc.
I am on the tarmac about to take off at SFO.
Will respond to this in tbe blog this week.
In the meantime, credit card debt levels reached record highs in the US…
Ok, I burned one of my free Gogo passes with the Amex Platinum card 🙂
When I started Ingy (FTG founder and first one who cashed a cc sales commission check and started the trend at this side of the pond) told me to forget my mission, rebrand and basically become THE Wall Street guy who just happened to be a true expert in traveling with rewards credit cards. You know. like a knowledgeable TPG lol. What he missed was that…this blog here NEVER set out to be a raking money machine. It’s just my little personal thingie trying to keep me busy and entertained for the most part while trying to improve the world. Does it bother me that I don’t make more than minimum wage? It does now, as time passes it bothers me more. But not to the point of making me stop. Not yet but I must admit it is getting closer lol. I will stop when the net result is no longer fun for me. The positives still outweigh the negatives.
I have achieved my goals in my main career. You know I used to write a lot about personal finance. But I am blogged out there, I haven’t written anything new in a while. Because I am busy blogging here almost daily!
You know my target niche in my real job is higher net worth people and I think it is a great niche! I think you are correct that it appears to be not too cultivated in the online personal finance blogging space. In my first Fincon I met so many Ramsey type bloggers, we “never use credit cards, only cash”…and I was like WTF is that! 🙂
There is no way to start a 2nd blog, no way! And it may be too late to somehow change direction here as travel dominates, it is in the title of my blog and URL and heck, it is my other passion.
My philosophy in life is not to get too serious, enjoy the ride and whatever happens, happens.
I should delegate more…working on that part of my personality 🙂
How do you get Gogo FREEEEE w Plat Amex? I didn’t know… just knew about free Boingo.