We bring you a Credit Card Transfer Partners master list, a nice video of traveling in Iran, more Jack Bogle wisdom, more on ANA Awards, learn the causes of death, travel to Luanda in Angola and Bergen in Norway, cry over some sad credit card statistics, learn about retail arbitrage, come down on all the AI hype, get you some free Ivy League courses so you can avoid posts with pics and arrows (hehe), track down murderers, a sad AA flying story involving Mrs. TBB and more!
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Oh, in case you missed my standard Sunday post, here it is again: TBB Best of Web: TBB Best of Web: More Bogle Lessons, Media Influencer Crap, Precocious Puberty, 2018 Good Stories, India Pollution.
In case you missed my RARE Saturday post, here it is again too: TBB Best of Web: Jack Bogle Lessons, Todd Marinovich, Bill Gates Letter, Iranian Jews, Dr. Rapp.
This is a very handy list to have: Credit Card Transfer Partner Master List and Transfer Ratios.
A very nice video of traveling in Iran. I was supposed to go with her in the same trip when I visited Iran before the US Visas ran into a major glitch and…I used my other passport. And one day I must continue that trip report…Je suis the world’s slowest trip report writer!
If you wanna go to Angola, read this: What You Need To Know When Traveling To Luanda, Angola.
If you go to Bergen: 35 Things to Do in Bergen, Norway – Culture, Food, and Nature!
You bet some bloggers you may have heard of are responsible in contributing to these sad stats: Now we know the average American’s credit card balance.
People in the US hold over $1 trillion in credit card debt.
74% of adults have a credit card, but just 48% of those under 25 have one, compared with 87% who are 65 or over
While the average American maintains an average balance of $4,560, this is highly dependent on age. Balances are relatively low for the young, about $2,340 for those under 25, but grow as people get into middle age, reaching over $6,000 for people 45-54, before falling as they get older.
44% of adults have revolving credit, and these people typically have an outstanding balance of $6,600. Revolvers are generally poorer and less educated than the typical American. [These are the ones who allowed this hobby to thrive for so many years. Sad but true…]
Ummm, we call this…reselling? Inside the Strange Yet Profitable World of Retail Arbitrage. Interesting short interview with one of these guys doing business with…Wal-Mart!
Author makes great points! Don’t believe the hype: the media are unwittingly selling us an AI fantasy.
Let others read repeated blog posts about XX reasons this travel rewards credit card or the other one is so amazing. They would not take so much space if there were no affiliate links earning the bloggers mucho dinero! So, ignore them and click on stuff you can actually learn and improve humanity: 400 free Ivy League university courses you can take online in 2019.
Yes, one more! Your Money: The words and wisdom of Jack Bogle.
Bogle on living a meaningful life: “You are rich if you have more money than you need. It is nice to have money, but it is not so good if you are just throwing it away on useless objects. I prefer money going towards something that has meaning, like our family home in the Adirondacks. I have 12 grandchildren now, and the whole summer, I don’t think there is a day where someone isn’t there.”[Tomorrow I will post here an article on the 69 reasons I just LOVE the ChaseSapphire Preferred card you guys…just kidding]
Bogle on success: “I would define success as using your God-given talents for the greatest advantage of society. And that doesn’t have anything to do with money. It has a little bit to do with leadership. You could even be a loner and be a success. I’m a bit of a loner. I keep my own counsel and live in my own little world of investing and family. But I’m happy that way, and happy with who I am.”[My blog is doing its part for the greatest advantage of society. At least I would like to think so. Thumbs up to fellow loners who are happy with who we are, lol]
Bogle on investing: “My advice is typical. Diversify, focus on low costs, invest for the long term. Don’t speculate – and don’t be distracted by volatility.”[YEAH…STAY THE COURSE!!!]
This has an amazing animation feature: What are the Most Common Causes of Death in the U.S.?
Wow, what a story and what a picture! How Two Murderers Were Spotted on an Old Mark Jackson Trading Card.
Entering BLOG BUZZ section for the advanced hobbyists and blog fanatics…
The United Business Explorer card with the 75k signing bonus should be way up there in your go to cards.
Amex now limits the Centurion lounge visitors in the final destination, WTF is wrong with these guys? I can not wait to cancel my Amex Business Platinum…it will be funny when agent tries to keep me and I will say “BITE MEEEEEEE!”.
I recently linked to an ANA awards article that appeared in the God Save The Points site. And then the master of ANA awards, Andy at The Lazy Traveler, had this so to say about them:
ANA is probably the BEST J-award-friendly airline, but here is is the comment I’ve posted on the GSTP site.
“Great piece! However, ITA YQs doesn’t mean squat as long as ANA YQs on COMPLEX itineraries are concerned. As someone who’s in love with ANA Business Class awards, I’ve found it the hard way (tons of manual research). They are completely, totally and utterly out of whack; they don’t seem to have rhyme or reason for the amounts added (or not added) — to the point when polite and usually competent ANA agents would admit they have no idea why this is happening. Hell, I’ve seen YQs added to airlines that don’t add YQs to their own award flights (SAS)! Hopefully, RTW tickets won’t have these issues, but I wouldn’t necessarily count on this.”
My wife picked the worst day to travel this past Friday. Or maybe we picked an airline that is having trouble doing things the right way? American Airlines flight out of Detroit was late, only to get to do deicing. Which went bad and then had to do it all over again. Almost three hours on the plane on the ground. And then the plane went mechanical. And then they rebooked her on a completely crazy unreasonable routing, to Dallas with just exactly one hour connection to San Fransisco to Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific with 61 minutes connection to fly Cathay Dragon (!) to Kuala Lumpur. And supposedly her two checked luggage pieces were going to follow her, LOL. She said yes and I begged her to go back and tell the AA agent that this is not good enough and we had to find an easier way, even if it meant flying out the next day. And that is what happened. I went to the airport and got her, we had another family meal out again, and she is now flying to Dallas to London Heathrow on AA and then direct to Kuala Lumpur on Malaysia Airlines. I did try to get her on Business Class because I felt so bad…but not even one available seat on ALL legs, wow AA! I did send an email to AA customer relations about the ordeal. She felt so bad about several senior members of a Ski club vacationing together to a Caribbean island, they are all spending an extra night at a Detroit airport hotel courtesy of AA. Update: Long rambling apologetic reply by an AA agent and, please sit down, just 15,000 AA miles. Ok, whatever.
Who is this Titan Menace dude you guys?
And I leave you with this…
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.
Your wife’s trip sounds horrible.
Thanks for the links.
Why Doctor of Credit will NOT appear here? Because that blog links to blogs that post shit like this:
Insane: EVA Air Passenger Demanded Crew Wipe His Butt (And A LOT More) – One Mile at a Time
Awful Passenger Meets EVA Air Hospitality – in the Lavatory – and it Gets Crazier From There – View From The Wing
I swear, everytime these come up in the Boarding Area twitter feed I have…I feel like vomiting. Same thing happens when the esteemed Doctor of Credit blog sends its readers to these guys, smh
I hate that F/A story crap more than anyone….because it is BS, and I have dragged my share of male pax to the lav in my F/A day and not told any of those F/A stories here. But DOC is an essential read for and last oldtimer surviving can’t get approved for anything anymore old time hobby enthusiast. If you read only one blog in this hobby, DOC is it.
Buzz did I ever tell you about the time a PAX can out of the 707 lav with one eye closed and said to me,”Ramsey you are a nice guy, could you do me a favor and straighten my eye out.” He then opened his 1 closed eyelid, which exposed a solid white ping pong ball looking fake eye. He then said. “could you please spin it around until it looks like my other eye.”
I did not want to do it but I did not want to disappoint the old codger, so I reluctantly stuck out my pinky and spun it around until a fake Iris showed up. I was so grossed out I left that eyeball shooting out looking into space. No where near the way the other eye was looking. The guy looked worse than Marty Feldman.
As far as ass wipes on board, i do remember a couple of Old Timer Female F/A’s doing it, while I held an old dude up in the lav on an Intl flight. We are talkin the 1970’s.
My list. No link circle jerking in my blog!
The eye story, wow!
apologies to anyone upset with my grammar and spelling above but i cannot type and laugh at the same time
Okay, Rams. I’ll be at the Mill Plain Walmart for a retired FA-looking dude (with a MAGA hat?).
Just kidding, I’ll be at the gym, cleaning out my Internet bookmarks….what else to do there when celebrating MLK day?
*Walmart looking
I ‘ll be on twitter messing with Titans and DoC 🙂
BLUECAT…there are 2 Walmarts on Mill Plain, Vancouver is a two per main road Walmart town, I go to the one off Grand Ave. (great for MS), which if you know the area explains my previous expose’ of Vancouver’s undesirable areas and the lack of money these folks have for a coffee house cup of coffee. They be poor, really poor.
Also there was another top ten list Vancouver, Wa. made recently that I saw online. It said that VanGhetto had more Hipsters than anywhere else in the Country, even more than PDX, SFo, SEA and BRKLYN. That list was a crock too, obviously the person who blogged it never been here and just figured since it was just on the other side of the river from PDX, it must have Liberals and Hipsters. As you may know BC, this place is polar opposite of PDX, politically and socially. You can fly your flag and wear your red MAGA hat here with PRIDE. Do that in PDX, you will get shit 4sure.
But in PDX ANTIFA/LGQBT harrassing/threatening old white people is OK, just ask the mayor.
BLUECAT/anyone else please watch this video on PDX excrement and comment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSw79yRnDVs
Oh crap, my MAGA-hat wearing, gun-toting, truck driving, gets-his-news-from-Breitbart buddy also sent me that video. You guys must drink the same kool-aid.
I aint prejudiced—I hate all extremists equally.
I like the 205 Walmart. Close to my favorite Vietnamese place.
PSS as far as TBB like list, about DansDeals. I like the guy personally, and but something from his list rather thru a portal all the time, BUT I do wish he would inform his very loyal reader base that they do have the option to “portal” or that some items are often cheaper elsewhere than he is showing. In other words, he sells just about as much or more with his blog than just about anyone.
That Milenerd CircleJerk remark was epic BTW
I do not disagree with what you said.
At the end of the day…it is my list. I give him a break for the history…been there a long time. Where did DoC come from? 🙂
There will be no link circlejerking in my blog. It would help my conversions though if I did that 🙂
OMG that old codger Marty Feldman eye adjustment story was comedy GOLD! I almost spit my diet coke all over my work laptop!
Thank you for that, it was a welcome respite!
It was…and don’t drink Diet Coke.
TBB Management
retail arbitrage is a lot like MSing. Why would I tell someone my secrets only to have them infiltrate my market and take business away from me. They only real difference is that CC apps are the accelerant to out deals and eventually get them killed by people “who only want to tell their friends and family about it”.
so you can start a blog and then get people to sign up for a course on how to resell better and make a lot of dough? 🙂
I hear ya…
Working on the top travel hacking and general travel sites list, any you recommend?
State your case here, thank you.
Make sure Ric G stays on.
This list is new consisting of sites we use to help us travel hack and then just general helpful travel sites (not blogs).
No plans to change this travel related list of miles/points and pure travel blogs:
https://travelbloggerbuzz.com/blog-reviews/blogs-i-like/
Biggest hack, calling yourself The Frugal Travel Guy when all the writers are female.
They should have rebranded early as “Frugal Travel Gals” 🙂
I looked through my old basketball cards, and somehow I have that Mark Jackson card! That’s the good news. The better news is that I have the entire 440 card set from that season! The bad news is that the entire set is only worth about $10 on eBay 🙁
Thanks for the heads up though! I’m going to print the article and keep it with the cards so future generations will know how prescient I was.
Seriously?
WOW, that is amazing!
So, now I am being offered $500 for:
“We are asking participating influencers to write blog posts and social posts authentically talking about why _________ is a good option for _________.
Campaign Overview:
– 1 Blog Post
– 3 social posts (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter)”
“Authentically”????? Maybe I ask them for a sponsored post clearly labeled on top like DansDeals does 🙂
Do NOT ask me about the name of the company!
$500 = you’re a nobody.
Fyre Fest reportedly paid Kendall Jenner $250K for a single Instagram post (promoting a failed festival)
I enjoyed watching the train wreck (Netflix documentary) “Fyre: “The Greatest Party That Never Happened”
They increased it from $250 so I felt pretty good that they felt I doubled my worth to them as an influencer lol.
I’d take it in a heartbeat.
I love explaining why ________ is a good option for ________. Hell, I do it for free all the time. $500? No brainer.
About to cancel my TR Diamond trip to Atlantis with a followed up “excursion” to Cartagena and Medellin. Family thing. That sucks because:
1. This will be my second trip to Atlantis that hasn’t happened.
2. It would be a perfect match for my Hilton Aspire credit at Conrad Cartagena.
3. It would be my first IHG PointBreaks stay ever (Medellin).
4. It would be my first ever use of Avianca miles.
5. I’d rather be somewhere warm in the next 2 weeks.
So many firsts that won’t happen. Sigh.
Oh man, sorry to hear it!