We bring you content all about teens stock gambling, Delta Skymiles suck, modern nomads, face mask hacks, we travel to Galapagos Islands and Peru and the loneliest place in Michigan, an amazing almost suicide story, the best Covid-19 coverage, how to file your taxes early, rising interest rates, growth of millionaires that will shock you, laugh with Zillow jokes, scream together like a team going mad in this pandemic that is so far away from ending and so much more. You all have a great week!
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This goes out to subscribers via email the day it is posted at 8 am. After that I may add something new in the body of the post and I indicate it like this: Update.
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TOP PICKS
Top picks are not excerpted at all. I recommend you find time to read every word!
One of the most disturbing articles I read recently. And highly conflicted. On one hand, these kids are learning when they could be wasting time playing online games or doing drugs. But I think they are setting themselves up for a big failure when the bull market stops cooperating and I wonder if that experience will be so traumatic that will harm them for a very long time. Investing is not easy and this whole gamification going on is, well, disturbing. I already had a client approach me to talk to their kid who is way into this…I shook my head so violently reading this. Perhaps, it is best to leave excitement for your hobbies instead? Investing SHOULD BE boring like…watching paint dry, I wonder if these kids will ever try it. Be careful out there!
Teens Are Gambling Their Savings on Gamestop Stock. Their Parents Are Worried.
You are playing professional baseball in the major leagues and one day you shoot yourself in the head. And survive. And…this is just a hell of a story!
San Francisco Giants outfielder Drew Robinson’s remarkable second act
I think I read this guy’s essay back in 1997 in Wired magazine. And totally forgot about it. Until this NYT writer brought it all back. It starts out this way: “Michael Goldhaber is the internet prophet you’ve never heard of. Here’s a short list of things he saw coming: the complete dominance of the internet, increased shamelessness in politics, terrorists co-opting social media, the rise of reality television, personal websites, oversharing, personal essay, fandoms and online influencer culture — along with the near destruction of our ability to focus.” It is a Top Pick for a reason…
I Talked to the Cassandra of the Internet Age
MILES & POINTS
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If you do not see a credit card with my affiliate links, perhaps I could refer you? Contact me!
Newbies: If you are just starting out, it is better to go for travel rewards credit cards from banks offering their own proprietary points such as Chase Ultimate Rewards, American Express Membership Rewards, Citi ThankYou points, etc. Why? They are more flexible. If you focus on pure airline or hotel credit cards, you are at the complete mercy of these companies that can devalue their currency in a devastating manner. Case in point just this past week is Delta Airlines Skymiles—->AVOID!
Heads Up: Chase Southwest Personal Cards: 80,000 Points (Plus, Premier & Priority) [Last Day]. Remember, 100,000 points earns you the Southwest Companion Pass! Please use my links or use this REFERRAL link IF you decide to go for them, thank you! My daughter applied for the lowest annual fee Southwest card with an 80k signup bonus and did not get instant approval. And now we wait…
Leave it to Delta of course to devalue again in the middle of the biggest global pandemic to hit us in the past 102 years. Skypesos are a joke. If you have Delta credit cards in your wallet you are not being smart here. At all. Cancel them and get yourselves a 2% cash back card instead. Airlines tend to imitate Delta so the outlooks is not very good here. But make no mistake, expert miles points travel financial product salesmen will enthusiastically sell Delta credit cards again! Ouch: Big Delta devaluation on partner awards.
I predict the next one will not be so kind: Marriott 2021 Award Changes: 201 Properties Changing (51 Increase, 150 Decrease).
Save this for future use, hopefully soon! How To Visit The Galapagos Islands Using Points & Miles.
TRAVEL
We all expect that travel will come back soon…What if it does not? Brace Yourself: Long-Haul Travel May Not Get Going Until 2023.
Wow, this has grown a lot and the dude featured here is a likeable guy: Off-road, off-grid: the modern nomads wandering America’s back country. Thank God I did not have to do this to live on and if I do something similar it would be to…drive to the next Hyatt to spend the night lol.
Wow, I am freezing just looking at the pictures! Coast Guard flies out to fix remote Michigan lighthouse known as ‘the Loneliest Place in the World’.
Absolutely amazing! Travel Photographer of the Year 2020 – in pictures.
Love the photography here! Portraits of the Incredible Craftspeople of Peru.
COVID-19
It is good to see that Coronavirus cases are falling all across the country. With almost a year into this ordeal I think we are all now realizing that this pandemic will take a while to put it behind us…if ever. I ordered carryout from a restaurant last Saturday and I went inside to pick it up. With my mask, make it double mask that is. Michigan recently allowed restaurants to open inside seating at 25% capacity. I go inside and several tables were occupied with people eating, chatting and laughing without a care in the world. One looked at me with that Karen look, smh. I mean, it is a year later and almost 500,000 families had their life changed forever after losing a loved one…and…I don’t know what to say anymore smh.
Anyway, this may be helpful to you. 5 Hacks And Tips To Make Your Face Mask More Protective. If you are a Karen please leave! Actually, my next door neighbor is named Karen and she is really nice and responsible…I have a feeling not many parents welcoming a new baby girl would be naming her Karen, so sad!
Yep, It’s Not Just You. A Lot Of Us Are Hitting A Pandemic Wall Right Now. Count me in, it is what it is. It is normal. If therapists was a stock, it would be a runaway winner! “Have compassion for yourself and don’t belittle your feelings,” Gold said. “At a certain point, we’ll all get through it.” Amen.
Fascinating: Pandemic Graphics Archive.
PERSONAL FINANCE
I am in tax season beast mode, here is a really good comprehensive newbie type article: What to Know About Filing Taxes.
Be careful out there, the scammers are out of control again! Well-known Michigan attorney’s ID stolen in Ohio unemployment scam.
Must read interview of Howard Marks: The Biggest Risk Is Rising Interest Rates. I excerpt the best two Q&As:
What exactly do you mean by that?
There is no one size fits all approach. I tend to think of it as the speedometer in a car that goes from zero to one hundred. Zero is no risk, full defense: You put all your money in cash or in T-Bills. One hundred is complete risk, straight offense: You’re fully invested in aggressive securities, maybe with leverage. Every person should figure out what their normal position on that speedometer should look like. This decision depends on your age, income, assets, aspirations, dependence, outlook for future income and intestinal strength, etc. How will you feel to live with big markdowns? People should not overlook that last point, their emotional makeup.
Why is the emotional makeup so important?
If you overestimate your intestinal strength, you could wake up and find your portfolio down substantially. In that case, you may panic and sell, crystallizing that loss. Yet, markets fluctuate around a rising trendline. If you buy at a high price and it falls, that’s not the worst thing in the world, because the next high will likely be higher. So if you hold on for the long-term, you will make money. But if you buy high, the price falls and you sell, then you never get to participate in the subsequent recovery. That’s the cardinal sin: selling out at the bottom. That’s the reason it’s so important to not overestimate your risk tolerance.
Amazing! Which Countries Gained (and Lost) the Most Millionaires in 2020? Let’s see what Socialist Biden does lol.
CURRENT EVENTS/POLITICS
These guys will be in jail for a very long time. The greed is just unconscionable, wow! LockThemUp! The Lion, the Polygamist, and the Biofuel Scam. How a member of a breakaway Mormon sect teamed up with a Lambo-driving, hard-partying tycoon to bilk the government for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Another awesome SNL video: Zillow. So funny…because it is true!
This Tom Brady dude…at 43 wins another Super Bowl, he now has 7 rings and has played in 10 Superbowls. With a brand new team this time which makes it even more legendary, wow!
ODDZ & ENDZ
I had no idea about the life story of this guy, wow! The amazing adventures of James Lick.
You call a phone number, you scream while recorded. Here is a website with a collection of screams: JUST SCREAM! Wow, how cool is this? I feel like that every time I see a blogger with nothing to offer who has not posted in a long time…only to come out to sell something smh.
Wow, I had no idea too…Actually, the best part of blogging here for peanuts is it just feeds my intense curiosity! The Castle Bravo Disaster – A “Second Hiroshima”.
A collection of pictures of gay men. Ok, so what you may ask. Wait for it…it is a collection of pictures of gay men in the 1850s, wow!
When I say Oddz I mean it, how about this? An Historical Collection of Found Paper Airplanes.
BLOG BUZZ
We are now entering BLOG BUZZ, a section for advanced hobbyists and veterans of this fast imploding hobby and also a section where I go on and on about some stuff that happens in my life because it helps me feel better about myself.
I transferred 100,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points to my Hyatt account, maybe I should do more but I am, you know, waiting for the darn vaccine to get to me!
Is it just me who thinks that the Chase airline and hotel credit card spending based promos are just not tracking as they should? Come on!
I am halfway through the 50 February transactions on two Hyatt credit cards to go for that 5k World of Hyatt points.
I need to force myself to cut down on the volume of the content in each post. I think I managed it a bit but I think it is still way too much for one post. Agree?
I missed running so much sidelined with a bulging disk. Physical therapy is helping but it is taking forever. Doc agreed after looking at my MRI to schedule a cortisone injection so this will happen and go from there. Running has been a great stress reliever amidst the pandemic misery so I hope it works this time!
And I leave you with this…
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Good morning!
Thanks for the links. Interesting you are moving ur points to Hyatt. I booked a Christmas trip last night and the dollar / points was truly odd. Hyatt points worth $0.037? Really?
Love me some Hyatt… My best-ever Hyatt redemption was 8 cents per point, back when the Hyatt Place Asheville was a category 1. Even at cat 3 it’s still a good value.
Wow.
With Chase pumping out 5x for grocery spend I don’t think these rates will hold! Perhaps the new wording on “cash equivalents” that Chase put out to start in April is an attempt to block the easy purchase of gift cards in grocery stores.
I have about a million Chase UR points, I thought transferring now 100k to Hyatt is immaterial in the big picture.
Chase devalues UR points will be a seismic event in this space.
We’ll see what happens…
lol, Hyatt Place AVL opened as a cat 3 Skippy.
So many podcasts and and articles by “wealth managers”. Many love to talk about exotic investments and the latest trend. Meanwhile you can save a lot of time in your life and simply get a targeted retirement fund, set it and forget it!
About Karen, I understand that she wants to eat in a restaurant and support the economy. But will she get vaccine?
According to the former director of the FDA
“ by April, vaccine supply could outstrip demand”
https://twitter.com/scottgottliebmd/status/1358252780624953344?s=21
Meanwhile South Africa gives AZ’s vaccine the middle finger. Sad!
I don’t disagree with your first point much…
Hope that guy is right about the vaccines by April.
That SA with the AZ vaccine was small…but yeah, not looking good on that front.
re interest rates–I’m really concerned about inflation right now. The Fed has all but said they’re going to try to inflate away some problems, but I don’t think inflation can be easily controlled. If and when it comes, it’s going to tank tech stocks and other long-duration assets as well as all the major investing benchmarks.
I agree, but my concern is mainly relatively high interest rates. For the last decade we have adapted to very, very, very low interest rates. Now, imagine what increasing mortgage rates to historically “normal” rates will do to the housing market. In the US you can at least ensure that you have fixed costs for 30 years. In many other parts of the world most have their mortgage rates locked in for only 1,3 or 5 years at .5-1%. Imagine the domino effect if the interest rates go up to 4-5%. Few can afford it and many will be underwater. And we may have another financial crisis. In short, the Federal banks around the world can not allow interests to go up “fast”. At the same time, there is a realization from the Federal banks that there’s a lot or slack in the economy and one should not tighten the economy as early as we have done in the past (w/ the exception of the Fed being asleep at the wheel during the housing bubble).
There is a clip somewhere years ago Janet Yellen saying “I have no idea what is going with inflation”. The lack of it that is. I think it still applies 🙂
So many questions we have no answers to. Out of our control. Focus on what you can control:
Diversify
Rebalance
Keep costs low
Don’t do stupid tax moves
And stay healthy 🙂
Not sure this goes through with the hyper Robinhood trading/gambling kids…
Watching paint dry is amazing, maybe more should try it 🙂
I can control having a portfolio that handles inflation well, so I’m long oil, natural gas, and uranium right now. A modest amount of precious metal miners too. Not as diversified as a financial adviser would want me to be but I perceive a lot of risk in holding indexes right now given how heavily weighted they are with tech companies. Time will tell…
Well, all these commodity type holdings have been sucking so bad for a very long time! Maybe their time has come…
Understood about tech weightings. Back in the tech stock bomb days I lost sleep and did an intervention which proved to be very timely. On that note, no intervention in the GFC was done.
Am I losing sleep now? Not really. There are so many crazy things happening in the markets that anything is possible. And a lot more other things have again proved to be so important, like keeping our health up and our sanity too…
Mental trick: Look at your portfolio. Subtract 1/3 from it. If the new number has you freaked out, maybe you need to fix your allocation 🙂
I predict the 2020 Tax Year season will be hellish…you heard it here first!
Dogecoin!
I just could not stay away from cannabis stocks. In theory, the top 1-3 cannabis companies should at some point behave like tobacco stocks. Surprisingly, tobacco stocks have been amazing investments.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-15/how-tobacco-became-one-of-the-greatest-investments-in-history
I will respond later to the comments, I am on tax beast mode now…
Spending based bonuses I am still waiting to show up:
– Two elite nights for over $10k spend on Hyatt Visa card, now 4 days after statement close.
– One free night for spending over $4k on Hyatt card in December. Chase secure message reply was I will get it…that was a few weeks ago…
– Southwest 30% bonus on up to $6k of spend on a Southwest card for spending 10/1/20-1/31/21.
-Amex Aspire $20 monthly credit for dining out. Got Amex Offer email a few days after transaction. Now 5 days since transaction and no $20 credit yet…
What is going on?
Something is clearly delayed with Amex credits across the board.
I am missing the February PayPal credit, Home Chef Amex offer and $20 dining credit on the Aspire.
I chatted with a rep via the Amex site and they told me the boiler plate language of the term, but said I should in practice receive the credits in 5-7 business days.
Thanks, I see posts on the Amex delays now.
I am leaning towards not doing the small Chase card spending promos, hate to have to follow up with them…and blaming the airline/hotel, etc.
Update:
That first item on my list (actually, 4 elite nights as it is 2 elite nights for $5k of spend) finally posted today.
The rest are still outstanding
Newest thing here in WA State (Yay Pacific Northwest!) is Restaurants open at 25% capacity. And I do mean OPEN! That is, open with doors and windows and everything open to the weather so people dining inside with jackets and gloves and hats… CRAZY!
Gobs of good stuff here today, George! Hope the Cortisone helps!
Injection scheduled on the 18th. But this past week the pain has gotten much better so…we’ll see what happens this week and most of next…maybe it is finally healed and skip it #developing
Looking at the Tampa Bay fans last night and…smh.
Just read on DansDeals AA will fly MIA-TLV starting in June.
No offense to anyone but the hardest flight for a flight attendant ever to work is born. I know this from my many JFK-TLV days at TWA. OV Vey they were so f’ing hard to work. Most called in sick route in the system. F/A’s would get in the crew van in TLV after the flight looking like the just went 15 rounds with Smokin Joe Frazier….and that’s the girls.
What do you think the over/under betting number on wheel chair request will be per flt. for 777-200……my guess 43.
Re; Mr.Marks….Don’t fight the Fed
Maybe we have a better shot (pun intended) to fly to Israel to get the vaccine than waiting for it here 🙂
Hey Ramses-
Why were the flights to/from TLV so tough?
Going tax beast mode here.
Peaking at credit card conversions: Still seeing zero for February.
Sticking with tax beat mode, no blog post tomorrow, sad!
What a week.
On Monday, we got our second Moderna vaccine shots. Two weeks and I’m back in the saddle.
Then today, Larry Flint died.
And it’s only Wednesday.
Doesn’it seem like everything is accelerating lately or what?
RIP Hustler Larry, Playboy always sucked 🙂
I have a lot of material lined up but no time to push into WordPress…wish I had the ghost writer Ben and Gary employ…Apparently, my stock options in Dogecoin were not that attractive I guess, sad!
Buzz-
À propos Larry Flint:
Now I am sure some judgemental loudmouth will say “Larry Flint was a pornographer”, like that just ends the discussion. And, yes, Hustler did go where no man-or at least only the lucky few-have ever gone.
But to many, Larry Flint stood tall in calling out hypocrites and blowhards. He repeatedly offered big money-$1 million-for info leading to outing right wing, bible toting phonies. He labeled Jerry Falwell an asshole, and made it stick (pardon the mental imagery). He said we all like sex, and on that point (to quote Pope Francois and many bloggers), “Who am I to judge?”.
If Playboy was like the Beatles, who wanted to hold girls’ hands, Hustler was like the Stones, who wanted to spend the night together.
Larry Flint had his hand on the pulse of America’s libido. And a lot of other places too.
Agreed!
Perfect analogy with Beatles vs Stones….I have used the “hold your hand” vs “I can’t get no…satisfaction” myself before.
I thought men bought the magazines for their hardcore investigative journalism. The downfall was putting everything online so you can now “read” everything for freeeeee. Excuse me but I’m about sell my cannabis stock for $4.20.
OMAAT has been on a legendary credit card pumping spree the likes of TPG has not even seen…WOW!
Here I am still waiting for the first conversion to credit in February.
DCFlyer said I am like them.
LOLOLOLOL
As of now, no draft post…too busy with actual work than this…Going to say hello to Mile Nerd.
#theendisnear
Thing is…don’t feel like blogging anymore…sad.
And I need a nap
Update:
We are back to posting once a week. See you sometime next week.
My tech guru is going monthly fee now…so I will need about 10 credit cards to cover his fee for the year.
February (to date): 0.ZERO.NADA.ZILCH.
You all enjoy the weekend.
Playing “This is the end” by The Doors in the background.
Some bad news for TPG:
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-removing-blog-comments-may-impact-search-rankings/395400
If I do this here I may get a cc conversion this month, sad lol!
Will try to post Monday, it is all tax season mode here, about to crash them IRS servers!
Working on the next blog post now…Should be ready to go early Monday morning!
Vaccine magic:
Israel’s largest healthcare provider on Sunday reported a 94% drop in symptomatic COVID-19 infections among 600,000 people who received two doses of the Pfizer’s vaccine in the country’s biggest study to date.
https://t.co/zz9kNs8nq1
I am seriously thinking to move to Israel to get vaccinated 🙂