Another TBB post featuring the most eclectic links around the web such as the forgotten lessons of 2008, ignore Jim Cramer, a deep dive on the Wagner Group founder that will shock you, the people living inside airplanes, entrepreneurship lessons, learning more about the Adani affair, the unusual crew behind Tether, SBF giving millions to former girlfriend, stop buying from charlatans selling you their systems how they got rich because they get rich this way, watch all the Superbowl ads, amazing knowledge dropped about donkeys, scaring you about another pandemic coming at us oh dear god not again, romantic gateways and haunted highways, the latest action in the world of frequent flyer miles and points and who is this crazy guy blogging about all these things? Enjoy the weekend!
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PERSONAL FINANCE
It is kind of eerie how many of these lessons are still relevant: The Forgotten Lessons of 2008: Seth Klarman. All these are great, I pick the three most important imho:
Do not accept principal risk while investing short-term cash: the greedy effort to earn a few extra basis points of yield inevitably leads to the incurrence of greater risk, which increases the likelihood of losses and severe illiquidity at precisely the moment when cash is needed to cover expenses, to meet commitments, or to make compelling long-term investments.
You must buy on the way down. There is far more volume on the way down than on the way back up, and far less competition among buyers. It is almost always better to be too early than too late, but you must be prepared for price markdowns on what you buy.
Beware leverage in all its forms. Borrowers – individual, corporate, or government – should always match fund their liabilities against the duration of their assets. Borrowers must always remember that capital markets can be extremely fickle, and that it is never safe to assume a maturing loan can be rolled over. Even if you are unleveraged, the leverage employed by others can drive dramatic price and valuation swings; sudden unavailability of leverage in the economy may trigger an economic downturn.
I beg you, stop watching this guy to get educated! On the other hand, when you realize Jim is about entertainment and you find nothing else so entertaining…I guess go ahead? Jim Cramer versus the world. I mean, if you get this so wrong, maybe you would be ashamed to be on TV? #NeverForget.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
For any reader looking for the internal call to become an entrepreneur….you must read this: 10 Harsh Lessons From 10 Years of Entrepreneurship. This one speaks to me: “If you succeed, you never want to go back”. So true, so true…
You probably saw the news about how the Indian conglomerate of a rich Indian guy named Adani got clobbered after a US firm issued a report blasting it. This firm is the one that discovered the Nikola truck company founder was a complete fraud by the way. Anyway, if you are interested to learn more about Adani and business practices and markets in India, this is a really good article: Control, Complexity and Politics: Deconstructing the Adani Affair!
CRYPTO/FTX/ELONMUSK/TWITTER
You can treat your crypto addiction in luxury for upwards to $75,000 smh: Luxury rehab centres now offer therapy for ‘crypto addiction’.
Amazing that bitcoin is off its lows. And beyond amazing Tether is still standing…despite all obvious shenanigans by people like this: The Unusual Crew Behind Tether, Crypto’s Pre-Eminent Stablecoin.
Yet the company’s founders and owners are an unusual bunch with scant experience at that scale of finance. One founder was a child actor turned early crypto investor. Another founder and top shareholder practiced plastic surgery before turning to electronics importing and then crypto. One newer owner has gone deep into British politics.
Must be nice to give $400 million to a former girlfriend hey? The Unknown Hedge Fund That Got $400 Million From Sam Bankman-Fried. When is the Netflix special coming out smh…
SCAMS
Are you sensing a theme in my blog? Simple, But Hard. Be careful out there…online!
Those rare folks who day-trade, or flip houses, or garner passive incomes as a route to wealth are busy doing those things. Those that want to sell you a newsletter or a seminar or some product to show how to become rich (but do not earn their living that way) have revealed the flaw in their pitch. It’s a shame this gets overlooked by so many. The people who would benefit from debunking this silliness have already spent their time and have been separated from their money; for everyone else, it’s an after the fact tsk-tsk moment. One cannot help but notice that the influencers pitching this lifestyle DO NOT MAKE THEIR INCOME this way, but rather selling “How To” kits.
A few economic truisms:
Anything worthwhile requires time and effort.
Putting in time and effort is hard, but it gives you experience.
Learning from your experiences is difficult, but can lead to expertise.
Applying expertise over time is not easy, but can lead to rewards.
Also, never forget this insane NFT related interaction BARF!
UKRAINE RUSSIA WAR
The world will celebrate when this guy goes upstairs: Yevgeny Prigozhin: the hotdog seller who rose to the top of Putin’s war machine.Really good investigative article chronicling his rise from prison and selling hotdogs…
ODDZ & ENDZ
Check out the 2023 Superbowl ads. Looks like ridiculous crypto ads are over, here comes, well, beer!
Fascinating deep dive on donkeys! How donkeys changed the course of human history. Wow, learned so much, I had no idea, respect to donkeys!
I don’t want to alarm anyone but…An Even Deadlier Pandemic Could Soon Be Here. Dear God, enough! H5N1 is changing, let’s cross our fingers and pray for the best…
You want odd? How about a collection of Soviet control rooms, so there!
TRAVEL
Love is in the air you guys, which is your favorite? The Most Romantic Gateway in Each State. I am so embarrassed to admit I never heard of Walloon Lake in Michigan!
It is not Halloween but still, good to know: List of haunted highways. In the world. Never knew this was a thing…Actually, I drove this one and I survived lol.
E8 Expressway, Malaysia: the E8 Expressway, also known as the Kuala Lumpur–Karak Expressway, is reportedly “one of the most haunted highways in the world”, It is claimed that many people driving late at night see strange creatures, lost schoolboy, and Pontianak on this road. There is also sightings of a driverless yellow Volkswagen Beetle that appears from nowhere, that makes other drivers follow it to death.
I love airplanes but no thanks! The people who live inside airplanes.
MILES & POINTS NEWS/PROMOS/MY ACTION
It is that time of the year again to do this: It’s time to get on the Hyatt/MGM status match merry-go-round. If you read it more carefully, this can lead to free cruises (well, nothing is free, you still gotta pay port fees and taxes). I have Hyatt Globalist and MGM Gold elite statuses and it is on my to do list to match with Carnival to have a shot at a free cruise but I move very slow these days with so many things going on in my life. I guess you can score a free Holland cruise too but this cruise line does not appear to be as generous. I have only done one family cruise years ago and of course it was free, thanks Capital One bank! Of course I could pay for the cruise but it is SO sweet when you get US banks to pay for them woohoo!
The bang in this hobby is on the travel rewards credit card signup bonuses, do not forget that. Of course, if you are going to shop online as all of us do, there are always promos and you can pick up a few more miles and points here and there, here are the latest online shopping promos. Do what you do but start your shopping inside the airline shopping portals of American Airlines, United and Alaska. All airlines have these shopping portals and it is very easy to pick up some miles for stuff you would be buying online anyway.
The US banks are going at it non stop with continued travel rewards credit card promotions. When you see other bloggers screaming at you pumping their affiliate links non stop saying the most ridiculous things to get you to click on them, maybe, I don’t know, consider stop reading and supporting them?
I have been doing this for way too long and my blog almost never reaches double digits in credit card conversions. Unlike The Points Guy. When I was taking my family to Tahiti for free, TPG was in diapers lol. Anyway, in other words, I don’t care, the primary mission of the blog is to educate and we’ll let the chips fall somewhere, so here we go:
Southwest Personal Cards Signup Bonus: 30,000 Points + Companion Pass Through 2/28/24. Unless you have a significant other and both of you have LOTS of time to travel on Southwest, these offers are not for you. Because the Companion Pass will only be good for nine to ten months only. And the bonus points are greatly reduced. Maybe wait for Chase to get these offers back up to 80,000 or even 100,000 perhaps. It will take 135,000 points to get the Companion Pass…but if you have a plan and knock it out in early 2024, it will be good until end of February 2026 #winning.
New Delta Welcome Offers: Several cards, up to 100,000 Delta Skymiles. Skymiles suck big time and only in very limited situations, if you know what you are doing and are totally out of hitting other travel rewards credit cards ..you should consider them. Newbies should stay the hell away, there are so many better and more flexible offers out there. Never fall for the trick “Highest Offers Ever” because very likely down the road it will be proven false. But hey, if you have some of the Delta cards, you can get 15% Award Discount wow #joking.
Wait, there are more credit card offers! We have Hilton Honors Surpass at 150,000 points, Hilton Honors Business card at 165,000 points and even the lowly no annual fee Hilton Honors at 100,000 points. Hilton used to be amazing, I remember back in 2003 I scored 5 (0r was it 6?) nights at the Hilton Waikoloa Village Resort for just 100,000 points in total, those were the days! Now I am not sure if that even gets you just one free night. I usually prefer flexible bank points cards, followed by airline cards and then followed by hotel cards. If you have a favorite hotel program maybe focus on it exclusively. I stick with Hyatt (with transfers to it from Chase cards earning Ultimate Rewards points) and still have a Hilton Honors Surpass card (downgraded to it from the premium Aspire card after getting the premium Capital One Venture X card) with around 360k Hilton Honors points in the bank. I am slowly working myself out of all the other programs to make the time management of this addiction less costly. Nothing is free in this hobby!
In addition, I saw a few Chase Marriott Bonvoy new credit card offers: 100K for Boundless and 60K for Bold. Why would you get these, why? Marriott Bonvoy sucks ever more than Delta Skymiles! At some point a little while back, the Signup Bonus offer for the Boundless card was a certificate for five free nights which was outstanding and I have been kicking myself for not going for it. Since that offer went away, it was lowered to three free nights which it could be a nice score if you had a specific property in mind. But 100,000 Marriott Bonvoy points is not exciting and if you see a blogger out there raving about it just know they are only doing it to earn more sales commissions pushing the product for the banks #sameold.
Anyway, most of the offers mentioned above can be had HERE. Ask away at the comments if you have questions. You can win at this game if you get educated and ALWAYS pay your full credit card balance EVERY month. It is mostly due to the people who pay ridiculously high interest rates that finance our rewards #sadfact
BUZZING
A section where I go on and on about some stuff that happens in my life and anything else that just does not fit in another section above.
My mother is not doing well and it looks like I am taking her back to Greece. This Sunday. Unless she has a miraculous recovery in the next few days. In the middle of a full blown tax season. I have no idea how blog posts will appear here next week but you know me, I have been doing this here in obscurity for over ten years while the blogosphere is littered with corpses.
Aging sucks. Taking care of old and frail parents is probably the toughest duty on this planet. I am tired you guys.
My marathon training was going so well. Not sure how long I will be in Greece, depends on how my mother does. But I will try to be back within a week #developing. #NeverGiveUp
Speaking of running marathons: When a marathon isn’t extreme enough, run backwards. Or dressed as a candy bar, or with a pineapple on your head. Meet the wave of runners aiming for a different kind of record. Wait, I remember this guy with a pineapple in the 2022 Berlin Marathon!
Editorial firewalls will never be breached here. Because this venture can not afford any, lol.
When Morningstar Magazine asked me nicely I said yes to them to do a profile on me. With this kind of face I guess my plan to venture into modeling is not gonna happen…ever woohoo! As I tell my kids, be an original and do it your own way and enjoy the process!
MILES & POINTS
HOT CREDIT CARD OFFERS: 90k CHASE Ink Cash, 90k CHASE Ink Unlimited, 75k Capital One Venture X, 100k CHASE Ink Business Preferred, 60k CHASE Sapphire Preferred, 60k CHASE World of Hyatt Visa, 20k CHASE Freedom Flex, 175k IHG Rewards Premier and many more, including many AmericanExpress cards, including Delta, Marriott and Hilton cards! Please check out my Affiliate links. Terms apply to American Express benefits and offers. Visit americanexpress.com to learn more. If you do not see a credit card with my affiliate links, perhaps I could refer you?
This section is about my hobby addiction of collecting frequent flyer miles and hotel points since the early 1990’s! SKIP if you are not into it!
As of today, I have burned 32,000 miles/points year to date in 2023 and have 4,565,342 miles/points in the bank. Some do drugs, I do miles lol!
Thanks to US banks, very lucrative travel rewards credit card offers come and go all the time. This section will act as a reference point on the best CURRENT offers. I will designate new material preceded by NEW.
BEGINNERS
The Beginner’s Guide to Getting Started with Credit Cards, Points & Miles
BASICS: This travel hacking hobby is mostly about getting the fat Signup Bonus of travel rewards credit cards while of course NEVER EVER carrying a balance. Banks have a marketing budget and are willing to give us many THOUSANDS of miles/points to travel mostly for free hoping to hook us to charge 20%+ interest rates on our balances. The poor souls who fall for their marketing paying these ludicrous interest rates end up subsidizing us responsible consumers who enjoy taking advantage of, cough, such bank marketing budgets! Some of us have been doing this for thirty years creating amazing travel memories…Feel free to ask me questions or post them in the comments.
BASICS: Prefer credit cards from the proprietary points programs of banks, such as Chase Ultimate Rewards, American Express Membership Rewards, Citi ThankYou Network, Capital One Rewards Miles because they are a lot more flexible and are not devalued as frequently. Over pure airline and hotel travel rewards credit cards. Pure cash back credit cards may work for you best and they are getting more valuable as airline and hotel loyalty programs keep getting devalued. Sometimes, a pure no annual fee 2% cash back card works best for simplicity!
TOP TRAVEL REWARDS SIGNUP BONUS CARDS
Master Guide to Credit Card Applications: All the Rules You Need to Know, Bank by Bank
How to Sign up for Chase Ink Cards
The Chase 5/24 Rule: Everything You Need to Know
By far, the best BANG you can get these days! These two NO ANNUAL FEE Chase Business cards are now offering an amazing 90,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards Points, the Chase Ink Business Cash and the Chase Business Ink Unlimited! Bottom line, I think these are the BEST business travel rewards cards out there right now! The 90k Signup Bonus can be earned after $6k of spend on the cards in the first three months. I am not going to make a fool of myself with recurring “69 reasons I love these two cards”, this is not a sales maximization blog ok? You can click to find out more about them and you can apply HERE to support this blog, thank you.
Chase Ink Cash vs Ink Unlimited: Which Offers the Best Return For Your Business?
The Capital One Venture X card offers a 75,000 point Signup Bonus after a minimum spend of $4k in the first three months. If you like simplicity and looking for one (premium) card, I highly recommend this card (and yes, I have it myself!). It has an annual fee of $395 but it comes with a VERY easy $300 statement credit for travel booked on its excellent travel portal, essentially turning it into a $95 annual fee card. But wait…there is more! On each card anniversary you earn 10,000 points essentially making it FREE! Every dollar of spend earns 2 points and flights booked on the travel portal earn 5 points per dollar. You get access to Capital One and Plaza Premium airport lounges and a Priority Pass Select lounge membership and, this is important, you can add FOUR authorized users FOR FREE who can also have their own Priority Pass Select airline lounge membership. You can transfer your Capital One points to up to 18 Transfer Partners. No foreign transaction fees. Free Hertz President’s Circle rental car top elite status. Cell phone protection and PRIMARY rental car coverage. Awesome seats at baseball stadiums for just 5k points each. And lots more. Available with my Credit Card Links, thank you for your support!
7 Sweet Spots to Use 75K Capital One Venture Miles
7 Underrated Benefits of the Capital One Venture X Card
NEW: Chase IHG Rewards Premier Card 175,000 Points Signup Bonus. After only $3,000 in spend in the first three months. Not free, you gotta pay the annual fee of $99. Free night up to 40,000 points per night starting with the second year of holding the card. Automatic Platinum status (which is not a big deal) while you hold the card. Card earns 26x per dollar spent on IHG properties, 5x on travel/dining/gas and 3x everywhere else. Fourth reward night free on stays of 4 or more nights. Under Category/Hotels HERE, thank you.
NEW: Six new higher offers for the consumer and business Delta Gold, Platinum and Reserve cards. I do not recommend Delta Skymiles, especially with so many better and more flexible points choices out there. Unless you know what you are doing and you can swing more of them because they work for you. Or you can jump on the Delta Flash Sales right away…Available HERE.
Remember, you are NOT allowed to ever carry a credit card balance if you ever get a credit card here!
Let me leave you with this…
Thank you for reading my blog. If you enjoy it please pass it on to a family member or friend, thank you!
Some of the links are behind a paywall. You can try to read them using Archive.is.
TBB
travelbloggerbuzz@gmail.com
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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.
Good morning! Thanks for the links.
Sorry that your mom is not doing well.
Agree about aging parents, it’s rough. Good luck with your mom.
Plane houses look kind of cool though.
Geez,, I am really sorry to read that your Mom is not doing well. Is it that she just needs to be at home? I hope things go well for you and her and the rest of your family. I had to take care of Dad the last few years and I know what you mean about aging parents in spades. Good thoughts from here for all.
Great stuff in the blog today and much thanks!
Arg, forgot to comment on the profile article. That’s really great! Hope you pick up a few new readers here from it, too! Good photo, as well.
Again, best wishes on your travel and care with your Mom!
GREAT article & photo in Morningstar…and lessons within it for us all.
Give your PR dept a pat on the back! 😉
Thanks everyone, been a rough day running around Urgent care and Walgreens…Nothing is serious, I think the change in diet and climate was too much for her and combined with old age is not ideal. I have some hours to cancel but I am leaning towards flying back this Sunday.
And thanks for the kind words, no time to respond in more detail today, sorry.
I enjoyed reading your profile in Morningstar. I suggest you attach it to the right of your blog as a permanent link so people who find your site in the future can read it.
Interesting idea, thank you. When I get time…I will let the WordPress IT guys handle it..if they can. I almost did not post it here at all, feels too self promotional…
Thanks for the idea harv, it is there now.
It took 10 years to post my pic on the home page! 🙂
Sorry Carl for deleting your comment. Do not feed trolls 😉
Ok, here was Carl’s comment in reply to the blog’s resident troll.
Perfect example of Poe’s Law here.
“Poe’s law is an adage of Internet culture saying that, without a clear indicator of the author’s intent, any parody of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being parodied.”
Can not reason with these people Carl.
You are right. I let myself get baited on that one. Apologies!
Sorry to hear about your mom. The profile was a great read. I thought you came across very accurate (and the eyebrows looked fantastic!)
Thank you!
Oh yeah, the eyebrows…reminds me of this:
https://travelbloggerbuzz.com/eyebrows/