Simply Well Spent

Travel + Renos + Finance

Finance

I got Denied for a Credit Card. Now What?

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You had it all planned out. The trip to Europe in the spring. Which friends you’d ask to go with you. How you’d ask your boss for the time off work. And which credit card would help get you there. So you apply for the card… and get a “pending” or “denied” message. And you start to cry. Because your dreams are crushed.

No wait, don’t get too upset yet! Maybe get on the Googles and search “What to do when I get denied for a credit card” and end up here. And from here, you start to get that little glimmer of hope back.

Let me first start off by saying that I have gotten that “denied” and “pending” message before. And it’s no fun, because what would be really nice to see on the screen is “approved”. BUT all is not lost, even if you are denied. 3/4 times I’ve gotten that message, I’ve been able to call the reconsideration hotline (it’s a real thing folks) and talk them into giving me the card.

And by talk them into it, I literally mean talk them into it. Sometimes it takes a couple different calls and different reps. But if there is a great reason to get that credit card and it will be used – stick to your story.

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Bye, Bye, Cable. How we cut the cord, and still get HD TV (for Free!)

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Television is becoming more and more consumer friendly with the recent explosion of “build your own” packages available from streaming services like Sling, DirectTV Now and YouTube TV – to name just a few.

That’s kind of a big deal, because now consumers are in more of a position to pick and choose what they pay for instead of just paying for blanket packages. This gives us a little bit of control in an industry that is notorious for how badly they treat customers.

But you said “Free HD TV”…

Outside of those, there is another option that can get you free local HD channels! We use an antenna to get crystal clear broadcasts of NBC, Fox, CBS, PBS, ABC, CW, and more. And the best part is, there is no monthly cost – your all-in cost is the price of your antenna.

These antennas aren’t the bunny ears of years past or the bulky Dish antennas; our antenna actually looks like a piece of paper. It’s a little bit smaller than an 8×11 and just a little bit thicker. I have it stuck on the inside wall of one of our closets, and you’d never know it was there!

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Our Top 3 Travel Credit Cards

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So, last week I went over how great credit cards are at making travel accessible – check it out here – and today I’m going to run down my favorite travel credit cards. These are by no means the only cards out there, and they aren’t even the only travel cards I have. The combination of rewards, minimum spend and annual fee make these some of my favorites. Let’s do this thing!

Best Airline Card

If you are flying domestically, chances are that Southwest can get you where you need to go. And that’s not to say they always have the best prices – sometimes that award goes to the ultra-low airlines like Frontier or Spirit. But out of all of the airlines that I know of, Southwest has by far the best reward program. There are no blackout dates, which means every flight and every destination is points-eligible.

Southwest has a couple different credit cards, but their Plus card and Priority card are relatively similar. Currently, the sign-up bonus is for 40,000 points after spending $1,000 in the first 3 months. There is an annual fee of $69, but that is basically offset by the anniversary bonus of 3,000 points. For some perspective, 5,000 points are worth a little under $100. AKA 40,000 points are almost $800 in value!

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Credit Cards: The Gateway to Free Travel

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Credit cards mean different things to different people, and most of it has to do with your experience. For some, credit cards represent high-interest rates and a gateway to mountains of debt. For others, credit cards are some mysterious and forbidden last-resort option. And for some people, like me, credit cards are a gateway to free travel.

Surely it can’t be as simple as that, though, right? I mean, can you have the best of those three options without falling into any of the other options along the way? It is actually pretty easy to manage, and it all comes down to educating yourself on how they work and making a game-plan for your usage of them.

The Basics

Credit cards are relatively straightforward. You use them to pay for bills and expenses and instead of the money being pulled directly from your account, it gets stacked up against your “credit limit”. Aka the amount that the bank decided it could trust you to pay back when you applied for the card. Then, after a month of using it, the bank will ask for a minimum payment that goes towards your entire balance. Ideally, you pay off the entire balance so you do not have to deal with interest (which is usually pretty high for credit cards).

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Friday Five Episode 8

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Man oh man, where has the summer gone!? All of a sudden we are past Labor Day and fall is just about staring us in the face. No complaints from me – I’m pretty partial to fall weather – but did August just disappear for anyone else?!

We took a couple weeks off this summer… a bit of an impromptu “summer break” if you will. August was pretty hectic with family time and vacation time, so we decided to just chill for a couple weeks. But now, we are back on track and, as always, looking at different ways we can save money and stretch our miles to the limit! So we are going to slide back into the flow of things with a Friday Five – because lots is going on!

Chick-fil-a App

The CFA app is pretty swell and they just revamped their app to (hopefully) bring more food rewards to their raving fans. In honor of this revamp, they are offering free 8 count nuggets through September 29th – all you have to do is download their app and create an account! If you already have the app, just open it up and the nugs should show up under your rewards.

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How to Save Hundreds of Dollars on Textbooks

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With fall kind of around the corner, students are gearing up to go back to school and that means transitioning from beach mode to study mode. Not the easiest, but at least fall means cooler weather, colorful trees and holidays on holidays.

Today, I thought it would be a timely post to dive into textbooks… aka a potentially huge money suck for students. Textbooks can easily run upwards of $150 per class, and even with a typical 4 class semester, that is over $1,200 per year! That is pretty crazy. But it doesn’t have to be that way for anyone and it certainly doesn’t have to be that way for you, because here you are! Stick with me as I run through some of the different options out there and then I’ll finish up with the tool I use to search for the best deal.

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Getting the Most out of Your Accommodations

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One of the biggest costs of any trip is the accommodation. Sure, airfare can be cheap or even free, but it is harder to find good deals on hotels and Airbnb’s. A couple nights of hotels or Airbnb’s, plus the assorted cleaning fees and taxes and whatnot can really add up.

One of the best things you can do to fight against the accommodation money-suck is to consolidate your rewards programs. And what I mean by that is to pick a major hotel chain and stick with it when you are looking at multiple bookings that cost the same. This way, you will be able to funnel any rewards points into one stack instead of randomly having a couple thousand points here and there.

Hotel points are funny because it seems like across the board almost they cost more in points than airfare. On Southwest, a $100 flight will run me around 5,000 points, but a hotel room at a mid-level chain can easily start at 20,000 points. Because of that, these hotel credit cards with huge sign-up bonuses don’t go as far compared to airline cards with smaller sign-up bonuses….

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Our Complete Bathroom Reno for $2,000

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So, if you guys have been following on our blog or our Instagram stories, you are probably super aware that we have been renovating our bathroom in our house. We purchased the place in May after a couple years of living in it, and we were very much ready to get going on some long-percolating ideas that would help us put our stamp on the place – and hey, an increase in value doesn’t hurt either!

In looking at doing this full-scale bathroom renovation, we started from a place of “I wonder how much it would cost someone else to do this” and ended up at “Hey, I think we can do this all ourselves”. Initially, we weren’t sure how it would look – doing it all ourselves – and whether or not we even had that capability. For one, my dad and grandfather are super-human, fix-anything-ever people… but they live a solid 13 hours away. So anything that we took on would be all on us, though we had the option to phone-a-friend if (read: when) we had questions (pretty sure I used up all my Grandfather’s minutes).

As I researched it more and more, I kind of really started to want to take it on by myself. Not only would that represent some significant savings, it would also be kind of an adventure. And now that it is all done and looking… well, I think pretty good, there is a great satisfaction that comes from knowing and remembering every single step and struggle that went into the creation. And that feels really good….

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Friday Five Episode 7: McDonald’s, IKEA and Flying Blue

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This Friday Five is coming at you at the end of a really weird week – July 4th on a Wednesday – I mean, what is that. Needless to say, whether your BBQ was over the weekend before or on Wednesday, it was probably a hot one! I hope you had a pool or a lake to cool off in. Alright – let’s get started on Friday Five.

McDonald’s $1 Burgers

Look. I know McDonald’s has a bad rap in North America. And I mean, sure, sometimes the restaurants aren’t the nicest and the food isn’t super healthy or fresh – whatever. We don’t eat there every day by any means, but if we are on a road trip… and it’s Sunday and Chick-fil-a is closed, we might end up there….

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