Finance

Friday Five Episode 4

May 25, 2018 By Ian Thomas Leave a Comment

We are kicking off a brief Friday Five with some flight sales, a dream home competition, and a credit card FYI! Let’s dive in.

1. HGTV Smart Home Giveaway

HGTV is having a sweepstakes with a grand prize of over $1.6 million. Sure, the odds are low, but hey someone has to win! Check in out here.

2. APR Poll

This was an interesting poll I ran across that has some scary numbers: almost half of the people with credit cards don’t know what their APR is. As a reminder, APR, or annual percentage rate, is basically the interest rate that banks charge consumers for carrying a balance. This is reason number 1 why I recommend paying off your card each month if you can, and getting a card with a low APR if you can’t! Read more about APR and how it is calculated here….

Friday Five Episode 3

May 18, 2018 By Ian Thomas Leave a Comment

We are still up in Canada, so I’m just going to get right into our Friday Five’s for this week and then get back outside to work on the in-law’s patio project! We might include some of the fun on our SWS stories, but for now, let’s jump in:

1. Southwest sale

Head on over to Southwest and check out the sale they have going on right now – it’s a good one! Flights start at $49. And just a reminder, if you have a flight that you already booked, check and see if the price went down. If it did, change your flight… to the same flight! Any extra points would be refunded to your account, or if you used cash, you’ll get account credit for the next flight! Usually by the time I’ve taken a flight, I’ll have changed it (to the same flight) a couple times. And at the end of the day, this saves me thousands of points….

Friday Five Episode 2

May 11, 2018 By Ian Thomas Leave a Comment

So, it’s only the second week of our Friday Five series and already we are running late on it! Jeez-laweez, can we get our act together over here or what?! I guess in our defense, WHAT a week we’ve had. We have been all over the map trying to finish up our first big reno project before we headed out of town (update at the end), and this week just slipped by! Anyways, here are my top fives for the week.

1. $4.5k trip giveaway

Million Mile Secrets having a travel giveaway that is worth $4,500 in travel! Head here for more details – and in case you missed it, check out the interview we did with them a couple months ago….

Inaugural Friday Five

May 4, 2018 By Ian Thomas 2 Comments

So after a couple months on the scene, today marks the debut of a new series lovingly dubbed “Friday Five”. It’s meant to be just a shorter recap of things we think are interesting, deals we are digging or credit cards we are applying for. So, with that being said, let’s jump in!

1. Moviepass

Summer is when a lot of big-ticket, blockbuster movies come out. Just this summer we are looking at Avengers, Ant-Man, Mission Impossible, Jurassic World 2, The Incredibles 2, Mama Mia 2, Solo, Ocean’s 8 – and jeez, the list could go on! Knowing that we will want to see a couple of those, I checked out what was being released when and decided that it makes sense for us to sign up for Moviepass for two months this summer….

How We Get Free Movie Tickets

April 17, 2018 By Ian Thomas Leave a Comment

In honor of what was a miserable, cold and dreary weekend here in Birmingham, I’m going to dive into one of my favorite under-the-radar secrets: free tickets to advance movie screenings. Over the years, Sarah and I have seen a lot of movies before they were even in theaters – there have been a lot of good ones, and a couple bad ones – but our highlight was getting to see the last several Hunger Game movies a week early. Oh, and did I mention this is free?!

It works like this: prior to a movie coming out, studios want to build positive buzz around the film on social media and by word of mouth. The only problem with that is that no one has actually seen the movie. Enter advance screenings. Studios have one or two screenings in big cities across North America before the movie opens on the big screen. Codes are distributed, sometimes via local radio shows or contests, and lucky winners or early adopters get to punch that code in online and print out 1 or 2 tickets….

7 Tips to Raise Your Credit Score

March 20, 2018 By Ian Thomas 10 Comments

Having a good credit score is an important financial goal because attaining and maintaining a good credit score will set you up for long-term success. When you work with banks to obtain credit or a loan, whether it be for a car, house or credit card, having a good score means lower interest rates and friendlier terms. Over time, this can save big bucks, especially when it comes to larger purchases like vehicles and homes.

Improving your credit score is not something that happens overnight, though. It is the result of an intentional effort to be a good steward of the money you are loaned and make choices that reflect positively on you. So, here are some tips and tricks that, over time, will result in your credit score increasing.

Make payments on time

This is a big one! Every time you miss a payment or a due date, think of it as a letter that your bank sends to the credit bureaus that will go on your report, and eventually be reflected in your credit score. Equifax notes that a 30-day delinquency could damage your credit by dropping it over 100 points – which takes a credit score from attractive loanee to questionable. I use a financial tool called Mint to track all of my different accounts. So, in light of how important it is to make payments on time, that leads to tip #2……

Financial Review – Three Weeks in Australia & New Zealand

March 13, 2018 By Ian Thomas Leave a Comment

The dust has settled, the jet lag has been beaten back (well, for me – Sarah might still be working on it) and we are adjusting to life-as-normal back in Birmingham. Our trip was a great adventure and a grand success – we kept waiting for something to go wrong – the rental car tire to go flat, missing a flight, losing a passport – but nothing on this trek went bottom up, and I am super thankful for that.

This trip was planned on a relatively skinny budget, and one of the reasons I am doing this financial recap is because I want everyone to fully understand just how attainable travel is, especially when you use handy-dandy points! I’m going to dive into the finances of our trip – specifically, everything we paid as it related to 3 different categories – flights, accommodation and car rental. These three categories contain the three biggest costs of (probably) any trip and the ones that can be most easily offset by either using points or strategic maneuvering.

I did not include food, excursions or any random costs, like the Pride & Prejudice book I bought at a Salvation Army in Queenstown for a good flight read (Update: watched movies the whole time, didn’t even touch the book). Costs like these can fluctuate situationally for people – Sarah and I tend to run to a grocery store as soon as we get somewhere and stock up on bread, cold cuts, and fruit + veggies for meals. Sometimes this is difficult, like instant-coffee-every-morning kind of hard, but we were gone for 21 days, so either Hobbiton or eating out was going to get the boot, and I like to think I made the right decision 🙂

Alright, so let’s get ready to dive in. Three categories – flights, accommodations and rentals – and I’ll be including a running tab of what our actual cost would have been, so you can compare how well points worked out for us on this trip.…

The Money-Saving Secret Weapon We Use To Get Better Deals: Gift Card Granny

March 6, 2018 By Ian Thomas Leave a Comment

As I talked about in a previous blog post with Ebates, there are numerous under-the-radar ways to save money when shopping. Some of them, like Ebates, are relatively painless, whereas others need a little more planning in order to make the money-saving magic happen.

Money-Saving Magic

Gift Card Granny is a little bit of both. It is essentially a one-stop-shop for gift cards. One you go to the site, you can type in a store and it will act as a search engine for all the different resellers out there – from ABC Gift Cards to eBay. This turns Gift Card Granny into Gift Card Google and with the click of a button finds the best discount available!

Another benefit of GCG is that they have a rewards and referral program. For every dollar you spend, you get a point, and if you refer a friend who makes a purchase, you get 1,000 points. 1k points are only worth $5 towards a gift card, so it is not a revolutionary savings, but hey – every little bit helps! If this post convinces you to download the app and check them out, use my referral link for an easy $5.…

How To Pick Your First Credit Card Wisely

February 27, 2018 By Ian Thomas 2 Comments

If you are reading this post, you may or may not have read all the previous posts I’ve written about credit and credit cards and be asking yourself “Jeez man, where do I start!?”. Well, that is what this post is for – to help you get started.

Picking out your first credit card is incredibly important. I don’t feel like I can emphasize this enough. You want to pick out your first credit card like you pick out your significant other – because best case scenario, you are going to be in each other’s lives for a loooong time. I discussed this in previous posts, but I’ll do a quick recap here.

Opening your first credit card is the same as you starting an Instagram and posting for the first time ever. As long as you keep that first card open, your credit history (one of the factors that goes into your credit score) keeps growing and growing as time goes by. But if you cancel that card, your credit score immediately shrinks. So, to put it in Instagram terms, if you had Instagram for 5 years, but delete all your old posts up until 1 month ago, anyone who looked at your feed could assume you are new to the platform. Same thing with credit cards – the minute you delete that first card, those months and months (potentially years) of credit history tied to that card goes down the drain. Hopefully, that illustrates for you the importance of picking a good credit card as your first card, because ideally, you’ll never close it.

Let’s talk details

So, what makes a good first card? Well, for starters, it should have no annual fee. There are a lot of killer credit cards out there, but the best ones have annual fees, and that is a big no-no for your first credit card. The reason is that you want to keep it forever, and if you have a pesky annual fee, that will start to add up over the years. Side note: Annual fees are sometimes worth it, but usually cards with annual fees don’t stick around in my wallet for more than a year or two once their benefits (usually the big sign-up bonus) have run their course. Once you chop the annual fee cards off your potential list, it gets way smaller. What’s left on the list are cards that are decent, but not the best – hear me when I say that is so OK for your first card.

The second thing that I think goes into a great first credit card is narrowing it down further to cash back cards. Miles and points are great – trust me there – but your rewards needs will change over time, and one thing that will never change is the fact that you will always benefit from cash back cards. Cash back cards are what they sound like – you get a percentage of cash back to your account every statement, based on your spending.

FYI – I use my credit card like a debit card and it works out great!

The third thing that factors into a great first credit card will only apply to some of you. If you are a student, finding a bank with a student card can be a gamechanger. I got my first card when I was in University and over the years I demonstrated to the bank that I was a reliable lendee. Once I graduated, I contacted the bank and they upgraded me from a student card to a regular card. There weren’t a ton of benefit changes, but I was able to keep my oldest card open and upgrade it to a regular card. Even today, this is the card I have kept open the longest and is the one I recommend to anyone who is starting out on their credit journey. From my friends to my brothers – this is hands down what I consider to be the best card to date and marry. And guess what? I’m going to recommend it to you now.

What’s the verdict?

Drumroll please… the Discover It credit card is, in my opinion, the best starter card for anyone who is just jumping into credit cards. It comes at you hot as a no annual fee cash back card with a student option and rotating 5% cash back categories. The categories are relevant (gas stations + wholesale clubs, grocery stores, restaurants, Amazon + wholesale clubs) and the benefits are great.

Discover is a little bit of a quirky bank in that they don’t have a ton of card options, unlike Amex or Chase. Their best card is their flagship It card, and they pack in the perks to make it a very solid, no fee card. I have had it for years and it is still my foundation card, a.k.a. the card I use when I’m not trying to hit a minimum spend on another card. And the categories are always relevant to me – gas, Amazon, groceries, Costco, and restaurants cover a pretty wide spectrum.

Some of the perks include 100% US-based customer service if you ever have an issue and cashback that can be applied to your balance or directly towards purchases at merchants like Amazon. They also provide your FICO credit score for free and they have a shopping portal with exclusive discounts from select merchants. Trust me when I say that what Discover does, they do well.

I cannot recommend this card highly enough – OH – and by the way, if you use my referral link right here, we both get $50! Plus, your first year of cashback rewards will be doubled once your year is up – so if you earn $200 over your first year, you’ll snag another sweet $200 at the end of the year.

If anyone is a student, follow my link here for your $50 referral. As an added perk for you, Discover will give you an extra $20 in cash back each year that your GPA is over 3.0. Get studying!

The Simple Summary

I hope that post served as a practical “This is my advice” post for you after the first couple months of (probably) slogging through a lot of theoretical, background and foundational information. A Discover It card is where I would recommend starting from and keeping forever – it’s what I did, and I have no regrets.