Playing the miles game is such a win-win situation. On one hand you learn new skills; Organization, creativity, and attention to detail come to mind. On the other hand you save thousands of dollars and are able to expand your world with amazing travel experiences to exotic destinations. As an ordinary working stiff, you can […]
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Don’t Pay, Do Play
In the field of manufactured spending one of the most common metrics is “cents-per-mile-earned.” The idea here is that if you’re doing manufactured spending, there are always some costs associated with the exercise, and those costs can be quantified if you divide the total cost of the manufactured spending in cents by the total number […]
Cold Comfort
Luxury is a two-edged sword. On one hand we crave it. The most expertly prepared food. Elite wines. Performance cars. Soft hotel feather beds. Pampering vacations. On the other hand luxury can be a bit of a golden cage. Once the best is tasted, the ordinary can become unpalatable. Our world can shrink. One runs […]
The Anatomy of a Lame Award
One of the most common metrics for determining the value of an award redemption is the so-called cents-per-mile measurement. The idea here is that the more the award would’ve cost you in cash and the less miles you need to use, the more valuable the redemption. This is why the common logic of the miles […]
Conflictualization
One of the standard first slides in medical PowerPoint presentations is the conflict of interest slide. It goes something like: I’m on the payroll of Medtronic, St. Jude, Boston scientific, Biotronik, ELA, and Biosense Webster… Please enjoy the following educational presentation on sudden cardiac death. I’ve noticed that the same goes for online travel blogs, […]
Butterfly Effect
Life is unpredictable with its own rhythm and logic. Which is why the self-help genre is inevitably so disappointing. Self-help strategies seem to assume that life is shaped by the conscious mind. In my experience, it largely isn’t. Instead, life rolls along chaotically, each seemingly unrelated event shaping the next. Each subsequent human move percolating […]
Why Knot?
Look, there are some good reasons for not playing The Miles Game. We’ve already covered them, but let’s rehash. If your credit score is below 700 it will be difficult for you to get approved for multiple cards at one time. It’s a better idea to first get your score up above 700 and then […]
The Rebirth of Churn
It may be useful to give some real-world examples of credit card churns. Not because these were particularly well-thought-out, or executed. Indeed were I to do it all over I would certainly choose different cards. The value here is more about giving a granular view of the actions and reactions of a real-world churn. Let’s […]
Code
Just as fences make good neighbors, a little structure makes your life easier to live. An example: I am by nature a procrastinator. But if you procrastinate too much at work as a doctor, It can all snowball pretty quickly and you can end up with a mountain of unfinished charts . So I instituted […]
Plain Vanilla
I’ve used up a fair bit of bandwidth on this blog discussing the bluebird card and loading Visa gift cards onto it at Walmart. This is the bread and butter of manufactured spend for me. But this is not a Portland, Oregon specific Blog. And this sequence might not be the the most convenient route […]
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