Adventures in Personal Finance
If you regularly read travel hacking blogs, you have probably heard the term “churn” used quite a bit. For the uninitiated, a churn is a strategy used to sign up for new credit cards to maximize signup and bonus offers to rack up a huge number of frequent flyer miles and travel points quickly.
Over time, many of us become account collectors. You have that old checking account at the bank by your parent’s house. The checking account you use now, and maybe the old one you never closed. Over the last 10 years you collected three 401(k) accounts as you moved jobs, and opened a couple of investment accounts of your own.
This is way too much account clutter. Here are some reasons and tips to help you consolidate your accounts down to only the ones you actually need and use.
Some long time readers may remember a series of posts I wrote called “inbox clutter week.” The goal of the week was to wrangle and manage your emails to get your inbox down to zero. I have leveraged that post series to create a brand new email course called Zero Inbox Week. The idea is simple. Each day for a week, you get an email delivered with tips to get your email under control. By the end of the week, we should all be down to an inbox with zero emails and have a system in place to keep it under control.
Earlier this week, I shared my 5 best mobile apps to save you money. Now, it is time for my favorite time savers. I use these for my to-do lists, idea tracking, businesses, and general productivity.
For most of us, our smart phones are only a money drain. We pay at least $40 per month, on a family plan, or up to hundreds per month for unlimited plans, to get our calls and internet wherever we are. We can use those phones, though, to save us money. Here are my favorite free money saving apps.
I recently compared financial organization site Manilla with financial management and budgeting site Mint.com In my comparison of Mint and Manilla, I suggested that the services are complementary and both would be helpful. Since that time, I have put even more of my accounts on Manilla and have considered using it to dump my file cabinet once and for all.
I once I wrote about how I was on the verge of the Costanza Wallet. I have learned more about keeping my wallet de-cluttered and small in the time since, and got it down to a list of my top five tips for an organized wallet.
About four years ago I made the transition from being a casual earner of frequent flier miles to becoming a serious mileage junkie. How serious am I? I attend conferences devoted to the subject and make a nice living writing about loyalty travel programs and credit cards. But having earned millions of points and miles through some ingenious methods, I reached an inescapable conclusion that will sound very familiar to personal finance enthusiasts: Spending points and miles wisely is at least as important as finding ways to earn them.
This is a guest post from Ben Edwards
If you’ve ever played sports or had kids who were on a team then you know how many hours parents have to spend waiting on their kids over the course of a season. Just last week, half the parents at my son’s soccer practice spent part of the time on a Kindle or iPad.
Chances are that they were playing games or checking email and not working on their taxes. However, technology now allows us to work on our finances in the time and place best suited to us. An iPad with a tax app can turn an hour of sitting and waiting into an hour of making a dent in your taxes.
Last weekend, I went to a local computer specialty store to research a few items that I need to buy. I was surprised by how helpful my phone was in researching not only price, but other factors that went into my purchase decisions as well.
This post is part of a series on reaching a zero inbox. Managing our inboxes can be difficult and stressful at times. These tips are designed to help you conquer your email permanently to make sure you don’t miss anything important and don’t waste your time on junk.
Over the last four days, we have cleaned the hell out of our inboxes. We have setup rules and filters to keep the junk out and the unimportant stuff out of the way. We have built a system around efficiency, an inbox to do list, responding, and following up. You should already be at zero, but keeping it that way takes some dedication.
This post is part of a series on reaching a zero inbox. Managing our inboxes can be difficult and stressful at times. These tips are designed to help you conquer your email permanently to make sure you don’t miss anything important and don’t waste your time on junk.
Now that we have unsubscribed, filtered, and prioritized our inboxes, it is time to build a sustainable system to keep your inbox clean for the long haul. Luckily, this is easier than just replying and deleting to every email as it arrives. We have tools to make things much easier to handle and track.
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