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clockworkspider · 11 months

Text

Okay here's the thing about undercharging for commission prices. We run into the same broader problem always present in the labour market.

Minimum wage exist because there's always someone desperate enough to do work for cheaper, which depreciates the value of labour because eventually everyone else becomes desperate enough to do work for cheaper

People get around this by outsourcing their labour overseas, where the conversion rate is favorable and the cost of living is cheaper (you see this a lot if you work in tech or art nowadays)

Or hire an intern!

The overseas contractor is happy to charge $10 USD/hour, a decent rate where they live after conversion. The intern is resigned to work for free for the 2 years of experience you need for an entry level job, because they don't have bills to pay yet.

Contractors in US and countries with higher cost of living are now pressured to lower their prices to compete, but they risk making below a living wage.

So there's 2 dimensions here. People under-pricing their art for competition, and how much groceries can you buy with $10 USD at any given place.

I work in graphic design, an industry heavy with gig work, where there's no real minimum wage. So professional associations here are very eager to teach fresh graduates and students on how to price their work. Why? Because newbies undercharging for competition hurts the entire industry. People are willing to pay an experienced freelancer 2x more than a junior, but when it's 5x? 10x? A lot of doubts here.

I work in Canada. The market rate for design work is a bit cheaper here than it is in the US. I got told that if I'm working for US client, I should charge by their market rate. International work, international rate. And you know what, most US clients were willing to pay that because it's a reasonable market rate in their reality.

With international work, it's really difficult to make the pricing fair for everyone, especially for commissions. If you charge by US market rate, you make your work unaffordable to people from your own country, if you charge by local rate, you're depreciating the market when you could be making more.

Here's the other reality with art. People like what they like. People are willing to drop a couple of hundreds on a commission, I've seen it happen. It's a combination of finding the right market (it's furries and ffxiv players), having a marketable style, and just skill.

On the other hand, lowering your price indefinitely will not necessarily get you more work. I can't even make minimum wage doing art commissions, I just can't. There is a point where one must admit to oneself "it's better to just practice my art in peace before I can make a living with it".

I'm not telling any international artists to charge by US rates. However, with any type of freelance contracting, the suggestion is always to decide how much you wanna make and what your work is worth. And if you feel, realistically, that the latter can't match up to the former, then you might need to just hone your craft in private and make your living doing something else for the time being. I know getting no commissions hurts, but cutting your prices is hurting more than just yourself.

#clockrant #art

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moodyyehudi-sideblog · 2 months

Text

Since we started eating kosher we order and do takeout food from out much much less (like twice a month down from 1-2x per week.) so our groceries bill naturally has gone up quite a bit, and it isn’t the cost of the kosher food because the only thing that’s really a significant increase is meat and we have only had 1 meat meal per month at our house the past 2 months (it just isn’t something we feel we need more often. We eat fish a lot now. And it’s easier this way) so it isn’t that we’re buying more expensive food items, I’m pretty sure. I didn’t grow up with any type of budgeting knowledge, education or experience. I kinda thought of food as something that was always a “justifiable” expense so not something to worry about the budget, cus you can always be frugal elsewhere like buying secondhand clothes and not buying expensive cosmetics or other luxury items. I realize that’s a privileged outlook. Tbh I do have ADHD in the way that, just getting everything into the house that I need to create cohesive, nutritious, enjoyable, kosher meals feels like a miraculous accomplishment for me. Like it’s a lot for me I know it sounds basic. But I have recently been struggling with huge guilt over the price/cost of groceries. Idk if we are spending more or the same or less on food overall cus as I said, I never had the wherewithal to budget for that. I always just figured we’d be ok and so far we have been but that’s kinda a scary way to go about things. I’m always questioning what I can afford. And the fact that I don’t contribute financially really makes me worry because it’s so much all on my husband and Ideally I want to do everything I can to negate the stress. But I haven’t honestly done much work toward that in this specific regard (I have been successful in saving money in other arenas, such as not buying many new items and making do w what we have, mending things when they break instead of replacing)

Idk it’s a combination of things. When I was growing up, I remember buying normal sized packages of food items for like less than $2 and now it feels like no single package of food is less than $4.75 at the store (I’m exaggerating there but really, when did bread become $6? When did a box of Oreos become more than $5? Maybe I just didn’t pay attention until recently but everything feels too expensive..)

Not to mention the time expense of cooking, but of course I’m so so happy to do it. But it is something I cannot help but to factor in because whenever I’m doing a sustained task like that, my kids are likely missing out on my attention for a bit and it can be distressing for all involved. I’m just trying my best and I’m pretty sure we are doing ok but how do people afford to do all this and also have lots of kids and then send them all to the Hebrew day schools 😭 when I first started having kids I was determined I would homeschool them but more and more I’m realizing Hebrew day school would be ideal in many ways. But like, how on earth to afford such a thing? And camp? And yeshiva and college? Like. Where is this money coming from … and when I do go back to the workforce how am I going to manage the household to the standard I want …? Just how 😭 idk idk. I’m having a lack of faith moment I guess because it has all worked out in the past so , I should just do my best and realize that things will be ok.

I’m having like these racing guilt and anxious thoughts. Idk why…

It is for sure time (overdue acrually) for me to make a groceries budget. I know that.

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puffdragonpuff · 6 years

Text

I really hate

When people tell me I charge too much for services....like hair color falls out of the sky.

I'll break down my life style

Work expenses:

Booth rent - $170 a week yes I said A WEEK. Which means that's $680 a month. Now I get to lower that as I sell retail to my clients which is nice but it's only 10% of each h product sold. So I might save about $3-10.

Color and othed products- $200 a week (rough estimate) yes a week as well. Color is expensive and let's not forget they raise their prices on products 2x a year -_-....

Education- I do my best to take at least one class a month if not more and that rangers from free to $600+ now free doesn't necessarily mean free but it means time or traveling which can also cost money.

Phone bill- which isn't just used for personal use but more for work. I use it for advertising and Contacting clients $116 (I have sprint and its shit)

Car- gotta have one of those to get to work and the supply store or an onsite wedding. $500 a month

Car insurance- you have to have that $115

So without adding education onto the equation I'm already into spending g roughly $2,200 a month just in work expenses. I haven't even added my personal shit for living

Which includes things like credit cards, Netflix and hulu (no commercials) grocery shopping, gas (which I guess is a work expense), rent and utilities, dog food, toiletries, taxes, medical, shit I don't have a retirement i don't have health insurance i don't have any of that other shit cause I spend almost $4k a month just to survive....the struggle of being self employed is real. Y'all who don't own your own business have it good. Sure it sounds like we make a lot but we really don't it has to keep me literally surviving. I have a pretty full clientel but theres plenty of room to grow and I'm currently about to hire and assistant which again another work expense, just so I can pay someone to help me book more people and make more money..

Some days I really feel like I'm drowning but will keep fucking swimming....

#brujapost

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michaeljtraylor · 5 years

Text

Ramblings from my latest Minimum Spend rush

I’ve happily moved away from almost all manufactured spend, but recently found myself with a somewhat pressing need to meet some hefty minimums. I learned some good lessons here, that perhaps will help. One thing I’ll suggest is that if you’re currently happy with doing giftcards/money orders or have some other gigs running, it might be harder to get onboard with what I’ve been up to, so put it in the someday/maybe file.

Need Requirements

Before Spend Requirements was need. I needed 6 nights (2 nights then 4 nights) of hotels (nice ones, because I’m valuing vacation time very highly right now) and I also needed to finish a full $1K of spend on a recent AS card application (acquired with pure speculation in mind).

Spend Requirements

I identified a great SPG property that was 10K per night ($380 cash price) that worked for the first two nights. $5K Spend

I identified a 5 star hilton for 50K per night, or a 4 star DoubleTree for 20K per night. Haven’t decided on which one I will go for yet. $3K Spend.

That AS card.. $1K Spend

All in, $9K spend required, and I need it fast because I want the hotels locked in.. we’re talking first 1-2 weeks of card ownership to hit these.

The Strategy

I held both the SPG and AS card ($6k Spend) for a week or so before executing spend. This allowed me to finish off spend on the other AS card I got (His/Hers) before focusing on the next ones. I decided that I would use a recent (future at the time) cruise to meet min spend, unfortunately I didn’t identify and execute the Hilton points (100K Surpass offer) until a day or so before departure, so it didn’t come along for the ride.

As an aside, I try to work on a dual ‘Speculative Points’ like the AS ones, and ‘Target Points’ like the SPG ones wherever possible. This is a shift from where I was something in a lull and avoided all speculative applications.

Paying a Premium

After several years, and 11 free cruises, I’m starting to fall out of favor with NCL. The swine. For the first time, they set me at a tier level that doesn’t include free casino advances. I tried to quickly engineer that, and have them re-evaluate, but didn’t like the attitude of the person I was working with, and rather than ‘HUCA’ them I decided to just ignore the loss and grab a Margarita and hit the pool instead. That cruise the casino still gave me $200 of free money in addition to the cruise, so whatevs.

I put the SPG card as the credit card on file for the cruise (this one scoops up all expenses) and pulled out about $6K from the Casino at 3%. I then visited the front desk of the cruise and asked to make a partial payment of $1K on the AS card. All in, $180 to meet the spend, in exchange for straight cash.

I’d lie if I said it was instant. The line in the cruise front desk is akin to walmart, albeit a little shorter, but the key difference being that I was able to sip on a Pina Colada while waiting in it.

First Lesson

Paying cash to meet spend, at $30 per $1,000 makes you appreciate that the amount of min spend required to trigger a bonus matters. It was starkly obvious when dealing with the extremes of a $5K card and a $1K card. I do wonder if I would have noticed this difference if both cards were at $3K. Previously, when MSing it’s something I’ve never really cared about at the $0-$5K min spend levels, but it does make a difference in both cost and time. For the MSer’s, many times you cannot buy either the GC or the MO at that level in a single transaction, but you ignore that you are doing multiple trips to make spend because it is ‘free’.

The fee for gaining 30,000 SPG (25+spend of 5) was $150. This means that my hotel cost $75 per night, and I have 10k leftover. 10K SPG is a solid night ‘somewhere’ but I still value these as ‘orphaned points’ because I have no pressing need for them right now.

Luckily for me year 1 fee is waived, but frankly, if the card had $95 fee attached too, I would have still spent $245 for the bonus because it involved such a low level of friction to my daily routine. However, it reinforces that ‘travel is rarely free’ and instead pushes the notion of ‘deeply discounted’. I think that the willing acceptance to pay $150 to gain the bonus, vs run around town with giftcards and money orders is a big step.

My takeaway from this is that I’m more than happy to pay $150 (or $245) for the two nights in the hotel that I wanted, even if I could have spent about $30 to do it for free, via several visits to Walmart…

Fancy enough for $75 a night, and I’m a loyal SPG Gold, don’t you know?

So my first lesson is that min spending even with a 3% surcharge is a good deal for me.

The next step of that was the Altitude Reserve.. while I didn’t do it this trip (more out of laziness than anything) I’m also happy to ‘Invest’ in Altitude Reserve points, with some caveats….

An Altitude Reserve point is worth 1.5 cents, and earned at 3x on travel. Therefore, even without chasing a bonus, paying $30 for $45 of hotel travel is a good deal to me. It is an investment, because I would move asset class from cash, to funny money. I would hesitate to do this too far into the future speculatively due to the risk that the Altitude Reserve is not backed by Silver, like the USD, but I would move in a certain amount of points in order to cover my immediate 6-12 month travel.

Back from the Cruise

Two cards down, but $3K on the Hilton Surpass to go and a goal of 7 days to meet spend. My first thought was Kiva. I like using Kiva for lazy ‘MS’ it has no fee to fund, but it has two downsides:

Risk of Loss (I lose money on Kiva, but it still has worked out less than 3% via luck and diversification.

Time to repay (lock up of float for 6 months or longer has a price, vs getting cash from Walmart which can actually work out as a free loan..)

My mind went then to the IRS. I expect another refund this year, and we haven’t paid any tax yet so in theory I could give them a loan and get it back. I generally don’t advise messing with the IRS though, and like Kiva, it has two downsides:

A fixed fee to fund via credits card (less risk of loss, more guarantee of loss)

Time to repay (3 months vs 6 months, but still a lockup period)

Then I started thinking ‘outside the box’…

Second Lesson

After a while, It can be very easy to forget about real spend. Personally, for the last 2-3 years I’ve been doing min spend in 1 transaction in most cases, but since my time became limited, and options closed, things have changed. I rarely think about using a card for ‘real spend’ as I have a few that I use for this. With fewer options, I started looking around for real expenses that were close, and see if I could ‘Forward Shift’. I managed to apply about $1400 here via reimbursed business expenses. I generally avoid this also, because it is a PITA to track, but since the year is almost over, and I have good accounting software, I went for it.

In addition, I was able to look forward to November/December and find items like our Car insurance payment, and was able to send in the funds a bit early.

In terms of a relatable example, Resellers have a great option here, because if you buy $1K of inventory on a personal card, you can reimburse it instantly, even if it takes 6 months or more to sell. For me, it was mainly licenses and renewals for various professional organizations.

One thing that caught me was ‘Swap Spending’ or the destruction of priority. With this, I mean that when my goal is 100% fixated on meeting $3K spend naturally, without ‘wasting’ 3% on a transaction fee, or locking up money for the IRS, I would forget the opportunity of the transaction.

The Surpass was a bad example of this, because it offers some multipliers for Dining and Supermarkets, but I would typically use a OBC for Supermarkets (not MSing) for 5% and at least 2x to 3x points Dining card (TYP Premier, or other) those points further being uplifted by 25% or more at spend stage.

The lesson I picked up here was that by shifting natural/organic spend to the card of the day, slipping a $100 grocery bill onto the new card vs the 5% card came at a cost. Often times that cost could be 3%, if you value the points (not the bonus) at 2%. So it might be better to stick with the old 5% transaction, and pay 3% out of pocket to build the $3K minimum.

Interestingly, the Surpass could be a good argument for, or against this lesson. On the one hand, at 6x you could argue a full $3000 of Grocery spend being valued at 18,000 could be another night, or almost two, if you can find a property that fits. Alternatively, you might find that 18,000 points are orphaned in your account for years, and have no value.

So what did I learn?

I’m fine paying 3% transactions fees. I’d pay more than 3% if I can profit.

I like profit.

I’m OK with fancy hotels.

Even if all MS dies, right now we’re looking at perhaps a 50% uplift from certain programs, which in some alternative universe, or dystopian future, is still epic. Especially if it involves less work than the glory days.

(PS the USD dollar is fiat currency, it is backed by the US Government, which is supposed to be more stable than the Altitude Reserve, but who knows…)

(PPS I now get all my referrals, wherever possible, from fellow humans. For a while I tried to support a few blogs that I like, but I really think that there’s a nice touch in getting a personal referral, so thanks to Amol for the SPG and to Brandon for the Surpass)

The post Ramblings from my latest Minimum Spend rush appeared first on Saverocity Travel.

* This article was originally published here

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8312273 https://proshoppingservice.com/ramblings-from-my-latest-minimum-spend-rush/ from Garko Media https://garkomedia1.tumblr.com/post/183979236309

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garkomedia1 · 5 years

Text

Ramblings from my latest Minimum Spend rush

Need Requirements

Spend Requirements

I identified a great SPG property that was 10K per night ($380 cash price) that worked for the first two nights. $5K Spend

I identified a 5 star hilton for 50K per night, or a 4 star DoubleTree for 20K per night. Haven’t decided on which one I will go for yet. $3K Spend.

That AS card.. $1K Spend

All in, $9K spend required, and I need it fast because I want the hotels locked in.. we’re talking first 1-2 weeks of card ownership to hit these.

The Strategy

Paying a Premium

First Lesson

Fancy enough for $75 a night, and I’m a loyal SPG Gold, don’t you know?

So my first lesson is that min spending even with a 3% surcharge is a good deal for me.

Back from the Cruise

Two cards down, but $3K on the Hilton Surpass to go and a goal of 7 days to meet spend. My first thought was Kiva. I like using Kiva for lazy ‘MS’ it has no fee to fund, but it has two downsides:

Risk of Loss (I lose money on Kiva, but it still has worked out less than 3% via luck and diversification.

Time to repay (lock up of float for 6 months or longer has a price, vs getting cash from Walmart which can actually work out as a free loan..)

A fixed fee to fund via credits card (less risk of loss, more guarantee of loss)

Time to repay (3 months vs 6 months, but still a lockup period)

Then I started thinking ‘outside the box’…

Second Lesson

In addition, I was able to look forward to November/December and find items like our Car insurance payment, and was able to send in the funds a bit early.

So what did I learn?

I’m fine paying 3% transactions fees. I’d pay more than 3% if I can profit.

I like profit.

I’m OK with fancy hotels.

(PS the USD dollar is fiat currency, it is backed by the US Government, which is supposed to be more stable than the Altitude Reserve, but who knows…)

The post Ramblings from my latest Minimum Spend rush appeared first on Saverocity Travel.

* This article was originally published here

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8312273 https://proshoppingservice.com/ramblings-from-my-latest-minimum-spend-rush/

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garkodigitalmedia · 5 years

Text

Ramblings from my latest Minimum Spend rush

Need Requirements

Spend Requirements

I identified a great SPG property that was 10K per night ($380 cash price) that worked for the first two nights. $5K Spend

I identified a 5 star hilton for 50K per night, or a 4 star DoubleTree for 20K per night. Haven’t decided on which one I will go for yet. $3K Spend.

That AS card.. $1K Spend

All in, $9K spend required, and I need it fast because I want the hotels locked in.. we’re talking first 1-2 weeks of card ownership to hit these.

The Strategy

Paying a Premium

First Lesson

Fancy enough for $75 a night, and I’m a loyal SPG Gold, don’t you know?

So my first lesson is that min spending even with a 3% surcharge is a good deal for me.

Back from the Cruise

Two cards down, but $3K on the Hilton Surpass to go and a goal of 7 days to meet spend. My first thought was Kiva. I like using Kiva for lazy ‘MS’ it has no fee to fund, but it has two downsides:

Risk of Loss (I lose money on Kiva, but it still has worked out less than 3% via luck and diversification.

Time to repay (lock up of float for 6 months or longer has a price, vs getting cash from Walmart which can actually work out as a free loan..)

A fixed fee to fund via credits card (less risk of loss, more guarantee of loss)

Time to repay (3 months vs 6 months, but still a lockup period)

Then I started thinking ‘outside the box’…

Second Lesson

In addition, I was able to look forward to November/December and find items like our Car insurance payment, and was able to send in the funds a bit early.

So what did I learn?

I’m fine paying 3% transactions fees. I’d pay more than 3% if I can profit.

I like profit.

I’m OK with fancy hotels.

(PS the USD dollar is fiat currency, it is backed by the US Government, which is supposed to be more stable than the Altitude Reserve, but who knows…)

The post Ramblings from my latest Minimum Spend rush appeared first on Saverocity Travel.

* This article was originally published here

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8312273 https://proshoppingservice.com/ramblings-from-my-latest-minimum-spend-rush/

0 notes

nicholerestrada · 5 years

Text

Ramblings from my latest Minimum Spend rush

I’ve happily moved away from almost all manufactured spend, but recently found myself with a somewhat pressing need to meet some hefty minimums. ; I learned some good lessons here, that perhaps will help. ; One thing I’ll suggest is that if you’re currently happy with doing giftcards/money orders or have some other gigs running, it might be harder to get onboard with what I’ve been up to, so put it in the someday/maybe file.

Need Requirements

Before Spend Requirements was need. ; I needed 6 nights (2 nights then 4 nights) of hotels (nice ones, because I’m valuing vacation time very highly right now) and I also needed to finish a full $1K of spend on a recent AS card application (acquired with pure speculation in mind).

Spend Requirements

I identified a great SPG property that was 10K per night ($380 cash price) that worked for the first two nights. $5K Spend

I identified a 5 star hilton for 50K per night, or a 4 star DoubleTree for 20K per night. ; Haven’t decided on which one I will go for yet. $3K Spend.

That AS card.. $1K Spend

All in, $9K spend required, and I need it fast because I want the hotels locked in.. we’re talking first 1-2 weeks of card ownership to hit these.

The Strategy

I held both the SPG and AS card ($6k Spend) for a week or so before executing spend. ; This allowed me to finish off spend on the other AS card I got (His/Hers) before focusing on the next ones. ; I decided that I would use a recent (future at the time) cruise to meet min spend, unfortunately I didn’t identify and execute the Hilton points (100K Surpass offer) until a day or so before departure, so it didn’t come along for the ride.

Paying a Premium

After several years, and 11 free cruises, I’m starting to fall out of favor with NCL. The swine. ; For the first time, they set me at a tier level that doesn’t include free casino advances. ; I tried to quickly engineer that, and have them re-evaluate, but didn’t like the attitude of the person I was working with, and rather than ‘HUCA’ them I decided to just ignore the loss and grab a Margarita and hit the pool instead. That cruise the casino still gave me $200 of free money in addition to the cruise, so whatevs.

I put the SPG card as the credit card on file for the cruise (this one scoops up all expenses) and pulled out about $6K from the Casino at 3%. ; I then visited the front desk of the cruise and asked to make a partial payment of $1K on the AS card. ; All in, $180 to meet the spend, in exchange for straight cash.

I’d lie if I said it was instant. ; The line in the cruise front desk is akin to walmart, albeit a little shorter, but the key difference being that I was able to sip on a Pina Colada while waiting in it.

First Lesson

Paying cash to meet spend, at $30 per $1,000 makes you appreciate that the amount of min spend required to trigger a bonus matters. ; It was starkly obvious when dealing with the extremes of a $5K card and a $1K card. I do wonder if I would have noticed this difference if both cards were at $3K. Previously, when MSing it’s something I’ve never really cared about at the $0-$5K min spend levels, but it does make a difference in both cost and time. ; For the MSer’s, many times you cannot buy either the GC or the MO at that level in a single transaction, but you ignore that you are doing multiple trips to make spend because it is ‘free’.

The fee for gaining 30,000 SPG (25+spend of 5) was $150. ; This means that my hotel cost $75 per night, and I have 10k leftover. 10K SPG is a solid night ‘somewhere’ but I still value these as ‘orphaned points’ because I have no pressing need for them right now.

Luckily for me year 1 fee is waived, but frankly, if the card had $95 fee attached too, I would have still spent $245 for the bonus because it involved such a low level of friction to my daily routine. However, it reinforces that ‘travel is rarely free’ and instead pushes the notion of ‘deeply discounted’. ; I think that the willing acceptance to pay $150 to gain the bonus, vs run around town with giftcards and money orders is a big step.

Fancy enough for $75 a night, and I’m a loyal SPG Gold, don’t you know?

So my first lesson is that min spending even with a 3% surcharge is a good deal for me. ; ;

An Altitude Reserve point is worth 1.5 cents, and earned at 3x on travel. ; Therefore, even without chasing a bonus, paying $30 for $45 of hotel travel is a good deal to me. ; It is an investment, because I would move asset class from cash, to funny money. I would hesitate to do this too far into the future speculatively due to the risk that the Altitude Reserve is not backed by Silver, like the USD, but I would move in a certain amount of points in order to cover my immediate 6-12 month travel.

Back from the Cruise

Two cards down, but $3K on the Hilton Surpass to go and a goal of 7 days to meet spend. ; My first thought was Kiva. ; I like using Kiva for lazy ‘MS’ it has no fee to fund, but it has two downsides: ;

Risk of Loss (I lose money on Kiva, but it still has worked out less than 3% via luck and diversification.

Time to repay (lock up of float for 6 months or longer has a price, vs getting cash from Walmart which can actually work out as a free loan..)

My mind went then to the IRS. ; I expect another refund this year, and we haven’t paid any tax yet so in theory I could give them a loan and get it back. ; I generally don’t advise messing with the IRS though, and like Kiva, it has two downsides:

A fixed fee to fund via credits card (less risk of loss, more guarantee of loss)

Time to repay (3 months vs 6 months, but still a lockup period)

Then I started thinking ‘outside the box’…

Second Lesson

After a while, It can be very easy to forget about real spend. ; Personally, for the last 2-3 years I’ve been doing min spend in 1 transaction in most cases, but since my time became limited, and options closed, things have changed. I rarely think about using a card for ‘real spend’ as I have a few that I use for this. With fewer options, I started looking around for real expenses that were close, and see if I could ‘Forward Shift’. I managed to apply about $1400 here via reimbursed business expenses. I generally avoid this also, because it is a PITA to track, but since the year is almost over, and I have good accounting software, I went for it. ; ;

In addition, I was able to look forward to November/December and find items like our Car insurance payment, and was able to send in the funds a bit early.

In terms of a relatable example, Resellers have a great option here, because if you buy $1K of inventory on a personal card, you can reimburse it instantly, even if it takes 6 months or more to sell. ; For me, it was mainly licenses and renewals for various professional organizations.

The lesson I picked up here was that by shifting natural/organic spend to the card of the day, slipping a $100 grocery bill onto the new card vs the 5% card came at a cost. ; Often times that cost could be 3%, if you value the points (not the bonus) at 2%. ; So it might be better to stick with the old 5% transaction, and pay 3% out of pocket to build the $3K minimum.

Interestingly, the Surpass could be a good argument for, or against this lesson. On the one hand, at 6x you could argue a full $3000 of Grocery spend being valued at 18,000 could be another night, or almost two, if you can find a property that fits. ; Alternatively, you might find that 18,000 points are orphaned in your account for years, and have no value.

So what did I learn?

I’m fine paying 3% transactions fees. I’d pay more than 3% if I can profit.

I like profit.

I’m OK with fancy hotels.

;

(PS the USD dollar is fiat currency, it is backed by the US Government, which is supposed to be more stable than the Altitude Reserve, but who knows…)

;

The post Ramblings from my latest Minimum Spend rush appeared first on Saverocity Travel.

* This article was originally published here

Source: https://proshoppingservice.com/ramblings-from-my-latest-minimum-spend-rush/

from Garko Media https://garkomedia1.wordpress.com/2019/04/06/ramblings-from-my-latest-minimum-spend-rush/

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