In my previous post I told the story of the day I lost the most money at the poker tables and the lesson it taught me. Fortunately, not every life-lesson I’ve learned playing poker has come at such cost.
Can you guess, based solely on how they stack their chips, which of my sons plays looser and which tighter? 🙂
In this final post of this three-part series, I share the last three lessons a decade of poker has taught me, including the single biggest lesson I’ve learned. (more…)
Would you rather get a $1,000 bonus at work or save $900 on plane tickets for an upcoming trip you have already decided to take? Or, would you be better off earning $1,000 driving for Uber or negotiating with your cable and phone company to save $720: $60 per month for the next 12 months, say?
While you might think the first option is obviously better in both scenarios, for the vast majority of working adults, the second option is preferable. The reason why is simple but important to understand and keep in mind: (more…)
Marriott and Starwood are in the process of merging. One likely outcome is that Chase and AMEX will discontinue a couple of currently available Marriott/Starwood credit cards with nice signup bonuses (worth $488-$587 in travel). If you’re interested in these cards, you should consider grabbing them before they’re potentially gone.
Here are the cards that folks in the know speculate will disappear: (more…)
As 2017 draws to a close, I wanted to recap for you the 10 most popular posts on my blog this year. You should be able to get outsized value from these posts, especially the #1 most popular.
Here are the top 10 posts, starting with the most popular: (more…)
One of the best credit card offers on the market—the Merrill+ card—will be discontinued by September 18-19 at the latest. The card has no annual fee and comes with 50,000 bonus points. Those points are worth $500 in cash or up to $1,000 in airfare.
My wife’s Merrill+ card
In this post I’ll cover the basics of the card and how to apply for it. But if you’re interested, you should act fast. A source told Doctor of Credit that the card will be discontinued on September 18 or 19. But another source told Frequent Miler that the card will be discontinued “mid-September,” which means it might not last until September 18. (more…)
You’ve probably seen commercials advertising credit cards that earn 5% cash back or 5 points per dollar spent. Compared with standard cards that often earn just 1% cash back or 1 point per dollar spent, these 5x cards seem amazing. But are they? Should you get them?
In this post I’ll cover the 4 main cards that earn 5x rewards. I’ll then provide my recommendation for whether to get them. (more…)
While there are many ways to earn extra money on the side, the primary way to earn more is to get paid more for your work. Improving your skills is a key ingredient to getting paid more. But there are many ways to improve. The question is: which improvements are both easiest to make and likely to have the greatest impact on your ability, value to your employer, and income?
In the book Topgrading, author Bradford Smart lays out no fewer than 50 job competencies. These are 50 areas in which every employee has more or less ability. Topgrading is a book about hiring. The competencies are discussed to help an employer make a top hire.
But in reading about the competencies, I realized it could be reverse-engineered to help someone become more valuable to a current or perspective employer.
Specifically, 5 of the 50 competencies are considered by experienced Topgraders to be both highly important and easy to change. Focusing on growing in those 5 competencies presents a leveraged opportunity. They offer 5 ways to make yourself more valuable to an employer with comparative ease.
In this post I will provide a snapshot of the 50 Topgrading competencies. Then I’ll discuss how to increase your ability—and hopefully your income—through improving in the key 5. (more…)
Four good bank offers have come out over the past week or so, as reported by Doctor of Credit. Each offer allows you to earn $500 or more. They represent a fairly easy way to add to your financial bottom line.
Here’s an overview of each of the four offers, together with my recommendation for which one(s) to get, depending on your circumstances: (more…)
Poker legend Doyle Brunson is rumored to have been asked whether he would take the following bet. A coin is flipped. If it comes up heads, Doyle loses his entire net worth. Tails, he wins 10 times his net worth. Doyle responded, “I’d have to take that bet.”
He’d “have to” take that bet because of a concept called expected value. Even if some of us wouldn’t take that particular bet, the concept of expected value can help us make better decisions in many areas of life, especially those involving time and money.
In this post, I’ll define expected value and show how you can use it to save time and money. (more…)
A reader named Blake wrote in to ask me the following question about credit card rewards: If your intent is to travel, would you rather have travel points rewarded you or straight cash? My thought is that with cash I have more freedom to search the cheapest flight, at the right time, going to the right place. Do you think this is a true assumption?
It’s a great question—one that probably a lot of folks have. Years ago, I agreed with Blake’s assumption. “Cash is king,” I thought. Often, it is. But sometimes, you can do better—even much better—with miles and points. Let me explain. (more…)