Jan 13, It's torture!

 Grr! I'm clicking around and finding so many bank bonus or credit card offers. They're so high!

Note to self to wait till the beginning of the year, I guess. 

Chase has a $900 offer for opening a savings and checking. You need $15k for the savings though and I am quite low on cash at the moment. I just bought a series I bond at the beginning of the year, that would have been quite nice to help me meet this offer. Although my strategy has been to keep the FIRE money tucked away from regular use. But for the first quarter, I could be tempted since there's not a ton of spending going on.

For the most part, I want to keep it stashed and out of regular circulation. I think that's what I'll continue to do, and I hope with either brokered CDs or treasury bonds, I can continue to get something more than 0.1%. But I will say if it does get that dismal, I may have to rethink my strategy and open it up to churning.

But for now, I like keeping the pots separate.

I think it would be okay for the first quarter since I don't have any big spends that I would feel tempted to borrow from that stash for. But in later months when I start traveling, it would be much harder. And I hate paying things back. It's not as much of an issue (though a hassle) to just move money around, but being tempted to borrow from one pot is wading in murky water.

So I'll keep the pots separate for now until I get more used to the stash.

It was exciting to see my investments only balance climb up over $450k. That's awesome! I'm not looking at my spreadsheet to know if it's ever gotten that high before. I don't think so. It'll be cool to hit $500k in investments alone. Wow! 

I do wonder if I'm too cash heavy, but I think I'm okay with it for now. I like having the FIRE Cash Stash because that's what the early leanFIREees before me did. And at the moment I have no viable source of passive income, so I will need that more than any of the others before me.

But I also have regular cash and a 3-4 month emergency fund for my regular life. I live it as though I don't have a FIRE safety net for the most part. It's historically been a 1 year fund but if it takes me more than 3 months to find a job, then I will probably consider myself early retired by then. So that's why it's so low. It took some iterations to find a comfortable spot of straddling regular life and pre-early retiree.

Mentally, I mostly consider myself pre-early retired. But I don't vocalize it...who would care?

Anyway, there's also a sweet TD Bonus I tried for but my application didn't go through. And of course allll the credit card offers I got denied for! Groan!

I am hoping I can try for the Chase bonus by mid-March. I need to earn some more money. I'm hoping I can hold out at least until my next paycheck.

I need to just let all these bonuses go and hope for better luck next year. This is supposed to be my most perfect year!

Anyway, my throat still hurts. Surprisingly tea helped. I might make more because then I ate some hot chips.

My weekend plans include not thinking about work; baking either cupcakes or brownies; eating popcorn and signing up for a 1 week trial of HBO Max to watch sex lives of college girls.

Oh and I thought I'd figured out FaceTime, but I didn't. I realized later, I have to just dis-Allow Facetime vs just turning off notifications. Onward, Perfect Year!

Oh, I think what got me started clicking around is reading Root of Good's amazing $12k in bonuses this year. The most I ever did was close to $4k. And last year, 2022, it was closer to 1500.

I just can't figure out the brokerages, and of course I've been stopped in my tracks for credit card sign ups.

I will say, the extra motivation for Chase is maybe if I can keep a high balance for a couple months, when I reapply for a credit card and have to call for reconsideration, that might work in my favor. 

Ok, let me make some tea and try to relax more.