Well as I'm wont to do on Saturdays it seems, I got sucked into a world of endless clicking for my next adventure.
This time while just checking on flights or award travel (can't remember which), I stumbled upon what's called a Round-the-World ticket offered by the different airline alliances. I was on the AA page so it took me to their alliance.
For funsies, I clicked through their robo-agent and plotted a trip from NC - Cairo - Bali - Sydney - NC. For economy class, with just a few clicks, I could get that flight for a bit over $6k.
For business class, I could get that trip for about $12k. So I figured if I added $8k for food and lodging, I could round out a trip around the world for $20k. That is my lifestyle budget for the year after all!
I originally thought 30 days and thought, whoa that's a steep price to spend in 30 days! Then I tried 60 days...and seriously tried to think about making this trip work.
Could I do this with points? How long would it take? Would I need > 1 million miles? How long would that take? Do I want to make that my ultimate travel hacking goal?
Then I thought, I don't even like traveling that much. Aren't I done with long-term goals. I think the most I want to commit to is 1 year. But is that just my ethos for this year?
It's such a lofty goal for something I'm having so much trouble getting started.
In the end, I was like who cares, if it came down to it, I would just pay the $12k. Who cares! There's not actually a budget wars or a frugality trophy at the end of all this. I think I liked the structure it would provide the year though (traveling for 2-3 months).
Anyway, caught in the click and thought spiral, I headed over to the next alliance group to see if they offered the same thing. They did!
This robo-agent wasn't as helpful because you just had to pick your destination like you would book a multi-leg travel ticket.
But since it showed you all the destinations you could go, I was overwhelmed at first then after awhile got into it. Bali was not an option (and really I picked that city because it seemed so foreign and out there). I had already justified it in my brain that I would go for the yummy Asian food and beaches (nature), I guess.
So with Star Alliance, I chose Thailand. When I realized I could keep clicking places and the trip price didn't change much or at all, I got a little fancy.
So my new trip around the world was: NC - Cairo - Tel-Aviv (cuz why not) - Tokyo (hello Terrace House!) - Thailand (cheap Asian food) - Singapore (some more delicious Asian food, from what I read in Crazy Rich Asians) - Australia - Tahiti (cuz it sounds cool) - then back to NC!
What started out as window shopping turned into a few more hours of clicking around!
The non-WAYMISH nature of the easy clicking made it all seem so possible!
The most recent place the cool kids seem to go is Chiang Mai but I couldn't get that city to work for some reason even though it said I could fly there - but not from Tokyo I guess. So then I was clicking around the internet to see the difference between Chiang Mai, Phuket, and Bangkok. I figured I could spend the bulk of my trip there because by now this 30 day fantasy trip was morphing into 3 months.
Looks like Bangkok was more city, Phuket was beachy, and Chiang Mai was the cheapest but tucked away in the mountains. On AirBnb, Chiang Mai was cheaper typically but it was just hard to know how available all the cheap easy food would be from just AirBnB listings. I didn't have any pre-determined objectives for this fantasy trip, so I tried to think about what I would want.
I still like nature and tend to in theory prefer the mountains and a trail, but in practice never actually do these things. I like the way the beach looks in pictures, but kind of don't enjoy being that hot. And I wasn't sure being in a bustling city was going to give me a tranquil vibe.
Meh, then I clicked out of all the windows and laughed it off.
But we know that's not the end. I thought more - could this be a fun 40th birthday trip? But would it be even better to take advantage of the winter months. Although NC has been lauded by me for these mild winter months, it's not necessarily the best place in all the world to be for winter. It's still cold and dark (and the pest problem doesn't help). But I was also in Maryland for half of December and I think it's a bit colder there.
Anyway, so then I looked at date that included November and December and the first week of January 2024.
Could I really do this? I started to shun Seattle. So I'm sure now I'll be seeing more mentions of Thailand and trips around the world. Ha!
But then this morning, I came to the swift realization that I've been sick for about a month (just forecasting to the end of January), and who knows what COVID is doing. I don't see myself signing up for 3 months of sickness. People get sick when they travel, especially to third world countries. So with that, the thoughts of taking a trip around the world started to float away in the thought bubble it came in on.
But I did notice a pattern and want to re-affirm some affirmations:
Knowns:
- I want to save $36k/yr; that's like my only real objective for this year
--- I say this because it gives me some room to spend more without feeling like I'm not saving enough
- I don't really want anymore long-term goals or hard things
- I like the idea of escaping for 4 months each year
---(not sure if there's a longer term message here)
- I want to go somewhere more inviting for the dark winter months (I had some simmerings of this this past December)
It's tough though because there is one paradigm of radical acceptance of the past, but also, I like using that to be like okay, I don't want this thing to happen again. So this year I was kind of picking out the good parts of last year and replicating it and doing everything I can to minimize the bad parts.
The thing is, I still don't really enjoy traveling enough to make these grand long-in-advance plans. And I think I have to be okay that the cost of that is higher expenses. As much as I would love to be stable enough to plan a trip 11 months in advance, that's just not me.
Considering I only have 1 goal for this year says enough.
So yeah, that's what I've been up to this weekend so far.
In other news, I slept in my bed last night. I've been sleeping in the office while I recover because the cold back bedroom seemed to be aggravating my symptoms but I hadn't been sleeping well the last couple of nights, so I decided to switch things up since I just have a few mild symptoms left. There was some night coughing and nose running and woke up a little stuffy, but I slept for about 7 hours! Which is awesome.
Probably waking up a little stuffy reminded me of travel sickness.
In my fantasy travel clicking, I wasn't sure how I would work out using my vacation time - just on the travel days or try to use dedicated lumps of time to stay in one place. Unlike other bloggers, this didn't make me want to quit my job so I wouldn't have these restrictions. As I've said, I don't "love" traveling, it's just the thing people my age and online community do that doesn't seem that bad.
Credit Card Strategizing
So before the fantasy travel clicking, I was trying to figure out my credit card strategy. Basically, based on the conversation I had with the Chase reconsideration line, I've got it stuck in my mind that trying to get their current $900 bank bonus which requires you to keep $15k in a savings account for 3 months will be my best shot to try again for the Chase Sapphire card.
All the bloggers point to this card as the card to have and since I have no desire to learn the hard way this has moved to the top. Also, it's the one that gave me the most information when I tried to get reconsideration.
My upcoming spend is for my summer trip to Seattle, so that just seemed like the perfect time. But when I did the backdating, I would ideally need to apply for the credit card around May 1, so it would have enough time to arrive for me to book my lodging later in May.
So to have 3 months of account history with them, I would need to open a bank account by Feb 1 and fund the 15k within 30 days. Yikes!
I just don't have $15k lying around! What's worse is I did at the end of December but before I ran into these troubles, I bought a $10k series iBond and a $5k brokered CD from my FIRE Cash Stash. At the time, I wanted this money inaccessible to me because I was tempted to invest it. I had once considered keeping it more accessible so I could churn it, but I wasn't stable enough yet, so locking it away in CDs was the better option.
But now, I am more stable with my investment choices. I've been steadily at $500k for over a week. Anyway, I digress.
So I was trying to pool money together from all my regular accounts and just kept coming up short, that's the short version of the story.
So for the moment I think the best I can do is open it later in Feb and hope that Feb date makes it seem like I have a 3 month history when I apply in May and maybe need to talk to someone at the reconsideration line (I might just try calling before applying, not sure). Quick interwebs search says don't wait more than 30 days. (We get bonuses in March and one of my last credit union CDs get released in March, so I should be able to scrounge up $15k by mid-March.)
Anyway, that's the easiest choice and while the puzzle to figure it out was fun, it still didn't work. But for posterity, here's my current plan. I split up my strategies into two different objectives and plans. This is from reading way too many articles on travel hacking/ award travel. I just wanted a focus on which cards to apply for since I don't really know what I'm doing yet (I realized this happened with saving/investing. I just took it in small bites. Even 5 years later, I'm still probably not at my most optimized, but sometimes I just want to get started.)
Travel Hacking Strategy
Objective: get to 100k miles
Plan:
1. Chase
- Sapphire Preferred
- United Explorer
*The Chase card is every blogger's favorite and they have more known rules and players so there's a lot of information about them. They also sponsor a lot of co-branded cards as I'm learning.
2. AA/ Citi Advantage
- I've gotten this card twice in the past, most recently I didn't get the bonus because it hadn't been 48 months
- they have a nice sign-up bonus, I've had success getting the card in the past (twice), and they fly out of my regional airport (I only have Delta and AA to choose from)
This helped to tune out the noise and give me something to focus on as I racked the first 100k miles.
I realize now, the only way I'll be able to meet these spends is by the travel I had projected for 2023. This is why I probably was just churning low tier cards - low spends. And really, I planned to stop after the first couple because it was a bit stressful and disruptive to my automated processes.
Now that I have new information, in those recent denials, I've modified my original Seattle Credit Card strategy a bit:
Seattle Credit Card Strategy
Objective:
- get a 0% intro card to pay for the trip so I have time to cash flow it and track expenses away from regular spending +/- cashback/bonus
- get an airline card for free checked bag +/- bonus miles
Plan
1. Fidelity 0% card
- there are a couple other 0% intro cards that offer a $200 bonus and some cashback; but given my recent denials, I want to bet on as close to a sure thing as possible; I have a healthy relationship with Fidelity because they are my broker; this does not appear to be a high tier card; there are even 0% intro cards with much longer intro offers, but again this seems to be my best bet
2. American Gateway card
- doesn't have free checked bag, but has a $50 statement credit and 10k bonus miles; it is a lower tier card than the AA Advantage (at least I think so), so I should be able to get it. Technically, this is just $150 bonus and most of the lower tier cards I have churned in the past offer $200 back. But again with this new information about denials, I'm not taking any chances. And psychologically the statement credit will feel like a free checked bag. And maybe having that relationship with AA will help my case when I apply for the AA/Advantage card in the future.
- Alternatively, if Chase denies me again in the Travel Hack Strategy, I might be tempted to just go for the AA Advantage card for the bonus miles.
I plan to apply for all these cards around May 1 of this year. So that will give me a good chunk of time (and at least 3 months) since my last applications!
So yes, friends that was my Saturday, clicking and fantasizing and to an extent re-affirming.
I thought I would want to do some work today, but I have no desire to be on this laptop for anything other than fun. It might be a late night tomorrow, but it'll be worth it not to work today.
Other than that, it should be a nice cozy day. So glad I baked those muffins on Friday. I will probably read some blog posts and click around some fantasies. I'm leaning more toward spending November, or at least December somewhere warm and nice. That may mean skipping out on a Fall Trip to Seattle. I'm definitely getting more okay with just spending my full travel budget.
Not gonna lie - a part of me wonders if in 3 years of spending $20k (what seems frivolously), I'll wish I'd saved that $60k for something like a car or a downpayment on a nicer house. What if I wake up and suddenly realize life is worth living and wished I hadn't spent the last 10 years "wasting" money! She laughs. Okay, well that was a funny joke.
Considering my basic overall goal for this year was: Live, I think I'll be good on the regret front.
That's enough of an update. It's time for cozy movies and muffins.
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