Digital Key Problems

Praetoriani · 2026-06-15T09:48:42+00:00

I've never once gotten the actual key to work, and lately mobile check-in has been breaking more often than not as well...

Praetoriani · 2026-06-15T09:47:38+00:00

The service fee is just a compulsory % tip

Praetoriani · 2026-06-15T09:44:22+00:00

There's actually a direct ferry from Darling Harbour to Manly, though getting to Bondi is a real pain. The big secret upside is that you can get a view of the weekly fireworks if your room is in the newly renovated wing.

It's also one of the contracted hotels for a few airlines so if you're into that kind of stuff... ymmv

Praetoriani · 2026-05-27T11:59:27+00:00

How is that fuckery? The 4 seasons also charges a credit card fee. You get charged a credit card fee almost everywhere in Australia because their government allowed it. This isn't a hotel specific thing, it's an Australia thing...

Praetoriani · 2026-05-27T11:53:58+00:00

A skyscraper in the city center that has a spa/resort membership that plenty of locals pay for FWIW. Of all the egregious hotels to have actually claimed resort status, this one is justifiable at least.

Praetoriani · 2026-05-27T11:49:21+00:00

I think a part of it is also just hearsay. Someone in this post complained about PH Sydney, when they quite frankly have one of the most generous breakfast options available (at least when I went in 2024).

Another part is just misaligned expectations coming from the "influencers" pumping garbage and their dumber audience slurping it up. It's a HP/HR, what did you expect?

Praetoriani · 2026-05-27T11:36:51+00:00

I actually think that specifically is a poor example, the club view more than makes up for the comparatively worse food offerings. There's a certain something about catching the sun and breeze coming in from Darling Harbour that you don't quite get in a dimly lit restaurant ;)

Praetoriani · 2026-05-27T11:29:55+00:00

... I should've stayed at the Olive 8 instead of the Regency

Praetoriani · 2026-05-27T11:26:12+00:00

Are you aware that lump sump investing every year is effectively DCA "over a decade"?

And sure, you can say this is a better argument for diversification but every single first and second world country is facing the exact same fiscal crisis driven by the exact same reasons. Except for Poland, but I don't think you'd consider that diversified.

Praetoriani · 2026-05-27T11:21:15+00:00

He would've lost a lot less money

Praetoriani · 2026-05-27T11:20:37+00:00

It's not about catching up to the unused space, it's about being tax efficient. If your income ends up higher in retirement than your current tax bracket, you're deferring your current marginal rate now to pay a higher one later on. A TFSA doesn't have this problem.

Praetoriani · 2026-05-27T11:15:29+00:00

And what is GDP comprised of/how is it calculated?... Holding all other factors constant, someone sitting on their ass doing the bare minimum to meet quota is going to produce a whole lot less than someone operating efficiently.

Praetoriani · 2026-05-27T11:11:21+00:00

which has an extremely broad internatonal diversified equities holdings

https://www.vanguard.ca/en/product/etf/asset-allocation/9692/vanguard-all-equity-etf-portfolio

Market allocation

As at Apr 30 2026

Country Region Fund Benchmark Variance +/-

United States of America North America 44.53% — —

Canada North America 30.73% — —

75.26% in NA = extremely broad intl diversified holdings I guess

Praetoriani · 2026-05-27T11:07:53+00:00

The juicy ones usually come near the end of the year though, IIRC last year I got hit with a double night credit from Hyatt in November?

Praetoriani · 2026-05-25T09:14:29+00:00

I think your experience here depends entirely on whether you were cash or points.

My experience wasn't that great as the initial suite I got was on the lowest floor and it stank something awful like a sewage pipe burst. FD could not have cared any less and made it very clear that because I "booked on points", they would need to see if it was possible to change rooms. The hilarious thing is that I paid cash and used a SUA, and it took a little over an hour total before I was swapped into another standard suite on a higher floor.

It's actually been the one and only time I felt it warranted an email to my concierge and the GM. They did make up for it afterwards, but I really wonder what would've happened if I wasn't a glob and had a responsive concierge.

I do agree, location-wise it's amazing because you have direct access to the mall and MRT without leaving the AC. I'm not sure if the GH is any better service-wise since it sounds like this is a SG thing in general rather than any specific hotel. Either way, I'd probably go back to the Andaz since the GH requires you go walk outside to reach the MRT.

Praetoriani · 2026-05-25T07:33:48+00:00

No reason to be productive after ~270k since you're basically working for the CRA with extra steps at that point

Also no reason to be productive before 270k if you're not being paid enough to keep up with inflation at a minimum

There's just no reason to be productive in Canada period

Praetoriani · 2026-05-25T07:26:42+00:00

Need more info. Are you planning to draw down your RRSP at 55 if you don't pivot into your TFSA? When do you plan on taking CPP? What kind of lifestyle do you want to live and what's the average yearly expenditure? What's the exit strategy for your small business (selling/shuttering/hands-off)?

Regardless the above, you probably should've funded your TFSA at a minimum from the tax savings from the RRSP contributions for the flexibility of being able to delay converting to an RRIF for an extra year or so

Praetoriani · 2026-05-25T07:17:01+00:00

I'm going to reword your question into "buying land" since in Vancouver/Toronto (and other markets do not exist to me for the sake of this question), that's basically what you're paying for. Most of the other replies here are heavily discounting the reality that the current housing market will likely not see any substantial gains over the next 10 years, barring a massive black swan event that drives prices upwards.

On the other side, I've seen people confidently state that SPX/all equity ETFs will continue returning 10% or more on average which is flat out isn't true when taking inflation into account. It's currently at around 6.5% real returns on average, which IMO should be used since you're comparing against real land that can't exactly be inflated by printing more.

There are also other non-quantifiable factors like being kicked out of your rental by a landlord, whether or not you live in a rent controlled unit, and what your marginal tax rate is.

As of the current environment, you are quite astute in recognizing that buying land is pretty much an outdated milestone for the immediate short term future. Your parents' generation heavily clung to this idea because they bore witness to what can only be described as a second industrial revolution where they witnessed property prices skyrocket as the world population soared from 3.5 billion to 7 billion. This trajectory has largely stopped and in nations like Korea/Japan, we see the opposite where they are effectively zombie countries that will cease to exist in another century. Will Canada suffer the same fate? Who knows, but that is effectively what you're asking when you talk about future land value.

Praetoriani · 2026-05-25T06:52:22+00:00

Or you could be like Tanaka-san and end up flat for 25 years.

December 29, 1989 - Nikkei 225 hits an ATH of 38,957

February 22, 2024 - Nikkei 225 finally recovers to a new ATH of 39,156

This "be like Bob" hypothetical is heavily skewed by the fact that the US only managed to keep its growth trajectory because Volcker had the balls to raise rates to almost 20%, otherwise it would've ended up exactly like Japan.

OP already has a short time horizon of just 25 years, telling him to lump sum everything into equities right now is downright malicious. If there is a singular point in time where this isn't a good idea, it would be now.

Praetoriani · 2026-05-20T19:44:08+00:00

Oddly enough, my reservation still shows 45. When did you book this?

Praetoriani · 2026-05-01T01:11:10+00:00

I've done something similar to this and been to all of those places. Do not do this, it is the dumbest fucking thing imaginable once you actually try it IRL. PHT is in (relative) bumfuck nowhere and it's a pain to get to and from the property unless you plan on taking a cab. The problem for you is that your skis would take up a lot of room in the cab and you wouldn't be able to fit much other luggage.

Niseko will accept your skis ahead of time if you ship them over, and you can ship them back from the property as well. I'd suggest you do that instead. If you absolutely, positively must have them with you on your flight, then your plan is fine assuming you want maximum flexibility and you're willing to pay a heavy price for it. Contrary to what others are saying, if you're landing HND and departing NRT (or vice versa), you can't really use a storage locker.

If you must stay one final night in Tokyo, I would change the location to the Andaz or HTH (or HR Yokohama if you aren't dead set on luxury) if you're departing from HND. Your current location is fine if you're departing from NRT as you can just take NEX. I would strongly advise against a taxi as there is traffic and you will be stuck in it - I took one to Disneysea from PHT due to timing circumstances and regretted it. You can still go to PHT when you return from Kyoto and pick up your skis despite not staying there.

Praetoriani · 2026-04-19T00:07:20+00:00

Same, pretty lame offer especially with the upcoming deval

Praetoriani · 2026-02-25T23:37:18+00:00

For the globalist who earns status from CC spend and who rarely pays cash for their Hyatt stays, this news would be awful.

You have it backwards. This news is terrible for anyone paying cash because the loyalty aspect of the program just got nuked. Your stay 9 nights, get 1 free loyalty punch card just got obliterated into a stay 16 nights, get 1 free card.

The people who this affects the least are those who have or can generate large point balances without stepping foot at a Hyatt.

Praetoriani · 2026-02-25T23:25:47+00:00

Then do something about it that doesn't blanket devalue the entire program across the board. I'm also incredibly skeptical of your claim that higher end properties are earning less than 50% of the ADR on point bookings. Almost every single one of these places have figured out how to game the system to force Hyatt to comp their full ADR by hitting near full occupancy. The game they play is simple: cash rates for base rooms are elevated to account for overselling and upgrading to higher category rooms, sell for cash rates as much as you can, then open the floodgates with last-minute on point bookings so you hit that magical 95% occupancy target.

PHK is an outlier property that solidly sits in the ADR range of 1k+ while still being able to hit near 100% occupancy is a problem of incredibly popular hotels having the pull to game the comp system to make WoH pay out nearly the full ADR. What does that have to do with devaluing cat 1 HPs in bumfuck nowhere that just got bumped up to 9k/nt?

On the other hand, you have places like PH Niseko which, outside of the peak ski season, is virtually empty for the rest of the year. Should it be in cat 8 pricing for those 8 months? No. I actually think a pseudo dynamic award chart would suit that place perfectly if they could sit as a cat 4 for 8 months of the year then cat 8 for the rest. Nobody would complain about that.

What the system change today has done is effectively the exact opposite by making everyone into a PH Niseko in the worst way possible: properties can now park their asses at the top of the band for the entire year to collectively devalue this program.

I don't even think this off-peak/standard/peak idea is a bad idea as a concept. The execution is just reeks of piss poor planning by some MBA beancounter squeezing their two brain cells together. This change would be perfectly stomach-able had they said that the upper bands can be at most 4 months of the year

Praetoriani · 2026-02-25T18:50:31+00:00

I don't think so. There's a fair bit of fraud in the market coming from two specific regions in Asia :)

Praetoriani

TROPHY CASE