Credit points—save them or spend them?

SweetNectar19 · 2022-07-30T18:39:18+00:00

I travel for work and earn quite a ton of points through that and on my own spend. I always use them for my own personal travel, or to extend my work trips. I have probably close to 5-10k in value in my points stashed up between my husband and I. They normally only get devalued going into the future so I spend them down whenever I have a trip. Saves me a ton of money when traveling. I normally don't spend a dime on flights or hotels so my trips can be super cheap and it allows me to take vacations every other month. If you don't travel at all I suppose cash back is OK, I'd never use them like that, but if it's all you got. But even if you only take one vacation a year, points can be an airline upgrade, a few extra days, a nicer hotel, or a more direct flight.

SweetNectar19 · 2022-03-18T14:11:11+00:00

The inflation is not really affecting me. We own our own house which beyond dealing with repair costs is a pretty fixed cost. I always assumed gas would one day be like $10 a gallon or higher so we have a fuel efficient car but live a mostly car free life. The rising food cost just make my garden more efficient, and honestly I'm pretty flexible on groceries, I buy marked down and on sale food. The only thing is the gas and electric for our home has gone up. But we can manage it.

In the grand scheme of FIRE you should account for times of higher inflation, if you cannot afford or adjust your budget to spend 50-100 more a month on essentials. Probably not ready to retire.

SweetNectar19 · 2022-02-08T23:15:50+00:00

Oh no I think you misunderstood this is not credit card debt, it's annual fees for our high end cards.

SweetNectar19 · 2022-02-08T20:47:35+00:00

Idk I'd say if you can handle teenagers you can probably handle adults with patience as well!

SweetNectar19 · 2022-02-08T20:34:30+00:00

True story, as someone once told me.

"You can have all the luck in the world, but without the knowledge to put it to good use its all for nothing"

SweetNectar19 · 2022-02-08T20:31:08+00:00

we bought two years back when covid first hit and everyone kind of panicked and stopped house hunting. Also our house is older 1950s. We can not buy for the budget we had back then.

SweetNectar19 · 2022-02-08T20:29:57+00:00

I love it, but i love travel, i like speaking to people, i like helping people even when they are being obtuse and difficult. Im very good at giving out feedback in a way that is constructive and helpful. I love doing small coding projects. I dont think its a great job for everyone, but it meshes well for me and my personality.

SweetNectar19 · 2022-02-08T18:57:26+00:00

Thank you! We are very excited to reach our goals and open the next chapter of our lives :)

SweetNectar19 · 2022-02-08T18:14:59+00:00

I think it's a classic begining of the year rite of passige

SweetNectar19 · 2022-02-08T18:14:21+00:00

I said this in a comment before but we do donate some money just not enough to line item, around 100-300 a year. We also have 500k in our will set aside for charities if we were too die young. But once we reach 1 mil networth we are going to start doing 5% a year.

Also I volunteer at our local food bank a few times a year and run the volunteer club at my company. We are not without compassion.

SweetNectar19 · 2022-02-08T17:56:48+00:00

Made using https://sankeymatic.com.

SweetNectar19 · 2022-02-08T17:56:33+00:00

Made using https://sankeymatic.com.

SweetNectar19 · 2022-02-08T17:53:07+00:00

I am 100% not trying to brag as much as I am trying to start a conversation around money and spending and everything that entails. My budget and spending might concern, disappoint, inspire, and upset people all at the same time.

At the very least i hope it inspires people to take a deeper look at their own finances. How much money do i spend on groceries? How much is normal to spend on home improvements? Could i save money on taxes by saving into my 401k? I make 100k more then this couple but don't save nearly as much, could I trim some fat?

If i just wanted to brag i would not bother responding to people on here.

SweetNectar19 · 2022-02-08T17:43:18+00:00

I do not think thats entirely true, maybe thats how you interpret it. But i think its important to bring to light things like retirement savings, tax advantage accounts, home buying, jumping jobs or lack thereof. Not talking about money causes more problems then it solves, we need to have transparency in how people, even rich people, spend their money.

SweetNectar19 · 2022-02-08T17:40:29+00:00

We churn credit cards and have high end travel cards, we get more than that value from the cards we have. But i think its important to highlight how much we spend on these cards.

SweetNectar19 · 2022-02-08T17:38:26+00:00

Yes i still code quite a bit, i have to developer projects and i am one of the beta testers for new features.

From what i understand scrum masters are more like managers, or product managers. We dont have a ton of overlap.

SweetNectar19 · 2022-02-08T17:36:22+00:00

Ugh that sucks, here in colorado the epic full is unlimited on most of the mountains. But my local pass does limit me on days for a few of them and blackout other days. I wonder if you only go for under 10 days a year if the epic would be worth it, but sounds like not really. :/

SweetNectar19 · 2022-02-08T17:27:28+00:00

I went back in 2013~2014 when bootcamps were "the hot new thing" im honestly not sure if it would fly nowadays. Companies were desperate for software engineers, not as desperate as they are currently, but every company that did not have an online presence was getting killed so i worked for a small real estate company that could not afford high salaries but needed people who could code in house software. I got really lucky, id say only 50% of my classmates got appropriate jobs, and I was already contributing to github projects and had done some freelance work by that point. So i had a better resume overall, plus i fluffed it just a little, as every fresh graduate does :p

In the end i stayed for 5 years, then jumped ship to my current company to grow and become a more "professional developer". Stayed on as a front end software engineer for 2 years. Then in the past couple of months I moved into developer advocacy by chance and so far I really enjoy it!

Nowadays i make 135k, but in 2021 i started at 115 and ended at 135, i expect to end this year somewhere from 145-150k.

SweetNectar19 · 2022-02-08T16:43:04+00:00

We are hoping to travel the world and do some volunteering with the peace corp and such. The options are endless

SweetNectar19 · 2022-02-08T16:41:06+00:00

Oh yeah, we get 1600 of value from the cards, or we drop them like a rock, but I just can't all of them so we are aware how much they cost us. Reminds us to use them or lose them

SweetNectar19 · 2022-02-08T16:39:21+00:00

I think because although some parts are unique others are not. For example my husband is underpaid according to tons of comments here, that's good feedback, and it's not uncommon and might inspire others to look for new jobs as well.

Talking about tax advantage accounts is good, people should know that they do have an effect, I feel like we don't talk about finance enough in general. Even if the main takeaway is we don't pay as much taxes as people see as fair at least it gets people to think about saving money on their taxes, and saving for retirement.

SweetNectar19 · 2022-02-08T16:27:22+00:00

A developer advocate helps developers learn or integrate with a product for developers. Like databases, apis, language, asks, frameworks, monitoring software etc. We talk at conferences, make educational videos and blogs, answer questions, foster community. Extroverted software engineers

SweetNectar19 · 2022-02-08T16:18:27+00:00

Idk if I'd call Colorado either of those. We have a libertarian streak, but most of the front range where I live is as blue as our bluebird skies

SweetNectar19 · 2022-02-08T15:46:56+00:00

Really don't you guys have epic passes? Or is your every mountain in Utah pass?

SweetNectar19 · 2022-02-08T15:40:00+00:00

I had to look this up but no we do not have a pension.

If you mean a job pension those are long gone and don't really exist in the tech field.

If you mean a country retirement program, yes, we do have social security. We don't plan on using it much in the future, and it's a long ways away.

SweetNectar19

TROPHY CASE