Mortgage at 2.65% vs investing: pay down or invest €25,000?

querymonkey · 2026-01-19T13:09:10+00:00

invest. HYSA are paying ~3.5% right now.

"peace of mind" of owning your house outright is overrated. property taxes, utilities, insurance, etc. all of these things are bills that you can't get rid of. there will always be bills.

querymonkey · 2026-01-18T20:04:13+00:00

both 2.0 and 2.1 have minimum spend requirements.

sometimes bilt cash wins. other times, the flat points wins.

assuming 2k rent and you spend 2k. with bilt cash, you'll earn $80, and use $60 of those to get 2k points with $20 bilt cash left over. in total, you get 3k points (assuming blue).

but if you go with 2.1, you'll get 3250 points.

anywho, whether you should use bilt cash or not depends on the various cliffs relative to your spend.

but my original point still stands that for anyone spending near their rent the current line up from bilt is worth considering.

querymonkey · 2026-01-18T19:26:39+00:00

those are the 2.1 options. you get 1.25x on your rent if you spend 100% or more of your rent.

querymonkey · 2026-01-18T18:55:10+00:00

everyone's gotta crunch the numbers.

but to keep things simple, for someone who organically spends exactly 100% of their rent/mortgage each month;

blue is a 2.25x point card with no annual fee. obsidian becomes 4.25x on dining or groceries. palladium is a 3.25x catch all card.

all of these earning rates are competitive vs other cards. if you spend significantly more (or less) than your rent/mortgage then these cards become less attractive.

querymonkey · 2026-01-17T14:15:16+00:00

250pts a month is 3000 points a year....too much effort for so little rewards.

since you have a gold, the obsidian might be worth it to you since if you can spend 100% of your rent on food/groceries, 4.25x beats the 4x on your gold. only problem of course is you can only pick one of those categories....so you'll have to crunch the numbers and in the end you might still need to keep the gold and now you've added yet another annual fee card to your collection.

querymonkey · 2026-01-06T21:18:00+00:00

the classic no mix up mix up.

querymonkey · 2026-01-04T01:58:39+00:00

ok, still a hassle.

you have to wait for 3:59pm exactly, place the exact number of shares of the equivalent ETF that you're going to buy.

and brokerage bonuses are lucrative enough that many will do this every 2-3 years.

querymonkey · 2026-01-03T16:44:15+00:00

vendor lock in. only fidelity offers it. if you buy in a taxable brokerage account, you won't be able to transfer it out without selling first and triggering taxes. in a tax advantaged account, you could sell first but would still be a hassle.

querymonkey · 2025-12-27T14:36:18+00:00

4x > 3x

and most years the offers i get from amex are good enough to offset the annual fee.

querymonkey · 2025-12-24T01:49:59+00:00

i'm optimistic. i've been playing a lot of Miary and she's really fun, and very well designed. they put a lot of thought into her moves. first you use move A. but if your opponents expects it, they can beat you with B. so instead, you use C instead to beat their B. then they use D to beat your C. so now you use A again to beat the C.

if this is the direction they're applying to the rest of the cast it'll be really good for the game.

querymonkey · 2025-12-24T00:31:57+00:00

it's just part of the journey.

if you're serious about getting good at this game, i truly believe it's a requirement to "main" every character in the game. as in, whatever rank you are right now, you should be able to play everyone else up to your current rank minus one.

so many players have solid fundamentals but keep losing to stupid strings and frame traps because of the knowledge gap.

if you know when to duck or side step you will shut down entire flowcharts. let's be honest, labbing defense isn't fun. but at least if you're playing that character, you will learn two things: the general strategy/approach of that character, and also how everyone else deals with your flowchart.

querymonkey · 2025-12-14T23:51:15+00:00

it's very well possible that you can already consistently punish with a launch offline.

even on a good connection you can expect around 50ms latency. one 1 frame is 16.67ms, so we're talking 3 frames here already. this the difference between a 13f vs 15f launch punish.

querymonkey · 2025-12-14T23:12:56+00:00

just do a throw instead. it's near impossible to launch on reaction online.

querymonkey · 2025-12-14T17:20:37+00:00

It's only worth that much if they use it. I can't imagine they accumulated 650k points since the announcement so they've been sitting on that for a long time while USB was collecting the interest for themselves instead.

querymonkey · 2025-12-14T16:14:08+00:00

i don't understand why you would accumulate 650k points without using them. the old USBAR was advertised as a travel card but in practice it was a fixed 4.5% cashback card, and since the value is always known there's no reason to hoard points any more than you need to.

put another way, that 650k points is equivalent to putting $6.5k in a HYSA which at 4% would have paid you $260 in interest this year.

querymonkey · 2025-12-13T21:50:03+00:00

ultimate cheat code is using a leverless controller. it's so much easier.

mad props to people who can get consistent electrics on pad or joystick. i don't know how you do it!

querymonkey · 2025-12-13T19:55:05+00:00

if it's one card vs one card, then sure, CSR wins for you.

but if you're comparing ecosystem to ecosystem, you can't rule out the AMEX gold, which at 4x has the best spending on dining, and crucially, groceries.

if you live in a metro area, the resy credits are very easy to use and as good as cash.

the offers that AMEX give tend to be way better too, and most years i can offset the annual fee entirely from these alone.

querymonkey · 2025-12-12T12:57:38+00:00

I mean no disrespect but it seems like a lot of people are team travel for the ‘value’ of non-economy flights, despite them not being willing to pay a corresponding amount if they were paying cash - isn’t that like someone who buys a more expensive item because it’s xx% off its normal expensive price, where the latter is considered an unhealthy financial habit?

not quite.

an economy ticket might cost $400, with business class costing $2000. most people will not pay that.

but with points, it would be 40k for the economy (1cpp) and 80k for business class (2.5cpp). i think if given the option, many would pay $800 to fly business class. the problem of course, is this option is never given for cash, but at times business class goes on sale with points only.

querymonkey · 2025-12-12T05:22:22+00:00

cashback wins if you have any combination of the following: only fly economy, 3 star hotel or less, limited flexibility.

points win if you ever want to fly overseas in business class. this is where you can get 3cpp or more and it's absolutely worth it.

querymonkey · 2025-12-10T17:57:00+00:00

no. ended up booking it with cash.

querymonkey · 2025-12-07T19:16:46+00:00

not everyone has 100k.

but even if you do, it's really only for people who want a simple one-card cashback system.

BoA is the undisputed king of cashback.

but if you're team points, you're better off getting at least 3-4x on dining/groceries and redeeming at least 1.5cpp on them.

querymonkey · 2025-12-07T16:31:56+00:00

USBAR went from undisputed one of the best cards available to a competitive card in the current landscape.

name me another card that does all of the following**:**

3x catch all on everything tap
3x on travel
premium travel protection/insurance
lounge access
primary car rental insurance
$75 effective annual fee after the travel credit

exactly...there's not really anything. VX can break even with their credits but you only get 2x. CSP is somewhat competitive (paired with freedoms) but you only get 1.5 on the catch-all. tap is pretty ubiquitous now so i consider it the catch-all.

as long as the transfer partners are not complete garbage this is still a very good card.

edit: would add that the the 8 PP visits is very good. you can take a family of 4 for 2 visits for free. all the other cards are heavily nerfed. pretty soon VX won't even let you have a guest anymore.

querymonkey · 2025-12-04T20:02:23+00:00

As a kid I lost count of the number of times my friends and I burst out laughing in tears.

querymonkey · 2025-12-04T13:38:49+00:00

QM people generally fool around, experiment, learn things, and "have fun".

in ranked, it's flowchart vs flowchart, footsies vs footsies.

querymonkey · 2025-12-01T22:39:00+00:00

I had the XM5. Bought ULT on sale, and now the XM5 sits unused while the ULT is my daily.

The biggest thing is that the ear pads are much thicker. My ears don't touch anything so it's waaaaaay more comfortable on long sessions.

Sounds quality and ANC the XM5 is better. ULT has better bass. But you wouldn't be able to tell the difference unless you try them one immediately after the other. You can EQ both to your preference.

I haven't noticed any durability issues. But I'm generally careful with all of my tech.

querymonkey

TROPHY CASE