In a previous post, I talked about why travel is a good use of money, which is largely because people tend to underinvest in experiences and overinvest in material goods even though experiential purchases tend to make people happier than material purchases. Taking this another step, I’ve realized that it doesn’t really make sense for me…
When calling airlines to make or change award bookings, you usually need to tell a phone agent a confirmation number. And it’s often necessary to use some sort of spelling alphabet (e.g. “A” as in “alpha”) to communicate the letters of the confirmation number to the phone agent as it’s very easy to confuse letters…
One benefit of the Chase United MileagePlus Explorer card (Flyertalk link) is getting an additional 5000 bonus miles for adding an authorized user. To add an authorized user, all you need to do is call Chase and give them a name, and then Chase will send you a new credit card with that name on it….
Most people probably don’t care about this announcement since Discover’s cards aren’t particularly interesting from a frequent flyer perspective, but Discover’s peer-to-peer payments service called Money Messenger is being discontinued starting October 10th, 2013. This service, powered by Paypal, was slightly interesting in that there were no fees for sending money, but you still earned…
Links to stories #1, #2, and #3. Near the end of my freshman year of college, I shaved my head completely bald. Soon after, when walking around campus with my newly bald head, a random woman stopped me and said, “I know where you’re from. You’re from Tibet!” Me: “Ummm, no, I’m not from Tibet.” Her:…
Disclaimer: I don’t work for CVS or Vanilla Reload/Incomm, nor do I actually know what I’m talking about. But I can read, and I’ve talked to a couple of friends who have experience with BSA/AML requirements, so I think I can make some educated guesses. The other day at CVS, the person in front of…
(I realize that this post is mostly just preaching to the choir, but I have a future point in mind) Most of us are lucky enough to have at least some discretionary income to spend on whatever we choose. One question this leads to is what’s the best use of this discretionary spending. Should we…
If you happen to be flying on your birthday or are otherwise flying on a special occasion (e.g. honeymoon, anniversary) on some airlines, you or someone else can call the airline to request special services like a birthday cake. This list isn’t meant to be at all exhaustive, but just a sampling of what certain airlines…
While I know that this article is supposed to be humorous, I found the NYTimes article “How Many Miles Do I Need to Murder the Head of the Airline?” by Joyce Wadler to be more misguided than anything else. So many people feel like their miles are worthless–or worse, don’t even collect their miles–because they’re misinformed….
Links to stories one and two. When my sister and I were in South Africa, wherever we would go, people would tell us that they liked our accents. Seeing as how we were both born in the US and speak without a regional accent, neither of us could figure out why so many people were…
