Howdy! After the success of last week’s discussion thread, I figured we should keep going. Feel free to comment below with anything and everything money related that is better suited to a conversation or a quick question and answer than a full post. Some ideas include:

  • Journaling about an ongoing job search
  • Asking for ideas about how to manage an emergency fund
  • Logging recent stock trades
  • Talking about the impact of inflation on your budget
  • Your plans for maximizing the rewards on a credit card

Again, those are just suggestions, if there’s really anything you’d like to talk about related to finance in your life, feel free to put it here.

  •  gyrfalcon   ( @gyrfalcon@beehaw.org ) OPEnglish
    4•1 year ago

    Not too much going on for me real life money wise, which is how I like it, although I forgot to mention an account in my last post. I have a cash management account that holds what I hope to one day be enough money for the down payment on a house. Right now it is just set up with most of the balance to automatically roll into a short term brokered CD, and with some money set aside such that, given how banking has been lately, if my main bank had trouble right when all my bills came due I wouldn’t be completely screwed.

    For my little real money fun investing account, the only notable development is that MHO is getting pretty close to reaching 100% gain. If it does, I intend to sell half the position to get out what I put in, reallocate that, and let the remainder ride to see what happens.

    For my paper trading account, I took some of my own advice from last week and closed the position I had on F. I have also changed my approach to the volatility trades that I had been doing with the SPX iron condors. Volatility is low right now, so long term I would expect there to be more volatility at some point in the future. With that in mind, I decided to try a strangle strategy using LEAP options. This should minimize my exposure to theta while allowing me to profit whether the future volatility is upwards or downwards. For position sizing reasons, this is no longer held on SPX, but instead SPY.

    •  gyrfalcon   ( @gyrfalcon@beehaw.org ) OPEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      I think when discussing the financial aspect, this is definitely the right place.

      That said, I am curious why you hold it. I haven’t seen any convincing arguments that it works as a good diversifying asset, like gold can sometimes be, though I’ll admit I haven’t explored that much. Beyond investing, my understanding is that there are probably a lot of unbanked people it could help out with transferring money, but that the current widely adopted ones are less than stellar on that front. If you’re able, could you elaborate on that point?

  •  shanghaibebop   ( @shanghaibebop@beehaw.org ) English
    3•1 year ago

    Curious if we have a large enough churning community here to create our own community.

    It’s a pretty decent personal hobby of mine, usually on the order of 5-10k/yr worth of SUB/MS and banking rewards a year.

    Happy to share some knowledge here as well if others are interested.

    •  gyrfalcon   ( @gyrfalcon@beehaw.org ) OPEnglish
      1•1 year ago

      I’m not sure how much churning we have representation for, given c/Finance is already on the smaller end, but could definitely be a good one to split out as activity increases!

      I would be interested in you sharing some knowledge. I have been working on assembling the Chase Trifecta for maximizing my day to day spending into rewards points, but I haven’t seen any offers that look good enough for a true churn to get and cancel or forget about the card after. I’m familiar with MS as manufactured spend in churning lingo, but what is SUB?

      •  shanghaibebop   ( @shanghaibebop@beehaw.org ) English
        2•1 year ago

        On the same topic, I get a decent amount of information on new account bonuses and offers but don’t know if this community would be the right place to post them. It seems a bit out of the pattern since most of the posts are financial news related rather than personal finance or those types of topics.

        •  gyrfalcon   ( @gyrfalcon@beehaw.org ) OPEnglish
          2•1 year ago

          This would definitely be the right place! I’ve been putting in a lot of finance stuff I find in my day to day since that’s easy to make a lot of posts with, but personal finance is welcome as well.

      •  shanghaibebop   ( @shanghaibebop@beehaw.org ) English
        2•1 year ago

        SUB: sign up bonus.

        For Chase, this is my 2p strategy:

        1. Churn all the flavors of business ink every 24 months, this is the highest ROI on SUBs alone. MS for SUB spend usually is very simple through buying groups. 2P so this is a new card every 3-4 months between the 2 of us.
        2. CSR is useful for me since I don’t have / am too lazy to product switch into the ritz carlton card and I like the priority pass restaurants since I travel semi-frequently for work.
        3. Used to churn CSP for points, but now it’s 48 months, so I’ve moved my focus all over to the business side.

        I have actually put a lot of daily spending onto BILT card. The 3x dining and points on ACH rent is just too sweet of a gravy train to pass up on. Since my primary chase point usage is to Hyatt, BILT is worth it. Would highly recommend BILT due to their roughly equivalent transfer partners with Chase. If they keep this up, it might make me abandon chase for my daily spend.

        Overall spending optimization for me:

        Plat for airfare

        Hyatt business and personal, which I MS to help hit globalist status as well as the free nights

        Gold for grocery and dining (depending on if I need amex points more or hyatt points more)

        BILT for dining and rent (100k+ points / year for me)

        Chase ink prefferred or Chase CSR for hotel.

        VentureX for rental car and the 300 travel credit.

  •  Witch   ( @Witch@beehaw.org ) English
    3•1 year ago

    Thinking of signing my mom and I up for a free debt counseling program and trying to reduce the amount we pay each much. I’m not sure how much it’ll help, but I figure if I get this done out of the way quickly, any damage to our credit might be recovered by the time we have to move.

    Job searching still hasn’t been going well. My first ever job interview got rescheduled for Thursday and I feel like I might be getting too burnt out to do it. It was like all my energy was placed into getting ready for it, and now I’m just tired.

    On the bright side, I’m getting a not-zero sum of money in the form of government refunds. Might be able to get some glasses and get a week of something like Meals on Wheels so that we can relax for the first time in months, and still have enough to start up a savings fund.

    •  gyrfalcon   ( @gyrfalcon@beehaw.org ) OPEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      Oooh debt is tricky, I should probably steal borrow some of the resources about dealing with debt from the finance communities on reddit and put them in the sidebar. I hope that if you decide to go through with the consolidation process it works well for you, and if not I hope you can still get a good handle on things moving forward.

      I don’t have any job advice, but I agree that it is super draining. I changed jobs last year and it was a lot of searching intensely for a while, seeing some things start to progress, then opportunities not working out and needing to rest after. Best of luck on having a more straightforward path, but either way I’ll keep these threads up so you can share if you think that’s helpful.

    •  zagaberoo   ( @zagaberoo@beehaw.org ) English
      4•1 year ago

      What 20% do you mean? The interest rate?

      If you treat a credit card like a charge card and pay it in full every month there’s zero cost to you. You don’t even pay interest on the time between the purchase and the payment as long as you pay everything off on the first statement it appears.

      Having a credit card is good for your credit and can save you money in the form of cash back. As long as you can keep disciplined about only spending money you already have and paying in full every statement, it’s all upside.

      •  shortwavesurfer   ( @shortwavesurfer@monero.town ) English
        1•1 year ago

        Yes, you are right. However, how many people do you know who absolutely pay the whole balance every month without fail. I dont personally know of anyone including myself. I fell into that trap for a while and then paid them all off and cut them into tiny pieces and no longer use them

        •  Gumby   ( @Gumby@beehaw.org ) English
          3•1 year ago

          When I was young, this was the case. A friend started paying them off each month and then another friend. Now we all do.

          My rule for myself is pay them off each month or put them in my desk and leave them. I also maintain a minimum balance of more than one month’s pay in my saving account. This is my back up in case something happens.

          If I use anything from savings, I am not allowed to buy any alcohol until it is paid back. I like to go out for drinks with friends, so this is a strong deterrent.

        •  shanghaibebop   ( @shanghaibebop@beehaw.org ) English
          1•1 year ago

          I grew up very poor and would budget out the grocery with my mom every week. But we were extremely fortunate and disciplined to have never needed to take out debt. So I’ve always carried that mentality that debt was only for appreciating assets, and if it’s for someone I’m intending to consume, then I can’t afford it.

      •  Steve   ( @Steve@lemm.ee ) English
        1•1 year ago

        Seriously lol. If you carry a balance from one month to the next then a credit card is NOT FOR YOU. The person you’re replying to seems to be one of those people. Which is fine, different ways to view and take care of money work for different people, but… to assume everyone with a credit card is paying interest is not accurate… If used correctly, credit cards can be extremely beneficial for your future.

    •  coldredlight   ( @coldredlight@beehaw.org ) English
      4•1 year ago

      I’m the opposite, almost all of my spending goes through my credit cards. I would pay my rent on a credit card if I could. I only use cash back credit cards and pay everything off before the end of the month so I effectively get 1℅ to 5℅ off all my purchases and never owe interest. One of my cash back cards the 1% to 5℅ cash goes straight into a brokerage account where it automatically earns around 5℅ in a money market fund. It doesn’t seem like much but it adds up, and I appreciate the added layer of security where if there’s fraud my actual money isn’t impacted.

    •  shanghaibebop   ( @shanghaibebop@beehaw.org ) English
      3•1 year ago

      Eh, just pay the full balance every cycle. You’re paying the hidden 3% transaction costs even if you don’t use credit card on pretty much all transactions you make, so might as well get some rewards and sigh up bonus from it.