financegirl on May 12th 2008 Travel
Who knew that taking a vacation in your own city has its own buzzword? Staycation!
According to the Urban Dictionary, a staycation is defined as follows:
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staycation |
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A vacation that is spent at one’s home enjoying all that home and one’s home environs have to offer.
Even though I live and work in New York, I don’t always get to enjoy all it has to offer, what with my work commitments, but I sure did have an awesome time here during my spring staycation.
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Check out the call for digital postcards and videos from your staycation at CNN.
Now I can be cheap and trendy! Just call me the budget travelista!
financegirl on Mar 16th 2008 Credit Cards, Credit Scores
I’m sure you know someone like this:
“Credit cards are great! I use mine for everything and pay it off each month. I flew to Tahiti last March with the airline miles I earned and I get $500 cash back from my Discover card at the end of the year. I know some people can’t handle credit cards, but they can be used to your benefit if you do it right!”
Admittedly, I am not one of these people. Maybe someday I will be, but I don’t trust myself to pay everything off and not spend more than I would otherwise.
One of my coworkers is, only she takes it to a whole new level. Every few months, she will open an American Airlines or Continental credit card that offers 20,000-40,000 airline miles for signing up. She’ll make the required number of purchases with the card and keep it open long enough to get the miles. As soon as the miles are transferred to her frequent flier account…bam!, she closes the card. She then has her husband do the same thing.
After waiting a few months, she calls the credit card company and applies for the exact same card. Makes her purchases, gets the miles, closes the card. Repeat.
She now has enough miles for her and her husband to fly to the Caribbean every six months for the next three years.
Crazy? I’m not so sure. The only drawback I see is that it might affect their credit scores by opening and closing cards so often. But since only 10% of your FICO score is determined by new credit, it shouldn’t affect it too much.
It’s really tempting to open a card for both my husband and myself and use the points to fly us somewhere for our fifth anniversary next year, but I think I’ll stay away for now. I can’t believe I’m quoting Dave Ramsey here again, but, “When you play with snakes, you’ll get bitten.” And I can’t afford to take any chances.
