Travel Hacking

When doing deliveries on the weekend I end up spending a lot of time in my car. Sometimes as much as 25 hours in a 3 day period. In order to prevent myself from going stir crazy I like to load up some Podcasts. The Joe Rogan Experience (http://podcasts.joerogan.net/) is my favorite along with The Mad Fientist (https://www.madfientist.com/) and The Bigger Pockets podcast (https://www.biggerpockets.com/podcast). What I like about podcasts is that I can select the topics I want to hear about without too much commercial interruption. Plus these particular podcasts are free to download. I used to listen to the BBC and NPR all the time in the car but the news has become too depressing. I thought I would miss it but I don't. It's really easy to load up 20 hours of podcast and then go cruse the town delivering emergency tacos to the drunk and hungry.

While listening to the Mad Fientist podcast, one of the guests introduced me to travel hacking. The basic concept is that you sign up for a new credit card that has a travel bonus. Usually the terms are something like spend $4,000 in 3 months and you will get 40,000 travel miles or some other reward as a new customer. That would be equivalent to about $400 in free travel. After you have obtained the bonus you close the card and pick a new one with a new bonus.

The problem I had with this system is that I didn't think I could hit the spending thresholds each month since I do not spend that much money consistently. I would need to spend around $1,300 a month or so to hit those limits. Then an unexpected opportunity arose.

I was living in a house with two roommates. We were each paying out landlord $500 a month for rent in cash. We also split the utilities which was another $50 a month. Our landlord unexpectedly needed us to move out so he could rent the house to a friend of his. We were bummed out but liked living together so the 3 of us rented a 3 bedroom apartment down the street for about the same price. I told my roommates that I would like to put the entire rent on my credit card and have them pay me in cash so I could obtain some credit card bonuses. They agreed to do that. Each month I am now putting not only my rent onto a credit card but their rent as well. It comes out to about $1,600 or so each month. With that kind of spending it was been simple to hit those spending targets. One draw back is that the apartment company charges a 1.75% fee to make a credit card transaction each month which comes out to about $28 each month. In the end it still comes out in my favor. 

The first card I tried this on was the Chase Sapphire preferred card. The deal was if you spend $4,000 in the first 3 months they will give you 50,000 chase ultimate rewards points which can be redeemed for cash, travel, hotels or other perks. I easily hit this spend in 2 months and converted my points for a cash back reward of about $550. Nice.

The next card I picked was the Chase United Explorer Mileage Plus card. The deal on this card is that if you spend $4,000 in the first 3 months you receive 40,000 United Mileage plus miles. Additionally, if you spend $8000 in the first 6 months you will receive another 30,000 miles. I hit my first target and received the 40,000 miles. I then used these miles to book a flight that would have cost around $400 on United for $11.20. I'll be shopping around for another credit card as soon as I hit the final target for the current one.

A nice side benefit of this is that my credit score has gone up as well. I have a 100% on time repayment rate and my credit score is hovering around 740. It might dip a bit when I cancel one of my cards to obtain a new one but it will be worth it as long I can keep getting bonuses and not paying interest. I'm not sure how much longer the credit card companies will be offering all these bonuses but getting a couple of free flights a year is big for me so I hope they keep it up. What is also nice is that I am self employed so I can plan my vacations around the times of the year when the flights will be cheaper so the miles can go quite a bit further.

This has been a great system so far. I am looking forward to planning some more trips now that I have a way to drastically reduce the cost of airfare. Combined this with staying at an Airbnb or couch surfing and you have the makings of a very reasonably priced vacation.

    

Leaky Tire

When things go wrong with my car I get stressed out. I have never had an interest in anything mechanical. I need my car to get to trivia and to do my delivery job so it is imperative that I keep it in working order. I know this. I also have this other urge called not wanting to spend money on my car. In a perfect world my car would just run. I don't enjoy taking my car in to the shop since I am pretty much ignorant about how to keep it running when it breaks down. These two urges battle each other in my head until either something breaks and I have no choice be to bring my car in or someone rides in my car and comments on some broken thing and I feel like I should get it fixed since I assume they know more than I do. This is not a good system but that's how my brain works and I have come to accept it.

The rear passenger tire has had a slow leak for a couple weeks. I walked by this tire a bunch of times, saw that it was getting flat, then proceeded to do nothing. I probably would have kept doing this for a while longer until fate intervened. I was putting my gym bag back into my trunk after a workout when I heard someone try to get my attention. I thought it was a hobo asking for money but when I turned around it was an old Mexican man and his wife. He must have been in his 70's. I wasn't sure what he wanted until he pointed at my tire and said, "your tire, es flat." His English was pretty rough but it was much better than my Spanish will ever be. I said "gracias." They continued to walk towards the grocery store. If this guy is going out of his way to tell a perfect stranger that his tire is flat, it must be pretty obvious that I need to fix this.

I drove to the nearest gas station and found an air pump. I was about to ransack all the change out of my car but the pump accepted credit cards. Technology. After putting some air into the tire, I considered it fixed forever and promptly forgot all about it. 

Fast forward to a week and a half later. My tire is getting flat again. I never saw this coming. More action would need to be taken. There is a discount tire down the street from my apartment. After pulling up one of the employees came out to see what he could do for me. Once he knew of the leak in my tire he got to work inspecting all the tires. Then he looked at the spare. A few more questions followed and he took me into the waiting room for a tire report. He informed me that the other three tires were in ok shape but the flat one would need to be replaced. When I asked him if they could patch the tire he ignored my question and then showed me some new tires. The fact that he did not even address my question made me a bit suspicious. I had worked at Verizon as a salesman for a while. I remembered my boss telling me that the solution to any phone problem is a get the customer to buy a new phone. I felt that I was getting a similar treatment so I stalled. I told Jeff the salesman that I didn't get paid till Friday but would like to set up an appointment to get a new tire this Saturday. 

After this he directed me to the air station and one of the attendants checked my air pressure and filled my tires. When he got to the flat one he said that the machine would not fill it since the tire pressure was too low. I'm not a tire engineer but this demonstration seemed a little fishy and I was already a little suspicious. I drove back to the gas station and used the air pump which worked just fine a second time. 

I needed a second opinion so I called up my step father who had worked in auto sales. I asked him the critical question: was I just being cheap or was the guy at discount tire telling me the truth and I needed a new tire. He said to check the tire and see how worn it was. As I looked down to do this I noticed that there was a drywall screw sticking out of the tread in my tire. Huh. Neither of the attendants had noticed this which finally destroyed any sense of confidence in their abilities. 

After this revelation I called up a Goodyear affiliate and asked if they could repair the tire. As long as the screw is not in the side wall it would be no problem. He said it would cost about $21 and they would be able to complete the work today. They ended up fixing the tire in about 30 min. 

Did I learn anything? Just because someone presents themselves as an expert does not mean they have your best interest in mind, or that they care about saving you money. I should also remember not to drive on a low tire for weeks at a time. I was lucky that it was able to be fixed this time. Who needs new tires for a 21 year old car anyways?

 
 

Modern day foraging.

After driving around all evening delivering food it was time to decide what I was going to eat for dinner. I pulled up to Rosa's Cafe to place my last order of the evening. The restaurant was down to a skeleton crew so I knew the order was going to take longer than normal. I sat down to wait.

At a lot of Mexican restaurants here in Texas have a salsa bar. You can help yourself to all sorts of salsa and vegetables. I looked over the options. They had salsa, chopped onions, chopped jalapenos, Pico de Gallo, tomatoes, Cilantro, Lemons, limes and other items that I had never seen before. I thought to myself, A hungry guy could make a nice omelet with all that stuff. Then it hit me, I was a hungry guy, I liked omelets. This is just crazy enough to work.

I started loading up the tiny containers. I figured that it would look like I was filling up these containers for my delivery order. Little did they know my devious plan. I had a lot of time to kill so I ended up filling 16 tiny containers which are shown below. Pico de Gallo on the left, then onions, Jalapenos and finally salsa on the right.

Luckily I had a dozen eggs and some shredded cheese already. I fried up all the condiments first then added the eggs on low heat and made a scramble. When it was all done I put the cheese on top to let it melt a bit then threw salsa on. Practically a textbook version of huevos rancheros. It only took me about 6 min to put everything together since the restaurant had already chopped everything up. I was very satisfied with my handy work. Looks a lot better than 80% of the junk food I delivered tonight. The saving were also a strong, fragrant, spicy additon that really elevated my enjoyment of the entire process. Delicious.

        

Free Chicken Sandwich

I was out and about delivering food this Saturday when I arrived at Chick-fil-A. It was jam packed as usual. There was a double line of cars surrounding the building. I decided to save some gas and go inside to place my customers order. 4 piece chicken tender combo with waffle fries and a Dr. Pepper. Pretty standard stuff until the cashier handed me the receipt.

Before I could throw the receipt in the garbage she stopped me. We locked eyes and she gazed deep into my soul and whispered seductively, if you fill out this survey within the next two days, you can get a free sandwich. Spicy or original. This sent a shiver down my spine and I was mesmerized by the thought of a free sandwich. As I waited to pick up my order I wondered if I could get another customers receipt too so I could fill out a couple surveys to get even more free sandwiches. It was then I realized that the survey does not print out on every receipt. Was I one of the chosen? I didn't have time to find out as my order was complete and I needed to get back into my car to deliver the food.

When I arrived home I logged on to the site. www.mycfavisit.com. The first thing the site asks for is the serial number on the receipt to prove that you actually went to Chick-fil-A and made a purchase. My customer made the purchase so I would be reaping the rewards of the survey without spending anything. I was taking advantage of a gaping loophole. They said very explicitly that I will need to provide my email and that if I do not, I will not receive my free sandwich. Pretty clever tactic. What they don't know is I maintain a bunch of fake emails specifically for this reason and also to leave poor restaurant reviews. Point and match. Jim Smith who has email address of derpk.klaus@gmail.com is my favorite fake account. Turns out he really likes Chick-fil-A.

At the end of my survey it said that it will take up to 24 hours for my digital gift card to arrive. Was there a problem at the digital post office? That is a long time to wait for a free sandwich. I went back to the home page and tried to enter a new serial number to see if I could win another sandwich with a different fake email. My original serial number was 4240308-01903-1351-0330-90 so I obviously tried 4240308-01903-0330-91 to see if that would produce another survey. Sadly, that did not work. Then I got on google and searched for "Chick-fil-A survey serial numbers". No numbers were listed. I did find a reddit thread about people asking about how they could get a survey for free but the discussion quickly descended into rude comments about each others mothers.

Finally, after hitting refresh about a thousand times my coupon arrived via my fake email address. I got a QR code that will entitle me to one free Chicken Sandwich. Hopefully that helpful cashier with the deep sultry voice will be there again to take my order of one free sandwich one packet of special sauce and one tap water. I'm sure she will be impressed. Maybe I can ask her to use her employee discount for me to get a side of waffle fries. Then I remembered that tomorrow is Sunday and Chick-fil-A is not open on Sundays because Jesus only eats fish on that day or something. Guess I'll have to wait another entire day for my spicy chicken delight. 

Here is an update from last week. Success!

Auto Insurance Adjustment

Around the beginning of the year I get a notification from Geico about my next 6 months of auto insurance. Its the Yang to the holiday Yin I have just enjoyed that brings me back to reality. They use all sorts of factors to determine how much your auto insurance is going to cost. Level of education, safety record, credit score, where you live, how much you drive and a bunch of other factors. What many people do not know is the insurance companies have a formula to determine if you are the type of person who may decide to switch policies. If you are not they often add a premium to your rate.

To date I have never made an insurance claim. I have had a couple cars bump into mine but it has never been anything serious. All the money I have paid for insurance premiums has been pure profit for the insurance company. I own my car and have the lowest amount of coverage possible. In the event of an accident all the lives of the humans involved in both vehicles would be covered and the other car. My car would not be covered and I would pay any repair costs out of pocket. At that point I was paying about $67 a month for my policy.

My first attempt at getting my premium lowered failed. My credit score had improved quite a bit last year so I called up the insurance company and asked for a lower rate based on this fact. The agent was very shrewd. He told me that he couldn't offer me a lower rate but if I signed up for renters insurance I could get a discount on my auto insurance. He transferred me over to the renters insurance department. Not one of my possessions is worth insuring but I decided to let him give me a quote. For the combing policy it was going to be about $85 a month. I declined and hung up the phone. Of course this quote dogged me for a few months since they must have told their sales department I was a hot lead. I was not.

I decided I would have to take a different tact. A few months had elapsed so I thought I would try again. This time I got online an looked up some quotes from other companies. My quote from Allstate came in at about $90 a month. Nope. Then I got a quote from Esurance for $55 a month. That was appealing and I saved this quote on my computer. Then I called Geico and asked if they were willing to price match a competitor. At first the agent was resistant. She said that I was as low as possible. I informed her that I would like to stay with Geico but Esurance had come in at $55 a month. Magically she found a way to match their price. How strange.

The first thing she did was switch my auto pay from going through my debit card to being directly withdrawn from my checking account. Even though this money was still coming out of the same account they were charging me a $4 a month processing fee. Then she lowered my coverage in some area down to the minimum. I had been paying this processing fee for years and no one thought to mention it.

I told my story of triumph to a friend of mine recently and his reaction was, "why bother?" Mostly because I think its funny and also because there is no reason to spend more and not get more. Most companies are not focused on trying to maximize the value they deliver to you as a consumer. They are trying to maximize their profits. If they can find a way to extract extra money from you they will do it. They prey on the fact that most people will not shop around. Many times people just accept whatever price they are given because it takes time to look for a better deal. If you take a little time to compare rates and arm yourself with some information you can cut through all the hidden fees to get to a reasonable price. I now do this with all my bills and the sweet savings add up each month. Each dollar I save is a dollar I do not have to earn by working.

 

How much would you pay to insure this sweet ride?

Repurposed Auto Accessories.

I drive an old Lincoln town car. The drivers side seat is falling apart. I was sweating on it all summer. That and constantly getting in and out of the car has taken its toll. The stitching is starting to fall apart. I was driving around some family members recently and my uncle Mike asked me if a bear had attacked my seat. Normally I am the only one in the car so I never think about it. I decided I needed to do something with that dumpy looking seat.

There were so many possible solutions online. I decided to go look for a simple elegant seat cover. When I arrived at the local AutoZone they had an entire shelf dedicated to seat covers. They all looked like something either a race car driver or someone who wished they could be in the next fast and furious movie would think is cool. They were also designed for bucket seats and I have a huge hybrid bench seat. I asked the clerk were people who have more of a daily driver might go to get a seat cover. He told me that it might be easier to build a time machine, travel back to 1998 and buy one there than to try and find one locally.

Time travel sounded like a good idea so I pulled out my smartphone and typed in Kmart on my google map.

I would have to try the next best thing and headed over to Walmart. They had more of an every man car seat cover selection. It came down to something that can only be described as a seat bib and a net of wooden beads. I decided to try the bib option. It was a little small for my seat but the harness part was made of elastic so I was certain it would fit. Out in the parking lot I put the seat cover on and sat down to see how it felt. One of the elastic straps immediately snapped off. Back to the drawing board. I walked back in and got a full refund. I didn't even need to make up some story about faulty merchandise. They just took it back no questions asked and went back to picking their noses.

I then proceeded to forget the entire thing. Until today.

I went for a swim at the free local pool. They should really call it the Hobo showering area that happens to have a pool attached. Swimming outdoors in December is a treat for me since its snowing in my hometown so I cannot complain too much. I was about halfway through my laps when I got to thinking about my seat again. I need something that I can clean periodically that will fit over the seat. A T-shirt? No, too trashy. How about a sweater? What would I do with the sleeves? I don't know if I was over caffeinated or under oxygenated but an idea hit me like an endorphin taser to the brain.

How about a vest?

I couldn't think of a reason why it wouldn't work so I drove over to the closest Goodwill to find a vest. I found one right away for $5 that I thought would fit around my seat. It had some zippered pockets on the front but I just decided that I could just put it in backwards so that the zippers would not irritate my back. That way people in the back seat could also use the pockets to store some small knickknacks. I suppose I could also put napkins and plastic forks in their too in case anyone needed those. Maybe some tiny roadside flares. 

I was all set to purchase my snappy new vest/seat cover when I saw the line. There was only one flustered looking woman running the cash register. People were giving her a hard time and acting real snippy. One woman came up and asked the clerk if she could be let into the fitting room. The Frazzled clerk said that she would be over there as soon as she could but she had to check everyone else in line out first. After witnessing this I walked over to the clerk and told her that I would let the customer into the fitting room myself if she would loan me the key. I would have preferred to do just about anything other than stand in line.

When I returned to my place in line after letting the woman into the fitting room it was just in time to check out. As I handed my vest and the dressing room key back to the clerk she said "Well what do you know, looks like this item is half off today". She winked at me and we both laughed. We had just colluded to defraud the Goodwill for half the price of my vest. That's what I call a good woman. If I hadn't seen a ring on her finger I would have asked her out right then and there. I should have asked if she had a sister. Something to think about for next time.

Problem solved. 

The Half Cup Maneuver

I spend four or five days a week in coffee shops writing trivia questions. Sitting at home never allows me to concentrate on one specific task. I'll be sitting at the table ready to write when I start thinking about doing a load of laundry or one of my roommates needs a small favor. Distractions are around every corner and I can never get into "production mode". It seems easier to block off a couple hours to focus when I am out of the house and then be done for the day.

Each time I go to a coffee shop I feel obligated to buy something. This is a business and the WIFI doesn't pay for itself. Most places have a drip coffee available which is usually the cheapest item that does not have sugar in it although sometimes the soda costs more than a small coffee.

Each cup of coffee is marginally dirt cheap for the company once they have produced it. Sometimes the cost of the cup is more than the cost of the fluid that goes in it.

Before I developed this strategy I would order a large size cup of coffee since that was the amount I wanted to drink. What a fool I was back then.

I discovered that most places will offer you a refill at a discount. Lets say you ordered a large coffee for $3.50. They might offer a refill for any size coffee for 75 cents. If the small coffee is $2.25 and a refill is .75 cents you can get even more coffee for $3.00.

Then I took my coffee game to the next level.

I created a socially engineered system I call "The Half Cup Maneuver." Instead of ordering a full refill I ask for just a half of a cup. In all of the coffee shops I have encountered, not one has a button on their register for a half a cup of coffee. At this point most baristas will just wave me on and say its on the house. If they do come up with some figure like .30 cents I'll pull out my credit card and hand it to them. I never carry cash. It might actually cost the business more to process my payment than they would make at that point and they usually just tell me not to worry about it.

Through this method my small coffee transforms into a large pretty much everywhere I go. The only additional cost was my dignity which is worthless. Not everyone will feel comfortable using this method since it preys on the fact that the baristas live on their tips and need to be accommodating to retain their jobs. If I save $1 every time I go out that is $5 more per week I can spend on beard wax.

Whether my second cup is half empty or half full is irrelevant, it's free.

Update: I found a way to get a free cup of coffee when I am in a pinch.Walk into your local bank branch. For me this is Chase Bank. Go to the indoor ATM and check your checking account balance. After that walk up to the coffee station and help yourself to a complementary coffee. Not sure if every bank offers this but since they try to copy each other in everything else I assume they do.