Off to Baltimore tomorrow (work)

I am off to Baltimore for a short 2-day work project. A little more road time, some more miles, and some great crab cakes to be had. This will be my first time in Downtown Baltimore instead of the outskirts. Hoping it is more interesting there!

I am looking forward to a smooth project with few hiccups. I have had enough of those recently!

I will be back Wednesday night and home for about a week before nearly 2 weeks of Savannah, staying with family for the weekend, and then West Virginia Sunday.

Buy and cook food in bulk

This is one area where I am still learning and forming better habits. I have been buying a lot of my staple foods in bulk but separating into 2-person size portions and storing them. I find that this makes cooking easier down the road. Less waste and fewer leftovers.

I am now questioning my methods a little. I am wondering if I should get 5-7 pounds of chicken and cook it all at once and then store it for later use. It makes sense from an energy use and time saving standpoint. The major issue is I like variety in what I eat and don't want to eat only chicken for dinner all week.

I think the answer is somewhere in the middle. If I buy bulk chicken and maybe cook it 2 different ways I can achieve some variety and still save time and effort later. I could marinate in 2 different ways and cook/grill it all at once to get that out of the way. I can then make several different dishes with that chicken as the base ingredient.

The bottom line is that I need to learn more about cooking and do better with what I already have laying around so I can make less frequent trips to the store. Buying certain bulk food such as pasta, rice, meat, and other staples does save money in the long run. I need to take better advantage of that!

Frugal Tip: Dryer sheets part 2!

A little while ago I mentioned using dryer sheets to their fullest by cutting them in half and then using them until they start to fray on the ends.

Part 2 to this is that dryer sheets are good for cleaning soap scum also!

Basically once you are done using the sheets in the dryer store them. When you clean the bathroom(s) in your house you can use them one last time for soap scum. I haven't tried this yet but people claim this is a very effective way to get the scum off.

We shall see!

Where spending more makes sense: Technology

I am always trying to find new ways to save a buck yet there are times when spending extra makes sense in the overall big picture. One of the things that I always aim for quality over price is technology. The up front outlay saves me headache, time, and of course more money down the road. My recent experience with the WiFi at my house is a good example.

I currently have a refurbished Cisco wifi router at my house. It works great...most of the time. In the past few months I have had issues with the wifi signal just dropping out. It usually happens about once per day on all of my devices. All I have to do is reset the wifi on the device and it works again. A minor annoyance at first but now I have had enough.

My $40 cheapie router is costing me time and productivity. I did some research online and found a lot of other people with similar issues and they all came to the same conclusion: spend the money for a better product. In my case that is an Apple router which makes sense since all my devices are also Apple.

I am dropping $150 on this but I know it will be solid. It also has some nice other features my current one does not have so I am getting an upgrade out of it too. They have nothing but stellar reviews online and the failure rate is extremely low. On top of that I get a full year warranty instead of 60 days. A win in my book.

Stomach problems finally clear?

I think I am finally back to normal after that parasite from South America did a number to me. Many unpleasant days and bland meals later I am feeling normal again. I am still not sure what the source was but that is always the mystery with these types of things. It could have been much worse (and has been worse in the past!).

The part that bothers me the most is the food we could not eat that went bad as a result. I went grocery shopping when we got home for our usual stuff and half had to be thrown out. I absolutely despise wasting food. Food is expensive. Such is life.

The good news is that we are both doing better.

A first for me: I bought some points!

I finally found a purchase points promotion that I could not pass up. The Daily Getaways promotion from American Express has a lot of bad deals. In this case it was a great deal. I bought 50,000 hotel points for $128.70. I can convert those points to many different kinds of airline miles at a rate of 2.5 hotel points per airline mile.

That works out to half a penny per mile which is a great rate. To buy most airline miles outright costs 2 cents each or 1 cent each on a "good" sale. I will end up with 20,000 miles wherever I need them when the time comes. It was a small price to pay to add to my pile of "flexible" points that I can transfer as needed.

I value "good" air miles, such as United miles, at around 4-5 cents each so I got an excellent value from this deal. In this case 20,000 extra miles gets me 1/6th of the points I need to go to Asia in business class. That is worth more than $128.70 to me.

The points game all comes down to math, rules, and creativity. I have a pretty good handle on those so I get to take amazing trips in premium seats for pennies on the dollar. This game pays off big time!

Bonus! and a 6 day work week

I got my quarterly bonus today which was nice and well timed. I can recover car repair and house repair costs incurred recently and add some more to savings! I always look forward to these bonuses as big steps ahead. I am always careful not to spend them on stupid things.

That said I do have to work the majority of Saturday for our quarterly meeting. Not really difficult work just a necessary time consuming meeting. I am also not a fan of a 1-day weekend after time on the road but I will live.

Now it is time to figure out exactly how I will divide up the bonus dollars amongst my goals.

Boston Day 2: Success! and flight delays

I am in Boston today to finish up the project here. I had a rocky start with things that were not done although I was told they were. I made several emails and phone calls and in the end I got everything that I was responsible for done. By 11AM I had all of our devices up and running perfectly. I had a sigh of relief.

I then headed out for a semi-early lunch then my usual round of errands on the way to the airport. I was very early for my 5:15PM flight so I proceeded to the lounge to relax and get some work done. Days like these I really appreciate the Sky Clubs and other airlines lounges and easily justify the annual fee on my American Express.

I checked into the club and my flight was delayed. They moved me to an earlier flight that was also delayed but it was actually going to leave around my original departure time. I got an aisle seat closer to the front so I was happy. In the end it worked out just fine.

I got home at 8PM and will be able to get enough sleep to have a decent day tomorrow!

Off to Boston for 2 days

Today I am off to Boston for work. It should be a relatively easy work trip for me since I only have to do one location this time around. It is a new construction which means with almost certainty that something will be missing, wrong, or both. I have been doing this too long to believe otherwise.

At least I will spend a lot less time in the car than I have on previous recent trips. I have had my fair share of driving all over the place in recent weeks!

7:30AM flights come early! Waking up at 5:00 AM is my least favorite aspect of work travel but it could always be worse.

New credit card: 50,000 more points!

Today I was approved for another credit card to add to my nice collection of points/miles. This time around it is a business credit card that will yield me more very valuable Chase points that I can transfer to multiple hotels and airlines as I need them. I plan to use my work travel expenses to ramp this one up quickly and reap the benefits sooner than later!

I did have to call the Chase reconsideration line since I was not instantly approved. A little research has shown that no one who has published anything about this card has gotten an instant approval. It was not a big deal just to verify some information, ask questions about the business, and so on. It took about 15 minutes and now my new card is on the way.

I am running out of attractive credit card offers to apply for. This is a good thing as I don't want to get red flagged by the banks as an abuser of the system and get cut off. I am planning to take a 6 month break from new credit cards to let the dust settle and stay in good standing with the card issuers. Of course if some ridiculous offer appears I will go for it but for now I will take a break!