I want a vacation that I don’t have to pay for. I think it can be done, too!
Now, before you think I’ve gone off the deep end, please realize I’m just seriously stubborn. And, my little ornery self is tired of not being able to take a vacation because of financial limitations. So, I’m going to get really creative here.
You know those stupid offers that come in the mail in the form of checks from credit card companies? They generally hope that you’ll cash those $20 checks, subscribe to some “watch my credit for me while I get dumb and look away” service, and forget that you signed up so they can bill your card directly every month from now ’til infinity. Well, I’m going to deposit those things–as long as they don’t come with some catch. Ideally, I’ll be able to cancel those services before the monthly charges kick in. I think they come with a 30-day free trial usually. As long as I cancel them during that 30 day period, this should work for me.
In addition, I’ll take advantage of any bank bonus that comes my way for signing up with a new account.
That’ll be my seed money. I can grow it from there and end up with, gosh…I guess $1500 would pay for a nice little Vegas vacation. I figure we’ll need $500 for airfare for two, $400 for a hotel room on the Strip for three nights, and $600 for food and entertainment. It wouldn’t be an extravagant vacation, but we’d need none of our own money!
I can continue to grow the seed by using a trick I learned on Blueprint for Financial Prosperity (great blog, by the way). I plan to sign up about eight different times with Sharebuilder and take advantage of sign-up bonuses there, too.
It may take a few months, possibly longer, to reach my goal. But, this will be a fun little experiment! I’m all about personal experiments since taking on this 30 Day Challenge of No TV. I feel creative and alive, like I’ve been mentally hibernating for a while and my brain just woke up with hunger pains!
“No TV and no beer make Homer go crazy.” Gotta love The Simpsons!
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Hi,
I just found your blog here and am enjoying myself with your post.
My family has been in real estate and property management for generations and I have just recently started to dabble in the note buying biz… not much action yet, so I will have to keep my day job,,,
I added you to my blog roll and I look forward to your next project…
No offense, but this sounds like an awful idea. You’ve read rich dad poor dad right? Do you remember the anecdote about Kiyosaki’s family’s freezer full of pork loins?
You’ve just described your time consuming and somewhat risky (*) plan to pack that freezer.
Focus your energy instead on bigger things (like RE investments) or things that have a continual payoff (like getting better interest rates or cheaper insurance rates).
I’d recommend having a minimum return for any activity that you choose to engage in. Let say that, for example, you decided to engage in a project to get tons of unsecured credit lines at 0% interest and to invest the money in CDs (**). I would not actually go about that plan unless you knew that it would give a minimum return to you. (For example $5000 or $1000/yr)
(*) risky because you will have to cancel a bunch of services before they bill you and many of these companies are skilled at ‘losing’ cancellation requests. Also you will likely receive more junk mail after this operation is completed.
(**) Probably a very bad idea for you since you want to keep your credit scores up for RE financing.
However it might be possible to do it in a business name. You can read up on what others have done here:
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/632935/
Some of the success stories involve couples getting over 1 million dollars in unsecured credit where a health chunk of that (>700K) are at 0% interest for 9-18 months.
For example: http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/topic.php?catid=52&threadid=772928
If you’re willing to fall for stupid marketing tricks, why not take one of the free or almost-free timeshare vacation deals? It can’t be that hard to find one of the timeshare companies willing to send you to Vegas as long as you’ll sit through the 90 minute hard sell. They’ll often even give you cash or show tickets as a bonus.
Jay-bird - It sounds like we’re two “birds” of a feather! Note purchasing can be lucrative–best of luck to you! I’ll check out your blog, too.
Bogonflux - Well, I completely understand where you’re coming from! Actually, I took your (*) to heart and am re-evaluating the seed money part of this idea. Unfortunately, right now, I’m having to deliberately place my focus elsewhere besides REI. We’ve got too many irons in the fire as it is. I want either the three houses to close or House 17 to be finished/refi’d. So, I’m coming up with ways to entertain and enrich my mind in the meantime–like the 30 day challenge of no TV and figuring out a way to build a free vacation from scratch. I’ve already taken all the 0% credit card checks I could justify doing and used that money toward the House 17 project. It’ll pay off–I just have to be patient, which is NOT easy for me! Thanks as always for such great input!
Anon - Hmph. How can you not see the difference between “falling for” a marketing trick and “taking advantage of” them? I would not in a million years ever even initiate communications with one of those timeshare companies! We were green once, and fell for their empty promises of free tickets and meals in exchange for two hours of our time in Vegas. They drove us out to the middle of nowhere, wasted an entire day of our vacation, and refused to return us to our hotel until after nightfall! We got the tickets and food, alright–but, we could’ve paid for it and still come out on top! FORGET IT! Besides, it’s going to be way more interesting the way I want to go about it–building a wad of cash (that could be used toward ANYTHING, not just Vegas) from scratch.
Trisha, one easy way to do this is to open up a bunch of bank accounts at Chase. They pay $200 for each business account. I’ve opened up 5 accounts and got $1000 already. You have to keep each account open for 6 months though.
30 day challenge no TV plan- sounds most refreshing.
I might just have to try that very soon.
Good links that you posted. Thanks
Kenric - Oh, that’s awesome!!! Thanks so much! I really will use that and incorporate into my plan. Who knows–maybe I’ll make enough for two vacations?
Reno - Good, I’m glad you’ve enjoyed it! Yes, I highly recommend giving yourself a set time away from the TV. I’ve been amazed how my mind has opened up and started creating new ways of making money.
I’ve done the timeshare thing at least once, and it wasn’t as bad as your experience. The presentation was right off the Strip, and I could’ve left earlier but ended up just gabbing with my friendly and uncharacteristically normal sales kid. I think they put me up for two nights at the Sahara.
If you want to save $$ travel between Sunday and Thursday, go to the Sahara or Imperial Palace or other cheaper property, and get a coupon book from Las Vegas Advisor.
2nd Anon - Well, our experience may have been just isolated to the particular timeshare company–it was the one by the front door in the Aladdin. We complained about it taking a full day later to the same lady who hooked us in the first place. She’d told us we’d only be gone a couple of hours. Know what she said? “Oh, I lied!”
Ok, thanks! The Las Vegas Advisor. I’ll have to remember that.