How I’m Getting 3 Hotel Nights in Las Vegas for $47.51

by

Welcome_to_fabulous_las_vegas_signThis week I’ll be in Las Vegas from Tuesday to Friday. This trip was planned about a month ago. I had some airfare credit on  Southwest from volunteering to be bumped last year that was about to expire and decided to use it for a trip to Vegas. With my airfare covered a hotel room was the only major expense I needed to pay. I originally only planned to stay two nights in Vegas. Then I found out my mom had also planned a trip to Vegas with a couple of my aunts and they would be arriving the day after I left. Therefore, I decided to stay another night which will allow me to have lunch with my mom and my aunts at the airport when they arrive. I felt it was worth paying for an extra day in Vegas in order to get to meet them. I also get the value of another day to do stuff in Vegas and as I explain in this post the extra day isn’t going to cost me much.

I had several options to choose from to get cheap or even free hotel rooms in Vegas.  I have Starpoints that I could have used to book a free room at a Four Points. I decided not to use the Starpoints since hotel rooms are already cheap in Vegas I could get a lot better value from my Starpoints using them elsewhere.

I also could have used some of my Chase Ultimate Rewards to book three hotel nights. I decided not to use my Ultimate Rewards for a couple of reasons. One is that when booking through the Chase site your Ultimate Rewards only cover the base hotel cost and taxes, they don’t cover resort fees. I’d still have to pay the resort fees out of pocket. I could write a rant post about resort fees, but I’ll save that for another day. Another reason for not using my Ultimate Rewards is that although I can use them to pay for a hotel without paying anything out of pocket it isn’t really free to use them.  Ultimate Rewards can be redeemed for cash so using them to pay for a hotel basically costs you the amount you could have gotten by redeeming the points for cash. For example, if it cost me 2800 UR points to book a hotel which I could have redeemed for $28 in cash then I’m basically paying $28 for the hotel. When you add the foregone cash to the resort fees then the hotel night from using my UR points wasn’t really free. Using the UR points would still have been an okay deal, but I had a better option.

Wyndham Rewards currently has a promotion awarding you with $100 in Wyndham gift cards when you stay two times with them during the promotion period.  I stayed at a Wyndham property once during my April hike and once during my July hike and satisfied the terms of the promotion. The $100 in Wyndham gift cards is awarded as four $25 gift cards and only one gift card can be used per each hotel stay. Also, the cards have to be used by October 31, 2016.   That makes it a little difficult to take advantage of all the gift cards since you need four different stays to use up the gift cards.

I mostly solved that problem by booking one night at three different hotels. Wyndham has a lot of properties in Vegas making it easy to stay at three different hotels. It will be a little bit of a hassle to have to check in three different times, but these are small properties so I don’t anticipate a long check-in line like you sometimes have at the mega hotels. My first night I’m staying at a property that doesn’t have a resort fee and I’ll only be paying $7 and change for my room. The other two nights I’m staying at properties that have casinos and I’ll be paying $20 and change each night for my room. I could have saved a little more money by staying at non-casino properties. However, the casino properties had much better locations for my purposes so it was worth paying a little extra. After all, $20 a night is still pretty cheap.

My only other expenses will be bus, food, and gambling.  The bus will be pretty cheap. I’m going to get a 24 hour pass for $8 the first day and I might get another 24 hour pass for the last day. The max I think I’ll spend on the bus is $16. Food will be cheap since I like cheap food. I don’t consider food a travel expense since I eat out all the time when I’m at home too.  I’ll be sure to eat at In n Out at least once and I’d like to try Shake Shack while I’m there too.  I also have a couple of free buffets from playing My Vegas Slots.  If I’m not too unlucky gambling the entire trip should cost me less than $100 out-of-pocket.  Although I’m far from a master at travel hacking, I hope this shows how it is possible to travel without spending a lot of money.

 

 

Impact Health $25 Online Health Research Study

by

Impact Health is paying qualified participants $25 for completing a short health insurance research study online. If you sign up through my referral link I will get $25 for referring you and you will receive $25 for successfully completing the study. To qualify for the study you must have purchased health insurance directly from an insurance company or through the online marketplace. If you have your health insurance through your employer then you will not qualify for the study.

I completed the study a couple of weeks ago and found it be pretty simple and it only took about 10 minutes. They paid me in less than a week. You do have to share information about your health insurance and upload a photo of your health insurance ID card. If you’re not comfortable sharing this information then the study isn’t for you. I thought it was an easy $25.

Once you have completed the study Impact Health will send your payment via PayPal, Venmo, or any other format you choose within a few days. They will also send you links so you can refer people to the survey as well. In addition to referral links like the one in this post they have links for Twitter and Facebook. Not only can you make $25 for completing the survey you also have the potential to make $25 when you refer your friends to complete the study.  There is no limit to how many friends can participate in the study. You receive your money for referrals on either the 1st or the 15th of the month.

Health Insurance Research Study Referral Link

August 2016 Net Worth Update

by

penniesIn order to keep track of my financial progress or lack of progress I have decided to calculate my net worth each month.

My net worth as of today (8/2/2016) is as follows.

Assets
Cash – $4393.42 (-$415.14)
IRA – $23,839.74 (+$373.76)
Roth IRA – $10,320.25 (+$324.94)
Car/Stuff – $4700 (-$100)

Liabilities
Student Loan – $129,775.17 ($642.75)

Net Worth = $-86,521.76

My net worth decreased by $459.19 since the last update. Although I had a nice increase in my investments they were not enough to overcome the decrease in cash and the over $600 in student loan interest. Some of the decrease in cash is due to an increase in Amazon FBA inventory. I hope to be able to turn most of that inventory back into cash this month.

As I’ve stated before this massive student loan makes it difficult for me to get ahead financially. Since it charges over $600 a month interest I start in a pretty big hole each month. I need to increase my income dramatically to be able to get ahead on this loan.

I’ve been using Personal Capital (affiliate link) to help track my net worth. It keeps track of all of my financial accounts and my student loan making it pretty easy to calculate my net worth each month. It is free to sign up. If you would like to sign up I’d appreciate you using my link. All blog income, including affiliate income, goes to paying down my student loan.

Personal Capital

July Income – $1862.26

by

Here is a breakdown of my income for July.

Job $102.27
Interest $1.40
Online Income $67.50
Amazon FBA $588.34
Mystery Shop $18
Cash Back $1036.50
Survey $48.25
Total $1862.26

My income was pretty good in July considering I only had one day of pay from my document review job. The big contributor to my income this month was cash back. As part of Discover’s double cash back promotion I received $983.16 in cash back. This represented a match of all the cash back I had earned from Discover in the past 12 months. That was a pretty good return for a five-minute phone call to sign up for the promotion.

My FBA income finally came back to a decent level. It should be a lot higher this month. A hardware store near me went out of business and I bought a ton of stuff at 50% off.

I also completed a health insurance research study that paid me $48.25 after PayPal fees. That was a very good return for about ten minutes of time. The survey was a random find on Craigslist. I’ll have to check the Etc. category more often.

The health insurance research study has another study that will pay you $25 if you sign up through my referral link. I’ll get $25 for referring you as well.

My cash back income will be a lot less this month. I’m thinking I will be able to make up the reduction in cash back income with increased FBA income and online income. If I can make about the same amount this month as in July I will be okay with that result.

July Expenses – $1447.14

by

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for July.

Household $419.50
Entertainment $38
Transportation $58.83
Food $132.43
Student Loan $37.71
Travel $605.46
Phone $36.79
Health $118.42
Total $1447.14

My July expenses were a little higher than I would prefer.  The higher expenses were due to my $605 of travel expenses which were mainly from my shortened  hiking trip. Since the travel expenses paid for two nights hotel, a two-day train trip, a one day rental car, a taxi, and several bus fares it is a reasonable number.  Since I didn’t get many miles hiked which was the purpose of the trip the expense was mostly a waste of money. On the bright side the July travel expense is also covering my round-trip airfare from Kansas City to Las Vegas. I’ll be staying three nights and have one free night and should be able to book two more nights at a very low rate. The Vegas vacation will be very cheap as long as I don’t lose too much gambling.

I have a doctor and a dentist appointment this month which will make my health expense higher. The other expenses I expect to stay about the same this month. I think I have a good shot at keeping my expenses under $1000 this month.