Weekend Reflections: Resolutions, Luxury, and Deals

Weekend Reflections 1/12/19: Resolutions, Luxury, Deals and More

The past few weeks have been quite eventful. Christmas and New Years came and went. It was also my birthday recently. I can confidently say that I am firmly in my mid-30’s now.

I know, sounds old doesn’t it? Especially when it seems like everybody in the FIRE community is trying to retire in their late 20’s.

Eh, whatever. Being a doctor, it’s not considered old. I still feel like a young man with plenty of things I want to accomplish in life.

 

Resolutions

Speaking of accomplishments, one great way to accomplish goals is to write them down and make a plan of action. Some people do this every year in the form of New Year’s resolutions.

Out of pure curiosity (and maybe motivation too), I like to check out other people’s goals and resolutions.

Passive Income MD shared his recap of 2018 and goals for 2019. Needless to say, I’m impressed. It’s amazing how much you can accomplish when you set goals, stick to the plan, and stay consistent like he does. I’m thinking about checking out some of the books he is planning to read in 2019.

Another fellow anesthesiologist, The Physician Philosopher, also posted his New Year’s resolutions. True to his mantra of promoting wealth and wellness, he outlined a few of his financial and personal goals for the year.

Side Hustle Scrubs is a gentleman and a jokester. His post Resolutions made me laugh out loud (half of his posts do, actually). Of course, you’ll have to follow the physician bloggers he tends to poke fun at in order to get the esoteric wisecracks. But you should you follow all of them anyway. You can get the latest updates on all your favorite physician bloggers by going to The Hospital on XrayVsn’s site.

What about my resolutions?

I almost forgot that one of my first published posts was a financial independence New Year’s resolutions.

It’s kinda funny to see your old posts as a beginner blogger. Anyways, lets see how I did with the resolutions…

Save more than 50% of my after-tax income

Check. My wife and I saved $103,000 in tax-advantaged accounts and more than $100,000 in our taxable accounts. We were able to accomplish this by living a relatively frugal lifestyle and by following our investor policy statement.

Avoid buying a fancy new car

Who am I kidding? A Tesla is a fancy new car. Sure, I followed the 1/10th rule for buying a car, but it’s still fancy and expensive no matter how much I try to rationalize that the Tesla is saving me money. But really, it does save me money. 🙂

Eat out less than three times a week

This was a win. As part of my buy nothing challenge updates every month, I kept track of how many times we went out to eat. It came out to be about eight to ten times a month. Definitely less than three times a week. By cooking at home, we were able to eat very well for cheap.

Refrain from buying new clothes

Check. This wasn’t terribly difficult for me. I have a lot of clothes already and I don’t have to dress all fancy to work. (Once I get into the hospital, I change into scrubs anyway.) The buy nothing challenge for the entire year of 2018 definitely helped keep me in check with not buying clothes.

Continue to travel for pennies on the dollar

This is an interesting one. We definitely traveled for pennies on the dollar by using the Southwest companion pass (scroll down to “Deals” to learn an even easier way to earn it!) to fly my wife, baby, and myself to FinCon18 Orlando for nearly free. The thing is, it was our only trip in 2018. In prior years, my wife and I were used to about four big international trips a year. We usually traveled with a vacation budget of $10,000 per year (including travel hacking points and miles). 2018 was different because simply put, traveling with a baby ain’t easy. So by not traveling, we saved a lot of money!

Decrease clinical time to 40 hours a week

For the most part, I have accomplished this. While I was used to working 60+ hours in past years, this year I cut down to about 1 FTE (full time equivalent), which equates to about 40 hours a week. Before (even as a resident), I was motivated to work extra hours to aggressively pay off all my student loans and save for a down payment on our house. Now that that’s done, there’s really no incentive to work so much anymore. Our lifestyle and living expenses can comfortably be supported by half of my base salary. Some physicians (like Crispy Doc) choose to cut back due to burnout. While others, like me, cut back to seek greater work-life balance. Once our baby was born, I deliberately chose to cut back to spend more time with her.

Get at least seven hours of sleep a night

I can’t really call this one a smashing success. While I actually do get about seven hours of sleep most nights, some nights I get much less. There’s just so many things I want to do and accomplish every day. It’s so easy to short change our sleep in favor of being more productive. But I shouldn’t. Sleep is immensely important to health and I need to prioritize it a bit more. There’s a difference between being productive and being efficiently productive. Efficiency is something I need to work on.

Maintain a clean home and living environment

This is generally easy for my wife and I because of our lifestyle that leans toward minimalism. Simply put, when you have less stuff and clutter, it’s a lot easier to keep the house clean. Admittedly though, I need to do a better job of picking up after myself. I have a tendency of leaving stuff around and not putting things in their rightful place. Changing that habit will make my wife happier, I’m sure. My wife also does a good job of maintaining a clean environment in the sense of eliminating potential toxins in our home. It’s important for us to limit our baby’s exposure to toxic chemicals.

Manage baby related expenses

We accomplished this. Most of what our baby needed was gifted to us through the baby shower. We were also able to borrow a lot of short term use baby paraphernalia from friends and family. For example, we borrowed a baby swing that she only used for a few weeks. Also, we are minimalist parents with minimal toys and we co-sleep with baby so there’s no need for an expensive nursery. The baby industry is just like the wedding industry. Through advertisements, marketing, and social pressure, the industry is really good at convincing people to buy crap that they really don’t need. Having a baby doesn’t have to be as expensive as you think.

Exercise and meditate daily

This one is a definite fail. I definitely didn’t meditate every day. And it’s debatable whether or not I actually exercised daily. I guess picking up the baby and changing her diapers can be considered exercise, right? In all seriousness, I probably went to the gym on average about twice a week. Not too shabby considering I’m a new dad. At least I haven’t developed a typical dad bod yet…

 

Luxury

The buy nothing challenge of 2018 was a fun test of discipline and parsimony. It was a way to flex both our frugality and minimalist muscles at the same time.

But there were times when I wondered if my wife and I were depriving ourselves of luxuries that we deserved.

Those thoughts were mostly fleeting, however. What are luxuries anyway?

Side Hustle Scrubs answers this with his post Luxury Items. Of course, these aren’t your conventional luxuries…

One the luxuries he says that a physician can easily afford is the ability to fully fund a back door Roth IRA. And in case you didn’t know, the maximum limit for Roth IRAs has increased to $6,000. So my wife and I have funded $12,000 for 2019.

For more information, check out Physician on Fire’s step by step guide to Vanguard Backdoor Roth for 2019. The 2017 iteration of this post was actually the catalyst for me to fire my own financial advisor. Once I learned how to manage my own investments and make Roth conversions myself, I no longer needed a financial advisor. Like many physicians, I owe a lot to the Physician on Fire and the White Coat Investor for helping me become more financially independent.

Of course, doctors might also be able to afford conventional luxuries like rolexes, cars, and houses.

Speaking of houses, after reading Accidental Fire’s post on house bloat, I felt immediate guilt for living in a McMasion that has more rooms and toilets than number of occupants. Oh well. At least my house doesn’t have 5 toilets…

 

Deals

Southwest Companion Pass

You may have read my November post outlining easy ways to earn the Southwest Companion Pass through December 2020.

Well, there’s an even easier and cheaper way to earn it.

The only caveat is that with this promotional deal, you’ll only have the Companion Pass through December 31, 2019 and not through 2020.

I first heard about this promotion through Lucky who blogs at One Mile At A Time.

Per One Mile At A Time…

Currently the following credit cards are offering this new bonus:

• Southwest Rapid Rewards® Plus Credit Card ($69 annual fee)
• Southwest Rapid Rewards® Premier Credit Card ($99 annual fee)
• Southwest Rapid Rewards® Priority Credit Card ($149 annual fee)

All three cards have identical bonuses, which include 30,000 Rapid Rewards points plus a promotional Companion Pass through December 31, 2019, when you spend $4,000 on purchases within the first three months.

These bonuses are limited time, and are only valid through February 11, 2019.

I don’t have any referral or affiliate links that lead to this promotional deal. But if you’re interested, check out these posts by One Mile At A Time and The Points Guy to attain the links with the promotion. (I have no financial relationship with those sites.)

Who should consider this Southwest promotion?

First of all, you have to be under the Chase 5/24 status to even be approved of any of these cards. In fact, all Chase cards are now subject to this 5/24 rule. In short, you will be denied if you opened 5 or more personal credit cards in the past 24 months.

If you’re a newbie to the world of credit card points and travel hacking, then opening one of these cards and earning the Companion Pass is a perfect start. Southwest Rapid Rewards points are generally worth about 1.5 cents per point. Therefore, the sign up bonus of 30,000 points (then doubled with the Companion Pass) is worth about $900 in flights. If you apply for the Plus credit card with a $69 annual fee, you clearly come out ahead as long as you’re able to meet the $4,000 minimum spending requirement.

The Companion Pass is even valuable to the more seasoned veterans of travel hacking who redeem miles for first class. This is because Southwest is perfect for positioning flights. Let me illustrate an example. Award availability for first and business class seats are getting more and more scarce these days. Unless you can book 11 months in advance or last minute (like a week in advance), then good luck. Randomly, seats may become available but it may not be at your home airport. For instance, if there’s a first class seat leaving New York but you live in California, all you have to do is take a cheap positioning flight to get there. Southwest flights are perfect for that situation.

And of course, you should only consider this promotion if you can actually use the Southwest companion pass. If you’re not even planning to travel in 2019, then there really is no point.

Fee-Free Visa Gift Cards

Tip of the hat to this post by the Frequent Miler for alerting me of a new limited time Visa Gift card promotion.

Essentially, there is no purchase fee when buying Visa gift cards at Staples next week from January 13 to January 19.

This especially makes sense if you have the Chase Ink Cash or the old Chase Ink Plus credit cards which earn 5% cash back or 5x Ultimate Rewards points at office supply stores. Therefore, for each card you purchase you can make a profit of $10. Of course, you can alternatively earn 1,000 Ultimate Rewards points that can be redeemed for even greater value.

The limit is one per customer, but YMMV. In my case, I’ve been able to purchase four or five of them on the same day.

It also only makes sense if there is a Staples located convenient close to you. Luckily, there are several stores close to me. It’s one of the ways I’m able to make easy money and points.

Earning more points and miles (or cash back) on tax day

Don’t forget that January 15 is tax day if you pay estimated quarterly income taxes.

Paying large amounts of taxes to Uncle Sam definitely hurts. But you can lessen the sting by getting some money (or credit card points) back when you pay your taxes online with a rewarding credit card.

The online tax payment service provider with the lowest fee is www.pay1040.com with a service fee of 1.87%. All you have to do is use a credit card that earns more than 1.87% cash (or points) back. That’s how I make a profit by paying my taxes every quarter. It’s one of the many reasons how I’m able to buy nothing yet earn thousands of credit card points.

 

How did you do on your New Year’s resolutions? Anybody planning to take advantage of some of these deals?