I’m having a great time writing again, and I want to thank you for the warm welcome back. You’ve taught me some new tricks about the hobby. Even more important to me is you have reinforced my belief that “change is hard”, particularly on us old guys.
Ariana and I have been going back and forth about the recent lack of killer manufactured spending opportunities. Another friend of mine in the game has gotten really discouraged with the loss of the Dosh deal at Kroger, which was just a heyday for us in our location.
When that gravy train disappeared, I tested my lower limit and tried driving an hour round-trip to my closest Sam’s Club. (Be grateful if you have on nearby that is on Dosh).
Although I found out that I didn’t want to make that trip for the return on my time, I considered it a “Win” as it resulted in my having a lower limit. I know what I won’t do.
My hourly rate
I’m looking to make more than $30 per hour if I’m driving my own car in touristy traffic to give me that feeling of accomplishment on a lazy retirement day. My goal and mindset was “Let’s take Katy to lunch today and do it for free!” I was fixated on that Dosh rebate that made the deal worthwhile.
But greed took away my short-term memory. My local Kroger store has been my friend all year at 4x on my Amex Gold and was my friend before Dosh with my 3X Navy Federal credit card.
With the Dosh bonus, I had to do just one prepaid card each for Katy and I to hit that $30 per hour rate. I completely forgot about doing bigger numbers per trip and it took me several weeks to “snap out of it.”
Calculating manufactured spending cost
So with Dosh now gone at my “10-minutes-away Kroger”, all I had to do was up my card numbers per trip back to two each to hit my minimum:
$505.95 x 2 x 2 people = $60.71 gross.
– $27.80 in fees and money order purchases nets $32.90.
Again, in less than an hour.
Why do I (maybe we) make this so difficult at times? Deep down I know the game is constantly changing. But when I find a winner, I fixate on it and struggle when it goes away. Now that Dosh is out of my mind at Kroger, I’ll up my grocery purchases over time to $
505.95 x 3 x two people = $91.07 gross.
– $41.70 fees for a net of $50 for that same “less than an hour.”
Final thoughts
Keep me on my toes and I’ll try to do the same for you. We will all be better, more efficient, more profitable players by sharing what we know and see in our own market places. I hope to get reacquainted with some of you at the Chicago Seminars.
And P.S: Let’s try not to be too hard on ourselves. After all, we do call it a game.
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