The year in review.

 personal insights  2 Responses »
Dec 302009
 

2009 has been a big year for me. I don’t even know where to start. I’ve traveled to a bunch of places, found a wonderful girl, changed colleges, etc.

First off, my finances are shot. I’m not in debt but I’m exactly sitting pretty like I was at the start of the year. This wasn’t due to poor decisions or anything but this year I decided to do a lot of traveling and that’s where the majority of my money has gone.

Back in February I visited Vietnam, Singapore, and then Bali. In March I went to the Dominican Republic with a bunch of friends for spring break. In June I went out to Los Angeles which included a mini road trip out to Las Vegas. In August I went back to Vietnam with two friends and it was even more enjoyable than the February trip. Last week I went back to Las Vegas with my girlfriend and a big group of people. Kinda strange how I ended up in two places twice this year although I didn’t exactly plan it out that way.

Now onto Kiva which I still feel passionate about but have scaled down my lending considerably this year. In my 2008 update I think I ended the year with 1,008 loans. It looks like for 2009 I’m going to end the year with 1,126 loans which means I only funded another 118 this year. My portfolio was hit with 37 defaults and with the total amount lost being $479.08. My default rate is however only 1.53% which is still lower 1.87% average default rate.

Although I’m worse off financially after the conclusion of 2009 I can confidentially say I’m a lot happier than I was in 2008.

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 Posted by dan at 6:22 pm

Let’s buy a beer company.

 interesting  No Responses »
Dec 302009
 

Pabst Brewing Company, which is known for their Pabst Blue Ribbon or PBR brand, is up for sale. The charitable trust that owns the company must sell it by 2010. Charitable trusts aren’t suppose to own for profit companies and the IRS is forcing them to sell according to this CNN article.

The asking price is $300 million and 2 ad companies are using crowdsourcing to buy the company. There’s more information on the website which is rightly named buyabeercompany.com.

 Posted by dan at 9:12 am

Take advantage of American Express gift card cashback.

 deals  1 Response »
Dec 142009
 

Generally cash back portals will give you a percentage of your purchase back when you shop through their portal. Various cash back websites are offering a percentage back for purchasing American Express gift cards. This is a great opportunity for some free money.

Given that I know of no way to liquidate American Express gift cards into cash I’ll only buy gift card amounts I can reasonable spend within the next few months.

Let’s say I plan on spending around $3,000 in the near future. I’ll purchase a 3k gift card from American Express using BigCrumbs which nets me 4.5% cashback on my purchase which is $135.

Since orders over $200 cannot be shipped via USPS I’ll choose Express 2nd day which is temporarily discounted to $5.95. Using promotion code AFL420 gets $5.95 off shipping. Therefore all I have to pay is the $3.95 gift card fee.

Let’s do the math here:
$135 (cashback) – $3.95 (gift card fee) = $131.05 net gain

Oh yeah, you can use a credit card to make your purchase and I prefer to use a travel reward card that nets me 1 mile for every $1 spent.

So I’ll net $131.05 AND 3004 frequent flier miles. Sweet deal?

or rather let’s say I make the gift card purchase using a regular 1% cashback card. I’ll net an addition $30.04 cashback.

That brings my net gain to $161.09 or 5.36% of $3,000. I’ve effectively gotten 5.36% on all the spending.

Now if I only knew of a way to turn these gift cards into cash so I could churn the process and use the money to pay off my existing credit cards then it’d be a little moneymaker.

Here are a few cash back websites and the corresponding cashback percentages offered.
BigCrumbs 4.5% cashback
Fatwallet 3% cashback
eBates 2.5% cashback ($5 sign up bonus)

Note: Today, Dec 14th, eBates is having a Cyber Monday II promotion where they are doubling the cashback on certain merchants. American Express Gift Cards is one of them and therefore you’ll get double the cash back. That’s a whopping 5%. If you’re already a member you’ll get an easy $5 sign-up bonus too.

 Posted by dan at 9:11 am

Song from Amazon Kindle commercial.

 interesting  1 Response »
Dec 102009
 

That song from the Amazon Kindle commercials is really growing on me. It’s a bit called “Fly Me Away” by Annie Little.

The song is available as a free mp3 download over at Amazon too. FYI, you can skip the Amazon Downloader option and just download the song (look for the option).

 Posted by dan at 5:04 pm

Further clarifying how Kiva works and personal update.

 Kiva  No Responses »
Dec 102009
 

I got an e-mail regarding the kiva blog post about clarifying how kiva works. They seem to want to clarify some topics that were not totally clear to people such as where their money goes and whatnot. Check it out.

I’m still active in Kiva lending although not quite as active as I was last year. Ever since I hit the 1,000 loan mark I’ve been crawling along with around 4-12 loans a month. The main reason for this is I just don’t have the funds anymore to cover heavy lending. The second reason is that I don’t have access to cheap 0% credit anymore that I would use to fund additional loans.

I’ll probably do a year end update but as of now my total loans is 1,120 loans. The loan stats are delinquency rate 6.91% , default rate 1.54% and the total amount lost through defaults is $479.08.

 Posted by dan at 8:58 am
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