Happy Holidays!

by | Dec 30, 2021 | Life | 19 comments

Happy Holidays everyone! I hope it has been a wonderful Christmas / holiday / dividend season for all.

This was our first holiday season in the United States since we first hit the road back in 2012… 9 years ago?

It’s been… different.

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The Obamacare Tick-Tock

by | Dec 13, 2021 | Finances, Health | 55 comments

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare, the health insurance options available to us are standardized. It definitely makes it easier to compare and contrast.

And thanks to a series of somewhat dated yet excellent blog posts (e.g. Obamacare Optimization in Early Retirement and Obamacare Optimization vs Tax Minimization) I have a clear understanding of how to balance costs and benefits.

Unfortunately, that balance seems to require either a cheap plan with insanely high deductibles (just pay the first $13,000 of medical needs out of pocket, good times) or an OK plan with decent benefits but restrictive income challenges.

So which did I choose? Both.

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Autumn Adventures – Using 7 Hotel Free Night Certificates

by | Nov 2, 2021 | Travel | 23 comments

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These past couple of years have been light on travel, obviously. All of our best laid plans had to be postponed or cancelled.

Even though the travel industry has had to deal with a lot of adversity, some of the big players did try to do right by their customers. For example, extending status, extending point expiration, and the best of all, extending the expiration date on the hotel free night certificates offered to holders of certain credit cards.

Which is how we found ourselves with 7 free nights that had to be redeemed in the near future.

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