Following an epic collapse of double bubbles in the stock market and real estate prices, Japan “suffered” 2+ decades of stagnation and deflation.
You would be hard pressed to find somebody who hasn’t at least heard of Japan’s Lost Decade(s.) It’s a popular topic people raise as soon as our early retirement and living off an investment portfolio comes up in polite conversation.
“Oh man, what are you doing to do when the United States (inevitably) experiences it’s Lost Decade(s)?!”
“20 years of 0% investment performance is bound to put a dent in your retirement plans, hehe”
“I want to retire early too but I’m really concerned about a Japan-style financial collapse. What can I do?”
That last question is probably the best – What lessons can we learn from Japan’s challenging times?
Advertiser Disclosure: This site is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as CardRatings.com. This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
In last week’s article, I gave a high-level view of award travel by introducing terminology, outlining basic earning and redemption strategies, and, hopefully, enticing you to give this travel hacking thing a shot yourself.
That post included a lot of information in a small number of words, so over the next few weeks I’ll be circling back to unpack various topics to explain them in more detail to give a deeper understanding of how to best use miles and points for luxury travel. I’ve also made note of the ideas and suggestions mentioned in the comments which I will weave into future posts.
Today, I’ll cover one of the most important topics in award travel: transferable currencies.
2019 was our 7th full year of post-work life and probably our most “normal” year to date – we lived in a normal city, Jr went to a normal school, and we did normal life things. It was nice. And different.
We did manage ~5 weeks of travel vacation (Thailand, Vietnam, Bali) and I took most of the summer off from anything with a screen, which was also very wholesome and normal and nice.
So of course something happened that will completely change our lives, forever.
Advertiser Disclosure: This site is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as CardRatings.com. This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
GCC: Welcome to the new Go Curry Cracker Award Travel series, featuring author and master travel hacker Brandon Chase. How to travel further/cheaper/more often/more luxuriously has been a much requested topic and it has finally arrived.
“Travel Hacking”, “Award Travel”, “The Hobby” – whatever you call it, the concept is the same: leveraging rewards programs to travel more frequently and luxuriously while paying less out of pocket.
In an age of dizzying advertisements and nonstop promotions from banks, hotels, and airlines all vying for your eyes and dollars it can be difficult to decipher the most advantageous programs to focus your attention on. However, if you are able to distill the overwhelming amount of noise down to useful and actionable strategies, the benefits can be incredible. I’m here to help you do that.
Sometime recently there was a big hubbub about a personal finance personality saying, and I do paraphrase, “If you didn’t spend $5/day on coffee you would have $1 million at retirement.” (Orman, maybe?)
Anyhoo, the responses went something like:
“You can’t save your way to wealth!”
“Nobody gets rich saving $5!”
“F you! I like my coffee!”
My response was a little more incredulous… “Coffee costs $5?!”
