Interesting marriage/divorce stats can be found here. http://www.avvo.com/legal-guides/ugc/marriage-divorce-statistics The one stat for 5 years married was that
- 20% end within 5 years.
How crazy is that? Kinda crazy and I'm very glad to not be one of the 5 five that got divorced within 5 years.(ya I know technically we're not at 5 years yet, but I'm very certain it ain't happening)
So what are we going to do to celebrate? We're going to go on a cruise to mexico the week after thanksgiving (colder here so we want to escape some of that + somewhat cheaper prices). So why am I writing about it now? I'm bored at work is one, but two this last week we booked it and I just went and checked and paid off the remaining balances. Remaining balances? Yes.
We paid for most of this vacation with rewards money accrued over the last year or so.
So for round trip flight tickets, 5 day cruise with food included (not including excursions, which are pricey and we're still deciding on which to do), our total bill outside of rewards so far is a whopping $286.51. I'm pretty happy with that price tag. I think it was the year London was born we went and stayed up at a really nice hotel, the Walsdorf Astoria,
and that stay was about as much (easy if you include food) as this entire cruise will be.
The breakdown is as follows:
Flights round trip = $544.40
We opened the Capital One Venture card (no annual fee for the first year so I've got a calendar reminder to have me close that later this year) that gave us 40,000 miles after spending I think 3 grand in 3 months. Those rewards removed $481.83 off of our flight cost and so we paid $62.57 to cover the difference.
5 day cruise = $764.18
We had one credit card with Chase that gave us $262.24 for spending again several grand in 3 months and then we also opened up a checking account with them and switched our tithing deposits into that account to get an additional $300 in rewards for a total rewards amount of $562.24. We paid the difference of $198.94 plus I used the $25 that was deposited to initiate the checking account there to pay for it as well.
Total vacation cost = $1,308.58
Total rewards = $1,044.07
So our out of pocket for an awesome vacation:
$198.94 + $25.00 + $62.57 = $286.51
Total amount of time spent getting rewards, paying them off, setting up accounts was 1 maaaaaybe 2 hours tops.
And if anyone decides to do this for themselves in the future it shouldn't hurt your credit really unless you're carrying high balances and missing payments. My credit score is still in the 780-790 and low 800's even after opening up all these cards and stuff. (you get your credit score each time you open a credit account just as info). Also some of these cards I found through Mr. Money Mustache's credit card post/forum/section thingy so you can check out what might work for you there.
In the future I may venture into more annual fee type cards because even with a $70-$120 annual fee the initial rewards of $400-$500 more than make up for it. Plus I want to try and use some of the cards that are more regional when I can plan that far ahead for trips to Alaska (come on family lets still plan that!) and to the south pacific like Fiji and what not.
So there you have it my rewards post. May the force be with you. Oh and....
285 days till our cruise!
http://www.carnival.com/cruise-ships/carnival-imagination.aspx
