Usually a year flies by, but this one sure seems like a long one because so many things happened. I spent two months in Taiwan and one in China learning Chinese. I went on vacations to Japan and Portugal using points and filed taxes for my business. But this blog started with the idea of sharing interesting ways to make or save some extra money, so let’s get to how this year went.
I’m including my wife’s activity as well because we are a great team.
Credit card signup bonuses:
British Airways – 100,000
Marriott – 87,500
Southwest – 50,000
AA – 150,000
American Express – 75,000
Merrill + – $1000 for flights
Barclays Arrival World Plus – $525 for travel
Shopping Portal bonus miles – 40,000
Total – 502,500 + $1525 travel ($9,025 value)
Additional income:
Cashback ($1000)
Cashback portals ($250)
Lyft bonuses ($3000)
Uber bonus ($750) The driving was little more than break even, so I’m not including it.
Reselling ($1000)
Bank bonuses ($1550)
Staples credit ($360)
Total – $7,910
Conclusion
I have about $7,910 in bonus income which is about $6,000 after taxes and over $9,000 worth of travel which I am consistently using to travel. I used the Staples credit to buy some stuff I need around the house as well as a jet drive for our MacBook. The beauty of all this extra money is that it was all earned in a way that didn’t put me at risk of losing money.
However, the year was not without some failure. My decision to try to install garage doors didn’t work out, but that only cost me $100 in losses. A terrible decision was to buy gold as it was risky and although it earned some points, definitely cost me lost of money. In addition, if I was more invested I could have earned 13% since the beginning of the year. So, it was a pretty good year overall and as I hinted last week, next year will be a big transition so I don’t think I’ll be able to match it. Next week I will share what we’ll be doing.