Money Tips Network

Earlier this month, Southwest announced a newer credit card offer that sounds like a stellar deal. Through Feb. 11, consumers who sign up for one of three personal Southwest credit cards and spend $4,000 on their card within three months of account opening would qualify for 30,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards points and the Southwest Companion Pass for the remainder of 2019.

If you’ve never heard of the Southwest Companion Pass before, it’s a sort of holy grail among credit card rewards enthusiasts. This pass allows a designated companion to fly free with you on any Southwest flight, whether you pay for your initial fare with cash or with Southwest Rapid Rewards points. It’s a perk that lets you save money on airfare or stretch your points further by making them worth twice as much.

Picking up a travel rewards credit card may seem like a good idea, but what happens when you can’t afford to cash in your points and miles? Maybe you thought you’d be able to travel soon, but fell on hard times. Or perhaps you decided to give credit card rewards a try only to wind up in over your head with credit card debt.

This kind of thing really does happen all the time — even to people who don’t expect it. After all, it doesn’t take much to throw your budget out of whack if you lose your job, get sick or injured, experience a loss in income, or face some expensive bills you hadn’t planned on or prepare for.

And, you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself. Sometimes travel just isn’t in the cards for various reasons, whether the money isn’t there or your health isn’t as good as it should be.

Another year, another search for the best savings account! That's right: It was almost exactly a year ago today that I was hunting for an online savings account so I polled you, the Get Rich Slowly readers.

Last year, Ally Bank was the clear winner. More GRS readers had their money there than anywhere else. But folks also liked Discover Bank, Synchrony Bank, and several others.

This year, it's my girlfriend who is trying to find a better bank. Kim is perfectly happy with Ally — in fact, she's a vocal crusader for Ally, which I find amusing — but at the same time, she's curious if she can find a better interest rate somewhere else.

Mary writes in:

Trying to follow your food strategies but I have a very picky 6 year old and a picky 2 year old at our dinner table. They refuse to eat most things that are put in front of them and insist usually on a certain kind of mac and cheese that’s not the cheapest. Thoughts?

When our children were younger, they were somewhat picky, though they grew out of that pickiness over time.

Our strategy for picky eating children was to simply prepare and serve the meal before bringing them to the table, which meant that they could decide for themselves whether to eat what was before them. This eliminated the sense that they could dictate what they were served at meal time. Since the food was already on their plate when they sat down, they lost that sense that they could dictate what was being prepared, which helped a lot.

Swago is on again through 1/28/2019. Earn up to 500 SB with Swago and 300 SB extra for signing up …

There are lots of “get paid to” (GPT) sites out there, but I haven't run across anyone that makes it as much fun as the guys at Prodege, the parent company that runs Swagbucks.

Swago (think “Swagbucks Bingo”) is just one of the ways that they make getting gift cards for what you do every day a bit more fun!

Over $1,000 in gift cards

My lifetime earnings on Swagbucks are over 97,000 SB. Each SB (the point system that Swagbucks uses) is worth about a cent, so 97,000 SB translates to $970.

If there’s one thing that’s certain about 2019, it’s that the year ahead will be filled with a great deal of uncertainty — at least on the economic front.

Trend experts and personal finance experts alike say the country’s current, polarized political climate, including the record-breaking government shutdown, has a lot to do with that, and is setting the stage for a year that no one can truly predict.

“At the moment, we are living in this world of unparalleled polarization,” said trend expert Daniel Levine, director of the trends consultancy firm the Avant-Guide Institute.

What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to summaries of five or fewer words. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Unknown banks
2. Roth conversion with low income
3. Bone broth and stock?
4. TaxAct basic version question
5. Credit card with bad credit
6. Dollar cost averaging
7. Abject poverty?
8. When to buy a book?
9. “Getting through” a cold

“It manifests itself in the shape of the lucky fool, defined as a person who benefited from a disproportionate share of luck but attributes his success to some other, generally very precise, reason.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness

I think we’ve all met some version of the “lucky fool” at some point in our lives.

Think of a person born wealthy, with their parents giving them every academic and professional advantage, and then believing that they acquired some small measure of success in life through sheer talent and hard work.

Think of a person who happened to be in the right place at the right time and now believes themselves to be a person of immense skill and value.

Think of the business owner who is immensely proud of their keen business sense and strategies when their success lies on the back of a handful of talented and hard working folks.

Over the last few years, I’ve really begun to appreciate a cup of coffee in the morning, particularly on days when I need to tackle a lot of tasks that require focus and ideas. My personal preference is cold, black coffee, cold brewed in the refrigerator and consumed without sweeteners or cream (I’m actually sipping a cup of this as I write this article), but everyone has their own particular way that they like their coffee. Sarah, for example, likes hers quite hot with a bit of cream in it.

Of course, a morning coffee routine can be quite expensive. I used to drink coffee pretty regularly back in the day, but I did it by stopping at a local coffee shop on my way to work and dropping $6 or $7.