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Not a whole lot particularly stands out this month in my spending. The only real thing of note is the somewhat higher travel spending. This was partly due to taking a weekend trip to Minneapolis for the GoCurryCracker FI meetup. I spent about $100 on the roundtrip flight and used points for hotels rooms, so the trip itself was fairly cheap. While I’m traveling, I also include any restaurant spending in the travel because I consider restaurants to be part of the trip, and because I rarely eat at restaurants when not traveling, I want to track them separately....

This month was an interesting one because I spent about half of it away on work training. As a result, much of my normal expenses were reduced because the company was paying for my lodging and food. Well, technically I paid for it and I will be reimbursed sometime next month. No complaints from me because I still get to collect all the points and miles that come along with travel spending at no cost!...

This month was pretty stressful at work. A lot of emergent work, and therefore emergent overtime. But the market is still chugging along, so no complaints from me. 

Crossed the $150k milestone this month. Was travelling for the first half of the month, so some of my ordinary expenses dropped while some my discretionaries went up. All in all, a pretty average month as far as spending goes.

Pretty good business progress this month. It’s chugging along without too much additional effort at this point. Still not quite profitable yet, but it’s getting there. At current rate, will break even sometime in September/October and with any luck will score some profits in Q4 to finish out the year. In other news, hit 2 mini-milestones this month. The first is reaching $100k of savings from work. This represents after-tax money that I have earned from working which I funneled into savings instead of spending on current consumption....

What good are earning credit card rewards if you don’t use them? Here’s how I have used my points to save money on travel since I started earning them a year ago. Since I have focused mostly on earning points, I haven’t had as many opportunities to spend them yet, so this post will be considerably shorter than Part 1. Note that I don’t count travel expenses covered by the Sapphire Reserve’s $300 annual travel credit as a redemption as I view it more as a rebate of the $450 annual fee, making the card effectively $150 annually....

Lot of progress this month due to fortuitous timing of paychecks (3 this month), the last of my overtime pay, business income, and a modest tax refund. The remainder of the year will likely look much more ordinary on the income side, so I will have to step up my business income and hope for the best in the markets if I want to keep up the pace from the last couple of months....

As part of my ongoing quest to optimize my finances, I took up credit card churning almost exactly one year ago today. Let’s start from the very beginning (a very good place to start!) What is churning? In order to attract new customers, banks often offer lucrative sign-up bonuses to those who open up credit card accounts and then meet a minimum spending threshold on the new account within a few months of signing up....

Obviously, a significant amount of progress this month, mostly due to my company’s annual bonus getting paid out. Thanks to it, I was able to max out my Roth IRA for the year, as well as pay off the larger than average credit card bills from starting my business last month, all without having to touch my emergency fund. Those expenses also allowed me to earn my final batch of rewards from credit card sign-ups, some of which I will put to good use on my upcoming trip....