Citi Forward Card Bonus & Rewards Follow-up: 5x Rewards at Restaurants and Amazon.com
I promised to follow-up on the features of the Citi Forward card after getting mine, and am finally getting around to it. Read on to see how you can get a $100 gift card and also 3.45% cash back with this card at restaurants, Amazon.com, and more.
Sign-Up Bonus
New cardholders get 6,000 bonus ThankYou points after $50 in purchases made within 3 months. In addition, you get another 5,000 points for choosing paperless statements within 3 months.
The 11,000 bonus ThankYou points showed up promptly. I signed up for paperless statements immediately, and received the 5,000 points on my very first statement. I made the required $50 in purchases during the first month (showed up on the first statement), and received the 6,000 points on my second statement.
5x ThankYou Points
This card works off the same ThankYou points system as many other Citibank cards. 10,000 points = $100 gift card at stores like Sears, Macy’s, Staples, Old Navy, Gap, etc. 12,700 points = $100 towards a student loan or mortgage payment. 14,000 points = $100 prepaid Visa credit card. 14,500 points = $100 statement credit.
What makes this card unique is that you get 5 points for every $1 you spend on books, movies, music, and at restaurants. On everything else, you get the plain vanilla 1 reward point for every $1 spent. No annual fee.
5x Rewards at Restaurants
Again, at 1 penny per point with gift cards, getting 5x points is like getting 5% back when eating out. Even if you convert to straight cash, that’s still 3.45% cash back at restaurants (5/1.45). Or 3.57% back if you are okay with prepaid Visa card, which I am since they are usable anywhere that takes credit cards.
I have gotten my 5x rewards at fast food restaurants (McDonald’s), chain sit-down restaurants (Chili’s, etc), and also mom-and-pop places.
5x Rewards at Amazon.com
I can also officially confirm that Amazon.com is considered a bookstore. This is true even if your entire purchase (or any of it) did not contain books. I made one purchase with books, and one with only electronics, and got 5x points for both. So you can indeed get 3.45% cash back at Amazon, or 5% back in the form of gift cards.
The 5x points show up separately under the “Bonus Points by Category Earned” on your online statement:
I can also confirm it works at Regal movie theaters. I have this card stored online at my Amazon account so I don’t forget, and it’s in my wallet marked for restaurants only. Makes it easy to track my dining-out budget!
My Dog’s Favorite Chew Toy Is Now Free
This might be completely obvious to others, and I’m probably opening myself to ridicule, but I only recently discovered it and find it awesome. If you have dog that like to chew things, many of those fancy plush squeak toys last about a day. But if you take an empty plastic water bottle, slip in inside an old sock, and tie off the end, you now have an endless supply of free dog toys!
I did this after finding $10 “bottle buddies” at a dog store, and have already gone through three of these things in a little over a week. Removing the cap and ring helps avoid a choking hazard.
20 Great Places to Find Coins
I like to walk and when I walk, I am always on the lookout for coins. I don’t really consciously do this — it has become a habit over the years. What I do know is that most years I add over $100 to my savings (you would need to keep over $10,000 in your [...]How to remove a judgement from credit report?
Creating Your Own Three Legged Stool of Retirement
You may have heard the term “three-legged stool”, taken from the idea that a stool needs three legs to maintain balance. (Photographers use tripods, no duopods or quadrapods. Even a four-legged chair will likely wobble.)
Old Three-Legged Stool of Retirement
Traditionally, the components of the three-legged stool of retirement have been presented as Social Security benefits, Pensions, and Personal Savings (401k, IRA, and other assets).
This is partially supported by data from the Social Security Administration:
The Qualified Retirement Plans slice combines pensions, 401ks, and IRAs together, making it hard to see the breakdown. The Other Assets include income from other investments like capital gains or dividends from taxable accounts and real estate. We observe that a quarter of all income in retirement is still from working for a paycheck.
Shaping Your Own Retirement Legs
These are just averages, and each of us will have their own path to retirement. If you’re planning on retiring early, you won’t have Social Security yet. For people born after 1960, the full retirement age for benefits is already 67, and expect it to rise even further the younger you are. I think some form of SS will still be around when I’m 70, but who knows.
1. Flexible, reliable, part-time income
We already saw that lots of people over 65 still work. Even though I want financial independence early, I’ve also come to realize that I’ll never stop working. Ask yourself what are you really going to do in retirement? In addition, I think it would be stressful to stare at a big pile of cash and think to myself - “Crap, I hope this lasts for 30+ years!” Maintaining a part-time job and the related skills would help my cashflow, and also ensure that I could return to the workforce if disaster strikes.
I would want a part-time job that could provide some socialization and a sense of improving your community or helping others. Most of my imagined jobs involve teaching, coaching, sporadic technical consulting, or something tourism-related. It can’t be 9-5, and I’d want to be able to take months off at a time. This won’t be easy to find, so I need to start developing more “fun” skills as well as personal relationships now.
2. Personal Savings: Accumulate 30 times annual (non-housing) expenses
Without a pension or Social Security, you’ll need to live off your own savings. If you invest in a balanced portfolio of 60% stocks and 40% bonds, studies have estimated that you can have a “safe withdrawal rates” of about 4% per year. By being a bit more conservative than that, this means accumulating 30 times your annual expenses.
For example, if your annual expenses are $30,000, then you need to save $900,000. This is a very general rule of thumb. Taxes are tricky, but if your income is only $30,000 per year, you won’t be paying very much income tax. Check out the historical effective tax rate over a past 25 year timespan:
For reference in 1995, to be in the bottom 50% (safely in Q1/Q2) your adjusted gross income had to be under $31,000. And this even includes payroll taxes of about 9%, which you won’t have to pay on investment income. The result: very low taxes (possibly under 5%) if you keep your expenses down! Which brings me to…
3. A Paid Off House
I don’t think everyone needs to own a home. However, I happen to enjoy many of the intangibles of owning a home, I love my house and neighborhood, and plan on staying here a while. The cost of this leg can vary widely, from a $1,900 house in Detroit to… where I live, so choose where you want to live carefully. 
Financially, owning a home protects you from future inflation and rising rents. You are still subject to property taxes and maintenance costs.
In addition, not having to pay rent means you need less income from savings, reducing your needed nest egg in #2 above. You also pay less taxes. Withdrawing additional money from an IRA, for example, will mean subjecting them to your marginal tax rate, which could be 25% or higher. So to pay $750 in rent, you’d have to withdraw $1,000. Not very efficient.
So there, you have it, my three-legged stool. Yours may be very different - you may like renting, have a pension, own investment property, or have some other sources of income. I still worry about health insurance, but I’m still hopeful that some positive health care reform will occur that will create affordable health insurance for individuals under 65 not covered by an employer group plan.
* You can read more about the last two legs in my related post A Quick & Dirty Plan To Reach Financial Freedom.
Finding Treasure
Every so often, hard work and dedication really do pay off in fabulous ways! Recently, Mary Hannaby, a 57 year old English housewife, hit the jackpot while metal detecting in a field that she had searched many times over the years. An avid treasure hunter for the past 7 years, Mrs. Hannaby found [...]Your Take: Rent Control Based On Tenant’s Income?
I saw this LA Times article San Francisco beefs up renter protections over at SavingFreak, and it nagged at me all day as both a recent renter and possible future landlord.
Here’s the quick summary. City Supervisor Chris Daly introduced legislation to add the following additional tenant “protections”:
- Landlords cannot raise the rent above 33% of tenant’s income. An alternative amendment restrict this to situations where the tenant has a “hardship” - defined as being unemployed, having wages cut, or living on a fixed income and receiving a cost of living increase.
- Allows tenants to add roommates other than family to help pay rent, even if explicitly forbidden in the rental contract.
My take. I think this going too far, and I am glad the mayor seems to agree and will veto it. Already 88% of rental units in San Francisco are subject to rent control, with annual rent increases being capped at an average of 2% per year. Now a landlord must charge rent based on a person’s future income? How can they control that? And then tenants can bring in whomever they want as additional roommates, also creating more wear and tear on the place?
This is different from having the government provide unemployment benefits, or even “bailouts”. This is forcing individuals to directly subsidize other individuals arbitrarily. Imagine being a cabinet maker and being forced to accept a 50% discount to any customer who lost their job recently, regardless of your own costs or financial needs. I echo the concerns of this editorial:
We all like the idea of businesspeople doing the benevolent thing when their customers are hurting, but it is not fair for a public entity to force such behavior on a private one.
Am I way off base here? Let me know in the comments.
20 Inexpensive Ways to Spruce Up Your Home
I was talking to a neighbor the other day and she expressed how frustrated she is with her current house and how much she’d like to move. As we talked, it became clear to me that it’s not the actual house, neighborhood, or lot she hates, it’s that the house is older and needs some [...]Prefect credit score and rating
Assorted Links and the Tuesday 10
The Accidental Slumlord
A writer whose lives in Massachusetts buys a two-unit rental property in Pocatello, Idaho for $62,750 during the housing boom. Read what happens when he actually visits his house and deals with his tenants.
OptionsHouse Brokerage - $2.95 Stock Trades
Another new discount online brokerage with cheap trades, but actually won #1 in Trade Experience in recent Barron’s Broker Survey, beating out E-Trade. Offers flat-rate pricing at $2.95 for stock trades regardless of number of shares, and $9.95 flat for options (no per-contract fee). $1,000 to open, $100 balance needed to trade. Anyone try them?
New research sheds light on the habits of successful savers
Includes a lot of expected characteristics, but worth a skim to see how you compare.
AMC Theatres A.M. Cinema
“A.M.Cinema, a new program providing early-morning guests the opportunity to see first-run movies at the best ticket price of the day. The program invites moviegoers to visit their local AMC theatre before noon Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays to enjoy ticket prices of $4, $5 or $6 depending on the theatre and market.”
F*** my job, Selling Everything!
Found in the Best of Craigslist section. Have you ever had the urge to simply sell everything you own, cash out your investments, quit your job, and just travel the world until the money runs out? This guy did.
Credit Bailout: Issuers Slashing Card Balances
People are haggling directly with credit card companies to lower their amount owed. However, the articles neglects to go into detail about the impact on credit scores. I suspect that there will still be significant damage to your credit if you “settle” in this way.
Tuesday 10: Good stuff from other personal finance blogs
- How much do people spend on clothes by Jim at FreeBy50
- Emotional Barriers to Negotiating and Haggling by Flexo at Consumerism Commentary
- My IRA asset allocation at GreenPandaTreehouse
- Things You Own End Up Owning You by David at MyTwoDollars
- On Spending Consciously by Patrick at Cash Money Life
- Pay attention to your money by Single Ma at Fabulous Financials
- Retired at 31: An Early Retirement Story by FrugalTrader at Million Dollar Journey
- Tax Deductible Mortgages in Canada by Mr. Cheap at FourPillars
- Mid Year Financial Checkup by Madison at MyDollarPlan
- Fun Fund Sell-o-Meter by J at BudgetsAreSexy
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