👋 Hi Reader,

Happy Saturday! I'm sharing some of the best deals and finds from the past week:

• 💬 Listener Q&A: Money, points & career
• 👑 New ways to earn Alaska status
• 🧾 Self-driving bookkeeping
• 🏨 Free points at Hyatt and IHG
• 💸 Latest bank bonuses (up to $1,000)
• 📬 50% off my favorite virtual address and mailbox
• 🔁 Latest transfer bonuses and more!

If you enjoyed reading, please feel free to forward this to someone who might too (and if that's you, don't forget to subscribe here!).

Thanks so much!

Chris

💬 My Recent AMA Episode

​

In this week's episode, I took a ton of listener questions on points and miles, credit card optimization, travel tips, career growth, top podcasts and more. The episode was even better because my good friend Kevin Rose joined to help host the episode. I'm planning to do another AMA episode soon, so if you have any questions you want to ask, please share them here.

🤑 Latest Deals

📬 50% Off Stable's Virtual Address and Mailbox

I recently started using a virtual mailbox service called Stable to be the address of record for the business, keeping my home address private. Now, I can now manage my mail, forward packages, deposit checks and a lot more – all from the web. I'm a huge fan Stable, and you can get 50% off your first year here.

🔁 Current Transfer Bonuses

Here are transfer bonuses you might be able to use to score an awesome deal for an upcoming trip:

• Virgin Atlantic: 40% bonus till 11/30​
• AirFrance/KLM FlyingBlue: 20% bonus till 11/10​

As always, I wouldn't recommend taking advantage of these if you don't have a trip in mind. Here’s a list of historical transfer bonuses, so you can get a good sense of what to expect in the future.

💸 Latest Bank Bonuses

If you haven’t already listened to Ep​ #184, I share how you can earn thousands of dollars through bank and brokerage bonuses. Here are some bank bonuses that you can leverage to maximize your savings.

• ​Up to $1,500 from Citi: Open a new checking account before 1/7/25 and maintain a qualifying deposit for 90 days + complete the required activities.
• ​Up to $900 from a Popular Bank*: A best-ever bonus for opening an eligible checking AND savings account. Set up a direct deposit to the checking account and deposit a total of $15k into the savings account within 30 days, then maintain the balance for an additional 60 days.
• ​Up to $400 from Chime: Open a new Chime account through Swagbucks or MyPoints before 10/31/24 and complete the required steps. Earn 39k Swagbucks worth $390 (+ get a $10 bonus here if you don’t have a Swagbucks account) or 64.6k MyPoints worth $400.
• ​Up to $125 from Robinhood: This is a targeted bonus for Robinhood Gold subscribers. Deposit at least $2k before 10/22/24 and maintain your Gold subscription till 10/25/24.

Reminder that Robinhood also has it's HOOD Week until 10/27, where you can get 3% on IRA transfers and 1-2% on Brokerage transfers.

* For compliance reasons, we can’t include names of all banks.

🛫 Travel, Points & Miles

👑 New Ways to Earn Alaska Elite Miles in 2025!

Alaska Airlines is updating its Mileage Plan in 2025, making it easier to earn elite status. Changes include earning elite qualifying miles on award travel and credit card spending ($1 EQM per $3 spent, up to 30k miles annually), plus bonus miles for non-airline partners like Lyft. Members can also roll over 10k miles after hitting 85k miles in a year. The only downside is reduced mileage credit for some partner flights booked outside of Alaska channels.

🏨 500 Easy/Free IHG Points

While it's not a lot of points, it's probably one of the easiest way to earn 500 IHG One Rewards points. You just need to download the IHG app before 12/31 and sign in with your IHG account.

🚲 Earn Bonus Hyatt Points for Peloton Workouts

Hyatt and Peloton announced that Hyatt members can earn 100 bonus points for each 20-minute Peloton workout they complete at a Hyatt gym (up to 10 workouts/month). Since I'll be at a Hyatt property for FinCon next week, I'm going to use this as an incentive to work out as much as I can. You can link your Hyatt and Peloton accounts here.

🕵️ Great Finds

🧾 Kick Launches Self-Driving Bookkeeping

Kick recently launched their AI-driven bookkeeping software to the public and I'm really excited to be using it (and to no longer be using Quickbooks). You can check it out (and I think get a discount) here.

📈 31 Years of Stock Market Returns

Ben Carlson analyzed 31 years of S&P 500 data, showing that despite crises and downturns, the market still averaged a 10% annual return. The key takeaway: while short-term losses and volatility can be painful, a long-term investment strategy remains the most reliable approach.

🫀Finding an Affordable Coronary Calcium Scan

Last month I shared this article that called the coronary calcium score test "the highest ROI $100 you can spend on your health." However, I got a lot of follow-up questions about how to find a place to do get the test done. I didn't have a great answer until I came across this service from Instalab that makes it easy to find an affordable test near you.

💬 Parting Thoughts

As always, thanks so much for reading - I hope you enjoyed it!

Please feel free to reply to this email with any thoughts, feedback or even if you just want to say hi! :)

Chris