Happened to notice today on the treasury direct site that they are discontinuing the ability to get savings bonds as part of your tax return. I’d actually been leveraging this to eke out an extra 5k a year. Sad times.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

That's too bad, but the tax prep software I used (FreeTaxUSA) didn't support i-bonds when I was interested, so I never took advantage. Now I just buy t-bills, and I'm happy enough with that, especially because the TD website sucks.

But I know a lot of people find a lot of value in i-bonds, so it's sad that it's no longer an option. I wish they'd increase the amount you can buy instead.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Company announced they will be doing mass layoffs soon. They said if anyone wants to volunteer for a retirement package to let them know. If only I was closer to my number...alas maybe next time (assuming I don't get involuntarily cut).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I just got my highest annual fee credit card ever, the US Bank Altitude Reserve (no longer open to new applicants it seems), and I'm pretty excited about it. I've done some credit card churning off-and-on over the last few years, but never got around to this one, despite it being so popular among credit-card enthusiasts, mostly because we haven't traveled much recently. We are planning a big trip in the next year or so, so I jumped on the offer.

It has a $400 annual fee w/ a $325 annual credit (dining works), so I think of it more as a $75 annual fee card. It earns 3x (worth 4.5 cents on travel) when using mobile payment apps, so I bought a Pixel Watch used for ~$120, and I expect my regular Costco spending (we spend about $1k/month) to make up for both the watch and the fee in the first year (it should earn 2.5% more than the 2% Costco card, and that adds up to a bit over the watch + $75 annual fee for our spending). There are some other perks too, which will be pretty nice.

I thought this would be one of those cards I'd just close after using up the signup bonus, but there's a decent chance I'll keep this one longer term. If I only use it for Costco and other places that work w/ my new smart watch, it'll be worth keeping, provided we can use the points for travel.

Do any of you do credit card churning? Do you have any credit cards you particularly like?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

I don't do churning, mainly because I'm lazy. I do use tap to pay with my smartwatch and have to say it is so convenient. I love not having to pull out my wallet and cards to pay. I did have a little snafu when I first started using it. I went on vacation to Canada and the mobile card got incorrectly flagged as fraud, so it kept getting denied. I had to call when I got home and sort it out.