I booked travel with all my points already, as I fully expect massive devaluations as everyone rushes to travel post-COVID.
I’m not really thinking about the long term future - just the halcyon period roughly next summer when people can do recreational things in public again. By that point in theory my recovery stonks should have more or less recovered and I’ll be back in boring index funds.
International or domestic?
Probably a good idea.
How does Cinemark look?
International. Unloading Amex points for airfare and Marriott points for hotels. Airline redemptions have been getting worse for a long time and it’s only a matter of time before the masses figure out the 10x value on Amex international air travel redemptions (though it is a lot of work to execute).
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Put me in the masses category regarding the 10x comment. Got a link to explain?
I have a Chase Sapphire card that I pay for everything with. The deal if I exchange my points for miles is pretty sweet. Obviously paying cash for miles sux - but I think that’s what Riverman is comparing it to.
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The greatest deal travel deal I ever had was Southwests companion pass. We’ll probably do it again in my wife’s name assuming they still have it.
Here is a decent summary. Note that its getting really hard to find award seats, so much so that I hired a service to find availability for me when I booked my upcoming trip. For $100/ticket a mega-expert will search all the airlines for you and find dates/times when you can use points. This was easily worth it as I booked a roundtrip ticket that has a cash price of $8,000 for 110,000 points (7 cents per point). You can do even better sometimes, if you aren’t picky on dates.
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The good news is as my AMC tanks it becomes less and less a % of my overall portfolio. So its swongs hurt me less. #BLESSED
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Question for all the finance, actuary wizes. I pay my Dad $600/month so he can stay retired. He just turned 79 and is very healthy except for glaucoma, which shouldn’t affect his life expectancy. He stays physically and mentally active.
Is there any universe where it makes sense for me to buy some kind of annuity for him that pays $600/month for as long as he lives?
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Not unless you think your judgement is better than the actuaries.
The only possible product that makes any possible sense is an SPIA (single premium immediate annuity). But I would advise against it. No flexibility and really crappy payouts given current interest rates.
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With super low interest rates annuities are expensive. So probably not a good idea. The one meaningful risk that annuities help with is longevity risk, i.e. the non-intuitive “risk” of living long and running out of money. But its expensive to hedge that risk via annuity.
But do the actuaries know how healthy my dad is?
very cool you’re doing this for your dad
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I put in a stop loss on AMC at $2.70 (it’s at $2.80 now). Time to take my lumps and live and learn. I had no intention of buying a bankruptcy risk.
While I do believe “doing your own research” is generally a canard for the casual investor, I still should have done some basic research to at least figure out Cinemark was a much healthier company.
He was more of a LIHOP guy but for sure on the 9/11 truther spectrum
Miss that guy, wish he’d post here.