When was the last time you rode Amtrak?
Quick Reads!
More credit card arbitrage.
I’m still practicing credit card arbitrage. Sometimes I have to get these credit cards in Carol’s name. Luckily, she trusts me. We now have 28 credit cards acquired in the last two years. We’re making tens of thousands of dollars every year, good for air travel and hotels around the world. People who don’t know anything about this think it’s difficult to do, but it’s not.
As an example, we’re in Maui, Hawaii, right now. We’ve been to Maui more than 50 times because we once owned three timeshares. We loved those timeshares. I also owned three furnished rental condos on the beach in Maui. I NEVER liked it when one of my tenants called to ask me to buy them a new TV! I also had a Hawaii driver’s license for 12 years. That made for super cheap golf rates.
Credit card rewards improve our lifestyle.
Right now, we’re staying at the Hyatt Regency Maui for 5 nights. If you booked that hotel on our dates, you would pay a bit more than $5,000 with breakfast, parking, and the like included. We used 145,000 Hyatt points to get all of that for free. Then they upgraded us to the second-best suite in the place! I would have had to take $8,000 from my IRA to pay for this short 5-night stay without our credit card points. With credit card arbitrage, we didn’t pay a penny.
International intrigue.
I’ve gotten involved in an unusual project. I’m not sure I know what I’m doing. A young woman acted as my travel agent and tour guide when I went to Angola a few months ago. I was impressed with her overall demeanor. Now I am supporting her in her effort to learn English and then to use that English-speaking ability to immigrate to a Western country like Canada, Ireland, Australia, or New Zealand. If you’ve ever done anything like that, let me know. I’m learning a lot using ChatGPT, but could benefit from your experience.
Geography makes a difference.
We’ve been down to Texas to see our grandchildren three times in the past couple of months. When I was a kid, I lived next door to my grandparents for the first 15 years of my life. Being a grandkid or a grandparent is very different if you live “next door” than if you live 1,500 miles away.
People are different.
People are different. That’s why a grocery store carries 40,000 items. Most individuals only buy 500 items during their visits. What some people think is normal behavior is so far “out there” for other folks that they would never ever consider doing that particular activity.
I like to travel.
As you may have noticed, I like to travel. In a moment, I will tell you exactly why traveling is so important and entertaining for me.
Everyone falls into one group or another.
People can be divided into groups by various methods. Once, at a Procter & Gamble meeting, they asked a large group of us to divide into two smaller groups: one for people 50 and over and one for people under 50. At the time, I was over 50. I was shocked to see how few of us oldsters still remained.
Which group are you in?
I’m going to put everyone reading this into one of three groups. Just like at P&G, I will separate everyone into age groups.
The first group will be those people aged 30 and younger. The second group will be people aged 31-60. The final group will be for everyone who is 61 and older. I dare you to tell me you are not in one of these three groups!
You will need these three things.
I told you I like to travel. In order to travel frequently around the world, you need all three of these items. What items? Time, money, and health.
I would submit to you that, in general and by “in general”, I think what I will say applies to most people in each of these groups, but not every person.
Age 30 and under.
People in the 30-and-under group probably have good health and a decent amount of free time, especially if they have not joined the permanent workforce. In general, they may not have as much money as they expect to have later in life.
Age 31-60. Is that you?
People in the 31-60 group probably have good health in general and a decent amount of money to spend on things like travel, but maybe not as much time available to them as the other two groups. They are busy working for the man to get more money so that they can spend it when they have more time.
Age 61 and older.
The final group, those aged 61 and older, probably have more time, especially once they retire. They have more money because they’ve had a lifetime to accumulate savings and investments. But they will fall behind the other two groups in health.
It’s not easy to have it all.
It’s just difficult to find a period in your life when you have the time, the money, and good health to travel the world. So, how does all of this affect my personal situation and my desire to travel?
I have the time, but I don’t do chores.
I retired at age 52. For a long time, I’ve had all the time in the world. I told you that I don’t do any chores at home, and I don’t. If something needs fixing, Carol will fix it. She likes doing stuff like that, and I don’t. If she can’t fix it, I will hire someone to fix it. I have only one item in my “toolbox.” What’s that? A credit card with a very large credit limit.
I have enough money to travel. I will never rival Elon Musk in his financial category, but I have enough money to have traveled nearly 200 nights a year for every year since I retired.
I have a number of systems in place to support my travel hobby, which probably save me 50-75% on trips compared to others. This is not an exaggeration, although you might think it is.
Nothing lasts forever.
Knock on wood, I have good health. No one has good health forever. But if you have it, I think it’s better to go visit Venice, Italy, than it is to mow the grass. By the way, I have not mowed a single blade of grass since 1983, and I am pretty certain I will never ever mow a blade of grass for the rest of my life.
SUBs! Sign-up bonuses.
I also practice credit card arbitrage. Carol and I now have 28 credit cards with a combined credit limit of about $470,000. We are now starting to discontinue credit cards in the second year of our ownership. Getting new credit cards with huge sign-up bonuses is a great idea. Those SUBs happen in year one. In year two, the sign-up bonus has gone away, so there’s no need to pay an exorbitant annual fee in year two. That’s when that card gets discontinued unless the rewards can offset the annual fee.
I couldn’t care less what the annual fee is for a credit card.
I just got a new credit card two weeks ago. I really wanted this card. It came with an annual fee of $895. Who cares? If the card provides rewards that exceed the annual fee, no harm, no foul. Some folks go epileptic if they have to pay an annual fee. I don’t care.
An annual fee of $895 for any credit card is the highest on the market. Without me telling you, you can probably guess which card that was. With 28 credit cards, the total of our annual fees comes close to $10,000.
Card #28 came with a 290,000-point sign-up bonus. I just need to spend $20,000 in six months. One tax payment will take care of that. How much are 290,000 points worth? About six grand! Is somebody going to give me a $6,000 travel expense reduction simply for paying my taxes? That $6,000 is what I would have after tax if I took about $9,000 from my IRA to pay for a trip. And that reward is tax-free? Come on, man. This is like taking candy from a baby.
Getting a credit card reward for simply paying your mortgage? Blasphemy!
The above card was card number 28. Card number 27 was acquired in early February. It’s the Bilt 2.0 card. This credit card pays points on my home mortgage spend. I will earn about 75,000 points based on the amount of money I spend each year on my mortgage. 75,000 points is worth the same as withdrawing $3,000 from my IRA to pay for travel. Can you imagine? I have a mortgage on the house, and somebody is willing to give me $3,000 every year just because I have one particular credit card? That’s credit card arbitrage!
An Amtrak train credit card? Randy, you can’t be serious.
Several months ago, I went to the First National Bank of Omaha and got their Amtrak MasterCard. When was the last time you rode Amtrak? Do you think you would ever need an Amtrak MasterCard?
That card comes with a $99 annual fee. I think I had to spend $2,000 on the card over three or four months to earn 40,000 Amtrak points. You should know I never spend money on any credit card that I wouldn’t have spent if I didn’t have one. That’s important.
Should you pay your bills on time?
The most important thing if you’re going to practice credit card arbitrage is to pay your bills on time. We pay our bills on time. My latest FICO credit score is 838. That’s exceptional. The top score you can get is 850.
However, in reality, my credit score of 838 isn’t any more valuable than someone’s score of 700 or maybe 750. It’s important to note that your overall credit score doesn’t matter one lick if you’re not planning on getting a loan for a home or a car, or maybe trying to get another credit card.
Despite having a credit score of 838, 28 credit cards, closing five or six credit cards in the past couple of months, and getting hard credit pulls every time I open a new card, I still have an exceptional credit score. Does that debunk some of the myths around credit scores?
I wanted to travel a long way on Amtrak.
Why an Amtrak MasterCard? I have wanted to take a long-distance train trip for a long time. The Amtrak MasterCard gave me 40,000 points. I only had to spend 23,000 of those points to get a one-way train ride from Los Angeles to Chicago.
Yes, I could purchase an Amtrak train ticket if I had to. What fun would that be? I like “playing the game.” Playing the game means I get all of this stuff for free or for a very low price, pennies on the dollar.
Some folks tell me they don’t need a $ 50,000-or-more-per-year travel reward. They say they can just pay for their travel out of their savings? Yes, they likely can. But what if those folks GOT the $50,000 travel reward? Couldn’t they use the $50,000 in their investment account that they didn’t need for something else? They very likely could!
Just for the hell of it.
Why did I want to take an Amtrak train ride for such a long distance? The short answer is just for the hell of it. When I am home, I don’t have anything whatsoever to do other than to get on my computer and plan more trips.
That meant that I wouldn’t mind at all spending 43 hours on an Amtrak train with 42 stops along the way. I’m the most laid-back guy you know. I wouldn’t have cared if the train ride were 83 hours. I just wanted to get on that train, watch the scenery go by, and talk to some interesting people during breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Tell me about your Amtrak adventure.
So, what was the Amtrak train ride like? Take a load off your feet, grab a cup of coffee or maybe a Coke Zero, and I’ll tell you all about it.
I drove my Tesla Model X from our home, 75 miles north to the Los Angeles International Airport. By the way, I haven’t spent a single penny on gasoline or electricity to charge my two Tesla automobiles, which I first acquired six years ago. I wouldn’t care if gasoline went up to $10 a gallon. I don’t pay that expense. In retirement, people won’t take my money, it seems!
I needed to park my car at the airport because I won’t be returning to Southern California by train. I will be flying. I don’t like Amtrak that much!
As a matter of fact, had I wanted to, I could have walked about 400 yards from my house, caught a train from San Clemente up to the LA Union train station, and taken my trip to Chicago from there.
The FlyAway bus.
As it was, once I parked my car at LAX, I walked over to the terminals and grabbed the FlyAway bus to the Los Angeles Union Station. My flight was leaving at about 5 p.m.
How to travel on Amtrak.
There are three general categories of seating on an Amtrak train. The first is an individual seat, pretty much like the seat you might have on an airplane, but it’s a little bit better on the train. This is the cheapest way to travel on Amtrak.
The second category of seating is called a roomette; that’s what I had. A roomette is about 3 1/2 feet wide and about 6‘6“ long during the day. It has two seats that face each other, and at night, those seats fold down to make a bed. The roomette also has an upper bed, but since I was a single traveler, that would not be in use except for some limited storage of my stuff.
A roomette does not have a dedicated bathroom. A traveler in a roomette will have both a shared toilet and a shared shower. Those facilities are small! I’m 6‘3“ tall. The roomette space didn’t leave much room for anything other than me!
How much does it cost?
The one-way roomette price from Los Angeles to Chicago was a little over $700. As mentioned, I used 23,000 Amtrak points to replace the entire $700 purchase price.
The crème de la crème, which is probably an exaggeration to describe it that way, is the Amtrak “bedroom.” The bedroom is essentially twice the size of the roomette. It comes with an in-room sink, toilet, and shower, and features a sofa and a chair that convert to a bed.
In my judgment, the bedroom (above, not my photo) is very expensive and not a very good value. It normally costs about twice as much as a roomette, or about $1,500 per person, for the one-way trip I was taking.
If you’re not early, you’re late.
I showed up early at the LA Union train station in Los Angeles, which is quite historic. It certainly takes you back to what train travel was like 75 years ago.
Passengers who purchased a roomette or a bedroom get complimentary admission to the Amtrak Metropolitan Lounge. Here, they have some low-level snacks and drinks available. This lounge was definitely dated. I didn’t even realize I had that benefit until it was almost too late to use it.
Let’s tour the train.
I boarded the train at nearly 5 p.m. I would ride the train for the next 43 hours. After I found my cabin, one of the train attendants took me on a brief tour of the train. There wasn’t a lot to see.
The hallways were narrow. I almost had to walk at a 45° angle in the hallways.
The first item on the tour was the dining car. A plus, if you bought a roomette or a bedroom, was that all of the meals on the train were free. The food was good. The meals included an appetizer, an entrée, a dessert, and a free cocktail each day.
If you were traveling in a regular train seat, you could also use the dining car. The charge for breakfast and lunch was $25. Dinner was $45. At those rates, my six meals would have cost $190 if I had only paid for a single seat. I think the price of a single seat was about $200 for this trip. Single-seat passengers, as well as all passengers, had access to a small area that sold drinks and snacks.
Just beyond the dining car was the observation car. The observation car was open 24/7. All passengers can sit in any seat in the observation car and watch the world go by.
Traveling through Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, and Missouri in winter, when everything is brown and desolate, will not provide the most scenic scenery. It was what it was.
Dining.
I would end up having six meals on the train, two dinners, two breakfasts, and two lunches.
When you enter the dining room, especially as a single diner, the Maitre d ‘ is going to sit you with someone else. This was almost required. That was fine with me. I was actually looking forward to meeting other people on the train during my meals. I love meeting people this way.
This didn’t work out as well as I had hoped. For three of my meals, I was seated with an elderly gentleman from Australia. OK, let’s be brutally honest here. I was as old as he was, but in a lot better shape.
He was a retired jeweler. He needed to use one of those 10x triplet loupes to read the menu. He was a little bit outspoken, and I’m not a huge fan of people who want to push their outspokenness on me. Nevertheless, I tried to steer him in other directions. The man was pleasant enough to talk to.
Sort of just like at home.
When I went to dinner each night, the train attendant would come into my roomette and “make the bed.“ This was just like at home for me. I don’t make my own bed at home. I have someone in the house who does make my bed, and if you guessed it was Carol, you are correct.
At home, what good is Randy?
Let’s stop here for just a moment. You might be asking yourself one question. “If Randy doesn’t do anything at home to help out Carol, then what good is he. Fair enough. Let me try to stand up for myself.
It is true that Carol does all of the chores and maintenance at our house. Everything. In an emergency, I don’t know how to turn off the water. I don’t know how to turn off the electricity. I don’t know what day our trash is picked up. In my life, I only worry about what I need to know, and I don’t need to know that stuff and more… because one of my partners handles that stuff.
What DOES Randy do?
Then what DO I do? I do some stuff!! I manage the money. No, I don’t pay the bills manually. Carol does that. You will commonly see her with all of her paperwork spread out on the kitchen table. I can see her working when I glance over from watching TV. Sometimes, when I think she needs a break from all of this mental effort, I will ask her to get me a snack. This lets her take a break, stretch her legs, and help me out a little bit, which she loves.
O.K., what do I really do around the house to support Carol? I am always offering her encouragement. I constantly compliment her. When I’m home, she serves me breakfast at my desk in my office every morning. Yes, she has to handle the breakfast tray up and down about 25 steps, but again, that breakfast tray is giving her some exercise, right?
When Carol is with me, she has never had to open a door in her life. I manage the money from a strategic and planning perspective. She doesn’t have to open up her own credit cards. She has more than ten. I open them for her!
When we go on a trip, I do all of the planning. I simply confirm the location and the dates with Carol, and off we go. She doesn’t have to lift a finger.
When Carol can’t do stuff?
There are some things that even Carol can’t do. She doesn’t do roofing, and she can’t put up solar panels. She can’t replace the water heaters, and she’s not all that good with exterior house painting. She doesn’t even clean our windows. If Carol can’t do it, I’ll have it done.
A good reason for dining out.
I’m home about 175 days a year. Carol makes breakfast. I normally don’t eat lunch, but I have lunch somewhere in town. I like to take her out to dinner almost every day I’m home. Why? I hate seeing her spend so much time preparing the meals and cleaning up afterwards.
Plus, and this is very important, those restaurant dinners are a great way for the two of us to spend an hour or so catching up on the day’s events. Often, she gives me an update on her chores and what needs to be hired out around the house. I update her on the trips I’m planning for her. Yes, everybody does this stuff differently. This is how we do it, and we’ve been married a long time! Now back to the train trip! Oh, forget this. I have credit card combinations that give me a 27% discount at fine dining restaurants.
The Amtrak food was good.
The meals on the train were good. I had the shrimp tempura as an appetizer, the steak as my entrée, and a nice piece of moist chocolate cake for dessert for the first dinner. The butter cake dessert and the hamburgers were nearly gourmet. The food was actually one of the big highlights of this train trip.
The train swayed a lot. I was told that was because the tracks were old. We didn’t have any significant delays. Most of the stops lasted about 3-5 minutes. Some were longer, with places to get off the train and stretch your legs. Smoking was not allowed on the train. The smokers had their opportunities during these 10-15-minute stops.
How could I walk four miles every day on the train?
I walk more than 4 miles every day. I might miss one day every two or three months. I was a little concerned about how I would maintain that achievement for the day, since I would be on the train for 24 consecutive hours.
It was my good fortune to stop in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for an hour and a half. I only wore shorts on the train because I only wear shorts in my regular life. I might have long pants on for a few hours over maybe two days a year. I normally wear T-shirts or sweatshirts. The other day, I had to go to an event with a collared shirt requirement. I haven’t worn a collared shirt in years, and I didn’t care for it much.
The train stopped in Albuquerque for 90 minutes. They were doing a crew change. I saw my opportunity. The temperature was only about 35°. No problem. I went out and started walking in shorts and a sweatshirt.
I am amazed how I can take a relatively short walk like this and somehow get lost. Nevertheless, my Apple Watch, along with Google Maps, gets me back on track. I did ask one lady for directions. She ended up walking with me for about a mile. It’s always my great pleasure to meet local people. I did get my four miles in on that stop, but just barely.
While in my cabin, I used my Apple iPad to watch shows I had downloaded from Netflix. That kept me entertained.
Amtrak is probably not for hyper people.
If you are a hyper person and think that any diversion is a waste of time in your life, and you have to get going to be “doing something,” you’re probably not going to like a long train ride like this.
I am not a hyper person. I had all the time in the world to ride an Amtrak train for 43 hours. For my taste, the train ride was going too fast, and the trip was going to end too soon.
I don’t know that I need to ride the train on a trip like this in the future anytime soon. However, I’ve got enough points, so I might take a nice train ride with Amtrak sooner than I think. One of the key aspects of credit card arbitrage is that you don’t want to collect rewards for something you don’t want or can’t use. That seems about right, doesn’t it?
The roomette was my best option.
I don’t think I would want to ride the train overnight in a single passenger seat. I’m virtually certain I wouldn’t want to pay $1,500 for a 43-hour train ride with a bedroom that was only twice the size of my roomette. So, I guess that puts me in a roomette on any future trip.
I’m not sure I would want to ask Carol to take this trip with me. She’s not as laid-back as me. If I did invite her, she would likely recoil in horror and tell me that with her chore load, she doesn’t have time for train rides. Yep. Different strokes for different folks.
I truly do have an advantage.
I have one advantage over many people in the 61-and-over age group. I have time, money, and good health. Some of that stuff doesn’t last forever. As long as I have that advantage, I’m going to go out and see the world, even if it’s in a roomette on an Amtrak train.
Why was I going to Chicago?
I did have a reason for taking the train to Chicago. When I left the train in Chicago, I took a look at the Chicago River, grabbed an Uber, and took it to Chicago Midway Airport. Then I hopped on a Southwest Airlines flight and flew to Pittsburgh the same day I arrived in Chicago by train.
I like to do stuff.
Yes, I like the “do stuff.” Many of the things I like to do are far away from Southern California, where I live.
I am a big sports fan. I like to watch college sports in person. For this trip, I would see four consecutive basketball games in four days. These were those games. By the way, I have now seen D-1 college basketball in more than 60 arenas.
UCLA at Penn State
Youngstown State at Wright State
Chicago Loyola at Dayton
UCLA @Ohio State
When I follow my favorite team, the UCLA basketball team, to road games, I am always wearing UCLA gear. That might be a sweatshirt, a jacket, or maybe a hat.
I am not a Communist.
I do find one thing absolutely hilarious. The people who see me at their home game look at my UCLA game wear with a high degree of skepticism and react as if my sweatshirt read, “I am a communist.” You can see it in their eyes. I find their reactions so funny. They are liking having an issue on so many different levels.
UCLA beat Penn State, but lost to Ohio State. Wright State beat Youngstown State, and Dayton beat Chicago Loyola.
Replaced by technology.
I used to use my “need one” sign when I went to road games. That approach was so effective. I bought tickets for dimes on the dollar.
With COVID, many transactions that used to be done in cash switched over to credit cards. Oftentimes, credit cards are linked to people’s phones. On a recent flight, a man dropped a couple of coins. I bent over to help retrieve what he had dropped. I looked at the dime and penny in my hand. Then, I said, “I haven’t touched a coin in three years!” and I hadn’t.
As an example, I rarely pay cash for anything. All of my credit cards are stored on my iPhone. I use “tap to pay.” I have been known to scowl at any operation that doesn’t use tap-to-pay. I know that several people in my age group have never used tap-to-pay in their lives. In my eyes, they seem to feel hesitant. It’s almost as if they think they’re going to get shocked to even tap their actual physical credit card on a reader. Like I say. People are different.
Nowadays, I almost always buy my tickets to road games on StubHub or SeatGeek. If you’re not familiar, these are the names of online ticket brokers.
A wonderful credit card reward.
As a matter of fact, Carol and I both have credit cards that give us $150 credits from StubHub twice a year. That’s $600 of sports tickets or concert tickets. All for free!
Well, it’s not exactly free. Oftentimes, those credit rewards are simply paying me back for the roughly $10,000 I’m paying in annual credit card fees on 28 credit cards. But… those rewards do push me toward many experiences I might not otherwise have.
Dayton, Ohio. You want to buy a ticket??
When I showed up at the University of Dayton, I didn’t have a ticket. There were only a couple available from the online ticket brokers, which was very unusual. Normally, there are well over 25 tickets to choose from at various price levels.
I’ve been to 15-20 games this season away from SoCal. Carol and I are also season ticket holders for UCLA basketball. That’s 19 games. The round-trip drive up to legendary Pauley Pavilion, where UCLA plays, averages 3-4 hours. Yes, I am a big sports fan. I get with Carol before the season, and we map out the 10 games that she will see. Why not all nineteen? She has chores to do.
Good seats or nothing for me.
I always buy a ticket in the lower bowl and preferably near midcourt. Those tickets are more expensive, but then I practice Die with Zero. A nosebleed seat may cost $50. A lower bowl seat might cost $100 or more. The delta is usually about $50-$75 per ticket.
I want a close-up view of the game. If I cheap out and get a seat in the upper deck, I won’t enjoy the game as much. Importantly, with that bad seat, another $75 will sit in my Vanguard account, and it will be there when I visit the big arena in the sky. Die with Zero, baby!
Sometimes, when the buying opportunity online isn’t right or available, I will try a different strategy. I will actually show up at the box office and often get a good ticket there.
People are different.
People in the Midwest are funny. I can tell you what I’m going to tell you because I grew up in the Midwest, Illinois, to be specific, until I was 22 years old. If I were just a wacky Californian, this Midwestern critique might be received less well.
Midwestern folks are conservative in their behavior. I’m not talking about politics. They just seem very hesitant to take a chance. They are quick to point out all of the negatives of an idea that has very little chance of happening. What they consider taking a chance is something that wouldn’t even dent my mental radar. Of course, I am speaking in generalities. Remember, if you are from the Midwest and were offended by these comments and want to unsubscribe…that’s a long-term solution to a short-term problem. :)
In Dayton, Ohio, I walked into the outer door of the arena. I asked the first lady working the turnstiles where the ticket office was. Her response was a shocker.
Oh my! That’s all I can say.
“Ticket Office?” she almost yelled. “What do you want that for?” I told her I wanted to buy a ticket with as straight a face as I could muster. She pointed me in the opposite direction and stared me down as if to say, “Are you freaking crazy? Do you think you’re going to buy a ticket at the ticket office?” Actually, I did think that. I was taken aback by her reaction.
I found the ticket office, but not before I walked around the building about 330°. At the ticket office, I met a nice young lady who was working at the desk. I told her I needed to buy a ticket.
She looked at me with a kind expression and told me that the event was sold out. But she also informed me that one of the season ticket holders had turned in their two tickets when they couldn’t attend the game. She turned around, grabbed one of those two tickets, and gave it to me for free. Carol commonly tells me I’m lucky. Then I tell her that I think luck is an outcome of preparation. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
Busybodies. Nope. I don’t like busybodies.
My free ticket was in a great location. I sat down in my really nice lower bowl seat inside the University of Dayton Arena. I found the place and the fan support impressive. The arena was packed to the gills with fans. The people sitting next to me also stared me up and down.
One lady asked me how I got my ticket. I thought that was bold. She told me that her friends normally sat where I was sitting. I really wanted to tell her I had killed her friends and stolen their basketball tickets just to see her reaction. I wasn’t sure how much information I wanted to share with her. She seemed to be a busybody to me.
Game experiences.
I was surprised by the low attendance at the Penn State game. I was surprised at how nice a facility a school as small as Wright State had. The Dayton game was the most exciting one, even though Dayton pulled ahead in the end. Their crowd was really into it.
And finally, the Ohio State game was filled with people who are used to rooting for winning teams and probably have gigantic NIL budgets, most notably in football. Their football NIL money could probably pay for a brand new stadium in a couple of years.
Time to go home but not for long.
Following the last of my four consecutive college basketball games, I hopped on an airplane from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles. When I landed, I grabbed my car, and I was home after being gone for just six nights. I usually get a lot done on these trips. I want something major to happen every day. I’m not going to sit around when I’m on vacation as if I were home.
I am always up for a trip. Last year, I traveled overnight 208 times. If a friend called me on the phone and said that he wanted me to join him on a trip to London, but that I had to be packed and ready to go in my driveway in 10 minutes. I could do it in 8 1/2 minutes. I never even think about packing my bag for any trip that I take until about an hour or so before we’re supposed to back out of the driveway.
People are different. It’s OK. That’s why Baskin-Robbins has 31 different flavors.
Yes, people are different. How many times, when you read this tale, did you say to yourself, “Hey, I like doing chores. We never travel the way you do. And no, I don’t think Midwesterners are conservative in their behavior?” No problem. People are different. Some people like doing chores. It gives them a sense of accomplishment. I’m not one of those people. Some folks don’t like to travel at all. But I am never going to agree that you are likely to see 65-year-olds wearing shorts to a Dayton game in 30-degree temps and showing up without a ticket. No way, Jose.
If you’re going to commit to a lifestyle that takes you away from home about 200 nights a year, when your spouse “only“ travels about 70 nights a year, you won’t be able to do chores…but maybe your spouse/significant other will!
With my lifestyle I can’t do some things.
You probably won’t be able to have a pet. We don’t. You probably won’t be able to play canasta with your neighbors on Thursday nights. We don’t. You might get tired of the travel grind. I don’t.
Die with Zero.
I am always practicing Die with Zero. I want to enjoy things I can afford while I am still in good enough condition to do so. I’m not perfect at this, but I think I am better than most. When I get hit by a bus, I will have no complaints. I will have done pretty much everything I wanted to do when it comes to traveling the world.
I am going to ride the train again on a long-distance trip. I don’t know where or when. But I have 17,000 points sitting in my account, and they expire after two years if I don’t use them. That’s kind of like life, isn’t it? Your life ends at some point. You only get one life to live, and I recommend you use it.
Randy, a former Midwesterner, said this.