Black Card Deal
My life is boring and happy, and it cannot be both if it’s to offer any entertainment value in blog form. Thus at least for this month, I’ll attempt to pivot to utilitarian value and join the burgeoning ranks of financial wellness gurus. My top qualifications are:
Got my only C in a class ever in 311 Macroeconomics, which comes with an asterisk because it was taught by a heavily Chinese professor, like super Chinese, who would be run off by our current president in the interest of national security and therefore this blemish should be removed from my academic record
Hawked a program for a micro-investing fintech that was great for consumers but offered dubious value for marketers concerned with incremental sales before being fired after a year and a half
Flawlessly timed the mortgage market at two peaks to the tune of 7.99 and 6.624 percent, so people no longer track the 10-year treasury yield but simply wait for me to refinance as a signal rates will drop within 30 days
Credibility established, let me guide you with an actionable money tip to secure the life you want. Groupon is or at least was offering a $100-off-$200 digital order coupon when purchasing a new Costco membership. If this is now expired or you’re already a member, I cannot help you. You are not my target audience.
Getting your own Costco card, especially in the new era of more stringent identification practices by store employees, is a personal finance milestone. At 41 years old, we could no longer handle the cognitive dissonance from teaching our children about responsibility and then going to my parents to get toilet paper. This was a big step for us.
I am not ready to get my own tolltag account though. It just feels too magical rolling up to the DFW booths and garages and the parking gates rise like I’m the messiah while having no conception of time limits and costs.
You need to keep some of that childlike wonder to enjoy adulthood, which is why my first purchase with that black Costco Executive Member card — not to be confused with the black AmEx card used by executives — was a Disney cruise. That clever little Burbank, Calif., corporation must have consulted the Frisco, Texas ISD school calendar because the price during our spring break was jacked up well past the hefty Disney premium. All in, this narrow lap across the gulf will set us back about $10K, minus a $540 shopping card and 2% back from Costco, the enticement for me to upgrade to Executive level.
I am a sucker for deals that bait you to spend more than needed, so it’s a wonder why I took so long to join volume discount king Costco. Penny wise, pound foolish is a solid financial approach because it allows you to live well while maintaining an identity of austere, efficient minimalist. Like a Communist dictator or fraudulent clergyman without having to steal from constituents.
My wife was headed to HEB yesterday, and I spent a solid 10 minutes of online research before texting her to buy a 260-piece bag of Halloween candy with a $5-off coupon. Cost per piece rather than ounce was my metric because the savage children can’t aggregate weight or volume in their underdeveloped iPad brains and will gauge their haul and short-term happiness by the variety of colorful wrappers mashed in their nasty hands. Glad I could save us $2.50.
In the same week I ACH transferred $13,573.15 to a company that fired me in July (different one, healthcare not fintech) to purchase vested stock. Compared to the candy, I did not spend a commensurate amount of time researching its prospects for going public, future performance and IPO market conditions. I saw no taxes were due now and went for it.
FOMO and YOLO are important to balance the HSAs and IRAs in your acronym portfolio. Exercising those stock options was a hedge against the pain of being on the sidelines. The Disney cruise was a chance to capture a point in the dreadfully finite master timeline where all four grandparents are in solid health and the kids can still watch Pixar movies without a strict comprehension of fiction. Good deals are in the eye of the holder of the Groupon and extend beyond the fine print.