Why Templates?

Once you are post the big sign up rewards phase and you just apply to them on the side, you are on the hunt for something more sustaining and gains you point in perpetuity ( or at least till the credit company kicks you in the rear :D). There are many combinations of stores, rewards and cards among many other variables that come into play. In this series, I would start covering a few of them. I would put them all under the "Template" tab as well as put it in the "Badge It" link. I think these are the unique points and features of this blog. I have seen no other blogs or forums which provides tools at this level. The idea to provide this tool is to give you the workflow which can be followed to maximize your rewards and spend in a sustainable way. Note that I am not going to post something crazy like double hoops (buying gift card A and then buying gift card B OR buying items and then returning them or selling them on eBay OR relying too much on cash back portals) because each of this step involves more extra steps and extra process on your brain. Your mental resource should be free and have fun doing this activity. It should be similar to doing your daily spend and getting paid to go to Disney doing that. Of course, with limited bonus points sign up, the category bonuses are the best way and in many ways even better than the big sign up bonuses.

So why do you need such templates and apps to make life easier? Do they make life easier at all? Or is it just go to grocery and pick up cards there and at CVS and 7-elevens along the way? Often times, I found myself asking what cards to use. Which stores to go? what are the limits? What is the best way to liquidate the cards? When to get the money orders? When to get the paypal cards as there is a limit of 4 grands per month on them? Which store to get your money order from? (Do you know Food lion gives money order for 49 cents - the lowest I have found among any grocery stores including Wally)

Now imagine, your Siri or Android or Cortona or your car or whatever suddenly becomes so smart that it has developed the artificial intelligence to track your habits. It automatically tells you that for this month you have yet to buy some more gift cards or money orders and then alerts you to the nearby drug stores or gas stores and also tells you in specific which card to take in and swipe? It updates all this info real-time. Chances are all these are being done by you. And rightfully so. There is no Robot yet to go to a gas store and show your id and get the card. Besides that wont work either. So these are the steps that has to be done by you. But what about other steps. Could it be automated by a software. Being a software programmer, my first instinct is to program anything that I find that I am doing or at least the ones where they repeat. But few experiments and side projects showed that it would be essentially just a bunch of business rules that need to be coded. Now, instead of over thinking this problem, we could look at it from a process view. In the enterprise world, not everything is computerized or automated. Many processes where the payoff is better with manual actions, easy instructions are laid off so that a human can follow these instructions. As a matter of fact, these steps are often so simple that any untrained human should be able to do that. The genesis of products such as iPhone or iPad were that any child would be able to use it without documents. And in such processes, the automation is done at a process level. So in essence, you would see that there are workflow diagrams or actionable steps which if you do then you reach a point or state. Repeatedly doing this over a period of time nets you a tangible benefit - in this case, good amount of points and cash.

Removing the stress and thinking factor from one of your most critical faculty - mental processes leads to looking at this activity in a fun way and doing more of it thus getting more points along the way. Your mental strengths and resources are limited. Attention span is drastically dropping. How we wish that there was a Staples Easy button for this task! ( or every other one in life ). The end goal of this site is to reach a state where we list or create those tasks, tools, apps and processes so that you just print them out and execute it like a robot. Thus freeing up your mental resources for the stuff where you could actually use it.

And that is why I am creating these simple templates. Print them and stick them to your rooms and cars (in the trunk of course!) or wherever you can view them. Put them in your index cards. Whatever it takes to just have them just when you need them and not before/after that. Customize them. Share them. Badge them or do whatever you want with them.