It's Not A Bender, It's A Lifestyle.

Took steps recently to get myself clear of some high interest debt in the short term, and debt altogether in the mid-term. Due to my hard work getting my FICO score to a great place over the last couple years, I've been getting some really good offers for various credit cards. I got an offer for a Citi Diamond Preferred balance transfer card, and took them up on it. $8500 limit, 0% interest for 18 months on transfers and purchases and no annual fee. The card arrived today and I immediately put it to use. I did a balance transfer on my Discover card, getting rid of a 24.5% interest rate, and am sending a check tomorrow to my car finance company to pay off my car loan, getting rid of 13% interest on that. So altogether I'm transferring around $5500 of interest-sucking debt and turning it into 0% debt, for 18 months. So I have 18 months to pay off $5500 of debt while having no interest on it, that works out to a $305/month payment for those 18 months. I was already paying...

Still a bit of a piece off, but semi closing on Vegas numero uno of the new decade. T-minus 60 days. Barring anything weird I'm locked into the King Suite at Delano with VIP package for the trip. Great rate, great perks and more than enough room for a single boy. Can't afford the Cosmo on every trip (boo) and this allows me to maximize the Mlife usage by pinging it for the hotel and any gambling. Did the math on that topic today. Mixing in what I will earn monthly in tier credits, and factoring in just two trips as it stands between now and the Mlife cut off date of 9/30, I will have to accumulate around 20K points on each of those two trips to get to Gold. Doable, but no more spreading my play around like a cheap whore like I did on the last trip. It's all Mlife all day - eating, drinking, play, as much as possible. Looks like I'll be spending some quality time in the various VP bars of the MGM south strip resorts in March. Hopefully my luck will improve from la...

Whew, that was a trip then, wunnit? Some ups and some downs on this one. Will eschew the normal daily blow by blow because it was a 7-day trip and it would take a week to write this post, and ain't nobody need that. Will go with ups and downs. Ups: Food - ate well on this trip and only one bad meal had. Lunch at Jaleo great as always, had the filet at the newly reopened Delmonico, always awesome. Had a surprisingly good Bolognese at Il Fornaio in NYNY, and another good pasta dish in the lobster ravioli at Carbone. Also went downscale but good a few times with the buffalo chicken nachos at Nacho Daddy, the very good tenders at Twin Peaks and Yardhouse and finally made it into Secret Pizza at Cosmo which was pretty solid. The only not great meal was the supposed to be best one at Jean George, had the lamb chops and they were a fatty gristly mess. Other than that well done on the foodz. Rooms - Mirage for 2 nights was serviceable if bland as always but the room at Cosmo was fr...