After my recent credit card breach, my new Chase Freedom cards arrived in the mail. A day or 2 later, a lovely note arrived from them about the discontinuation of my rewards. (I knew that was coming - most people with the program have already been cut off).

I couldn't help but feel that them changing every thing over made them do a second look at my card, and spurred this decision. BOO!

All that said, I will consider myself incredibly lucky. I am due for a $250 rebate, come Thursday. I can't complain about the timing! (On the flip side, if they cut me off a month sooner, I'd be pretty peeved).

We will meet the $250, even though the card was inactive for a few days. Phew!

----------------------------------------------------

OF course, if I had known, I wouldn't have changed all our payments over to the replacement card. True to my word, I am dropping the card, now that I no longer have the lucrative rewards. No more big banks in my life.

Considering that I just applied for a Target card, and my State farm card was just closed, it's not a great time to open and close a second set of cards. But I only expect short term negative FICO consequences. I really don't care!

----------------------------------------------------

I might have been a little rash, but I had my eye on the Fidelity American Express (2% cash back deposited into my IRA). So, I already applied for it.

It just now occurs to me that I should have looked around a bit - see what else is out there. BUT, this has been my plan for a good year - just sitting and waiting. It's hard to beat contributions to my IRA.

----------------------------------------------------

I went to a seminar yesterday (For my CPA license) on Asset Protection Planning. IT was actually VERY interesting. (Usually no matter how interesting I think a topic will be, it can either be over my head or a bit of a snooze).

All I Can say is, NEVER take free legal advice. I'll probably be real annoying in the forums, correcting everyone's bad asset protection legal advice, for a while.

(I always say good legal advice is worth paying for, but boy, did I have my eyes opened on a lot of stuff that is taken as gospel and just not true).

For one, IRAs really offer no asset protection from creditors/lawsuits, unless you are of traditional retirement age. That was the scariest part that I learned. (Not sure what to think about that - better to keep as much as possible in ERISA plans, like 401ks and profit sharing plans. Now I am not so thrilled to rollover my profit sharing plan into my IRA). Of course, depends on the state you live in. California does not care if you work hard and work up huge IRA balances.

The attorney who led the seminar was excellent and/or a good salesman. Needless to say, I know who to call if I am ever sued. Though much of what we talked about applied to much more high net worth individuals. But I have ideas rolling in my head to protect our own assets in the future, as they grow.

--------------------------------------------------

I spent the evening in San Francisco last night, after my seminar. Had a really nice time. Spent too much money, ate too much food, stayed up too late, but had a nice time. I have another seminar in the Bay Area next week, so made plans with my parents. I think they were upset I had so little time with them (I crashed with them the night before - my commute was a quick half hour to SF in the a.m., that way).

I still have the San Francisco GPS jinx. We turned on the feature to "Avoid toll roads" in Colorado, and never turned it back off. My astute friend noticed it was sending me in the wrong directions, and I finally realized it wanted me to avoid all toll bridges, which would maybe add an hour to my drive home? UGH! I felt relieved not to get stuck on a huge detour again!

One of the only reasons I feel more comfortable traversing SF is because of the GPS, but I keep running into these type snafus! Third time will be a charm. (Even with the snafus, I find it infinitely easier to traverse the big city with the GPS. Phew!!).