TIE #061: The Road to $100,000 with Rakuten + American Express - June 2024
Watch me show you how to create 6 figures out of thin air (even if it takes a long time)
Apparently you hate money. If you didn’t, you’d be using Rakuten every time you shop on websites like Walmart and Target to save money.
They have paid me over $13,943 for things I was already going to buy for my one-person business:
They are also the reason this post is free to read. Sign up here and get $30 for free after your first use.
Rakuten isn’t just a newsletter sponsor, they are an important part of my one-person business that I’ve used for years.
The goal of this series is to hit $100,000 in a brokerage account as a byproduct of simply spending money.
By leveraging both Rakuten and Credit Cards, I believe you can rack up six figures over a multi-year period.
What you are reading today is my attempt at proving this.
(Even if I fail or take way too long to accomplish this, it is all free money so who cares)
You can read the last post here:
To get started, let’s take a look at our updated Rakuten balance:
Total Unpaid Points: 28,824 (Up from 18,219)
Cash Value: $317.06
Most people take Rakuten payouts in cash but I take them in American Express points because I get a 10% bonus thanks to the Schwab Platinum card.
Like the month prior, we hardly earned anything via Rakuten.
Roughly $120.
However, come Q4 we will see a huge jump in value so bear with me.
Here is how our Amex Points balance is looking:
Total Rewards Points: 291
Cash Value: $3.20 (up from $1.53)
As you can see, we don’t have much of a balance because I made a transfer to the Schwab account mid-month.
(We got a 80,000 bonus for hitting the sign-up bonus on the Platinum card)
Sadly, that $1,250 Amazon points balance cannot be transferred to Schwab.
If it could, this challenge would be a hell of a lot easier.
Here is how the brokerage account is looking:
Total Value: $5,953.43 (+$326.41)
Total Cash Value (all of the above): $6,273.69 (+$444.73)
So despite receiving a $880 bonus and making a bit of money via Rakuten we only grew $444 month over month.
This is due to market fluctuation in relation to what the balance is invested in at the moment (ETFs).
So like I mentioned last month, we are not making a ton of progress at the moment for multiple reasons:
This is the slowest time of year for purchase activity for my business
I could be manufacturing spend but I have been lazy
I use other cards for things I am buying that don’t apply to this venture (the Amazon one mentioned above)
Despite this, we still made a free $444.
I know a lot of people that could use that every month.
We will easily surge past $10,000 this year regardless of what the market does, so sit tight with me.
Also, it is probably time to sign up for a new card an earn another bonus but the offers out there aren’t all that enticing.
That’s it for this month.
If you have a question leave it below and I’ll get back to you ASAP.
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What ETF are you investing it in? Total stock market?