You go on at $50,000 trip touring the world by private jet. One of my oldest (and obviously, most successful and busy) friends is actually doing this next year, the deposits have already been sent in.

Join National Geographic on an unforgettable expedition, traveling in ease and comfort by private jet. While circling the globe, explore the world’s most treasured and legendary natural and cultural wonders. Visit Peru, Easter Island, Samoa, the Great Barrier Reef, Cambodia, Tibet, India, Tanzania, Egypt, and Morocco on this once-in-a-lifetime adventure.

* Meet with National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence Meave or Louise Leakey in Tanzania and Dr. Zahi Hawass at G?za.
* Explore 12 UNESCO World Heritage sites, including Machu Picchu, Angkor Wat, the Taj Mahal, and the Pyramids of G?za.
* Discover Easter Island’s giant moai statues and famously lost culture with resident archaeologist Edmundo Edwards.
* Delve into the natural world on game drives in the Serengeti Plain and while snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef.

This is me being jealous green with envy.

Think you spend too much on pet products? Read this post about pampered pets at The Digerati Life first, and then make your decision. Got neuticles?

JLP at AllFinancialMatters discusses when you should start taking Social Security benefits. I think Social Security will be around when I retire, but I think it could very likely be restricted to those with little or no savings.

GetRichSlowly mentioned a post on Jalopnik talking about the best cheap beater car for non-car folks. This caught my eye because now my new idle fantasy is to buy a $1,000 car and learn how to drive a manual transmission.

All this talk about converting free Membership Rewards points into cold hard cash got me to thinking – how much do you net after fees, and which stores have the gift cards or certificates with the highest resale value? My initial guess was that stores that everyone shops at (Wal-mart, Home Depot, etc.) would be the easiest to resell, while the higher-end boutique shops might be tougher due to a smaller customer base and less bidding frenzies.

I decided to test this hypothesis by looking at eBay’s archives. Here was my not-statistically-sound-but-let’s-just-try-it methodology – I took 10 recently completed auctions for each store’s gift cards, taking a variety of gift card values and different sellers. I would then take 5% off the average ending bid to estimate eBay auction fees and then calculate the net resale percentage (ignoring shipping since at most it would be a stamp):

Results
Instead of doing every store under the sun, I tried to take a small sample of different types of stores. Even with only 10 data points per store, the cards often sold in a tight price range, with the relative standard deviation of this small sample size being about 2%. The results are on the right.

As one might have guessed, Amazon.com has the highest resale value, as you can easily spend it online, and they sell everything from groceries to bedding to electronics. Big Box stores Target and Home Depot followed closely behind. Surprisingly, even with a limited presence and fancier products Crate and Barrel also did quite well. My theory behind this is that people tend to spend a lot of money there, so people can buy a bunch of gift cards online, combine them, and still save a large amount – 12% off of $1,000 is $120 saved.

The worst performing out of this limited sampling was Gap. Pottery Barn, Banana Republic, and Old Navy also hovered about the 80% range. Some specialty stores had very few completed auctions, so I skipped them.

Which are good bets for each Rewards program?
Not every points systems offers gift cards to the same stores. Here are my favorite conversions (all 10,000 points = $100 Gift Card):

Starwood Starpoints » Amazon.com Gift Cert.
Citibank ThankYou Points » Target Gift Cards
AmEx Membership Rewards » Crate and Barrel/Home Depot Gift Cards

You can find $100 bonus offers all three of these points programs here.

Keep in mind though, that this is assuming that you aren’t going to convert to other things like hotel or airline rewards. Free flights can also be sold for cash, especially if you have enough to redeem for a business or first class ticket. This can be worth 3-7 cents per mile depending on the route and if you sell directly or through a broker. More on this somewhat tricky practice next.

If you run a business, even if only on the side, you still want to maximize the interest earned on your idle cash. Technically, if you’re a sole proprietor you can simply use a consumer high-interest savings account as there is no legal distinction between you and the business, but for accounting reasons it may be a good idea to separate the two. If you have an LLC or corporation, keeping your personal and business transactions separate is even more important.

While looking for a business-specific savings account, my criteria was a little different than before. I don’t mind rate-chasing a bit with personal accounts, but given the careful accounting records I need to keep, I wanted an institution I could stay with for a long time. Therefore, I was looking for (1) a consistently good rate even if not necessarily always the best, and (2) a place with good customer service.

After doing my research, I ended up opening a Fidelity Account for Businesses at Fidelity Investments several months ago, and it has been working well for me so far. Although you can buy everything from individual stocks to junk bonds with the account, I just keep use my core money market fund (FDRXX). It is actually a very flexible account, with the following features:

• FDRXX is currently yielding 0.08%.
• $2,500 to open, no annual fees.
• Minimum balance requirements waived since it is my Core account.
• Easy access: No limit transaction limit, free checkwriting, available ATM debit card
• Link electronically to multiple external bank accounts, quick transfers
• Great customer service, usually can reach a human in under a minute.

An new option has recently appeared – the Capital One 360 for Business Savings Account, which also looks to be a competitive product:

• Currently yielding 0.40%
• No minimums, no fees
• Access is limited to online transfers to linked account
• Limit of 6 withdrawals per month due to being a savings account
• Only one linked account is allowed
• Good customer service, at least from what I’ve heard.

In a nutshell, the Capital One 360 account is leaner and more simple, but it is harder to access your money. I like being able to keep most of my cash at Fidelity since I can write checks directly from that account instead of waiting for a transfer. I am also getting spoiled at Fidelity since whenever I call I get a courteous and knowledgeable human almost immediately! But I think either one would be a good addition for people currently using a business checking account paying little or no interest.

If I’m missing a great alternative, please let me know in the comments.

[Rates are updated as of 1/13/2010, and are much lower than when this article was originally written.]

At the end of each of my posts, there is the option to subscribe to future comments. It’s not checked by default, but it provides an way to easily follow the conversation. Today, for some reason, some people who were already subscribed to certain posts received updates to unrelated discussions. Since I can’t actually see anyone’s e-mail addresses, I am posting here to apologize. It was not intentional. The whole process is automated, and I believe this event was caused by a bunch of comments being approved all at once after Memorial Day. For those familiar with WordPress, I am using this SubscribeToComments plugin. Please let me know if you have continued issues.

Some random bits:

1. It’s been a while, so I decided to again request automatic credit limit increases on my Citibank and American Express card. Got $3,000 in credit limits with no credit score hit.
2. I also saved $10 by getting a free notary public signature from my WaMu Free Checking account. Got a free medallion signature guarantee too, although that’s free at a lot of banks.
3. An MSN Money article outlines the perils of automatic bill pay. I don’t like the idea of giving companies permission to take money out of my accounts either. Here’s another horror story. If anything, use credit cards for automatic billing and not checking accounts! I still use paper statements for bills, and electronic statements from most banks and brokerages.
4. Madame X graciously hosted this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance.

I got off my virtual tush and participated in some Carnivals this week:

The Carnival of Personal Finance was run by We’re In Debt. It’s organized nicely by topic, and my post on my current bank setup was an Editor’s pick. Woohoo!

The first part of my Zecco broker review was also included in the Festival of Stocks, hosted by the Stock Market Prognosticator.

I’m back from Sin City and I am exhausted. Let’s see what kind of money-related and non-incriminating stories I can tell 🙂

Not quite whales, but… we did stay in the Player’s Room Suite at New York New York.

It’s the ultimate players retreat…our Players Rooms promise to please with a marble entry, two queen-size beds, a whirlpool tub, chaise lounge and magazine table, two TVs, and a bathroom with enticing marble counter tops and enclosed shower and tub. Take advantage of these 700-800 square foot rooms’ winning layouts when visiting with family and friends!

Of course, there were six of us. The sleeper sofa was perfect so we didn’t have to break out the sleeping bags we brought.

I played Blackjack and won over $300 overall. We visited almost every casino on the strip and played a little here and there. I stuck with whatever table was cheapest, either $5 or $10 minimum bets. My actual bets probably averaged $15. I usually do my best to find the table which offer the rules with the best odds, and try to play basic strategy with a smattering of very crude (and probably useless) card-counting. I know that my $300 was a result of luck and not skill, but it was fun as well.

Poker is definitely the new hot thing, with packed tournaments everywhere. I considered entering a $50 buy-in Hold ‘Em tournament, but decided against making a fool out of myself.

My wife also won a big jackpot on the slot machines! She mashed the button and won 1000… pennies. Yep, she played the penny slots. I’m happy for her, but she wasn’t too amused when I said that I just lost that much in one hand while listening to her tell me about her jackpot. 😕

ATM fees were insane. Although I thankfully didn’t need to hit the ATMs, I did check out the fee schedule. Regular ATM withdrawals were $4 inside casinos. Better yet, they also have a feature that I think charges your credit card instead of doing a cash advance. I feel this is because the cash advance limits are usually much lower than the overall purchase limits. The price for this convenience? $12 on a $100 withdrawal.

No coupon runs. The only coupons we used were to get free drinks when we couldn’t track down a cocktail waitress. I’m pretty sure I drank at least five of the worst $1 frozen margaritas ever while down there. Guinness from a bottle on the other hand, is actually pretty tasty. I didn’t hit any celebrity chef temples or non-free shows, although some in our party did get some discount tickets to Ka and Mystere. Garduno’s in the Palms is a good New Mexican restaurant.

Anyways, this should be the end of Vegas talk for a while… Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

I’m going to my very first funeral today. It’s actually a very strange experience for me. I’m still too young to have much wisdom, but one thing I realize more and more is that life is a marathon and not a sprint. There is so much you can accomplish in a lifetime without having to be some sort of superstar. As long as you live each day with a purpose in mind, one day you’ll look back and be amazed at all the things you have accomplished. The key is simply to keep moving forward.

So I ask you: Are you moving forward? Are you closer to your goals this month than last month? If not, why not?

Currently, my main goal is to achieve our dream future. We are definitely closer this month than last, but not as much as I could have. I need to start setting monthly entrepreneurial goals again.

Due to the increasing needs of this site, I have been upgrading to a new server over the weekend. It has been taking longer than expected. Because of the way the internet works, there are currently two copies of my site on the internet right now – one on the old server and one on the new server. Depending on where you are located, you will be seeing one or the other.

The side effects of this are that you may leave a comment on the “old” server, and it will disappear when you eventually get redirected to the new servers. Posts also might appear and disappear. The dust should all settle within the next 24 hours. I have been monitoring the e-mails on both my old and new servers, so everything should be okay in that respect. Thanks for your patience.

I have never been a very neat person. Having a bigger house is not a good thing for me. I swear the amount of junk we have has doubled since we started living in a house with a basement!! Given that we are also doing an inter-state move in less than 4 months, I really need to get rid of this junk. Because of this, I’ve been noticing a lot of other articles that related to simplifying your life:

The Zero Inbox – Here, the idea is to have nothing in your e-mail Inbox. Nothing! The second you get the e-mail you either answer it, delete it, or file it away appropriately. 43 Folders has a whole series about this method. I think I have over 1,000 messages in my blog e-mail Inbox alone. 😛

Buy Nothing For A Year – A group of people, called The Compact (see their blog and Yahoo Group, are pledging not to buy any new products of any kind (from stores, web sites, etc.) for all of 2007. They wish to “counteract the negative global environmental and socioeconomic impacts of U.S. consumer culture.” and simplify their lives. Instead, they borrow, barter, or buy used. (I think food and medicine are okay.)

Having Zero Impact – What if you went further, and led a life with the goal of having zero impact on the environment? For the couple interviewed in this New York Times article “The Year Without Toilet Paper”, it means “eating only food (organically) grown within a 250-mile radius of Manhattan; (mostly) no shopping for anything except said food; producing no trash (except compost); using no paper; and, most intriguingly, using no carbon-fueled transportation.” This means no cars, no subway, no toilet paper, and barely any electricity. I’m sorry, but I need my Charmin, dude…

While I don’t necessarily want to go to any of these extremes, I do feel I need to consciously choose to live a more simple life and let go of my pack-rat tendencies. I’ve felt this way before, though, so I know it won’t be easy.