Making Sense of your Money with Capital One 2: My Family’s New Year’s Goals

Back in December, I shared with you how we use 360 Savings from Capital One to help keep our financial house in order.   I’m back in January to tell you how Capital One is helping our family achieve our New Year’s Goals this year.

My Goal:  Strength

As I mentioned last week, my goal for this year is to approach my life from a position of strength, and part of that is tracking our spending.  I don’t know about you, but apart from our fixed expenses (mortgage, daycare costs), and relatively constant expenses (gas, groceries) there are some months when we just have no idea where our money has gone.  Luckily, my Capital One Venture Card provides a year end summary of charges, which breaks down my credit card spending by month, by category and by piece of the pie.   If there’s strength in knowledge, this handy feature allows me to quickly identify where we are spending our discretionary dollars and where we can cut back, so we have more money to spend deliberately.  (I don’t know WHAT I was doing last February, but the answer to where all my money goes is to Amazon.)

The Husband’s Goal:  Less Stress

My poor husband works very long hours, and experiences a lot of stress, and would like to spend the time he has not working in either playing with the kids or watching Netflix’s varied and crappiest offerings.  What he doesn’t want to deal with is things like credit card theft, and affidavits about fraudulent card use, and hassle.  Thank goodness for Capital One’s No Hassle credit card policy.   Right before Christmas, his card number was stolen, and Capital One immediately stopped a suspicious transaction from going through.  They texted us, asked us if it was a fraudulent charge (no, we are not in the habit of charging $1800 to a random bank onto our credit cards) and immediately canceled the card (and took off the fraudulent charge that had slipped through ($7 for wings in Pittsburgh) with no questions asked.   I will say it was the most PLEASANT experience of credit card theft we’ve had.  And that’s worth something.

The Nuni’s Goal:  Adventure

Early in January, we took the Nuni to see the new Star Wars movie (which she enjoyed, but did not become as obsessed with as her brother.  The Darth Vader theme is literally being hummed on constant repeat in our house, and I am going mental.)  After the movie, she burst into tears in the car.  “I want to have an ADVENTURE,” she cried.  “We never do ANYTHING interesting.   We never go ANYWHERE.”  After pointing out that most people in movies who are having adventures are simultaneously (this may be a spoiler if you live under a rock or something) being shot at or pursued by evil people, and maybe adventure is overrated, we agreed that we should try to see the world this year.  Or at least a state other than California.  (She’s eight.  Illinois IS an adventure).     Capital One (ad)Venture Card can help us do this, with their flexible rewards program.  You earn double miles on every purchase (and, as we explored above, there are a lot of purchases) and there’s a lot of flexibility in redemption –  airlines, hotels, Uber rides.  As long as it’s a travel-related expense, you can redeem your miles on it.  Which is great, since we do have a 3 year old in tow, and it’s yet to be seen whether our out of state adventure will involve a plane flight (to Michigan!) or a driving trip to Arizona.  That kind of flexibility will help us achieve adventure without sacrificing financial strength or less stress.

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.