It's amazing how much first impressions count. As a treat to myself before I ran my half marathon, I bought myself some sunglasses. I'd always talked about owning a pair of polarized sunglasses, and spending 2.5 hours in the sun running seemed like a good excuse to get some. I ended up with the Native Dash SS, purchased from REI during a sale for around $100 (usually $130). I'd never owned a pair of such expensive sunglasses, and I was surprised by how much of a difference the lens made. Unfortunately, I lost them while rafting a few weeks ago. I'd held out for a while, but backcountry.com had the Dash XRs on sale for $103.96, so I caved and bought them.
I lost my Discover card this weekend, so I had to call and cancel it on Sunday. Last time this happened, they shipped it to me using DHL. For some reason, this time around it's coming by regular post. Weird.
Speaking of credit cards, I'm considering switching from Discover to a Southwest VISA. Apparently you get a point for every $1,200 you spend, meaning I'd earn about a half flight a year from my spending alone, and then add in any Southwest flights I take. I'm not sure if that makes up for the annual fee and being locked in to Southwest. My discover card doesn't get me a huge amount of rewards, but the cash back is much more flexible than Southwest points . . .
My Discover is up to 1% (I'm not sure what the criteria is for that), and then 5% on the seasonal promotion, so I'd guess it's comparable to the Chase card.
The Southwest card in terms of dollar value is probably significantly better than 1% back, in that you can redeem it for any flight they offer (including Hawaii from what I understand) . . . assuming you're willing to deal with redeeming frequent flier points. But again, you're locked in, where as with a cash back, I could always take the dollars and run.
In practice, I don't do this, and usually redeem the points for gift cards, as you can get an extra 25% or more (i.e. $20 gets you a $25 gift card). On the other hand, that means I usually have some balance unredeemed, which isn't making any interest for me . . . though a hundred bucks or so in principal isn't going to make that much of a difference . . .
I assume I'm responding to Mr. Geiger?