A Winter of Solo Travel - Preparing to Go Digital Nomad

To prepare for a long trip, the first thing I did was sign up for a Chase Sapphire card. They have a 100k points signup bonus if you spend 4k in 3 months.

4K obviously a lot of money to spend in that timeframe, even at a software salary. I was hoping to be able to pay my mortgage with my new credit card (even with a 3% fee, it would still be worth it, although not optimal). That turned out to not be an option, so I couldn't do it that way.

Some things I did was:

• Buying basically everything for friends and having them venmo me (this only works if they are not themselves hoping to get points)
• Buying all the equipment I didn't already have for the trip

Keep in mind that if you do this too fast you'll over-leverage yourself a little bit, and are likely to go above the 30% suggested credit usage for at least one month.

Useful links: Set up your first bot in Slack Bolt Shortcut Payload Reference Guide