Speaking of kiva, awhile back I planned to loan out a total of $4,000 on kiva.org before summer was up. As of today I have officially surpassed that number! However, seeing as how things have been going well for me finance wise I’ve decided to balance out the personal finance karma scale and plan to fund another $6,000-$8,000 on kiva by the end of August. So by September 1st I’m confident the total amount on kiva.org will be $10,000 or greater.

Going on vacation is a great way to run up your credit card bill. My total amount due on my card was roughly $3,500. I was gone for roughly a month so that comes out to $875/week! This is southeast asia too. Normally my spending doesn’t even top $200 a week at home.

I actually witnessed this happening to a local which was surprising at first but then realized most locals now own flashier and more expensive phones than foreigners (the economy is booming). I was walking by two people on the corner and one girl was talking on her phone and a guy and a girl driving by on a motorbike snatched the cell phone out of her hands and took off (guy driving, girl snatching).

I’ve thought about letting various places charge me 3% and then calling up my credit card company later to get it removed but it isn’t worth the hassle and I’m on vacation. So yes, cash is still king when traveling here.

Citibank and HSBC have a huge presence worldwide and have a good number of ATMs and branches. The optimal way to exchange cash is withdraw from your account via the teller in US dollars and then exchange currency at a location that’ll give you better rates. Also there’s a different exchange rate for $100 bills and smaller denominations. I forgot which one got the better exchange rate but I”m sure smaller denominations would because of the massive amount of counterfeiting with $100 bills.

So if the regular checkout counters is jam packed and the pharmacy counter is still open. Skip the line!

So why am I funding $4,000+ worth of loans? Simply put, it’s all the money I have excluding my portfolio or emergency fund. This is money sitting in my checking account that’s been funding my partying and misc other activities. So the real question is why all my money?

I need to know that feeling again. How it feels to be broke. How it feels to have no girlfriend and no money. How it feels like to be “hungry and foolish” again. I’m going back to start.

Hopefully it’ll motivate me like it has in the past to find ways to make more money. Instead of sticking all my money in a CD or something I figure locking it up in Kiva loans would be a more charitable thing to do also. I’ll accept the 2.2% default risk for the greater good to help others lift themselves out of poverty.

So far I have contributed $1,175 in helping fund loans. Every couple of days I’ll look for loans and causes I like and fund more loans until I reach $4,000 or so.

So why do you want to charge something to your credit card instead of using your available PP balance? It’s the credit card rewards of course.

The easiest way around this is to withdraw all your money to your bank account. However for some people like me who sell on eBay and ship via UPS I always need funds in my account since UPS now only gives you the option of paying from your PayPal balance.

The tip to temporarily make your PayPal balance unavailable is simple and easy. Send all money is in your available balance to an e-mail address you control that is NOT registered with PayPal. Then when you are done making whatever purchases just simply cancel the payment all the money re-appears back in your PayPal account.