Mappy March!
A month in Thailand, 6 weeks in an Animal Sanctuary, 4.8% APY, Weightloss bets, Auto-dumping Period Discs, Dr. Attia and Ferriss on longevity, $400 referral bonus, Female pleasure, Sighs, Ayahuasca
New on my MappyEverAfter website:
We spent 6 weeks at an animal sanctuary, petting everything that moved - a story and 2 videos
Our month in Chiang Mai, Thailand - a story and a video
From the Archive: The one where we bet on our weight loss to earn cash and credit card points
Travel: Periods on vacations and auto-dumping discs. A bit graphic, my apologies.
Health: Dr. Peter Attia (a longevity expert) on Tim Ferriss's show, on what to eat, how to exercise, what blood tests to get, and medicine 3.0
Money: $400 for referring a friend to an Ink card, and Wealthfront increasing rates on savings again (4.3% - 4.8%) (Update in June 2023 - the interest rate increased again, to 5.05%)
Watch: The Principles of Pleasure on Netflix
Read: David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day
Mental Hack: Breathing Techniques to Reduce Stress and Anxiety
Just because: The comedian (and alcoholic) Ron White got clean using hypnosis and ayahuasca
Note: I will always tell you if I’m getting any referral bonuses and how much they are. There aren’t any in this letter, but I mention some of my previous newsletters that do contain referral links.
New on MappyEverAfter.com
I wrote a blog post about our stay (2x 3 weeks) at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Utah. It’s an amazing place set in a gorgeous piece of nature. Have a look here: What’s it like to stay at Best Friends Sanctuary
The second post is about the month we spend in northern Thailand: Meditating, Exploring, and Eating Our Way Through Chiang Mai
And here are my 3 newest videos: one of petting all kinds of fuzzy animals, one about the whole Best Friends sanctuary, and one of our month in Chiang Mai
From the Archive: We bet on our weight loss to earn cash and credit card points
There are many creative ways people try to meet minimum spending on credit cards in order to earn welcome bonuses. We once funded a weight-loss bet with our new credit cards. We lost the weight, won the 6-month challenge, earned over $1500, and loads of credit card points.
Read about it here: Meet minimum spending, lose weight, win cash
Travel: Auto-dumping menstrual discs are perfect for traveling during your period
I've been using silicone period cups for years and had been reasonably happy with them at home and while traveling. But then, I stumbled upon period discs on sale and I decided to give them a go. I watched a bunch of videos on how to use them and they talked about something called "auto-dump." I was thinking "no way, I don't want anything period-related to be auto-dumping." Turns out, it's not what it sounds like. This is how it works: when you pee, your muscle contraction empties the disc out into the toilet. It's like a magic trick for periods. Kim Rosas from Period Nirvana explains it best in her video, Auto-Dumping Menstrual Discs Explained.
You can wear it for up to 12 hours before cleaning or tossing it out (depending on the type you have), as opposed to a cup, which you have to take out and clean every time you empty it. The disc may look bigger than a cup but it sits in a different way, you’ll forget you're even wearing it.
I wish I’d found these bad girls earlier, I could have been living the disc life for years. But hey, better late than never. Now that I've experienced the wonders of the disposable disc, I'm taking this relationship to the next level and getting the reusable one.
Health: Longevity expert Dr. Peter Attia and Tim Ferriss on what to eat, how to exercise, what blood tests to get, and medicine 3.0
Well, well, well, the esteemed Dr. Peter Attia (physician, author, and longevity expert) and the ever-insightful Tim Ferriss (entrepreneur and best-selling author), two of my favorite health nerds in one podcast. In the 2 hr 16 min interview, they dish out a buffet of insights and strategies on the most critical things to prioritize if you want to feel your best now and into your vintage years.
A few hints:
Focus on the few things that matter most
Work on your fast-twitch muscles, they are the first to go as you age
Get strong to keep your brain healthy
Raise your VO2 max (oxygen your body is able to use during exercise)
Don’t let sleep trackers stress you out
Don’t overdo fasting, it eats up muscle
Eat the right kinds and amounts of protein
Double up on disease prevention
Rucking is good for you (not a typo, haha)
Read Peter’s book, even Tim’s dad likes it, and, apparently, that’s saying something
And much more, I’ve barely scratched the surface.
Here’s the video version, here is the transcript, and here’s the audio on Spotify. Pick your poison.
Money: Chase Ink raised the referral bonus to $400, and Wealthfront increased the APY on savings to 4.30% (or 4.80% if you opened an account using my link) (Update in June 2023 - the interest rate increased again, to 5.05%)
Okay, I know I've mentioned Chase and Wealthfront a gazillion times, they just keep getting better and better. It's like the lottery, but without the scratch-off tickets and the risk of getting a papercut. So I'll keep talking about Chase and Wealthfront until they stop making it rain with all these amazing deals. And even then, I might still talk about them.
If you got the Chase Business Ink Unlimited or Ink Cash card I wrote about in Mappy November, congratulations on your $900 welcome bonus. That offer is now gone, replaced with a $750 bonus (which is still great). The best part is that you can keep earning big. You can now generate your own referral links to send to your friends and family (even in the same household). You will earn 40k points (which you can turn into a $400 statement credit or use them for booking travel) for each person that opens an account using your link.
There’s no catch. The annual fee is $0. If your friend spends $6k on the card in the first 90 days, they will earn the welcome bonus - 75k points, worth $750 in cash redeemed as a statement credit (or more if used for travel). Win-win. If you don’t have the card and do want to check it out, by all means, head to Mappy November and apply using my link (please and thank you). If you want to see how I use the points to book free travel, last month I wrote about it in Travel Hacking with US Credit Card Points.
If you used the link I shared in Mappy February to open a Wealthfront cash account, you and I both got boosted to a 4.8% (Update in June 2023 - the interest rate increased again, to 5.05%) interest rate on our savings as of last Friday. Each time the fed increases rates, Wealthfront follows suit. You can now generate your own referral links to send to your friends for extra 3 months of the boosted interest rate (up to 12 months total) if they sign up. Your savings are FDIC-insured for up to $2 million since Wealthfron spreads the money across different banks. If you sign up without my link (but why would you?), your interest rate will be 4.3%, which is still great.
Watch: The Principles of Pleasure (on Netflix)
The reviews are all over the place, from “Absolutely ridiculous, laughable and offensive!” to “I absolutely loved this show! I'm almost embarrassed to say how much I didn't know about my own body and my pleasure.”
Mark and I decided to give it a go and we both really enjoyed it. This 3-part mini docu-series talks about female pleasure, from anatomy and psychology to toys and myths.
Read: Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, an American humorist, comedian, and author
Me Talk Pretty One Day is a hilarious, self-deprecating rollercoaster ride through Sedaris’s life, from his childhood struggles with speech therapy to his adventures in France learning the language as an adult, and everything in between. If you can, get a hold of the audiobook. It’s read by the man himself which makes it that much better.
Mental Hack - Dr. Andrew Huberman on proven breathing techniques to quickly calm yourself
The “psychological sigh” - you know what it is when you hear it, you’ve done it before (likely while crying), you’ve heard your dog or cat do it. Now you can do it on purpose, to calm yourself down when you’re stressed or anxious.
Just Because: The comedian Ron White cured his alcoholism with hypnosis and ayahuasca
Ron White, known for his stand-up with a cigar in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other, decided that he’d already drunk more alcohol than one person should in their lifetime and decided to quit. His most successful previous attempt (at a rehab) cost him $70,000 and kept him sober for 6 months. He then tried hypnosis and ayahuasca and, 16 months later, here he is to tell the tale, sober and still hilarious: Ron White Cleaned Up His Life With Ayahuasca
So there you have it, a bit of fun and a bit of pleasure to spice up your March.
Be Mappy,
Mags
