We show you how to go on a tour to Iran, bring you the SPG 35k Cards like everyone, discover beautiful hidden beaches, pick the best Caribbean Islands & more!
TBB Blog Mission: To Entertain. Educate. Inspire. In That Order!
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Starwood SPG has a new online game you can win SPG Starpoints and I won 10,000 points in my first try, woohoo! It’s called Get In The Game with SPG. You can play every day until March 18. I saw it first at Loyalty Lobby. Now watch how every blogger will publish this and sell the SPG cards with it #rolleyes
Yomadic has a new Iran Tour! I am going to be doing this one. Just before the US election, phew!
Where to find First Class Anywhere in the world. There is a lot here to process…
You may have heard that the SPG cards (both personal and business) are now offering 35k SPG Starwood points which is great. What is not great is that for almost everyone reading this blog you will NOT get the signing bonus again (once per lifetime now, booooooo!). In case you never had them and/or are a newbie and you are indeed responsible with your credit, you can get them with my links HERE. And that’s all the positive news about it, no WOWs, no AMAZING, no LAST CHANCE and HURRY. Sustain the small bloggers to keep them…going! For the beatings of other bloggers please see MILESBUZZ section below 🙂
Hidden Beaches for Bookworms. I always find something interesting in AFAR lists.
Do you really need rental car insurance? Really good New York Times article. Take lots of pictures with your cell phone!
Best Caribbean Island for every type of traveler. Interesting!
Crazy new instrument uses 2,000 marbles to make music. This is absolutely mind boggling. This Swedish artist took two years to build this thing, you have never seen anything like it, I guarantee it #mindblown
A new study confirms your worst suspicions: Financial firms prey on “unsophisticated” consumers. TBB study just out: “Titan blogs prey on unsophisticated travelers keeping them in the dark so they can sell to them more credit cards”
Best images from Smithsonian’s annual photo contest
There is a human tragedy unfolding in Syria getting bombed by everyone it appears. Whoever can afford it is getting the hell out. Not everyone makes it. These portraits of refugee families show the lost members #verysad
John Travolta’s house. Might as well be an airport!
MILESBUZZ
2016 Has Been a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Year for Our Hobby It sure has #sosad
There was a deafening silence all morning from the big bloggers (affectionately known as Titans around here) about the SPG 35k offers. Dead silence. They were all waiting for their own affiliate links of course! Why help readers if you are not going to get paid huh, that would be sooooo non Titan like! And then I warned everyone! This practice of frenzied pimping attacks is what gets me so pissed off by this hobby. It is amazing to watch really! And it gets me a little, cough, angry? And sometimes I wonder why I am still doing this hehe #cryoutloud. If I only had more time to do another top ten parody post. Sometimes I can’t help myself! You remember the hideous pumping by the same bloggers screaming like this? #barfcity And this one always takes the cake, they started all this madness!
Suddenly, Moocho app is no longer allowed to be used in Ann Arbor’s Lucky Markets. That was the only reason I shopped there, boooooo! I guess I am going to burn my points by enjoying several more awesome pitas at… Pita Pit then! Or maybe me as a blogger I killed this deal. This is weird…have I become like these bloggers too? Oh Lord!
Get ready to donate to Personal Finance Digest‘s legal assistance fund, darn you Berkelele bank!
Apologies to all who fell for the BS getting the SPG 25k cards. Sadly, this includes some of my readers. I had no idea…I got stuck too as I was getting ready to apply for a few more Business cards! And then bang, the ax fell with the once per lifetime rule! But you can try getting matched to the 35k offer by trying these. Good luck!
And I leave you with this…
Please help bloggers you appreciate & make a positive difference in your life by spreading the word about their blogs, emailing and commenting and using their few $ links, thank you!
Check out my updated blog lists: Blogs I Love, Blogs I Like, Blogs To Ignore
TBB
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Another Friday, waiting to be interviewed. No, I don’t have a blog, but I am thinking about starting one.
Still have the email inviting me to do it. Same questions, he wanted them in an email. Then he adds cc affiliate links to it and voila, Friday content served while getting on the good graces of new blogger wannabe & get linkbacks.
Amazing…they keep lining up to do it!
Gold!
Love that photo of Travolta’s house – wow!
One day when I win the lotto I will invite you there…
Oh shoot…that means I need to buy a ticket first 🙂
Silver!
safe at 3rd?
The marble music is just f’g brilliant! Restores a small part of my faith in humanity to see someone use the space between the ears in such a clever, creative way!
Happy Friday!
f*g brilliant…think you nailed it!
Bronze!
I would like to encourage everybody to check out the 2,000-marble music machine link. It really is neat.
I agree…RT my tweet leading them here 🙂
If I get both the SPG personal and business, should I get them the same day or get one and then wait a few weeks for the another? Seeing conflicting datapoints, thoughts?
Other*
Anyone? PedroNY?
I think it depends on what other Amex cards u have now, which kind, and your recent history/usage with other banks.
I would go for personal first and then watch the end of the 35k deadline and….apply for the business in the final day. No need to push through. Also be aware of the Chase 5/24 rule too!
Thanks Buzz. Not worried about Chase, since I am beyond 5/24. I have an Amex Platinum, but it’s the only Amex card I’ve ever had, so Amex is wide open for me. Along with other banks.
American Express only allows one credit card application per day, so just apply for personal or business first and then wait at least another day. You can throw in a charge card, but two credit cards won’t be instantly approved.
Love how those banks are asking to revise all those years old posts, except of course
The Point Genius who “controls his content fully” (and is owned by bankrate) ROTFL
I just received a reply from that Barkleekard compliance vendor. The entirety of their response: “lalalalala”.
I know I make up stuff to be silly sometimes, but that is actually what they wrote.
This is so messed up…what a joke indeed!
I was once “turned in” for mentioning the word “vagina” in a post. I asked the “compliance” staff person…can I say penis, breasts. butt….never got an answer!
I think these “compliance” depts just need to login a certain number of “reportable instances” to cross “check” on a checklist to show regulators in case they are asked what they are doing. Which leaves the big Titans alone to just lie/deceive anything they want because, at the end of the day, this whole space is….all about conversions.
So glad you turned us onto the marble music machine! My 2.5 year old grandson watched it with me this morning and started smiling and dancing to it. As AMEX used to say: Priceless!
Speaking of AMEX, I may be the only veteran of this hobby who has never owned an SPG card. May have to find out what I’ve been missing all these years…..using the TBB links, of course!
I am still amazed by that artist, wow!
I am surprised about you never owning an SPG card. I like to use them for Category 1 and 2 SPG properties. I have a conference in San Diego and Orlando every other year, they alternate. There are decent Four Points by Sheraton properties nearby, one within walking distance, the savings are great! Sadly, you can not use the “burn 4 nights, get 5th night free” for Cat 1 and 2 properties. Or turn 20k SPG points to 25k AA miles. Of course, you can save them for aspirational stays but most of these are not too much of a bargain when you burn these points. What makes these cards unique is that with darn Starwood is very hard to earn them otherwise if you do not have paid stays! With Marriott entering the picture, we will all miss SPG. I think we are safe until sometime in 2017. I don’t believe anything coming out of Marriott execs, these guys are Delta-like ruthless!
Thanks for the support.
Blasts, my Bluebird got shut down today!
All over the Twitterverse that the grim reaper is back.
Don’t eat the canned salmon! (see if anyone gets that one!?)
Yep, blog posts are all over the place…I may put them all in a comment and feed some bloggers some hits, maybe they will reciprocate. Of course the Titans never do 🙂
“canned salmon”….Hmmm, can I buy a vowel? #stumped
It’s from The Meaning of Life – one of the world’s best ever movies. This is the only clip I could find – it’s only about half of the sketch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tIg2nK67LQ
Hey, I didn’t eat the mousse lol
Thanks for the link to the SPG game, didn’t know about that one. So what teams did you pick for Home and Away? It would be interesting to see if the gameplay uses actual 2015 MLB statistics as a factor or if it is just completely random.
I totally noticed the silence about the SPG 35K offer from the Titans yesterday. I think FM or maybe DoctorOfCredit was the first out of the gate with the news in the morning. It is pretty nice of Amex that everyone can have a referral bonus link if you are an existing cardholder.
These online games are completely random imho.
I had Detroit and NY Mets. Knuckleball both times, hit a triple on second pitch. 10k SPG points, sweet!
Whats the big deal about once in a lifetime on SPG if SPG is bought out anyway?
At the very least, without checking my math, it’s 43k airline miles (and Amex offers).
100,000 if you get both w/transfer bonus I believe. 🙂
If Amex goes away…(and judging how they are screwing up all over the place) they are clearly becoming soon…LAST CHANCE…for real this time 🙂
Buzz-
A quick question before you head out for the weekend:
Do you think it generates a lot of hits when a blogger has a story on “Erin Andrews Naked”?
Yes
🙂
Meant to say
HELL YEEEEEEEEES!
Applied for SPG Business and was approved! Used your link, Buzz. Will go for personal in the next few days. 🙂
Awesome, thank you very much. The day this site makes more than minimum wage is…coming! 🙂
Nice to take a day off on Saturdays. I almost posted something…
Currently deciding which “3 Links I Love” links to post tomorrow…at Panera. Thanks to my headphones I escape the crappiest music they play here, wow!
Looks like it was a batch mass murder of more Bluebird and Serve accounts by Amex. 3 out my 4 BB’s were shut down in the first mass massacre a few months ago. The remaining BB survived and I did NOTHING with it. It is still alive….for now.
MARCH 5
http://milestomemories.boardingarea.com/amex-serve-shutdown-data-point/
MARCH 4
http://www.doctorofcredit.com/bluebirdserve-shuts-cards-today/
http://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/2016/03/04/amex-lowers-the-boom-on-bluebird-and-serve-again/
http://milestomemories.boardingarea.com/bluebird-serve-shutdowns-march-2016/
http://www.pointswithacrew.com/americna-express-finally-shut-down-my-serve-account/
http://travelwithgrant.boardingarea.com/2016/03/04/round-2-of-amex-serve-card-account-closures-march-4-2016/
http://runningwithmiles.boardingarea.com/more-bluebirdserve-closures-but-some-still-remain/
You know that this hobby is not sustainable when even a non-travel titan blog has affiliate links and spells sh*t out like the bowtie douchebag does:
http://clubthrifty.com/pay-your-mortgage-with-a-credit-card/
Reading this I thought to myself…this gotta be dated in 2014 or 2015. Nope, February 29, 2016. Expert…writing for the Frugal Travel Guy. Shaking my head. Just sad…
Had to come see what you were whining about over here since I had some referral clicks!
It was written in 2014 but we update it with new information and change the date each time we do.
Get it together….Slapping together an old post and mentioning Bluebird like nothing has happened to it and changing the date to February 29, 2016 is a bunch of lazy selfish crap. Typical Frugal Travel Guy like quality! Have a good week and you are welcome for the clicks.
It’s actually not lazy at all – it’s called SEO. Lazy would be…not writing a post at all?
When a post gets excellent organic traffic from search engines, it’s important to keep it updated and improve it all the time. If you google “how to pay your mortgage with a credit card,” that post should be in the top three on any browser. Updating that post frequently and getting back links to it is what helps it continue ranking as well as it does.
Yeah…it would help if the content was updated as well and you did not put YOUR SEO hits FIRST! Bluebird and Serve accounts have been getting shut down left and right, leaving that in the post shows how clueless you are in this stuff and it harms people by misleading them.
No problem with SEO when the content is actually good and HELPS people FIRST.
I swear all FTG writers learn the FTG way….put yourselves FIRST before the welfare of the readers.
I repeat. BB/Serve stuff is pretty much dead. If not, it will soon be…I am sure you were aware of that right? Shaking my head…
Yes. There is an ongoing conversation in the comments on that post. There are lots of people who haven’t had their accounts shut down yet, and we are just waiting and watching. Our two Bluebird accounts haven’t been shut down yet, and are still functioning as of today. I have noted that clearly in the post and in the comments. But yeah, as soon as it is 100% dead, we will update it to reflect that and maybe just take that whole part out.
I am over here “shaking my head,” too. I hope you are happier in real life than you appear to be on the net. If your goal is truly convincing people to stop doing things you find immoral, I think you would get a lot more done by taking a positive approach. You come off as angry, spiteful, and downright jealous at times. Nothing personal, but you seriously need to lighten up – maybe take a really nice, long vacation! =)
>>>>>There are lots of people who haven’t had their accounts shut down yet, and we are just waiting and watching
>>>>>as soon as it is 100% dead, we will update it to reflect that and maybe just take that whole part out
>>>>>>I hope you are happier in real life than you appear to be on the net
>>>>>> If your goal is truly convincing people to stop doing things you find immoral
WTF…just wow!
>>>>>>You come off as angry, spiteful, and downright jealous at times.
Lol. Only when crap content is unleased for SEO purposes from “experts”. Stop misleading people, sheesh!
Misleading people to do what? Sign up for a free Bluebird account?
They are still working for some people – ours are still working. I know a lot of people are upset about getting shut down, and I totally understand, but not everyone has been shut down yet. And I don’t get paid when people sign up for Bluebird – I just don’t.
Holly, you are saying you don’t get paid from the post? Right in your blog post there are several affiliate links. The huge section right in the middle of the post entitled “Card Offers for March 2016” has not one but five links to various credit card sign ups. Furthermore, there is no mention of the 5/24 rule for the CSP card. You had said you update the post with new content. Well, I guess you only selectively choose what to update your post with. TBB was not wrong to say that you are misleading your readers and that you are putting yourself first before them.
Of course I make money from that post, just like I make money when anyone signs up for a card anywhere on the site. That’s why I have multiple disclosures everywhere. I also post my income every month, which is more than most bloggers do.
And no, I don’t think I need to write an entire section in that post on the 5/24 rule. It’s not a post about Chase cards – its a post about the various ways you can pay your mortgage with a credit card. If I included every “what if” and disclosure under the sun about every card in that post, it would be 10,000 words long.