Tech Investing, Crypto Losses, Best Zoos, Who Pays for Rewards?

MILES & POINTS

HOT CREDIT CARD OFFERS: 80k CITI Premier, 60k CHASE Sapphire Preferred, 75k Capital One Venture X, 75k CHASE Ink Cash, 75k CHASE Ink Unlimited, 100k CHASE Ink Business Preferred, 60k CHASE World of Hyatt Visa, 60k CHASE Sapphire Reserve, 20k CHASE Freedom Flex, up to 30k CHASE Freedom Unlimited, 70k CHASE United Explorer, 140k IHG Rewards Premier AND 1 Free Night, 5 FREE Nights with Chase Bonvoy Boundless, 20k CITI Custom Cash, and many more, including many AmericanExpress cards, including Delta, Marriott and Hilton cards! Please check out my Affiliate links. Terms apply to American Express benefits and offers. Visit americanexpress.com to learn more. If you do not see a credit card with my affiliate links, perhaps I could refer you?

This section is about my hobby addiction of collecting frequent flyer miles and hotel points since the early 1990’s!

As of today, I have burned 639,147 miles/points year to date and have 4,807,261 miles/points in the bank. Some do drugs, I do miles lol!

BEGINNERS

BASICS: This travel hacking hobby is mostly about getting the fat Signup Bonus of travel rewards credit cards while of course NEVER EVER carrying a balance. Banks have a marketing budget and are willing to give us many THOUSANDS of miles/points to travel mostly for free hoping to hook us to charge 20%+ interest rates on our balances. The poor souls who fall for their marketing paying these ludicrous interest rates for years end up subsidizing us responsible consumers who enjoy taking advantage of, cough, such bank marketing budgets! Some of us have been doing this for thirty years creating amazing travel memories…But how do you start? This is a good post and podcast: How to Start Travel Hacking. In addition, you can also start by reading the Basic Reading material in the Reddit/Churning site.

If you are looking for airfare deals traveling abroad, this is a good guide: 8 Hacks for Finding Cheap International Flights in 2022.

There was a very interesting research study recently titled: “Who Pays For Your Rewards?“. It is lengthy, 51 pages long. But here is the abstract below and I added bold font for emphasis:

We study credit card rewards as an ideal laboratory to quantify the cross-subsidy from naive to sophisticated consumers in retail financial markets. Using granular data on the near universe of credit card accounts in the United States, we find that sophisticated consumers profit from reward credit cards at the expense of naive consumers who lose money both in absolute terms and relative to classic cards. We estimate an aggregate annual cross-subsidy of $15.5 billion. Notably, our results are not driven by income—while sophisticated high-income consumers benefit the most, naive high-income consumers pay the most. Banks lure consumers into the use of reward cards by offering lower interest rates than on comparable classic cards and bank profits are highest for borrowers in the middle of the credit score distribution. We show that credit card rewards transfer wealth from less to more educated, from poorer to richer, from rural to urban, and from high to low minority areas, thereby widening existing spatial disparities.

Dear readers: This insane bank environment above only happens in the US. $15.5 Billion, wow! In every other country the regulators have taken action to protect consumers. Not here, it has been going on for decades, the power of the banking lobby greasing politicians’ pockets is very powerful indeed. I am all in favor of reform but, like with the issue of gun control, I have almost given up. So, continue to be a sophisticated educated consumer and take advantage of banks’ marketing budgets!

IGNORE posts from bloggers encouraging you to buy miles/points. For 99% of situations out there this does not make sense for you other than making the bloggers richer by using their affiliate links. The whole point of this game is to get the miles/points FOR FREE!

The Chase Sapphire Reserve card was one of the best travel rewards premium cards. And then Chase decided to whack it repeatedly and only recently started making baby steps to stop its decline. But make no mistake, the card is no longer worth it. And to prove it Chase offered, well, nothing! Chase Offers Reserve Cardholders Marriott Bonvoy Gold Elite Status. Actually, I find this insulting…a worthless elite status from one of the worst hotel programs and only, please sit down, for three months LOL.

TOP TRAVEL REWARDS SIGNUP BONUS CARDS

Citibank again increased the Signup Bonus for the Citi Premier card from 60,000 to 80,000 Thank You points. Annual fee is $95 and the minimum spend to score the Signup Bonus is $4k in the first three months. The Citi Premier card has a solid earning structure as it earns 3 points per dollar on gas/groceries/dining/travel and one point on everything else. Of course, you can transfer your points to mostly foreign airlines and JetBlue. Or you can take $705 and run. You can cash out at one cent per point. Therefore, 80,000 points means $800 less $95 annual fee——-> BOOM, here is $705 in your pocket, you need this $$$ to pay for gas! Read the newbies paragraph above and think…taking advantage of bank marketing budgets! To reiterate, do NOT become a victim of bank marketing budgets by paying interest TO the banks ok? To read more: The Citi Premier Card Has a Big Offer – 80,000 Points, Worth at Least $800. Yep, available HERE, thank you!

The Capital One Venture X card offers a 75,000 point Signup Bonus after a minimum spend of $4k in the first three months. If you like simplicity and are looking for one (premium) card, I highly recommend this card (and yes, I have it myself!). It has an annual fee of $395 but it comes with a VERY easy $300 statement credit for travel booked on its excellent travel portal, essentially turning it into a $95 annual fee card. Wait…at each card anniversary you earn 10,000 points essentially making it FREE! Every dollar of spend earns 2 points and flights booked on the travel portal earn 5 points per dollar. You get access to Capital One and Plaza Premium airport lounges and a Priority Pass Select lounge membership and, this is important, you can add FOUR authorized users FOR FREE who can also open their own Priority Pass Select airline lounge membership. No foreign transaction fees. Free Hertz President’s Circle rental car elite status. Cell phone protection and primary rental car coverage. Awesome seats at baseball stadiums for just 5k points. And lots more. Available with my Credit Card Links, thank you for your support!

5 Amazing Ways To Maximize The 75K Capital One Venture Card Welcome Offer.

NEW: Capital One Adds New Perk: 6 Month Cultivist Membership – Never heard of Cultivist before. But it can be an AMAZING opportunity to save a lot of money if you enjoy museums as you can get in free and bring along THREE guests! Many museums in the list with 10 only in New York City alone! The catch? You get a free membership for only 6 months so make sure you cancel before they start charging you $40 per month, ok?

In general, I do not recommend hotel travel rewards credit cards. Unless it is for a card from a hotel chain you use A LOT (like Hyatt for most of us). But right now there is a superior offer for a hotel card from a program that I generally almost never recommend. It is this one: Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless FIVE Free Night Certificates (Up To 50,000 Points Each) Bonus. You can enjoy almost a week at a very nice property anywhere in Marriott’s vast footprint for the $95 annual fee, do the math! Available HERE under Card Category/Hotel, thank you for supporting this blog!

The Chase IHG Premier Card Signup Bonus is now 140,000 IHG points AND a free night (that costs up to 40,000 points) after you spend $3k in the first three months. The annual fee is $99. The card can earn up to 26x per dollar for spending in IHG hotels, 5x per dollar on travel, gas stations and restaurants and 3x everywhere else. You do receive a free night (up to 40,000 points) at each card anniversary which softens the blow from the annual fee somewhat along with a $50 deposit into your United Airlines Travel Bank account. You also get automatic Platinum elite status which is not that big of a deal. Word on the street is that Chase will approve you much easier for this card than any other of its cards. I am trying to phase out all IHG points from my life so I am not going for it. Hotel cards are just not as lucrative as they used to be. But if you plan to spend some time at a Holiday Inn brand hotel this card could get you several free nights so consider it. Of course it does not compare to the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card above that comes with FIVE free nights! Available HERE under Card Category/Hotel, thank you!

Remember, you are NOT allowed to ever carry a credit card balance if you ever get a credit card here!

NEWS/PROMOS/MY ACTION

The $99 annual fee on son’s Citi AAdvantage Business Select MasterCard posted so we did the standard routine to call Citi and pretend that we don’t think the annual fee may be worth it anymore and if the rep could kindly check to see if there is a retention offer in the account to make us keep the card? And, here we go again, Citi offered a $99 statement credit after spending $1,000 on the card in the next three months. Accepted. As blogged previously, me and my wife finally closed the same Citi cards as we both applied for the Barclay AAviator card recently that offered 80,000 AA miles Signup Bonus. Why didn’t son do the same? Well, it is a long story behind it…Let’s just say his miles/points “manager” screwed up and Barclay could not approve him and before going down that path…I made an executive decision to lay off Barclay for him and stick with Citi. Next up is to get the 80k Barclay AAviator card for daughter when she settles down and feels ready to possibly call Barclay to get them to reconsider her application…Moral of the story: ALWAYS call when the annual fee posts or a few months before it actually posts and kindly ask if there are any retention offers on your account as you are thinking to close the card because you are not using it much, you are not taking advantage of the benefits or whatever.

Wait, wife’s 80k AA miles from Barclays did not post with the miles from the spend in the first monthly statement. Calling Barclays is one of those experiences your worst enemy wished on you…And sending them a secure message and seeing the canned responses by a robot are just sad!

Register for the latest Radisson Rewards Americas promotion HERE to earn 2X points on stays of two or more nights at any of our 600+ hotels across the United States, Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean, now through August 31, 2022.

ADVANCED TRAVEL HACKERS

For players doing manufactured spending (MS) at Kroger, this post is helpful: Kroger 3PGC Buying Limits.

Question: What is the latest workaround to get your AAdvantage frequent flyer number entered on award reservations made using British Airways Avios flying partner AA? My prior workarounds do not appear to be working any more…If this window has closed I am not going to transfer any Chase Ultimate Rewards points to British Airways to take advantage of the 30% bonus (valid until July 31, 2022).