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NEWBIE/FINCON13 ATTENDEE: HOW TO STAY IN A HOTEL UP TO 16 NIGHTS FOR FREE!
Get 80,000 IHG Rewards points by applying for the IHG Rewards credit card. You need to spend $1,000 on it in the first three months. No annual fee for the first year! You could get up to 16 FREE nights in a Pointbreaks hotel as they cost only 5,000 IHG Rewards points per night! (New list live on November 1st). Make sure you read the wiki on the top of this page and apply using the link posted in the answer to the first question. If you do not have an IHG Rewards account number please open an account (Click on IHG Rewards Club/Join) first and note your number you will need to enter in the credit card application.
If you have spending control issues or carry credit card debt please leave NOW, this is not the place for you! If you have to think about how to spend $1,000 please leave now, this hobby is not for you! Think about it. You can buy gas or grocery gift cards, pay your utilities, make a charitable donation at the end of the year or whatever to satisfy the spending requirement and receive 80,000 IHG Rewards points and you can STILL cancel the darn card before the year is out. Your true out of pocket cost CAN be zero, zilch, nada!
If this is too much to handle you are just not cut out for this; this hobby/game/addiction requires some decent organization skills and of course some discipline along with the desire to SAVE money on travel costs! If you have credit card debt please follow David Ramsey‘s debt killing advice (but not his investment advice!) and stay away from any credit card until you exhibit signs you can control your spending! You should also have an emergency fund set up too! Never ever get a card BEFORE you wipe out ALL credit card debt; carrying a balance is NOT allowed! ! I must proudly state that I have personally never paid a single penny of interest in many years of doing this and have earned millions, err gazillions of miles/points and have traveled the world for a fraction of the cost! You can email me with questions.
TRAVEL
Surprisingly I have not had a single find for you in the Travel section! But I made it up in the others lol. So I will bore you with one of my own pictures from my trip to Istanbul last year. Here is the Blue Mosque at night:
MILES/POINTS
The best bargain in hotel points burning, Pointbreaks by IHG Rewards, is going to appear here. Start your engines on November 1st. This is actually a pretty good list with several Intercontinentals and Crown Plazas. Only 5,000 points per night! You do not see any bloggers shouting from the rooftops how getting a non affiliate IHG Rewards credit card can get their readers 16 nights at one of these properties FOR FREE. But you see how they were bombarding you with the latest credit card promo (Southwest, etc etc). Shameful? You be the judge. Don’t be angry. If you are I understand. More on this in the Blog Buzz section.
First one out with the Pointbreaks hotels was Travel is Free with this post. I was second on Twitter by retweeting him (unofficially). You can follow me on Twitter at @FlyerTalkerinA2 and join about 1,960 others who put up with my insanity. 🙂
Pointchaser updated the Best Club Carlson Hotel Redemptions posts. Very useful.
Here is the excellent Virgin America Safety Video everyone is going gaga over!
Someone asked to do a blog post about FinCon13, the financial blogger conference. Here is a report from Andy Shurman in his own blog Lazy Traveler’s Handbook (Andy also writes at the Frugal Travel Guy the blog). Many were blogging about getting in or how they got out of debt, something totally foreign to me! Very anti debt crowd (I agree) but also anti ANY credit card (I disagree). Only a small percentage of people think like us AND manage to have the inner discipline to take advantage of the generous offers to travel the way we do. This is why I cringe so much when bloggers suggest to newbies to start out with several credit cards at once, it should be a crime, what nonsense!
Another 5x bites the dust. By Frequent Miler. Citibank’s Forward card is gutted.
American Express Membership Rewards adds Emirates as a partner. View from the Wing has the best post about it. Maybe I should go for the Alaska cards in the near future as the program is getting better and better.
ON MY MIND
The W Hotel bed delivery has been scheduled for Tuesday of next week, hooray!
ODDZ & ENDZ
23 Insanely Cool Wedding Photos. Some of these are indeed way too cool.
Well, I just love this picture too! Shadows and Spirals. Found at Twisted Sifter.
Behind the scenes pictures from the filming of “Shining”, one of the all time classics. Here is Jack:
Guys, if you do this and make it to emergency, please for God’s sake, do not forget your penis! Depressed bachelor cuts off penis
BLOG BUZZ
The following comment was “posted” on Milevalue‘s site:
Hi,
I notice you were running an offer for a US Airways credit card that offers 30,000 miles for a sign up bonus. I just want to point out to your readers there is another offer that gives 35,000 miles, does NOT require a first year fee be paid and even provides a 10,000 mile anniversary on the 11th month (before the annual fee hits!) I thought you may like to know and inform your readers of this better offer. Thank you. TBB.
It went to moderation and I bet my credibility that it will not be posted. Always willing to give bloggers the benefit of the doubt. I would like a response and I certainly won’t bet I get one.
Well, it was an all out Southwest card pump day. Get it NOW folks. If you don’t do it now, errr, we won’t tell you that it is very likely that the same promotion will come back…so we can do it AGAIN! Viva le pump! Only one blog dared to say that 200,000 points are up for grabs in the headline!…Shaking my head again.
Breaking News: Deals We Like may have escaped TBB’s infamous list 🙂 When I saw the headline “Perks for Big Credit Card Spenders” I immediately started playing the guessing game with myself: How many cc links will appear all over the post? Only to be shocked to find out that there were NONE! Kudos to DWL! This should be encouraged to ensure that readers do not have to second guess the reasons behind the blog posts! Take that conflict of interest out of the game. It would be very helpful if the banks cooperated at this instead of pushing to pump to ensure the status quo. Let’s see if more do it, I am encouraged! Update: Well, DWL could not hold off on the Southwest card. Make sure you do not miss the 9 part (!!!) series on Companion Pass! Never mind.
So, I ask you dear readers: Shouldn’t you want your readers to know AND benefit from the fantastic Pointbreaks deal in the maximum way possible? Bloggers should know that a non affiliate IHG Rewards credit card offer for 80,000 IHG Rewards points has been around, well, for ever. Do you hear about it much? NO! If they don’t know about it you should ask yourself if they are true experts. If they know about it and they do NOT let their readers know I think it is disgraceful. If they take the opportunity to let their readers know about Pointbreaks (of course they should) AND try to pump ANY OTHER card other than the one that can give them 16 FREAKING NIGHTS FOR FREE, well I think it’s shameful! You owe your readers an apology (personal opinion as EVERYTHING in this blog!). If you did this, welcome to my Avoid list. Yeah, I will publish it at some point.
And let me leave you with this. Smile, another credit card promo is right around the corner…
No one else posted yet??
I think you are first.
And I am going to bed right now! Before 1.30 am, progress!
Second. My personal opion is that IHG is the stuff that durian smells like. Still have 17100 points lying around from the 4sq promo. Their BRG seems to be mainstay of the frequent nonsensical travel community, planning to use it for a visit to Bertechsgarden my self.
And I, OTOH, love IHG. They have hotels everywhere(!), I can squeeze my family into the room, and those pointbreaks are the best perk anywhere!
Love the shadows and spirals. And the red in both photos. I was getting bleary-eyed looking for info in a long FT thread. Nice to relax my eyes here.
I have a bunch of IHG points from my last churn but none of the hotels are where I’ll be in the next year. I typically pick a place and then find a hotel. Maybe I should be doing the reverse.
Did a churn today for my husband and got three instant approvals (Barclays Arrival, Chase United Explorer and B of A Alaska Airlines) along with one pending (SPG). All were for personal cards. I was surprised at the SPG pending. Very inconvenient since he hates to call the banks for anything, let alone recon. Much as I’d like to have him call ASAP, I think I’ll just wait it out in hopes he won’t need to call. It’s the first time either of us ever went pending with an Amex app. Maybe they want to move the credit lines around….
The Amex/SPG app requested an SSN for adding me as an authorized user. Anyone know if this will result in a hard pull for me? I am also thinking that perhaps it would be better to not add another user on the app – it just gives the bank one more thing to review! But then he’d have to call to add me…. It sure would be easier if I was not the only points junkie in this household!
Theoretically you could get 16 nights in Tahiti until 31 Jan. Of course you would have to sell your house to pay for the food bill unless you eat ramen noodles and rice for 16 days!
Details, details… it’s profitable to sell the dream. Everything is free in this hobby, right?
I really hate to bring this up, but IC Tahiti is not a place to spend 16 nights, it’s a resort to spend ONE night on your way to Bora Bora… If Thalasso was on the list – a different story…
Surprised you didn’t mention anything about all the bloggers tripping over themselves to let us all know that bonus points can now be tracked for the CSP (many of whom also served up CIB and CIP links even though this relatively unimportant news didn’t even affect those cards)
Well all the bloggers except MV
No PNC rewards rant today? Very disappointed. btw, have they been sending you those 50K point offers too? They really irritate me.
For a minute there I was wondering if you had gotten an affiliate link for IHG and hadn’t put in your disclaimer:) You are right about the 80,000 point IHG credit card omission from the blogs. I have been trying to decide whether to go for that one yet or not. My Platinum status with IHG which I matched from Marriott Platinum which I got through a challenge a year ago, expires on Dec. 31. They even sent me a nice link to a video with a personal 80,000 invitation with my Platinum membership card, but I can no longer access that one since I didn’t jump right on the application. But I do digress. No question that it would be an obvious link in during the point break posting. It is a great example of the conflict of interest issue. Content should not be impacted based upon what the writer is selling or not selling, plain and simple. And the 200,000 point mentioned in the headline by DP was just silly. It wasn’t even referenced in the text of the post!
I really hope you like your W hotel bed better than I do. Got mine in September and It is way too soft for me and has given me shoulder aches I never used to have. I could have sold you mine and would have happily.
TBB, What should I dress-up as for Halloween tonight? Richard Anderson? Conrad Hilton? Doug Parker’s DWI arrest photo? Deltalina?
MMS teaching people how to book awards on United.com
Step 1 – sign in to United.com
under it is a picture of the United home page, with the caption “Step 1 – sign in to your United account
Also, I count 34 colored arrows in that post, some of them ginormously red. That has to be a new “I think my readers are idiots” record, no?
For the record, MMS readers are idiots. And it’s a great niche – lazy and stupid love circles and arrows
This weeks non-affiliate travel challenge:
Step 1: Open up 2 AA cards for 100K+ miles and the PC Visa
Step 2: Fly from wherever you want in North America to Tahiti (stop over in HNL or LA on the way if you want) and stay at the Intercontinental Tahiti among other places
Step 3: Fly from Tahiti to anywhere in Asia (via Tokyo which Air Tahiti Nui flies to) for 25-30K miles and stay in some of the Intercontinentals for 5K points
Step 4: Fly home from Asia for 25-35K miles and stop over in whatever NA gateway city you want (US Pointsbreaks list to be unveiled tomorrow)
Total Cost: A lot, because I’m not going to pretend like FTG that it would be cheap, even with credit cards
+1
TBB is your vanilla hack still live? The one I stumpled upon looks like it its dead, i.e., – “tender not accepted” at the register for credit cards. I gave the post-mortem on this one on my site maybe you can check if its the same as yours.
You should have put in your non-affiliate link a disclaimer that this was NOT your affiliate link. You know, just to keep it standard.
Also, did you see TPG posted top 10 things he wanted in hotel rooms and there wasn’t a single CC link???? What’s wrong with him?
Did anyone see the fight video of Guy Fieri and his Hairdresser? Wow, talk about a cat fight, or were these guys having a lovers quarrel?
Sam Adams indeed!! Teehee!
@Oliver2002: Nothing smells like durian, NOTHING! Seen pics of Bertechsgarden, looks nice but not tops tops to me.
@TWA44: Many are doing the reverse. I altered my trip to the Canadian Rockies to incorporate two Pointbreak nights and drove a little further, worked wonderfully. Never underestimate the power of burning just 5k per night! Very surprised to hear of SPG Amex card pending. Hmm, it does not make sense. I never add any authorized users in the initial app, tends to create unnecessary problems sometimes. Hmm, SSN for authorized user, not sure what’s up. I always call for my wife and pretend I am her as her first name is very nontraditional & 100% foreign, it works great 😉
@Tara: Yeah, very funny. Back in college I use to buy 12 packs of ramen noodles for $1!
@ Steve: Yeah, I run out of time/space on the ridiculously useless of the Chase UR posting enhancement. Ludicrous bloggers tried to milk that too! MV never got back to me, so strange to never hear about the Chase Ink Bold in that site.
I hear you about the United post. Never underestimate the number and the amount of “green”/newbies out there, they eat this stuff up!
Yeah, the Travel Challenge series totally turn me off. At least today they spent two minutes extra on it to add a few sentences about Halloween and Draculas lol.
@Nick: PNC what?? 🙂
@smittytabb:
>>>>>>>No question that it would be an obvious link [80k IHG Rewards Visa] in during the point break posting. It is a great example of the conflict of interest issue. Content should not be impacted based upon what the writer is selling or not selling, plain and simple. And the 200,000 point mentioned in the headline by DP was just silly.
Yeah, that’s what I am talking about. Content is impacted NON STOP!
Oh oh, I hope I do not have the same experience about the W bed!
@theblakefish: I am not sure you should try to dress up like Deltalina 🙂 How about a combination of the Cyrus wrecking ball and Richard Anderson lol.
@Big Habitat: Ssssh, let’s see what happens tomorrow. New month, hoping the store computers somehow get “reprogrammed” back to their former state 😉 VERY long shot. I need to post about it now that it is 99% dead. Update: Well, I just realized you spilled it. This was my baby. Boo! Now I am going to enjoy seeing what other bloggers do about it. I was also hoping that come November there was a tiny chance it may still be alive. Now it won’t for sure.
@R: In my disclosure page I state on the very top: “As of today, this site is completely free, no advertisements, no affiliations, no kickbacks or bribes or comped trips. Nada! Enjoy it while it lasts” But you are right, I should have. I should edit the post! Yeah, I was shocked too about that post. It happens once in a while but soon it is back to the grind…need to keep the lights on.
@Sam Adams: I heard about it, did not watch it. I don’t even know who Guy Fieri is!!
@TBB -Try as I might (and I did once unsuccessfully) I just can’t seem to sound like a guy and his name is very guy. I have always been jealous of couples where this can work – odd names and gay couples luck out – but I guess given the inconveniences of a foreign name and/or discrimination folks should enjoy any advantages that come their way, like being able to make recon calls!
BTW if anyone reading this is an Amex card holder planning on an SPG app, be sure to check out FT because there is a workaround to the odd notice that Amex cardholders only can get 10,000 points:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credit-card-programs/1490178-expired-30k-starwood-amex-usa-offer-10.html
Look at posts in the 130s and 140s but basically you need to apply incognito with an emptied cache.
@Big Habitat (or TBB) – how about a link – not sure which blog is Big Habitat and googling did not help! Thanks!
TBB,
I think its gone for good since I tested at two locations where it had worked before. But since you confirmed it’s the same as yours, I’ll password protect the post until tomorrow so you can blog about its demise assuming it fails to resurrects itself the day after Halloween. I can assure you that based on the web traffic to my 1-week old fledgling blog its still essentially a secret. My website is so well hidden that even Google can’t find it as TWA44 proved by fruitlessly searching for it. But your readers can click on the name on my post or use my name and add .com to get there.
Guess I’ll just have to wait another day. I can confirm that the PW is neither TBB or vanilla 😉 .
Never say never…Let’s see what happens tomorrow…Weirder things have happened. 99.9% is gone but hope dies last 🙂
George, thanks for including my post in your roundup. Yes, that felt really amazing to me too. Even weird.
Since tomorrow is the CSP 1st day of the month dining crap, this would be a great time to do some math
Let’s say most people will not spend more than $50 on dining tomorrow? I think that is a very generous assessment if anything. So that means they would get an extra 53.5 UR points. At 2 cpp (again, a generous assessment), that comes out to $1.07 extra
So just keep in mind tomorrow that TPG, MP, Lucky and everybody else will be writing long posts (the same as every other month) on a bonus that is worth such a negligible amount that it would never in a million years warrant a monthly post by everyone in the blogoshpere….. unless a CSP link came with it (and in TPG’s case, probably 12 other links as well)
Ha – joke’s on you! TPG has a post on First Friday dining bonus already!
I am just disgusted about the whole space lately. And then this post took me over the top. I went on a major rant on Twitter:
http://ptmoney.com/citi-thankyou-premier-card/
site is owned by the organizer of fincon blogger conference. Written by an employee I think. Can you believe this “expert”? Nowhere any dislcosures in the body of the posts. I noticed at the conference that this stuff is like butter to everyone, very normal. I think the joke is on me.
And today you see the orgy selling the Thankyou cards while nobody is taking any time (almost no one, you know what I mean) to give their readers 16 nights at IHG…
Douche baggy land ole!
“In accordance with the latest FTC guidelines, we declare that we have a financial relationship with every company mentioned on this site.”
EVERY? Hope that is a typo, it would be disturbing if a personal finance site only wrote about stuff which paid them.
Frankly, that is a bigger problem than miles and points blogs pushing cards. They don’t pretend to be helping you sort out your finances.
George you need to pad your comments by leaving individual ones… the @ for everyone makes it extremely hard to keep track of the comments and your response.
Actually it works great for me – to each his own!
ALL the bloggers let me down.
I went to flyer talk just now to see if there were any cards I need to get, in preparation for a churn tomorrow. Just saw that Navy Federal has a great offer out there. Expires today! And no blogger talked about it.
Yeah, I know that not many people are NFCU members, but it is the largest CU out there. Besides, it’s worth $600 in travel and not mentioning it is bad.
Aurgh…Ive got a few hour to do the apps!
UPDATE: DONE! Two cards, $1200 in travel (or $1000 in Gift cards), after a total of 6K spend!
Uh..my bad. I did a googly and saw that mms wrote it up. And here i had him removed from my list of blogs to read. Guess he’s back in…
It does not pay. Hey, did you hear about the Thank you card????
Other bloggers (ahem!) mentioned it too, albeit a few weeks ago. They might mention it more if Navy FCU would go the way of PenFed and let them join:
http://saverocity.com/pfdigest/what-could-possibly-be-more-enticing-than-a-64000-point-best-western-credit-card-offer/
“They might mention it more if Navy FCU would go the way of PenFed and let them join”
they would definitely mention it more if they got affiliate commission. just give mv the word and he’ll have a 12 part series on it
I applaud you for recommending that IHG card to your readers. I do exactly the same since I think it’s one of the best deals out there. http://point2steve.com/?p=48
Keep up the good work bud.
Thanks for the kind words but something must change around here
@Buzz.. but something must change around here/ do you mean folks leaving links to their sites?…………Buzz what are you wearing for Halloween? I’m going as Guy Fieri’s Hairdresser if I can find some more bandages and gauze to wrap myself in……………We get about 300 kids tonight around here, how many come to your hood?
Somewhere between 50 and 100 usually. But it has been raining all day so I think we are nearer the lower number.
Possibly the most badly timed competition you will see this year, from the MyFlyertalk page:
“Enter to win 100,000 United MileagePlus miles with Frugal Travel Guy and ScoreBig. Learn more.”
Ha! You can fly one-way most of the way to Europe in F using those miles!
Lol, yeah really!
Buzz, you need to post about the United award inflation man…we need a forum to air our grievances. And possibly blame the bloggers 😉
I am stuck at a Panera with no working wifi. Not going to do blog post on my phone man!
Too easy to earn miles, airlines make money, they have upper hand. Writing has been on the wall for a while. Poor Gary Leff, no more aspirational trips. Should lay off the Ink Bolds and start pushing Southwest cards! I am definitely keeping the day job. Oh another expert at MMS interview!
Too bad – will wait until later to hear from you.
Guess we can all look forward to coach toilet pics now on Lucky’s blog!
So in light of the huge devaluation of United miles, we should all expect the Chase UR cards to get a lot less coverage, and the 50K AA cards (which are now relatively more valuable) to get increased coverage
Right?
Gleff is tying himself into knots trying to defend Chase UR. “Hyatt transfers from UR are now worth more relatively”. That is like saying it is a good thing you are now blind because your other senses are sharper!
No one’s debating that Chase UR is still valuable, but talk about trying not to bite the hand that feeds you.
I can see MV pounding on the Barclays and SPG cards now lol
Serious prediction: increased coverage of BA card + increased pushing of 25K SPG card + argument that you can transfer UR to BA. The desperate pushers will start to explore sweet spots in the Korean award chart.
At the end of the day, United is a for-profit enterprise that is under-performing because it’s losing high-value contracts to Delta and American and it can’t cut costs adequately or make its planes run on time. It monopolizes the wrong airport for high-value Manhattanites, and Christie canceled the soonest transportation solution to ease traffic congestion to its hub. So instead it cuts loyalty benefits – alcohol in clubs, allowed award stopovers, value of miles – to protect its revenue. Flyers looking to fly cheap and save costs gripe about SkyPesos, but Delta just returned a whopping quarterly profit. Delta’s probably not sad to see us skinflints go, and United won’t be either.
As someone noted, business travelers are still going to be able to accrue to meet these levels; leisure travelers will return to coach and occasionally business.
Maybe one day it’ll dawn on the dreamers that it still sucks to be stuck in a metal tube for hours, and opinions of the salmon amuse bouche are ridiculous.
I expected a devaluation – perhaps not of this magnitude – and see no need to waste breath/energy complaining.
And Chris Elliott’s “I told you so” grin is probably wider than the wingspan of an A380 right now.
You have no heart man…What are Gary and Ben going to do now, no caviar and champagnes…oh wait, they can afford to buy them tickets 🙂
The writing has been on the wall for a long time! As spending and points are manufactured, the airlines respond. The hackers will bitch, the true road warriors will spend the real dough and life will go on.
Best line of your comment was the last one, I am still laughing!
I’m f***ing fuming at this, and all you guys can think about is what bloggers are going to push next! Seriously? Just in case you don’t get it, this is a huge blow to all of us. When Delta did their thing I wasn’t even excited, that’s Delta. But United has always been my go to solution because I’ve always known I’ll get it with them should other options fall through. Now where do you go?
50K LH doesn’t seem like such a bad proposition after all, does it?
It’s a for-profit corporation trying to cut costs while encouraging future customer loyalty. Don’t be upset that the game changes. And the answer to your first question is Alaskan.
In perspective: SNAP cuts today will make poor people more dependent on food banks. Warning: video.
Changes? With this magnitude? The word “changes” does not even apply here. Gary rightfully calls it a bloodbath. And how many avenues are there to collect Alaskan miles?
Exit row seat is the new flat bed!
Yep.
@Harvson, Yes, indeed. There was another cut today: According to Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog, food stamps will be cut $5 billion (yes, with a B) today and these – can I say selfish? – ffers are all bent out of shape since First will be harder to come by? Now that’s a real devaluation in the food budgets of many people who can’t just eat in the lounge…. It leaves me really disgusted.
POINT TRAVELER “I started collecting miles and points back in 2011″………………..Buzz, I should of stopped reading right there. But nooooooo ………..”Last year, I got the Chase Sapphire with a 50,000 point sign-up bonus. Instead of transferring those points to an airline or hotel partner, I took cash back. I got $500 cash when I could have gotten over $800 worth of travel”………….No sh$t Sherlock, Buzz I need to take my meds, good day… C.R.
I discovered the “Welcome MMS readers” post last night even before MMS had published it. I outed in on Twitter and the reactions were similar to yours. Another “expert” ready to sell credit cards (they are lined up in a separate tab) and, OF COURSE, friends and family kept asking him about how he does it so voila the website. #shootmenow
Take a look at what his spending is to meet the $5k SPG min spend. Even put a Christian conference fee on it. Hallelujah!!
The absurdity continues…
Today FTG writer Holly Johnson does an article ( i hesitate to even call it that) on Minimum Spend (“LOOK AROUND THE HOUSE TO SEE WHAT YOU CAN NEED TO BUY”) what drivel! Does she actually get PAID to write that. This is the best a team of writers can come up with? Makes MMS interview look good………………………Ingy stick with Drew on a daily basis, my 2 cents……………C.R.
What, you didn’t like the article about the five 5 best credit cards for international travel? U so angry 🙂
Sorry You didn’t like the article. It was obviously written for newbies which you are not.
Holly and Drew represent both ends of the knowledge spectrum. Some days you’ll like it. Some days you won’t.
Rick
“please follow David Ramsey‘s debt killing advice (but not his investment advice!)”
ha ha ha! Love it!