We learn about ANA Awards, how to burn AA miles to fly Etihad Apartment, get an update on the State of US LGBT Travel & discuss “structuring” and more!
WARNING: The email with MailChimp to subscribers did NOT go out today. Our apologies. Looking into it…like I got time for dat!
TBB Blog Mission: To Entertain. Educate. Inspire. In That Order!
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Again, we leave the juicy stuff for the end…so keep on reading and clicking hehe!
Get into the ANA awards.
You want to book Etihad Apartment with your AA miles? Or fly it over 10 hours for just 40k AA miles?
Good reference post on how to max your plastic limits with each card issuer. Some of this stuff I didn’t know…and just when you thought you knew everything #joking.
Another set of awesome travel photos via Matador Network.
Sum. Brilliant short film. Makes you wonder about the finality of life, how much time we waste…doing this and that.
Paragliding. At night. Through Aurora Borealis. Wow!
101 Investing Insights From The Experts. Some of them are really really good.
Interesting chart. China is going…down lol.
6 Charts Showing the State of LGBT Travel in the US. I must admit I was very surprised shocked to see how high Marriott comes up here! I am still mad at them for being first to ban porn #joking
And I leave you with this…
I am disappointed about the whole blogging scene of this hobby. With the loss of so many easy MS deals in the past year many bloggers have lost a big part of their…content. So, they are trying to remain relevant in a diminishing (literally speaking!) rewards atmosphere…Some are getting desperate! I am taking down many of the blogs in the “Blogs I Like” list. If you have not made it in there in a long time, you do not belong. Don’t worry…you will lose a few clicks, your Alexa rankings are safe lol. Don’t worry, the mega pumping and/or deal killers listed here are safe 🙂
Personal Finance Digest has a good post about structuring with an excellent clickbait headline 🙂 How manufactured spending can get you sent to jail. It generated a lot of fighting on Twitter, something we here at TBB always find entertaining as hell! The former editor of Frugal Travel Guy, instead of blowing off the criticism, hysterically laughing at some admittedly moronic and nasty crap thrown at her and seriously listening to the feedback/criticism (hint: TBB does all of that!) , she decided to fight back. And got pretty nasty out there—–>entertaining! (Hint: Look at TBB’s mission!.
What do I think? You know I speak my mind. I don’t think blogging about depositing $40,000 in Money Orders in different banks in a blog post is EVER warranted because of potential legal ramifications AND the potential of some newbie getting HURT big time. Let me repeat: Do not break the law! Ever! So it is done for the clicks…and in a follow up post it was revealed that this led to one of the highest traffic days ever. Hey, like I said, we learn things working over at The Frugal Travel Guy! Let me say one more thing: Whenever she blogs about her MS activities of the week and how she goes from that store to that store…I am shaking my head. But hey, it’s her blog, it’s a free country and you can do what you want. Just don’t &%%$ explicitly structure stuff because…readers can get hurt! BIG hurt!
Ok, stop right here and take a few moments to read this blog post by Points Are King “Game Theory: Why Deals Get Killed” who goes off on a very thorough analysis involving Big Blogs, Little Blogs and their motives and more. I think it is spot on!
In addition, this comment by Money Metagame is totally awesome, must read. It involves the owners of a cow, the cow and cow’s milk. Clap, clap, clap.
TBB does not kill deals. But if you subscribe to my blog I may start sending out exclusive content that may be a bit sensitive for the blog here #oooooh #ahhhhh #mysterious #intriguing 🙂
At the end of the day, this argument “deal killing” has been around travel hacking for ever. Ever since the big money came into blogging (think: credit cards) the speed of things dying has exploded. As harvson3 stated:
You’ve reached a point in this hobby where the easy fruit for you is all gone, so you have to rely on the private information deals to continue earning. Those private information deals are eventually made public (“leaked”) because larger blogs need to generate traffic by exposing “secrets,” and have a large readership of people not privy to private information. ‘Twas always thus. What has changed is that more people are in the “easy fruit is gone” category.
I wonder if all this dirt will help my Alexa ranking at all #hint. This post took and the “research” on it took for ever…”My name is George and I a blog addict”
To end this whole episode here is some advice from Mile Nerd. And who posted this AWESOME pic I am borrowing, hope it’s okay amigo!
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Isn’t this better than delta diamond medallion?
Appreciate the posts by PFDigest, Milenerd and you on advising the newbies about potential legal ramifications of MOs when people could easily get carried away by this MO thing. That is why I like you guys.
Nothing is better than being First and getting Gold here…Absolutely nothing.
Respect.
Got a sore back…taking a day off from digging 🙂
What has two thumbs and is second? This guy!
Are you structuring your thumbs, huh?
🙂
To blog subscribers:
No email went out at 7 am with this post. No idea why MailChimp did not work as usual. If you want pure perfection on all this crap from this joke of a blog, help us out so we can hire competent help and pay them accordingly. You can only fool interns with stock options for so long before they quit! So I can spend my time messing around with some angry bloggers dishing it out structured dirt.
Gracias!
P.S. No idea when this tech Mailchimp hiccup will be fixed. Any ideas anyone?
Is your email template RSS-based? That’s how mine is set up on Mailchimp, and whenever the email isn’t sent out, it’s usually due to an error in the feed itself. Use a feed checker to see if that’s the case. You may have to go into an old post and delete/edit part of if. Special characters cause problems every now and then.
PS: used your Creditcards.com link yesterday, hope you got credit for it
Thanks for the feedback. Hmm, not sure I follow all that feed checker stuff…I need to catch up with life today….yesterday so much time was spent on structuring blog stuff 🙂
Thanks for the support too!
99 per cent of the time MailChimp fails, it is (for me) because I was tweaking the template and did not go through all the steps to restart it. If you edit the template and click Save, that does not restart it – it remains in Edit mode.
Some of these “point, mile, deal” chasing/collecting blogs are either stupidly arrogant or arrogantly stupid or both 🙂
What my eyes see all day 🙂
Oh my goodness. What a fall for FM from love list to like list to nowhere now. I agree, this “travel” blogging is difficult stuff.
Yep.
Necker. Prosper. And now flowers????
Buzz, Gutsy call on FM, but I agree and I know others feel the same lately.
Kumar please report to the HR dept. asap……seems like there is a problem with your resume. Don’t worry I am sure it is nothing. It seems you put down that you hosted a TV comedy show on TBS called Late Nite with Kumar O’Brien, but nobody over there remembers it. Please straighten it out and get back to work.
Aha, no bonus for Kumar!
Chick is buying 40K in VGC every month ? ? ?
? ? ?
😮
OK looking forward to those mysterious exclusive emails !
Well….one day…I move slow….What konorth said 🙂
The thing with her post vs. all of the titan bloggers pushing the 40k amex platinum is that I do think hers was arrogantly ignorant. Anyone following that advice without thinking something is up probably shouldn’t be doing this anyway. However, that kind of crackdown on MS could really hurt those of us that aren’t being flagrant.
So I know you’re really protective of newbies, but some of them are not meant for this at all. I’d rather have the friend who makes great money but is afraid of credit cards than bring someone in whose first instinct is to call the bank and say “my friend said he does this all the time, so why can’t I?”
Here’s the analogy I think fits. The titan says “hey, all of you hungry people… there’s some really delicious first class honey in that bee hive over there, so just go for it!” and they blindly reach in, ignoring all the warning signs and using no common sense. I’ll have more analogies and metaphors in my upcoming treatise “Natural Selection in ‘The Hobby'”.
As a side note, my solo trip in Cathay first, Singapore Suites, and JAL first was pretty lonely, so I don’t really envy any of the bloggers that live in long-haul first class. They can drink all the Krug and Dom in the galley, but that doesn’t make it less lonely. I know, I tried.
It mainly works if you’re narcissistic, emotionally stunted, or spiritually dead inside.
There is a post “Why this travel hacking hobby is NOT for you” post in me…and it will come out eventually. Obviously, you will never see such a post in a Titan blog lol.
Brenton: Your 2nd paragraph is IT and looking forward to your treatise!
Yeah I got that Cathay out of my system. Never done Singapore Suites or JAL First, maybe one day. I tasted Krug once and that was it, yuck!
harvson3: LOVE your one liner!
Mike,
Are you thinking 40k a month is a large amount or are you thinking it’ small?
Some people do that (or simon) well over that.
I know some people 🙂
What is making me shake my head re PointChaser are the comments in the follow up post that are generally following the theme of this comment:
“I find that the criticisms leveled against you are misguided and selfish. These people want to keep everything secret and not share the tricks that you have graciously given to your readers. Don’t stop!”
This is precisely why the advise in the structuring post was so bad. Because there are people like this guy who think that us telling Ariana to back off that advice are doing so because we want it to ourselves. Makes me sad for the general IQ level in this hobby.
You nailed it! And these people always come out to defend posts like that…always.
So after the cull of BB the only (common) MS avenue left is MOs? How sad 🙂
Yeah…pretty soon we could be like…Germany 😉
Buzz, I must say that I really like the way your blog has evolved lately. Yes, Yes, I do very much miss the days of you slamming MileValue and Delta Points on a daily basis. That’s just me I guess, but it was fun to read.
I have reading you daily almost from day 1 of you adventure here and I must say that your current format with post like today are your most informative. Keep up the good work and thank you for turning me on to so many great other blogs that I feel have our best interest in mind.
Gotta watch The Donald tonite just to see what he is going to come out with. Entertainment.
HT KUMAR
I am toning it down in tomorrow’s post. The thing is I am finding less worthy stuff that interest me and are worthy to share. So I have to mix up with some dirt to make it worth because I am not lazy to phone it in.
Thanks for the kinds words, much appreciated.
Yep, it’s Miller, eeeerm Donaldtainment time.
HT Cruz…is the Devil!
Anyone see this article?
http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/wounded-warrior-project-spends-lavishly-on-itself-ex-employees-say/
Wounded Warrior putting up their employees at 5 star hotels, ect. 40% of donations go to “administrative” expenses whereas other similar charities are under 10%.
Isn’t our favorite troll Ingy involved in this so called “charity”? Wouldn’t be surprised.
I mentioned here almost a year ago that my sister in law said to stop giving to them. My nephew was at Walter Reed for 3 years recovering and never had any meaningful help from them. They got tremendous support from Truckers for Troops and Home for our Troops INC, the most helpful to him and others “who had a blast in Iraq” (don’t worry he and others joke like that all the time as a way of dealing with it).
Yikes…that article.
But hey, did you learn how much money it “raised” 🙂
@pointchaser advocates structuring and FM gets taken off the Like list all on the same day! And you say the hobby is boring?!
Come on, TBB, don’t help shut it down. I want to see a circles-and-arrows post about “How I Negotiated a Plea Bargain with the Federal Authorities”.
On another note… “Sum” was a great video, but I lol’d at the line “2 days lying”…. overlaid on a photo of a statue of Reagan. Messages!!
It’s never boring…as long as we are around here….But, come on, it’s not as exciting as it used to be. But it sure has its moments like diz structuring thingie 🙂
I totally missed that Reagan message…maybe I just tuned it out….but the rest was some good stuff. Well made. Made me ponder….how evil this current administration is for making a deal with them Iranians while saint Reagain did…cough 🙂
El Chapo is at it again!
http://www.businessinsider.com/demand-for-el-chapo-shirts-surge-2016-1?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds
My fancy tends to run toward what Sean Penn is wearing….basic black T, $4.99 at Walmart
What a deal!
Milevalue is on a countdown selling the Citi Premier credit card that goes down to 40k Thank you points (until it probably goes back up again).
2 hours left
then
54 minutes left
hurrryyyyyyyyyyy
Wow
Then Doctor of Credit makes a post and then he links to View From The Wing’s affiliate credit card offer and gets upset for me telling him “Out of so many blogs you picked that one????? Why? Thanks for helping the little guys out there dude!”
I assumed it may be because GL has linked to him a few times (and drove tons of traffic) to his site instead of my numerous links (that probably did not amount to much traffic but lets not elaborate on that shall we? lol). I assumed it was a fair assumption, he thought it was “pretty phucking insulting”. Apparently VFTW’s cc links must come with free pancakes or something.
I swear this whole space is…well…entertaining!
Thanks Brenton, nice post. Yeah I started realizing that renting apartments while traveling solo was just isolating and I get lonely. So trying some Airbnb where there will be other people in the house, eg. some small bnb’s. Reading lots of reviews I’ve also realized it is the hosts that make all the difference. I like to have my own bathroom though. Also yeah about the cc’s, I don’t want to lose track.
Konorth 40k in vgc per month seems slightly insane to me. I just have the one INK and one BB which happens to still be working, so 5k max per month for me for 25k miles is good for me.
I’m still in the first time bonus stage. Just not sure I’d make that 10K 3 month spend for Amex. 7-8K yeah, but . . . No vgc or MO ? ? ? Can I call them up and negotiate that down? Nah, probably not, the lady I talked to when I called didn’t even know what the rules are. I doubt she has any authority.
OK great discussion today, thanks !
Here was the thing for me.
Cathay Pacific First – slept about 4 hours after drinking my champagne and scotch and eating my caviar before waking up due to turbulence, being warm, and a bed that was still too firm for my taste. The most comfortable bed I sleep in is my own bed. I could churn out 6 posts a day too if I wasn’t busy getting 8 hours of sleep each night and interacting with actual people not paid to service me.
Singapore Suites – I ate breakfast alone in the private room with three other people in the whole place. What I really wish I had done was go on the slides with my son. Instead I had a mimosa with an $80/bottle champagne. The flight itself was pleasant enough, although the bed was really firm. The best part of the trip for me was talking to another passenger who had her 14 month old son riding with her.
JAL First – I had sushi for breakfast (ok, that was pretty awesome) and then got a foot massage by a girl who really looked like she despised everything about me. Then I sat next to a guy whose wife was ignoring him, his 2 kids were at home in the US while he and his wife went skiing in Japan, his main goal was to drink as much of the Salon Champagne as possible, and he was about to go on a mileage run from Toronto-Milan-Santiago and then back.
I just don’t think I’m cut out for that world. I had a better time road tripping through central europe with my wife after flying in airberlin economy. However, I’m still angling to do Emirates first and Etihad apartments so I can report back which one has the better shower…
Great comments guys.
The best sleep I ever had, please stop the flaming, was in my Amtrak cabin two nights between Chicago and LA and then one night to Seattle. There is something about that railtrack back and forth, soooo soothing! Sure beats all beds in the air.
I did not know JAL First gives foot massage, ooooh.
My reputation as an Expert is on the line here….if I don’t do the showers lol.
I finally got the massage witjh Thai Airways lounge in BKK out of the way…next goal is the foot massage aboard JAL F #aimhigh
You get the massage in the Narita airport JAL First Lounge. 15 minutes. Not on the plane. I look forward to having it this summer.
My suggestion, Travel with friends or family, it is more fun that way. Sometimes I pick up a flight on miles for a good friend, we have a blast in J class, enjoy a long weekend trip to Asia, and reconnect over some food and drinks. Hotel night is same price on points for two people. So burn extra ~100k miles and enjoy the company of someone you want to spend time with! Not a novel idea.
Isn’t the whole point of our hobby is to travel and have fun? Solo travel just doesn’t seem as fun…
Cheers,
PedroNY
The best sleep I ever had was at my home and I think in my mother’s lap. Now who cares about these first class cabins and stuff like that? I often wonder whether we focus too much on things that are just not worth it. Enough said. Now back to my IHG point collecting work 😉
Thanks a lot. I passed it on to the person who helps me with MailChimp.