Super busy again today in the blogosphere. It seems like every single blogger wrote about the tiny changes in the annual Hyatt hotel category changes. Actually, there was some pretty good stuff posted and we highilght it all here. No need to go anywhere else, the TBB research department is always on the lookout finding the absolute best content (and a few turkeys here and there) for your enjoyment. Remember, our motto is: “We waste our own time reading blogs so you don’t have to!’ You can also sense that everyone is slowly going on holiday mode. So, let’s get on with the show, shall we?
READER QUESTION: “How often do you check your Award Wallet Balances?”
My routine is to get them updating as soon as I start out my computer each morning! Then I start drinking, coffee that is! I see the difference from the day earlier and then I apply my auditing skills and trace the difference of a cent, err…mile/point down to the specific program! A great sense of accomplishment over takes me and I down another cup of coffee right there! I also realize I need to find time to burn some and lower these insane balances! I wish all airlines allowed Award Wallet as the software makes it SO much more convenient to track everything. But Southwest, Delta and United are more interested to extract money from the AW folks. Oh, prepare to pay more for AW if they work out a “licensing deal”. I would like this trend of not allowing AW to work with the companies to STOP and REVERSE itself! Will I bet any money on this happening? Absolutely not!
BEST OF
A nice concise Frequent Miler post on “Multiple paths to 5x everywhere“. You are being copied all over dude! We are having lunch again today in Ann Arbor along with a few other addicts. I swore that I will never ever go public with the trick of getting 29x everywhere!
Milevalue on Free One Ways on Delta. One of these days we will manage to put one of these together as we have a hard time getting award seats at the lower level for the primary roudtrip target, let alone plan way in advance for the free one way!
Romsdeals has some original content (becoming so hard to find with so many blogs!!!) on his “How to earn 8x Back on Almost Everything“. Of course you have to deal with Paypal, be careful. TBB and online shopping do not get along too well, especially eBay! All the power to you if this works out for you who may give this a shot! TBB has a MyPoints account too!
Jason Steele, TPG Contributor, wrote “Maximizing Reload Cards for Points and Miles: Vanilla vs. Green Dot vs. PayPal. vs. Reloadit“. Decent post, good to repeat stuff to drill into our heads the different methods ( so many now!). I am starting to get it now…I have to grow big and then hire others to write for me and then I travel around the world while the dough keeps coming in from my amazing affiliate credit card links, aha!
Jodi at Legal Nomads wrote a beautiful post “The Overview Effect, Mindfulness and Travel“. And the video at the end of it about space is absolutely breathtaking! We love getting spaced out around here, it’s so groovy, woohoo!
The Points Guy again on “Top 10 Ways to Redeem Delta SkyMiles“. If this is not proof that content immediately improves after one pit stop in my infamous “NOT SO BEST OF” joint…I don’t know what is! 😉
Hack My Trip has a good article on the Avios program. I think the more we talk about the gems the new program offers the more we invite an “enhancement” from BritishAirways!
A stunning time-lapse video of the Grand Canyon! Must click!
Another stunning video on Visiting Iceland. Your life will be enhanced after watching this. Yet another place in the must visit list…so many!
Excellent post on How to Find Mileage Runs – 2013 Edition by Frequently Flying
NOT SO BEST OF
The Trip Report “Our 2nd Honeymoon in Paradise” that will never end. Coming up next: “Eating coconuts at the beach in Paradise” followed by “Short ferry ride to the port” and “Flight to Papeete sitting in 1A and 1B. TBB commenter said “post 598686 was about a frog they saw on their way to breakfast and how darius explained to the frog how to earn points”. We know MMS, you will keep going;-)
Travis at Extra Pack of Peanuts had a “What’s Your Excuse for Not Traveling? 71 Travel Experts Tell You Why It’s Bull#$&%!“. Many here are bloggers we know. First I am not sure how this came about but if Travis took the initiative to contact everyone…I am very impressed, an A+ for effort! BUT I found this to be not that helpful as almost every blogger responded with his/her own hook of what they blog about! I would paste some here but we are already making today’s blog post quite long so we will spare you the torture! By the way, most replied with “time and money”!
I am getting really tired of featuring here relentless credit card link only posts. They are disguised in several forms and you have all seen them over and over and over and over again. My eye sockets need some time to recover. I mean, is there any living creature who does NOT know about the Chase Ink or Sapphire Preferred cards anymore? If we only had a dollar for every affiliate link our eye sockets had the honor of facing over the years…
THE END
You can follow me on Twitter @FlyerTalkerinA2 along with 1,100 others!
You can find me as gpapadop in FlyerTalk and Milepoint.
1A and 2A? Surely, you meant 1A and 1B or 2A and 2B.
Also, another honeymoon post means one less post to read. Certainly better than another post in the continuing series of spoon feeding the n00bs in how to kill the deal…
Checking your Award Balances daily? Thats scary disturbing. Can’t believe you waste that much time on it.
Oh, and speaking of reading things over and over again.
How about only 1 tweet per day about your new posts? Any more is overkill. Instead of tweeting, you should be writing! 🙂
MMA is posting and end of the world post for a Citi Thankyou business card? Maybe he is running out of credit cards to pimp?
You forgot to mention that the FIRST link in the post is to a better non-affiliate Delta card with a much better offer than the affiliate offer which pays me a commission.
And the Citi Thank You Business offer was the last card mentioned in that post. If I wanted to “pimp” it, I would have had a standalone post or put it first.
I call it as I see it…MMS disclosure policies and offerings of non aff cards are probably ones of the best and wished other bloggers would copy him on this!
Having said that, how much did you offer Points Envy? 🙂
Seems like you should do a naughty/nice list of blogs which offer non-affiliate cards and disclose. FTG doesn’t disclose. Points Guy doesn’t disclose. Both post links that are to offers that aren’t the best available. MMA, OMAT, MommyPoints are on the good side of that I think?
There are so many things I want to write and expand on. You see, this is a one man show and I have higher priorities in life! I barely keep this baby up, just no time to devote to my “to-do articles list”! I have in there stuff such as” “How to choose which credit card links to apply?” “Disclosure policies of bloggers” (do a complete rundown of all of them, “What’s in my Wallet”, “My own top 10 cards” and on and on. Until cloning becomes a reality, I would not bet that you will these articles anytime soon;-)
I keep getting emails from Frugal Travel Guy. The emails say I am receiving them because I signed up. Only I didn’t. A long time ago Rick posted that he sends emails to everyone he’s ever emailed with. I wonder if he also added the Chicago Seminars email list. He built his list as any email address he ever found. But now it’s Internet Brands’ list, and they’re spamming. I get like 3 copies of the email to 3 different addresses. Any way to report the spam??
George, George, George… Did you forget? You weren’t supposed to even mention the existence of 29X! Now everyone is going to want to know how it is done…
@Anon 1: Fixed the seat numbers, my bad.
@Anon 2: I used to check AW several times a day. Now it is only once. This is what you call progress! 🙂
@Anon 3: I know. But I need to get the night, morning, afternoon and evening crowds. Come on, give me a break for not insulting your eye sockets with aff cc links, will ya? I will reduce it…just a bit. I am new, need to let all of internet be aware that reading my blog can enhance their lives, lol.
@Anon 4: I will get to that post soon. I also see TPG is on a roll now with Top 10 credit cards from each bank. What is next, the top 10 cruise cards? Top two Disney cards? Top 10 credit cards with the highest interest rate? And on and on…
@Anon 5: Unsubscribe like I did from 2 of the 3 email addresses that used to get FTG’s emails. I kept one for TBB editorial purposes. I have no idea how to report spam. I believe my unsubscribe requests worked fine.
@ FM: Don’t worry, your secret is fine with me, my lips are sealed;-)
Just used the 29X online last night!
Better than sex.
Thanks for sharing that over lunch last time.
TBB: (a few days late)
Yes, the One Mile At A Time trip report was excellent but he forgot one little item.
The modern Arab world!! Ben showed us the architectural wonders. However, in Dubai, none of the sky-high buildings are hooked up to a sewer system! The two minute video below passes a line of poop trucks outside the city and never gets to the end of the line.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-pQdjwliLMA
@ Bikeguy: You should have been there in today’s lunch. 35x mile/point fest is now on! 6 times better than 29x sex;-)
@ Anonymous: >>>>>in Dubai, none of the sky-high buildings are hooked up to a sewer system!
Wow, u serious? Or is this one of those urban legends? And how can you tell poop trucks from oil trucks if you are not there to smell? 🙂
If true, Dubai just moved way down in my go to list of places:-)
False.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_in_Dubai
Thank you, this makes a lot more sense now! Otherwise it would have been quite a permanenty smelly situation:-)
Apparently I hurt MMA’s feelings…so defensive over criticism. *hardy har har*
Get slammed for miles and points posts that deal with credit card affiliate links….then don’t post anything dealing with credit cards for a week and still get slammed! Man, I’ve got to buy George a beer or something….
As for getting a hold of all the bloggers, I did do that myself, and yes, it took a ton of time! Although people like us may already travel and know why others don’t, I think having answers from some of the top travel experts can really serve to inspire people who don’t have the travel bug like us.
A beer will not get you anywhere. A six pack, maybe?
71 experts and you did not email me? So…you made my Non Best Of category again….ok, don’t dread it so much this time…Congrats on being invited to join Boarding Area…I guess that was an invitation of some kind right:-)
Ok, I have to add a karma comment. I, too, thought MMS’s longest trip report ever was incredibly annoying. But now that I am looking to burn up some Hilton points before the HiltonCliff next month I am actually reading every one of those posts in detail, since I’m thinking of staying at the Hilton Bora Bora. And all those really annoying details he was writing about are actually INCREDIBLY helpful. Just putting that out there…
Yes, this happens a lot. I really don’t bother with trip reports unless…I find myself researching a trip to that place!