Another TBB post featuring the most eclectic links around the web such as Fed rate cuts and savers, how to stay safe out there, the Nazi of Oak Park, Advance Directives, amazing drone show and wildlife photography, Cyberstuck, how to use Google Flights, best indoor water parks, the hot new Chase Sapphire Preferred card offer and much more and of course always all of the most important developments in the crazy world of miles and points. See you next next week, enjoy the weekend!
TBB Blog Mission: To Educate. Entertain. Inspire. In That Order!
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This blog started way back in 2012 focusing on my crazy hobby addiction of traveling with frequent flyer miles, hotel and bank points. It has since evolved to curated posts featuring the best web content along with my commentary.
This is a one man labor of love operation, enjoy it while it lasts.
BLOG HOUSEKEEPING
Changes are coming next week in this blog, it is time! This will be the last long post in the present format. It is clearly not working traffic wise. Google algorithm changes and the prevalence of short form content in YouTube and TikTok along with major attention span issues plaguing all of us online is forcing this change. Not having sold a single credit card here since September 4th may also have something to do with it. So, for next week at least, I am going to try to post way shorter posts more often. Maybe daily. Never more than once daily. You can subscribe to receive every post that appears here via email, enter your email address and click SUBSCRIBE on the right. Let’s see how it goes next week.
I am also going to reduce the long credit card section starting next week and dump most of the best credit card offers in the CREDIT CARDS page and only have in the body of the post one or two best offers. If a whole calendar month goes without a single credit card sale, sorry folks, the blog has probably reached the end.
On November 12 it is 12 years of posting regularly here, something unheard of. No ads, no clickbait, no sponsors. Lately, no clicks either so maybe it is time to look at the blog traffic stats for a change, something gurus have told me to do numerous times. But they are thinking money and my blog baby was never meant to make lots of it. But when it does not cover its costs, spending many hours on is defeating to put it mildly.
I always love the feedback, especially when it is constructive. Negative respectful feedback is appreciated too. If you take the time to provide feedback it shows you care, thank you.
And of course thank you for reading my blog. And on with the show…
PERSONAL FINANCE
This is a good summary of what is going on with the lower interest rate era upon us: What lower inflation and Fed rate cuts could mean for I Bonds, CDs and savers.
Are you one of the people out there without estate planning documents? If yes, you can at least prepare your own Advance Directive. What is it? An advance directive is a legal form that lets you have a say about how you want to be cared for if you cannot speak for yourself. Because if you don’t, you won’t believe what will happen next!
Interesting stat:
In 1996, the U.S. markets included roughly 7,300 publicly-traded companies. Today that is down to 4,300 stocks.
This past 3rd quarter was one of the best ever in my day job. Thanks Biden, to trigger some of you lol.
SCAMS/CRYPTO/AI/TECH
I have been blogging here for years about the increasing dangers of doing anything online as the hacks and scams are getting more rampant and increasingly sophisticated. And this a must read: Stay Safe Out There.
There is now a Reddit thread about the Tesla Cybetruck. Appropriately titled: CyberStuck. And the description of it is hilarious:
The Place To Post Images of Cybercucks Stuck In Their Cybertrucks. It’s also the place for mocking the WankPanzer by showing how awful it is. Only posts about the DivorceWagon being awful in its own right. No “funny” cartoons or random vehicles doing things or basically anything that doesn’t show an actual IncelCamino being awful. Just posts about why the Deplorean itself is woefully bad. NOTE: THIS IS NOT A SUB FOR POSTING GENERAL TESLA ISSUES. NOR IS IT A GENERAL WANKPANZER DISCUSSION SUB.
This blog is not going to blog itself. I rely on my readers helping it grow as I don’t have time to do any promotion/marketing. Which leaves the content clean of intrusive sponsoring posts and stupid ads and stuff like that.
You like my blog? Send a link to someone please!
ODDZ & ENDZ
What a story: The Nazi of Oak Park. It was a stunning revelation: A respected high school custodian had been a concentration camp guard. This excerpt of a new book examines how the disclosure of a dark secret in the early ’80s divided a suburb.
Drones can do amazing things. Like this: A new world record was set last week in Shenzhen when an 8,100 drone formation lifted off to show a stunning performance. After posting that I read somewhere there was a new record with 10,000 drones in China.
Amazing photography: Comedy wildlife photography awards 2024.
TRAVEL
Google Flights is getting better and better, now displays fares on trains too!
Wait, since we are talking about Google Flights: How to Use Google Flights: A Guide for Finding Travel Deals in 2024.
My kids enjoyed water parks growing up. Here are the 15 Best Indoor Water Parks in the US. Which one is your favorite?
The discount is now $60 if you sign up for ETF using code TBB below. You can be first!
SAVE $60 FOR 2024 THE EXTRAORDINARY TRAVEL FESTIVAL
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This blog started with a focus on miles and points and travel. It has evolved since then. Everything below deals with the hobby of collecting frequent flyer miles and points and maximizing your travel experiences. If you are not interested, you can stop here, thank you.
MILES & POINTS NEWS/PROMOS/CREDIT CARD CORNER/MY ACTION
Wow, there is a lot to cover today, buckle up. Starting next week, the offers in the CREDIT CARD CORNER will be relegated to the permanent CREDIT CARDS page only leaving the best few current worthy ones.
EXPIRING CREDIT CARD OFFERS
Going to list the offers that expire within a month below:
AMEX Marriott Bonvoy Business card: Oh, it is back! Up to FIVE free nights again. I am no fan of Marriott Bonvoy but hey, five free nights is five free nights you guys. Each Free Night Award certificate has a redemption level up of to 50,000 Marriott Bonvoy points, expire after one year and can be topped off with points for up to 15,000 additional points per night. The annual fee is $125. The minimum spend is $8k in the first six months. Earning structure is 6x on Marriott purchases, 4x on gas stations, cell phone bills, restaurants and shipping and 2x on everything else. You get 15 elite night credits, Gold elite status AND a Free Night Award cert at each card anniversary. Having Gold elite status earns an additional 25% bonus points on Marriott stays, 2 pm late check out and if the planets align with the moon a shocking room upgrade. No foreign transaction fees. 7% discount on rooms and premium internet access. Offer ends 10/16/2024.
GENERAL NEWS/PROMOS/NEWBIES/ETC.
If you are into this program: The Ultimate Guide to United MileagePlus.
It looks like Hyatt is moving away from quarterly promotions, only selected brand related promos lately, hope this is not a trend that sticks. REGISTER by November 30 to stay in 800+ Mr and Mrs Smith properties to earn 2X points for qualifying stays between October 1 and December 24, 2024.
Only do this if you have a certain redemption in mind AND it is available to book right away: Chase Ultimate Rewards Has New 30% Avios Transfer Bonus.
We are learning more about the Southwest Airlines changes coming up. And it is kind of intriguing because we are really talking about a transformation. It appears to be well planned but will the airline manage to execute it? It’s Time for Southwest’s $4 Billion Plan to Sink or Swim.
And here we have: A Detailed Look at Southwest’s Assigned and Extra Legroom Seating Plan. It looks like the gate poles will stay…
CREDIT CARD CORNER
Please help the small independent blogs like mine continue to exist by supporting them with your CREDIT CARD clicks, thank you!
I will indicate with NEW every new section as the rest is the same from the previous blog post.
NEW: You can get a lot more value transferring your bank points to airline and hotel partners and booking awards directly with them. But it requires more leg work. Most are not cut out for it. But there has been an explosion of entrepreneurs (many with dubious qualifications) smoothly selling travel rewards credit cards for the banks and telling us all how to “travel hack”. And with the voracious appetite for debt in this country the market for newbies falling for “hey, look at me in First Class drinking Krug and eating caviar for free only if you click on my seven credit card affiliate links” blah blah blah. The day the banks stop paying people online to push their plastic, 99% of these people will switch to selling something else. Anyway, after this long intro, here is the article showing how much more value you can get transferring your bank points out to travel partners. 60K Points are Not Worth $600: How to Get More From Your Points & Miles.
NEW: We have a HOT new credit card offer for the Chase Sapphire Preferred offering 60,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points AND a $300 statement credit on travel through the Chase travel portal in the first year. The minimum spend is $4k in the first three months. No affiliate link yet, it is expected sometime very soon, maybe later today. You can always subscribe to BONUS OFFER NOTIFICATIONS. The annual fee is $95. The CSP earns 3x on dining and streaming services and online groceries, 2x on travel, 5x on travel booked in the Chase travel portal and 1x on everything else. Primary car rental insurance which is great. No foreign transaction fees. 10% anniversary bonus. $50 annual hotel credit. At the very least, you can cash out at 1 penny per point and get yourself $600. Or redeem your points booking travel in the Chase travel portal and each point is worth 1.25 cents. Meaning, 60k points is worth $750. Add the easy $300 travel statement credit and at the very minimum you get an easy $1,050 bang for the $95 annual fee. There is more when you add the points for the $4k minimum spend to trigger the Signup Bonus of course. And you can always do better when you transfer to airline and hotel partners with a bit more work of course.
NEW: All four of us in my family have the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. It acts as our anchor Chase card, it is the card we keep and use and yes pay the annual $95 fee every year. With this card we can transfer Chase points out to airline/hotel partners, mostly Hyatt, United, Aeroplan and Southwest sometimes. We must have this card (or the Chase Sapphire Reserve or the Chase Ink Preferred) to be allowed to transfer points out to partners; this is why I call the CSP our Chase anchor card and it is a keeper.
The affiliate link from my favorite bank is now HERE. If you can’t wait, please use my REFERRAL LINK, thank you.
NEW: I need to rewrite the below card ratings to elevate this offer to the top, ran out of time. Update: Looks like the CSP offer goes up to 70k points plus $300 statement credit if you apply in a Chase branch. So, take that into consideration.
NEW: Interesting offer: Chase Hyatt Credit Card: 5 Free Night Certificates (Category 1-4). Free night certs instead of points. I prefer points, more flexible and no hard expiration deadline. No referral link yet. And no affiliate link. I will update this if either one pops up but I doubt it.
The new TOP #1 offer now is the 90k CHASE Ink Business Unlimited card. This is my personal REFERRAL link. The affiliate links from my favorite bank can be found HERE. Learn How to Apply to support the blog. Chase’s business cards are a gift that keeps on giving you guys. This is a NO ANNUAL FEE card that earns 1.5x on everything, unlimited. The minimum spend required to earn the Signup Bonus is lower at $6,000 in the first three months. 0% APR for the first 12 months, in case you need it. Don’t use this card abroad as it has a foreign transaction fee. Chase may advertise this card all over the place as a cash back card but it does pay the Signup Bonus in 90,000 Ultimate Reward points. You can redeem for cash back at minimum $900. Or, preferably, if you have a Sapphire Reserve card, 90k points can be worth $1,350 (1.5 cents per point). Or if you have a Sapphire Preferred or an Ink Business Preferred card, one point can be worth 1.25 cents, so $1,125. Of course, don’t forget to add the value for the points you earn doing the $6k minimum spend as well, you are going to net a minimum of 99,000 points so always do the math. The card earns 5x on Lyft through March 2025. Of course, extended warranty, purchase protection and primary CDW when renting a car for business purposes also apply. All these goodies for no annual fee, wow! Needless to say you don’t have to book travel in the Chase travel portal to get the travel values above. You can transfer your points to airline and hotel partners and possibly get even more more value than what you can get at the Chase travel portal, assuming you do have one of the cards mentioned above (Sapphire Reserve or Preferred or Ink Business Preferred). But that requires a little more legwork from you to transfer, find availability, etc. I like to transfer to Hyatt, Air Canada Aeroplan and sometimes Southwest.
Best credit card offers STILL remain the same, see below my TOP THREE travel rewards credit cards right now. For a DETAILED explanation of the features of these cards below, please click HERE and read about them at the bottom of that page.
The Top offer right now is the 90k Chase Ink Business Unlimited card.
The next offer NOW is the 75k Capital One Venture X card. It is amazing what you get for free with this card!
Next we have the 75k CHASE Ink Business Cash card.
Learn How to Apply HERE to support the blog.
MY ACTION
Looks like son’s girlfriend is joining us in Thailand, there go another 59,130 Amex points for a one way ticket from Honolulu to Bangkok via Seoul on Asiana. I guess son got tired looking at Aeroplan choices with horrendous connections. He still needs to book his own ticket as he arrives earlier and I have been telling him to stay patient with Aeroplan. We shall see…
Nearing 2 million miles/points burned this year, definitely going over 2 Million! Just imagine if I was not busy with this blog smh.
With the Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines merger moving in full speed, the airlines will combine both elite qualifying miles and grant reciprocal status. Son has been an Alaska MVP Gold elite due to a corporate promotion and now gets to combine both airlines elite qualifying miles for status requalification. He has around 32k combined but needs 40k. Could a mileage run be in his horizon? We’ll see.
My mother is having some issues again and if this disrupts my Thailand trip it will suck big time.
Home driveway had been sinking for a while so we have replaced it. We also did the garage floor. The whole project is almost done and looks great. Does spending money on your home ever end?
I voted twice. Ok, the second ballot was my wife’s. VOTE!
ADVANCED
More details dressed up with Delta like bullshit straight from the VP of Loyalty at Virgin Atlantic after its announcement they are going all in on dynamic awards to help us out lol.
Well written post with great graphics that may help some of you advanced hobbyists: How to Combine P1 and P2 Hawaiian Airlines and Alaska Airlines Miles into a Single Account.
MILES & POINTS
HOT CREDIT CARD OFFERS: 90k CHASE Ink Business Unlimited, 75k CHASE Ink Business Cash, 75k CAPITAL ONE Venture X, 75k CHASE United Business, 60k CHASE Sapphire Preferred AND $300 Credit, 150k AMEX Business Platinum, 200k CAPITAL ONE Spark Cash Plus, 150k CAPITAL ONE Venture X Business, $1,000 Cash Back CHASE Ink Business Premier, Three 85k CHASE Southwest cards, 5 FREE Nights with AMEX Marriott Bonvoy Business, 15k AMEX Blue Business Plus and many more!
Learn How To Apply HERE to support the blog. Or email me if you have any questions about any cards, I’m happy to help, thank you!
As of today, I have burned 1,859,617 miles/points year to date (1,148,286 in 2023) and have 4,195,258 miles/points in the bank. Some do drugs, I do miles lol!
BONUS OFFERS NOTIFICATIONS
Would you like to be automatically notified every time a card comes out with (or is about to remove) an elevated welcome offer? If yes, I highly encourage you to sign up if you haven’t yet. And when you apply for a credit card from a link in these emails you help support the blog (and you don’t have to hunt down the link in my Credit Cards page!)
Elevated Card Offer Notifications
All you have to do to receive these free notifications is:
1. Click on the link above
2. Create an account
3. Subscribe
Remember, you are NOT allowed to ever carry a credit card balance!
Let me leave you with this:
Some of the links are behind a paywall. You can try to read them using Archive.is.
Thank you for reading my blog. If you enjoy it please forward it to a family member or friend. Or Buy Me a Coffee, thank you!
Feel free to contact me anytime at travelbloggerbuzz@gmail.com, all feedback is very appreciated.
George
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Good morning!
Thanks for the link to the story about the ex-Nazi … I will think about this for
a long time.
Man! Lots of good stuff again! Whatever form the blog takes or whatever you decide to do, if you send it, I will read it.
“Does spending money on your home ever end?” No, never. The amount changes depending on either how good your eyesight is, (Can you see something wrong?) or on whether you care how good it looks or works.
Credit card applications… I’ve basically decided not to follow through on the last one with Barclay’s wanting a 4506t for a personal card, even though I have a Jet Blue card with 17k dollars credit limit I offered to move. Just not that enthused. Last 3 apps for different cards over the last year have all been rejected. That and age and lessening desire to just go anywhere just to travel means I am slowing way down on cards. I’ve got miles and points burning a hole in my pocket but this year, with medical issues and everything else, one small trip from WA to CA is it so far. I wonder… does the novelty of all this just wear off as you get older?
Hope the issues with your mom get easily solved and that she is OK. Take care!
Hi guys, less than 10 of you who care that is I think.
Yeah, that Nazi article has stayed with me, so uncomfortable…
Carl: No problem man, I am losing interest as well slowly too. I mean, I started paying for airfare and not feeling overly guilty lol. Health comes first always. I am going to give it a go next week but unless something bigly happens I don’t anticipate any improvement and I REALLY need to lower my time spend here by a facto of a lot. 9 coffees sold in September cover the Mailchimp fee only, the blog has other fixed costs, I should sit down and figure them out one day. My readers tend to be more advanced so they are limited in cards they can get. This is why so many pumpers have come on to the scene impressing newbies who are at 0/24 and can easily fall for a free ticket to Orlando on Delta for 50k miles, sorry probably 75k miles by the time you read this LOL.
Also, the new CSP offer is out and maybe one newbie finds me and gets it…but they probably click on some slick dude or pretty gal on YouTube and TikTok with quick well made videos, who reads these long posts with actual quality content other than you ten guys who are tapped out with cards?
And any day now I will get the boot from the 2nd card provider so when that happens the decision is very easy than and I am ok with it. Will I ever completely disappear? Probably not, been trying for years lol. But it will require less time spent here and me being ok with it…which is a work in progress I guess.
30 days without a single card sale was something I never expected. YOu know why? Because I always stepped in to rescue me LOL. And I would again but the long Thailand trip is coming up so I can’t.
Greetings from NC! Just cashed in some IHG points for a luxury trip to the Maldives! And by “luxury trip to the Maldives” I mean a quick road trip to a Holiday Inn at the beach, which is more my style anyway. My wife is a beach girl at heart and we haven’t been for a while so off we go. I have the highly prestigious DIAMOND ELITE status with IHG, so it’ll at least feel like I’m in the Maldives with the treatment I get, right?
Hey Nick, is that you?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCqm4H3m3Ew
In good fun of course, enjoy the stay.
OMG!! That is just too dang funny!
“I demand the presidential suite! DYKWIA?”
I hope you do Thailand. I can’t do it this year to make the festival but hearing from you what it’s like along with some pictures may help me entice the wife for next year.
I am trying but it is out of my hands #developing
What you need is to get the other George Papadopolous in the news again. He must be up to something!
This guy smh:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/19/intelligencer-pro-russia-website-trump
I still have this in my Twitter profile lol:
For the nth time, I am NOT Trump’s foreign policy adviser! I have NO association with the Trump camp! NONE!
I am shocked they are still married. George’s mother never liked Simona.
I miss those old Twitter days with people thinking I am that George, good times.
Hi TBB,
I’ve been lurking around for over a decade (maybe longer—basically ever since you started roasting the Frugal Travel Guy). I mostly stalk you through your RSS feed, but hey, I’m really hoping you stick around and keep dropping those posts.
Listen, I’ll even promise to click on more of your credit card links—just sprinkle in a few pro-Trump posts to keep things “fair and balanced.” LOL.
Kidding! I know, I know, it’s your blog—just had to toss it out there.
I miss those days…especially when FTG was here taking shots at me, so much fun.
He abandoned me…I am trying to break the mother of all cold streaks to make one cc sale since September 4th!
Trying to keep it non political here. It is not easy. But just had to come out of hibernation today on FB and post 2 pics of weirdo Elon joining Trump on stage…that Pic has become a mega meme.