Another TBB post featuring the most eclectic links around the web such as the magic of compounding, the Bitcoin 2024 conference, born in a Nazi family, Amex refreshing Gold cards, the US economy keeps rolling, the techno-humanist manifesto, always amazing photography, most beautiful waterfalls and European road trips, the Olympic games begin 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 a curated at least weekly post of the best web content along with my commentary. Here to Educate primarily, sometimes Entertain and if I get to Inspire you, well, that is a bonus.
This is a one man labor of love operation, enjoy it while it lasts.
PERSONAL FINANCE
This was good: Let Compounding Do Its Work.
Most investors neglect the power of time and the monumental advantage it bestows upon those with a sufficiently long horizon. We behave as if we are attempting to generate the highest possible return in the shortest possible time. Instead of compounding solid returns, we become destined to compound a succession of poor decisions with painful long-term consequences. It is not surprising that investors act in this fashion. We are wired to worry about and act on short-term risks and opportunities – it is a great strategy for evolutionary survival, just a terrible one for long-term investing. But it is more than that. The entire industry wants us to be impatient – whether it be selling the next great product or attracting our attention with the next alarming article.
Investors who understand their time horizon, build a sensible portfolio and rarely make changes will be far better off than most. The trick is understanding ourselves and our environment well enough so that we avoid the temptation to veer from that course. [I think the most important aspect of being a financial advisor is keeping clients away from the constant temptation to do something. And trust the disciplined process, it works but only after a long time while looking like a moron at times lol]
Also, the article reveals that the best performing stock of all time is Altria Group (formerly known as Philip Morris) which has returned over 268 million percent over the past 98 years. I guess killing people with them Marlboro cigarettes has proven very profitable smh. Admittedly shocking number but it only equates to an annualized return of ‘only’ 16.3%.
Meanwhile, the US economy just keeps kicking ass: US economy grew much faster than expected in 2nd quarter. While the Chinese economy continues to flounder, maybe it is because of this?
SCAMS/CRYPTO/AI/TECH
This is a great edition of Molly White‘s citation needed newsletter titled “Grassroots“. She takes the lid off all the bs how the crypto community is coming together to support politicians only to reveal it is the same small group of entitled rich arseholes. Also, check out her project Follow The Crypto which keeps track of how they are lobbying bribing politicians. Also, I regret to inform my readers that I have not been invited to the Bitcoin 2024 conference, lol.
We’ll do a turn now, going positive about technology: Fish In Water. Chapter 1 of the Techno-Humanist Manifesto. Let’s not forget how far we have come along; this inspiring article does a good job reminding us all of that. It ends like this and I suggest you take a few minutes to read it all:
We live in an amazing world, and we should stop taking it for granted. We should never forget how difficult, dirty, and dangerous life was for most people who ever existed. And once in a while, we should look at our world with a sense of awe and wonder that humanity could ever create it. We should look at the world with gratitude to those who came before us, and especially to the scientists, inventors, and entrepreneurs who labored, struggled, and fought to build it. This world and the standard of living we enjoy are the gift they left us. We can never pay it back. But we can pay it forward: we can keep progress going, and build an even better world for the generations to come.
ODDZ & ENDZ
This is a hell of an article written by someone whose own family was full of Nazis. Democracy can be ridiculous and utterly frustrating sometimes but it is worth preserving imho before we fall into mayhem. Anyway, this may generate strong emotions, you have been warned: My family and other Nazis.
Amazing photography: Exposure One Awards. Click it!
Amazing body of work she left behind and she died in anonymity, wild story: Meet Vivian Maier, the Reclusive Nanny Who Secretly Became One of the Best Street Photographers of the 20th Century.
Vivian Maier took more than 150,000 photographs as she scoured the streets of New York and Chicago. She rarely looked at them; often, she didn’t even develop the negatives. Without any formal training, she created a sprawling body of work that demonstrated a wholly original way of looking at the world. Today, she is considered one of the best street photographers of the 20th century.
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TRAVEL
SAVE $100 FOR 2024 THE EXTRAORDINARY TRAVEL FESTIVAL
Our lovely Detroit airport is getting even better! Detroit Metropolitan Airport announces new shops, restaurants and video game lounges.
I like waterfalls in general but not crazy about them. 21 Most Beautiful Waterfalls in the World.
Which one is your favorite? 9 Unforgettable European Road Trips. I would love to drive #7, Norway’s Lofoten Islands, they look so cool.
BUZZING
A section where I go on and on about some stuff that happens in my life and anything else that just does not fit in another section above
The 2024 Olympics are starting in Paris. And for the first time I just don’t care that much. I think what did it was seeing the introduction of the new sport of breakdancing, seriously? Anyway, did you know about this? The extinct Olympic sport that was the ‘dullest’ of all time. It will shock you! Well, not really. More like put you to sleep instead. The sport was “distance plunge”. It holds the dubious distinction of having been labelled the lamest, weirdest and most boring Olympic sport of all time.
Daughter is moving back home for a month this weekend. Hope we all survive this, it’s been so long, well, actually about four years since she moved out for college. She now has our old 2011 Ford Edge with 177k miles on it as her parents upgraded finally to a cool 2024 Lincoln Nautilus as wife is now supposed to go to the office twice every week instead of just one day. Anyway, it was time.
No new movie watched since last posting. But I do see more new movies out there lately. And it appears the horror genre is getting more popular? Anyway, this appears relevant to what we are talking about I guess: The 111 Best Horror Movie Kills of All Time, Ranked.
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/MY ACTION
I only pick worthy links to share with you. As there is so much crap out there!
GENERAL NEWS/PROMOS/NEWBIES/ETC.
Delta lost its mojo. Operationally. The airline lost its Skymiles mojo long time ago. Delta is still melting down. It could last all week. You would expect something like this from the Spirit airlines of the US. But not Delta. I hear Delta’s CEO is flying to the Olympics, this is the guy:
There is some good info in this post if you are interested in cruises: Saving big on a cruise by stacking an agent with discounted gift cards.
Say goodbye to the Southwest open boarding policy and yes to red eye flights going forward. It took 50 years to change this. I am looking forward to flying Southwest in mid September…and do I get a refund for the $25 Early Bird fees yet? 🙂 It was time, passenger surveys clearly showed they prefer assigned seating, like 80% of present customers and 86% of prospective customers. Now I just hope they never mess with the bags fly free policy, we shall see.
I am no fly up front seat snob but we must admit that this looks great: Turkish Airlines unveils its new Crystal business class seat. The promo video is nice.
These look amazing: 12 Exciting SLH Properties Bookable With Hilton Honors Points.
Hyatt continues to add properties under its umbrella but sadly using your Hyatt points will cost you an arm and two legs: Under Canvas Tents Become Participating Under Mr & Mrs Smith. Every time I see reference to Mr & Mrs Smith I feel my wallet is under attack.
CREDIT CARD CORNER
Please help the small independent blogs like mine continue to exist by supporting them with your credit card clicks below, thank you!
I will indicate with NEW every new section as the rest is the same from the previous blog post and will finally roll off those parts as offers expire, thank you.
NEW: If you are new, have Chase as your main bank and just want to stick with Chase to keep everything simple, if you get these three Chase cards you will do just fine and let us enjoy all the Signup Bonuses from other cards and/or other banks hehe. Chase Trifecta: Why This Trio of is a Proven Winner.
NEW: I know you can have both Capital One Venture X and Capital One Venture Rewards. How about both personal and business Venture X, anyone know for sure?
MY ACTION
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I applied using my own links for the 120k Chase Ink Business Preferred card. And so did my wife. My own minimum spend is done and now working on hers. Trying to meet it by August 4th so we can then have about 130k Chase points each added to our accounts. There is always this special euphoric feeling when I see this happen, still, after all these years and numerous times of experiencing it, talk about a drug lol. So, still debating what card to go next. So many cards, so many choices. I closed three recently and added two so I have mental bandwidth for one more. In the old days my bandwidth was unlimited, is this due to aging? Lol.
My daughter booked another round trip with the Chase points I spotted her. This one from Seattle to Detroit for a weekend in September, I guess she knows she is going to miss us lol. Another 23,727 points burned to fly non stops on Alaska Airlines and Delta, not bad.
Son is an Alaska Airlines MVP Gold elite flyer. And he received an invitation for private dining and cocktails for himself plus one to Duc’s Bistro in Honolulu where he lives. From an Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan marketing type. Anyway, the invite seems phishy and the Alaska Airlines team on Twitter will look into it. Just wanted to make sure before the RSVP button is clicked, you never know these days, scammers are getting really good!
ADVANCED
My blog finally got a back link from Frequent Miler, can I retire now? 🙂 IRS planning on taking tax payments directly – hopefully great news.
Hope this does not happen to you anytime soon but when it does your loved ones see it: What happens to Hotel Points and Credit Card Rewards When You Die.
MILES & POINTS
HOT CREDIT CARD OFFERS: 120k CHASE Ink Business Preferred, 75k CHASE Ink Business Cash, 75k CHASE Ink Business Unlimited, 75k CAPITAL ONE Venture X, 75k CHASE United Business, 75k CAPITAL ONE Venture Rewards AND $250 Travel Credit, 150k AMEX Business Platinum, two 120k CHASE Southwest Business cards, $1,000 Cash Back CHASE Ink Business Premier, 15k AMEX Blue Business Plus and many more!
This section is about my hobby addiction of collecting frequent flyer miles and hotel points since the early 1990’s! SKIP if you are not into it!
As of today, I have burned 1,205,950 miles/points year to date (1,148,286 in 2023) and have 4,116,340 miles/points in the bank. Some do drugs, I do miles lol!
Thanks to US banks, very lucrative travel rewards credit card offers come and go all the time. This section will act as a reference point on the best CURRENT offers. I will designate new material preceded by NEW.
TOP TRAVEL REWARDS CREDIT CARD OFFERS RIGHT NOW
The Chase Ink Business Preferred card offer a 120,000 point signup bonus. See above for more extensive coverage of its features.
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 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 an easy $300 statement credit for travel booked on its decent travel portal, essentially turning it into a $95 annual fee card. But wait, there is more! On 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 have their own Priority Pass Select airline lounge membership and, this is BIG, they can bring in unlimited guests with their FREE Priority Pass card! You can transfer your Capital One points to up to 18 Transfer Partners. No foreign transaction fees. Free Hertz President’s Circle rental car top elite status. Cell phone protection and PRIMARY rental car coverage. Awesome seats at baseball stadiums for just 5k points each. And lots more.
The Chase Ink Business Cash and Chase Ink Business Unlimited card offers are back down to a 75,000 Signup Bonus! These are NO ANNUAL fee cards.
The Chase Ink Business Cash earns 5x on office supply stores and internet/cable/phone services and 2x on gas and restaurants. Why don’t you go to Office Depot and buy gift cards of the stores you usually shop at, hello 5x Amazon! The card now offers the 75k Signup Bonus in two stages (and a 10% relationship bonus if you have a Chase business checking account) after $6k spend in the first six months.
The Chase Ink Business Unlimited card works differently, it just earns 1.5x on everything. So if you were going to use a credit card to earn 1x why don’t you pull this one out instead? Bottom line, I think these are still the BEST business travel rewards cards out there right now! The 75k Signup Bonus can be earned after $6k of spend on the card in the first three months.
Learn how to apply HERE to support the blog
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 and tell me what you like and don’t like about my blog and, more importantly, what you would like to see changed and/or what you would add or delete. All feedback is very appreciated.
George
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This site may receive compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. Travel Blogger Buzz and Your Best Credit Cards may receive a commission from card issuers. This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not necessarily include all financial companies or all available financial offers. The editorial content on this page is not provided by any of the companies mentioned, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities. Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone.
Great stuff again today! The compounding thing is great even though for humans, it isn’t easy. I will say, that of the holdings that I got from my dad, (not too many) was one that he got that his mother bought. WAY back, she bought one share of Bank of Italy. Apparently they later changed their name to Bank of America. It’s now 162 shares. I won’t ever sell it of course, because legacy and all, but I like knowing how it started!
Thanks for all the hard work to bring this out to us. It is always appreciated!
Oh, yeah, and FIRST!
Good to see Carl’s post!
One of requirements for Delta status is a thick skin. Oh. This will be interesting as the rightful
abuse flows in.
Thanks for the link to the piece on the Nazi past. Yes, the “we were the first victims” was always a ghastly scam.
Clicking your *photo* STILL leads to a 404 error page.
@ Carl: Gold medal for you today, getting into the Olympic spirit around here. 1 share of Bank of Italy into 162 shares of Bank of America, wow. Then again, it could have been one of the gazillions of single company stocks that just died. Moral of the story: This is why index funds do so well over the long term 🙂
@ DML: I thought you were stranded in an airport by Delta 🙂 Now that I think about it, looking back at my post, that Nazi family article was indeed the best one. Can you imagine having a family like that? Speechless.
@ Sam: Thanks, I fixed it! Things take a long time to fix around here, no interns or ghost writers. I even added the link to the Instagram button at the very top…if I could only get the RSS link to work. That will require asking the tech guy and they are not cheap.
I’ve returned from Niagara Falls. Difficulty level: American side only (had a couple of expired passports). Verdict: AMAZING! Great vacation.
First the bad: as everybody says, the town of Niagara Falls on the American side is indeed a dump. There aren’t a lot of great restaurants nearby. And Buffalo, of course, has seen better days as well.
The good news is that it doesn’t really matter if you’re there for the nature. The area immediately by the park feels safe even at night. The parks are in nice shape AND they’re not too crowded which is a nice change of pace from–for example–Yellowstone, even during peak tourist season. And there are some nice hikes in the gorge (Whirlpool SP, Devil’s Hole SP) that are even less crowded. Maid of the Mist was a really cool experience and Cave of the Winds was even better. Fort Niagara, downriver on the shore of Lake Ontario, is a great history lesson that our kids really enjoyed. And the charming, walkable small town of Lewiston (also my former hometown many decades ago) is just 15 minutes down the road.
Incidentally we flew out the same day as that Crowdstrike glitch and thankfully were only delayed by an hour on AA.
I know I’ve said this before but I think we need to get up to Michigan. The last three summers we’ve done South Dakota, Wisconsin, and now Western NY and I have to say north-central U.S. is a great place for a summer trip.
Great feedback on your trip, thank you.
I have been posting pics from my 2020 pandemic road trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan lately on my Instagram page. I really liked it a lot, just pure nature at its best and no Hyatts anywhere nearby lol.
You got lucky with Delta, really lucky.
I’m in the camp that I don’t get the fuss about Turkish Airlines after our recent trip in business class to IST. Felt service was adequate as was food but nothing to get excited about and won’t rush to fly with them again. Guess the moral of the story is don’t fly Emirates first class because every other airline feels lacking after that experience.
Re the Alaska invite. Interesting as my husband is Alsaka MVP Gold via paid First Class flights and has a Honolulu address on his account and did not receive an invite, not that he would have gone anyway.
>>>>>Guess the moral of the story is don’t fly Emirates first class because every other airline feels lacking after that experience.
Lol, good one.
That Alaska Airlines invite, still not sure about it. I am leaning towards it being a phishing scam. Alaska Twitter reps knew nothing about it and promised to get back to me. It was very well written to be a phishing scam though. I need closure on this, it bothers me 🙂
Great stuff George.
Was considering the IHG card until it was confirmed the 60k per night could not be topped off, which virtually killed all the appeal to me.
Seriously considering dropping Amex Gold after the couponing .
It seems CCs are following same path as every internet product lately, the “enshittification”. This is an actual term coined to describe the process all too familiar now, recommend reading about it.
I would go for the Marriott Bonvoy 5 night certs before the IHG ones personally. And then Amex would not approve me anyway lol.
This Amex couping trend is as bad as the whole internet enshittification trend 🙁
Oh shit.
Blog news coming. The end is near…er than ever now 🙁
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!