I go on clearing my head because it makes me feel better. Hopefully it adds some value to you, thank you for reading!
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Just some stuff I need to get out of my head, so here it goes…
I see a lot of buzz about the Redbird Target card. I am not biting yet. I doubt the credit card loading feature will still be around in the near future and I highly value simplicity in my life the older I get. My four Bluebird cards are working just fine, meeting minimum spends is still never a concern. I just wish I had more time to earn and BURN more! Working on it as I am training Mrs. TBB to work on some award searches. It’s been an eye opening experience for her. Screw you to all bloggers who entice people to fly for FREE (click my links) without warning how burdensome the process of BOOKING these “Free” award trips can be! You add family members around school schedules and it almost tempts you to burn your miles for toasters (just kidding, come on!).
The only KMart open in Ann Arbor is closing for ever in a few months. Sad day…Wal Mart people are getting sick of us…It’s getting harder folks. The only bright spot in this hobby (the MS game) is getting harder. Or I am getting tired as this darn blog is taking so much of my time. I don’t know. I gave some Meetup participants a little bit of history about this hobby when it all revolved around Flyertalk and how it has expanded to SO MANY blogs, mostly of new people who suddenly became experts dishing out “expert” advice trying to trick their readers with their credit card links while relentlessly pumping them every day with such links. It makes me sick. But I do understand the economics believe me. My blog is back to not earning enough to pay for my coffee at Panera again. It is a very tough go making it a viable operation without them, I sure have learned a lot two years of this!
I had a question on Twitter from someone new to the hobby how many credit cards to apply for? And my response went something like this: Resist the peer pressure to do as many as someone you know is bragging about doing X per day/week/month/quarter! It is ludicrous, you are different individuals with different goals and different mindsets and different mental capacity to do what it takes to do this right. Mental capacity=mental real estate devoted to this hobby. If you have a family and kids and a serious career and a few other interests/hobbies you likely do NOT have the mental capacity to be juggling 10 credit card applications each quarter! Plus, more importantly, you need to be WIRED a certain way to do this right. Very detailed oriented (yeah, T&C’s reading is our forte!), freakishly organized, very comfortable doing things online ( I use RoboForm and love it…I could pump my affiliate link right now but just can’t do it!), excellent money habits, NO consumer debt (if you are reading this and you are having credit card debt…you should NOT be near credit cards until you pay them all off…so please LEAVE NOW, nothing personal!), and some money in the bank to withstand some unfortunate event in your life (health setback, loss of job, drunk driving, smoked too much pot by accident, got Ebola in a Dallas hospital or on a Frontier flight or whatever), and then of course make the time to do what is necessary to travel for “FREE” (which is probably the biggest misconception in this hobby!). This time is spent on doing the credit card apps, keeping track of the minimum spends required, making ALL the payments ON TIME, ensuring you get the miles/points, likely getting/running/auditing an Award Wallet account, reading blogs (mine first and if you have the time the rest lol) to stay up on the latest deals, learning more at Flyertalk, going on Twitter so you can goof around while getting tweets from The Flight Deal on ridiculously low airfare deals that may resemble instant orgasms sometimes (like last night’s fares to India starting at $200 Roundtrip!), and of course researching your next travel destinations and spending lots of time putting the “free” trips together (unless you are REALLY flexible and are single). Or you then graduate paying for seminars to learn how to travel for FREE! Get it? Paying for FREE LOL! I warn you all newbies who may be reading me…this can be VERY addictive. And if you start please do not start with more than one travel rewards credit card. Let’s see how you handle it. I can tell by the way you handle your first card if you are cut out for this or not. MOST people are NOT and should NEVER be encouraged to be near credit cards! Of course that is not happening in my dear hobby for the past four years and it now resembles a giant circus all selling the same cards for the same reasons every day. Check out the photo at the end of this blog post to see what I mean. #sadface I wrote all this in one sitting, I need to stretch and mix it up with some cool stuff I found and move on to other stuff.
This article caught my eye. Maybe soon we can have a Twitter Payments service to replace our beloved Amazon Payments? 🙂
If you think you are into traveling, well let me introduce you to Gunther Holtorf and his wife Christine who have been on a road trip since 1989. No blogs, no Facebook, no Instagrams, no crap. Just traveling…885,000 miles and 177 countries and still going. I became emotional watching this man, wow!
This article by a colleague of mine is great at these volatile times: The Importance of Ignoring the Noise of the Market
Time for a few laughs…
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First.
I completely agree with your comments about the RedCard and suggest that people wait and see what happens. Keep up the good work.
3rd place? Yippie!
Your feed screenshot is classic! Says it all…
How did you use Kmart?
Agree on RedBird and your characterization of the hobby. It takes a strange mix of qualities. And I just want to mention, that before you know it those kids will be grown. Time opens up. And if you are only booking one or two tickets, it gets better. I know you will be glad you took all these trips with your children. Amazing memories!
Hi,
Thanks everyone for playing along in our silly game here and taking the time to comment.
A few selected comments to reply:
@ ABC: email me.
@ smittytabb: Yes I agree. Been amazed I have managed many trips for 4 so far. Been getting harder or I just don’t have the time anymore to search is more like it.
Gunther is a cool story.
Yeah…Imagine no flat beds and warm nuts involved either 🙂
George,
The Gunther story really is an amazing travel experience. Thanks for linking to this.
You think he knows the 70k Ink deal is ending in a couple of days?
Sure, you are welcome. I enjoy sharing what picks my interest! I have watched that video a few times, what a story!
If it is extended again I am going to have to explode 🙂
Is it time to buy some BABA?
Checking crystal ball:
Darn it, it is kind of hazy again. So I will go big with….Maybe!
TBB, this post is very close to EPIC proportions because it talks about “the other side” of this points game that we all play. It is so absolutely true that points are hard to use when you need them—just ask anyone with kids who wants to travel during winter, spring or summer breaks! Sure, if you are booking ONE seat, you can do it. The rest of us: thinking about cashing in for that toaster. 🙂
It gets tiring reading about “GREAT” trips , ala Drew’s “hoppers”. Yeah, it’s POSSIBLE, but (1) I don’t plan trips just to maximize the value of my award (I actually pick a country first) and (2) the idea of multiple stops versus a nonstop does not appeal to me.
It all came home to me last week when another parent on my kid’s soccer team was saying she was cashing in all her CapitalOne points so that she could get to Vegas. I thought it was a bad use of points but then, yeah, try to find 5 award tickets at decent times during MLK weekend—damn near impossible! Had to think later that, hey, she is right to use the points exactly WHEN she needs them. Good for her. (In the meantime, I am searching for connecting flights and alternate dates and going through all my various bullshit flight curriencies, hoping *something* will work…)
Thanks. I thought it was kind of filler post myself as I didn’t go through my usual routine…I ran out of time!
I am going through the same motions right now…outsourcing to Mrs. TBB to find 4 seats to somewhere over Christmas. Barbados or Costa Rica…forgedabouit. Pre TBB I used to look way in advance and meticulously plan trips. After TBB I don’t have the time and the task is just getting harder in general imho. Yeah I can be flexible but with school schedules as you mention it is becoming a giant joke! I feel for the all the newbies who get sucked in getting cards and then they go to book…I can see them pulling their hair out.
I have always felt that the points were earned and people should spend as they see fit. Except for toasters lol.
Ha ha, I am one step ahead of Mrs TBB, for same itinerary for xmas (and also spring break). No cheap or award flights anywhere to Florida, CR, Cancun, Belize, Hawaii……ugh. I can’t plan ahead 11 months either….
BTW, stupid Alaska Airlines “2nd-ticket-for-$100-plus-taxes”: anyone notice that Alaska’s flights during peak travel times always cost about 50% more than their competitors. Ugh.
Frustrating day in the Bluecat household today. I will virtually share a glass with Mrs TBB, to drown out our sorrows….
It’s a party…Those are the same destinations she has been trying (except Belize)…”I now realize how much time you put into this” Well, I guess we could pay an award booker to fly us for FREE 😉
Saver tix to Barbados for Christmas were available on nearly all dates at 30K for business, and most dates in coach, for about a month after the booking window opened. On AC with overnight layovers using UA miles. Since then and on AA/US, nothing.
Wow, had no idea it is THAT popular. I already gave up on the idea #sadface
Any ideas so late in the game over Christmas somewhere warm with miles are welcome.
I second what bluecat said.
Confession: we’re using 45K miles each for three seats in domestic flights over New Year’s. It’s not a great use of miles (around 1 cent, with the added benefit of convenient flights), but cash is tighter this year and the infant should have a separate seat. Miles are easy to acquire and, I find, getting harder to use.
I’m stuck on whether to pay 2% to charge the infant’s day care bill to a credit card. The 0.2% extra from the Arrival for $stupid_amount each month is in the range of a monthly Panera coffee, but the points have to spent on travel. Could switch in some new sign-up minimum spending amounts, but to change the card I need to stop by the day care’s finance director’s office each time. P.S. “And they don’t take… American Express…”
Keep it simple whatever you do 🙂
“Miles are easy to acquire and, I find, getting harder to use.”
Nailed it.
Why not pay with a miles earning debit like UFB or cashback debit like PP Biz?
With all the volatile actions lately, I picked up some more oil stocks (they are cheap for a reason). We usually take two short vacations per year, and I am all set for the next several years. WMT trips seem to take longer to feed the bird, and I only have one. There are times that I ponder on quitting this hobby… Thanks.
Wanted to do a post about how this hobby harms people by getting them sucked in and not have them focus on stuff that may be more meaningful and better contributor to long term success….You know, instead of wasting all this time to arrange/go/fight for that AA Cadillac test drive people could use their time to do something more useful.
The same applies to me…I remember coming back from the Chicago Seminars II where I was sitting next to an attendee being interviewed and going “I flew from xyz to yzf to abc to wer to lib to wif and I earned xxxxxx miles” gloating with the cameraman & interviewer having that WTF look in their faces…
Maybe this is a disease….maybe there is no cure? lol
The pudding guy? I remember him speaking and said…”I moved on, I developed other interests…running marathons).
I tried to move on….here I am blogging about this stuff
Dang 🙂
I think you have it right… People really need to look at the consequences of too many cards and min spend, it got me into trouble a while back. I’ve learned from my mistakes and have changed how I look at “new cards and bonuses” … for example, I’m looking at the US Air card for the quick miles and no min spend. I’m not one who wants to deal with MS, so the no-min cards have appeal to me. Different strokes for those who have the extra time to work the MS angle, just not to me.
Like you said, “points accumulation is easy, using them is hard” is a great mantra to speak to. I’m getting used to using miles to book a return for my wife and I together, but seperate outbounds… we arrive about the same time, but getting multiple seats together on the same flight is getting crazy hard!
I’m also getting to be a “lowest fare” traveler… When I can get to my Thanksgiving destination for half of what AA/DL/UA are charging… $250 v $450, I’ll fly Southwest, or Sprirt or Frontier (just not the ebola plane) … The amount of devalued miles I would get, just wasnt worth the extra $$$ (Dear Airlines, I’m starting to do cost/benefit ratios for what you give me… Hint: It’s not looking good for you legacy carriers!)
So far amazingly I have managed to keep us all together…but it’s exasperating nowadays!
Soon we ‘ll be booking for 3 so minor relief there.
I have been a free agent since January 1, 2012. Was a Northwest/Delta Elite for about a dozen years before that, mileage running and all that. Not worth it anymore. I just don’t pay for tickets anymore and Southwest is outstanding (along with Avios for short distance trips!).
George et al, consider taking Amtrak over the holidays as a mode of transportation or as a vacation by itself. I’ve been bitten by the Amtrak bug, but there is usually a train station near by and plenty of award seats open.
Thanks for all the Amtrak advice George 🙂
I had a very different experience than yours sleeping. Never slept better actually traveling actually (and I have a W bed at home too!). Yeah the food was so surprisingly good. No warm nuts though lol.
Test post from my new Samsung 5. Pardon the interuption.
Went from a Galaxy 3 to a Note 3. Love them both, especially the Note!
Can you tell the note to mail me one of the dozen pictures we took 4 weeks ago?
Progress,….It’s in my gmail account…somewhere!
I loved this post. I have reached critical mass in this hobby. I have more miles than I can spend and am lucky that I need at most 2 tkts at a time but usually only 1. I’m tired of the repetition and all the Pushing of how everything is free, free, free. I am taking a break from applying for cc’s as I simply don’t need the points/miles now. I actually am more into 5% cashback MS and that’s a whole other hobby.
OT should people start shorting airline stocks? I feel really bad for Frontier.
Thank you! I know where you are coming from. 5% cashback MS is definitely a higher priority than the standard boring cards all the time. Been trying to burn over the only openings we have as family of 4 and it is just VERY pathetic….By the time I get to use the miles, at this rate, they would lose over half of their value…
Frontier just got a bad break, really bad. Hope they react well to it. This is where you see if management is worthy or not.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j2WRn3xfEkA
You are definitely No. 1 Tori Amos fan!
Question on Twitter was from me – not a newbie (been doing this 4+ yrs), but the principle is the same. Your message is right on point. I kind of like the kinder, gentler TBB. 😉
My story worked better if the question was asked by a newbie 🙂 Seriously, I forgot who had asked it but made an impression on me so I elaborated on it.
I am not sure I like me kinder & gentler, it is….a little weird.
Anyways, thanks for the comment. Trying to keep this baby up while I am having many things thrown at me (good things) from all directions this week!