Another TBB post featuring the most eclectic links around the web such as retirement losses, Steve Kerr, AI breaking us fast, the 4% rule is now 4.7%, World Of Hyatt’s brutal reality, making estate planning mistakes, five legendary Apple stories, AI adoption around the world, the endgame in Iran, the best museums, inside the hotel slipper scandal, the best photography links and of course always all of the most important developments in the crazy world of frequent flyer miles and points at the lower half of the post. And much more. Enjoy the weekend.
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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.
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BLOG HOUSEKEEPING
This is truly a one man labor of love operation, enjoy it while it lasts.
The blog should have a new fresher look soon.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Stubbornness and stupidity are twins.” – Sophocles
MUST READ GEMS
This is one of the best ever written articles on retirement I have read in recent years. As my wife is retiring in about a month and I am getting to an age where this phase of life is not such a long term goal anymore it was refreshing to read about all the “issues” that come with it. As I have successfully guided many of my clients to reach the ‘promised land’ I must admit that retirement is not easy. And turning from a saver/accumulator to a spender is indeed one of the hardest transitions that may exist in the universe. Anyway, if you are contemplating retirement this is a must read, no excerpts, read the whole thing. I may do a separate post all about retirement at some point in the future…
What You Will Lose When You Retire
Another article in the past week that just blew me away was about Steve Kerr, the Golden State Warriors coach who is also stepping away from the NBA. Again, retiring is hard. I have always been a fan of Steve Kerr. And my respect for him after reading this has no bounds. This is a very deep introspective about the man and, this is a warning, it is very long. I experienced a high while reading it I must admit and maybe you will too. I love reading and sharing with you what I find. If you do not agree you are free to go somewhere else, this is a free country. Oh wait, maybe not as free as it used to be, sad.
Why Steve Kerr stayed with the Warriors
PERSONAL FINANCE
Today we are on a binge of retirement related content for some reason. Anyway, we are all aware of the 4% rule. A lot has changed since this “rule” first came out. And it has many shortcomings of course. But I think it still remains a valid simple ‘rule of thumb’ to at least give you an idea how realistic it is to retire. A great benchmark to start out with before, you know, your own specific circumstances and goals come into play to make answering this a monumentally difficult decision. And sometimes you just gotta take the leap risk you know. I often kid with clients that I can answer this question with close to 100% certainty if they can provide me their date of death and market returns every year into the future. Yeah, right. Anyway, looks like inflation has now hit the 4% rule too, here we go:
The 4% rule is now the 4.7% rule. That matters for your retirement.
Sometimes some people mean well but the execution fails horribly. Like this man who wanted to do right for his grandchildren. I read this and my head was shaking so hard it almost separated from my neck. Do not do this to your loved onese! 36 trusts, come on! Can you imagine the CPA preparing these 36 trust tax returns and then billing for them? I can see him/her smiling all the way to the bank. Take steps to ensure your loved ones do not have to deal with such heartache, you owe it to them. Keep things clean and simple and quick to settle and spare them all the costly hassles dealing with the aftermath. Also, I must say that in my own dealings with TIAA-CREF I am not shocked about how the company is inflicting such pain; I think doing this is part of the company’s DNA. And now lawyers get to bleed more of what was supposed to go to the grandchildren, how sad. Read and weep:
One Small Fortune, 36 Grandkids and an Inheritance Stuck in Limbo
CRYPTO/TECH/SCAMS
This French fraudster was in the news some time ago but then he vanished from the spotlight. Until I came across this article that shocked me how come we have not heard more about one of the biggest Ponzi masterminds. And get this, he managed to avoid jail time! And no he did not receive a pardon smh. Gérard Lhéritier lured investors by selling shares in literary treasures. When suspicions grew, he was exposed as the architect of a massive fraud
The French mastermind behind a €1bn Ponzi scheme
The ponzi was about to run out of money when, amazingly, this guy won 170 Million euros in the lottery and injected a big chunk of it into his own scheme to keep it going. Think about this for a second, just wow.
Entertaining read and I am not even an Apple fan: 5 Legendary Apple Stories That Reveal the Genius Behind Its Innovation. I enjoyed them all, even the one that is not true (story #2 about Steve Jobs and that fish tank).
AI
I think we all feel this way lately: The AI Conversation Is Happening Too Fast. The AI boom is meant to overwhelm you.
Silicon Valley’s leaders pay lip service to a societal conversation about what comes next, but their actions say something else: Keep up or be left behind. Humanity rewriting the social contract together sounds nice; less so when you have a gun to your head. Time is of the essence, we’re told. Maybe that’s true. But how can we build a future if we can’t agree on the present? A cynic might conclude that our input isn’t desired at all.
Wait, there is more: AI Has Broken Containment. Once-speculative concerns about the technology have now become pressing matters.
It’s hard to overstate the extent to which AI has crept into contemporary life, even for people who aren’t commonly using the technology. A poll this spring showed that, for Americans, AI is growing in importance faster than any other issue… Silicon Valley has spent ungodly sums on AI and data centers: Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Google alone have already spent more on data centers since the launch of ChatGPT than the federal government spent to build the entire interstate highway system. Those expenditures are set to grow, even as consensus opinions on whether all this spending constitutes an economic bubble fluctuate every few months…Now these same companies are barreling forward to consummate their technological revolution. For everyone else, the AI future is beginning to feel less like something you participate in and more like something that happens to you.
In the meantime, many college commencement speakers are now booed from the generation graduating into a new reality. Maybe the young generation is having enough of AI and major backlash is…brewing?
I am really surprised that here in the US, the leading AI country by most measures, the AI adoption is much lower than expected: AI Adoption by Country in 2006.
IRAN WAR
Yeah, it is still going on, the negotiations, the threats, the blockade, the nuclear bomb demands, money paid to Iran through Binance to let ships sail through, Israeli government’s shit, the suffering of the poor Iranian people continues as they are caught in this surreal catastrophic environment and I could go on and on smh…
Meanwhile, we pretty much know: Trump’s Endgame Is Surrender. Then again, we should expect the unexpected. Anyway, in the Middle East we always come back to “…in the Persian Gulf will be chronic instability and frequent disruptions in shipping.”
Meanwhile, things are looking up suddenly and amazingly for energy transition away from this Hormuz bottleneck: Dawn of the Electric World Order. Why we may enjoy some increased revenues here in the US from exports of oil and gas, I think the tide is turning…
A carbon energy superpower, the United States looks increasingly like an energy island. Last year, we wrote that the central speculative question about US “fossil drenched” energy geopolitics was whether it would be forced “to watch as others climbed towards the solar uplands, or have the power to crush the spring.” This monumental energy supply shock sets the stage for that question to be answered. A fossil fuel supremacist government has made oil and gas costly and unreliable and accelerated the turn to the electric world order.
ODDZ & ENDZ
I empathize with all international college students in the US. Because I was one of them in the past. It hurts to see that they are no longer welcome. We are going to lose a lot of talent who would love to work here. And stay here, legally of course. Anyway, it is what it is: ‘It’s Getting Unfriendlier’: International Students Race to Find Jobs.
The narrowing of work options could spell trouble for universities, many of which financially depend on international students, who often pay full freight. It could also upend a crucial talent pipeline. In 2025, nearly half of the Ph.D. and master’s diplomas in science, tech and engineering went to international students. Since 2000, more than one-third of American Nobel Prize winners in chemistry, medicine and physics have been immigrants.
Very educational video of the border crossing between Singapore and Johor Bahru in Malaysia. My wife has relatives doing this every day, it is the busiest border crossing in the world by the way: Why Singaporeans Are Fleeing to Malaysia Every Weekend.
TRAVEL
Hmmm, ordering groceries with Airbnb? Whatever. May be a little too late for getting into this? Airbnb Expands Into Hotels, Cars, Groceries.
For all the museum lovers who read my blog, this is for you Sam: 27 Best Museums in the World for Art, History, and Cultural Wonders.
I had no idea about them hotel slippers! Inside the hotel slipper scandal. From China to landfill — how the in-room freebie became a globally toxic menace.
The scale of the problem is huge: with a length of 29.5cm each, if you took every slipper thrown away by just the top 100 hotels in London in a year and laid them end to end, you’d have a line stretching from Hyde Park Corner to Frankfurt. London, it should be noted, has more than 1,500 hotels.
If you recently visited a place that is full of tourists you undoubtedly had similar thoughts: Japan’s Tourism Troubles Are Being Fuelled By Social Media Assholes.
I have travelled all over the world in the last 30 years, and have never seen anything like the density of assholes I just encountered in Japan, but what I found wasn’t a horde of Westerners simply being rude, or spaces where there were too many Westerners, it was tourists being an unbearable menace specifically while on and around their phones…The problem was the tourists with their phones out shooting themselves for a video or taking endless selfies, blocking crowds, barring entrance to stores and just generally getting in everyone’s way in the most annoying way possible. I know simply blaming TikTok and Instagram and YouTube Shorts for so many flashpoints is an overly-simplistic explanation, but also, from everything I saw in my two weeks (where other kinds of rude or offensive behaviour outside the occasional jerk were rare), it was kinda true.
The obligatory Thailand link, say goodbye to 60 days visa exempt stays, back down to 30 days: Thai Cabinet Reduces Visa Free Entry To 30 Days For Most Nationalities, Some Visa Waivers Pulled. I plan to explore a longer stay visa as we expect to spend more time in Thailand going forward.
I am shocked Spain’s tourists are double the size of France and the UK: Europe’s Most Visited Countries.
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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
So, here we go again…
Welcome to the new post May 20, 2026 World of Hyatt devaluation. Combined with the recent stoppage of the never ending earning of Chase Ultimate Rewards points through its (mainly) Ink business cards. Which basically means the end of long held practices of just booking Hyatt hotels with World of Hyatt points repeatedly without ever even blinking just one eye. Notice how content creators in this space whose primary income is affiliate commissions from selling travel rewards credit cards are all very mild in their assessments? This outfit also sells plastic but its main income is a decent travel alert service and they were a little more blunt about it: We Analyzed 368K Hyatt Award Nights … & The Findings Are Brutal.
But based on what we’re seeing here, even diehard Hyatt loyalists should be doing the math for themselves to determine whether their (or hard-earned Chase points) are worth it anymore.
And the people running these programs know that content creators will be all over testing the new rates right away. And they will lay off the bigger hurts until later on, it happens every time. So, you have been warned.
Quick guide for the basics on these still (but less) valuable programs: A quick guide to transferable points programs.
And this is a good one too about What is dynamic pricing? An explanation and its positives & negatives. Well, the negatives sure outweigh the positives by miles (pun intended). This hobby thrived on exploiting the incredible values that FIXED award charts will offer to weird people like us who thrived on digging into the fine print and sticking it to the banks and airlines/hotels. Until, they finally caught up with us species, sad lol. I am really sad typing this as me and you old timers are faced with the harsh reality of separating our cherished cash from our pockets to go towards our (former) right to travel for free #crying.
Amazing deals that none of us will likely get. Hitting the lottery may be easier than winning one of these! Road Trips for 250 Points?! How To Score a New Hilton Honors America Experience.
In case this could work for you now that you are no longer transferring your Chase points to Hyatt: Chase Ultimate Rewards To Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards 30% Conversion Bonus Through June 5, 2026.
TRAVEL REWARDS CREDIT CARDS
For ANY questions on travel rewards credit cards, contact me anytime at travelbloggerbuzz@gmail.com
No affiliate links with these AMEX No Lifetime Language Offers: American Express Hilton Increased Credit Card Signup Bonuses (Up To 175,000 Points)(NLL).
LATEST OFFERS:
I will make this section increasingly smaller. Because my posts are too long and nobody clicks on these links anyway…
150k AMEX Marriott Bonvoy Business PLUS $125 Statement Credit: $125 Annual fee, minimum spend $8,000 in the first six months. For more info on the card’s benefits click HERE.
150k CHASE Sapphire Reserve: $795 Annual Fee. 150,000 points after spending $6,000 in the first three months. Lots of benefits and credits and earning multipliers.
185k CHASE IHG One Rewards Premier:$99 annual fee. 150,000 points after spending $3,000 in the first three months. And another 35,000 points after spending a total of $6,000 in the first six months.
125k CHASE IHG One Rewards Traveler: No annual fee. 90,000 bonus points after spending $2,000 in the first three months. And another 35,000 points after spending a total of $4,000 in the first six months.
150k CAPITAL ONE Venture Business: $95 annual fee. 75,000 miles when they spend $7,500 in the first 3 months, plus an additional 75,000 miles when they spend $30,000 in the first 6 months. Two separate $50 credits: travel credit and advertising/software credit. 2x on every purchase and 5x on hotels and rental cars booked on the Capital One travel portal. $120 Global Entry/TSAPreCheck credit. Shockingly, this card will NOT report to personal credit bureaus.
50k CAPITAL ONE VentureOne Business: No annual fee. $4,500 minimum spend in first three months. 1.5x on every purchase and 5x on hotels and rental cars booked on the Capital One travel portal.
As High As 200,000 Points on the AMEX Business Gold after spending $15k in the first three months
100,000 BANK OF AMERICA Atmos Summit after spending $6,500 in the first three months. And a 50% flight discount voucher
80,000 BANK OF AMERICA Atmos Ascent after spending $4,000 in the first four months. And a 50% flight discount voucher
85,000 BANK OF AMERICA Atmos Business after spending $5,500 in the first three months
75k CITI AAdvantage Business World Elite MasterCard
175k AMEX Platinum & 300k AMEX Business Platinum
75k CITI Strata Elite card
Due to credit card vendor restrictions, the only affiliate links I can place in the body of my posts are for Capital One cards. You can always email me at travelbloggerbuzz@gmail.com with ANY questions.
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MY ACTION AND BLOG BUZZING
Thank you to reader Brian for the generous Paypal donation that covers a good chunk of the costs of running this blog for a month.
.I have again applied for the Schwab AMEX Platinum card and, as expected, I again was greeted with that dreaded pop up jail message. I think I am going to have my wife apply for it over the weekend and see what happens…
Not much has happened in the meantime. I get no emails from PointsYeah on some award alerts I have placed for the SE Asia trip later this year. Oh wait, burned 50,000 World of Hyatt points for the Andaz Bali for son +1. Which takes the year to date burning of miles/points to about 421k, not too shabby while not even trying much. But I wonder when these Chase/Hyatt points are depleted, then what?
May 20 World of Hyatt devaluation day came and went and I did not book anything additional other than the Park Hyatt Saigon. I should probably surf there to see if the points required for my stay went down. Highly unlikely but ya never know.
House renovation project is nearing its end, we can use the kitchen again hooray! Everything should be done by mid June and ready for the World Cup.
I am going to be posting about the World Cup games a lot here, join me in the comments so we can increase the traffic in my blog so I can make more money. Oh wait, what money lol.
I made the mistake to go see the movie Obsession. I walked out midway, something I almost never do. I was fooled by the good reviews it received. Again.
I move slow online these days as it has become clear that this blog venture will never head to IPO lol. Anyway, here are two Instagram posts from the most recent trip to see our daughter in Seattle over Mother’s Day weekend. I did not bother taking any pics/videos from the two hotels we stayed in (for free of course): Hyatt Regency and Thompson. There was nothing notable about both hotel stays. Other than the great location and free parking due to World of Hyatt Globalist status. I did not waste a Suite Upgrade on them which was a good move for such short stays (three nights total). I find the Thompson properties to be as over rated at the W properties in the Marriott Bonvoy program. I still can’t believe the front desk guy checking me in tried to upsell me a Suite for only $300 per night, come on man!
Seattle trip pics from around the city
Seattle trip from hiking Ebey’s Landing Trail at Whidbey Island
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HOT CREDIT CARD OFFERS:
150k CHASE Sapphire Reserve Business, 150k CHASE Sapphire Reserve, 75k CITI Strata Elite, 75k CAPITAL ONE Venture Rewards, 100k CHASE Ink Business Preferred, 175k AMEX Platinum, 75k CAPITAL ONE Venture X, 300k AMEX Business Platinum, 200k AMEX Business Gold, 200k CAPITAL ONE Spark Cash Plus, 75k CHASE Sapphire Preferred, 100k BofA Alaska Atmos Summit, 80k BofA Alaska Atmos Ascent, 85k BofA Alaska Atmos Business, 30k CHASE United Gateway, 100k AMEX Gold, 15k AMEX Blue Business Plus and many more!
As of today, I have burned 421,515 miles/points year to date (after burning 1,893,248 miles/points in 2025 and 2,027,816 in 2024) and have 4,157,402 miles/points in the bank.
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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I’m looking forward to your posts about the World Cup!
Good morning!
Thanks for the weekend reading!
Man, this is a lot of good stuff to read? Gonna keep me company with coffee and such for the next few mornings, I can see. Trying to figure out some travel but complications and indecision have made it a bit more difficult. Getting old doesn’t help either. I get my heart treatment on June 24th so though slightly dangerous, I am looking forward to it to straighten some problems out. But a sort of a plan is slowly coming together. Not gonna be able to use as much points as I would like but money is for spending and not hoarding. That’s a retirement thing that has been a tad difficult to settle in my mind since I retired (at 51).
Thanks for all the good stuff as always and hope your wife gets that Platinum card!
That question mark after the first sentence was a typo. Supposed to be an exclamation point. Sorry!
That “what you will lose when you retire” article is a good one. My two-up manager just retired; today was his last day. Great guy, we’ll miss him. Part of his reason for retirement was taking care of aging parents. Another friend of mine just retired in part for the same reason. Which I totally get; I took about 10 vacation days last year to deal with my own parents and just got back from another trip to deal with them last night. And of course, since they’re American, they don’t want to move in or near their kids because they want to be “independent”. Being married to a Latin American, I have concluded over the years that Latin Americans have a better approach to aging.
Can’t remember if you already linked this article: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-lede/are-disney-adults-the-happiest-debtors-on-earth
Archive link: https://archive.ph/y5rYl
Some mind-boggling stuff in there, I don’t get that mentality at all.
I remember seeing that article but did not click to read it. Because I am just not a Disney fan, never was and never will be. I don’t get these people. But since it ties to personal finance I will add it to the TBB queue. Going to debt to give money to Disney is bonkers.
Good museum list, Buzz. A couple of possible additions:
-The Clark in northwest Massachusetts. Funded by Singer sewing machine money. At on time, these folks owned an entire city block in midtown Manhattan.
-The Kroger-Muller in Otterloo, Holland. Dozens and dozens of Van Gogh and Picasso paintings.
Both of the above museums are isolated in small towns that are tough to get to.
I strongly recommend anyone who is getting close to retirement to get onto the same page as their spouse and get their mindset out of the Save mode and into the spend. I know 2 long term 35+ year marriages where the wife has walked in the past 6 months because of the husbands refusal to change from hoarding every cent and not prioritizing their spouses expressed desires instead focusing on wanting to leave a huge legacy to their kids and I see 2 other marriages going down the same path all because one spouse wants to hoard money of which they have more than enough rather than indulge their spouse with a new car or a 2 week holiday.
@ Eric: Me too 🙂
@ DML: You’re always welcome.
@ Carl: I need to make my posts shorter…one day. Good luck on that procedure in a month.
@ Sam: You are the resident blog art museum expert. Will add your comment to the next blog post. Royalties are under arrangement 🙂
@ Vicky: Yes Yes Yes. I endorse your comment. May add it to the next post. See prior comment replying to Sam, royalties under arrangement lol
i somewhat understand thailand reversing back to 30 days, which is what it was previously. You always had the option to get a tourist visa which is good for 60 days. So get them more cash, but as I sit here in Vietnam they give 90 days on an evisa and don’t care (for now) if you churn them every quarter and pseudo live here. But expect an even greater influx of Russians to move in. But interesting thailand is getting more strict as their economy is struggling and vietnam doesn’t care, and they have one of the fastest growing economies in the world.
And speaking on that Japan article, absolutely. Worst thing that happened to Japanese tourism is the yen tanking and every asshole can now afford to travel there now. Heading there for 3 months in June, but specifically going out of my way to avoid the Tokyo-Osaka-Kyoto tourist corridor. Last time I was in Kyoto the crowds were so bad it really soured the experience. But in my experience, if you get off that ‘main’ route you can escape the hordes pretty easily.
You know, tit. I am sure you know what these three letters stand for 🙂
Vietnam is definitely becoming a better alternative. Thai govt better get its act together.
Agreed on Japan tourist assholes roaming the corridor lol.
Just had an online consultation with a law firm in Bangkok. Going to start the DTV visa process, seems best bet to secure entry and long stay to the kingdom for the next 5 years. I am sure this visa will be adjusted soon and hope to get grandfathered in.
yeah, try and do it above the book as much as you can. already starting to see some pushback on people doing the soft power stuff like muay thai. That’ll probably be the first loophole they close.
Started the DTV Visa process today. All legit, workcation status. Spouse as dependent. We are not going down the muay thai or cooking class road 😉
fyi my original comment is stuck in moderation
Fixed it.
Updates:
Wife applied for the 150k Schwab Amex Platinum and was approved. Looking forward for the 150k points and keeping track of all them credits (not really but I will do my best to squeeze them so we can win lol).
If you prepay for an Edit hotel with a Sapphire Reserve and receive the credit…what happens if the stay is after you close the card? Smooth sailing or do you have to use the card for the stay (for incidentals, parking, etc.?)
For a wedding at St. Regis in Singapore, we will need at least 2 nights nearby. I see the Conrad and The Standard (at 20k points per night), did not check how many points for the Conrad (but do have a FNC). Or maybe an FHR hotel that makes sense is nearby? The closer the better, it is hot out there. Any input on such a property?
Will close the month with just one credit card sale, yikes. Can’t believe my credit card vendor has not kicked me off the reservation yet. And not getting paid for my own cards just blows (it applies to the Schwab Amex Platinum app sadly).
No grilling today, it has been raining all holiday weekend long here in Ann Arbor.
Enjoy your day!
Buzz-Congrats on the Schwab Amex Plat approval. Will you be getting an authorized user card? Seems for another $195 fee, you’d get most (all?) of the lounge-type benefits. Also, I read that after a certain time, like 3 months, primary and auth users can move MRs between themselves, though what I read was not specific to the Schwab card.
Thanks. Wife is so excited about buying stuff at Lululemon, I just told her. I am on schedule to close my Amex Business Platinum and I am going to try going for the Shcwab Platinum just to see if holding the Business Platinum is what keeps that popup showing up at my face. And then I wonder if I should take some time off before getting a $195 AU Plat from my wife and just keep applying for the Schwab Platinum…I guess we will get to that when the time comes. In the meantime, I will keep on trying. I am now looking at Resy restaurants, $100 per quarter, I am good with that. Later today trying a new restaurant to use my Hilton Surpass for another $50 credit. Amex just got me messing around with all them credits 🙂
Really good point about moving around MRs between primary and AU cardholders, I will definitely look into that.
Sun is out here, hooray. Enjoy your holiday Sam.
Buzz-
Have you seen any SUBs for getting a Schwab Plat AU?
I don’t think I have ever seen any. Lmk if you do please. Or anyone reading this.
Going to stop by here at least once a day me thinks.
So, tried a new restaurant yesterday in Detroit inside the Godfrey Hotel (Hilton Curio Collection), the Hamilton. Gotta use them $50 Amex credits. It was ok, my pasta was below average but wife’s fish dish was good. And decent calamari. But waiting a whole hour for food to arrive? It wasn’t really that busy…Need to find more places to burn these things. Hopefully the Resy restaurants to blow $100 per quarter going forward will be much better to check out.
The most prolific bloggers out there is Award Wallet, You know, the software company. And the content just banged out to rope in the credit card newbies is getting unbearable. Maybe this is why they sure sell more than one credit card per month like me LOL.
Had a really good Memorial Day weekend. Caught up with some work and there is a small progress on my blog’s new look coming.
I have found some amazing links for next Friday’s post. Not as much as in previous posts. But then again it is only Tuesday.
Award Wallet runs so much crap that it is almost impossible to find anything worthwhile in it. I quit paying them for the service last year after the increase. They said with more $$ they would improve the service and all but all I noticed was a lot more junk and nothing to make the program track points better or be faster or include more programs. I bailed on them and now I just track my stuff myself.
Thinking to bail on them too. Looks like they are spending on more resources (writers & AI) on the blog and not on the software product. I am just amazed on how prolific they have been on posting new content on the blog. And so much of it is just geared to rope in newbies entering the hobby and trying to sell them plastic.
Good morning and there goes your Citi Custom Cash card and your 5x card. So much for Shiti becoming a real alternative to Chase and Amex lol. At this rate the hobby is on its way to becoming an afterthought. You know, like booking a Delta trip and not even taking into account the mileage earning from it.
And yet so many people making a living in this industry keep screaming that the sky is not falling. Of course, wtf would you expect them to say?
Anyway, summer is on, it’s hot out there, I need me to get me some nice shorts and stuff like that…
The way I have read the news on the Custom Card (I have two of them) is no new accounts and apps are frozen, but cards that are out there are still ok. No word on a forced change to a different card. Fingers crossed because my 2 cards are 5k points a month worth to me and I work them like a monster. Latest one was a total $500.26 so I plan it exactly.
I am hitting their Strata Elite dang hard as well, averaging 1200 points a week, but when the AF hits, it might go away, not sure yet because I can easily see 50K or more points a year with it.
Got to say though, that my Alaska card if/when I head to Europe, will get front row usage for the 3x everywhere.
Citi Custom Cash cards will be grandfathered. But this is how it always starts…until the end comes eventually. Sometimes the end can take forever though like that old Citi Premier card so good luck.
Will see when BofA will “adjust” that 3x on foreign purchases. Which is one of the most innovative developments in this space. Will come in handy when I start spending more time in Thailand and Greece…if it survives until then that is.