US Airways has been my preferred domestic airline for years, largely out of convenience.  The bulk of my life has been spent between Philadelphia and Northern Virginia, which happen to be hubs for the airline and therefore direct flights from pretty much anywhere else that I have attempted to live.  As a result, I’ve amassed a fair bank of miles on US Airways and have also become somewhat decent at finding low level award space on their metal. The Dividend Miles program has received a great deal of coverage in the past, thanks to an industry best 90,000 mile business class award to North Asia, with a stopover allowed and routing pretty much anywhere that the phone agent would agree to ticket.  That opportunity has dried up, but one lesser-covered [...]

I apologize in advance for the lack of posts recently.  I’ve been traveling, which I need to write about and get those posts up.  I wanted to quickly alert folks to a potential deal if you need to top off a Dividend Miles account.  I received an email with a targeted offer to buy US Airways miles and receive up to a 100% bonus depending on the purchased quantity. Oddly, the deal has been good since July 7 and expires on July 31, but this is the first notice I’ve received.  Based upon that, I recommend logging in to your Dividend Miles account and checking to see if you’re eligible if you’ve otherwise been waiting for a promotion to top off an account. Bonus Structure • Buy 10,000 to 19,000 [...]

The good news is, I’m not sleeping on a rock hard twin mattress tonight, but rather in my own Sleep Number that my wife convinced me we had to have.  The bad news is that my trip back to see my family is pretty severely delayed, enough so that we decided to bag it for this evening and fly out in the morning. Managing Pre-Trip Delays A flight delay prior to departure from our home airport, or especially prior to having even loaded up the car to go to the airport, is a relative luxury in the world of airline irregular operations.  IRROPS.  What a nice way to summarize a massive dent in your plans.  I’ve previously shared my airline contact cheat sheet, and tonight I’m recommending you open that [...]

I don’t know about you, but I visit my favorite travel blogs to score deals on laundry detergent.  Maybe sign up for a dozen credit cards.  That sort of thing. Target has Tide Free and Gentle High Efficiency detergent, 100 ounces of it in fact, for $10.00.  That price drops to $8 if you subscribe, similar to Amazon’s subscribe and save model. I’m posting this as a deal because Amazon no longer does S&S or free prime shipping for items like this – instead, Amazon Pantry is a flat shipping charge model where you fill a “pantry box” and have it sent for a flat rate as part of the Prime program.  I’m shocked that no one covered the devaluation of the Amazon Prime award chart, but here it is, [...]

This site is probably last to the party on this one, but in case you missed it and happen to be in the market, Target is offering up to a $100 gift card with the purchase of an iPad Air or Mini with retina display. These kinds of promotions usually mean a new product is on the horizon, so whether or not to purchase the current generation is of course a personal choice.  I am still rocking the original iPad in all of its slowness on iOS5. It’s still a very capable night stand “TV” since Netflix, Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime Video all have apps.  Still, I’ve been looking to upgrade, so getting $100 back that I (or rather my wife) would otherwise spend at Target anyway is a [...]

I am proud to live in one of America’s finest food cities.  My friends and family would suggest that I spent my post-college, pre-child years direct depositing my paycheck at various restaurants.  They’re wrong, and crazy for suggesting that, of course, because everyone knows the Chase Sapphire Preferred pays 2X on dining and First Friday is coming up insert credit card link here.  When our daughter was born, I was fairly adamant that she was going to grow up a good little eater and we would get to go back to all of my favorite spots.  With some practical modifications, that has actually turned out to be a mostly true statement. It bears mentioning that not all cities are the same when it comes to food culture.  Portland, on either [...]

For existing Bank of America Alaska Airlines cardholders, check your mailbox.  A targeted offer for 3X miles on qualifying back to school purchases is making the snail mail rounds.  Let this be your reminder to open the junk mail this week, maybe not for this offer, but for the other, better ones that could also show up. The bonus categories are fairly broad, but the offer itself is capped at 2500 bonus miles, so it is lukewarm.  Still, this card is not known for extravagant sign up offers and even less so for spend promotions.  For those unfamiliar with the card, you can, of course, read every link-pimping blog post extolling the virtues of this thing, or I can provide you with a run-on sentence and the highlights: $75 Annual Fee [...]

This Facebook post by Mike Rowe is making the rounds this morning.  I found it as I was working on my next “first trip” installment regarding aircraft and seat choices.  I think Mike has beaten me to the punch on explaining why you probably don’t want that first trip to be on a CR7 (spoiler alert!), and it’s just beautifully worded.  I mean, really top notch stuff here. I’ll limit myself to a short paragraph here so that you can get to reading it. Image Credit:  D-ACPF by ABF. (CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Heads up that Capital One 360 will hold it’s annual Independence Day sale from June 30 to July 3, 2014. The offers for this year are not yet known, but 2013 offers included – $76 Bonus for 360 Savings Account $100 Bonus for 360 Checking Account $176 Bonus for Capital One ShareBuilder Account $576 Bonus for Capital One ShareBuilder IRA $176 Off Capital One ShareBuilder 401(k) Plan $76 Bonus for Refer A Friend Program I don’t currently bank with Capital One, but $500+ to open an IRA would be tempting if it happened again this year. Hat tip to debentureboy at FWF.