Credit Cards Archives - asthejoeflies

Nov 13 2018

Capital One Venture card adds airline transfer partners – best programs for family travel

News broke today that the Capital One Venture card will be offering airline transfers at a ratio of 2:1.5. Since the card earns 2 miles per dollar (good for 2 cents towards travel), it essentially has become a 2 cents per dollar OR 1.5 miles per dollar card. Some outlets are now offering 75,000 miles for $5000 as a sign up bonus in order to promote the change. Let’s take a closer look at what Capital One Venture airline transfers mean for families.

Here is the list of transfer partners:

Aeromexico
Aeroplan (Air Canada)
Air France/KLM (Flying Blue)
Alitalia
Avianca
Cathay Pacific
Etihad
EVA Air
Finnair
Hainan
Qantas
Qatar

Ever since Capital One rejected me ten years ago before my honeymoon, I haven’t bothered with their cards. (I wasn’t even playing the miles and points game back then). Although I don’t worry too much about credit checks these days, I’m still salty they checked three bureaus and didn’t even approve me. Since many cards offer no foreign transaction fees (my initial reason to want the card back when I was a neophyte), I never looked back at Capital One.

Flexibility is always good, so the fact that the Capital One Venture card offers multiple options for using your miles obviously is a plus. I’m still not totally sold on the card because I don’t have the time and energy to deal with less mainstream programs today, though some transfer partners do jump out in terms of value for me. Here’s what I’m looking at – is it enough to get me to change my mind on yet another credit card?

Aeroplan (Air Canada)

It will be a plus to have another option for Air Canada airline transfers besides American Express Membership Rewards. Air Canada is great for families who want to travel internationally with their babies because they charge super low rates for lap infants. While most airlines will charge you 10% of the adult cash fare for an international lap infant, Air Canada charges a reasonable $50-$125 or 5000 to 12,500 miles for lap infants depending on the cabin. So instead of paying hundreds of dollars for a lap infant in business class on Eva Air, you just pay $100 or 10,000 points. A great deal for those families that need to travel abroad with a lap infant.

Avianca Lifemiles

This transfer partner is notable if you’re trying to get away from your family. It’s still one of if not the best Star Alliance partner out there for booking Lufthansa First Class. You can book 14 days out (which is when they usually open space) and Avianca doesn’t pass on any fuel surcharges. My days in LH F might be over, but I know a lot of people will be happy to have another program to earn Lifemiles with.

Flying Blue (Air France/KLM)

We really like flying Delta as a family, so if we were to get a Venture card it’d be nice to have another transfer partner to Air France/KLM. You can use those Flying Blue miles to book Delta flights, but if I need to combine miles from different programs (a regular occurrence for family travel), it’s nice to be able to pool between Capital One Venture and American Express without having to pay the excise tax (which I’d have to pay if transferring from AMEX to Delta).

Final Thoughts

It really does seem like the Capital One Venture airline transfers are more niche, which means they can represent a ton of value but also a ton of work. So I’d say for right now, I’m still going to pass on the card unless I have a specific trip in mind. More Air Canada miles are tempting, so 75,000 miles converted to 56,250 Aeroplan miles sounds pretty good – if I plan to use them. Avianca and some of the others are too niche for me at this point in my life, but I’m sure other families can extract a ton of value from them.

What transfer partners stood out for you? Does the Venture card seem more exciting? Let me know in the comments!

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Apr 16 2018

Quick Hits: How to use non-Southwest points to book Southwest flights

When you’re trying to save money on flights using Orbitz or the like, you may notice that Southwest never pops up. That’s because Southwest blocks online travel agencies from viewing their flights. This becomes a problem when you want to use points to book Southwest flights. You become limited to only using Southwest points. You can’t use Ultimate Rewards, Thank You points, or Membership Rewards because you can’t see the flights!

Well, the other day on Twitter I theorycrafted in a #veryshortblogpost one possible way to pay for a Southwest flight with non-Southwest points:

Theorycrafting:
1) Buy SW ticket with a Flexperks card
2) Redeem points using real time mobile rewards
3) Profit. #veryshortblogpost
— Joe Cheung (@asthejoeflies) April 2, 2018

This past weekend I killed three birds with one stone: I booked my first Southwest flight ever, burned some points I’ve been hoarding, and I tested out my theory. It worked! I figured at least someone might prefer to see some circles and arrows, so here’s how to use US Bank Flexperks to book Southwest flights. I’m guessing you can do something similar with Capital One and Barclays Arrival.

1. Enroll in Real-Time Rewards

If you haven’t yet, enroll in real-time mobile rewards. Log in to your account, click on “My Rewards”, and then click on “Redeem Rewards and Access Card Benefits.” From there click on “Card Benefits” and then “Real-Time Rewards”.

Enroll your phone number and then do the most important thing: make sure Airlines and Other Travel is checked off as eligible for Real-Time Rewards. I may or may not have had to cancel my first attempt within 24 hours due to not having done this. 😛 I’d also suggest reducing the minimum purchase amount.

2. Buy your Southwest ticket with the Flexperks card you just enrolled

Self explanatory.

3. Reply to the Real-Time Rewards text with “REDEEM”

You’ll eventually (very quickly in my case) receive a text asking if you want to redeem X points for Y dollars. Since Flexperks are simple now, this will be a rate of 1.5 cents per Flexperk point. Reply with “REDEEM” and you’ve redeemed non-Southwest points for a Southwest flight. Huzzah.

Final Thoughts

You know, as I wrote this, I realized someone must have figured this out before, at the very least for Capital One or Arrival. But, since I never bother to fly Southwest, I had never experimented before. Anyway, if you knew this already, at least I kept it short?

Anyway, I found this to be very useful – and plan to never do it or fly Southwest again 🙂 J/K, we’ll see how the flight goes. Let me know if there are any nuances I missed in the comments, thanks!

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It's almost impossible to use points to book Southwest flights, but you can use certain types of miles and points if you're smart about it. Here's how.

Apr 02 2018

Choosing which point option to use for a domestic flight

So I’ve been working on clearing out earned miles and points (my shame list). I’ve got points lying around in all sorts of programs that I’ve decided to prioritize getting rid of. That creates an interesting scenario when you have multiple trips coming up. Do you burn the points you want to get rid of, or do you redeem points for best value? In my case, that question turned what should have been a ten minute booking into a two hour internal debate. Mo Points, Mo Problems as Diddy said.

I thought it might be useful to go through my thought process as I debated which points to use (like I’ve done before). I’ll keep this post focused on only one of the flights I booked, Newark to Charlotte. The other flights I’m booking factored into my decision making but not enough to blab about all of those. I also learned a few things along the way which I’ll share as well. Let’s dive in.

Flight Parameters and Non-negotiables

Before I started looking for airfare, I had to figure out my flight parameters. Since this will be our first flight as a family of five, I wanted:

Nonstop flights
Morning flight times
Everyone on the same itinerary

Also, since I’m trying to ditch miles and points in all the various programs I’ve earned, I had one more parameter: Use up some of these random miles, even if it might not be the best value.

Various Options and Prices

So I had various options to try:

AA award flights via British Airways Avios
UA award flights (out of Newark)
Cash flights booked with Ultimate Rewards
Cash flights booked with Flexperks
Cash flights booked with Merrill Lynch points
Cash flights booked with BofA Premium Rewards points

Here’s what I found and what I felt to be the pros and cons of each.

AA award flights using Avios

As always, I found Avios to not be as useful as advertised (in my personal situation, relax everyone). While there was bountiful award space on AA in economy, at 15,000 Avios round trip per person I didn’t find the redemption to be a great value vs. the $177 cash price. Now, if I had a ton of Avios, I probably would have pulled the trigger since it would have fulfilled my “use random miles” parameter. However, I would have had to transfer from Chase or AMEX – I could do better by either using the 35% rebate on my Business Platinum (AMEX) or booking for 1.5 cents per point (Chase). So, no Avios for me.

The goal should always be to redeem points for your flights. But sometimes, it can be difficult to decide which points to use, so how do we go about doing that? — It did not feel worth it to transfer points over when the cash flight is so cheap

UA award flights out of Newark

The next thing I checked was UA award flights. Saver flights were only available at inopportune times (6 in the morning or 8 at night), so I quickly moved on.

Cash flights booked with Ultimate Rewards

Since I have the Chase Sapphire Reserve, I knew I could get 1.5 cents per point if I booked through Ultimate Rewards. Since the cash flight cost around $177, that came out to a favorable number (especially compared to transferring to Avios). The whole itinerary priced out at around 47,000 Ultimate Rewards points, as opposed to 60,000 Avios + $44.80. I put a pin in this one to think about later.

Cash flights booked with Flexperks

Since Flexperks offer the same 1.5 cents per point rate, I knew that it would cost the same number of points as Ultimate Rewards. Pinned this option as well. However, at this point I had been farting around for so long that space had dropped from 4 seats in the fare bucket I needed to 3, so the new cost (in either UR or FP) was around ~50,000. Analysis paralysis! (If I didn’t have the all people on same itinerary parameter, I could have booked two separate itineraries. But 3K points are worth avoiding the hassle for me).

Cash flights booked with Merrill Lynch

The next thing I did was see if I could book business class with Merrill Lynch. The best way to maximize Merrill Lynch is to book flights that cost almost $500, you can get those for 25K Merrill Lynch points. I was trying to see if I could get a couple of one ways in business, but as you can imagine with such a specific parameter, it was too difficult to make the numbers work. Each leg cost around $300 in business, too cheap to book a one way and too expensive to bother booking a round trip. Doing this also would have violated my one itinerary parameter so it ended up being a non starter. Curse you Merrill Lynch points I must be rid of you!

Cash flights booked with BofA Premium Rewards points

At this point I wanted to look at BofA Premium Rewards, one of those cards that I just got for the sign up bonus because of the hype. Guess what I learned that I probably should have already known? Points can be redeemed for 1 cent per point for travel (no uplift) or for straight cash, homey. Since my goal was to get rid of miscellaneous points if possible, I immediately redeemed my Premium Rewards points for cash and kicked myself for not doing it three months ago.

Choosing what miles and points to redeem

In the end, I decided to go with Flexperks. I figure Chase Ultimate Rewards points are more flexible (I can even use them to buy Disney tickets), and Flexperks offered the best combination of value and “random points I want to get rid of” status. Better yet, I was able to charge the ticket to my US Bank Altitude and test out mobile rewards redemption. It’s pretty nice to just redeem points with a text! Which gave me an idea for a #veryshortblogpost which you’ll see if you follow me on Twitter.

Final Thoughts

I find it useful to go through various miles and points options when booking tickets. Honestly, it’s a little annoying to have so many options but I guess that’s #firstworldproblems. Make sure you go through all your options to find the best value for yourself and your situation, and redeem according to your parameters! In the end I was happy to be rid of a bunch of Flexperks and to save my Ultimate Rewards. Now to get rid of those Merrill Lynch points…

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Mar 26 2018

Four Reasons to consider passing on the Chase Iberia Credit Card

Like I wrote about last week, at one point in my miles and points career I applied for cards I didn’t need. That was all well and good when we didn’t have kids and could fly off to Europe for the weekend. It’s less ideal now that our time is limited. One thing I wish I had seen during my “Phase 3” heyday were more reasons not to apply for the shiniest new credit cards out there. So I’ve written this post about reasons to avoid the Chase Iberia credit card with that in mind. If you’re looking for reasons to talk yourself out of this card, this post is for you!

Now let me get this out up front: this is a perfectly good card and will fit a lot of people’s situations. However, every single review you read of a new credit card spends 90% or more of its time talking about what’s good about the card. This post will spend 90% of the time highlighting what’s not so good about the card, but let me get the other 10% out of the way. 50,000 Avios can be very useful to families who live in cities that have good AA space, transferring to British Airways is useful if not cumbersome, and the card not being subject to 5/24 is great.

Alright, let’s get to the reasons why I’m avoiding the Chase Iberia credit card. You can also consider these reasons to be wary of the hype.

1. It’s not really a 75,000 Avios sign up bonus

The first thing I think consumers should be aware of is the advertisement of the sign up bonus being 75,000 Avios rings a bit false to me. You earn 50,000 Avios after $3K in spending, and the other 25,000 after $7K in spending. If you have reliable MS or reselling methods, that 75K might be worth it. But if you’re a bit more average, like myself, 25K for 7K of spending isn’t amazing. I’d rather do 7K spending with my Chase Ink at office supply stores and earn 35K Ultimate Rewards.

Here’s the tricky thing that I need to remind myself. Even though I know I probably wouldn’t earn the 75K total if I applied for this card, just seeing it advertised as 75K has a subtle effect on how I view the card. I know better, but advertisements, which I’d is how I’d characterize 80% of the Chase Iberia credit card posts out there, have one job, and that’s to psychologically fool people into buying products. So I personally need to mentally adjust when I’m reading the hype, and I think others should do the same.

Just remember the opportunity cost of spending an extra $7000 to earn that extra 25K Iberia Avios. It definitely will be worth it to some, but not all. But it’s really a 50K sign up bonus with a 25K spending bonus. At least that’s how I identify it.

2. Avios (both Iberia and British Airways iterations) can be difficult to use in your situation

I used to love British Airways Avios. Even post devaluation, I found being able to take AA flights for slightly cheaper to be invaluable. Then a funny thing happened, AA tightened up all their award space and I had a bunch of kids. Now all of a sudden I’m searching for four tickets during peak school vacation times. Finding nonstop flights that fit those criteria can be very difficult.

One highly touted usage of British Airways Avios is the ability to redeem for flights from the West Coast to Hawaii for 12,500 per segment. That is indeed a great deal! Except:

They say Avios are great for the West Coast to Hawaii, but that’s contingent on award space

Things get better in September but your kids are probably back in school.

Update : counterpoint from @lsjbrooks

That space does my family very little good but hopefully it helps yours

Looks like you cherry-picked that LAX-Hawaii space. It looks decent in late July and most of August, especially non-HNL. Only east-coast Hawaii casuals go to Oahu 😜
— Tim (@ljsbrooks) March 26, 2018

Anyway, sometimes Avios can be super useful, but I generally haven’t found them to be as useful as the internet says they are. You have to get pretty creative, and if you don’t have a lot of time to do your research, you may just be chasing a shiny new sign up bonus that you don’t have the time to put the work into to use properly. Also, if you’re busy, you might not want to go through the hassle of transferring from Iberia to British Airways. It’s only like, two steps, but there’s the 90 day waiting period yada yada yada…I have found as my time has become more precious these small nuisances add up.

In terms of using the Avios for Iberia flights, I’ve had my eye on BOS-MAD on Iberia in the summer (it’s seasonal) for years now, but have never found enough seats for my family. We’d love to go back to Madrid, and you’d think the Iberia credit card could get us there, but in reality…probably not.

3. It’s another card to keep track of in your sock drawer

The earn potential on the card out of the sign up bonus isn’t very exciting. Most people don’t fly Iberia regularly so it won’t be worth it to spend $30K to get a $1000 voucher. (Though at 3.3% back, it’s not bad if you do I guess). But most people aren’t going to be spending on Iberia or British Airways flights regularly, so this card will only earn you 1 Avios per dollar. Obviously you can do better just by using any Sapphire Card which will earn you a minimum of 1 Ultimate Reward point per dollar which you can of course transfer to Avios.

So, most people will just get this card for the sign up bonus and sock drawer it – that’s not going to be worth the hassle for a lot of people.

4. Is the card worth going past 5/24?

A lot has been made about the fact that the Iberia card isn’t subject to Chase’s 5/24 rule. For some people, that’s great because if you’re “LOL/24” you have no chance to ever get back under so any hit of that sweet, sweet Chase is worth it. However, 24 months isn’t that long in the game – I’ve been dropping closer to 5/24 over the past 12 months. We’ve kept my wife permanently below 5/24. So is this card really worth adding to your 5/24 total or putting you over?

Ultimately, the miles and points game is a long game – so make sure you keep that in mind as you make your decisions.

Final Thoughts

If I’m being perfectly honest, I thought there’d be more compelling reasons to avoid the new Chase Iberia card. Turns out, the reasons are mostly subtle, meaning it’s likely a pretty good card! I thought I’d try a new angle while analyzing the credit card, so I don’t know if I’ll do another post like this in the future. In the end, I think my post has at least convinced me that I’m personally going to pass. Because the fact of the matter is, there aren’t many compelling reasons to get this card either. These days I like to keep my credit card applications to the ones I really want, and I’ll stick with that for now. If you’re looking for a more traditional review, DoC’s got you covered.

How about you, does the Chase Iberia card have a new space in your wallet? For the next month or so at least? Let me know in the comments!

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Mar 19 2018

Why you shouldn’t sign up for every credit card sign up bonus you hear about

I think the credit card and travel hacking game can be dangerous for a variety of reasons. One of the most dangerous can also be one the most subtle. For lack of a better term, I’ll call it “internet peer pressure.” Even if you don’t overspend to meet credit card sign up bonuses and pay off your balances monthly, there exists an inherent pressure from the blogosphere to be signing up for every single credit card sign up bonus that comes around. When I started this game, I always felt I HAD to have the newest, best credit card sign up bonuses out there. It starts off simply, but like I said, it’s very subtle. I think a lot of travel credit card enthusiasts go through phases along these lines:

Four Phases of Travel Credit Card Enthusiasts

Phase 1: Hmm, should I dip my toe into this credit card rewards thing?

In Phase 1, you’re still not convinced that applying for credit cards regularly won’t hurt your credit. You dip your toe into the pool by getting a card, probably a Chase Sapphire Preferred because you’ve heard about it ad nauseum. For some people, you’ll take one trip with those points, but for others…

Phase 2: Establishing a credit card application rhythm

If you continue on, you start getting a good handle on how often you can apply for credit cards, and fall into a predictable rhythm of adding one, two, or more new cards every couple months. Maybe you double or triple the number of trips you take in a year, and you really get into the swing of earning miles and points regularly through sign up bonuses. Now lots of people stop at Phase 1, but I think for most people in Phase 2 you end up at…

Phase 3: You really want to sign up for more credit cards but there are no good signup bonuses left so you just chase that next bonus

I think I hit Phase 3 about 2-3 years into the game. I had exhausted most of the “great” sign up bonuses but I felt like I had to still sign up for new cards every three months so I started applying for good, not great sign up bonuses. I’d convince myself mentally that I “needed” these cards even though I had no uses for the miles or they belonged to obscure programs. Hopefully for those who enter Phase 3, like myself, they enter Phase 4:

Phase 4: You realize that you should only be earning the miles that you plan to spend, and that almost everyone in this space is trying to sell you credit cards

Have a plan for your miles and points. Earn the miles you plan to spend. Once I finally burned that into my brain, I stopped chasing sign up bonuses. I then coupled this with my realization of the fact that all the “buzz” about every single new and “amazing” credit card sign up bonus out there results at least in some part from people who are trying to sell you said credit card.

Understanding the internet’s role in making you want to sign up for new credit cards

I’m not trying to be critical here, though I’m not trying to defend anyone either. But I’ll just speak for myself, even my blog and social media, which receives no compensations from banks for credit card conversions, contributes to the “buzz” behind cards. That’s because when my friend tells me they just bought a $1500 dollar snowblower my automatic reaction is “you should have signed up for a new credit card.”

Of course, this just perpetuates the notion that all spend should be going towards meeting credit card sign up bonus minimums. And if you’re in Phase 2, that’s almost definitely correct!

BUT. You get to a point where all of a sudden you are chasing points in programs that you don’t have a plan for. So, you may be earning more points, but if you don’t use them, maybe you should have just used them for regular spend on one of the cards you already have.

Factor in the fact that the minority of the community, at least on the blogs, warns you to consider how “lifecycle effects” (copyright Free-quent Flyer) has changed your travel habits. My wife and I flew internationally 5 times a year before our first child, now our goal is 2 international trips a year.

Whenever a new credit card comes out, everyone gets excited, and rightfully so! I really wanted the Hilton Aspire card and I really want the new Iberia card. But the reality is I haven’t redeemed a single Hilton point or Avios (Avio?) for over two years). So as much as I want shiny new cards, it’s tough to say I can actually use those miles and points.

Whenever a new card comes out, 90% of blogs will write about it, travel hacking Twitter will blow up, and if it’s big enough, even your mom will ask you about it. It’s tough not to buckle under that kind of pressure, especially when the bonus is legitimately good. But I do my best to remember to ask myself: Am I thinking about my actual spending (of miles) habits when I fall for the buzz for new credit cards?

Orphaned Points – My Hall of Shame

I reached Phase 3 right around lifecycle effects dictated a restriction on my travel. So, I have a personal hall of shame, orphaned points I need to get rid of. I thought it’d be fun to share my sources of shame and how I plan to get rid of them.

Radisson Rewards (~140,000 points)

Earned via: Club Carlson credit card sign ups back in the day

Reason for shame: Still haven’t used a single point. Had a stay booked right before the extra free night expired but we ended up canceling.

Plan for use: Since I plan on starting to book two rooms in the foreseeable future, we should use this on our next domestic vacation.

Alaska Airlines (~150,000 miles)

Earned via: a couple of BofA Alaska Airlines cards plus some old Virgin America Points

Reason for shame: Alaska Airlines felt like a great idea. We love Seattle, we love flying Cathay to Hong Kong, and hey maybe we could even fly Emirates. But it turns out when we had kids we actually realized we don’t like traveling without them! (Except for once or twice). I also didn’t book using AS for our last trip to Hong Kong because I wanted the flexibility to change dates and times from AA.

Plan for use: No active plans. 🙁 May just burn them on domestic AA flights.

Merrill Edge Points (~50,000 points)

Earned via: Merril Edge+ BofA card sign up bonus

Reason for shame: I guess I’m not ashamed of this, but I am reminding myself I need to use these points for my next flights

Plan for use: My next domestic flights

Final Thoughts

Remember, you don’t need to sign up for every credit card sign up bonus! Be sure to evaluate your miles and points needs and make your decisions accordingly. If you travel all the time, this probably applies less to you, but if you’ve got a growing family like mine, make sure you at least consider exercising discipline in your overall strategy.

Also, I’m sure some of you have orphaned points and your own hall of shame, so I’d love to hear about them in the comments!

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