Overpay by booking Cathay Pacific premium seats with Avios
There’s a tempting intuition that says high balances across a variety of programs are a goal worth pursuing, since they allow you to deploy the right rewards currency for the
Saverocity Observation Deck 2015 Award Nominees – Part 1
To celebrate a year of podcasting at the Saverocity Observation Deck, we decided to close out 2015 with a bit of fun. Joe Cortez, Trevor, and I convened for over
You should never buy points for what they're worth
The frame of reference for my manufactured spend practice is not usually the cost I pay per point that I earn, although I naturally privilege cheaper techniques above more expens..
My Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond tier match experience
BackgroundAs my regular readers no doubt already know, on November 19, 2015, the official Hyatt Concierge Twitter account sent out a tweet asking, “Looking for a new loyalty prog..
Full-Story of How we got to be Full-Time “Travel Hackers”
Many people wonder how Caroline and I ended up living out of hotels. We’ve been married for 4.5 years and we’ve gone to 20 countries a year, 4 years in row, and we
Do this now: activate Chase Freedom Q1 2016 bonus categories
When it rains it pours. Just as Discover it, Citi Dividend, and US Bank Cash+ bonus categories are now available for registration, so are the Chase Freedom bonus categories for the
Eating In French Polynesia for Super Cheap
In November we spent 7 nights on Bora Bora, 6 nights on Moorea, and 1 night on Tahiti. Total we spent $292.37 on food for the two of us. That’s $146.19
Do this now: activate Citi Dividend Q1 2016 bonus categories
The Citi Dividend credit card is absolutely the most frustrating of the quarterly cash back bonus category cards. That’s for two reasons:Cash back is capped at $300 per calendar ..
Episode 19 – Festivus
Episode Description
Wherein Joe Cortez and Trevor…are civil to each other? Must be Festivus! Grievances! Feats of strength! And a Festivus miracle you don’t want to miss! Recorde..
Kiva loan duration and repayment schedules
I don’t write about making Kiva loans very much anymore, mainly because I don’t make Kiva loans anymore! But Kiva loans are a still-working technique to manufacture an uncapped a..
Use these 3 weird programs to search Star Alliance award space
In Chapter 5 of my occasionally-selling ebook, I discussed the technique of using All Nippon Airways’ search tool to find Star Alliance award space. Recently, they made some chan..
Making the best of the AA award changes coming
Yesterday, I posted new AA Award Charts we made, and today I want to go really in depth about the changes coming. It’s not all bad, and this post will explain
Do this now: register for Discover it Q1 2016 cashback bonus
Registration is now open (log into your Discover account first) for the Discover it cashback bonus categories of “Gas & Ground Transportation” for the first calendar quarter of 2..
The New AA Award Chart (starting March ’16)
We decided to remake the new AA award charts for two reason.
1) The AA award chart looks terrible. They have a dozen award charts on one page, instead of one.
Our award
Use Hipmunk to find positioning flights
There are a lot of websites you can use to search for paid flights. Kayak is one of the most popular, but Orbitz, Expedia and Priceline will all find you
"Pop Finance" is a pretty good book
This is a review of “Pop Finance,” by Brooke Harrington. You can find all my previous book reviews here. If you’re interested in buying a copy, I hope you consider
Our bag got stolen on an AirAsia flight… Kind of
After tons of time waiting for Cathay flights to open up to go from Sydney to Hong Kong, we decided to move on and hop a cheap AirAsia flight to Myanmar.
Due to the
The Current State of BRGs
I talked about the BRG Experiments, and how I’m keeping track of different BRG successes and trying to push things like BRGing a hotel that I’m using a BRG coupon
Missing Deals, Making Deals – Serve, Rite Aid, and Diamonds
So the news hit today that Rite Aid and Dollar General will be allowing fee free cash loads onto Serve. The only reason why this matters is because there are
I just bricked my Bluebird account (for the next 28 days)
Today I’m going to share a very simple, very stupid mistake I made. In fact it’s so simple, and so stupid, that it’s unlikely to help any of my readers.
Anatomy of an Award Trip: Summer in Europe
I’ve written a few times about this trip before (as recently as yesterday), but now that it’s locked down, I thought I’d share one of my patented Anatomies of an
Use a demand schedule to maximize open jaws on revenue tickets, too
The “demand schedule” is a tool I first read about at Milenomics, which has now become more or less conventional wisdom: by creating a consolidated list of all the trips
InterContinental Bora Bora Le Moana vs Thalasso
The differences between the InterContinental Hotels in Bora Bora are best be summed up this way:
The InterContinental Le Moana feels like a more authentic experience, on the main..