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CategoryMy experience with free 5% Back Visa Simon Giftcards
A number of bloggers have mentioned some current promotions going on related to 5% Back Visa gift cards. One potential money-making approach is to buy $500 cards through GiftCard..
"The Black Swan" is not a very good book
This is a review of “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. You can find all my previous book reviews here. If you’re interested in buying a copy, I hope
Gut-checking the latest and greatest opportunities
Starting today, it should in principle be possible to sign up for the Popular Credit Service Avianca LifeMiles credit cards. Signup bonuses are constantly fluctuating up and down..
Shutdowns, devaluations, and resiliency
One travel hacking blogger who never disappoints is Vinh at Miles per Day (his Twitter account is a must-follow as well). Vinh attracts shutdowns like an office supply store prom..
Why I'm gunning for Globalist
After I wrote last month that Hyatt’s new loyalty program “made the decision easy” to requalify as a Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond in 2016, Joe Cheung at As the Joe
Primer – National Rental Car Elite Status
National Rental Car has been my rental car company of choice for the past few years. I started renting with National Rental Car, when my company gave me Emerald Club status,
My Borgata Black Label trade up experience
For quite a while now My Borgata Rewards has been running a status match program called “Trade up to Black Label.” New My Borgata Rewards members who show elite status
What is a nation?
I am an American. My parents were born in Oklahoma City and San Francisco. I was born in Arkansas. I was raised in Montana. I may be just slightly less
My taxonomy of travel hackers
Last weekend I took a quick trip down to Dallas to meet up with blog subscribers, and also managed to fit in a Friday happy hour with folks in town
Grocery store spend and the possibilities of loyalty-agnostic travel
I’m a big proponent of the US Bank Flexperks Travel Rewards card, since I think it provides the straightest path for most people to pay as little as possible for
Quick hit: what we think we know about World of Hyatt status transition
In this Monday’s post, I explained why I thought a plain reading of the World of Hyatt terms and conditions made it possible, but far from certain, that Hyatt would
World of Hyatt: more on the Chase credit card and chasing status
Now that some official information information has been released about the World of Hyatt program, I have a few additional thoughts to add to Friday’s post.Chase Hyatt Gold Passp..
Preliminary thoughts on World of Hyatt
By now you may have heard that in March, 2017, Hyatt Gold Passport is going away. Apparently, it will be replaced by a completely new program called “World of Hyatt.”
The Scam Economy: ScoreBig edition
It’s natural for travel hackers (and their concerned family members) to wonder, who really pays for what we do? The obvious answer is, “everybody else.” There are enough people b..
Hyatt Diamond benefits, ranked
I’m still plodding towards requalifying for Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond status after successfully matching to the status late last year. I’ve been intentionally booking towards H..
Overdiversifying, underdiversifying, and practicing what I preach
I recently had the pleasure of redeeming 30,000 American AAdvantage miles for a $290, one-way domestic plane ticket, which gave me an excellent opportunity to reflect on some tra..
Reminder: Starwood Preferred Guest transfers to Amtrak Guest Rewards
It feels like it’s been a while since I’ve written about Amtrak Guest Rewards! That’s mainly because the program underwent a dual devaluation in late 2015 and early 2016:On Decem..
Like McDonald’s, but for hotels
I just got back from a trip to Washington, DC with the family, and while the Hyatt Place was great I can’t help but think there’s an opportunity for a chain
Wyndham Rewards is a pretty good program. But is it necessary?
The “news hook” for this post is the launch of a new landing page for Barclaycard’s Wyndham Rewards Visa cards, raising the annual fee on the Visa Signature card from
The essential Ritz-Carlton properties
Long-time readers know that I can sometimes have an unfortunately literal approach to travel hacking. So when I decided to look into the Ritz-Carlton program to see if there were..
Chase Sapphire Preferred trip delay insurance for authorized users
When I periodically trash the Chase Sapphire Preferred as inferior to the Chase Ink Plus (because of its better bonused earning categories) and the Chase Freedom (because of its ..
In which the new Walmart POS software briefly messes with my game
I don’t keep track, but if I had to guess, I’d say I swipe cards through point-of-sale terminals around 50-100 times at Walmart store locations every month. That doesn’t make
On thought leadership
As regular readers know, I’m a podcast fanatic. The only thing better than being able to conveniently manufacture spend is being able to listen to great audio content while you