I’m surprised at the lack of publicity for the new Wells Fargo cards. They’re not amazing, but they’re at least worth a mention. And one of them in particular, the Propel World American Express, has a very good sign-up bonus. Consider:
USAir credit card improves, a guide to stopovers, and Marathon Man speaks
USAIR CARD GETS A LITTLE BETTER:Via Hack My Trip, the Barclaycard USAir card is getting a little better. Starting April 30, cardholders will get 1 free checked bag for themselves and up to 4 companions.
ARCANE FREQUENT FLYER RULES–IN PICTURES!: Travel Is Free has another typically helpful post laying out the quirks of the major airlines’ routing rules. Check this out:
Why would you want to do a trip like this? As Drew points out, “A trip to Africa would normally be 80,000 miles in Economy, but by making it a stopover on the way to Japan the price is 70,000 miles. Save miles, see more.”
Incidentally, for those of you who have suddenly found new uses for your Avios, there’s a good TIF post about how to save your Avios by breaking up the trip.
ANOTHER WAY TO MAKE MONEY FROM BANKS: How about buying a cheap bank stock? Oddball Stocks reports on M&F bank, currently valued at 30% of book value.
MARATHON MAN SPEAKS: Food for thought from Marathon Man:
We all want to share ideas and help our fellow MSers, and we all have our own reasons for that. I say, go ahead, share and show… but let’s not be specific about things. If we say a certain card exists that says “debit” on it, we need not tell every little step on how to use it. By now most are in tune with this and those who are not should step up (like we had to) and test things, ask questions or go out and learn too. No room for lazy people. As well, if we discover a certain store or chain starts allowing something, let’s not list the darn details so prevalently! Let’s not put the Google Map address on there either. Let’s not even talk about the store itself, just that a certain type of thing can happen at certain types of places. Again, people can go out and test depending on where they live. The thinking here is that if we push push push and constantly tout all these ways to get something out of these retailers, they may see it as a scam even when it’s not, and the overzealous department heads who are smart enough to use Google and find our writings (and they do in fact show up so let’s not kid ourselves!) will change the rules and gone will be the next best MS thing.
We have to be good stewards or custodians of MS and try to do whatever we can to prolong deals, not let them die quickly because we think a new one will come along soon. We must not think that something new will replace something good. When Coins died, it took a long time for the next thing to happen and many readers may not have been around in those days or in the much darker times of the past to understand this, but it happened then and it can happen again.
CHASE’S MILITARY-SPECIFIC CREDIT CARDS: Just when I thought I was familiar with all of Chase’s credit cards, I learn something new. Military Finance has a rundown on Chase’s military credit card family. I have no idea what an MWR is, but you can get 2% there.
Keep your eye on Wells Fargo! Plus 40,000 miles from USAir
USAIR 40,000-MILE BONUS RETURNS: As per View From The Wing, the 40,000-mile USAir MasterCard offer is back! And despite speculation to the contrary, Barclaycard has announced that this card is not going anywhere anytime soon. Here’s the link if you want to apply. (EDIT: Not so fast… Commenter HikerT writes, “The ‘new’ 40K US link is actually inferior to the 35K link. With the 35K link you get the first year fee waived and 10K at anniversary. With the 40K link you pay the annual fee in advance and give up 5K miles at anniversary. No deal!”) [Read more…]
A great Avios deal, a Upromise question, and a guide to obscure airline programs
GREAT DEAL ON TRANSATLANTIC BUSINESS CLASS FARES: If you’re enrolled in the British Airways loyalty program–and really, who isn’t these days?–there’s a great deal where you can get business class fares for 50% off the normal price of an Avios redemption:
Iberia is running a heck of an award sale for bookings made through January 7, 2014, for travel through April 8, 2014. They’re offering 50% off redemptions on Iberia metal, which is potentially extremely lucrative since Iberia only imposes very mild fuel surcharges on award redemptions.
If you’re an Iberia Plus member just log-in and search for award redemptions and you’ll automatically see the discounted prices. Through this promotion one-way economy class between Boston, Chicago, Miami, or New York and Madrid will cost you just 10,000 Avios, while one-way business class will cost you just 20,000 Avios. A one-way from Los Angeles to Madrid will cost you just 12,500 Avios in economy class or 25,000 Avios in business class.
The catch is that you have to already be enrolled in the Iberia program to transfer your Avios there since there’s a three-month waiting period before you can transfer in Avios. If you’re not enrolled, this would be a good time to make sure you can get the next good deal that comes along.
IS ANYBODY ELSE USING THIS THING?: I recently got the Upromise MasterCard and I have to say I’m pleased with it so far–there are some good cashback deals to be had with this thing. Nothing world-changing so far, mind you, but I’ve had some favorable transactions and I do see potential. Keep in mind the selling point of this card is that it will match the first 5% of whatever the Upromise portal has, so if the portal offers 5% cash back, you can get 10% cashback when ordering online. Note that the cashback is uncapped.
I’ll add the standard disclaimer that this is an affiliate link, so I’ll be knee-deep in cash if I can convince enough of you to apply. I’ll also point out that I have a lot of affiliate links which never see the light of day, but I did feel that this one was worth a mention. Some cards give you lots of easy money right off the bat, and some cards give you money if you’re patient and willing to do a little legwork–this one seem as though it may be in the latter category.
That said: is anybody else using this card? I so rarely see it mentioned anywhere.
A GUIDE TO OBSCURE FREQUENT FLYER PROGRAMS: This is a nice resource–Travel Is Free has assembled a great amount of information about lesser-known frequent flyer program redemptions. These are programs which are partners with Amex. Why should you bother with them? As TIF puts it:
Stopover rules are sometimes more generous. Heck, sometimes the routing rules are more generous on these airlines as they haven’t pinned things down yet. I won’t go into detail about that though. :-p
Prices are better. It’s pretty simple, the more award charts you have access to, the more likely you are to get a deal. If I’m flying to Europe, I have tons of options. Short BA flights, AA off peak, Lufthansa Mileage Bargains… We know of these. But there are other deals! Like Air Berlin.
Availability is better when you have more alliances to search.
Availability is better, period. That’s reason enough. Listen, airlines open up less seats for their partners than their own memebers. Pretty simple. Want to fly to South America but don’t see availability, try LAN or another Latin American airline. – See more at: http://travelisfree.com/2013/09/23/hidden-gem-airline-redemptions/#sthash.5WD6yfAS.dpuf
CREDIT SCORES WITHOUT CREDIT HISTORY: An interesting article in the New York Times about bringing credit scores to nations without a whole lot of credit history:
Banks in 16 countries are using a psychometric test to predict future behavior — specifically, whether someone will pay back a loan. Originally a Harvard doctoral project, the Entrepreneurial Finance Lab’s test has increasingly won the confidence of risk-averse bankers in places where, many economists believe, credit bottlenecks are severely stunting growth.
It’s an interesting article, and best of luck to all parties involved with both sides of that effort. I’m just wondering how long it is until millionnuevosolsecrets.com or whoever teaches Peruvians the correct answers for that psychometric test.
TODDLER RIPS UP LIFE SAVINGS: Toddlers and life savings are a dangerous combination:
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