HOW TO EARN AIR MILES WITHOUT AN ANNUAL FEE: This Flyertalk thread alerted me to something interesting: it’s actually possible to earn miles from several different airlines at a respectable rate without paying an annual fee. The key is the no-fee Wyndham Rewards card, which earns two points per dollar spent.
For most airlines, you get 1 mile for every 2.5 Wyndham points. So if you’re earning 2 points per dollar spent, you’re effectively getting 0.8 miles per dollar. That’s not too far below the 1 mile per dollar a lot of cards give, and you’re not paying an annual fee.
Wyndham’s domestic partners include AeroMexico, Air Canada, American Airlines, Delta, Frontier, Southwest, USAir, and United. Moving abroad, you have Air Berlin, Czech Airlines, Saudia Airlines, Air China, and a few others I’ve never heard of.
Obviously, most readers of this blog (to say nothing of the author) are more inclined to sign up for an airline card, get the bonus, enjoy the first year with the annual fee waived, and then hope for a nice retention offer. But if you know somebody who steadfastly refuses to pay an annual fee but wants to earn miles–or who maybe just needs to top off an account–you could do worse than to recommend this card.
CAPITAL ONE QUICKSILVER: Speaking of cards you can do worse than, Capital One has a new card out, the Quicksilver. It offers a simple, non-gimmicky 1.5% cash back, and good for them for doing that. If it weren’t for the 2% Fidelity Amex card, plus the fact that Capital One is known for pulling from all three bureaus for a single credit card application, I could totally recommend this card.
FREE APPS FROM APPLE: Apple has several quality apps for free this week as part of the iOS 5th anniversary celebration. Slickdeals has a good list of the free apps.
BEST APPS FOR RICH FOLK: Of course, if you’re one of those snooty upper crust types, you probably turn your nose up at free apps since they do nothing to signal the status you hold so dear. Fortunately for you, TechCrunch lists the top apps for the 1%. The most interesting one to me was OneFineStay, which lets you stay in rich folks’ houses. Kind of like Airbnb but, you know, rich. And if you’re really rich, you’d obviously think nothing of dropping a grand on an app.
NOT A BAD IDEA: If you’re going to drink your way through college, you may as well figure out how to get paid for it. That’s apparently the reasoning at Blue Ridge Community College in Hendersonville, NC, which will offer an Associate in Applied Science Degree in Brewing, Distillation and Fermentation.
A super fast way to earn miles for me is booking hotel nights through rocket miles. At least 1000 miles per night up to 5000 miles per night, most are 2000-3000 per night. I book hotels not only for myself but anyone I know that is planning on staying in a hotel in the future. Rates are competitive with any other online booking site, usually a few bucks more a night but it is well worth the large quantity of miles. Check it out, I think you get free miles just for signing up, and I rarely get emails from them, if I do it’s usually worth looking at. https://www.rocketmiles.com/refer/CARDS7777