Category: Miles

My general advice for promotions is register for them when you see them even if you think you’re not going to take advantage of the offer, and yes I registered for #2 even though I actually had to lookup which hotels were part of Choice (answer: seems like none I want to stay at, but I digress).

1. Register here for another Radisson bonus offer, which should stack with the other recent Raddison promotion. I’ll be staying at a Radisson in the next couple of weeks to take advantage of these offers, and it’ll be the first time I’ve stayed at a Radisson in years. This one is 3,000 bonus points for your first stay and 12,000 bonus points on your second stay between now and December 31.

2. Register here for a Choice hotels bonus of 2,000 points on two night stays and 5,000 points on longer stays between now and October 31. I won’t be staying at a Choice hotel for this promotion on purpose, but I’m still going to register in case I end up at one because someone hates me.

3. Register here for 500 miles from Delta. In theory you have to fly through LAX and scan a QR code to earn the miles, but in practice that may not be true. Bonus hint for making this even more likely to post: Have you noticed that cancelled reservations still show up in your Skymiles activity on the original day of departure?

4. Register here for 3,000 bonus points on your next stay at Wyndham properties. This program is a sleeper for most people but trust me, it can be very worth your time and it is something you can game.

Happy Thursday!

A sample Choice Hotel. Why wouldn’t you want to be here?

1. American Express has a transfer bonus from Membership Rewards to all of its airline partners, something unheard of until this point. You’ve probably heard this reported elsewhere already, so let’s add to the conversation with a few particular sweet spots:

  • 40% bonus to Avios with Aer Lingus, British Airways, or Iberia
    • Use Iberia for great award space from the US to Europe and avoid fuel surcharges with BA with the same flight access. Look for Madrid trips for extra value.
  • 30% bonus to Virgin Atlantic, Hilton, Marriott
    • Use Virgin Atlantic for really low redemption round-trip tickets in Business or First to Japan and Eastern Asia
  • 25% bonus to AirFrance/KLM FlyingBlue, Aeromexico, Hawaiian
  • 20% bonus to Air Canada’s Aeroplan or Qantas
    • Use Aeroplan for short haul economy flights in the US
    • Use Aeroplan for business or first class flights from the Central or Eastern US to Europe
  • 15% bonus to LifeMiles
    • Use LifeMiles for loose definitions of what a region is
    • Use LifeMiles for economy bookings from the Central or Eastern US to Europe

2. United has a 30% bonus when transferring from hotel points to United MileagePlus miles. You have to register here first though.

  • Transfer Marriott Bonvoy points. With the transfer bonus, you’re looking at approximately 1.85 Bonvoy points to 1 MileagePlus mile. I’d say that’s about the best general use case of Bonvoy points I’ve seen in a long time. (This is a terrible idea with most other programs, especially Hyatt.)

Happy Thursday!

Bonus: Neptune’s sweet spot

Well friends, the day is unfortunately here: As of tonight at 11:59PM Eastern (or perhaps even earlier), you can no longer cash-out American Express Membership Rewards at 1.25 cents each with the Schwab Platinum card. That makes it a great time to remind you about the often forgotten no-annual fee Morgan Stanley Card from American Express which I first learned about from the mostly defunct Windbag Miles, and then forgot about completely until the Schwab cash-out changes were confirmed. As of today now, it’s officially a member of the Miles Earn and Burn Unsung Heroes club.

Let’s talk about this card:

  • It earns Membership Rewards
  • It bonuses at 2x on department stores, restaurants, car rentals, and airfare
  • It has no annual fee
  • You can transfer to airline partners
  • You can cash out Membership Rewards to your Morgan Stanley account at one cent per point

The last bullet is the kicker, though the others are noteworthy too. This card may now be the best option for converting Membership Rewards to cash in an above-the-board sort of way. Yes, the Schwab Platinum gives you an extra 10% uplift on cash-out, but you also have to have a Schwab Platinum card and pay its $695 annual fee, which I guess you can offset slightly with Clear and a stupid gym membership.

Running the numbers quickly by moving the decimal, you’d have to cash-out more than 695,000 points with the Schwab Platinum at 1.1 cents per point to offset the annual fee of the Platinum card versus just cashing out at 1.0 cents per per point with the no fee Morgan Stanley Card; if you’re cashing out any number less than that over the period of a year, you should really be using the Morgan Stanley card and not the Schwab Platinum. As a really, really small incentive for getting the card, you’ll get 10,000 Membership Rewards as a sign up bonus after spending $1,000 within three months, and I’m guessing you’ve never gotten that signup bonus before. Right? It’s not exactly been high on my list.

As promised, the Morgan Stanley Card is no where to be found on my top credit cards list, but it will be in my wallet soon anyway.

I’m sure you’ve heard by now but just in case you haven’t, here’s the background for today’s post: Citi Thank You Points can be transferred to AA between now and November 23rd. (Why this date? No idea.) People are celebrating this and frankly with good cause. Until now, Citi Thank You Points have been my least favorite bank currency amongst the major players — so much so that I’d choose 1.0 Ultimate Rewards or Membership Rewards over 1.2 Citi Thank You Points. In general I think of Thank You Points as worth exactly a penny and move on to bigger and better things (say, 15x “shop small” with an American Express Platinum from Resy as a great example).

I hear your rebuttal, and yes, the Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles program has some sweet-spots and Citi Thank You Points are uniquely positioned to take advantage of that; but booking Turkish awards can be a long and frustrating process involving multiple unanswered calls and weird email bookings, and the rest of the Citi Thank You Points transfer partners range somewhere between “Chase and American Express can also do that”, and “I’d rather stab myself in the eye with a fork because if I’m going to be in that much pain, I’ll do it to myself.”

But now with Thank You Points transferring 1:1 to American Airlines’ AAdvantage program, there’s some real value to be had. I’m excited, but I’m also very cautious and won’t be transferring all of my Thank You Points to AA miles for one reason: AA Miles are ready to devalue, and for better or worse, that’s coming sooner rather than later. Consider:

  • Delta has a dynamic mileage redemption scheme (Asia will cost you 210,000 SkyMiles round trip in business class, if you’re lucky)
  • United has a dynamic mileage redemption scheme (Asia will cost you 160,000 MilagePlus miles round trip in crappy business class, if you’re lucky)
  • Southwest has a fixed value redemption (Southwest doesn’t fly to Asia. Can you imagine traveling to Asia on a Southwest 737?)
  • American Airlines’ fixed award chart is much cheaper than major competitors (Asia will cost you 120,000 AAdvantage miles, with great availability)

For the most part this is illustrative of awards to just about any international destination, we’re stuck in a situation where AAdvantage offers much, much better value than its major competition and on top of that they’ve said they’re moving to a variable redemption scheme. This means that they’re almost certainly going to devalue, and it’s almost certainly going to happen very soon, just as predicted by reversion to the mean. In fact, I’d call this event the catalyst for devaluation and cynically declare it’s a last ditch money grab by AA before the chart gets materially worse (and variable).

My advice to you: Yes, Thank You Points conversion to AAdvantage miles is an exciting development, but don’t go too far with this, transfer the number of points to AA that you need for the next six months or so and plan on an AA devaluation. Don’t be surprised when the rug gets pulled out from you at the end of the year. At that point, I fear we’ll all be thinking of Thank You Points as being worth a cent again.

My Citi Thank You Points award redemption eye fork.

Today’s triple is ordered by increasing difficulty — you know, for fun:

  • Link your Marriott account to your Emirates Skywards account to earn 1,500 bonus Marriott Bonvoy points. In case you don’t have an Emirates Skywards account like me, you can easily create one here.
  • Check CashApp for a 5% back on online orders at Sam’s Club boost, usable once per day for up to $400 in spend each day through Thursday. I’d buy a couple of Visa or Mastercard gift cards each time, and don’t forget to go through a shopping portal, which often tracks gift card purchases at Sam’s Club (though not always). If you don’t have CashApp, find a friend for an invite and you’ll earn $15 after sending another CashApp user five bucks.
  • Ting SIM cards with $30 credit are now $0.99 at BestBuy and $1.00 at Target. The Visible $100 Mastercard deal is still running strong, and reader Yun let me know that TopCashBack is currently at $40 for new bring your own phone plans with a port-in of an existing phone number, in addition to the $100 Mastercard that you’ll get from Visible after two months. Additional background is available here and here.

Those last two bullets will pair well together. If you don’t have CashApp, I guarantee someone out there that you know has it. Reach out, say hi, and get a referral. I reluctantly put a referral for Point in a post last week because it was the only way to get a good sign-up bonus, but I can’t bring myself to do it again this week, that’s not why I’m in this; so find a friend!

Shout out for another triple in the house.
  • Visible Mobile is again offering $20 back or 2,000 Membership Rewards at Rakuten along with a $100 Mastercard after two months of BYOD service, which will cost you a total of $65 for the service. Chase has an offer floating around for $25 off of Visible Mobile service too, so bring that down to $40 for cell service, a $100 Mastercard, and some cash or points from Rakuten. This deal scales, I had a reader write in that they’ve done over 100 of these. For more, read Cell Phone Burners and Travel Hacking.
  • Yesterday’s 125,000 Delta Reserve card is now available with a referral link from another American Express card holder, like a friend or P2. This card is essentially buying about $1,400 of Delta travel for the $550 annual fee, or about 61% off. So, refer your P2 and you might be able to get 125,000 miles on the card and another 15,000 to 30,000 miles on the referrer’s end.
  • Doug R pointed out that there’s a 2x multiplier bonus that seems widely available for AA SimplyMiles, which you should see after logging in to your account. For the 2x to apply, you have to add the offers to your account between now and tomorrow night. I’d add them all on the off chance you’ll use one (BestBuy shows up as a decent option), then make sure that your credit cards are linked to the SimplyMiles platform. If you happen to trigger an offer by May 31, you’ll get double miles. Note that the offer says you have to use a co-branded card, but my guess is that any Mastercard will work.

    If you haven’t yet signed up for SimplyMiles, sign up here for 400 bonus AA miles.

  • The Bank of America Premium Rewards card is offering 2 points per dollar on grocery spend, uncapped. Meh, I say, except if you have Platinum Honors status with Bank of America. If so, you get a 75% extra in rewards, which makes this card a 3.5 points per dollar card, uncapped, on grocery spend. I still prefer the AmEx Personal Gold for grocery spend at 4x MR, but that’s capped at $25,000 in spend per year which can be knocked out in a couple of days. Uncapped is quite the flex on Bank of America’s part.
Friday flexing for miles

There are a couple of deals out there that’ll net you $1,022, or $1,031.80 with some shenanigans:

1. Brex will give you $1,000, or 100,000 miles transferred to various airlines, for setting up PayPal merchant processing. It took me about 3 minutes which makes it one of the biggest hauls I’ve ever gotten for the time required for a US airline to show you how to use your seatbelt before you depart. Here’s what you do:

For the fastest phone call possible, tell the PayPay merchant services agent them you want to set up a merchant account with “online invoicing” as the only payment method that your business needs to accept and that you’re setting it up as part of the Brex integration. They’ll walk you through sending a test payment to yourself of $1.00, and put you on the list for 100,000 points. Just make sure your PayPal and Brex accounts have the same email address — create a new PayPal business account if they don’t already match.

If you don’t already have a Brex account, find a friend who has one and get a referral, you’ll both earn a $250 Amazon gift card, which as far as I can tell is the current best sign up bonus available. If you absolutely can’t find anyone, my link is here, but that’s not why I’m in this.

2. Swagbucks will pay you $110 for signing up for a Walmart+ annual membership, which costs $98+tax. But, you can make it better with a Chase or Bank of America credit card offer for $5 or $10 back. You can also get a Dosh 10% back if you’re willing to play some shenanigans (there are more specific instructions here if you like, just ignore the Google Pay instructions as they’re out of date). My Chase Sapphire Reserve had an offer for $10 back, so I’ll net $110 from Swagbucks, $10 from Chase, and $9.80 from Dosh for spending $98, which gives a total of $31.80 when all is said and done. And oh, I guess I get a year of Walmart+, which I predict I’ll use approximately zero times — SCORE!

Another hint/technique: You know there are states out there that don’t charge sales tax, right?

A picture of a Walmart store with fallen shelves, products scattered on the ground, and spilled liquids all over the floor.
My local Walmart as it looks on any given Tuesday. Why wouldn’t I want to shop here?

1. You can earn Star Alliance Gold Elite status, which will get you lounge access and free checked bags when flying on Star Alliance Partners like United by transferring miles to SingaporeKris Flyer from bank points (Chase, AmEx, Capital One, Brex, and Citi are all partners). Gold status requires a transfer of 250,000 miles, so this is only a good option if you’re already booking tickets with Singapore and plan on using the miles. Don’t forget that KrisFlyer miles expire after three years regardless of account activity. Louses!

2. If you have United Club passes that were expiring between April 1 and August 31, they’ve been extended to September 30. The new expiration is already showing in my United mobile app.

3. Southwest is offering a 10% rebate on Wanna Get Away fares booked today, or higher rebates for more expensive fare types. If you want to further goose this deal, perhaps book the cheapest fare between your city pairs for mid-May to early-June in anticipation of the next Southwest free change window?

4. The Cranky flyer outlines how you can essentially pay the difference between a refundable and non-refundable fare on United after you’ve already booked and get a refund for the initial fare way after the fact. You have to book through a travel agent though, and it’ll have to be a competent agent too.

No, not a fuel dump. Also, this isn’t what I mean when I say fuel dump.