The US Bank Triple Cash Rewards and Leverage business cards have heightened sign-up bonuses:
– Triple Cash Rewards: $750 after $6,000 spend in 180 days, $0 annual fee (Thanks to Jason for the 180 day correction) – Leverage: $750 after $7,500 spend in 120 days, $95 annual fee
Mini FAQ: Churnable? Yes. Both? Yes. Multiple? Yes. ASL? Ok boomer.
– Avianca Lifemiles: 25% through October 18 – Virgin Atlantic: 30% through October 18 – Turkish Miles&Smiles: 50% through October 18
Make sure with both Lifemiles and Miles&Smiles that space is actually available before booking, both have issues with phantom award space or missing partner award space.
American Express has a somewhat widely targeted bonus for 70,000 Membership Rewards or $700 credit. Requirements:
– Deposit $15,000 in 30 days – Keep an average balance ≥ $15,000 for the next 60 days – Make five transactions (five $1 ACHs will do fine)
Celtic Bank’s Mesa Visa card has a heightened sign-up bonus for 50,000 bonus points after $12,000 spend with promo code SEPT50, no referral shenanigans required.
Churners like the card for earning points on mortgage payments and sometimes “mortgage” payments, and for transfer partners like SAS EuroBonus and Air Canada Aeroplan.
– 20% to AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue through December 31 – 20% To Finnair Avios through October 22
Rove often has good mileage earning through their shopping portal, but points also take 30-90 days to post so earning to use a transfer bonus like these can be challenging, that is unless you started earning 30-90 days ago.
How many miles should you hold in a loyalty account before you start liquidating them or choosing to earn something else instead? My hand-wavey answer is: Hold as many as you’ll redeem between now and the next devaluation. Of course, we don’t really know when the next devaluation will happen, but we can look into the last 10 years to try and find patterns on a program specific level.
Why Programs Devalue
Before we do that, let’s remind ourselves why devaluations happen:
Inflation happens, and mileage earning is tied to prices
Airline CASM increases over time
Hotel CPOR increases over time
Devaluing a currency helps a balance sheet
Devaluations suck, but they’re entirely predictable over time. If we take as a given that programs will devalue, the next logical question is “how often?”
The Frequency
I collected data for frequent flyer program devaluations from the year 2015 until now for the major five US airlines. For this dataset, I only considered redemption devaluations; I excluded elite program changes, the removal of free-stop overs, and similar perks that aren’t directly tied to the mileage redemption rate. Some of these devaluations were only for specific types of redemptions (for example, partner awards to Europe), but that didn’t matter for this study. If redemptions devalued in some way, they were included here.
Now, let’s go airline by airline, sorted by frequency of devaluation:
Ok, now what’s the expectation value for a devaluation in each program, just taking the number of devaluations divided by the time period (10 years)?
Airline
Devaluation Time (Expectation Value)
Standard Deviation
Delta
1.00 years
0.42 years
United
1.67 years
1.05 years
Southwest
2.00 years
0.88 years
Alaska
2.00 years
1.11 years
AA
3.33 years
1.82 years (sqrt(3/10))
What do I do with that?
Alright, how do you make this data actionable? Well let’s go back to my hand-wavey metric for when you should stop holding miles in a particular program: Hold as many as you’ll redeem between now and the next devaluation.
That means that I wouldn’t hold more Delta SkyMiles than I’m likely to redeem in the next 1.00 years, or at least the next 1.00 years after October 2023 (😬 Spoiler alert: It seems likely that we’re going to see another Delta devaluation soon.) It’s also yet another argument about why you should be holding flexible currencies that transfer multiple places and can be cashed out directly.
– Transcons from 7,500 miles – Mexico from 7,500 miles – Alaska from 17,500 miles – Hawaii from 7,500 miles
Based on my searches, Delta is quietly matching this fare sale to and from Delta hubs.
You’ve now got another Card Pointers free alternative in addition to faux-cardpointersamex-load-offer.js. The US Credit Cards 101 Chrome plugin adds a button to the American Express offers dashboard to add an offer to all cards on the same login simultaneously, rather than just to a single card.
One day, credit card issuers will learn about database atomicity, but we’re not there yet.
Happy Thursday!
The American Express technology team’s unofficial poster. (Sorry, sometimes database humor can’t be helped)
Gamers can often find regular links with 250,000 Membership Rewards and manage to get approved despite lifetime language, but there’s utility in the easy game too. (Thanks to DDG)
Each promotion is limited to $10 cash back or 1,000 Membership Rewards per transaction, and each must be re-activated an hour after first use. Both stores sell gift cards.
There’s a slightly interesting play for converting Ultimate Rewards into difficult to earn airline programs like Lufthansa Miles&More (EDIT: Gary reminded me that Lufthansa Miles&More is no longer part of the program), which has a transfer ratio from Ultimate Rewards through Bonvoy of 1:0.687 in 25,000 mile increments.
– If you’re going to do a transfer, just knock it out now so you don’t have to think about it later – Every time you see one of these articles, take a shot of your favorite beverage
The churner who finds the most articles and comments about the “partnership ending” and “last chance” gets a prize!
Happy Tuesday!
A churner passes out after reading RSS feeds for 17 minutes while playing the new drinking game.
It’s been a while since we’ve played a round of the Breeze Route Dartboard Bingo™, so let’s call another route: Wilkes-Barre, PA – Fort Meyers, FL, or AVP-RSW for the ICAO geeks out there! If you’ve made a bingo, reach out for a 44% off of base fares promotional code on any Breeze route, including this one.
Have a nice Wednesday!
Spending $506.95 for a Swedish Fish shows that inflation’s already hit Big Gummy.
