Category: Points

  1. Citi ThankYou Points has two transfer bonuses through April 18:

    – Virgin Atlantic: 30%, or 1:1.3
    – Avianca LifeMiles: 25%, or 1:1.25

    They’re also devaluing two of their hotel transfer partners:

    – Choice: -25%, or dropping to 1:1.5
    – iPrefer: -50%, or dropping to 1:2

    Both programs offered outsized value for the ThankYou Program.
  2. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300+ in Visa gift cards through Saturday. For best results:

    – Buy in even multiples of $300
    – Look for the lower fee “Everywhere” cards if you know how to redeem them
    – Try for multiple transactions back-to-back

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  3. Target in store and online has a bonus $10 Target gift card with $100+ in One4All gift cards. Using a RedCard drops the total cost down to $95.50 for both.
  4. Safeway, Albertsons, Vons, and other Just4U stores have 10x points on Lowe’s gift cards (or 12x points on Saturday).
  5. Chase Offers has short-term offers on Hyatt spend:

    – 15% back at Park Hyatt on up to $467 in spend
    – 15% back at Hyatt Unbound, up to $467 spend

    Both are valid through March 31.
  6. Discover has a targeted offer for 15% off of Apple gift card redemptions. With Apple gift card sale rates at around 92%, that gives you a cash out of about 1.08 cents per point, which *checks notes*, is better than the usual redemption of 1.00 cents per point.

Happy Monday!

More Monday math tips.

  1. Chase has a 30% transfer bonus to Wyndham through March 31. It sucks for those of you that transferred points in after Chase added Wyndham as a partner just last week.
  2. Bank of America’s boring business credit card lineup which is also somehow the most exciting major program in churning has increased sign-up bonuses:

    – Business Customized Cash: $500 after $5,000 spend in 90 days
    – Business Unlimited Cash: $500 after $5,000 spend in 90 days
    – Business Advantage Travel: 50,000 points after $5,000 spend in 90 days

    Yes, you can get each of these, but once your total credit limit creeps up high, new applications will involve someone looking at your existing accounts which obviously might be bad for some of you.
  3. The fan-favorite Citi AA Business Platinum Mastercard has a sign-up bonus of 75,000 AAdvantage miles after $5,000 spend in five months, and the $95 annual fee is waived for the first year too.

    Citi business cards became chic last month because reasons. The offer makes them chicer, again because reasons.
  4. On January 4th, Kate Spade had rather ludicrous points bonuses on the British Airways and Wyndham shopping portals at 250x and 170x respectively. Today, those miles posted as (not) expected, congrats to those of you who are newly in the seven-figures-from-a-single-purchase club. There’s a lesson to learn for future deals here but I’m unsure of what it is.

    Let’s just say I’m glad Kalshi wasn’t running odds on this paying out, because I would have lost.

Have a nice weekend friends, especially those of you with stylish Kate Spade bags in business class.

At least he has a Kate Spade bag.

  1. Bilt has a 25-100% transfer bonus on March 1 only for JAL Mileage Bank. The bonus is based on your Bilt status, and you can add an extra 25% by spending $135 in Bilt Cash.

    For those keeping track at home, Bilt Cash is exactly like regular cash if regular cash couldn’t be used for anything useful for all but one day a month, and even then only a little of it was useful.
  2. American Express paused Membership Rewards points transfers to ANA are paused through March 5. The need to feed the content monster has shifted into high gear with rampant speculation that this means the end of 1:1 points transfers. It’s certainly possible that’s true, but hopefully we haven’t collectively forgotten the lesson of the fake Hyatt card scam. That was a content monster stomach ache and a half.
  3. Chase added Wyndham Rewards as a 1:1 transfer partner. The Wyndham program still has some outsized value in some hotel redemptions, especially the European kind.
  4. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards other than Amazon and generic fuel cards today only.

    Rates look great for February, at least we can thank Pepper for something.
  5. Air France / KLM FlyingBlue changed their points expiration policy, as of May 4 any activity resets expiration and expiration is the same regardless of when and how points were earned.
  6. I don’t write about rumors unless they’re actionable, and this one unfortunately is: Capital One may be moving Venture, VentureOne, Savor, SavorOne, Quicksilver, and QuicksilverOne cards to the Discover network, see the bottom of this page for the source.

    If these cards are part of your game and that game is reliant on running on the Visa or Mastercard network, it’s probably time to come up with a backup plan, like maybe a product change to a VentureX or another issuer altogether.
  7. JetBlue has an economy award sale for travel booked by today and flown between March 10 and May 20. This stacks with the only somewhat useful JetBlue Plus card’s 10% rebate.

Have a nice weekend friends!

Breaking: Actual photo of content monster feeding during the great Hyatt card lie of 2026.

Hyatt announced a major change and some minor changes yesterday, scheduled to start in May. The gist:

  • Each category will have five price points based on demand, prices will be:
    • Category 1: 3,000-9,000 points per night
    • Category 2: 6,000-15,000 points per night
    • Category 3: 8,000-20,000 points per night
    • Category 4: 12,000-25,000 points per night
    • Category 5: 15,000-35,000 points per night
    • Category 6: 20,000-40,000 points per night
    • Category 7: 25,000-55,000 points per night
    • Category 8: 35,000-75,000 points per night
  • The price of the middle tier for each category is going up between 20% and 38%
  • No changes to existing certificates or upgrade instruments
  • You’ll be able to share points digitally
  • “Early award night availability” for card members and elites

The commentary out there on these changes is wild, including words like “death”, “brutal”, “devastating”, “read it and weep”, and my personal favorite, “elitism“. Look, I agree devaluations suck, and I agree that this one does too. But let’s put a few things in perspective when the rage-o-meter drops a bit:

  • In 2014, a Hyatt Place that I used to frequent cost $67 per night, and was 5,000 points
  • In 2026, the same Hyatt Place costs $144 per night, and is still 5,000 points (standard)
  • Over the same 2014-2026 time-frame, US dollar inflation is +39%
  • Hyatt was probably paying about $25 for my award night in 2016, and about $55 in 2026
  • The same phenomenon affects high end properties too, probably worse
  • Ink card bonuses, which are Hyatt point producers) are about double what they were in 2014
  • A six-pack of soda on sale in 2014 cost about $2 and earned me, best case, 3 Hyatt points
  • A six-pack of soda on sale in 2026 costs about $4 and earns me, best case, 12 Hyatt points

Ultimately, inflation means that I’m earning more for the same spend, and Hyatt’s paying more for my redemptions. Whether it’s Hyatt or any other program, that means devaluations are coming. There’s only one way to avoid losing much when this happens, and it’s in the site’s title:

Earn and Burn

Miles and points lose value over time, so burn ’em when you get ’em. Or, maybe (definitely) I suffer from elitism.

Happy Thursday!

Next up: How many points did an out of place rotisserie chicken earn in history?
Data will include varieties both with and without salmonella, because elitism.

Over the weekend, an enterprising churner posted a quick demonstration about how under Bilt 2.0v2, you can earn more points with less spend. I don’t know why the post was deleted, but my theory is that after Bilt’s marketing team shifted into turbo-overdrive on bad press starting on Friday (to wit, they got the New York Times article about their launch debacle to dial-back its rhetoric and lean more Bilt friendly, removing “The most complicated rewards system we’ve seen” from the article’s title amongst other things), they shifted their sites to Reddit mods and worked hard on this Reddit /r/CreditCards article. Of course, maybe it’s for an entirely different reason, who knows?

The point of this article isn’t really about Bilt’s somewhat successful censorship though. Instead, my goal is to rehash how their 2.0v2 program can be beneficial for card holders, especially so for cardholders that have flexible leases with, for example, their P2 landlord. Earning under 2.0v2 “Option 1” for rent payments has four tiers, two of which are useful for us:

  • 1x points earned when your card spend is 75%+ of your monthly rent
  • 1.25x points earned when your card spend is 100%+ of your monthly rent

Cool I guess. But let’s say that you spend $5,000 monthly on your Bilt credit card before switching to other cards for the rest of your spend. Let’s also say you’re an expert negotiator with your P2 landlord. Under 2.0v2 Option 1, you can earn more points than with a higher rent. Let’s compare a negotiated rent of $5,000 and a negotiated rent of $5,500. Your $5,000 in monthly Bilt card spend would earn:

  • $5,000 * 1.25 = 6,250 points
  • $5,500 * 1.00 = 5,500 points

The punchline: You can earn more with a smaller rent. In fact, to optimize this completely, your monthly rent should be exactly your monthly spend / 1.25.

Good luck deleting this one, Mr. Kerr.

Happy Tuesday!

Next up: The Bilt 2.0v3 Rewards program.

MEABNOTE: I’ll be going on a blogging vacation at the end of the year and there won’t be any daily posts between December 15 and December 31, at least none from me. We may have guest posts during that period, but that depends on you sending me some. On January 1(ish), we’ll celebrate with the 2025 version of Travel Hacking as Told by GIFs.

  1. The Delta personal and Business American Express cards have new public no-lifetime language (NLL)[EDIT – link corrected] links, also available from your Delta Business portal’s dashboard:

    – Business Reserve: 125,000 SkyMiles after $10,000 spend in six months
    – Business Platinum: 110,000 SkyMiles after $6,000 spend in six months
    – Business Gold: 90,000 SkyMiles after $4,000 spend in six months, annual fee waived
    – Reserve: 100,000 SkyMiles after $6,000 spend in six months
    – Platinum: 100,000 SkyMiles after $5,000 spend in six months
    – Gold: 85,000 SkyMiles after $4,000 spend in six months, annual fee waived

    The Business Gold card with its waived annual fee is a current sweet spot in the American Express portfolio. If you can get these via referral and games, that’s likely still a better option though. (Thanks to achzeet44)
  2. The Cardless issued Qatar Privilege Club Visa cards have heightened sign-up bonuses through February 4, 2026:

    – Signature: 20,000 Avios after one purchase and 45,000 additional after $3,500 in 90 days
    – Infinite: 25,000 Avios after one purchase and 75,000 Avios + 150 QPoints after $6,000 spend in 90 days

    Both have 6x earning at dining through February 4, but beware of behaving like a floosie on Cardless cards if you value your relationship with the bank.
  3. Staples stores have fee-free Visa gift cards through Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  4. Stop & Shop, Giant, and Martins have 3x point earning on Mastercard gift cards through Thursday, limit $2,000 per loyalty account (or limit $1,500 for Giant Food because it’s still a running joke at the parent company).

    Stores carry either or both Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards and Sutton / Incomm gift cards.

Happy Tuesday!

Giant Food stores get joke sushi too.

  1. E*Trade customers are now eligible for American Express Morgan Stanley Platinum cards. In the past you needed either an Active Assets Account (they spelled American Automobile Association wrong), a Preferred Savings account, or a sunsetted Access Investing account. The card is generally interesting because:

    – It gives unlimited cash out at 1 cent per point (TBD on the E*Trade integration)
    – It gives a free authorized user Platinum card with its own lounge access
    – Historically it’s been semi-churnable

    According to the T&Cs, eligible accounts include an individual E*Trade brokerage or bank account.
  2. The Chase Ink Preferred card has an increased sign-up bonus of 100,000 Ultimate Rewards after $8,000 spend in three months, and the $95 annual fee is not waived for the first year.

    This card is available via referrals, but there’s restrictive referral language so the referrer may not get their referral bonus. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try though, T&Cs don’t always match reality.
  3. The Synchrony Virgin Red Mastercard has a sign-up bonus of 60,000 miles and a $200 statement credit after $4,000 spend in three months. The bonus is available on the checkout page during a booking, whether or not you actually check out and pay . The card’s $99 annual fee is not waived the first year.

    There was at one point a 75,000 point bonus, but 60,000 miles and $200 is better because you can transfer just about every currency to Virgin Atlantic, often with a transfer bonus. The card has other intrinsic value. (Thanks to DoC)
  4. American Express Membership Rewards has a 40% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic through December 31. It feels like we just talked about this somehow, somewhere
  5. TradeUp Brokerage has a $2,000+$2,000 sign-up bonus, the first for bringing $100,000 in stocks to a new brokerage account, and the second for doing the same with an IRA account. You’ll need to keep the funds there for a year, and you’ll end up with a few extra shares of either CRCL or SGOV too. (Thanks to DoC)
  6. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300+ in Visa gift cards through Saturday. For best results:

    – Buy in even multiples of $300
    – Go for the lower fee “Everywhere” cards if you can liquidate them

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.

Happy Monday!

Morgan Stanley naming team in action.

  1. Chase Ultimate Rewards can be redeemed for 1.5 cents each on Apple products for Sapphire Reserve holders through December 7.

    You can combine this with Sapphire Reserve’s $500 Shops at Chase credit too which makes it even more compelling. There are decent options for resale if you’re just looking to cash out for a high value too.
  2. AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue has a promotion for 20 miles per Euro spent at Hertz when booked through the FlyingBlue portal for rentals made by December 12 for travel through March 31, 2026. Bookings are valid worldwide.

    With current exchange rates, that’s about a 17.2x earn rate for US Dollar bookings. Of course, comparison shop with whatever quasi-public Hertz codes you have. I did some price shopping and the portal’s upcharge is reasonable for my travel, so I’ve switched a few upcoming bookings. (Thanks to FFB)
  3. AirFrance / KLM’s FlyingBlue program has updated its annual campaign for paid status matches, and USA residents continue to be excluded. But, Canada residents (and “Canada residents”) are eligible, and you can match up to Platinum which lets you book La Premier award bookings.

    A table of status match tiers can be found on their terms page, and has favorites like AA Platinum Pro and United Premier Platinum matching to FlyingBlue Platinum. (Thanks to FFB)
  4. Marriott Homes & Villas has a promotion for 26,000 bonus points after two night or longer stays that cost at least $2,000, registration required. For those playing math at home, 26,000 points * 0.005 dollars per point (a generous valuation), this is a $130 bonus which works out to a 6.5% rebate on spend.

    It sucks but it’s not nothing. Honestly that’s a great tag line for Marriott Bonvoy in general.

Happy Wednesday!

The Marriott promotion as a sale.