Major US Airlines are all targeting Southwest elites with extremely generous “twist-the-knife while they’re dying” style status matches, and that means you’ve got a unique opportunity for manufacturing a ton of airline status with a single swing. Let’s start with earning A-List Preferred using a Chase Southwest credit card:
$5,000 spent = 1,500 tier points
35,000 tier points = A-List
70,000 tier points = A-List Preferred
In post-mathematics words, $230,000 in real or manufactured spend takes you from zero to A-List Preferred, or if you’re an underachiever $115,000 spend takes you from zero to A-List. Now, once you’ve got that status, combine with:
So, for $230,000 in manufactured spend you can hold status with all of the top five US airlines and also status in every major airline alliance in the world, MEAB style.
The Pepper gift card reselling platform, the current mass market frontrunner in the race to move funds from venture capitalist bank accounts to your wallet, has a few newsworthy updates:
They got a loan last week, and they did the most Pepper thing possible when filing: The CEO’s name is spelled wrong. (This is probably a bridge loan, VC funding definitely doesn’t look like this)
Yesterday, they offered (with most of the cash back coming in a couple of weeks):
Unlimited Amazon gift cards at 25% off
Walmart gift cards at 24% off, up to $1,500 per account
HomeDepot gift cards at 22% off, up to $3,000 per account
I think it’s clear that Pepper is eating most of the cost on these offerings, which could lead you to a few conclusions:
They might be trying to pump sales in anticipation of funding hurdles and are fiscally fine
They might be trying to make payroll and are fiscally almost dead
They’re just benevolent and like giving away money, but they have plenty of it
One of those three is probably right. Make your risk/reward calculations accordingly. Since no one asked: I’ve been bringing down my Pepper float to smaller numbers gradually over the last couple of months, and I’m approaching zero but not there yet.
Finally, I want to add something to a common argument I hear about Pepper, which is “Who cares if I lose the $20,000 I have floated to Pepper right now? I made way more than that.” It’s a good point, but I’d like to offer that if you can catch the falling knife, you can make “way more than that” and still not lose $20,000.
Status is most useful for free checked bags, economy plus seating, and lounge access on international itineraries. In theory you can only match every five years, but also in theory: (1) communism works, and (2) the colors of gummy bears are evenly distributed. (Thanks to FM)
The Chase Marriott cards have increased sign up bonuses:
– Boundless: $150 statement credit + 100,000 Bonvoy points after $3,000 spend in three months, $99 annual fee – Bold: A free night certificate for up to 50,000 points plus 60,000 Bonvoy points after $2,000 spend in three months, no annual fee
They’ve also introduced Pay Yourself Back on the cards at a rate of 0.8 cents per point, which is more than the market value of a Bonvoy point so actually pretty good. The bad news though? You’re limited to $750 in total redemptions annually. But at $750 + $150, you could turn the Boundless into a $900 sign-up bonus and convert it to a Ritz Carlton card after a year (a move we call the reverse Bonvoy).
– Premier: 170,000 points after $4,000 spend in three months, $99 annual fee – Rewards: 100,000 points after $2,000 spend in three months, no annual fee
I prefer points offers to capped free-night certificates approximately 122% of the time, but not everyone thinks like I do.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I still have several guest posts from the holiday break that will go live on Fridays or Saturdays in the coming weeks. If you’d like to contribute a guest post, please reach out!
Also if you wrote to me over the holiday and I haven’t responded, it’s not you, it’s me. I’m still catching up.
– Gold status for 5,000 Hyatt points – Platinum status for 8,000 Hyatt points – Platinum Pro status for 12,000 Hyatt points
The best use cases are probably for checked bag benefits, main cabin extra seating for the account holder and maybe companions, and for international lounge access on economy tickets. You’ll earn bonus miles and you’ll end up on the upgrade list too, but your changes of an upgrade clearing are approximately the same as your chances of being involved in a plane-crash while you’re on a sail-boat moored in a bunker. (Thanks to blinyellow)
The authorized user card will show up on the user’s credit report, which is great if you’re trying to build credit for a minor, but less great for everyone else. (Thanks to DDG)
AA bag tag for when your status for a day is in transit.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m on an annual blogging vacation for the last two weeks of the year. To make sure you still have content, some of the smartest members of the community have stepped up with guest posts in my absence. Special thanks to James, the host of the Churn and Burn podcast, who candidly shares his story on the dark side of credit card churning for writing this post. I’ll see you on January 1!
Some of you may remember that almost one year ago, I wrote a guest post with a simple plea: stop inflating the value of your points and start considering more carefully how you value said points and what they cost you to make. Today’s post is a followup to that one. But instead of looking at C.P.P. (cents per point), I’m going to ask you to look at a different, yet closely related metric: R.O.I. The true R.O.I. of spend can be absolutely incalculable. Yet still, it’s worth doing.
In the Summer of 2023, I decided to make a push for Delta Diamond status after I realized that a certain card which was “Reserved” for me could be used to “Reserve” a lot of lucrative offers which were asking me to spend in increments of $1000 for a grand total of 5,000 Skymiles each. Mind you, this was “back in the day” before Delta nuked their loyalty program. Actually, I really need to thank Delta for that, because it ended up being one of the best things that’s happened to me in my recent award travel memory, but more on that later…
Real ones know that Delta Diamond used to cost less than the average Venezuelan starter home…Although said “home” might have been a prerequisite.
Yes, as a Skymiles account holder with a pathetic 3,000 MQDs to my name, I knew the only way I’d make Delta Diamond was by knocking out the mammoth $250,000 MQD waiver requirement for credit card spend. For all of this spend, I accrued the following:
1,675,000 SkyMiles
4 Regional Upgrades
4 Global Upgrades (x2?!)
Oh, and the Diamond status. That too.
I managed to parlay these upgrades into the following:
2 Roundtrip Transcon tickets on the A350 for only 48,000 SkyMiles
2 Roundtrip Delta One tickets to Rome for only 84,000 SkyMiles each.
2 More roundtrip Delta One Tickets to Rome thanks to a banking error in my favor (thank you Delta IT) for only 92,000 SkyMiles each.
For your own convenience, I’ve already done the math for us. The $250,000 in spend was done in a very lazy manner. You might say that I’d be called a floozy for doing so. In point of fact, I incurred a loss of $7,500 in order to complete this spend. So, what kind of ROI did my spend get me, if I value the above accrued items at fair market price?
1,675,000 SkyMiles = $19,262 per my own personal valuation
4 Regional Upgrades (RUCs) = $3,000ish in savings
8 Global Upgrades (GUCs) = $24,000 in savings
A total of 6 measly first class Diamond Upgrades and obligatory premium economy = ????
You’re probably thinking that my valuations for the upgrades are insane. And of course, they are. A more appropriate valuation would be for me to decide how many SkyMiles I would have paid for those upgrades over economy and then applying that value. So let’s go ahead and assign a value of $1,400 and $8,400 to the RUCs and GUCs respectfully. I’ll conservatively value the complimentary upgrades at a very round $2,000 figure. Feel free to play mad libs with my math and fill in your own break point numbers. After all, it’s not my blog. I don’t make the rules! That gives us a grand whopping total of $31,062 in value after $7,500 in loss. It’s a very, very respectable ROI, and I hope you can hear the sound of my shoulder dislocating as I reach around to pat myself on the back. *Please clap*
But, as they say: “It ain’t over till it’s over.” That brings us to the Fall season of 2023, when Delta announced (probably because of me) that they were gutting the SkyMiles program like a suckling pig at the Calala Island bonfire.
Delta would later roll back several of these devaluations, but not before our friends at B6 (JetBlue) decided to lower an olive branch to all of us Delta Elite members who were jilted by our abusive partner and now found ourselves craving an illicit affair with our spouse’s trashier, broke neighbor. And what better place to have that affair than at the Motel (B6)? The offer: “Be the first of 30,000 to open up a JetBlue Card in the next 30 days, and we’ll give free Mosaic 4 status for all of you dirty Delta Diamonds out there.” At the time, this offer was largely ignored. I am only aware of a couple of close friends besides myself who took B6 up on it. What was promised seemed too good to be true, and maybe that’s why so many people didn’t bother. For my infidelity against Delta, I was given a heaping treasure haul consisting of:
6 “Move to Mint” vouchers
4 Blade Helicopter Transfers in the NYC area
Unlimited non-mint upgrades on B6
These were all awarded to me fairly quickly after a successful match, and I used them to great effect:
3 one way Mint upgrades from JFK-EDI
2 Mint upgrades from PHX to JFK
4 Helicopter rides from JFK to Manhattan
5 B6 flights in the past year where myself and “P2” were treated to “front of plane” upgrades for free.
Perhaps the best part of all this is that I had already stashed around 100,000 B6 miles from a previous card signup offer, and the 2nd B6 credit card offer required of me for the status match accrued an extra 80,000 miles. All of this was utilized in order to book flights that I would later shower with Move to Mint certs. (As a brief aside, JetBlue knew they goofed with this campaign, because very quickly after this status match, the Move to Mint certificates were severely devalued. I very fortunately booked most of mine prior to that. Guess I’m just cool like that.) Calculating the value of all this is hard. Would I have paid out of pocket for all of those helicopter rides? Unlikely. So again, I’m going to apply the same math as before, and value these items at the price that I would have paid for them myself:
3 one way Mint upgrades from JFK-EDI ($3,000)
2 Mint upgrades from PHX to JFK ($900)
4 Helicopter rides from JFK to Manhattan ($440)
5 B6 flights in the past year where myself and “P2” were treated to “front of plane” upgrades for free. ($900)
It’s an additional $5,240 in value. Bringing our total valuation to $36,302. If we again consider our initial “investment” of $7,500” then we achieved a total ROI of 384%.
Enjoying my B6 Chopper ride over NY, which I apparently valued @ roughly $110? Who knew Bond was such a cheapskate?
At this point, if you’re still with me after watching me blow smoke up my own tailpipe for several paragraphs, I’ll finally quit burying the lede. There’s a few takeaways to be had, here:
Many times, one person’s devaluation is another person’s play of the year.
The true R.O.I. of a play is what you value it at, not the valuation of some person who doesn’t live in the same hub as you or frequent the same hotel chains.
You should, frequently and ruthlessly, reassess the R.O.I. of various “investments” you are making and ask yourself if there are more lucrative R.O.I. plays to be made elsewhere.
$250,000 of spend might sound like an astronomical amount for some of you reading. But I assure you that for others, it’s just another Tuesday. Something to think on.
As MEAB says: “Always be probing.” You never know when a play will quickly open a new door into a different play.
People will often scoff at you for spending on cards that most people wouldn’t take a second glance at. Trust your own compass. Every dog (of a card) has its day.
The “noise” generated by a less lucrative play can often be used to arbitrage or “feed” another play. Sometimes you need to find yourself rolling in some cash before you can wade through the muck.
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 18 and December 31. After that, we’ll ring in the new year on January 1, 2025 with the 2024 version of Travel Hacking as Told by GIFs though, so no need to be up in arms, but I guess it’s ok if you’re up in legs.
Make sure to put a reminder in your phone to go verify the other airline co-branded card in Barclays’ systems after you receive the Frontier card. (Thanks to FM)
– Business Gold: 200,000 Membership Rewards after $20,000 spend in three months – Business Platinum: 250,000 Membership Rewards after $15,000 spend in three months
It’s ok for P1 to use P2’s referral and vice-versa, and if you don’t have one of those, ask around for a heightened referral offer and make a new churning friend; it’s a great way to network too.
A PSA and warning: American Express links that were put together artificially by combining multiple offer components in an unintended way keep finding their way onto public blogs, which is ok, but they’re not labeled or explained as manufactured artificial links. My suggestion: Always know the provenance of no-lifetime language links that you’re using. DDG has appropriately labeled this recently, but not all bloggers are doing so. What’s the link? This time it’s a 100,000 Membership Rewards personal Gold link with a $6,000 spend in six months requirement, but others have surfaced over the last couple of months for Business Golds and Business Platinums too.
How risky are these links? It’s been over 6 years since there were reports of adverse action for using unintended links, so the risk is probably low, but I don’t like when you’re not told that you’re taking a risk with a manufactured link, even if it’s low. One day of course American Express may decide that it doesn’t like people making links themselves in ways never intended to work. Since no one asked my opinion: The risk isn’t worth it at 100,000 points, but if it were 80*270,000 points we’d be having a serious conversation.
Spirit Airlines has a status match to either Silver or Gold that lasts 90 days, and a there’s a fast-track challenge to hold it for longer (I imagine the challenge won’t make sense for any of you unless your name starts with an “S” and ends with a “hay”). Status doesn’t let you pick a big front seat for free, but it does waive plenty of other fees.
Breakage from failed reading comprehension illustrated.
– $50 off of $750+ in online spend – $70 off of $1,000+ in online spend – 200,000 Shop Your Way Rewards points with $750+ in online spend – 250,000 Shop Your Way Rewards points with $1,000+ in online spend
– Infinite: 80,000 Avios after $5,000 spend in 90 days, plus uncapped 6x at restaurants and 2x everywhere else – Signature: 60,000 Avios after $3,000 spend in 90 days, plus uncapped 4x at restaurants and 2x everywhere else
You might want to care because Caesars Diamond gives an annual, free four-night stay at Atlantis provided you gamble for four hours during your stay, but there are smaller benefits like show tickets, no resort fees, and free parking at Caesars properties too.
The major airline shopping portals have a big holiday bonus promotion before black Friday, all of which are more lucrative than typical:
– AA: 4,000 extra AAdvantage miles with $1,600+ through November 17 – Alaska: 1,500 extra MileagePlan miles with $650+ through November 18 – Delta: 2,000 extra SkyMiles with $1000+ through November 18 – Southwest: 4,000 extra Rapid Rewards with $1,000+ through November 24 – United: 5,000 extra MileagePlus miles with $1,200+ through November 22
– 150,000 Shop Your Way points with $1,500 spend through December 31 – 10% statement credit with $350-$400 spend in utilities each month through January (total $120) – $125 statement credit $600 spend in utilities, each month through January (total $375)
My offer was stolen out of my glove by rabid baseball fans this month, or at least I assume that’s what happened. (Thanks to GoBolts, SPX, BrandonV, IAD_Flyer, and birt)
I suppose an American with status in Air Canada could match too with a sleight of hand, and for the right use case Platinum is absolutely worth $499 CAD. I mean, what could that possibly be in US dollars? $20? $25? Yes I could look it up, but [insert excuse here].
I’m also seeing limited availability promotional business class awards from Seattle and Denver, the only two cities I bothered to check, for 50,000 FlyingBlue miles each direction.
– 30,000 Membership Rewards with $2,000 at ANA – $100 statement credit after $500+ with Delta – $250 statement credit after $1,000+ with Delta – $75 statement credit after $300+ at US and Europe Destination by Hyatt properties
The easiest hotel play is to buy a gift card at the front desk. For airlines, it’s figuring out how to refund to a travel bank or travel wallet for future use. Gamers may find more lucrative options too.
Happy Monday!
More outsized value: Multi-country soda arbitrage.
