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EDITORS NOTE: In 2024, I’ve introduced Guest Post Saturdays. I’m still looking for more guest posts, please reach out if you have something interesting to share with the community! Today’s guest post is from Southwest Airlines kingpin and family travel guru, Brian M!

Garden The Flexible Options (GTFO) and travel better! Employing gardening strategies for multiple travel options reserved with flexible change and cancellation terms mitigates the risks of uncertainty and dampens the negative impacts of uncontrollable factors that affect travel.  Moreover, one’s travel plans become more adaptable.  For those about to travel, we salute you!

The concept of gardening a reservation is not new. In the travel maximization context, “Gardening” is the practice of booking and monitoring a travel reservation while consistently analyzing whether the booked reservation (which may have been impacted by some outside factor like a schedule change) may be efficiently improved through some sort of action(s) or change(s) and the activity of undertaking that action or change to improve the subject reservation.   When factors affect a reservation that one is monitoring, then one may be able to (or may have to) undertake some action that could lead to an improved reservation. Always be probing the alternatives of a reservation to determine whether inaction, a change, or a cancellation may be the best decision. Deals can vary at original booking and over time; so, using and revisiting different levels of one’s travel waterfall of techniques is essential.  

Flexible reservations are also not new; but, flexibility does have value. Most car rentals have long had very flexible cancellation terms.  And, many hotel reservations have had flexible change and cancellation terms.  More recently, flight reservations issued by more carriers, especially through their award loyalty programs, have become more flexible.  Importantly, flexibility may be free!  Okay, that’s not quite true because even if there is no monetary cost to a change or cancellation, one would still need to undertake the effort to book, change, or cancel a reservation (so, there is an expenditure of time and effort) and there’s an opportunity cost of those points or miles.  Regardless, booking flexible rates/fares can preserve the ability to be ready for uncertainty, including both known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Fares and rates may drop. Flight times may change. New, more preferred, flights may become available. Accommodation amenities may close. Natural disasters may impact a destination. A car type may no longer be available or suitable. A travel companion may become ill or simply decide to no longer travel. To be impacted by an external force is human; to prepare for uncertainty is divine.  Changes will happen and the adept can adapt by gardening existing flexible reservations. When the reservation gets tough, the tough garden the flexible reservation!

Options in travel, like in life, are important. Reserving multiple flexible options for aspects of travel or flexible options for entire trips enables one to gain more value and empowers one with more control to exercise the desired option (and cancel the undesired flexible option(s)) when it becomes time to strike. Furthermore, gardening those options amplifies the value and control unlocked by flexible change and cancellation terms. Could one sow one’s travel field with inexpensive option seeds with the intent that some schedule change or weather lemons may grow to produce a bushel of opportunities and enjoy some refreshing non-stop lemonade? However, to reserve multiple flexible options with award program currencies, one must earn those currencies first. Miles need to be earned before they can be burned.  So, earning a sufficient volume of miles and points can be helpful to book early and book often. But, what volume may be sufficient varies and could be lower than may initially seem to be required given the ability to reduce, reuse, and recycle miles and points over time as options are canceled and changed. Miles burned for a reservation may rise like a phoenix from the ashes of cancellation ready to fly into action for the next reservation. Consideration about how to option the travel is also important – which traveler(s)? which flight(s)? which accommodation(s)? which date(s)/night(s)? which elite benefit(s)? which booking method? Considerations are unique for each aspect of each trip for each traveler. 

And, putting these three concepts together creates a travel strategy greater than the sum of its parts empowering one to travel better. A trip that may have been originally booked with a 2-stop flight itinerary on a less preferred day to a counter pick up for an expensive compact rental car to drive to the Hyatt Place Lubbock may be gardened to become become a better option – a non-stop flight to stroll directly to the rental car aisle to choose any inexpensive full-size car to drive to the Hyatt Regency Wichita after freely canceling non-preferred flexible alternatives. However, time, effort, and organization are mandatory to the success of any GTFO travel strategy.  So, determining how deep to dive into each aspect can be critical to maintaining sanity and avoiding The Optimizer’s Curse. Therefore, too many specifics related to a GTFO travel strategy would be imprudent. One must decide for oneself whether to, when to, and how much to utilize such a travel strategy. Of course, there are risks associated with the strategy beyond loss of sanity, including that duplicate reservations may be automatically canceled by the travel provider. Furthermore, speculation is undesirable: one must decide for oneself where to draw one’s own line – how far is too far and what may create too much risk given potential adverse consequences.

Travel is about the journey and the destination. So, utilize a GTFO travel strategy to burn some miles to GET THE F* OUT – both to travel better than one otherwise might and to spend less! Or, don’t travel – cash-out miles and improve life in a different way! No matter what, miles earned are only worth the value gained when burned. 

“Better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one, than to have an opportunity and not be prepared.” Travel opportunity is knocking and you may have the option to seize it today while maintaining the flexibility to seize a different opportunity tomorrow by gardening each of those seized opportunities until one becomes the best option.

– Brian M

Preparing to garden a few existing bookings.

  1. American Express Offers has a gamable offer for $200 back on $1,000 or more in Icelandair flights booked by April 1. (Thanks to TeddyH)
  2. Do this now: Register for Cathay Pacific’s AsiaMiles 10% incoming mileage transfer bonus from both Citi ThankYou Points and American Express Membership Rewards through March 31.
  3. In a move that should surprise only someone who can’t remember their name when waking up, Staples has fee free $200 Visa gift cards starting Sunday and running through the following Saturday, limit eight per transaction. (Staples Visa gift card promotions always follow the week after a Mastercard gift promotion.)

    These are Pathward gift cards so have a liquidation plan in place. Also, marvel at how Pathward, formerly Metabank, earned $60 million by changing their name to appease Mark Zuckerberg. (Thanks to GCG)
  4. I believe everyone around here knows how I feel about Marriott in general. Nonetheless, there are two Marriott cards worth having:

    – First, the Chase Ritz-Carlton which is only available via product change
    – Second, the AmEx Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant card in year one, because the credits on the card wipe out $300 in annual fees, and you’ll get an 85,000 point free night certificate if you time things right which is arguably (barely) worth the rest of the annual fee.

    There’s now a highest ever offer on the Brilliant card through May 1 for 185,000 Bonvoy points after $6,000 spend in six months. Use a referral though, not a public link.

Have a nice weekend friends!

The Marriott Courtyard Lubbock is a nice metaphor for the Marriott Bonvoy program.

Today’s news items dropped into a nice list neatly, a little too neatly for comfort frankly:

  1. Southwest has an award and paid flight sale with promo code SPLASH through tomorrow night for travel from March 19 to May 22. There are a few blackout dates, but my existing bookings had a roughly 50% rate of being included in the fare sale.

    What everyone seems to forget to mention when these fare sales drop is that you’re still flying Southwest and the discount better be big as a result. This is extra acute to me with six flights in the last 30 days on Southwest.
  2. Hyatt has announced its annual award chart recategorization.

    You have through March 26 to book at the old rates. If you book a property that goes down in price after March 26, your points will probably be automatically refunded.
  3. American Express Membership Rewards has a targeted15% transfer bonus to Avianca Lifemiles through March 15. Sweet spots:

    – Star Alliance business or first class from the US to Europe and Africa
    – Short haul domestic first class
    – Flights to and from the Caribbean in cattle class Southwest class economy

    This transfer bonus is mid at best unless you were going to book something anyway.
  4. American Express offers has two new sort-of gamable offers:

    – $200 statement credit on $1,000+ at about three dozen properties through May 15
    – $100 back on $500+ in Alaska flights booked through AmexTravel.com through May 26

    Gaming on the first one is typical, on the second probably is only really doable by refunding the right type of your fare to an Alaska wallet.
  5. The Motley Fool has an increased AA eShopping portal sign-up bonus of 6,700 miles for a $99 subscription, bigger than what it was on January 17 too. An American Express Offers $50 off of $99 is still around through May 15 too.

    Combined, the two promotions mean you’re buying 6,700 AA miles at for a net cost of $49, or 0.73 cents per mile. It’s untested as far as I know, but you probably can’t do this again on the same AA eShopping account as the one used in January. (Special thanks to David)

The laundry equivalent of today’s news items coming neatly packaged out of the box.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The feedback I’ve gotten for guest post Saturday has been resoundingly positive. I’ve got a few posts left to publish, but I’m running low. If you’re interested in a guest post, please reach out!

It’s a good news and bad news situation today. Ordered in terms of goodness:

  1. American Express has a great new referral offer for +10x at restaurants on many charge and credit cards for up to $25,000 spend in restaurants for three months for the referrer. The referral must be sent by May 22.

    Pro tip: Referrals usually stick around for 30 days, so squirrel one away on May 22 and you can double dip this one.
  2. Staples has fee-free $200 Mastercard gift cards starting Sunday and running through the following Saturday. There’s a stated limit of eight, which generally isn’t actually enforced in many locations.

    These are Pathward gift cards, so have a liquidation plan in place.
  3. Hyatt Destination residences have moved from the regular World of Hyatt program to the Homes and Hideaways platform, which really means that these properties now have a low 1.2 cents per point fixed redemption value.

    It already happened, and there’s no way to lock in old rates. Hyatt went #bonvoy in rare form.

Have a nice weekend!

Data deep dive: Visualizing today’s post, and look for the hidden infinitely good news item zero while you’re at it.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The feedback I’ve gotten for guest post Saturday has been resoundingly positive. I’ve got a few posts left to publish, but I’m running low. If you’re interested in a guest post, please reach out!

  1. Do this now: Register for Hyatt’s Bonus Journeys promotion for 3,000 bonus points for every three nights stayed between March 1 and April 30. There’s an additional 1,000 points for some international properties available if you hold a Hyatt credit card too.
  2. Do this now (if you hold Delta status): Choose what to do with your rollover MQMs in the new program.

    I extended my Diamond status through the end of the decade which seems like an insane option to offer, but no complaints. It’s rather niche and limited scope, but this approaches deal of the year territory for people with lots of rolled over MQMs.
  3. The FBNO Amtrak Preferred Mastercard has increased its sign-up bonus to 40,000 points after $2,000 spend in three months, and the $99 annual fee is not waived the first year. Points are worth between 2.5 and 2.9 cents each roughly.

    If you ride Amtrak regularly this a great card, otherwise skip it.
  4. In case you’re wondering how Alaska is doing since the Boeing door plug incident: They’re running another deep discount award ticket sale through tonight:

    – Short haul: 4,000 miles
    – Medium haul: 7,500 miles (including Hawaii and Mexico)
    – Transcontinental: 10,000 miles

    The covered dates are for travel between March 12 and May 22, which obviously overlaps spring break, but also Lubbock, TX’s favorite holiday: Pig in a Blanket Day on April 24.

Happy Thursday!

The official Pig in a Blanket Day pace car.

EDITORS NOTE: In 2024, I’ve introduced Guest Post Saturdays. Today’s guest post is from the witty, inspiring, and definitely-not-a-giga-chad irieriley.

If you’re like me, you likely didn’t set out in this hobby thinking you’d end up where you did. I was a backpacker when I started back in 2016, dreaming of free economy flights and upgrading from hostels to Hyatt Houses.

I did not think it would lead to hours spent probing fintechs, the rise and fall of the world’s greatest bodybuilding supplement company, and using developer tools to identify offer codes and account masking patterns.

Of course, there’s a lot of steps and shifts in perspective between seeing a TPG ad on TSA bins at LaGuardia and not giving a second thought to 99x Amex AU offers.

MEAB‘s wisdom posts contain a lot of thought provoking questions, but my all time favorite post is this one – concerning perception of dollar value, scaling your spending, and how things change as you go deeper down the rabbit hole. 

To build on Matt’s original premise, I’d posit that the same perception shift occurs with redemption. For the sake of discussion, let’s look at the value of 150k Amex MRs – a sign-up bonus that anyone with a pulse can earn with a personal Platinum card.

  • Non redeemer: What are transferable points? I’m just a giga-Chad cashing out my points for Home Depot gift cards.
  • Beginning redeemer: Wow, $6k of spend in 3 months is a lot. But 150k points transferred to Delta Skymiles must be enough to get to the moon  roundtrip to Europe in business class apparently, a one way basic economy award to Lubbock.
  • Intermediate redeemer: Look at those fools wasting their points on gift cards and transfers to domestic carriers – I got 30cpp by transferring to ANA and booking last minute one way J flights to Japan. 
  • Advanced redeemer: Things have come full circle – I have so many points that I will never be able to redeem them all for travel. I’ll book my travel a year out, and I’ll cash out the rest. 150k MRs = $1,650 with a Schwab Plat or ~$1,950 depending on my bargaining skills.

Pictured: A local business owner/giga-Chad on his way to Home Depot to convert the spoils of $7m of Amex spending into a patio furniture set.

Depending on your situation, each viewpoint can make sense. However, I’d imagine most MEAB readers fall into the final segment. 

And in a community that is largely a perfectly aligned Venn diagram with other optimizer communities like FIRE, cash is king, especially when you hit the inflection point where your ability to earn wildly outpaces your ability to burn. 

I was talking to my P2 (and fellow Waldorf Pedregal enthusiast) about how poorly I had strategized earning and redeeming early on, and she provided some much needed perspective on the whole thing when actually looking back at those first redemptions.

Some of our first cards and subsequent redemptions:

  • Citi AA Platinum pre-derAAilment – SUB used to fly AA Y to Europe, where we attended music festivals and yacht cruised as backpackers
  • Chase Southwest chasing Companion Pass – used to book Y flights to the Caribbean, where we got engaged
  • Capital One Venture – I hit the SUB on the engagement ring, and used the cashback to erase the insane VS surcharges on our first J redemption for our honeymoon

Pictured: Mr. and Mrs. irieriley in 2017 enjoying the spoils of their very first award redemption

While the strategy was akin to SideShowBob233 stepping on a rake over and over again, those first few forays into earning and burning provided more to enrich P2 and I’s lives than another $2,000 into VTI ever will. 

I think it’s ok to occasionally zoom out of doing finger math to avoid looking like a kiter or mourning your Paypal burner to remember why you started this hobby in the first place, and it’s very unlikely that you started because you wanted what sometimes feels like a second job. Instead, you wanted a way to take a trip for free, or some extra cash for bills. 

Pictured: MSers determining whether they’re clear to pull back into their hub account

If there’s anything the last 4 years have taught us, it’s that life is short. This is a friendly reminder that points can be used for something besides booking T-355 Qsuites, cashing out or selling – they’re also a tool for engineering unique experiences for you, your friends, and your family. 

Personally, I’m blowing the Chase Sapphire Reserve grocery cash out equivalent of $1,700 of URs to spend 3 nights at a Hyatt SLH 20 miles from my home. A year ago, that would have really pained me. It still does, a bit. But hey, the Hamptons in summer is otherwise too rich for my blood – may as well enjoy it before this particular hotel joins Hilton and becomes 95k 120k 150k HH/nt. And we’re definitely not going because P2 wants to be in the background of Summer House.

And yes, even for those who don’t travel and are firmly #teamcashback. Don’t forget to use your proceeds to treat yourself or a loved one every once in a while. Even if it’s just a boba during a money order run. 

– irieriley

Pictured: In keeping with the Simpsons motif, a fitting desk decoration for a MSer deep in the weeds of earning looking for some perspective

EDITOR’S NOTE: The feedback I’ve gotten for guest post Saturday has been resoundingly positive. I’ve got a few posts left to publish, but I’m running low. If you’re interested in a guest post, please reach out!

  1. Chase is sending targeted offers on its personal Southwest cards for 3x points at gas, grocery, and dining through the end of 2024, and bonus points count for companion pass but not toward other status levels.

    What does Southwest have to do with gas, grocery, and dining you ask? Well, they’re probably the worlds biggest supplier of pretzel snack-mix bags, and the snack-mix bag cabal knows how to pull strings, trust me. (Thanks to Lava121)
  2. We’re not yet at the point that the Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card moves from Unsung Hero to just Hero, but we’re approaching it. In addition to holding a card with greater notoriety, holders also saw a new round of targeted offers for online spend through March 14:

    – 200,000 Shop Your Way Rewards points after $750 or more in spend (MS Ninja)
    – 250,000 Shop Your Way Rewards points after $1,000 or more in spend (Jacob)
    – $50 statement credit after $750 or more in spend (David 99)

    Yes, these offers stack with the 2024 monthly statement credits for grocery, gas, and dining provided of course that you spend in those categories online. What does Citi have to do with gas, grocery, and dining you ask? They’re a credit card issuer and they want to attract spend on their cards, duh.
  3. The Marriott Bonvoy Business card has a best offer sign-up bonus of five free night certificates for up to 50,000 points per night each after $8,000 spend in three months. [insert joke here about overpriced Marriott hotels in Lubbock]

    I’m not linking to anything on this one because I hope that you can find someone to give you a referral, so they’ll earn points on your successful application too. Using a referral is a great networking icebreaker in the miles and points community for those of you looking to expand your network. (Thanks to DoC)
  4. Having a stable of burner phones and phone numbers is eminently useful, and DDG highlights a great, low cost option for adding a new device to your portfolio: A Moto G Stylus 5G plus a month of service for $40. Make sure you activate the phone, and I’d suggest only leaving it active for the first month then moving to a cheaper service. It’ll unlock automatically in 180 days.

Have a nice weekend!

The leader of the the pretzel snack-bag mix cabal.

EDITOR’S NOTE: All of the feedback I’ve gotten for guest post Saturday has been resoundingly positive. I’ve got a few posts left to publish, but I’m running low. If you’re interested in a guest post, please reach out!

What’s a weekend kerfuffle you ask? You don’t want to know, but it involves this:

  1. Do this now: Register for your targeted United Mile Play bonus. I got “Book and take a trip one time by March 15 to earn 3,000 bonus miles, minimum $100,” which frankly isn’t bad. But the bad news? The trip must be on United or United Express (shudder) metal.
  2. The Chase IHG One Premier personal credit card has a new 165,000 point sign-up bonus after $3,000 spend in three months. The card’s $99 annual fee is not waived for the first month.

    There’s still value in the IHG program, especially for stays in the middle of nowhere and for Intercontinental brand hotels in conjunction with 4th night free. RIP PointBreaks though, amirite?
  3. Chase went nuts with gameable card linked offers:

    – Southwest: 10% back on $50+, up to $400 spend through March 5
    – Marriott Fairfield: 10% back on $100+, up to $380 spend through March 19
    – Sheraton: 10% back on $100+, up to $570 spend through March 19
    – Le Meridian: 10% back on $100+, up to $570 spend through March 19
    – Westin: 10% back on $100+, up to $680 spend through March 19
    – Four Points: 10% back on $100+, up to $570 spend through March 19
    – AC Hotels: 10% back on $100+, up to $570 spend through March 19
    – Springhill Suites: 10% back on $100+, up to $430 spend through March 19

    The simplest way to game the hotel offers is to buy a gift card at the front desk. But, there are always other ways. With Chase offers, breaking correlation isn’t necessary.
  4. Delta always has targeted no-lifetime language (NLL) cards available at deltaamexcard.com, but they’ve refreshed which accounts are targeted The offers:

    – Personal Gold: 70,000 miles after $3,000 spend in six months
    – Personal Platinum: 90,000 miles after $4,000 spend in six months
    – Personal Reserve: 100,000 miles after $6,000 spend in six months

    – Business Gold: 80,000 miles after $6,000 spend in six months
    – Business Platinum: 100,000 miles after $8,000 spend in six months
    – Business Reserve: 110,000 miles after $12,000 spend in six months

    These offers expire on March 17.
  5. The Chase United Business MileagePlus 100,000 miles after $5,000 spend in three months offer and the United Club Business 75,000 mile + 1,000 PQP offer after $5,000 spend in three months offer are both now available through referrals. If you’re going to get the card, use P2’s link or use a friend’s link and make their day.

Have a nice weekend friends!

I told you that you didn’t want to know.