{"id":3725,"date":"2022-02-02T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-02T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=3725"},"modified":"2023-04-18T11:57:03","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T17:57:03","slug":"wednesday-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2022\/02\/02\/wednesday-thoughts\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday Thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Let\u2019s get a little meta today:<\/p>\n<p><strong>1.<\/strong> In manufactured spend, usually deals don\u2019t outright die. If they do die, they usually come back in a subtlety different way, like Season 6 Buffy. In just the last couple of weeks we\u2019ve seen several examples:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2022\/01\/24\/monday-fuel-points-hangover\/\">Safeway gave rewards on certain Visa and Mastercard gift cards<\/a> between mid-December and yesterday, and it\u2019s been an on-again <a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/milesperday.com\/2021\/11\/deal-dead-safeway-giving-out-rewards-for-vgc\/\">off-again<\/a> relationship over the year prior<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: initial\">Some Metabank \/ BlackHawk gift cards can be liquidated nearly everywhere, and some can\u2019t<\/span><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/churning\/comments\/s9z8p3\/manufactured_spending_weekly_thread_week_of\/hui3lsx\/?context=1\">US Bank gift cards stopped working at Walmart money centers<\/a> and other stores over the last couple of weeks, but are once again sailing through<\/li>\n<li>A payment anonymizer product started working just about everywhere after failing in all of the same places for a year<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In fact, most of my best plays have been taking advantage of a deal after it died, or at least after everyone said it did (and some time passed). Always be probing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2.<\/strong> <a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/awardtravel\/comments\/shxwbk\/psa_emirates_business_class_devaluation\/\">Emirates devalued their business class awards<\/a> without warning yesterday. Any time your points currencies are parked outside of a flexible bank ecosystem like Ultimate Rewards, ThankYou Points, or Membership Rewards, they\u2019re subject to unannounced devaluations that can make <a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/consumer-prices-inflation-c1bfd93ed1719cf0135420f4fd0270f9\">US dollar inflation<\/a> look extremely tame in comparison.<\/p>\n<p>At this point, the only time I\u2019m directly acquiring airline miles other than by flying on a paid ticket are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Credit card sign-up bonuses<\/li>\n<li>As a byproduct of spending for status<\/li>\n<li>Shopping portals<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The devaluation risk of collecting them through any other method is too high for me. Because banks are subject to banking regulations and enforcement action from the Federal Reserve, FDIC, <a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nysenate.gov\/newsroom\/press-releases\/shelley-b-mayer\/mayer-bill-protect-credit-card-rewards-points-signed\">New York state<\/a>, and potentially the SEC (to name a few), the likelihood of an overnight devaluation by 35% is small, and if it were to happen we\u2019d likely see changes previewed months in advance.<\/p>\n<p>Happy Wednesday!<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-editorskit-rounded\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3730\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/vr-1024x758.jpeg\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/vr-1024x758.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/vr-300x222.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/vr-768x568.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/vr.jpeg 1070w\" width=\"420\"\/><figcaption>Goggles to help you find deals that aren\u2019t really dead. Ok, they\u2019re not strictly necessary but they make you look cool, trust me.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let\u2019s get a little meta today: 1. In manufactured spend, usually deals don\u2019t outright die. If they do die, they usually come back in a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":1,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ms-hints","category-wisdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3725"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7106,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3725\/revisions\/7106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}