Showing posts with label Tips and Tricks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tips and Tricks. Show all posts

May 15, 2016

How to Get Started with Miles & Points

I'm often asked how to get started with this hobby.  Many people are intimidated by the vast amounts of knowledge (often times conflicting) and advice on the internet.  While I don't have any earth shattering advice, I do think the most important step in starting in this hobby (or any other hobby for that matter) is just to start.

Start learning, start reading, start asking questions, start experimenting.  The same advice could be said about a new workout, a new sport, a new skill, a new job, etc...

If you are interested in reading about how I got started, you can check out part one and part two or click on the "About Me" tab on any page of the blog.

Flying Lufthansa First Class - complete with tarmac transfer

Beyond just starting to read/learn/question, this is a hobby in which having a goal is very important.  It's key to understand how you want to travel, when, with how many people, your dream destinations, etc...

Once you have a handle on the answers to these questions, you can start to craft a strategy before you begin accumulating points.

Champagne in Singapore

One challenge in this hobby is the accumulation of points in disparate accounts without a goal.  This can lead to hundreds of thousands of "orphaned points" in which you have a lot of points but not enough to redeem any of them for anything cool.  Thus the need to have a goal and a strategy before you start applying for credit cards, maximizing spend bonus categories, dining out, or shopping online.

I don't believe this is a "10,000 hours" type hobby.  After a year of effort, I knew a lot,  After two years even more.  After four years of concerted effort, I'm pretty much an expert in a lot of the basic strategies so maybe more like a 1,000 hour hobby.  I've earned and burned more than 5,000,000 miles and points for my own travel and helped others earn and burn millions more to help them make their travel dreams come true.

So get started today by reading more on this blog (and others) and drop me a line if you have any specific questions.

May 7, 2016

$10 Free to Starbucks

I'm a little late posting this but the deal is still alive so figured I'd share.  Starbucks is offering a $10 bonus when you purchase a $10 gift card and pay with Visa Checkout.  If you aren't already signed up for Visa Checkout, you can do that during within the purchase path.  I just completed my purchase at 9:15AM MT this morning and can confirm the deal is still working (limited to the first 325,000 purchases).  If you want all the details, Lucky has more here.




All you have to do is click on this link and purchase a minimum of a $10 gift card.  The bonus won't show during the purchase path but you'll get a $20 card (on a $10 purchase) via email in about 2 minutes.  Make sure to use your Chase Sapphire Preferred for 2x points on the purchase (coded as dining).

April 17, 2016

How to Book Cathay Pacific First Class Award Tickets

Here at ATRP, we spend considerable time writing abut how to earn miles and points.  Using those miles and points to actually book award tickets and hotel nights with points is where the real fun begins.  I get a lot of questions about booking Cathay Pacific first and business class award tickets using American AAdvantage miles.  This post is a step-by-step guide to search for award availability using British Airways' search engine.  Since American doesn't actually show Cathay's availability online, this is the easiest way to find flights with open seats.

Cathay Pacific 777-300ER at LAX
Once you find availability, you'll need to call American Airlines to actually book the flight.  Having the availability on hand will make the transaction MUCH easier.

April 9, 2016

How to Earn 5x This Quarter at Costco

Chase has offered some phenomenal deals on their no annual fee Freedom card over the last 6 months.  In Q4, the 5x bonus category was Amazon which provided for some great pre holiday shopping opportunities.  Even better, they provided 10x points for a 6 week period at Amazon.  That is a 20% return (10x the 2 cent value for Chase Ultimate Rewards points) assuming you carry the Freedom and Chase Sapphire Preferred Cards.  That was an easy 15,000 (10x $1,500) bonus Ultimate Rewards points which could then be transferred to United, BA, or Hyatt (among others).



On the surface, the 5x quarterly bonus at grocery stores, BJ's, and Sam's Club isn't that exciting.  Yes, you can buy gift cards at grocery stores and liquidate them, but that's a lot of work.  Sure, you'll get 5x points on your grocery spend but our quarterly grocery bill for two isn't going to hit the $1,500 quarterly max.

Well, via OMAAT, it seems that Costco.com will count towards the 5x bonus!  While Costco physical locations do not take credit cards other than American Express, Costco.com will accept Visa.  This means you can purchase all sorts of items (similar to the Amazon promo) and you'll receive 5x points.  We are in the market for some outdoor furniture and Costco.com actually has a pretty great selection.  5x points is essentially a 10% rebate on what is already a discounted price.

I haven't tested this personally but plan to make a Costco.com purchase this weekend.  I'll report back on my own results once the transaction settles.

April 3, 2016

How Shopping Online Can Put Money Back in Your Pocket

Shopping online can yield tens of thousands of bonus miles and points per year.  An extra minute or two tacked onto each purchase isn't much when you think about the value that time can generate.

This isn't the first time I've written about a great mileage earning deal at Sephora or a successful triple/quadruple dip.  These are great anecdotes to share because they illustrate the point (get it) that with a small amount of extra time, you can generate an outsized return on your online shopping spend.  Especially if you redeem the miles and points earned for premium travel.

eBay is pretty consistently selling gift cards at a discount.  A few weeks ago they were selling $110 Sephora gift cards for $100.  Emily is always good for a Sephora purchase and I can usually find some things on the "need this" list as well.

March 20, 2016

United Premier Tracker Overview

In terms of loyalty, Starwood and United are my primary hotel and airline programs.  I've been loyal to both really since college and as my work and leisure travel patterns have evolved over the years, both companies continue to provide products that work for me.

Starwood launched a dashboard last year that shows stats towards elite status (both status year and lifetime).  United's done the same in recent months at mystatus.united.com.

To view your tracker, login to your United MileagePlus account and click on "View Premier Progress."

Click on "View Premier Progress"
Unfortunately, there isn't a ton of additional information beyond what is shown on the my account page.  But it's cool to see the data in infographic terms and hopefully United will build this out a bit more in the future.

Current and lifetime stats
I've primarily flown United for 15+ years and am still only at 459,000 lifetime miles.  At this rate, it's going to take another 15-20 years to hit million miler status.  Time to step it up I guess!

Progress towards status year goals

February 28, 2016

Picking the Right Credit Card for Hotel Stays

When you have 20+ credit cards, you want to use them like a swiss army knife.  Co-branded hotel credit cards can often provide lucrative spending bonuses so it makes sense to pay attention to which card you're using to pay for hotel stays and incidentals.  Throw in an international stay and you've got an even more complicated situation due to foreign transaction fees (you'll want to avoid these at all costs).

If I'm working on minimum spend towards a credit card sign-up bonuses, I'll use the card for a hotel stay regardless of the return.  Assume you're working towards a 50,000 point bonus (average these days) for $3,000 in spent.  You're effectively receding a bonus of nearly 20 points per dollar so unless you have massive spending ability, it makes sense to knock the minimum spend out first.

Beyond that, I'll look to the co-branded card (assuming I have one) of the hotel chain I'm staying with.  If it's an international stay, the card must also have no foreign transaction fees.

February 14, 2016

Finding a Star Alliance Partner Confirmation Number

For my upcoming trip to Tokyo, I used United miles to book my trip home on ANA.  Obtaining the ANA confirmation number allows me to select seats and make sure that the award ticketed properly.  Typically, this would require a phone call to United or ANA to retrieve the partner (in this case ANA) confirmation number.  Sometimes, United will make the confirmation number available within the booking on their own website.  I've found this to work for ANA, Air Canada, Turkish, and Air India.  I haven't had luck with Thai or Lufthansa.

United makes it easy to view (some) partner confirmation numbers

To view the partner confirmation number, view your reservation and click on the "view additional confirmation numbers" link.  If an additional confirmation number is available, it will be shown within the modal.  Write down the confirmation number.  You can then enter the confirmation number (often called a booking reference number with international airlines) along with some combination of your name to retrieve the reservation on the partner airline's website.  This should enable you to validate the award ticketed properly, select seats, meals, etc...and save you a phone call!



Huge Improvements to United Award Search

Continuing on the theme of United customer experience enhancements...United overhauled their website last year and the changes were mostly negative.  While the UI has been improved, functionality seemed to go backwards.  Expert mode was removed, (now back) logging in was made more difficult, and searching for awards was made more challenging for a variety of reasons.  Notably, the ability to search for nonstop flights was removed.

Well good news...United has now added back the ability to search for a nonstop award and applied the feature to their "calendar" page where you can search for nonstop awards two months at a time. This is a great enhancement.

Here's how to take advantage.  Go to United.com and login if you have status to see even more award space (United makes additional award inventory available for elite members).

On the "book travel" screen, you'll want to click the "Search for award travel" and "Nonstop" checkboxes.  

Searching for nonstop awards on United's new website

Click search and you'll see the 2 month calendar.

2 months of award availability between LAX and NRT

You can see all of the days across a 2 months window where United has nonstop award availability between two cities.  In this case, LAX and Tokyo's Narita airport.  A white box means no saver (low level) availability, yellow means there is economy saver availability, blue means premium availability, and green means both economy and premium availability at the saver level.

It's now SO much easier to piece together a complicated award.  By searching nonstop availability between two cities and then piecing multiple segments together, you can much more effectively find award space to make that dream itinerary a reality.

Thanks United for making our lives easier!

January 31, 2016

Booking Marriott Awards When You're Short On Points

Earlier in the week I wrote about booking Marriott PointsSavers.  I was roughly 15,000 points short needed for the redemption.  Marriott will let you book the reservation without sufficient points which is an amazing part of their program.  During the booking process you can either purchase additional points (bad deal) or earn the points through another source (good deal).  I knew I had points coming from the Chase Marriott Visa and that my statement would be closing in a week or so.

I made the booking as normal.  You can see the on-screen messaging around not having sufficient points in the screenshot below.



Everything about the reservation processed normally.  I received an email confirmation and was able to see the reservation in my account.  A week later, the points posted to my Marriott Rewards account and I was able to order the "e-certificates" for the free nights.


Kudos to Marriott for offering this feature.  I'm not aware of any other major hotel loyalty program that allows members to do this.  Locking in a hotel award is a key part of trip planning - especially since you can typically cancel fee free.  Being able to do so without sufficient points is even better!

January 27, 2016

Booking Marriott PointSavers

After our trip to London and Abu Dhabi, we're going to spend a couple of days in New York.  Both of us have stayed all over NYC and haven't really found a favorite hotel.  The W Union Square is great but a pricey points redemption.  The Andaz Fifth Avenue is another favorite but we're blowing 85,000 Hyatt points in London and Abu Dhabi so we were looking for something in one of our "other" programs...meaning Hilton, IHG, or Marriott.


Fairfield Inn or New York EDITION?

I loved my stay at the New York EDITION and the London EDITION is one of our joint favorites...anywhere in the world.  We are hoping to check out the Miami EDITION as somepoint in 2016.  I had 65,000 Marriott points in my account so figured that wouldn't be sufficient.  The hotel is a category 8/Tier 3 hotel meaning it would normally cost 50,000 points per night.  Thanks to Marriott's PointSavers, (a program I didn't even know existed) the hotel is actually discounted for the dates we were looking at to 40,000 points per night.  So 80,000 points gets you a $500 per night hotel room for 2 nights - that's basically 1.25 cents per Marriott point - WAY higher than a typical redemption.  You can see that the Fairfield Inn is also pricing at 80,000 points for 2 nights yet the cash rate is 50% of the New York EDITION.

I bet you can guess which property we picked.  Marriott will even let you book an award stay without sufficient points in your account.  In this case I was 15,000 points short but knew I had points coming.  More on this in a future post.

Thanks to Marriott for saving us 20,000 points on this awesome redemption!

January 23, 2016

Getting TSA Precheck for Free

One of the must have travel tools these days is TSA Precheck (stylized with a check mark for some unknown branding reason).  I've saved countless hours breezing through security while my shoes stay on, and my liquid bag/laptop stay in my backpack.  It's amazing.  For international travelers, Global Entry is a life saver.  No waiting in immigration lines to talk to an officer - you hit the kiosk, answer some questions and snap a selfie.  You're through in a handful of minutes.  This has enabled us to make tight international to domestic connections.  A huge benefit when you're tired and just want to get home.  Both Emily and I have TSA Pre with our Global Entry.  You can get TSA Pre on it's own but if you're going to take even one international trip (it's good for 5 years) in the next 5 years, you should apply for Global Entry.

The fee is $100 and I think worth it.  You can do better than that though.  There are a couple of credit cards that provide a $100 credit towards the fee every 5 years.

American Express Platinum:


Citi Prestige:


Both Emily and I are in the middle of our 5 year "term."  My parents are headed to Europe this summer for their anniversary and they have a tight connection coming home.  I suggested that they get Global Entry for their upcoming trip which will also give them TSA Precheck for their domestic travel.  We both used our fee waivers from previous cards so had a couple left.  My parents applied and they put one application on my Amex Platinum and the other on my Citi Prestige.  The fee credit is applicant "agnostic" so you can "sponsor" a friend or family member if you already have Global Entry or TSA Pre.

My Amex Platinum credit has already posted.


While this benefit is often trumpeted as a $100 credit, in reality you can only get it once every 5 years.  So if you're keeping the card and paying the annual fee, it's more like $20 a year.  That said, I was happy to save my parents $200 and I know that there travel experience will be much improved once they are fully enrolled for Global Entry!

January 9, 2016

Citi Prestige $250 Air Travel Credit Overview

I've periodically written about the Citi Prestige card but have yet to do a full overview (forthcoming). The card is probably the best "new" card on the market given the extensive list of benefits and directly competes with the American Express Platinum Card at the upper end of the market.

One of the best benefits of the card ($450 annual fee) is the $250 annual air travel credit.  This is a straight $250 reimbursement for air travel including airline tickets.  This differs from the Platinum Card which requires some finagling (i.e. buying gift cards in smaller increments) to get the $200 credit to trigger as "cash."

The credit is a (calendar year) annual benefit meaning you can signup for the card now and receive the $250 credit in 2016.  You're also entitled to the benefit in 2017.  So in theory you're paying $450 in fees to get $500 in air travel reimbursement - assuming you consider that close to cash which I do. Anecdotally(and it seems the example below supports this) you can actually get the credit for December spend as long as your December billing statement has closed.

Here's how Citi defines the Air Travel Credit:

"Airline Fees are defined as purchases made with airlines including Air fares, baggage fees, lounge access and some in-flight purchases. Please allow 1-2 billing cycles after the qualifying air travel expense is charged to your Card Account for statement credit(s) to be posted to the account."

I've had no trouble with the credit posting automatically much faster - usually in a handful of business days.

Last week, I booked a United domestic flight for our Etihad First Class Apartments trip and the credits have already posted!



Kudos to Citi for creating such a great benefit and supporting it with IT that actually works!

January 3, 2016

10,000 Mile AA Rebate Posted

I recently picked up the Citi American Airlines Advantage card for Emily after she received a sweet targeted offer in the mail.  The card offers a 10% (up to 10,000 miles) annual rebate on award tickets booked with American Airlines miles.  While the card hasn't even arrived yet, the 10,000 mile bonus for 2015 already posted!

10,000 Mile Rebate from AA

I booked our award on Etihad using miles from Emily's account and the rebate posted the same day!  I suspect that we'll be able to earn the rebate again in 2016 when we book our next award.  I didn't expect the rebate to trigger so fast - in the past it has definitely taken more like a week to post.  This is turning about to be quite the deal - 60,000 miles for meeting the minimum spend + a 10,000 mile rebate in both 2015 and 2016 with no annual fee for the first year!

December 27, 2015

Amex Offers Saved Me $1000 in 2015

I've written about American Express Amex Offers a number of times.  Amex really steps up their game at the end of the year and this year was no exception.  I was able to add awesome Amex Offers from places I was going to spend money anyway (i.e. Amazon, Uber, Saks, Instacart) to multiple cards by opening multiple windows and adding the offer to each card.  I was able to add the Amazon offer ($15 off $60 in spend) to 6 of the cards - that's basically $90 in "free" money since you can buy pretty much anything at Amazon.

Adding Amex Offers to your card account is easy

While the year isn't over yet, we're already at $958 in savings across 7 American Express cards.  That is way more than the Amex annual fees we paid ($640) in 2015.

Savings on food, hotels, luggage, and more!

It is super easy to add the offers to your card.  You can add via Facebook or Twitter but I prefer to check out the mobile app because scrolling through the offers is most efficient when there is a long list (I currently have around 85 available offers on my Amex SPG Card).

Once the offer is added, go meet the minimum spend threshold online or in-store and you should receive an email informing you that you've triggered the Amex Offer.  In my experience, credits post in 2-3 days.  You can also stack Amex Offers with other promotions or even buy a gift card to trigger the discount.  I was able to trigger the $80 W Hotels offer by booking Emily a "prepaid" rate at a W in New York in January - even though the stay was outside of the promotional window.

Kudos to Amex for not only launching but continually improving this program with improved offers each year!

December 24, 2015

An Easy Retention Offer from Barclays

Annual fees (waived for the firs year) on several credit cards in my "card box" were set to bill in January.  I was hoping for retention bonuses on all three but only lucked out on one.  I was able to cancel the other two cards via online chat in a combined 15 minutes.  I called in to Barclays regarding the upcoming $89 fee on my American Airlines Advantage Aviator Red (fka US Airways Dividend Miles MasterCard).

I was transfered to a retention specialist who quickly gave me two options.  Downgrade to a no annual fee version of the card (far less benefits) or keep the card with another year fee-free. 

I chose option # 2 to take advantage of the card's offerings (10,000 mile rebate on awards, free checked bag, priority boarding, etc...) when flying/redeeming American Airlines miles.  The call took all of 7 minutes and saved me $89 - although I wasn't going to pay that anyway.

I was also targeted for a bonus that offers 2x additional miles on supermarket, movie theater, and utility payment purchases.  


I opted in and will absolutely be pre-paying my utility bill to take advantage of this offer.  I'm reading the offer as 2x additional miles up to 2,500.  So I believe I can put $1,250 in spend on the card to earn 3,750 total miles which I value at $75.  

Barclays seems to be generous with retention bonuses (as well as other targeted earning bonuses) even without much spend on the card.  It's always worth the 5-10 minutes to call in and ask about your options!

December 13, 2015

eBags Price Guarantee Comes Through

I primarily travel with a Briggs & Riley Baseline carry-on that I've had for about 5 years.  Even on a long international trip, I try to bring the carry-on if possible.  The bag is indestructible and I highly recommend it.

Emily is typically packing a bit more (we have a giant Briggs and Riley as well) and so we're usually checking a bag for her.  Somehow I was able to convince her to carry-on to Dubai which is an accomplishment I'm quite proud of.  On the way home, we had accumulated enough stuff done a fair amount of shopping and needed to check bags home.  We ended up with 4 checked bags and several carry-ons which was just too many bags to be lugging 11,000 miles home.

Giant Briggs & Riley lost...then found

So I've been looking for a new "medium sized" bag for future travels.  You can generally find good deals on luggage at Amazon and department stores across the year...and it seems luggage is a great thing to purchase late in the year as well - lots of sales.  I've also purchased several bags from Denver based eBags over the years and have been pleased with their pricing.

I actually found the 25" TravelPro we were interested in purchasing on eBags and Amazon.  The price was nearly $50 cheaper on Amazon (prices have changed several times since my purchase) so I sent in a "price guarantee" to eBags to see if they would match.  A day later I received an email that they would match and provide a 10% discount!

This was actually a quintuple dip:

1)  I purchased the bag for $175 on eBags who provided a $53 credit back to my card for the price match + 10% discount
2)  I put the purchase on my Starwood Preferred Guest Amex which triggered a $10 eBags Amex Offer
3)  I made the purchase through an online shopping portal offering me 10% off the entire purchase
4)  I used past eBags credit (about to expire) to save another $16 on the bag
5)  I earned 5% for a future purchase at eBags which I'll use for holiday shopping

My true out of pocket expense for the bag was about $73 - not bad!

November 11, 2015

Buy Alaska Miles at 50% Off

Alaska Airlines is selling miles at a pretty significant discount through 12/23/15.  The sale is actually a "mystery" sale where you enter your Mileage Plan number and either receive a 35%, 40%, or 50% offer.  My account was targeted for the 40% bonus which brings the cost (if you purchased the maximum 60,000 miles) down to 1.97 cents per mile.


While I wouldn't speculatively purchase a big chunk of Alaska miles, if you are looking to book a premium cabin award on either Cathay Pacific or Emirates, this would be a great way to top up your account.


I actually purchased a handful of Alaska miles during the last sale in order to top up my account and book our Emirates first class flights to the Maldives.  I booked those flights for 90,000 miles each way per person.  Through this promotion, you can get pretty close to that amount for $1,650 + tax.  While you are limited to 60,000 (used to be 40,000) miles per transaction, there's no limit to the number of transactions you can make.

If you (hypothetically) had 0 Alaska Mileage Plan miles and wanted a roundtrip Emirates first class ticket to the Maldives, that would cost you 180,000 total miles and about $40 in fees.  If you were targeted for the 50% bonus, you could make 2 transactions for a total of $3,546 and purchase the 180,000 miles needed for the roundtrip award.  While I certainly would prefer to earn miles in other ways, this approach would still dramatically reduce the cost of something VERY expensive.

Here's an example Emirates first class flight to the Maldives:


$3,546 is still a lot cheaper than nearly $22,000!!!!

October 28, 2015

Tracking Point Balances with AwardWallet

AwardWallet is one of my favorite miles and points tools.  Staying organized in this hobby is critical to success and keeping track of point balances, expiration dates, free night certificates, etc... would be much more challenging without a place to aggregate all that information.

If you're getting started with miles and points, I highly recommend signing up for an AwardWallet account and adding all of your loyalty program accounts.  It will make life much easier for you as your start to accumulate points.  They even have a new interface (in beta) which I like a lot.

To that end, feel free to signup using my link and signup with coupon code free-fyvqsm (10 total) for a free upgrade to a plus account.

All the Right Points at Work

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to talk a bit about miles and points to a group (40+) of co-workers as part of our monthly "lunch and learn" sessions.  The feedback was overwhelmingly positive and I think I picked up a blog reader or two in the process.

Given many of the attendees were new to the miles and points world, I've posted a few introductory links below.  Looking forward to hearing about your own travel hacking success stories as you get started!

Getting Started Page

How I Started

Credit Cards & Travel Hacking Overview

Miles & Points vs. Cashback

Managing Credit Card Annual Fees

I'm going to work on a few additional introductory posts including finishing my 5 Steps to a (Nearly) Free Trip series.  Feel free to email me with any additional questions about getting started!