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I get a few emails a week from hotels, airlines and credit card companies pushing me to “buy” things with my hard-earned miles. Like this one from American Express:
Perfect, I’m somewhere between a Dyson Vacuum and a MacBook!
Or this one from Chase:
I won’t be fooled, Chase–100 points for $1 is a horrible trade!
Or this one from United:
I can think of nothing more horrible to own than a Racsal Flatts album or “NOW 50”
Why ordering [...]
For those of you saying, “Enough already! How do you get started?” here’s a quick crash course on racking up the points required for a free trip. This is written from the perspective of someone with no frequent traveler points that is starting from scratch.
1. Understand your credit scoreThis is imperative to getting in on the free miles game. Start by reading our Credit Score Crash Course post here. This will give you an idea of what is behind your credit score.
2. Look up your credit scoreBefore going any further, figure out what you’re working with. Please don’t go to just any website for a credit report– there’s a reason [...]
Having recently acquired the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, I knew that Hyatt was a 1:1 ratio transfer partner. The bad thing about the nice hotels in Paris is that they’re expensive in Euros, which means they’re outrageously expensive after making the conversion to USD. While shopping for a way to spend at least one night in a luxury hotel, I had totally ruled out paying $1000+. The only other option is to use points, specifically hotel programs that I could transfer AMEX or Chase points to…
These choices will assuredly put a dent in the travel budget
The goal: Find the [...]
There’s nothing better than double (or even triple!) dipping when it comes to earning miles and points — and credit card shopping portals can help out a ton when it comes to finding good opportunities.
Now, I’m not sure if this is news or not, but it’s definitely news to me: Hotels.com is now a partner in the Chase Ultimate Rewards Mall at a current rate of 3x! This means that if you have the Chase Sapphire Preferred (like McCown and I), you’re getting the following for every $ of Hotels.com spent through the portal:
2.14x normal (2x on travel + 7% annual dividend standard with Chase Sapphire [...]
Credit card signup bonuses are a big part of travelling for free using miles and points — probably the biggest part.
So, what do you do when you pull the trigger and register for that awesome signup bonus just to find that next week (or month) an even better bonus is offered? Luckily, you can often get the credit card issuer to match your offer.
Here’s how I got Chase to give me an extra 20k Ultimate Rewards Points.
The signup bonus for Chase’s Ink Bold and Ink Plus cards have been 50k each for the past few months, however, they made an announcement that for this week only the signup bonus would be increased to 60k each. Feeling like I missed [...]
