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Just bought EQP to requalify for IHG Diamond through end of 2025! Since I usually buy miles for 0.5 cents, the $768 to buy 110,000 EQP was only a $218 premium, and I get Diamond again https://buff.ly/3VNGVUu
Ran into the Mexican car insurance scam with Budget in Merida, Mexico 🇲🇽
Base rate was $18 USD a day, but if you didn't get the CDW costing minimum $85 USD a day, I had to put down a deposit of 330,000 MXN / $16,000 USD which obviously got rejected by all my credit cards.
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As a follow up to the guide on how to get to Asia using your transferable points, Adam from The Jet Set Blog commented that he also had a comprehensive guide for Europe. He’s also planning to add guides for each major region, so I’d give him a follow.
I’ve got some reading to do! And now that I will have 100k extra MR points, Alitalia is looking like an increasingly attractive option for business redemptions.
I stumbled upon a very nice and comprehensive guide on how to effectively use your Chase UR, Amex MR, and Citi TYP to redeem for flight awards to Asia the other day. Given that I love travelling to Asia, this was perfect.
What Adam at the Jet Set Blog has compiled is a guide on the cost of awards from North America to Asia as well as details on how to book for every single airline transfer partner for each program. I haven’t found a guide this comprehensive before, and certainly not for the 3 major programs (excluding SPG). I personally got a lot of value out of the Membership Rewards part, as I hadn’t yet figured out what to do with the 50k I received for my PRG as well as the upcoming 100k from the Platinum card I just applied for.
UPDATE: if you used our referral links, could you please let us know? Apparently the referrals are not getting automatically tracked.
Hello everyone!
I’ve been getting bombarded for over a year by FoundersCard (referral link, see end of post for details) to join their program at a lifetime rate of $295/year. That wasn’t very appealing to me at the time, since I couldn’t justify how to get more than $295/year of value from the program. My friends Kenneth and Tonei were telling me about some of the great benefits. I’m going to rank them here as well as a few thoughts:
One of the reasons I switched to T-Mobile is because of the unlimited international data plan. Although the speed is limited to 2G, it’s really taken away the stress about how to get data while travelling. I mostly use it to look up directions, message people, and call taxis, and it has been super useful in situations where there isn’t any free Wi-Fi around.
Previously, my international roaming had been working flawlessly on my Nexus 6P, except for the fact that I had to manually select the T-Mobile compatible network when I arrived into a country. I play around a lot with custom ROMs for my phone though, and I had installed a new update a week or so before I left for Panama.
EDIT: That was fast, as expected. The Amex Platinum link is now down.
Via ChetHazelEyes through reddit r/churning, the American Express Platinum 100k offer is back publicly. It is 100k Membership Rewards points after spending $3k in the first 3 months. I applied, was approved over recon, and confirmed the bonus offer.
You can access the offer through this link:
Well you certainly don’t get to try again, as I found out. I was in Miami on the way back from Panama, chatting with some new travel hacking friends I met on the flight back. We headed over to scan our documents at the Global Entry kiosks. I was going through the standard answer the questions, take a picture, scan your fingerprints, and got the last screen, where it said “Validating information. Times out in 31 seconds”
“I wasn’t even originally supposed to be on this flight!” I exclaimed, as I was getting adjusted in my seat, in Aer Lingus business class going from San Francisco to Dublin.
So what had happened was I was originally booked SFO-JFK-DUB in American Airlines business class, leaving San Francisco Sunday at 8:50am and getting into Dublin at around 7:00am Monday. I got to the airport nice and early for my 8:50am departure, got to the gate… and the 8:50am departure slipped to 9:30am due to some mechanical issues. Nearing departure time again, I got called to the counter by the gate agent.
It occurred to me as I was writing some blog posts that as much as I talk about various individual hacks, I’ve never actually detailed a real set of redemptions I made, how I constructed a trip, and the final costs. I think it’s because they aren’t the most fun to write (because usually they’re not all that novel), but they can actually be pretty fun to read because they demonstrate what’s really possible with travel hacking.
After my first driving adventure on the other side of the road, I went on another trip to a country where you drive on the left side of the road, the land of the rising sun, Japan. Now with some experience, would my next time driving on the left side be as easy?
Before all of that, you might be asking, “Why drive in Japan? Isn’t there a great public transportation system over there?” And the answer is, normally you wouldn’t. The train system in Japan is very extensive, and with options like the JR Pass for tourists, you should be able to get to the majority of tourist areas for free or just with a charge for the last local connection. Plus, driving in Japan is expensive, with pricey car rentals and highway tolls.
A few weeks ago I wrote a post that looked at my travel spending in 2015 with the goal of “keeping myself honest,” and see if I could notice any patterns of spending that I could reduce or eliminate as I progress into the year.
In it, I remarked that, unlike most people, I don’t actually net out my cash back rewards (or equivalents like Capital One Venture ‘Miles’) against my travel expenses, because cash is fungible with all other cash and doesn’t change the fact that I spent the money in the first place.
