Money

$150,000 Blackjack Tournament at Paris Las Vegas: How I did at my first Vegas tournament

$150,000 Blackjack Tournament at Paris Las Vegas: How I did at my first Vegas tournament Ever since I status matched to Caesars Rewards Diamond elite status, I have been receiving various offers on my Caesars Rewards account.  These offers include discounted or free nights, free gift cards with stay, and … Read more

Samsung Rewards with Samsung Pay

Samsung Rewards with Samsung Pay

Samsung Rewards with Samsung Pay Update: Be careful when redeeming Samsung Rewards points for a Reward card.  I exchanged 10,000 Samsung Rewards points for a $50 prepaid Visa card on November 9, 2017.  They added the $50 to a card that expired on December 31, 2017.  That gave me less … Read more

Gift Card Cash Back Laws

Gift cards are an essential tool for many people that are serious about travel. For some, it is a way to lower the cost of travel by purchasing discounted gift cards for hotels, restaurants, or airlines.  As an example, I recently purchased a $200 Hyatt gift card to trigger an Amex … Read more

Roku Stick and Month of Sling for $12.99

While the Roku Stick isn’t the best option for travel (it has a difficult time getting on hotel wifi), it is a handy portable device for watching streaming video. Roku has a ton of “channels” (basically apps): Netflix, Amazon video, HBO, Showtime, Sling, Hulu, YouTube, and so on. The Roku Streaming Stick … Read more

Australia with Miles and Points

Australia with Miles

I had an amazing time flying around the world on Alaska miles this past February for my birthday.  The news of Alaska’s doubling the cost of some partner airline redemptions, I decided it was time to plan my next big trip while my miles still had strong value.  I like … Read more

Daily Getaways 2016 Valuation

Daily Getaways 2016 Valuation

Daily Getaways 2016 Valuation

The US Travel Association is once again running its Daily Getaways promotion.  Beginning April 4 there will be a different offer for a limited time each day.  As was the case last year, there is no added discount for using an Amex card as there has been in previous years.  You can find discounts on rental cars, hotels, and theme parks.  In this post I calculate the Daily Getaways 2016 valuation for the hotel offers.

Likely the most popular offers will be for the hotel stays that, for the most part, come in the form of loyalty points.  Below I have created a grid that shows the cost per point for each of the hotel point offers.

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Hyatt Best Rate Guarantee Change

Hyatt Best Rate Guarantee Change

I don’t hide the fact that I am a big Hyatt fan.  Just take a look at my trip reports; most hotels I stay at are in the Hyatt brand.  I also have been known to use their Best Rate Guarantee (see this previous post) to save money on reservations. … Read more

Psychology of Double Dipping

Recently I’ve been thinking about the psychology of double dipping when it comes to the world of travel — including reselling, manufactured spend, miles/points and credit cards.  I have no doubt that companies have studied this and purposefully use and exploit it to get us to spend more money. One … Read more

$10 Amazon Credit for Using a Citi Card

This may be old news, but I haven’t seen it around before. You can get a $10 Amazon credit just for adding a Citi Card to your account and making it the default 1-Click payment option. I logged into my Amazon app on my iPhone and saw a banner with the … Read more

iPad Mini 4 for $269

iPad Mini 4 for $269

I recently posted about a way to get an iPad Mini 2 for $150.  A brand new iPad Mini was recently released.  For the next two weeks you can get an iPad Mini 4 for $269 and 1,345 Ultimate Rewards.  Currently the iPad Mini 4 16GB is selling for about … Read more

$150 iPad Today

Time for a quick post on how to get a $150 iPad Mini 2 today.  EDIT: Looks like they are extending the sale for another week! Walmart is currently selling the iPad Mini 2 for $199. A good deal on its own, but you can price match to Staples in store … Read more

Citi Prestige vs Premier

Many banks have their own travel rewards system.  Amex has Membership Rewards.  Chase has Ultimate Rewards.  And Citi has ThankYou Points.  The two elite Citi cards that earn TY points are Prestige and Premier cards.  This is a head to head comparison of the Citi Prestige vs Premier MasterCards.  You … Read more