Subscription week: "old" Blue Cash

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[As I explained Sunday, this week I'm re-running 5 "classic" Free-quent Flyer Blog posts, with the hope that readers, both regular and new, will decide that this blog is worth supporting through a weekly or monthly PayPal subscription. Today's post is by a huge margin my most popular, and highlights a key difference between this blog and many others in the travel hacking space: since I don't and have never received any affiliate money from credit card companies, I can write about incredibly lucrative but – because of affiliate agreements – essentially ignored products like what's known as the "old" Blue Cash card, from American Express. While the post has aged well, there are a few oversights: Reward Dollars can be redeemed for statement credits, not cash directly deposited into a bank account. Additionally, my claim that American Express doesn't code 7-11 store locations as gas station was hyperbolic; 7-11 stores with gas pumps are frequently coded as gas stations by American Express. This post originally ran on January 3, 2014 — see that original post for comments.]

I wrote early last month about my search for a new "workhorse" card to replace my Citi ThankYou Preferred card which, during my first 12 billing cycles, earned 5 ThankYou points per dollar spent at grocery stores, gas stations, and drug stores. With just a week left in that promotional period, imagine my excitement in seeing this FlyerTalk thread.

By opening this link in a new browser, "private browsing" session or "incognito" window, it's still possible to apply for what people are calling the "old" Blue Cash card. This "old" card has a totally different earning structure than the "new" Blue Cash Everyday and Blue Cash Preferred:

  • On your first $6,500 in purchases made with the card: 1% cash back at gas stations, grocery stores, and drug stores, and 0.5% everywhere else;
  • after spending $6,500: 5% cash back at gas stations, grocery stores, and drug stores, and 1% cash back everywhere else.

In other words this card is roughly comparable to the Citi ThankYou Preferred offer that's expiring for me, and I plan on applying for this card later today (after I decide on some additional cards for this impromptu application cycle).

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

  • Your net annual earning rate will be slightly less than 5% because of the lower earning rate on your first $6,500 in spend;
  • but unlike ThankYou points, which must be redeemed for mortgage checks, student loan rebate checks, or travel through the ThankYou booking tool in order to get a full 1 cent per point in value, Blue Cash "reward dollars" can be redeemed directly for cash;
  • 5% cash back is only awarded on gas purchases of up to $400;
  • and in my experience American Express does not code 7-11 store locations as gas stations and does not award gas station bonus points for purchases there.

Here on the blog I tend not to make explicit recommendations, since every reader's travel goals and application timelines are different.

In this case I'm inclined to make an exception and say that if you are able to take advantage of these bonus categories, you should strongly consider applying for this card right now. This offer will not last forever, and you will regret not carrying this card when you start reading about how much cash back other members of the community are earning.

Subscription week: Evolve Money

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[As I explained Sunday, this week I'm re-running 5 "classic" Free-quent Flyer Blog posts. One of the most exciting new developments this year in the world of manufactured spend was Evolve Money, an online bill payment service that, when launched, allowed tens of thousands of dollars in monthly online bill payments to a variety of merchants, which could be funded with prepaid debit cards. When the service first launched, payments could even be funded with credit cards, something my PayPal subscribers learned about all the way back in February, 2014. Unfortunately, that loophole was closed soon after a mainstream blogger publicized it. Much of the original research into Evolve Money took place on this blog, and can be accessed through my "Evolve Money" tag. This is the post that began it all. It originally ran on January 16, 2014 — see that original post for comments.]

HOW EVOLVE MONEY WORKS

Evolve Money is a service that allows you to pay your bills online – for free – using a Visa, MasterCard, or Discover debit card, REloadit packs (available at some grocery stores), or a product called "Evolve Pay Bucks."

You can create an account to store your payees, or use the service as a guest and input your bill information each time you pay a bill.

After searching their database of payees, you select the biller you want to pay, enter your account information, then choose your payment method.

That's it. It took me a few seconds to set up an account, add my MasterCard debit card, and make a number of experimental bill payments. I'll keep my readers updated with those results.

WHAT PAYEES ARE AVAILABLE?

There's good news and bad news on this front.

First, the bad news: as far as I can tell no bank's credit card division is listed as an eligible payee.

The good news is there are a lot of payees that are potentially lucrative. The list is incredibly long (it's free to search, so go check it out for yourself), but here are some highlights I found:

  • Mortgages: Bank of America Mortgage, JP Morgan Chase Mortgage, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, PNC Mortgage, Countrywide Home Loans, etc.;
  • Student Loans: Federal Student Loans - All Servicers, Discover Private Student Loans, Citibank Loan/Private Student Loan/Line of Credit, Acs Educational Services, Great Lakes Educational Loan Services, etc.;
  • Savings Accounts: Utah Educational Savings Plan, TD Ameritrade 529 College Savings Plan, Schwab 529 College Savings Plan, etc.;
  • Insurance Premiums: Blue Cross Blue Shield (every state);
  • Tax Payments: hundreds and hundreds of city and county revenue departments are listed.

WHICH DEBIT CARDS WORK?

I can confirm that the PayPal Business Debit MasterCard does work for bill payments, and these transactions are processed as signature purchases which should earn 1% cash back. My regular readers know what that means: you can load your PayPal account using PayPal My Cash cards purchased with a rewards-earning credit card, then earn 1% cash back liquidating those funds paying bills you wouldn't ordinarily be able to pay with a credit card. You'll be earning your credit card rewards – and a small profit – for transactions that wouldn't otherwise earn rewards.

If you are currently paying a mortgage or student loan using withdrawals from your bank account, take a look at the list of available payees and decide whether you can take advantage of this service instead and earn rewards on those payments.

It could happen to you: improperly activated OneVanilla cards

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There are a few situations that are guaranteed to strike horror into the heart of any travel hacker: denied boarding on a cabotage fare; having to make or change a reservation through a BA call center; making a United connection in Chicago.

If you manufacture spend, you may lose sleep over closed bank accounts or American Express financial reviews, but there's no worse possibility than your money just...disappearing.

Last week, I bought an improperly activated OneVanilla card. Now that the situation has been resolved, I want to share my experience.

Why are OneVanilla cards improperly activated?

In the last few years, I've purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars in OneVanilla prepaid debit cards. While they're not as useful as they once were, due to the recent inconvenience of using them at Walmart and new limits on Evolve Money bill payments, for example, they're still useful for Serve loads at Family Dollar store locations and other debit transactions, like grocery store money orders (where available) and Kmart bill payments.

On Thursday, for the first time, next to the OneVanilla card on my receipt, instead of the word "ACTIVATED" I saw the word "ACCEPTED," and below that the phrase "PREPAID CARD ACTIVATION WILL OCCUR WITHIN 24 HOURS:"

It's impossible to say for sure why the card was improperly activated, but in hindsight one thing has assumed greater importance in my mind: while purchasing the cards, I somehow ran up against the $5,000 daily CVS purchase limit, even though this was my first purchase at CVS that day. Whether it was a computer error or a function of the daily cutoff time CVS's servers use, it was an ill omen.

What to do if your card is improperly activated

Sure enough, when I attempted to check the card's balance online and over the phone, the system responded that no such card existed.

I remembered reading reports from some folks on FlyerTalk that their cards sometimes weren't immediately activated, so I waited the full 24 hours before calling into the number on the back of my OneVanilla card: 1-877-770-6408.

It was a fairly simple matter to reach an actual person, to whom I explained the situation. He looked up the OneVanilla card's number, saw it was improperly activated, and then needed to collect some information:

  • The date and time of the purchase;
  • the STR# number from the receipt;
  • the last four digits of the card's packaging (also available on the receipt);
  • the address and phone number of the store where I purchased the card.

Finally, he asked that I fax or e-mail a copy of the receipt and my driver's license. I opted to e-mail the documents to the address he provided, USConsumed@incomm.com.

While the customer service representative said the activation process could take up to 3 business days, I found my OneVanilla card had been activated by this morning, or a day before the self-imposed deadline he gave me.

While for some reason I was still unable to use the OneVanilla card at Family Dollar this morning (a problem I've had once before), I was able to fund an Amazon Payment with it, and consider this particular case "closed."

Lessons learned and reinforced

While my fairly meticulous bookkeeping made this situation a minor annoyance, rather than a catastrophe, it certainly drove home the importance of tracking every dollar of manufactured spend until it's safely ensconced in an FDIC-insured bank account or has posted as a payment to a credit card.

Here are three more tips to keep yourself out of trouble:

  • Check receipts immediately to make sure they correspond to the packaging of the cards you purchased. After opening the packaging, write down the last four digits of the card number (I write the digits directly on the packaging);
  • If a card hasn't activated properly, point it out to the cashier immediately and see if they can resolve it in-store. If not, note the cashier's name in case you later need to file a chargeback with your credit card company;
  • The sooner you contact the prepaid card issuer, the sooner the problem can be resolved. Don't just hope an improperly activated card will eventually be activated.

Subscription week: Walmart bill payments

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[As I explained yesterday, this week I'm re-running 5 "classic" Free-quent Flyer Blog posts. Today's post is a true classic, the first clear, public description of one of the most useful and flexible manufactured spending techniques: Walmart bill payments. The post that launched a thousand trips, it's still one of the most versatile and flexible techniques available, although there have been changes: for example, American Express-issued credit cards are no longer directly payable at Walmart. There are also a few oversights that are embarrassing in retrospect (Discover bill payments cost $1.50, not $1.88, for 3-day bill payments). This post originally ran on August 26, 2013 — check out the comments there.]

Walmart allows you to pay credit card bills using any PIN-based debit card

HOW IT WORKS

Walmart Money Center registers and, in locations without a separate Money Center, Customer Service registers are integrated with the CheckFreePay bill pay network. At any such register, you can ask to make a credit card bill payment and use any PIN-based debit card to pay the bill and the associated fee.

You can use up to 4 PIN-based debit cards per bill pay transaction, while paying a single transaction fee.

Credit and debit cards are issued by banks: Chase credit cards are issued by Chase, American Express credit cards are issued by American Express, Bank of America credit cards are issued by Bank of America. However, each card is also linked to a payment network: Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover.

The single most important thing you have to know in order to take advantage of this technique is that when you pay your credit card bills at Walmart, you must make the payment out to the payment network, not the issuing bank.

So even though your Chase Sapphire Preferred Visa Signature card and your Chase Ink Plus MasterCard are both issued by Chase, to pay your credit card bills at Walmart the payee for the Sapphire Preferred will be "Visa" and the payee for the Ink Plus will be "MasterCard."

WHAT IT COSTS

This section is based only on my experiments at my local Walmart store locations: your experience may differ.

There are two price points in the CheckFreePay system at Walmart: $1 "3 business day" payments and $1.88 "next business day" payments. Unfortunately, not every credit card payment network has both payment speeds enabled. Here are the results of my experiments:

  • Visa: Next business day only ($1.88)
  • MasterCard: Next business day only ($1.88)
  • American Express: Next business day ($1.88) or 3 business day ($1)
  • Discover: Next business day ($1.88) or 3 business day ($1)

So if you want to make a credit card payment to a Visa credit card at my local Walmart, you must pay $1.88: the $1 payment option is not available. This may vary by store location or employee. 

WHY IT MATTERS

Ever since the Federal Reserve issued new regulations forcing prepaid card issuers to allow their cards to be used as "true" PIN-based debit cards, we've been in a very exciting time for travel hacking. For example, Chase allows up to $2,600 in free gift card purchases per Chase credit card, per rolling 30-day period. Likewise, many grocery stores (a common bonus category) allow you to purchase $500 Visa and MasterCard gift cards at a typical cost of $5.95-$6.95.

Besides gift cards, in many parts of the country it's still possible to buy Vanilla Reload Network reload cards at drug stores like CVS, and PayPal Cash cards at 7-11 store locations that are processed as gas stations. 

The problem in this era of virtually unlimited manufactured spend is liquidating prepaid cards once you've purchased them.

Bluebird is a free option, loadable at all Walmart registers using PIN-based debit cards up to $1,000 per day and $5,000 per month, but those loads count against the same $5,000 calendar month limit as Vanilla Reload Network cards.

Gobank is another great option I've extensively covered, but while it's free to load Gobank accounts at Walmart up to $1,100 per transaction and $2,500 per day, it's a Green Dot product that's subject to shutdown if you exceed undisclosed monthly limits or if your loading pattern is deemed "unusual."

PayPal has a $4,000 rolling 30-day load limit using PayPal Cash cards, but unloading your account can cause problems since PayPal is notoriously sensitive to abusive behavior.

All of those problems have now gone away: you no longer need an intermediate product to liquidate your prepaid cards.  Instead, you can bring up to 4 PIN-based debit cards per bill pay transaction to your local Walmart and at a cost of $1 or $1.88 send the card balances directly to your credit card.

THE RISKS

There are 3 primary risks to this technique that I want to be perfectly clear about up front.

First, there's the risk of having an account shutdown. There are many reports of MyVanilla Debit cards being shutdown without warning, and it's still unclear what loading and unloading pattern is safest. I don't have an inside line on MyVanilla Debit's fraud prevention algorithms, but I believe cash advances are probably the riskiest method of unloading the cards, because of the high limits and fixed $1.95 fee. Large Walmart transactions are probably a close second. So while this is a great technique for liquidating MyVanilla Debit balances, you still should be careful about spacing your loads and unloads out over the course of the month. And of course, even being careful can't guarantee that your account won't be closed.

Second, there's the risk that Walmart will consider your payments suspicious activity. There are lots of reports in this thread of Walmart employees being prompted to record customers' Social Security numbers, home addresses, and other personal identifying details. Those requests seem to be triggered by credit card payments over $2,000, although the exact level that triggers scrutiny isn't clear. Many people are made uncomfortable by disclosing this sensitive information to Walmart tellers. It appears the best way to avoid doing so is to keep your bill payments below $2,000, although this will raise your cost per dollar of manufactured spend.

Finally, when it comes to Walmart there's always the risk of employee incompetence. This can take a number of different forms. Of course, an employee may simply not know how to make these bill payments. Alternatively, there are reports that some store locations demand that you physically bring your most recent credit card statement into the store. Further, some store locations refuse to allow bill pay transactions to be funded by gift cards (cards that don't have your name embossed on the front). Finally, some employees may feel uncomfortable with multiple, high-value transactions, and simply refuse to help you. Be aware that this is not corporate policy: you've just found an incompetent employee, or a store location with an over-vigilant store manager. Visit another location or return at a different time.

These are manageable risks, but they do exist and you should be aware of them before beginning to use this technique. As always, I recommend starting slowly, using money that you can afford to be temporarily without if something goes wrong, and watching your credit card statements carefully to make sure that each payment posts correctly.

CONCLUSION

This is a very basic overview of this technique. It works and it can increase your volume of manufactured spend while only slightly increasing your cost per point.

Tomorrow, I will provide my analysis of the volume and cost per dollar of manufactured spend that you can achieve using this technique, and I'll compare it to some other popular techniques.

Later in the week I'll discuss some of the most lucrative opportunities this technique unlocks and share my own plans to use it going forward.

If you've already been using this technique, please share your experiences in the comments. How long do your CheckFreePay payments take to post? Do they post at the beginning or end of the business day? What problems have you had dealing with Walmart employees, and how have you resolved them?

Introducing subscription week!

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About 5 months ago, I left my job in New England to move to the upper Midwest, where I've been happily plugging away on this blog and grinding out a living as a travel hacking enthusiast. I've enjoyed posting more regularly, helping readers, and the freedom that comes from having no one but my readers to answer to.

A snapshot of the Free-quent Flyer empire

After almost 2 years blogging, today this site has an average of 3,519 unique visitors per week, plus around 1,000 more who subscribe to my RSS feed or receive posts by e-mail.

Meanwhile, there are 3 main ways readers financially support the site. First is the use of my referral links, all conveniently assembled on my "Support the Site!" page. The two best performing links so far are my BeFrugal and TopCashBack referral links. Both have long delays between referrals and payouts, but enough people have signed up that I end up hitting BeFrugal's $25 redemption threshold about once a month:

On the other hand, about one TopCashBack referral goes from "pending" to "payable" status each month. You can see this month's hasn't quite reached that status yet:

The second way readers support the site is by bookmarking or clicking through my Amazon.com referral link, which kicks back a small percentage of each purchase to me. Many readers have done so, and I've been earning roughly $10 to $20 per month, for which I'm incredibly grateful to my loyal readers!

The third and most important way readers financially support the site is by signing up for weekly or monthly PayPal subscriptions. In total, I have 120 active PayPal subscribers, most of whom contribute $2 monthly, of which I receive $1.64, after PayPal takes their cut. Others contribute $5 weekly or monthly, which I earn $4.55 on, and a few heroes have signed up for $10 monthly subscriptions, of which I get $9.41. PayPal doesn't have any convenient way of displaying this kind of information, but here's the dashboard:

Last month those subscriptions added up to $309.23 after fees.

Introducing Subscription Week!

As you can see, PayPal subscriptions provide the overwhelming majority of this site's revenue, but 120 active subscriptions means that just 2.6% of my weekly readership, or roughly 0.8% of my monthly readers, have signed up!

That's why this week, I'll be re-running 5 "classic" Free-quent Flyer Blog posts, which I think illustrate the different kinds of content that I hope make this blog worth paying (a nominal sum) for.

If you're a regular reader, I do hope you'll consider subscribing.

And if you're already a subscriber, why not take the opportunity to move from a $2 to $5 subscription, or from a monthly to weekly one?

No matter what, I hope you enjoy this week's classic posts from the archive, starting tomorrow. There are a lot of gems in there – picking out just 5 was the toughest part!

Reminder: status match to Alaska Airlines

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Regular readers may remember my intention to request a status match to Alaska Airlines' MVP Gold status from my current (and soon to expire!) Delta Platinum Medallion status.

Platinum Medallion status is certainly the best value in Skymiles elite status, since it gives free award changes and redeposits (outside of 72 hours of departure). That has long been an invaluable benefit, allowing you to book each leg of an award trip as it becomes available, instead of relying on an entire, round-trip award reservation being available at the low level at the time of booking.

On January 1, 2014, Platinum Medallion status is about to become much less valuable. That's for two reasons:

  • On the earning side, Delta's Skymiles program is going to become "revenue-based," meaning you'll no longer earn twice the number of miles flown in redeemable Skymiles as a Platinum Medallion.
  • On the redemption side, Skymiles will be redeemable for one-way tickets, meaning there's no need to "lock in" low-level seats on one leg of your trip; instead, you can just book one-way reservations as low-level award seats become available.

Alaska Airlines status matches are good through 2015

While I've long planned to request a status match from Alaska Airlines, the FlyerTalk thread on the subject is surprisingly sparse. Most importantly, there's no definite answer to the following question: starting on what date are Alaska Airlines status matches valid through the entire following membership year?

In September one member claimed the cutoff date was November 1, while all the way back in July another member quoted an e-mail from Alaska saying the cutoff date was October 1.

To be safe, yesterday I sent in my status match request without the supporting documentation, so that I could wait if the critical date turned out to be November 1. I wrote:

"Dear sir or madam,

I’m currently a Platinum Medallion elite member of the Delta Skymiles program, and I’m disappointed with the changes Delta has planned for the Skymiles program in 2015.

I’m switching as much of my travel as possible to Alaska, and I’d like to know whether it’s possible to request an elite status match or challenge to Mileage Plan MVP or MVP Gold status based on my current Platinum Medallion status?

If so, could you inform me of the procedure and any additional documentation Alaska requires to process a status match or challenge?"

I almost immediately received back the following automated response:

"Thank you for your interest in our award winning Mileage Plan. To submit your request for a Tier Match, send a copy of both sides of your current elite card, an e-Statement showing current status and your drivers license. If your original email did not include all of these documents, please resubmit with all three attached. Allow 2-4 weeks for processing once we have received your documents. When your Tier Match is complete, you'll receive a welcome email and can check your status at alaskaair.com/myaccount.
Please note that Tier Matches can only be extended once during the life of your account and the status is valid through 12/31/2015.
We look forward to welcoming you into our program and flying with you for many years to come!
Also note, we only offer a Tier Match for: AeroMexico, Air Canada, American, Delta, Frontier, Hawaiian, Jet Blue, Southwest, United, US Airways, and Virgin America" (emphasis mine)

So it's official: get your status match started, and enjoy distance-based redeemable mile earnings for at least another year with Alaska's generous Mileage Plan!

Why would you book a stopover on a one-way trip?

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On Wednesday I saw this post by The Miles Professor explaining how to book stopovers on one-way Alaska Airlines award tickets.

The thing is, it's not immediately obvious why you would ever do this.

As The Miles Professor writes:

"One of my favorite ways to use stopovers is to schedule a stopover in my actual home city and use the stopover to connect two completely different trips."

Of course Alaska Airlines has a zone-based, not distance-based, award chart, so there's no reason you would need to book two round-trip tickets from your home city as two one-way trips with stopovers in your home city. For example, a Seattle resident could book the following two one-way tickets:

  • LAX-SEA (stopover)-BOS
  • BOS-SEA (stopover)-LAX

Each of those tickets would cost 12,500 Alaska Mileage Plan miles, assuming there's low-level award availability. But remember, our hypothetical passenger is a resident of Seattle, so they'd need to find some way to get to LAX in the first place, and some way back from LAX at the end! Each of those one-ways would also cost 12,500, bringing the total cost for 2 roundtrips to 50,000, just as it's supposed to be.

Now, at this point you've probably seen the sleight of hand I'm pulling; in fact our passenger knows better than to spend 12,500 valuable Alaska miles on a short West Coast hop, and instead transfers 7,500 Chase Ultimate Rewards, Starwood Preferred Guest, or American Express Membership Rewards points to British Airways Avios, and ends up with reservations that look like this:

  • SEA-LAX – 7,500 Avios
  • LAX-SEA (stopover)-BOS – 12,500 Mileage Plan
  • BOS-SEA (stopover)-LAX – 12,500 Mileage Plan

Here we've booked two-and-a-half round-trips for the price of one-and-a-half roundtrips. Not bad! Of course our passenger still has to find a way back from LAX if they decide to fly that leg, but even if they don't, they still end up a one-way flight ahead of the game, which isn't nothing.

If that's the obvious use for stopovers on one-way trips, I thought it'd be interesting to see which others I could come up with.

4 reasons to book stopovers on one-way award tickets

  1. See more cities. As you can see in the comments to The Miles Professor's post, you can also book stopovers on one-way Alaska Airlines partner awards, so if you're booking an award ticket on a partner airline like KLM, you can stop over for a few days and enjoy Amsterdam on your way.
  2. Cheap awards to Hawaii and Mexico. Since you can book award tickets from anywhere in the continental United States to Hawaii and Mexico for the same price, which is less than twice the cost of domestic awards, you can book future, onward travel to Hawaii for just 7,500 miles or Mexico for 5,000 miles, compared to the 20,000 and 17,500 Mileage Plan miles, respectively, you'd have to pay to book a separate itinerary.
  3. Position for future flights. I showed one example of this technique above, but you can also use it to position for flights on other carriers. For example, United operates an international hub out of San Francisco, but you might have difficulty finding low-level award space between Seattle and San Francisco on United-operated flights. Instead, you can use your free one-way flight to position to San Francisco on an Alaska Airlines-operated flight.
  4. Because you can. As long as you book your speculative onward connection at the end of your itinerary, you may as well tag an extra leg onto your reservation. Who knows, you might even end up using it! Just don't book a speculative connection at the beginning, since a missed first leg will typically cancel your entire itinerary.

Conclusion

Free one-ways are a fun and easy way to take advantage of airlines' generous award routing rules.

Which reasons to book a stopover on award tickets did I leave out?

Confirmed: multiple same-day Serve loads at Family Dollar

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Back in July I mentioned my intention to load my Serve card at Family Dollar for the time being, using easily-acquired OneVanilla prepaid Visa debit cards, and just last month shared my local store manager's theory about the kinds of limits Family Dollar registers impose on Serve loads.

As I explained in that second post:

"However, using Family Dollar raises its own issues; in particular, you can generally only load a Serve card once per day, per store location. Since I only have one convenient Family Dollar location, that means loading $5,000 in OneVanilla cards over ten days, compared to the 2 days possible at Walmart registers ($2,500 per day)." (emphasis added)

While it's true that I have only one convenient Family Dollar location, it's not precisely true that I have only one local location.

Multiple same-day Serve loads are possible at different Family Dollar locations

A reader had privately e-mailed me to let me know he was able to load his Serve card multiple times on the same day at different Family Dollar locations, so this morning I set off to cruise around the suburbs and collect my own datapoints.

I ended up visiting 3 Family Dollar locations: my own local, convenient location, and two suburban locations:

  • My $500 load went through as usual at my local store;
  • the first suburban location's card readers and PIN pads were out of order;
  • and the second suburban location allowed me to complete a second, $500 load.

My working hypothesis for now is that you can load up to $2,500 per day (Serve's daily cash load limit, per the Serve website), by visiting 5 different Family Dollar store locations.

Family Dollar loads have their drawbacks

Those with access to more store locations will benefit most from this fact, and not just because you need access to 5 stores in order to complete 5, $500 loads.

In addition to the one-load-per-store-per-day limitation, Family Dollar registers also have an overreactive fraud detection algorithm, such that you might be unable to load your Serve card at any given store even once, depending on that store location's previous daily load activity, as I described here.

And of course, as my experience today showed, Family Dollar stores are not necessarily reliable partners; both technical difficulties and undertrained personnel can make life more frustrating that you'd like.

Conclusion

I know there are metropolitan areas with dozens of Family Dollar locations, and for residents of those areas the possibility of multiple, same-day Serve loads using OneVanilla cards is yet another advantage of Serve over Bluebird.

As Serve becomes ever more useful than Bluebird, it seems to me that it must be a matter of time until Bluebird cards are discontinued and Serve remains as American Express's flagship prepaid card product.

Comparing distance- and revenue-based airline loyalty programs

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In 2015, there will be two major distance-based airline loyalty programs based in the United States – American's AAdvantage and Alaska Airlines' Mileage Plan – and two major revenue-based loyalty programs – Delta Skymiles and United Mileage Plus. US Airways Dividend Miles will presumably disappear sometime in 2015, so I won't treat that program here.

A lot of digital ink has been spilled about whether individuals will earn more miles before or after the changes, but I think that's a relatively unimportant question – not just because I earn the overwhelming majority of my airline miles through manufactured spend, rather than flying, but also because it's irrelevant: the changes are coming, on January 1 in Delta's case and March 1 for United.

In other words, what's needed is a forward-looking analysis of earning under the revenue- and distance-based programs under a variety of circumstances.

Example: my 2014 travel projected into 2015

I noticed recently that Delta makes it easy to compute exactly how much better off you'd be crediting your paid miles flown on Delta tickets to Alaska, rather than Delta. I currently have 28,000 Medallion Qualifying Miles, which consist of a 10,000 Delta Platinum American Express bonus, 1,142 Rollover MQM, and 16,858 miles flown this year on paid tickets. Meanwhile, my Medallion Qualifying Dollar balance for the year is $1,150, which gives me a cost per flown mile of 6.8 cents.

Next year, as a Silver Medallion, I would earn 8,050 Skymiles over the course of the year if I credited the same amount of paid travel to Delta. Since I'll be requesting a status match to Alaska's MVP Gold status on October 1, I'd earn 33,716 Mileage Plan miles for the same amount of paid travel on Delta.

Of course, a more fair comparison is to my current Delta Platinum Medallion status, which would earn me 10,350 Skymiles – still roughly a third of the Mileage Plan miles I would earn.

Analysis: comparing apples to apples

You may have seen travel bloggers suggest a "breakeven" point of 20 cents per mile flown: those who spend more than 20 cents per mile will earn more miles under the new system, while everyone else will earn fewer.

This ignores the fact that there will still be distance-based loyalty programs that offer elite bonuses on miles flown. To give a more comprehensive view, I decided to compare the 2015 revenue- and distance-based loyalty programs taking into account both the cost per mile flown and elite status.

Here's the result:

Click to embiggen

As you can see, the actual breakeven cost per mile flown varies tremendously – in both directions. If you're a 25,000-mile-flyer deciding between a United ticket and one operated by American, Delta, or Alaska, know that you need to be spending not 20 cents per mile, but 21.4 cents per mile, to earn as many miles as you would crediting a flight the same distance to Alaska.

A Delta flyer deciding between maintaining Delta Platinum Medallion or Alaska MVP Gold status would need to spend on average 22.22 cents per mile flown to earn as many Skymiles over the course of the year as she would Mileage Plan miles – that's over 3 times more than I actually spend per mile flown on revenue tickets.

Conclusion

This analysis isn't meant to be dispositive: you may value the perks of elite status with Delta or United, like waived award change and cancellation fees, more than the miles you're foregoing by not crediting your flights to Alaska (in the case of Delta) or another Star Alliance partner in the case of United.

But it is an easy way to determine just how many miles you're leaving on the table by doing so.