An interesting FlyerTalk thread on blogging and bloggers

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These days I don't spend much time reading other blogs, or FlyerTalk for that matter (although I do periodically post random thoughts on savings and investment in the Saverocity Forum). I'll skim the headlines in my RSS reader for new American Express "Sync" deals, and to see if any techniques are at risk of overexposure, but in general I have better (read: more profitable) things to do with my time than read about Japan Airlines award availability.

Award availability blogging is an interesting niche, it just doesn't have the slightest interest for me.

And of course the fact that so many bloggers recycle the same hoary talking points about the same commission-paying credit cards is another of the many reasons I rarely bother reading them.

Loyalty Traveler needs your pageviews

George, who blogs at TravelBloggerBuzz, recently pointed me towards an interesting thread on FlyerTalk, where some forum members were questioning a recent change in the format and content of the Loyalty Traveler blog.

The original poster posed the following question:

"Seems like there has been a shift from a 10 year+ focus on creative budget travel bookings to very frequent posts on rather ordinary airfare deals from SF Bay Area. 

Has Ric addressed this new direction in any post? What is the motivation for these abrupt changes."

Lo and behold, the blogger himself appeared and gave the following explanation:

"The addition of airfare deals was motivated by a need for more page views for Loyalty Traveler blog. Ad revenue has dropped by more than 50% in the past two years, meaning 100,000 page views pays me less than half what I used to get. I can't publish two blog posts per day anymore and make enough ad revenue to stay afloat.

I'll probably start affiliate links this year too for hotel bookings. 

Too many bloggers are writing in the hotel space these days to allow me to post content in the hotel space that is uniquely different enough from stuff readers see on other blogs. BoardingArea has become the 800-blog gorilla crowding me out. 

I'd love to only write about places to go, but those stories do not generate enough interest to pay a living wage. I started blogging as a lifestyle job, so I can work from home and organize my days the way I want to live my days. For eight years, I have been sustaining my self-employment without the need to sell readers anything from affiliate links."

Motivated blogging is usually bad blogging. It may still be profitable!

Ric obviously knows his business model better than I do, so it may well be that he finds his profit is greater with the addition of West Coast flight deals than it was before.

And as a gleeful dropout from your economy, I understand perfectly well the desire to blog as a "lifestyle job," in Ric's words.

But since I mostly can't stand to read travel blogging, I understand even better his readers' point of view: reading those west coast flight deal posts feels exactly like reading posts written with the sole purpose of generating additional pageviews in order to increase the blogger's revenue.

Turns out, that's what they were.

Conclusion

Obviously it's easy for me to sit here and snipe, since my livelihood (let alone my lifestyle!) doesn't depend on pageviews. Here's a fun chart of my all-time Google Adsense revenue:

On the other hand, it's not just some kind of insane luck that I'm able to make a living writing the posts I want to write, when and how I want to write them. Rather, I set up this enterprise that way (almost) from the beginning.

The way I look at it, I have a simple deal with my readers: I write the best blog I can write, and enough readers sign up for monthly subscriptions to make it worth my time to keep writing. And honestly, when I glance at just the front page of my site, I see a slew of posts that make me think, "damn, this is a great blog."

So here's hoping it stays that way!

Documents responsive to United Danish Kroner mistake fare FOIA request

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A reader passed along and asked that I share some documents provided by the Department of Transportation in response to his FOIA request regarding the Danish Kroner mistake in February, 2015. For those who weren't following the play-by-play, this was the second time I'm aware of the DoT allowing United to revoke tickets that had been issued at an incorrect price, the first being Hong Kong 4-mile mistake awards in July, 2012.

These documents appear to me to be a generic batch of e-mails and files that the Department has decided to send to anyone submitting FOIA requests regarding the Danish Kroner mistake, and they've been heavily redacted. My reader believes, and I'm inclined to agree, that the redactions are not appropriate and obscure several key parts of the decision-making process that would be in the public interest, especially since the department sided with a for-profit corporation against that company's customers.

I'll post an update if there's any movement on that front.

The documents

With all that said, here are the documents themselves. The first 2 pages are the Department's explanation of the contents, pages 3-23 are the internal DoT communications, and the remainder are social media and news reports on the mistake fare.

Riveting stuff.

Anniversary post: your economy doesn't interest me much

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A little history

I graduated from college in 2007, and that fall decided to pursue a longtime dream of mine: teaching English in Russia, where I had studied abroad as an undergraduate. In the fall of 2008, I returned to the United States to look for the kind of white collar, middle class job many of my readers no doubt enjoy.

A few weeks after I landed stateside, I was standing in the atrium of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania watching the stock market collapse as Congress voted down the first version of the TARP legislation. The Great Recession had begun, and I proceeded to scratch out a meager (though cheerful as always) living as a temporary office rat while I applied for hundreds of full-time jobs.

But no one was hiring.

After a year of living hand-to-mouth, I'd had enough and decided to escape the so-called "real world" (which didn't feel particularly real to me) and return to school. I studied in an advanced, federally-funded program to develop Russian fluency, then was admitted to a prestigious doctoral program in Slavic languages and literatures.

It was at that point, settled into a pleasant, walkable New England city with a plethora of CVS stores, that I went from applying for the occasional rewards-earning credit card and meeting minimum spending requirements with Kiva loans, to identifying the most lucrative cards I could use to manufacture spend on an ongoing basis.

My responsibilities at the university were negligible, besides teaching a section of undergraduate Russian each semester and pretending to care about 18th century Russian literature, so I wrote an e-book, manufactured more and more spend, and began writing this blog.

At the same time, I looked around at my classmates and realized that the chances of turning a PhD into the kind of tenure-track position they were all aspiring to were nonexistent. I like to gamble, but I wasn't interested in spending 6 years gambling on a career in academia.

So on May 13, 2014, I left New England and the university behind to dedicate myself to the present endeavor.

Your economy doesn't interest me much

In the last year, I've received one or two comments and e-mails each month either berating or interrogating me about my lack of interest in the traditional job market. As I hope the foregoing makes clear, the traditional job market wasn't interested in me. There was certainly a window, after returning from Russia, when the right corporate gig could probably have lured me into a 40 year career, house in the suburbs, and matched 401(k) contributions.

Entering the job market when I did, those jobs weren't on offer. And rather than hanging onto what was an increasingly-unrealistic fantasy, I adjusted my expectations to suit reality. In the reality I was thrust into, the only bets worth making were sure bets. That meant federally-financed educational programs, guaranteed university funding, and finally working for myself, where my livelihood depends exclusively on my own ingenuity and effort.

Readers seem to have two reactions to my decision. On the one hand, some people try to "explain" to me that my writing and manufactured spending can't consume every waking hour, so I could theoretically work a full-time job in addition to all the extracurricular activities I'm currently doing for fun and profit.

But other readers castigate me for not being "productive" and working a "real job," and those are the comments I have the most difficult time processing. Since no one has yet commented to actually offer me job, I can only conclude that what I'm being blamed for isn't not working, but rather not caring. And they're exactly right. I don't care about your economy.

Your economy just wasn't that into me, and I lost interest.

Caring is so baked into the cake of the American job market that it's no surprise many readers don't even realize they're doing it. But for me, caring would feel hopelessly masochistic. Writing resumes and cover letters, creating online accounts with hundreds of corporate job websites, and submitting application after application in the vain hope of securing the lifestyle many of my readers take for granted is not something I'm capable of doing any longer.

Because I already did it all, and in vain.

Conclusion

I'm nothing if not practical, and I know perfectly well that no deal lasts forever. When manufactured spend dries up completely and my blog subscribers abandon me, you can be sure I'll be there in the mailroom at Goldman Sachs, trying to catch the attention of the bond traders so I can make a quick fortune before destroying the world economy again.

But in the meantime, you'll find me right here. I'll keep writing the best blog I can as long as you keep reading.

Bonus plug

Interested in keeping this project afloat for another year? Consider a monthly blog subscription!

I love last seat availability

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I've written before about the lie of "no-blackout-date" policies at major hotel chains. By guaranteeing access to any standard room at a fixed redemption rate, hotel loyalty programs stave off open revolt from their most desirable properties by refusing to enforce those guarantees.

The US domestic air carriers avoid a similar problem by employing various forms of variable award pricing on flights operated by their own aircraft (partner awards are typically only available at the lowest level). With United Mileage Plus, American AAdvantage, and Alaska Mileage Plan that takes the form of a award chart with one price for a limited number of seats released, and then the ability to purchase all or some of the remaining seats at a higher rate.

Delta SkyMiles chooses not to publish an award chart, so award redemptions on Delta-operated flights cost whatever their website or phone agents say they cost.

Why I love last-seat availability

Many travel hackers seem to make it a point of pride that they will only book award tickets at the lowest award levels. I do not.

I travel hack for two reasons: I love to travel, and I cannot afford to travel as much as I would like to (thanks to all my monthly subscribers — you're doing your part to help!). I square that circle with travel hacking: if I can earn points cheaply enough, then I can redeem them for flights I want to take without paying anything close to the retail price of those flights.

The phrase here is "flights I want to take." If I'm traveling to the Western Montana Fair to catch the rodeo, then I sure as hell better get there in time to see those cowboys. If I want to attend a brother's graduation, I need to get there before he walks, whatever award availability happens to be (usually not great around cap-and-gown season).

Last seat availability on the domestic carriers allows me to take the flights I want to take to get where I want to go, when I want to go there.

I traveled before I travel hacked

What informs my attitude is that I traveled almost as much before I started travel hacking as I do now that I write a slightly popular travel hacking blog.

And it was horrible!

I once flew on Spirit Airlines between Los Angeles and Chicago because that was the cheapest flight when I hit "sort by price" on Kayak. No Big Front Seat, no assigned seating at all, in fact, and my knees drawn up so close to my chest for the 3-odd hours I'm still slightly surprised I survived.

Now I can pick the flights I want, and either pay for revenue tickets at a steep discount thanks to the miracle of price compression, or book award tickets, whether it's at the lowest award pricing level or not.

Know your trade-offs

Now, many readers no doubt object that booking at anything but the lowest award level is a "waste" of miles. After all, booking a 30,000 AAnytime one-way award ticket instead of a 12,500 SAAver award ticket costs an extra 17,500 AAdvantage miles — almost enough for a one-way award ticket to Europe during low season. If you don't have enough miles to pay for your award trip to Europe, you'll have to (insert gasp) pay with cash!

Those might be your trade-offs, but they aren't my trade-offs. When I run out of miles (God forbid, but let's entertain the possibility) and money, then I'll stop traveling until I have more. I have to prioritize the trips I really want to take, then use my leftover miles to jaunt around the world. Fortunately, I have a lot of leftover miles. But when I run out, I won't regret the fact that I took the flights I wanted to take, at a fraction of the price I would have had to pay in cash.

Earn cheaply

Ultimately this comes down to earning your miles and points as cheaply as possible. If you're earning 1 SkyMile per dollar spent with a Suntrust debit card, or 1 AAdvantage mile per two dollars spent with a UFB debit card, every flight operated by Delta or American will always be cheaper with miles than with cash.

By all means, book the cheapest flights that work for you! But what travel hacking has made possible for me is to have a slightly more expansive definition of what "works" for me (that was my last Spirit Airlines flight — and good riddance).

Bonus last-seat availability: I love Amtrak Guest Rewards

No discussion of last-seat availability would be complete without mentioning the wonderful Amtrak Guest Rewards program, which (besides some rather inconvenient blackout dates seeming mostly to do with the school year and national holidays) allows points to be redeemed for every single seat, every single roomette, every bedroom, and every family bedroom on every single train (and connecting Thruway Motorcoach) offered by Amtrak. There is no such thing as "award" availability; if you can buy it with cash, you can buy it with points.

Quick hit: Hotel Hustle Hot Rates

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I'm fond of saying that what travel hacking needs is more facts and less data. Much of affiliate blogging is taken up with listing transfer partners and earning rates, without concern for the ways that people actually earn and redeem their miles and points, and how to do so as lucratively as possible.

If there is a good argument for data over facts, it's the website of Seth Miller, the Wandering Aramean. He has developed a number of tools, some more and some less useful, but one I've been spending a lot of time on lately is Hotel Hustle. Hotel Hustle allows you to search, by airport or city, for properties in eight major hotel loyalty programs. It has a number of bugs which require it to be used in conjunction with another tool like AwardMapper, but it's a great resource.

The other day I noticed that Seth introduced what had the potential to be a very fun addition to Hotel Hustle: Hot Rates.

When I saw him post about Hot Rates on Twitter, I thought it might be an interesting way to see which hotel loyalty points are really worth earning for "aspirational" properties. My thought was that since cash prices have no upward bound (a hotel can theoretically charge any amount for a night), but award prices do have an upward bound (the top of the award chart), outsized per-point values would be most likely to occur at the most expensive properties.

Oddly, that proves to be not at all the case. Since the Hot Rates are powered by users' searches on Hotel Hustle, it's impossible to tell how representative they are, but the vast majority of Hot Rate properties are either airport properties or random mid- and low-tier properties in cities that happen to host one or more huge events each year.

Here's the entirety of the Club Carlson Hot Rate list. Besides the Radisson Blu in Beijing, these are not properties folks are sprinting to redeem their last-night-free benefit:

Anyway, this post isn't meant to be an endorsement or an indictment, just a quick hit making my readers aware of this potentially useful resource.

Hopefully Seth will continue to introduce new features that will eventually make it truly valuable to the working travel hacker, and prove me wrong once and for all about the usefulness of data in this hobby!

Trailing interest charges: the silent killer

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Every travel hacker knows that interest charges (and annual fees) are the flip side of credit card rewards. You may earn 2% on the front end when paying with a credit card, whether you're buying a cup of coffee or manufacturing spend, but if you don't pay off your entire balance in full by the due date on your statement, you'll give it all back and more as your remaining balance accrues interest. On my credit cards rates typically start at 12.99% APR annually and go way, way up from there.

All over the travel hacking blogosphere you'll find variations of the mantra, "if you don't pay your credit cards off in full every month, travel hacking isn't for you." There's an ironclad kernel of truth to that (your interest charges will far exceed the value of your rewards) but also a deep illogic: even if you have to pay interest, you're strictly better off earning the most valuable rewards possible on any purchases you have to make. So I'll skip the lectures and stick to the facts.

Warning: trailing interest is like interest, but worse

Just like the interest earned on your savings, the interest paid on your credit card balances compounds, which gives rise to a (deliberately) confusing concept: trailing interest. Trailing interest is the product of a mismatch between the pace at which interest accrues (daily) and the pace at which it posts to your outstanding credit card balance (monthly).

Here's the description of trailing interest given on my American Express credit card statements:

"About Trailing Interest

You may see interest on your next statement even if you pay the new balance in full and on time and make no new charges. This is called "trailing interest." Trailing interest is the interest charged when, for example, you didn't pay your previous balance in full. When that happens we charge interest from the first day of the billing period until we receive your payment in full. You can avoid paying interest on purchases by paying your balance in full and on time each month."

The takeaway from this statement is that, if you failed to pay for your purchases in full and thus have a balance that's accruing interest, the date your credit card statement closes is the only date when your outstanding balance accurately reflects the amount you owe. Every subsequent day, a hidden amount of trailing interest accrues which will only post on the following statement closing date.

To avoid paying interest, you have to pay your balances off on time. To avoid paying trailing interest, you have to pay any interest-bearing balances off early, preferably on the statement closing date, to avoid giving trailing interest a chance to accrue.

Bonus warning: know how your banks calculate interest charges

Since I pay off my credit cards in full every month (preferably before my statement closes, to ensure as low a credit utilization as possible is reported to the credit bureaux), I never took the slightest interest in how banks calculate interest charges.

Until a few months back, that is, when due entirely to my own negligence I paid $5 less than my statement balance on my US Bank Flexperks Travel Rewards Visa Signature card:

Mint, the website I use to track my bank accounts, credit cards, and investments alerted me that interest had been charged on one of my accounts, so I pulled up my statement and was horrified to see an interest charge of $20.35. Naturally my first move was to call in and ask a representative reverse the interest charge:

But while I was on the phone, I asked her to explain how it was possible that I was charged $20.35 in interest on a $5 unpaid balance. The representative explained that at US Bank, they charge interest on your entire balance if any part of it is unpaid on the statement's due date.

So in case you were wondering how credit card companies pay for the rewards they shower on us, this is how: by aggressively charging customers who are anything less than totally and utterly vigilant about paying off their credit cards in full and on time.

Conclusion

I hope credit card interest charges are an issue that will remain completely and utterly academic for all my readers. Realistically, that's not going to be the case, but the more information you have about the kinds of interest charges and the way they're calculated, the more lucrative I hope your relationship with your credit card issuers will be.

Blog housekeeping for March 26, 2015

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A few quick notes on the site, feel free to skip if this stuff bores you.

WELCOME SAVEROCITY READERS!

Matt, the benevolent dictator/head honcho over at Saverocity, recently reconfigured his site and generously offered to plug my RSS feed into his front page. I leapt at the opportunity and want to extend the warmest welcome to Saverocity readers discovering my site for the first time: make yourselves at home!

Should I re-enable the site's mobile theme?

I hate mobile themes. When I visit this site on my mobile phone, it's because I want to access one of the resources conveniently linked at the top of the page (like hotel promotions) or check an airline's alliance membership or flexible currency transfer partners.

But I understand my readers are more likely to just want easy access to blog posts. If you care one way or the other, vote in the following poll and I'll act accordingly:

Updated revenue disclosure

Reader Declan made an interesting point in the comments to this post about the old disclosure I had at the top of each page. He wrote:

"Do you know what "personal referral links" are - including links from Amazon Associates accounts? They're "third-party" (i.e. not you, not me) affiliate links."

In response I explained my reasoning, and still feel that my old disclosure policy (which explicitly mentioned Amazon Associates revenue) gave readers the information they needed to judge any possible conflicts of interest, but I've made it even more explicit so there's no mystery as to how I make (not very much) money from this site: Google Adsense, Amazon Associates, blog subscriptions, and personal referral links to sites like TopCashBack (the same links anyone else gets when they open an account).

I also decided to no longer include Amazon Associates links to specific products I'm reviewing (as far as I know, I've only ever included one, in my review of Pound Foolish, which I've now removed). The disclosure now reads:

"Disclosure: to the best of my knowledge, the only remuneration I receive for any of the content on this site is through my personal referral links, my Amazon Associates referral link, the Google Adsense ad found in the righthand sidebar, and my blog subscribers, who also receive my occasional subscribers-only newsletter. You can find all my personal referral links on my Support the Site! page."

I hope that makes sense, and if anyone has any other questions or concerns I'd be more than happy to address them.

Off to New Orleans

On Friday I'm heading to New Orleans for a weeklong vacation (look for an Anatomy of an Award Trip on Friday). The trip starts with a 20-hour Amtrak trip on the City of New Orleans, so my online presence will be limited over the weekend, but I anticipate keeping to a normal blogging schedule once there. We're planning a swamp kayak tour, so follow me on Twitter if you want to maximize your chances of seeing egrets next week.

How many Ultimate Rewards points do you stockpile?

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I recently saw Frequent Miler bemoaning his low Ultimate Rewards balances and had to chuckle to myself. Why? Because I do my best to keep my Ultimate Rewards balance at the bare minimum I'm likely to need in the immediate future.

I've written before about periodically redeeming my Ultimate Rewards points for cash. I do so because:

  • Points are worth nothing until they're redeemed;
  • Hyatt and British Airways (and Amtrak) are the only Ultimate Rewards transfer partners with points consistently worth more than 1 cent each to me;
  • Unredeemed points are vulnerable to seizure by Chase;
  • Flows are more important than balances.

I think it might be interesting to focus on that last point for a moment.

Flows versus balances

I have 3 primary methods of earning Ultimate Rewards points:

  • Chase Freedom bonus categories (7,500 Ultimate Rewards points per card, per useful quarter)
  • Chase Ink Plus office supply store purchases (250,000 Ultimate Rewards points per year)
  • Chase Ink Plus gas station purchases (100,000 Ultimate Rewards points per year)

With two Chase Freedom cards and two useful quarters this year (grocery stores in the first quarter and gas station in the third quarter of 2015), I'll earn 380,000 Ultimate Rewards points this year, or roughly 32,000 Ultimate Rewards points per month on average.

That's my flow, and it's the number I think about regularly: managing credit lines, managing liquidation methods, and managing my schedule to make sure I hit my earning targets month-in-and-month-out.

Balances, on the other hand, are only relevant at the moment of redemption. It's very important – essential even – to have a sufficient balance of Ultimate Rewards points at the moment when you need to transfer them to Hyatt, British Airways, Amtrak, or United (if you're a glutton for punishment), or when you need to redeem them for a paid flight or hotel reservation.

But since your balance is just the sum of your flows over time, it's trivial to manage your balance in order to always have the correct number of points at the moment of redemption, when they're actually needed. For that reason, I'm happy to put any excess points to work in my bank account, as cash.

I still stockpile a few Ultimate Rewards points

With that being said, I don't redeem my entire Ultimate Rewards points balance for cash. Obviously I first look ahead and make sure that my incoming points flow really will cover any future redemptions I already have planned. But I additionally keep a reserve of Ultimate Rewards points for unexpected and unplanned redemptions.

I don't think it's absolutely necessary to have such a reserve. After all, I have tens of thousands of US Bank Flexpoints, British Airways Avios, Delta SkyMiles, Hilton HHonors points, and even Marriott Rewards points that I could use to get and stay anywhere in the United States I needed to be particularly quickly. Failing that, I can always charge travel to my Barclaycard Arrival+ card and take up to 120 days to "work it off."

At the end of the day, however, there are reservations that really are made most cheaply with Ultimate Rewards points (for example my $200 flight to Reno).

So I keep a reserve balance of 45,000 Ultimate Rewards points in my Chase Ink Plus account. Here are a few of the potential redemptions that made me arrive at that number:

  • 40,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points: 5 nights at a Category 2 Hyatt;
  • 45,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points: 3 nights at a Category 4 Hyatt;
  • 40,000 Amtrak Guest Rewards points: a Bedroom - Two Zones award;
  • 50,000 United MileagePlus Miles (I already have a small balance): a Standard Award in economy anywhere in the United States;
  • Up to $562.50 in airfare or hotel reservations.

So with a balance of 45,000 Ultimate Rewards points I have a high level of confidence that I'd be able to get and stay anywhere I wanted or needed to be on short notice, regardless of my balances in the other programs I mentioned above. That's my reserve fund.

How many Ultimate Rewards points do you stockpile?

Obviously my calculation is based on variables that are specific to me: I don't have family abroad, so don't need a reserve fund that could take me overseas on short notice, and I'm budgeting for a single traveler, without a spouse or kids I would need to buy additional tickets for. Those expenses would add up fast.

What do my readers think? Do you save up Ultimate Rewards points for specific redemptions? Do you keep some in reserve for unexpected last-minute redemptions? Do you ever redeem them for cash? See you in the comments.

Weekend thoughts on killing deals

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I saw a few interesting posts in the last few days about the ethics and mechanics of writing publicly about techniques to manufacture spend:

In the 2-and-change years I've been writing this blog, I've developed a general rubric I use to guide my thinking about whether to share a technique to manufacture spend: if the technique takes advantage of a publicly advertised product of a for-profit company, I feel fine writing about it. If a technique involves a glitch, mistake, or oversight on the part of a company, I'll save it for my subscribers-only newsletter.

This rubric doesn't have the goal of "keeping every deal alive as long as possible." If I had that goal, I wouldn't blog about manufactured spending (and many of my critics would rejoice). Rather, it's based on the philosophy that when a company knows what it's doing, writing about a technique is more likely to help readers take advantage of a product for as long as it exists, while when a company doesn't know what it's doing lots of casual readers piling in will likely kill a deal before anyone can benefit substantially. That includes, unfortunately, the readers who would call into a company to "make sure something works," drawing even more attention to the oversight or mistake.

In other words, since every deal dies eventually, I ask whether I'm helping readers maximize their profit from a deal, or helping it die before anyone is able to benefit?

I don't think this philosophy is any better or worse than anyone else's, but it's the one I've settled on for now. Here are a few examples of how I've applied it in action:

  • The TD Go, Nationwide, and US Bank Visa Buxx cards are all products that by design allow or allowed users to fund PIN- and ATM-enabled prepaid debit cards with MasterCard and Visa credit cards. I wrote about them frequently and they still occasionally come up on the blog.
  • When TD Go announced that credit card loads would be limited to cards issued by TD Bank, third-party credit cards that had already been saved continued to work. Since that was a programming oversight, I didn't write about it. The more publicity the oversight received, the sooner it would be fixed (as it eventually was).
  • When Evolve Money first launched, it allowed contributions to 529 college savings plans to be funded with prepaid debit cards. There were risks (you might get a call from Bill), but that was how the product was designed, and I wrote about it extensively.
  • When Evolve Money first launched, due to lax implementation they also accepted credit cards to fund contributions to 529 college savings plans. Since that was an unintentional oversight, I shared it only in my subscribers-only newsletter, but not here on the blog, and it continued to work until a few days after affiliate blogger Daraius Dubash wrote about it on his highly-trafficked blog.
  • Kiva loans, still one of the most lucrative and accessible manufactured spending techniques available, are bonused as "charitable spending" by US Bank as a matter of policy. That doesn't mean they'll continue to be bonused forever — they won't. That's because every deal dies eventually. But when the corporate policy is clear, as it is in this case, the more of my readers able to take advantage of the policy, the better.

While that's my general approach, there are a few obvious exceptions:

  • When I agree in advance not to share something from a reader, I honor that even if it would otherwise be fair game, unless it's already common knowledge. After all, I actually do manufacture spend, so I'm thrilled to find out new techniques, even if I can't share them with my beloved readers!
  • On the other hand, when something is not corporate policy but has lasted long enough to become background or institutional knowledge, like refunding travel purchases made with an Arrival+ card, I'll write about it on the informed guess that the company simply doesn't care enough to change or fix it.

Conclusion

That's my overall attitude towards blogging about manufactured spend. I don't make any claim that it's the right attitude, but it's mine, and if it helps anyone trying to figure out where they stand on the subject, I'll be happy I could help.

Unvarnished and uncensored criticism is always welcome, of course, in the comments.

Think for yourself: it's free!

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Here on the blog I very rarely make explicit recommendations.

When the "old" Blue Cash card surfaced, I suggested readers "strongly consider" applying, and am pleased as punch at the hundreds of thousands of dollars my readers earned taking advantage of that offer.

When the Suntrust Delta SkyMiles World Check card was being (gradually) retired I wrote that "when they finally close existing accounts, a lot of people are going to regret not trying their luck to see just how many Skymiles they could earn in that crazy period in the early 2010's when debit cards still earned rewards on PIN transactions." I, for one, am still going strong.

But as a rule, I don't give advice, and that's because I don't know anything about you, which I'm happy to admit. Unfortunately, the miles and points blogosphere is chock full of people who don't know anything about you who are absolutely giddy to hand out advice to complete strangers.

And they're wrong to do it.

How much is a weekday night in April at the Grand Hyatt Seattle worth?

Hyatt will sell AAA members a refundable room for $240.25 after taxes and fees, and there are folks, including among my beloved readers, who will argue that the retail price is the only true measure of what a product is worth.

But we're travel hackers, which means never paying retail. So here are some other options for paying for the same room:

  • Redeem 31,344 Delta SkyMiles through the Travel Marketplace. Total cost: $22 (if earned using the Suntrust Delta SkyMiles World Check card at Walmart). 
  • Transfer 15,000 Ultimate Rewards points to Hyatt Gold Passport. Total cost: $150 (the value of the points if redeemed for cash instead).
  • Redeem 20,000 US Bank Flexpoints. Total cost: $200 (the value of the points if redeemed for cash instead).
  • Pay with a Barclaycard Arrival+ MasterCard and redeem Arrival+ miles against the purchase: Total cost: from $48.05 ($2 per $500 Nationwide Visa Buxx load).
  • Chase Hyatt Visa Signature annual free night certificate. Total cost: $75 (the card's annual fee).

Of these, the Chase Hyatt credit card is the third cheapest option, as long as you're staying for exactly one night.

That's fine as far as it goes, but what if you're staying more than one night? Do you move hotels? Or do you start spending $240.25 per night, or $200 per night, or $150 per night since you decided to "save money" by using your Hyatt free night certificate?

On the other hand, if what you want isn't really a night at the Grand Hyatt Seattle, but just a night in downtown Seattle, you suddenly have other options. The "Homewood Suites by Hilton Seattle-Conv Ctr-Pike Street" is literally across the street from the Grand Hyatt, and costs 40,000 HHonors points per night. Manufacturing spend with an American Express HHonors Surpass card at $4.95 per 3,030 HHonors points, a room costs about about $65. At $6.95 per 3,041 HHonors points, it costs about $91. And that's for each and every night, not just the first one. As an elite, if you stay for exactly five nights the price drops even further to 32,000 HHonors points per night, or $52 and $73 at the rates mentioned above.

Credit card rewards are traps; affiliate bloggers don't help

Hyatt, and Marriott, and IHG know exactly what they're doing when they give out annual free night certificates: they're trying to lock you into overpriced properties on the only-too-well-founded assumption that you won't look under the hood and realize how much money they're really making off you.

As travel hackers we should aim to break down these products and rationally choose the best and cheapest way of meeting our travel goals. As travel hacking bloggers, we should aim to help readers meet their travel goals by laying out analysis with as much detail and as many caveats and warnings as possible.

Affiliate blogging creates the opposite result: rather than laying out all the options and weighing them carefully and objectively so that readers can make the decision that works best for them, credit card affiliate links lead to motivated reasoning: since affiliate bloggers don't think of themselves as bad people, but do write blog posts promoting the credit cards that pay them affiliate kickbacks, it's absolutely necessary for them to be emotionally invested, for example, in the absurd notion that the Hyatt credit card annual free night certificate really is the best way to get a hotel room in downtown Seattle.

Why do I write about affiliate blogging?

I indulge myself once a month or so and point out particularly egregious behavior on the part of affiliate bloggers. And I typically get one or two annoyed readers who, quite rightly, point out that posts like this one don't help them earn or redeem their miles and points.

But at the end of the day, I understand that experienced travel hackers read my blog more for entertainment than anything else. If I write a dud every once in a while, it's no skin off their backs.

It's the novices who are just getting started in the hobby, the ones who are vulnerable to the ever-more-popular affiliate blogging platforms, that I have a real chance of helping by pointing out the conflicts of interest that are obvious to us, in hindsight, but are passed over with vague "disclosures" on the biggest affiliate blogs. As long as I think there's a chance of helping those beginners avoid rookie mistakes, I'll keep (occasionally!) writing about those abuses.

Conclusion: think for yourself

Of course it sometimes happens that affiliate bloggers make good points about the benefits of credit cards. Your only job is to be aware that they aren't making those points in order to help you — they're making them in order to get paid, and they find it convenient to ignore the benefits of all the credit cards that don't pay them affiliate commissions.

Understand the consequences of your actions. Decide on your own travel goals. Don't let anyone tell you what those goals are or should be. Think for yourself. It's free!