I just paid $200 in bills for $171.90 – did you?

As the one-stop source for all things Evolve Money, I want to make sure my readers know about two currently available deals I took advantage of yesterday.

Use promo code "Save5april" and save $5 in April

The next (or first!) time you make an Evolve Money payment, enter the promo code "Save5april" during checkout and you'll save $5 — including on bill payments of $5 or less.

Sync each of your American Express cards to Twitter and save

If you have an American Express card "synced" to a Twitter account, you can tweet "#AmexStaples" to activate an offer giving a $20 statement credit after making a purchase of $100 or more at Staples by April 30, 2014.

If you have more than one American Express-issued credit card, your first stop should be Frequent Miler's primer on syncing multiple cards to Twitter.

Once you understand that process, add the #AmexStaples offer to each of your cards, and head to Staples!

I bought 2 $100 Visa gift cards for $105.95 each – paying just $171.90 after my $40 in Amex Sync rebates.

Register your Visa gift cards and use them to pay bills

Any bills you can find in Evolve Money can be paid using Visa gift cards purchased at Staples, as long as you register the gift cards with your billing address prior to using them. To do that, follow the instructions on the back of your gift cards.

Suntrust Delta SkyMiles World Check Card being (gradually) retired

While the community's attention is focused on the betrayal and heartbreak caused by this week's American Airlines devaluations, allow me to pass along some thoughts on a slightly different topic.

The Alaska Airlines debit card was real

For as long as I can remember, I've been the biggest cheerleader for the Bank of America Alaska Airlines debit card. Believe it or not, all the way back in May, 2013, bloggers were already claiming the card was no longer available, but there was still a working link that I included in every blog post I could – no matter how tenuous the connection – because I believed the card was one of the best methods available to earn travel, while paying next to nothing.

Finally, it was announced that existing cards would no longer earn Alaska Airlines miles starting May 31, 2014 – over a year after my post letting readers know the card was still available. A year of $0.70 money orders, $1 and $1.88 credit card bill payments, and a year of free, $3,000 Venmo transactions up to 4 times per month.

That's a lot of miles.

It's still possible to apply for the Suntrust Delta debit card – but not for long

The Suntrust Delta SkyMiles World Check Card is still available — today — for new accounts being opened online and over the phone. Your humble blogger just opened an account over the phone an hour ago.

The card earns 1 Skymile per dollar spent on PIN-based and signature transactions.

But it has disappeared from Suntrust's website, and certainly will stop accepting new applications sometime in the coming days, weeks, or months. Until that day comes, I'll continue including the link to the card in every post I can – no matter how tenuous the connection – because I believe it's one of the best methods currently available to earn travel, while paying next to nothing.

Have you let the last week teach you anything?

With the end of CVS reloadables nationwide and the unannounced American devaluation, the last week has given every travel hacker an opportunity to reevaluate their entire system from the ground up: what's working, what's not? What entails too much risk, and what's worth the risk? Where do I go from here?

Are you taking advantage of that opportunity?

I don't give advice — but I don't entertain complaints

I don't know how long currently-existing Suntrust Delta World Check Cards will continue to issue Skymiles. It might be months and it could be years.

I do know 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.

When that day comes, are you going to be complaining – or bragging?

Marriott devaluation guts downtown Portland redemption options

This may be a bit of a niche case, but it neatly illustrates my frustration at Marriott's recently announced changes to hotel categories, as someone who typically stays at Marriott properties 3-4 times per year when visiting Portland, OR.

There are currently 4 Marriott properties in downtown Portland west of the river. Here are their current award categories:

• Portland Marriott Downtown Waterfront: Category 6;
• Portland Marriott City Center: Category 6;
• Courtyard Portland City Center: Category 5;
• Residence Inn Portland Downtown/RiverPlace: Category 5.

I usually stay at the Courtyard Portland City Center using my MegaBonus award certificates and annual free night certificates from the Chase Marriott Rewards Premier Visa.

Here are the new categories for those properties, starting April 8, 2014:

• Portland Marriott Downtown Waterfront: Category 7;
• Portland Marriott City Center: Category 7;
• Courtyard Portland City Center: Category 6;
• Residence Inn Portland Downtown/RiverPlace: Category 6.

In other words, it will no longer be possible to use any free night certificates at any Marriott property in Portland's downtown. It may as well be New York City!

East of the river, the Residence Inn Portland Downtown/Lloyd Center is moving from Category 4 to 5 and the Courtyard Portland Downtown/Convention Center is remaining at Category 5, so it will be possible to use some free night certificates at those properties.

Personally, from now on I'll be using my Hilton HHonors points to stay at the Hilton Portland & Executive Tower, which remains a terrific value for Cash + Points bookings at $65 and 16,000 HHonors points per night, including a credit towards breakfast in the restaurant as a Gold elite with Hilton.

In any case, check your own favorite Marriott properties to see whether you'll still be able to use your free night certificates there starting April 8.

Delta's war on their customers has gone too far

When I started blogging over a year ago, I used to joke, "every blogger makes fun of how worthless Skymiles are, and every blogger has at least Platinum Medallion status with Delta."

After United's devaluation, I explained the essential Delta value proposition: miles that aren't worth much, but are among the absolute easiest to earn.

Then when Delta's award chart devaluations began in earnest, I still insisted that you needed a holistic approach in order to make rational decisions about which airline to fly.

With the announcement of the 2015 reimagining of the Skymiles program, I reiterated my intention to switch my mileage earning over to Alaska, while remaining "loyal to [Delta] as an airline."

I'm done defending Delta

In case you missed it, on Wednesday Alaska Airlines shared the next phase in Delta's plan to alienate any remaining loyal customers: Alaska Airlines elites, who until now have received a reciprocal checked bag fee waiver when flying on Delta, will now have to pay to check their first bag.

Whenever a Delta customer needs to check a bag, this puts them in the untenable position of deciding with whether to credit their flight to Delta and earn a piddling number of worthless Skymiles, or credit it to Alaska to earn valuable miles but pay extortionate checked bag fees.

Think your co-branded American Express card will save you? Think again. You may be able to bluff agents at the ticket counter for a few months after the changeover, but the terms and conditions of the checked bag fee waiver are crystal clear:

"Reservation must include the Basic Card Member's SkyMiles number."

So I surrender.

Some folks in Delta revenue management apparently truly believe they can run a profitable airline with revenue exclusively from:

• hub captives;
• extremely casual flyers (bargain hunters without Skymiles accounts);
• and international codeshare connections.

Maybe they're right. But I'm not going to be part of their insane experiment anymore.

Why was this the last straw?

I spent last weekend in New York City and managed to painstakingly convince my mom that her best bet for her relatively frequent regional flights on Delta and Alaska in the Pacific Northwest, and occasional longer flights to visit her children, was to status match her Delta Silver Medallion status to Alaska MVP status. That way, she'd still get her free checked bag, could cancel her American Express Delta Gold card (now that it doesn't earn companion tickets), and earn valuable Alaska miles.

Then I got on a plane to Wisconsin, and when I landed Delta had gutted that benefit.

So yeah, it's personal.

One option for the brave and shameless

I'm going to be giving this a shot on my flight back to New England on Sunday, even though I'm not checking a bag. Based on what I've read, it's technologically possible for gate agents to change the frequent flyer account number on a reservation after checking in but before boarding a flight. That would theoretically allow you to check in with your Skymiles account number and receive a free bag, then switch to you Alaska account for actual earning.

I have no idea whether this works in practice. And it's certainly not something I'm going to ask my mother to do every time she flies. But it's one possibility.

The American – US Airways merger makes my decision easier

My home airport has never had really great options besides Delta. The United flights route through Chicago and are operated by United, which makes two strikes against them. There are US Airways flights to Newark, which allows you to connect onward on United or US Airways, which is not much of an improvement. And of course US Airways treats their elite members notoriously badly, such that I never saw any advantage to pursuing 50,000 or 75,000 mile status with them.

Now that Delta has gutted their partnership with Alaska, it's time to rethink that calculus, with the help of the merger between American and US Airways, and reciprocal mileage earning between those airlines:

• For Delta flights where I need to check bags, I'll book award tickets and keep my Skymiles account number on the reservation;
• For Delta flights without checked bags, I'll credit my paid flights to Alaska;
• For the time being for flights on US Airways metal, I'll credit my paid flights to American. Hopefully they'll align their relationship to Alaska soon and I'll be able to credit miles there;
• For paid flights on American Airlines metal, I'll continue crediting my flights to Alaska.

It's a little more complicated than my current system, but I book enough paid tickets using my US Bank Flexpoints and Barclaycard Arrival miles that I have a fair chance of earning elite status on a couple airlines next year. That being the case, I need to be sure I'm booking and crediting my flights strategically to maximize the benefits of status.

Who will buy Alaska?

The question on everyone's mind is how long Alaska can operate as an independent airline, give the pressure in the industry for consolidation.

I don't have any special insight on whether or when Alaska will be sold to one of the remaining big three carriers, but I follow the subject with intense interest.

Fortunately, Alaska is currently operating at a profit, and it's a lot more expensive to buy a profitable airline than an unprofitable one!

Naturally, given the recent developments at Delta, my preference would be for Alaska to continue to develop their partnership with American, while remaining independent and continuing to operate their amazing loyalty program.

Chase Freedom bonus categories and the Sapphire Preferred

I assume everyone who carries a Chase Freedom card has already received their quarterly text message telling them to register for next quarter's bonus categories of "restaurants and Lowe's home improvement stores."

So instead of reminding you to register for 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent on the Freedom in those categories next quarter, let me take the opportunity to continue my fruitless war against the Chase Sapphire Preferred.

The Sapphire Preferred, with its $95 annual fee, has 2 permanent bonus categories: restaurants and travel.

But neither category alone, nor both together, is worth a $95 annual fee. Here's why.

You should put non-bonused spend on a 2% cash back card

In non-bonused categories, a no-annual-fee 2% cash back card is clearly superior to a dollar spent on the Chase Sapphire Preferred. You would need to get over 2 cents per point in value from every Ultimate Rewards point earned in non-bonused categories in order to work your way up to a loss of only the $95 annual fee.

Just use the 2% cash back card instead.

You should put eligible travel purchases on the Barclaycard Arrival

As I reported back in December, the Arrival's definition of "travel" purchases doesn't align exactly with the Sapphire Preferred's. Namely, while Chase bonuses taxi fares, Barclaycard does not allow Arrival mile redemptions against them. That's a real difference, but of course its significance depends on how frequently you take taxis.

2 flexible Ultimate Rewards points are strictly more valuable than 2 Arrival miles, being worth a minimum of 2.5 cents towards paid travel through the Ultimate Rewards portal, compared to the 2 Arrival miles' value of 2.22 cents.

So why don't they justify putting your travel purchases on the Sapphire Preferred? Because of the annual fee.

Consider how much you'll have to spend in order to recoup the Sapphire Preferred's $95 annual fee:

• At 2.5 cents back per dollar, you'll need to spend $3,800 in travel categories in order to earn back the value of the annual fee.
• But it'll take another $3,040 to recover the $76 in value you would have earned from putting the initial $3,800 in travel spend on a no-annual-fee 2% cash back card!
• With the conservative valuation of 2.5 cents back per dollar spent in bonused travel categories, you'll need to spend $6,840 before you start showing a profit.

What makes the Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard different? Redeeming Barclaycard Arrival miles against the same $6,840 in travel purchases will yield at least $752 in excess value over the 2% cash back card, with an annual fee of just $89:

• Redeeming 684,000 Arrival miles against a single transaction will yield a 10%, 68,400 mile, dividend, worth $684 towards a future redemption;
• That future redemption will yield a dividend of 6,840, redeemable for up to $68 towards a third purchase.

To rephrase this point slightly differently:

• The Barclaycard Arrival isn't superior in earnings to the Sapphire Preferred for travel purchases;
• It's superior to the Sapphire Preferred for travel purchases because that's how you can leverage its dominant 2.22% cash back earning rate on all non-bonused (manufactured) spend.

Lots of cards bonus restaurant spending

Earning 2 Ultimate Rewards points earned per dollar spent at restaurants with the Sapphire Preferred is a nice touch, but it's hardly revolutionary. Check out Frequent Miler's list of cards giving bonuses in various common categories to see why.

The no-annual-fee Chase Freedom offers 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent at restaurants this quarter.

So for 25% of this year you would be downright insane to put restaurant charges on your Sapphire Preferred card. And for the rest of the year, you can simply select restaurants as one of your US Bank Cash+ bonus categories to secure 5% cash back year-round on up to $2,000 per quarter spent at restaurants.

Conclusion

Leave the Sapphire Preferred at home.

That was fast: Hawaiian changes Hilton transfer rate

At the end of January I responded to the surge of posts about changes to the ratio at which Virgin Atlantic Flying Club miles could be transferred to Hilton HHonors points by pointing out that the Hawaiian Airlines transfer ratio hadn't changed.

Unfortunately, Hawaiian quickly followed suit and devalued their transfer ratio, so that Hawaiian Airlines mile can now be transferred to Hilton HHonors only at a ratio of 1 HawaiianMile for 1.5 HHonors points, in increments of 10,000 HawaiianMiles (for 15,000 HHonors points).

I don't like to play armchair industry analyst, but it was obviously problematic for Hilton's co-branded credit card issuers, American Express and Citi, that the Barclaycard-issued Hawaiian Airlines co-branded credit card was giving a higher signup bonus — in terms of HHonors points — than HHonors' own co-branded credit cards.

That problem has now been finessed, by reducing the appeal of the Hawaiian Airlines card for those interested only in transferring their miles to Hilton HHonors points, without devaluing Hawaiian's own award chart.

One-way awards make Delta's new award chart (mostly) irrelevant

Delta released their 2015 award chart today ahead of schedule, and much digital ink has already been spilled over it. My sense of the pulse of the blogger community is primarily relief:

• Lucky writes that "Delta has just released their 2015 SkyMiles award chart, and it looks pretty good."
• Mommy Points says "the award chart that was just released doesn’t appear to be that bad on the surface."
• Delta Points is glad that "the good news is they did NOT devalue (very few went up) the chart more than the two times they already did last year."
• The Points Guy gives a more nuanced perspective, concluding "I actually think the new redemption chart could have been a whole lot worse."
• Gary agrees, saying "I also expected the changes to be worse."

Personally, I can't wait for January 1, 2015.

One-way awards change everything

Last week I rejected Frequent Miler's suggestion that earning miles flying on paid Delta Airlines tickets has long been passé: under the system ending December 31, 2014, even a Diamond Medallion who hacked fairly aggressively would still earn a majority of their Skymiles through miles earned on paid tickets, thanks to 125% Diamond Medallion bonus miles.

Now that we know Delta is retaining a traditional, region-based award chart, I am prepared to say that I think the 2015 Skymiles program will be an improvement for me — even though it means I'll end up flying Delta much less.

How is that possible? Thanks to one-way awards.

A real-life example will illustrate this neatly. Later this month, I have a Delta award ticket, flying out of New York on what appears to be the perfect flight: it's a non-stop flight to my destination, it leaves early in the afternoon, and it leaves from what I'm told is New York's most convenient airport, La Guardia. And I was able to book the ticket at the "saver" level, costing just 12,500 Skymiles each way, while a paid ticket would cost $390. On my outbound ticket, I'm getting over 3 cents per Skymile in value!

My return flight to New England is booked at the "standard" level. While I've been checking award availability every morning, and am fairly confident a "saver" level seat will open up before my flight (which I can switch into for free, as a Platinum Medallion), in the meantime I've spent 32,500 Skymiles on this award ticket: 12,500 for my outbound, and 20,000 for my return.

A one-way ticket back to New England costs just $146. I'm getting less than a cent per Skymile for my return ticket – but currently, I'd have to forfeit 12,500 Skymiles in order to book my own, paid, return ticket.

Starting January 1, use Skymiles when – and only when – it makes sense

Starting January 1, you'll be able to redeem your Skymiles for my "outbound" flight above, getting over 3 cents per Skymile in value, and pay for your return ticket – or use another rewards currency – saving your Skymiles until another valuable redemption opportunity comes along.

Historically, Skymiles has been the program where you can earn miles the fastest, but have to redeem the most miles for flights that work with your schedule.

The 2015 changes to the program turn that calculation upside down. There's no longer any point trying to earn Skymiles through paid airfare. However, the miles you earn through credit card and portal purchases have become more valuable, not because awards have grown cheaper, or because availability has increased, but because one-way awards allow you to use miles when – and only when – it makes sense for you.

That's obviously going to be less often than under the current award chart. Fortunately, you'll have fewer Skymiles, so you shouldn't mind too much!

Sizing up Amex Everyday and Everyday Preferred

Now that I've had a few days to think about the pre-launch of the Amex Everyday and Everyday Preferred cards, I have a slightly-less-preliminary take than my Twitter post late Saturday night.

While the cards are being marketed as the entry-level and premium versions of the same product line, that's irrelevant to us. American Express is launching two new cards, with different annual fees and different earning structures; consequently, the two cards will be right for different people, and I'll analyze each compared to its most relevant competitors.

No annual fee: Amex Everyday vs. 1–5% cash back

As I've said before, if you aren't a business traveler who's reimbursed for your credit card expenses, and you don't aggressively manufacture spend, you should carry a Fidelity Investment Rewards American Express ($75 signup bonus), which earns 2% cash back on all purchases, and another Visa, MasterCard, or Discover card to use at merchants that don't accept American Express. For example, the Discover it ($150 signup bonus) doesn't charge foreign transaction fees and has rotating 5% cash back categories, while the Chase Freedom ($100 signup bonus) has rotating 5% cash back categories and allows you to redeem 20,000 points for a paid airline ticket costing up to $335 (you can charge any amount over that to the card itself).

The Amex Everyday card is competing against these existing, no-annual-fee, options. The card earns:

• 1 flexible Membership Rewards point per dollar, which can be transferred to airline and hotel partners or redeemed for flights, hotels, and cruises through the Membership Rewards portal at 1 cent per point;
• 2 Membership Rewards points per dollar spent at grocery stores, on up to $6,000 in spend annually;
• and a 20% bonus on all points earned each month that you charge 20 or more transactions to the card.

First of all, I want to say that this is not a terrible earning structure, and when the card is launched April 2, it will be the only no-annual-fee card I know of that offers flexible points. Assuming you're able to make 20 transactions per month, earning 1.2 flexible Membership Rewards points per dollar means you'd need to value a Membership Rewards point at 1.68 cents in order to break even compared to putting the same (non-bonused) spend on a 2% cash back card. That's a high value, but it's not insane: Membership Rewards points can be transferred at a 1:1 ratio to British Airways Avios, and if you live in a destination served by Alaska Airlines or American Airlines it's relatively easy to get 2-3 cents per point from Avios on expensive, short-haul flights.

Second of all, if you are inclined to manufacture spend at grocery stores, then being able to mint 14,400 Membership Rewards points per year (after the 20% bonus) is a great addition to your fee-free credit card portfolio; in other words, this one card can, with no annual fee, serve roughly the same purpose as both a Chase Freedom and $95-annual-fee Chase Sapphire Preferred or premium Ink card, which together allow you to generate 7,500 Ultimate Rewards points per quarter that can then be transferred to the flexible Sapphire Preferred or Ink Ultimate Rewards account.

$95 Annual Fee: Amex Everyday Preferred vs. Chase Ink

A more pressing question for some of my readers is no doubt whether the Amex Everyday Preferred's $95 annual fee is worth paying, and if so, whether the card should join or replace a $95-annual-fee Chase Ink card.

The Amex Everyday Preferred card earns:

• 1 flexible Membership Rewards point per dollar;
• 3 Membership Rewards points per dollar spent at grocery stores (up to $6,000 per year);
• 2 Membership Rewards points per dollar spent at gas stations, with no annual limit;
• and a 50% bonus on all points earned each month that you charge 30 or more purchases to the card.

That means that rather than just 14,400 Membership Rewards points, if you were inclined to manufacture spend at grocery stores you could earn 27,000 points per year. However, you'd pay $95 for the additional points, or about 0.75 cents each versus the no-annual-fee card. That's a perfectly reasonable price to pay, but it's not free.

The competition really heats up at gas stations, where after the 50% bonus the Everyday Preferred card earns 3 Membership Rewards points per dollar, compared to the Ink's 2 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar. That's a real difference, and while Membership Rewards points don't transfer to United or Hyatt (as Ultimate Rewards do), they do transfer at a 1:1.5 ratio to Hilton, a 3:1 ratio to Starwood, and a 1:1 ratio to many airlines, including oneworld's British Airways, Sky Team's Delta, and United's Star Alliance partner All Nippon Airlines.

The Perils of Orphaned Points

Those are the facts, and I think I've given these cards as fair an assessment as they're likely to get. Now let's talk about the Amex-sized elephant in the room: what the hell are you going to do with these Membership Rewards points?

I ask because if you don't have a specific redemption in mind, your points are only going to lose value the longer they sit in your Membership Rewards account. Say you pick up an Amex Everyday card and over the course of a few months put $6,000 in grocery store charges on the card. Say you do that every year for 4 years. Together with the other monthly purchases that get you up to 20 transactions, you've managed to earn 60,000 Membership Rewards points, which you can then transfer to Delta and, if you try hard enough, maybe book a low-level Economy award to Europe.

However, it took you 4 years. Delta devalues its award chart every 3 months.

The same $24,000 in spend could have earned you $480 with a 2% cash back card. Is $480 going to get you a round-trip ticket to Europe? No, probably not. But it'll get you most of the way there, on the flights and days you want, without having to muck around with award availability, Membership Rewards transfer times, and of course award chart devaluations.

All of this is to say, know the program and have a plan before you sign up. If you don't have a plan, save yourself the trouble and enjoy the beauty of the cash(back) economy.

Is Amex cannibalizing its other product lines?

Finally, this is something I keep pondering: why is Amex introducing one card that replicates features of so many of its other product lines? Here's a rough chart I threw together, comparing the Amex Everyday and Everyday Preferred cards with two other product lines I happen to carry:

For the Delta cards I used the "true" earning rates at the $25,000 and $30,000 spending levels for the Platinum and Reserve credit cards, and remarkably the Amex Everyday Preferred isn't just more lucrative, it's wildly more lucrative, and at a much lower price point.

The comparison between the HHonors Surpass and Everyday Preferred perhaps isn't quite as clearcut, but the fact that an HHonors co-branded credit card has an earnest challenger to be the best card for earning HHonors points is not a ringing endorsement of the product line.

Of course those product lines have their own advantages: MQM bonuses for the Delta cards and HHonors Gold and Diamond elite status for the Hilton cards. And perhaps that's the point: American Express really doesn't care which card you earn your HHonors points with, as long as it's an American Express card.

My take on the 2014 Delta Devaluation

I've long argued that Delta is the best legacy US carrier, while having the worst legacy loyalty program.

It's no longer possible to make that argument, since starting January 1, 2015, Delta will no longer have a legacy loyalty program. Instead, they'll be introducing what can for now be called a "hybrid" loyalty program: miles earned for flights will depend completely on the revenue cost of tickets flown and on your elite status, while at the same time you'll — maybe — be able to redeem miles according to a traditional award chart. In other words, you'll earn like in a revenue-based system but redeem like in a traditional legacy program.

As of yet we don't know what that new award chart will look like, so it's still early days to give an overall assessment of the devaluation. Still, we can reach some preliminary conclusions.

Delta loyalty now makes (even) less sense

One long-standing advantage of the Skymiles program over US Airways and United has been that Gold elites, at the 50,000 Medallion Qualifying Miles level, earn 100% bonus redeemable miles on paid flights, while only 100,000 elite qualifying mile elites earn that bonus on the two other carriers. Now that miles are earned on revenue, rather than distance flown, the advantage of being a higher-tier elite is overwhelmed by the disadvantages of booking primarily cheap tickets.

Only Alaska Airlines and American Airlines 50,000-mile elites will now earn 100% bonus redeemable miles.

Mileage running on Delta now makes no sense

Delta has conveniently put a calculator on the website announcing the changes to the program. My mileage run to Lima last November earned me 17,054 redeemable Skymiles. Since it cost just $364, starting January 1 that same trip would earn me just 3,276 Skymiles, assuming I remained a Platinum Medallion — over 80% fewer miles! In other words, valuing Skymiles at just one cent each, I'd be getting $137.78 less in value from the run.

Meanwhile, Frequent Miler says he's relieved because "Miles earned from flying tends to be little more than a rounding error in my account balance." I think that's a minority experience — even among travel hackers, which you can see with the example of a Diamond Medallion with exactly 125,000 Medallion Qualification Miles each year:

• Carrying one American Express Delta Reserve card, on which she puts $60,000 in spend annually, earning 90,000 redeemable Skymiles;
• Selecting the Skymiles Elite Choice Benefit at the Platinum and Diamond level, earning 45,000 redeemable Skymiles;
• And flying 95,000 miles to make up the balance of her 125,000 Medallion Qualification Miles, earning 213,750 redeemable Skymiles.

This hypothetical Diamond medallion is still earning 58% more Skymiles each year through flying than through credit card spend or Elite Choice Benefits. That calculus will vary by hacker, but that's a big initial deficit to make back over the course of a year of portal bonuses.

No one knows what the new award chart will look like

For all the moaning and gnashing of teeth this devaluation will bring on, the single biggest thing to remember for now is that no one knows what the new award chart will look like. The only information Delta has given is that there will be 5 tiers of award availability, and that one-way flights will be allowed at half the cost of round-trips. Beyond that, they are starting from scratch, and anything is possible:

• Delta could adopt a distance-based chart, and that chart could be based on distance between origin and destination, or distance of each leg (like British Airways Avios);
• Delta could adopt a revenue-based chart, and that chart could give a fixed value per Skymile in each redemption tier (like Southwest), or fixed "bands" of value, like US Bank Flexperks and some other award currencies;
• Delta could differentiate between flights to and from hubs, and flights beginning and terminating elsewhere, as they currently do with small-business Skybonus point earning;
• or Delta could do literally anything else.

Until we know what the award charts — and the new award availability — look like, we won't know the value of our Skymiles, and we won't know the final effect of the devaluation on earning using co-branded Delta credit and debit cards and on miles earned through flying.

Will the devaluation change my loyalty strategy?

Not in the slightest.

For months I've been planning on this being a year of mileage redemptions: this will be my last year as a Platinum Medallion, enjoying free award redeposit and reissue, allowing me to maximize the value I get from my Skymiles by locking in "low"-level award space as it becomes available.

Indeed, I have been maximizing them so much I'm down to only about 2,000 redeemable Skymiles in my account. I hope to get off one or two more redemptions this year, before asking Alaska Airlines to match me to MVP Gold 75K and crediting all my Delta and American flights to Alaska's Mileage Plan.

I still love flying Delta, and I'll remain loyal to them as an airline, in the sense that I'll continue to redeem miles and points to fly them whenever possible. But I'll never again direct a paid flight to Delta in order to secure a higher Medallion status.

Meanwhile, I don't think they'll be terribly sorry to see me go.

Club Carlson Mega Points Promotion

Hat tip to Mommy Points and her reader who passed along the news that at a few Club Carlson properties, you can earn 10,000 bonus Gold Points per night when you make a reservation using the promo code "MEGAPT." Here's the list of participating properties:

• Radisson Martinique on Broadway
• Radisson JFK Airport
• Radisson Resort Orlando – Celebration
• Radisson Hotel Orlando – Lake Buena Vista
• Radisson Hotel Orlando – UCF Area
• Radisson Hotel Fisherman’s Wharf

Of course, I'm planning a trip to New York in March, and currently have 2 nights booked at the Radisson Martinique for a total of 50,000 Gold Points, but don't have my third night booked yet. This promotion has put me in a tough position. The way I see it, I have three options:

• Option 1: keep the 2 award nights, pay $228.42 after taxes for a "AAA Hot Deal" 20% off rate;
• Option 2: keep the 2 award nights, pay $307.59 after taxes for the "Mega Points Promotion" rate;
• Option 3: rebook all 3 nights, pay $1037.51 after taxes for the "Mega Points Promotion rate.

Deciding between Options 1 and 2 depends on my valuation of Club Carlson Gold Points. Are 10,000 Gold Points worth $79.17? Maybe, sometimes. But it takes more than "sometimes" to get me to spend $79 out of pocket (although I'll naturally redeem Barclaycard Arrival miles against the transaction later).

One of these options is not like the others though: why would I pay $1038 when I could pay $228 instead? Because of the other current Club Carlson promotion, which gives 38,000 Gold Points after 3 paid nights between January 6 and April 13, 2014.

By triggering that second promotion, I'd end up paying $810 for ~144,850 Gold Points (30,000 "Mega Points," 38,000 "Stay 3 Nights," and the 50,000 Gold Points I'm currently paying for the 2 nights, plus 30 Gold Points per dollar on my $895 room rate as a Gold elite), or 0.56 cents each. There's no denying that's a good rate to buy Gold Points at in bulk. It's almost enough for 6 free nights at a Category 6 property, as long as the nights are booked in blocks of 2, so conservatively $1,200 in value.

So, am I gonna do it? Of course not. The least valuable point is the one you don't spend, and I have 50,000 Gold Points burning a hole in my account. They're not going to get any more valuable by sitting on them.

My fellow travel hackers, we are the redemption we've been waiting for.

Check back tomorrow for my take on the Club Carlson "devaluation" (hint: I love it!).