The time I got 3 cents per Skymile and saved Christmas

That was exciting.

I've mentioned my upcoming flight in Alaska Airlines First Class to Hawaii to celebrate Christmas with my family (and earn Delta Platinum Medallion status). Well, Sunday's the big travel day, which means that my travel partner is flying tonight from her home base in the midwest out to New England so we could be on the same flights to Kauai. That was important to me because if there are any weather or mechanical delays along the way, I wanted to be able to troubleshoot the issues with her rather than leaving her stranded to negotiate rebookings, hotels, meal vouchers, and the rest of the hassles of winter travel on her own.

Unfortunately, when we booked the ticket a few months ago, it seemed like United's price and schedule worked best to get her out here. I say it "seemed" like it, because I failed to take into account the "United premium" of delays, missed connections, terrible customer service, and the overall disaster of an airline they represent.

With a delayed flight into Cleveland, there was no way my partner would make it into New England tonight. If she was rebooked onto a flight tomorrow, then we'd lose the Saturday buffer in case of additional weather problems. The only way she would get into New England tonight was on Delta:

View fullsize

That flight costs $1,219.60! Using Skymiles, on the other hand, I was able to book the outbound leg at the "Peak" (previously "high") level, and the inbound at the "Saver" (previously "low") level, for a total of 42,500 Skymiles and $10 in taxes and fees. That's a nominal value of 2.85 cents per Skymile.

Now, it's fair to point out that I wouldn't have actually paid $1,220 to rebook her onto Delta. Rather, I would have let United handle it, rebooking her onto flights tomorrow and causing me a huge amount of stress waiting to see whether she makes it in time.

That's the distinction I was driving at in this post back in April. While it's not fair to say that I used my miles to "save" $1,210, since I wouldn't have paid that much for this Delta ticket, it is fair to say that the 42,500 Skymiles I used, which cost me perhaps $243 to manufacture (earning 1.4 Skymiles per dollar, spending 0.8 cents per dollar), bought me something that's worth at least several times that much (including a ticket, my peace of mind, and a buffer day in between traveling), and in that sense I really did get an outsized return on my upfront investment.

Two Alternatives

There were two additional alternatives that were conceivable in this situation. First, I could have bought my partner the paid Delta ticket using my Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard, and redeemed Arrival miles against the purchase. To earn 122,000 Arrival miles, I'd need to spend about $61,000 on the card, which would cost me perhaps $488. That would be slightly more expensive than the Skymiles option, but it would leave me with the 42,500 Skymiles, which is about a third of the new cost of a transatlantic BusinessElite ticket.

Alternatively, and I might have tried this if I were flying with my partner, I could have asked United to rebook me on the Delta flight tonight, instead of paying for a hotel in Madison or Cleveland. Airlines are sometimes willing to do this, although it will depend largely on the agent you're dealing with and how hard you're willing to push. Besides the fact that I didn't want to put my partner on the spot to negotiate her rebooking, the real obstacle to this approach is the agonizing slowness of United customer service agents. If she waited in line to speak to the customer service representative, she would have missed not only the United flight to Cleveland, but probably the Delta flight to Detroit as well. I'd rather go online, book a ticket, and have her walk over to her new gate.

Plus, this way I scored huge brownie points, just in time for the holidays.

3 cards you might not know about (but should)

Every once in a while I come across a credit card product that I haven't heard of, but which seems to offer some kind of disproportionately high earning potential. Typically these cards fly under the radar either because they're new, they earn miles in a less-familiar rewards program, and/or they don't offer referral credit to bloggers. Here are a few such cards:

Barclaycard Travelocity Rewards American Express – 2%-6% cash back

When I wrote about this card all the way back in June, there were 2 versions of the card, one which earned 5 points per dollar spent at Travelocity and one which earned 3. I can no longer find a working link to the 5 point card, so it seems they've discontinued it for new applications. The 3 point per dollar, no-annual-fee card is still available though, offering 10,000 points after $1,000 in purchases within 90 days, worth up to $200 in statement credits against Travelocity purchases (see my June post for more information about redemptions).

You should be booking your paid airline tickets through Travelocity anyway, since they offer 2 Chase Ultimate Rewards points per dollar through the Ultimate Rewards shopping portal.

The Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard is strictly superior for manufactured spend, since it earns a flat 2.22% cash back on all purchases after the 10% redemption rebate, while the Travelocity American Express earns 6% only on Travelocity reservations, and 2% on all other purchases (which is still a decent return for a no-annual-fee card). And of course if you make a travel purchase with the Arrival card in order to make a redemption against it, you can't make the same purchase with the Travelocity card!

On the other hand, the Arrival MasterCard has an $89 annual fee, and earns less value on the travel purchases themselves.

That's a problem with no one right answer, but I would use the Travelocity card if I booked a lot of reimbursable business flights, and earn a $400 rebate for every $6,667 I spent on airfare.

For hotel stays, you are still be better off using a hotel co-branded card and booking through your hotel's website, since $6,667 spent on a co-branded card is enough to earn 1 or more (in some cases many more) free nights at any hotel chain property except a Category 7 Starwood property, which would require $8,750 or $7,000 on the co-branded American Express, depending on your elite status.

Quicken Rewards Visa – up to 2.86% cash back

Like the US Bank FlexPerks Visa, this card offers travel redemptions in fixed tiers, so the amount of value of your points will depend entirely on the cost of the flights you redeem them for. Here's are the available redemption tiers:

View fullsize

You can also redeem your points for a $100 check for 10,000 points. So, assuming you're not some kind of sociopath, you'll get a minimum of 1 cent and a maximum of 1.43 cents in value per point (for a flight costing exactly $500).

Crucially, the card earns 2 points per dollar spent at restaurants, gas stations, pharmacies, and office supply stores. If those sound like 3 of the most popular and lucrative venues for manufactured spend, it's because they are.

Interestingly, the slightly random redemption thresholds make this card a good complement to the US Bank Flexperks Visa. For example, a $400 ticket would cost 20,000 FlexPoints, giving you 2 cents per FlexPoint (100% of the maximum value), but 35,000 Quicken points, giving you 1.14 cents per point (80% of the maximum value).

Huntington Voice - 3% cash back on $2,000 in spend per quarter

While you won't get rich using this card, you can still earn $240 per year manufacturing spend in the bonus category of your choice (including gas stations, pharmacies, grocery stores, and office supply stores). Together with some of my other favorite cash back cards, like the US Bank Cash+, Discover More, and Chase Freedom, this is the kind of card you can take out once a quarter, max out your bonus category, and forget about it for 3 more months.

What else?

Which are your favorite "sleeper" cards, the ones that don't get the attention you think they deserve?

Rebate your manufactured spend (brand new hack)

As always, before I get started with today's news I have to get a few things out of the way.

First of all, the hack that I'm discussing today involves PayPal. I know everybody hates PayPal. Heck, I hate PayPal too. But they've also been very good to me. If you feel like ranting about PayPal, the comments, as always, are open.

Second, as always I want to give credit for this hack where credit is due. That's a pretty short list this time. I originally got the idea from a comment left here on the blog by Phil. If you read this, thanks Phil! Over the course of the day or two I spent researching this, I was only able to find one veiled reference (I think) left on a Frequent Miler post over the summer. So, thanks to DFW, too, I guess.

Finally, I haven't tried this personally. I'll be applying for new cards at the end of January or beginning of February, and will of course post an update then. In the meantime, I would love to hear about readers' experiences if they're able to make this work – or, especially, if not.

The PayPal Business Debit MasterCard

As my readers know, one of my favorite tools for manufactured spend is the PayPal Business Debit MasterCard. It has two amazing functions:

• It earns 1% cash back on all non-PIN transactions, including all online transactions;
• It's a PIN-enabled debit card that can be loaded using PayPal My Cash cards and emptied at Walmart.

This is an amazing combination of features. But unfortunately as it stands, you have to choose which benefit to take advantage of: access to debit features like money orders, Walmart Bill Pay, and prepaid card loads (Bluebird and Gobank), or 1% cash back.

Your New .83% Cash Back Debit Card

When you don't have enough funds in your PayPal account to cover a Debit MasterCard transaction, instead of having your transaction rejected, PayPal gives you the option of pulling the funds from a backup funding source. You can choose any bank account linked to your PayPal account, or you can use a PayPal Extras MasterCard.

The PayPal Extras MasterCard earns "points" which can be redeemed for cash into your PayPal account: you can redeem 6,000 points for $50 in cash, or 0.83 cents per point. You can only earn 50,000 points per year (8 $50 redemptions, plus some change).

According to Phil's comment, these backup funding transactions earn points on the Extras MasterCard.

Since I don't have an Extras MasterCard yet, I can't confirm the limits on these backup funding transactions or whether they earn points. The standard limit on backup funding transactions is $1,000 per day, but I don't know if the same limit applies when the backup funding source is a PayPal Extras MasterCard.

It Gets Better

As I mentioned, the backup funding source is only used when you don't have enough money in your PayPal account to cover a debit card transaction. That means that rather than loading your PayPal account with a PayPal My Cash card and then emptying the balance with your Debit MasterCard, you will want to use your Debit MasterCard when your account balance does not cover the transaction.

Amazingly your PayPal Extras MasterCard is managed from within your PayPal account and you can use your PayPal balance to pay off your Extras MasterCard. That means you can load a PayPal My Cash card to your account and move the money directly into your Extras MasterCard to pay off the balance you incurred using your Debit MasterCard.

What it Means

Let's take a look at a simple pass through this hack.

• Assume a PayPal balance of $0.70;
• Use your PayPal Business Debit MasterCard to purchase a $1,000 money order from Walmart;
• After using the $0.70 in your account (and covering the money order purchase fee), your PayPal Extras MasterCard will be charged $1,000;
• Buy 2 $500 PayPal My Cash cards at CVS for $7.90 and load them to your PayPal account;
• Move the money from your PayPal account to your Extras MasterCard;
• Redeem 1,000 points for $8.33 (when you have 6,000 points).

You'll have spent $8.60 for the money order fee and My Cash cards, and earned $8.33 worth of Extras points – and manufactured $1,007.90 in spend at CVS.

What do you think?

Does it work? Are you going to try it? Should I have kept my mouth shut? Inquiring minds want to know! See you in the comments.

Resolution of my MVD/FDIC complaint

Before I get to today's post, I want to invite all my readers to come back tomorrow when I'll be talking about a new hack that I've been exploring – because I need your help. Normally I only post about a new technique once I've had a chance to explore all the nuances and share my findings, but this one is a little bit different and I think it'll benefit from as much reader feedback as possible. And yes, it is going to upset some people that I'm writing about it publicly, so if nothing else you should come back to check out the fireworks in comments.

With that out of the way, on to today's news. When I got back from Wisconsin last night I found a letter from The Bancorp Bank in response to my FDIC complaint about my second frozen MyVanilla Debit Card account (the one with all the money in it). Then this morning I received another letter from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Bancorp's main federal regulator. I thought I'd share the details of those responses with my readers.

Bancorp's Response

There were several interesting sections in the Bancorp letter. First, the explanation of the initial account blockage on November 21:

Your account was blocked on November 21, 2013 due to activity that was considered suspicious. The account received several loads which mimic a fraudulent transaction pattern that InComm, the program manager, sees on a day-to-day basis during phone scams.

Presumably the phone scams they're talking about are when you're asked to buy a reload card and send in the PIN number in order to receive a prize.

Next, there was an explanation for the runaround I was given:

All of the requested information was received and on December 2, 2013 the card was reopened. We appreciate you sending in the requested information in such a timely matter [sic]. The turnaround time to review submitted documents is anywhere from 24-72 hours. In this case the documents you submitted were sent to the wrong folder which resulted in a delay in reopening the account. The documents were reviewed on December 2, 2013 and the account was reopened.

Then some commentary on their federal banking supervision:

Please understand that our ultimate goal is to protect the security of your account. We are obligated by federal banking regulations to follow a process known as the Customer Identification Program (CIP). The CIP regulations make it mandatory for a bank to take the proper steps to confirm the identity of its customers. The CIP process is necessarily stricter with accounts that are opened via the internet. While we must always comply with all banking regulations, we make every attempt to do so with as little impact to you as possible. We appreciate your patience and understanding while we assisted you with your concern.

Finally a little customer service boilerplate:

This issue has since been discussed with the customer service department to ensure the review requests and escalations are being sent to the correct individuals. We apologize for any inconvenience you experienced. We truly regret the delay that was caused by the mishandling of your request.

In other words, they seem to be saying there were two separate issues:

• Possibility of me being a phone scammer, getting Vanilla Reload PINs from unsuspecting victims and quickly loading and unloading the value;
• And federal banking regulations which require them to conduct identity verification for accounts opened over the internet.

That being the case, it's still impossible to say what "directly" led to my account being frozen.

The FDIC's Response

Besides including a copy of Bancorp's response, the FDIC also expanded a little on the regulations Bancorp was claiming to be following:

The USA Patriot Act rules require each financial institution to adopt a Customer Identification Program (CIP) to ensure the bank has a reasonable belief that it knows each customer's identity. That is why financial institutions engage in more rigorous customer identification procedures when opening new accounts, especially for accounts opened over the Internet. The FDIC and other regulatory agencies encourage banks to use the basic principles set forth in the rule (31 C.F.R Chapter X), which includes obtaining customer information, such as a name, date of birth, address, and for U.S. residents, a tax payer identification number. In addition, banks must verify the identity of customers, through the review of documents or through non-documentary methods, such as information obtained from consumer reporting agencies or checking references. The bank's CIP must also provide customers with adequate notice that the bank is requesting information to verify their identity.

So there you go. I don't think it will necessarily help keep anyone from being shut down, but it's good to know that if you file a complaint with the FDIC, they will listen and respond in a more or less timely manner. Your tax dollars at work!

Nationwide Visa Buxx offering $5 bonus in December

I'll be generous and assume that my readers already have a Nationwide Visa Buxx card, since it's an easy way to generate $1,000 in monthly spend on any Visa or MasterCard every month at a cost of $4.

That being the case, check your e-mail for an offer to receive $5 in extra cash when you load $50 to your Visa Buxx account by December 31, 2013. Unfortunately, the Terms and Conditions are too vague to tell clearly whether loading more than $50 will qualify for the $5 bonus, or if you need to load exactly $50.

This matters since if you only earn the bonus when you load exactly $50, you're barely coming out ahead (since you'll pay $2 for the $50 load and another $2 for the subsequent $450 load), while if you earn the bonus when you load any amount over $50, then the $5 will pay for 2 and a half $500 loads, a free month of manufactured spend!

The bonuses are supposed to post by the end of January, so presumably we'll find out for sure by then.

Have a Hilton Amex? Do this now

[edit: I was just about to start a countdown for how long it would take for this promotion to show up on some of the less scrupulous blogs, when I saw that seconds before I published, over at Milepoint gconnery posted the same thing. Well played, gconnery, well played] 

American Express has been quietly running a promotion for the past few weeks that I only noticed today. If you register your American Express Hilton HHonors or Surpass credit card, you'll earn an additional 6 HHonors points per dollar spent on your "room rate and charges to your room" at Hilton properties within the United States (excluding Puerto Rico and other US territories, possessions, and minor outlying islands) from November 20, 2013 to February 28, 2014, up to a maximum of 15,000 bonus HHonors points.

Interestingly, there is nothing in the Terms and Conditions excluding stays you've already completed, as long as you paid for those stays with your registered American Express co-branded credit card.

As a reminder, the no-annual-fee Hilton HHonors American Express typically earns 7 HHonors points per dollar spent at Hilton properties, and the $75 annual fee HHonors Surpass card earns 12 HHonors points per dollar. With this promotion, you'll be earning 13 and 18 HHonors points, respectively, per dollar spent with each card (although this 6 point bonus only applies to room rates, not taxes and fees).

Since there's a narrow and remarkably consistent band of value of HHonors points between 0.33 and 0.5 cents per point, this promotion is worth between 2% and 3% in additional value, bringing your total haul for a dollar spent at Hilton properties to 4.29%-6.5% and 5.95%-9% in value for each card.

Whether you anticipate taking advantage of it or not, be sure to register now, before you forget.

Perfect storm of signup bonuses

I was writing this post yesterday but my blogging software wasn't behaving, and Mommy Points beat me to the punch! Go read that post, but here's the quick and dirty: there are a number of too-good-to-miss signup bonuses available right now, so if you've been waiting for the right moment for a credit card application cycle, this is the right moment. Here are the cards I would apply for today (no affiliate links here, obviously):

• Bank of America Alaska Airlines Visa Signature, 50,000 miles after $1,000 in spending. Arguably the most valuable traditional airline miles, and inarguably the highest offer ever made for this credit card. This is the time to get it.
• Barclaycard Lufthansa Miles & More World MasterCard, 50,000 miles after $5,000 in spending.
• Chase British Airways Visa Signature, 100,000 miles after $20,000 in spending within the first year. A high spending requirement, but also the highest this offer has ever been. After spending $20,000 on the card, you'll have earned 125,000 Avios, or 6.25 Avios per dollar (the card earns 1.25 Avios per dollar on non-bonused spending).
• Citi Platinum Select / (American Airlines) AAdvantage World MasterCard, 50,000 miles after $3,000 in spending.

These are all best-in-class offers, and it's vanishingly unlikely that they'll all be simultaneously available again in the near future. If you wanted to add an American Express card into the mix I'd probably go for a Starwood Preferred Guest personal or business card, unless you're in the hunt for Delta Platinum or Diamond status, in which case you could apply for a personal or business Delta Platinum American Express. I'm not thrilled with any of the Membership Rewards signup bonuses currently available, unless one of my readers can point to something better than the 25,000 point signup bonus for the Premier Rewards Gold card.

Quick hits from around the web

Here's my roundup of news from around the blogosphere. Take note:

• Citi lets you redeem your ThankYou points for 0.75 cents each;
• Chase has announced their 2014 Freedom bonus categories (pretty much the same as last year, minus drug stores). My page has been updated with the new categories for your reference;
• Some American Express cards allow you to earn 5,000 bonus points for referring people (the signup bonuses seem the same as usual);
• If anyone you know doesn't have Hilton Gold status, you can gift it here for $49 (or buy it for yourself). I had to log in to Milepoint to see the gift page;
• TSA Precheck is now open to anyone willing to pay an $85 fee and visit Indianapolis for induction;
• Rent an Audi for $9 (plus taxes, I assume) using Silvercar;
• Earn EQM in Mileage Plan on all Alaska airline partners starting January 15.

Now you know (almost) everything I do.

Are Club Carlson points worth 1 cent each? Sometimes.

I've been fortunate enough this year to be able to more or less sit out the signup bonus carousel. Sure, I applied for a few new cards in April when I had some upcoming travel needs, but besides my 2% cash back Fidelity American Express and 2.22% travel rewards Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard, I've been focusing on getting the most out of my 5% cash back Citi ThankYou Preferred card. Now that I'm in the home stretch of my promotional period, my thoughts have naturally turned towards finding a new "workhorse" card for next year: a card which earns points or miles that are more valuable than the average of 2.1% cash back I earn with the cards I mentioned above.

One obvious choice is the Citizen's Bank 5% cash back offer, which lasts for the first 90 days of card membership. I happen to have a Citizen's Bank checking account where I receive some direct deposits, which hopefully would weigh favorably in their calculation of my credit limit, so it's certainly possible I could earn $2000-$3000 in cash during the promotional period.

There's a long thread on the FlyerTalk forums about the Wells Fargo version of this offer, which lasts for 6 months instead of 90 days. Unfortunately, those applying without a Wells Fargo checking account have found themselves with credit limits so low that it's difficult to imagine getting much value from the card.

On the other hand, I already have a Club Carlson Business Rewards Visa that gives me 5 Gold points per dollar spent on all purchases and – crucially – the last night free on award reservations of 2 or more nights. Thanks to that "last night free" benefit, the conventional wisdom is that the points are best used on award stays of exactly two nights. That's all well and good as far as it goes (I spent 2 nights at the Radisson Blu Aqua in Chicago in November, which cost me around $75 thanks to this card), but it's also fairly restrictive: sometimes you want to stay in a city for more than 2 nights, sometimes you don't want to move between properties every 2 nights, and some cities only have 1 Club Carlson property in the first place.

That being the case, I thought it would be useful to do a speculative analysis of the value of a Club Carlson point across various hotel categories and lengths of stay. I might have my next workhorse card in my pocket already!

Before I share the results, a couple of quick points:

• I assumed that you can manufacture spend at an average of 0.75 cents per dollar. If that's low for you (for example, if you primarily use MyVanilla Debit cards you might be paying somewhat more for that portion of your spend) then this analysis would have to be adjusted slightly;
• There's no easy method of selecting a value to use for a single hotel night. Price is almost always misleading, since there are hotels so expensive that you'd never pay to stay there (and hotels too horrible to pay any price for). I picked what seems to me a sensible compromise: the most I could ever conceive of paying for a hotel room is $250, and the least is $60, so I applied a linear regression between those numbers for a "hypothetical value" of one night at each category of Club Carlson property. This method isn't perfect and there's no substitute for researching the actual properties you want to stay at.

Here's what I came up with:

View fullsize

This follows the pattern you'd expect: when you stay 1 night at any property, you don't get to take advantage of the "last night free" benefit, so your value per point is just the hypothetical value divided by that category's point cost. Then your value per point is maximized when you stay exactly 2 nights, since that serve as a 50% discount on the cost per night. Finally, the more nights you stay, the less your free night decreases your average value, until it is just a 16% bonus on your points' value when you stay 7 nights.

As I mentioned, this analysis is very sensitive to assumptions, especially our assumptions about the value of a free night, so I want to suggest an alternative approach: at what hypothetical value per night is a dollar spent on the Club Carlson Business Rewards Visa worth less than a dollar spent on the Barclaycard 2.22% cash back Arrival World MasterCard? Since the Club Carlson Visa earns 5 Gold Points per dollar, we'll need to get less than 0.444 cents in value per point to justify using the Barclaycard instead. Here are those "break-even values:"

View fullsize

Strictly for the sake of comparison, here are some midweek refundable (AAA) rates at Category 5 and 6 Club Carlson properties I pulled up, including tax (since taxes and fees are included on award redemptions):

• Radisson Blu Aqua Chicago, mid-February, Category 6: $207.88
• Radisson Blu Alcron Hotel, Prague, mid-March, Category 5: $123.61
• Radisson Blu Hotel Champs Elysees, Paris, mid-April, Category 6: $524.42
• The May Fair, London, mid-May, Category 6: $596.31
• Radisson Martinique on Broadway, New York City, mid-June, Category 6: $292

This analysis has its limitations of course: you need to know in advance that you're traveling to cities with Club Carlson properties, for example, and the properties have to be convenient to the part of city you intend to visit. That's far from always the case. However, I know of no other card that offers such consistent value above that earned by a cash back card. To put it another way, while you may get more than 2.22 cents per value out of your United miles, you only get that value when you redeem for last minute domestic travel or premium-cabin international trips. A dollar spent on a Club Carlson Business Rewards Visa, on the other hand, is worth over 2.22 cents on stays of virtually any length at virtually any Club Carlson property.

Finding myself 1,582 MQM short (and making it up)

I mentioned all the way back in June that I was planning on making Delta Platinum Medallion this year thanks to the 200% MQM I'll earn on a First Class ticket operated by Alaska Airlines this Christmas. Oddly, while only "full fare" First and Business class tickets earn 200% MQM on Delta-operated flights, Alaska Airlines only has one First Class fare class, and that fare class earns 200% MQM on Delta, even when it's only trivially more expensive than Coach (as it was on this itinerary).

Then, the unthinkable happened: I decided to spend New Year's Eve in Portland, Oregon, instead of flying back to New England on December 30. Crucially, that meant my final first-class leg, PDX-BOS, would be credited to the 2014 program year, instead of the 2013 program year. That would leave me 1,582 Medallion Qualification Miles short of Delta Platinum Medallion, which is the best Delta Medallion status, since it gives you unlimited free award changes and redeposits, allowing you to grab low-level award seats as they become available.

I'm never one to shy away from a spontaneous vacation, but unfortunately I needed to fly on paid tickets in order to earn MQM, which meant I needed to think strategically. I thought I'd walk through my decision-making for my readers, in case they find themselves in a similar situation.

The Options

When trying to piece together a last minute mileage jaunt like this, you need to evaluate all the options. There are three important dimensions to look at right away.

• Are one-way tickets more expensive than round-trip tickets? If not, you can use different methods to buy each ticket, as I ended up doing in this case.
• Are first-class tickets (much) more expensive than economy tickets? I only needed 1,582 MQM, which thanks to the 500-mile minimum on Delta works out to 4 segments. If, however, I'd needed 2,582 MQM, then I could book my tickets in First Class and with the 50% class-of-service bonus those same 4 segments would earn 3,000 MQM.
• What kinds of points do you have available? This is obviously key if we're trying to earn these miles as cheaply as possible.

The Solution

It turned out that for the flights I had in mind, one-way tickets were half the price of round-trip, with each direction costing about $180 in economy.

On the flights I was looking at, first-class tickets were only about $100 more in each direction.

Finally, I had about 16,000 ThankYou points left over after my last student loan rebate redemption, and those points can be used at full value (1 cent each) for travel reservations made through the ThankYou booking tool. I also had a $50 Delta transportation voucher from a broken reading lamp a few trips ago.

With all that in mind, here's what I ended up doing:

• Ticket #1: Since I didn't have enough ThankYou points to cover the entire $180 ticket, I spent just 15,500 TY points, leaving me with $25 to pay with my Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard, which will allow me to redeem my Arrival miles against the purchase.
• Ticket #2: I used my $50 transportation voucher against the $180 ticket and paid for the remaining $130 with my Arrival MasterCard.

After redeeming my Arrival miles against the purchases, my total cost for this roundtrip will be about $81.38: $23.75 for the ThankYou points and $57.63 for the Arrival miles (assuming I'm paying 0.75 cents per dollar in manufactured spend). That's a no-brainer for Platinum Medallion status, which also comes with a Medallion Choice Benefit (I picked the 20,000 bonus miles last year).

An Alternative

Interestingly, since First Class tickets were only slightly more expensive than Coach, there was another solution: I could redeem my Skymiles for 1 cent each against a First Class "pay with miles" ticket, which unlike economy redemptions do earn MQM and redeemable Skymiles. I have enough Skymiles that I could have redeemed them for the entire cost of one or both tickets. I considered doing this, but there are a few reasons why I decided not to go that route:

• Delta transportation vouchers can't be used in conjunction with a "pay with miles" redemption, and just like miles and points, the least valuable travel voucher is the one you don't use;
• ThankYou points are worth a maximum of 1 cent each, while Skymiles are worth a minimum of 1 cent each. I can use my Skymiles for premium-cabin international trips, while the best alternative use of my ThankYou points is for student loan rebate checks, where I'm also getting 1 cent in value per point.

And that's how I'm going to earn Platinum Medallion for (probably) the last time, before switching to Alaska Gold MVP+ at the end of next year and earning hyper-valuable Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles instead.