Travel bleg: where should I stay in New York City?

When I published my 2013 end-of-year report on my manufactured spend activity, one of the requests I got from some readers was for more information on how I spend my miles and points and not just how I earn them. I just booked a pretty involved itinerary for March that I'll be posting about once it's finalized, but I'm still struggling with the last piece of the puzzle: where should I stay in New York City?

I'm planning on a long weekend in the City, preferably from Thursday to Sunday, although Friday to Sunday is fine as well. Since I always keep a balance of Club Carlson Gold Points, I went ahead and booked a 2-night award stay at the Radisson Martinique on Broadway for 50,000 Gold Points, valuing that 2-night stay at $222, which seems like a good value for New York City. For comparison, the AAA rate would be $511.92 for the same stay.

To book the previous Thursday would cost another 50,000 Gold Points or $238, which I consider a push since the paid rate would also earn Gold Points.

My concern is that for some reason I have a bad impression of the Radisson Martinique. I've never stayed there, but whenever I read about it it's people saying things like:

"It’s such a so so hotel. There is no way for me to pay to stay there."

"I am not the biggest fan of this hotel...Truly NY-style matchbox size rooms."

So I'm curious if my readers have any great insights or little-known hacks for getting great values in Manhattan. I have all of my February statement cycles to go, so I could run up the score on my Chase Sapphire Preferred in order to transfer Ultimate Rewards points to Hyatt and stay at one of their properties for 20,000 or 25,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points, but it's tough to imagine that's going to be a better value than the Radisson Martinique.

Are there other properties or programs I should be looking at? Good best rate guarantee opportunities?

Welcome the newest member of the Buxx family: TD Go Card

January is the month that keeps on giving.

Flyertalk member and American Hero BarnyardRomeo on Monday brought the community's attention to the existence of a new member of the Visa Buxx family of prepaid cards: the TD Go Card. I ordered my card immediately, and while it hasn't arrived yet, I want to share what I know so those of my readers who are interested can get their orders in as soon as possible.

Background: Visa Buxx

The Visa Buxx family of cards are PIN-enabled, reloadable prepaid Visa debit cards. While there are a fair number of these cards, the two that have traditionally been of interest to the travel hacking community are the Nationwide Visa Buxx and US Bank Visa Buxx (and the similar, since-discontinued Wells Fargo Prepaid Card), since they can be reloaded using third-party Visa and MasterCard credit cards. Most – but not all – credit card companies award miles and points for these transactions, and the money can be easily liquidated using any of the PIN-based debit techniques we have available.

I wrote a whole post on the nuances of loading and unloading those two cards, so if you're hazy on the details of Visa Buxx cards, check out that post before reading on.

Signing Up

Like the Nationwide Visa Buxx – but unlike the US Bank card – it's possible to sign up for a TD Go card using the same personal information for the "parent" and the "teen." That means it's not necessary to fudge your data or "swap places" with a partner in order to register. I did leave my middle initial out in the "teen" information section, purely from an overabundance of caution.

You can make an initial load of $20 to $1,000 using any Visa or MasterCard credit or debit card, and you'll pay a $4.95 enrollment fee.

Limits

Here's where this card gets really exciting: it's superior to the Nationwide and Visa Buxx cards in every way. From the terms and conditions, here are the limits on loads:

Limitations on Dollar Amount of Loads. The initial minimum load is twenty dollars ($20.00) and the maximum is one thousand dollars ($1,000). You may load up to one thousand ($1,000.00) per day on Your Card, not to exceed three thousand dollars ($3,000.00) per thirty (30) days. Your maximum Card value at any time is two thousand dollars ($2,000.00).

Even better, instead of $2.50 (for the US Bank card) or $2 (for Nationwide), each load of up to $1,000 costs just $1.

Now, before you try to load $3,000 over three days and make a single Walmart bill payment, keep in mind that the maximum balance on the card at any one time is $2,000, and (not surprisingly) the card has a daily purchase limit of $2,000. You can find additional information in the terms and conditions and in this handy TD Go product guide. You should read both thoroughly.

Conclusion

I've already ordered my card, and I strongly recommend you think about ordering one for yourself as well. It's impossible to say how long this opportunity will last: the US Bank and Nationwide Visa Buxx are going strong with nary a whimper, while the highly-lucrative Well Fargo Prepaid Card was discontinued, presumably because it wasn't profitable enough for the issuing bank.

Here's hoping January has even more pleasant surprises in store for us!

Update: Evolve Money payments posting

[update 2/6/14: please see my post on Upromise Investments]

I'm happy to report that my first wave of Evolve Money payments made at the end of last week have all posted successfully to my online accounts. I added all the legitimate payees I could think of, as well as a few experiments along the lines of my "3 Insane Ways." Here are my results:

Bills

I was successfully able to make a payment to my Blue Cross Blue Shield dental insurance policy. Evolve Money promised to deliver it on January 21, but it apparently got there a little early:

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I was also able to make an early payment to my gas provider, National Grid. Since same-day payments are free until February 16, I chose the "express" version of the payee – this is a different payee in the search function. Evolve Money claims to have delivered the payment on January 20 (a federal holiday), while National Grid posted the payment on the 21st:

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Student Loans

I also made a student loan payment to "Federal Student Loans – All Servicers." Evolve Money claims to have delivered the money on January 21, and sure enough, there it is right on time:

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529 College Savings Plans

Finally, I made 2 contributions to 529 College Savings Plans: one to my "real" 529 plan, with the Utah Educational Savings Program, and the second to a new account created with USAA. Both contributions posted right on schedule.

I haven't yet been able to determine whether the USAA plan will allow me to make electronic withdrawals from the 529 savings account like my UESP account does. It may take some trial and error to find an account that is compatible with Evolve Money and allows easy online withdrawals.

Preliminary Thoughts

In short, my first salvo of Evolve Money payments was an unqualified success. I also learned a few useful tips to make sure payments are processed correctly:

• For payees with multiple addresses, use the billing address on your bill. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it was relevant in the cases of my student loan and utility bill payments. I was given a number of options for which address to send the payments to, and I selected the payee with the same mailing address, even though the biller name did not match. In the case of my student loans, my loan servicer is "FedLoan Servicing" They apparently share an address with another student loan servicer, and I made my (successful) payment to that servicer instead. Even though the names didn't match, the addresses did.
• For all the payees I used, I was able to add the bill successfully by deleting any dashes or spaces in my account numbers.

My remaining unanswered question is whether the transactions I funded using my PayPal Business Debit MasterCard will earn 1% cash back. I'm extremely confident they will, since they are processed as signature transactions, but PayPal has not yet updated my pending cash back so I can't say so with certainty yet. Whether or not that 1% cash back option exists will determine what is the best funding source for these payments: PayPal, reloadable prepaid debit cards like Visa Buxx or MyVanilla Debit cards, or one-off gift cards purchased at drug stores, grocery stores, gas stations, or office supply stores with cards that bonus purchases at those merchants.

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Connecting the dots: Chase Ink Visas back on top

[update 2/6/14: please see my post on Upromise Investments]

I mentioned a few months ago that I was planning to finally get a Chase Ink Bold card, which would allow me to earn bonus points at local convenience store locations categorized by Visa as gas stations.

Ultimately that plan was short-circuited in my impromptu January application cycle, when I jumped on a 100,000 Avios offer from the Chase British Airways Visa card.

I've had a tortured relationship with the Chase Ink Bold card: in principle, its earning rate at gas stations (2 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar) and office supply stores (5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar) should make it one of the most lucrative cards available. In practice, every time I think I have a new source of gas station reload cards and gift cards, it's slammed shut by a register re-coding or employee re-training.

Meanwhile, while $200 Visa gift cards from office supply stores, with an activation fee of $6.95, allow you to buy Ultimate Rewards points at a cost of 0.67 cents each, liquidating those cards has traditionally required either using up valuable Bluebird reload space or buying inefficiently small money orders and bill payments.

Finally, since the United devaluation it's become increasing difficult to value Ultimate Rewards points at the 1.89 cents necessary to justify buying them for 0.67 cents each when you can buy Barclaycard Arrival miles, worth 1.11 cents, for just 0.39 cents each. (Explanation: 1.89 / 1.11 = 0.67 / 0.39).

Events have conspired to change that calculation, and again make the Chase Ink Bold Visa one of the most unimaginably lucrative cards on the market today.

Visa Savings Edge

Visa Savings Edge is a program that allows you to earn cash back in the form of statement credits on your account whenever you make eligible purchases at participating merchants. As Frequent Miler pointed out yesterday, Staples is one of those participating merchants. The offer reads:

Save 1% when you make a qualifying purchase of $200 or more with your enrolled Visa Business card in store or on staples.com. Save on thousands of products for your small business at Staples. From coffee to cleaning supplies and technology to business services, you’ll find everything you need to keep your business running. Now get 1% back via statement credit on all purchases at Staples® when you use your enrolled Visa® Business Card.

That means a $200 Visa gift card, rather than costing $6.95, will cost just $4.88, bringing the break-even value of Ultimate Rewards points down to 1.35.

Plink

Of course, as I mentioned yesterday in my trip report, Staples also participates in Plink, allowing you to earn $3 in Amazon credit every time you spend $60 or more at Staples. If you consider Amazon credit "as good as cash," you'll end up paying just $1.88 each time you buy a $200 Visa gift card – just 0.18 cents per Ultimate Reward point (up to 10 purchases per 30 days, per the terms of the Plink offer).

Liquidate Using Evolve Money

Finally, the last concern above, that liquidating $200 Visa gift cards is awkward, inefficient, and impractical, has been put to rest by the vast liquidation capacity of Evolve Money. If you take advantage only of the most lucrative version of this deal, combining both Visa Savings Edge and Plink, you'll have just $2,000 in gift cards to liquidate every 30 days. Since Evolve Money has plenty of legitimate payees, like utilities, insurance companies, phone companies, etc., $2,000 seems like an eminently reasonable amount to push through each month – especially when buying those gift cards is this unbelievably lucrative.

Honorable Mention: Club Carlson Business Rewards Visa

While the card itself doesn't bonus office supply store purchases, the Club Carlson Business Rewards Visa does earn 5 Club Carlson Gold Points on all purchases, which I've argued can in some cases be worth up to 1 cent each. The card can likewise be registered through Visa Savings Edge and through Plink, allowing you to pay the same 0.18 cents per point as with the Chase Ink cards.

Update on HRB Emerald load limits

Since reporting last Wednesday that HR Block Emerald prepaid MasterCards are (finally) reloadable using Vanilla Reload Network reload cards, I've been tracking my loading activity with the goal of establishing the card's limits (since it is not even published in the terms and conditions of the card that it can be loaded with those instruments). Here's what I found:

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As you can see, there's a rolling, 24-hour load limit of $1,000. There also appears to be a weekly or monthly limit of $5,000 in loads – although it's also been hypothesized that it's a limit of 10 loads of any kind, so if you were loading lower-denomination cards for whatever reason, you might end up being able to load less than $5,000.

As a reminder, you can use your Emerald card's routing number and account number (called "DDA" for some reason) from the account's home page to pay bills or transfer money from the account to any bank, credit card, or other payee that allows it. Unfortunately, American Express for reasons known only to themselves does not allow you to link bank accounts with account numbers over a certain number of digits, so I have not been able to successfully link my Emerald card as a payment source for my American Express cards. Of course, for a mere $0.95 I could pay my American Express bills directly from the HR Block Emerald interface, which I might consider doing under certain conditions.

A gift card deal too good to resist

[update 2/6/14: please see my post on Upromise Investments]

Gift card churning seems like a lot of fun for those who enjoy it. The really serious guys like Frequent Miler wait for a big opportunity to come along and then go big, turning gift cards into merchandise and then trying to liquidate the goods, generating credit card spend and – hopefully – a small profit.

Personally, I only dabble in gift cards when opportunities come along that already fit into my overall strategy. For example, I was happy to pay $7.50 for 3,500 Flexpoints last May.

Today I made an exception and strolled down to my neighborhood Staples to buy some hanging folders – and a $100 Visa gift card, which came with an activation fee of $5.95. Just to magnify the insanity, I didn't even use a card that bonuses office supply stores: I used my American Express Hilton HHonors card, which earns 3 HHonors points per dollar spent on non-bonused purchases.

American Express Offers for You

By now you've guessed where this is going: my HHonors card was targeted by Amex for the Staples "Offer for You," which reads:

Get a one-time $25 statement credit by using your enrolled Card to spend a total of $100 or more on qualifying purchases at Staples by 3/17/2014.

If you carry any American Express cards, log into your online account and see if any of them have been targeted. From the reports I've read online, most people are only receiving the offer for one of their credit cards. If you get the offer for more than one card, then use the "Multiple Browser Tabs" trick described here to register for the offer on each eligible card.

Plink

In addition to the $25 statement credit I received from American Express, I also made sure to add my Hilton HHonors card to Plink in order to earn 300 Plink points (worth $3 in Amazon credit) for spending more than $60 on my linked credit card at Staples.

Breaking: Liquidate with Evolve Money

Finally, I was excited to take advantage of this offer in order to run an experiment liquidating Visa gift cards using Evolve Money.

I'm more than happy to report that I was able to successfully add the Visa gift card to Evolve Money (after registering the gift card online), and make a bill payment to one of my utility companies.

This is extremely exciting since it effectively reduces the cost of gift card liquidation to $0. If this technique continues to work with other prepaid cards, like the One Vanilla cards sold at CVS, it will mean $28,000-$31,000 in monthly manufactured spend with no liquidation costs.

The possibilities here are truly staggering, but I'm going to refrain from any additional speculation until later this week when it becomes clearer what kinds of possibilities exist to liberate cash using Evolve Money.

3 Insane Ways to Use Evolve Money to Manufacture Spend

[update 2/6/14: please see my post on Upromise Investments]

Yesterday I broke some pretty exciting news: there's an online payment service that allows you to make bill payments – for free – using any Visa, MasterCard, or Discover debit card. I mentioned some eligible payees, one possibly lucrative use for the service, and told you folks to start experimenting.

One of the first comments on that post was from reader Alcwj, who wrote:

So... can't payoff CC = no MS

Instead of responding in the comments, I decided it would be fun to write up the 3 craziest ways I could think of to push as much spend as possible through the service (Evolve Money bill payments are limited to $1,000 per calendar day).

Cancel Student Loans

While the specific terms and conditions will vary depending on the private loan issuer, as a rule it's possible to cancel federal student loans by paying off the balance within certain time periods. If I remember correctly, the period is something like 90 days after disbursement.

So, if you or someone you know is eligible for student loans, you could have them take out the maximum possible loan, then pay off the loan using Evolve Money. Then you can use the cash from the student loan to pay off the credit card you manufactured the spend with.

Home Equity Lines of Credit

I fully confess that I'm well out of my depth here, but my understanding is that when you have a home equity line of credit, you only pay interest on the amount of money you borrow. The trick here would be to make a payment towards your HELOC, then withdraw the same amount of money the day that the payment is due to post. You won't pay any interest, and you can use the money from the HELOC to pay off the credit card you manufactured the spend with.

529 College Savings Plans

As I mentioned yesterday, Evolve Money has among its payees tons of 529 College Savings Plans. The interesting thing about these savings vehicles is that the money you contribute is taxed in the year it's earned. The account's appreciation is treated, pro rata, as earned income in any year an appreciated balance is withdrawn, unless the withdrawal is used for qualified educational expenses, in which case any appreciation is tax-free. Finally, the increased, pro rata, value of any withdrawal is subject to a 10% penalty if the withdrawal is used for non-qualified educational expenses.

However, because contributions have already been taxed, it's free to withdraw contributions as long as they have not appreciated at all. If they have, the appreciation is treated as a penalized, non-qualified withdrawal. That means you can contribute $30,000 to a 529 College Savings Plan, and as long as the account has not appreciated (you might achieve this, for example, by investing it in an FDIC-insured savings account earning little or no interest), the withdrawals will be penalty-free.

Keep in mind that I'm not a tax attorney — and I'm especially not your tax attorney. But this is my understanding of how these accounts work.

Bonus Insanity: Same-Day Payments Free Until February 16

Right on cue, Evolve Money also started a promotion today offering free same-day payments. As far as I'm concerned it's the duty of each and every reader to start experimenting with this service. Report back successes — and failures! — in the comments. I'll have a report on yesterday's test payments Tuesday or Wednesday, whenever they end up posting (or not!).

What's a PayPal subscription, anyway?

A few readers have written in to ask about the mysterious box that appeared in the top righthand corner of my blog a few weeks ago. If you get new posts delivered to your e-mail or through an RSS reader, you probably didn't even notice it, but it looks like this:

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If you click on the dropdown box you'll see a few different amounts and frequencies:

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So why did this box appear on the site and what does it mean to you?

The Multinational Free-quent Flyer Empire

First, let's be honest: this site is not a cash cow for me. I'm not throwing a pity party here: I love blogging, I love helping readers, and I love hearing new ideas and datapoints from my readers, all of which is only possible because I have this forum.

On the other hand, it does cost real money to host the site. Some of those costs are offset by book sales, and I want to extend another thank you to all the readers who bought my eBook and those who were kind enough to leave a review on Amazon (even the negative ones)!

At the same time, ever since my short-lived and ill-fated experiment with affiliate links, there haven't been any good ways for readers to directly support the site. Sure, you can sign up for Uber using my link (and thanks to those who did!), and there are a number of other referral links scattered around the site (I get a dollar if you sign up for Venmo!). But that's not the kind of money that pays for monthly hosting fees.

Consider Subscribing

Which brings me to PayPal subscriptions. I got the idea from a podcast I periodically listen to (heck, I even stole the amounts). By choosing one of the amounts and frequencies from the dropdown menu, you can make a small, regular contribution to the site, which I'll use to offset the costs of running it. Naturally, you can make the contribution using a rewards-earning credit card.

So if you've learned anything useful, and especially if you've learned anything lucrative, from this site please consider making a small, regular contribution. It'll go directly towards producing the great content that you know and love, and towards keeping this site uncluttered by intrusive ads, affiliate links, and the other junk that you don't want to see and I don't want to deal with.

Won't you consider making a contribution today?

Getting Away With It: Seasoning Credit Cards

I know there are a lot of very exciting developments that I've been reporting on for the last few days, and there will be lots of updates on those fronts over the coming days and weeks.

However, I always have a lot of topics on the back burner, and tonight I want to briefly address one question that a lot of readers asked in response to my end of year reflections: how do I keep from getting in trouble with my credit card issuers, given the amount of manufactured spend I put on my credit cards?

While it's not an exact science, I've used one and only one technique since I got into the travel hacking game: seasoning credit cards. Using this ridiculously simple technique I have never had a single card shut down or a single "hostile" conversation with a credit card company representative — although I periodically do trigger fraud alerts, which can normally be resolved through a text message or automated phone call.

Why Season?

I have a friend in town whom I've been gradually introducing to the travel hacking game, and since he flies to Poland once or twice a year, I suggested he sign up for the Chase United MileagePlus Explorer Card when it had a 55,000 mile signup bonus (after adding an authorized user), so he could redeem award tickets on LOT, a Star Alliance member (this was pre-United devaluation, of course).

Once he received his card, on a walk over to our friendly neighborhood CVS I explained that credit card companies don't like to see sudden, large transactions on newly issued credit cards, since that's the kind of behavior that desperate people and crooks exhibit – people trying to get as much cash off a line of credit as quickly as possible.

When we got to the store, he promptly picked up 2 Vanilla Reload Network reload cards and attempted to load them both with $500.

What happened?

What do you think? The transaction was frozen and he had to spend 15 minutes of his (and my) afternoon on the phone with Chase Card Services explaining why his first transaction on his brand new card was for over $1,000.

How to Season

So while it's no great secret — and I'll be the first to admit that it's superstition, not science — here's what I do to season a new credit card, reducing (in my mind) the likelihood of fraud alerts and frozen transactions down the road:

• When I first get a new credit card, I buy a single $500 Vanilla Reload Network card (or whatever I need to buy at the moment);
• Then, I wait. And wait. And wait;
• I wait until that first transactions has cleared from pending to posted;
• Then I buy another $500 card;
• And wait. And wait. And wait;
• I wait until that second transaction has cleared from pending to posted;
• Only then will I buy 2 cards at once;
• And wait. And wait. And wait...

You get the idea. The concern of the credit card companies is not "perk abuse" or anything like that. The concern the credit card companies have is the risk of chargebacks: if an identity thief gets a credit card in your name, you will naturally refuse to pay for any purchases made with that card. Your pattern of activity should have as its goal proving to your credit card company that it's you making those purchases, and that you intend to pay for them.

If I've signed up for a credit card exclusively for the signup bonus then I can typically meet any minimum spending requirement within a week or two using this technique.

If it's a card that I plan to put spending on long-term, then sure, this technique means I only manufacture $7,000 or so the first month that I have the card. But that's a small price to pay, in my opinion, for a smooth and uninterrupted relationship with my credit card providers.

Developing: Evolve Money

[update 2/6/14: please see my post on Upromise Investments]

Hot on the heels of yesterday's exciting post on the HR Block Emerald Prepaid MasterCard, today's news is about a potentially even more lucrative product: Evolve Money. I first read about this service last night on FlyerTalk and went to bed thinking about the possibilities.

Today I looked into the service in depth and have some pretty exciting preliminary conclusions.

How Evolve Money Works

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

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

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

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

What Payees Are Available?

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

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

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

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

Which Debit Cards Work?

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

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