Three Alaska Airlines signup bonuses

By now you may have seen the two Bank of America Alaska Airlines Signature Visa signup offers that have been widely reported:

• 40,000 MileagePlan miles: 25,000 on account approval and 15,000 after spending $10,000 within 6 months of account membership;
• 40,000 MileagePlan miles (personal and business): 25,000 on account approval and 15,000 miles after spending $2,000 in each of the first 12 months of account membership.

Obviously for my regular readers neither $10,000 in 6 months nor $24,000 in 12 months is a huge obstacle.

But that's not really the question.

The question is whether earning 2.5 or 1.625 MileagePlan miles per dollar (with the first and second offers, respectively) is the best use of that $10,000 or $24,000 in spend. There's no question that for many people it will be: I consider Alaska Airlines miles among the most valuable thanks to the ability to redeem them on both American Airlines and Delta Airlines, as well as Alaska itself. They also have a lot of premium international partner airlines which can give you enormous value per mile.

On the other hand, if you're earning 5% cash back at drug stores, you might be hard-pressed to decide between the cash and the speculative value of the airline miles.

That's why I'm happy to remind my readers that the 30,000 mile offer with no minimum spending requirement is still available.

Personally, I'll be holding out for another 50,000 mile signup bonus (plus I'm waiting for my credit report to cool off after my January application cycle). But if you're interested in MileagePlan miles and don't want to use your manufactured spending bandwidth on them, 30,000 miles is a very strong offer for this card.

Reminder: sign up for Uber (and use your damn Uber credit!)

If you haven't yet signed up for Uber under the temporarily higher $20 signup bonus (normally $10), my understanding is that offer is ending today. There's no doubt it'll be back, so there's no rush, but you may as well hop on it while the hopping is good. Your $20 credit will just sit in your account until you get around to using it.

And for those of you who were kind enough to sign up using my referral link, don't forget to use your $20 credit!

To get $45 worth of Uber credit for $5, just follow the instructions I posted earlier this month.

Just to contrast my Squarespace review, here's my Uber review in one sentence:

Uber works exactly like they say it does.

It's expensive (if you're actually paying for it!), but it's pretty cool watching your car's GPS move through the streets until it gets to where you are. And my Uber charges have all been within $1-2 of the "estimated" cost you can pull up on the app when requesting a ride.

On a funny note, my last Uber ride was $0.40 more than the credit balance I had in my account. I remember thinking to myself at the time, "there's no way they'll actually charge me $0.40, since the transaction will cost them at least $1 to process." But I'll be damned if I didn't get a $0.40 charge to my Chase Sapphire Preferred. Now that's standing on principle!

Housekeeping: coming site layout changes

I want to drop a quick note that this weekend I'm going to be fiddling around with this site's layout and formatting. This doesn't affect you in any way, and there shouldn't be any downtime, but some objects may be moved around the site so you may not be able to find everything exactly where you're accustomed to seeing it.

If you listen to any podcasts you may have heard ads from Squarespace, who happen to be my website's host. Since there's no other reason to know anything about Squarespace, let me give you my unvarnished review in one sentence:

Squarespace is pretty good at what they do, and terrible at everything else.

The main problem I have with the service is that they obviously have no sense of the ways that people actually design and build websites. If you think this website looks even halfway like a real website, it's because I hacked it together that way myself.

The key thing to know about the service is that all websites have to select a "template," of which they have quite a number to choose from. However, there's no way to know how a template actually works until you select it and start building the website. If it turns out that it doesn't suit your needs, you have to start over from scratch and rebuild the site. Content is saved, but that's small comfort – for me at least.

Anyway, that's how I'm going to be spending this weekend, so if I don't reply to e-mails or comments immediately, it's because I'll be swearing loudly at my computer.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Travel hacking is for lovers

At the beginning of the month I wrote up three techniques for manufacturing spend that

form a solid backbone of manufactured spend that is open to all US citizens and (I believe) virtually all resident aliens, as long as they have a tax ID number.

I got a lot of great responses and fielded a lot of questions about that post, but one question that came up a number of times was whether I could write a similar primer for those who aren't going it alone: techniques that are available to travel hackers with a partner, friend, or significant other who's willing to participate — at least to the extent necessary to score some free travel or cash rewards.

Of course, you can start by doubling the values I gave in that post, since your partner can sign up for accounts with all the same services you did. But there are other games which are better played together; let's now take a look at those.

Amazon Payments

This one's easy. You and your partner will need to enroll your respective Amazon accounts in the Amazon Payments service. After enrolling, one of you can send the other up to $1,000 each calendar month. I really like Amazon Payments not because it's insanely lucrative, but because it's insanely useful for making those odd-denomination purchases that periodically come up. For example, after being approved for the Chase British Airways Visa Signature and the Citi Platinum Select / AAdvantage World MasterCard a few weeks ago, I made $1,511.85 in purchases on the former and $2,519.75 on the latter. To trigger the 50,000 mile signup bonus on each card, I needed to reach $2,000 and $3,000 in purchases, so I just "topped off" the accounts with purchases of $488.15 and $480.25, respectively, using Amazon Payments.

Warning: under no circumstances send money back and forth between the same two Amazon Payments accounts. All payments should flow in only one direction. Deal?

The Southwest Companion Pass

Your humble blogger does not fly Southwest. But that's neither here nor there: the Southwest companion pass is an amazing value if you do, and if you have a partner you travel with on a regular basis. If you're not familiar with it, it's even better than it sounds. Unlike the companion tickets you earn on each account anniversary with the Delta Platinum and Reserve American Express cards, the Companion Pass is exactly that: whenever you buy — or redeem miles for — a Southwest ticket, you have the option of including a free ticket for your designated companion as well (although you're still responsible for airport taxes and fees, I believe, up to $10 or so per ticket).

There is only one correct way to get the Southwest Companion Pass: wait for the periodic 50,000 point signup bonuses from the Chase Rapid Rewards Premier Visa and Business Credit Card (currently available). Then spend $2,000 on each card to secure the signup bonuses and $6,000 on one or both cards to get you the rest of the way to the 110,000 points needed to secure the Companion Pass for the rest of the current calendar year and all of the next calendar year. For obvious reasons you'll want to get the Pass as early in the current year as possible to maximize the length of your Pass's validity.

Southwest points are fixed-value, meaning they can be redeemed for any seat on any flight, but the number of points required depends on the cost of a paid seat on that particular flight. As a point of reference, advance "Wanna Get Away" fares cost 70 Southwest points per dollar, so each point is worth roughly 1.43 cents each for those fares. That means that if you plan to redeem your entire signup bonus for flights with your companion, those points are worth $1,430 (in Southwest "Wanna Get Away" fares), and the card earns about 2.86% (ditto) on all purchases.

For answers to questions it would never occur to me to ask, head over to The Points Guy and read their great FAQ.

US Bank Visa Buxx

Unlike the Nationwide Visa Buxx that I covered last time, US Bank more-or-less strictly enforces the requirement that the "parent" and "teen" identities you give when signing up do not match. However, they don't have any restrictions on the age of the "teen" user. That means whoever your partner is, he's eligible! Read more about the US Bank (and Nationwide) Visa Buxx card in the refresher course I wrote last fall. I've been using both cards with a 100% success rate since then, so I don't believe there have been any relevant changes (though read through the comments for some corrections to my inadvertent errors).

Venmo

I've written a lot about Venmo since I've enjoyed using it with my Bank of America Alaska Airlines Debit Card (unfortunately no longer offered – existing cards will be retired in May, 2014). Using Venmo, you're allowed to send up to $3,000 per week using any true, bank-issued, checking-account-linked debit card.

In the travel hacking community we spend a lot of time talking about "PIN-enabled debit cards," but Venmo enforces a stricter standard than Walmart or Evolve Money. As far as I know (I'm sure you'll let me know in comments if I'm wrong), only real debit cards, linked to checking accounts, work with Venmo. That means your best options are the remaining mileage-earning debit cards. Here are the existing options that I know of:

• Suntrust Delta SkyMiles Check Card. One Delta SkyMile per dollar spent on the card. $75 annual fee.
• Bankoh Hawaiian Airlines Visa Check Card. One HawaiianMiles mile per $2 spent on "credit" or signature transactions. $3 monthly fee.
• ufb direct Airline Rewards Checking. One American Airlines AAdvantage mile per $2 spent with the card. No monthly maintenance fee.

Neither of the first two cards is perfect in the way the Bank of America Alaska Airlines debit card is: the Suntrust card has a high annual fee, and a bad reputation for shutting down accounts that are opened outside Suntrust's physical banking footprint, while the Bankoh card earns HawaiianMiles which, while they can be transferred to Hilton HHonors points at a 1 : 2 ratio, are not especially valuable for award redemptions. I'm prepared to be convinced otherwise, though — take a look at their award charts and let me know what I'm missing.

I know a lot of members of the community have had a lot of success with the ufb direct card, which I think is probably the best currently-available card to use with Venmo.

Conclusion

Travel hacking is a case study in synergy: the whole can be much more than the sum of its parts. The techniques above, plus authorized user cards when necessary, allow you to more than double your manufactured spend for each partner you add to your group. With new techniques being discovered every day, I truly believe that we are living in the golden age of travel hacking. Why not invite a friend?

Warning: TD Go transaction limits?

You can file this story under "developing," but I want to immediately alert my readers to a potential problem using the TD Go Visa Buxx card I wrote about last week.

My Experience

When my TD Go card first arrived it was loaded with my initial load of $20 (after my US Bank experience I decided I'd play it safe with this product). After activating the card, I immediately loaded it with $1,000 and headed down to my friendly neighborhood Walmart to make a bill payment, which was successful.

Over the course of a few days I was able to load an additional $1,980, meeting the monthly load limit of $3,000 without exceeding the balance limit of $2,000 described in the TD Go product guide (link not currently working).

Today I went back to the same Walmart and tried to make a bill payment for $1,980, which should have been allowed since it's under the $2,000 published daily transaction limit.

The transaction failed, with the error "debit not allowed" printing out on a slip from the register. Remembering this FlyerTalk post, I feared the worst and immediately called the number on the back of the card.

I was immediately connected to a customer service representative, who saw the declined transaction and set about researching the problem. He said "the limits recently changed," but didn't know the details.

When he came back, he told me that there was a new $1,000 transaction limit, but that I could swipe my card once for $1,000 and then again for the balance of my purchase.

That didn't work either.

When I got home I hopped onto Evolve Money and initiated a $980 bill payment to a 529 College Savings Plan account, which processed successfully and was immediately reflected on my online TD Go balance.

One Hypothesis

At this point, based on the extremely limited data I have, my tentative hypothesis is that the $2,000 transaction limit described in the TD Go product guide is not actually a daily limit, but is rather enforced over some other period. My current purchases are on January 26 and 28, so if it's a 7-day rolling limit I should be able to make another transaction on February 2 or 3. Naturally I will keep my readers updated with that data.

The reason to tentatively suspect that it's a 7-day rolling limit is that is the time period for the Nationwide Visa Buxx's $800 transaction limit.

The worst case scenario is that the limit is enforced over a 30-day rolling period, in which case this card is functionally only good for $2,000 in cheap manufactured spend per month, rather than $3,000.

More Data Needed!

Do you have a TD Go card yet? Have you run into any transaction limits? Have any of your large purchases at Walmart been declined? See you in the comments.

Personal Finance Digest is a pretty good blog

I try to keep a pretty minimal list of RSS feed subscriptions. There's so much duplication between the most prominent blogs that I have my feeds winnowed down to the bloggers that are the best writers, since you only really need one or two subscriptions to be notified when new promotions are announced, signup bonuses change, and so on. Then on top of that I subscribe to Frequent Miler, for whom I have tremendous respect. Since I almost entirely refrain from the shopping-portal-gift-card-shopping-portal game, I only rarely take advantage of the ideas posted over there, but he'll often suggest new ways of looking at a problem to drive down costs or drive up yield.

However I'm always on the lookout for new blogs — and new ideas — and the other day I stumbled across Personal Finance Digest. I don't know pfdigest, although I think we've crossed paths on various forums and comments sections before.

It's not for everybody, but if you have some time I suggest heading over there and just casually scrolling through the first few pages of posts. The thing is, the posts are very dense, so it's not always immediately clear what's a potentially huge new opportunity and what's just odds and ends from around the internet. To help you get started, here's my curated list of recent posts that inspired me in one way or another:

• A 75% bonus on Bank of America rewards for high-net-worth customers. I had some trouble pulling up the linked site; I found that to view the new program I need to open the link in an incognito window, say I was from Washington, and then open the link again (the new benefits are only available in Kansas, Missouri, Nevada, South Carolina, and Washington at the moment). Here's a little more detail from the terms and conditions of that offer:

View fullsize

Basically, with the Bank of America Cash Rewards card you end up with 1.75% cash back on all purchases, 3.5% at grocery stores, and 5.25% at gas stations (for the first $1,500 you spend in combined grocery store and gas purchases each quarter). Of course you could carry both the Cash Rewards card and the Travel Rewards card he discusses in that post to cover all your bases;

• I love Vegas, so I couldn't help but be intrigued by pfdigest's post on the Comenity Total Rewards Visa. It's totally absurd and I'll never do it, but I'm not going to deny falling into a reverie thinking about running up $75,000 in gas station spend on the card in order to earn 150,000 tier credits and coveted Seven Stars status (you're actually only "considered for an invitation" at that level);
• Upromise MasterCard + 5% Staples cash back through the Upromise shopping portal, if you want to play the gift card game;
• Redeem Starbucks gift cards at Tonx. This one is too much fun. You can buy discounted Starbucks gift cards (for example through ABC Gift Cards at 17.3% off), then redeem them at Tonx. While I've never tried Tonx, a coffee fanatic friend of mine from Seattle swears by them; I'm definitely going to be giving this one a shot.

So that's what I've been reading lately. Did any of these ideas pique your curiosity? See you in the comments.

Virgin Atlantic devaluation got you down? Don't forget Hawaiian

My RSS reader blew up the other day with news that Virgin Atlantic had announced a change to their partnership with Hilton HHonors. Starting February 6, 2014, the transfer ratio will no longer be 2 HHonors points per 1 Flying Club mile, but instead 3 HHonors points per 2 Flying Club miles.

Now, I didn't exactly care that this ratio was changing, except to write a note to self for the next edition of my ebook, but then I realized that none of the bloggers were making the obvious point: the Hawaiian Airlines transfer ratio hasn't changed.

As I explained earlier, I stay at a lot of Hiltons and find the availability of their Cash and Points awards, which sometimes let me redeem my HHonors 0.4-0.6 cents each, to be quite good. Still, I would never redeem flexible Chase or American Express points, or Starpoints, for Virgin Atlantic miles in order to transfer them at a measly 1 : 2 ratio.

Still, if you are really gunning for HHonors points, this means that the Hawaiian Airlines credit card, with its 35,000 HawaiianMile signup bonus (and $89 annual fee) will still be worth 70,000 HHonors points after February 6, 2014, while the $90 Bank of America Virgin Atlantic WorldElite MasterCard would need to offer 46,667 miles to match that offer (my casual search found that the best current offer is for 20,000 Flying Club miles – leave a comment if you know of a better current offer).

Note: HawaiianMiles transferred into the program from Membership Rewards and Starwood Preferred Guest cannot be transferred into HHonors points; those earned with the credit card can be, presumably including miles earned through signup bonuses. For more discussion of this issue see this FlyerTalk thread.

Do this now: Hilton HHonors Spring Promotion

As you can see on my updated Hotel Promotions page, Hilton HHonors has announced a Spring promotion, whereby you can earn up to 9,000 HHonors points per paid stay between February 1, 2014 and April 30, 2014. You'll earn 1,000 HHonors points per paid Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday night stay, plus 5,000 HHonors points per 2-night stay that includes 2 or more of those nights. Register for the promotion here, and find the list of non-participating properties here.

Many bloggers have panned this promotion for not offering outsized rewards. Fair! I stay in a fair number of Hiltons because of their convenient downtown locations, HHonors points are relatively easy to earn with the no-annual-fee Hilton HHonors American Express or $75-annual-fee Surpass, and because as a Gold member I receive free breakfast for myself and anyone else staying in my room. So I consider it a decent possibility that I'll end up earning a few thousand points through this promotion, which is why I registered right away, before I forgot.

You should do the same.

Thank You, Blog Readers and American Heroes

I've always thought of this blog as a kind of collaborative project between me and my readers: I love sharing my new schemes and discoveries, and some of my best ideas have been contributed or inspired by readers. Today I want to continue opening the books on the project, and share with the curious some details on the support my readers have provided to the site.

Book Sales

It occasionally comes up in comments that I'm always trying to sell books.

I sure am!

Between the day the book first went on sale on Valentine's Day, February 14, 2013, and December 31, 2013:

• 142 readers bought or borrowed the book through Amazon.com;
• Another 118 people downloaded the book for free during the week-long promotional period I launched the book with;
• I make about $2 per book that's purchased or borrowed, and earned a total of $263.44 from Amazon book sales in 2013.

Signup Links

While I don't have any credit card affiliate links here on the site, there are a few referral links scattered around, and I occasionally get a few dollars from those referrals:

• Plink. 14 referrals; 100 Plink points, worth $1, per referral. $14.
• Uber. 7 referrals (1 complete, 6 pending); $20 Uber credit per referral. $20 ($120 pending).
• TopCashBack. 3 referrals; $10-15 per referral. $35.
• Venmo. 1 referral; $1-5 per referral. $1.
• BigCrumbs. 0 referrals.
• Fat Wallet. 0 referrals.
• Discover it. This is a "refer a friend" signup link for the Discover it card, which is also the only way to get the $50 signup bonus for the card (if you sign up for the card directly there's usually no bonus). 0 referrals.

PayPal Subscriptions

About a month ago, readers who visit the blog's website (rather than using an RSS reader or e-mail subscription) noticed that there was a new box in the righthand column, giving the option of signing up for a "PayPal subscription." As I explained last Friday, this is a way to continue supporting this project by making a small weekly or monthly contribution, if you feel like it's made a difference in your effectiveness playing the game.

• PayPal Subscriptions: 1 (thanks for your support Ben!).

Conclusion

I don't have any terribly exciting conclusions to draw from this data:

• This website is a labor of love, and my main reward is getting feedback from the amazing readers I've been able to help;
• It means an incredible amount to me when readers buy the book, use my signup links, and of course signup for PayPal subscriptions to provide continuing support for the site;
• Keep reading, keep writing comments, and keep the feedback and suggestions coming. The tips and tricks you guys suggest get multiplied through this site and help hundreds of people every day make or save thousands of dollars every year.

So here's to another year of travel hacks: new, old, and crazy! I do hope you'll stick around.

"What's the best credit card?"

I have a lot of family and friends who typically find themselves somewhere between amusement, shock, and awe when I talk about this crazy game we play. But sooner or later when they foresee a big upcoming expense, whether it's a wedding, a move, or a remodel, they come to me and ask, "Alright hotshot, you're the expert, what's the best credit card?"

After all, here I am, a starving artist trying to push books out the door and get people to pay for a blog they can read for free, but I take long weekends a few times a month and three or four long vacations each year – in first class, whenever possible. Nonetheless, my answer is almost always the same:

It doesn't really work like that.

Sure, I'll pass along a particularly good signup bonus, like the 55,000 mile Chase United MileagePlus Explorer offer I recommended to my Polish friend, or the 50,000 mile Citi Platinum Select / AAdvantage offer I signed up for earlier this month, since those bonuses are so high even a rookie is sure to get a good enough value that I'll be able to sleep at night.

One Question

Mile-and-point-earning credits cards are not right for everybody, and in fact they're right for almost nobody. When my brother recently asked what credit cards his friend should sign up for, the only question I asked was,

"Is she a businessman who is allowed to charge business travel to her personal credit card, and/or is she crazy?"

If the answer to both is no, a mile-and-point-earning credit card is not right for her.

One Size Fits All? Cash Back.

The best credit for the average civilian is the Fidelity Investment Rewards American Express card. It earns 2% cash back everywhere American Express is accepted, and has no annual fee. American Express isn't accepted everywhere, so our average civilian should carry a backup Visa, MasterCard, or Discover. I have both a Chase Freedom Visa and Discover it card, for example, and I'll be doing a product change to the Citi Dividend Platinum Select once I use up my ThankYou point balance from my current ThankYou Preferred card.

Even better, the rewards balance on Chase Freedom and Discover it cards can be used at their full value on Amazon.com purchases, so users can use their rewards immediately for online purchases, rather than waiting for them to accumulate. For example, Discover requires a $50 rewards balance to redeem for cash, the swine.

Foreign Transaction Fees

I would slightly lean towards the Discover it because it doesn't have a foreign transaction fee, so for the very occasional international trip the average user takes, that would provide some real savings. Discover cards are processed on the Diner's Club network, so they have quite good acceptance overseas, although somewhat less than Visa or MasterCard (and much better than American Express).

Of course a free Bluebird account also doesn't have foreign transaction fees, and can be used as an ATM card at many international ATMs, but does operate on the American Express card network so acceptance could be a problem depending on the destination.

The Exceptions

Of course, if you are a businessman who charges company expenses to your personal credit card, or you are crazy, travel hacking is an amazingly lucrative hobby that allows you to travel the world for pennies on the dollar. Buy my book! Read my blog! If you like it, consider setting up a monthly PayPal subscription! But when your friends ask, tell them the same thing I told my brother: a solid 2% cash back card is going to get them farther, faster, then messing around with co-branded credit cards that earn just one mile or point per dollar.