Reflections on week 1 of #milemadness

As I've mentioned, this month I'm participating in a good-natured (but cut-throat) competition with a gaggle of other miles and points bloggers to see who can generate the most value at the lowest cost during the month of March. On March 1, we started with a $5,000 "bankroll" which we can use to fund any manufactured spending technique we want — on the condition that we can't use the money again until we've liquidated whatever product we purchased.

Frequent Miler, the competition's judge, has published the first week's results, so it's time for some serious reflection on my strategy (or lack thereof) so far.

My Score

As you can see, I'm in third-from-last place, earning just $250 in net "Fair Trading Value" using Frequent Miler's calculations on the cost of acquiring various mile and point currencies, after deducting the fees I incurred. But I can explain!

My Raw Data

Between March 1 and March 7, I manufactured $19,861 within the limits of my bankroll. That's the spend that I was allowed to count each day taking into account the amount of manufactured spend I had already liquidated.

That comes out to $2,837 in manufactured spend per day, on average, and that sum is in fact fairly competitive with the other players' average data.

Office Max Ruins Everything

The main reason I fell so far behind so quickly is that while I was earning 2-4% cash back in value, my competitors with Chase Ink credit cards were purchasing PIN-enabled Visa gift cards at Office Max for below face value.

That enabled them to quickly increase their bankrolls above the $5,000 limit: if they charged $4750, but liquidate $5,000, they're suddenly working with a bankroll of $5,250. That's an advantage that quickly added up for many.

Even worse, they were earning super-valuable Ultimate Rewards points, which brings me to...

The Curse of Fair Trading Prices

The tool we're using to judge this competition is Frequent Miler's proprietary system of "Fair Trading Prices," which you should read about here and here, if you're not already familiar with the concept.

The key thing to keep in mind about Fair Trading Prices is that they are not based on redemption value. Let me repeat that: Fair Trading Prices are not an attempt to assess the actual value of the points and miles we earn during the competition.

For example, I recently argued that under a variety of fairly realistic conditions, Club Carlson Gold Points can be worth 1 cent each, for example if you plan to spend exactly 2 nights in New York City and would otherwise spend $111 or more per night on a hotel room.

The Fair Trading Price of Club Carlson points is just 0.25 cents each.

So while I earned 18,710 Gold Points during the competition, which I value at around $187, I received just $47 in credit based on the Fair Trading Price.

Meanwhile, since the Fair Trading Price of Chase Ultimate Rewards points is 1.38 cents each, the 5 points per dollar my competitors were earning worked out to a 6.9% earning rate in Fair Trading Value!

My Strategy

Ultimately, while the competition is a great motivation to step up my game and see just how much I can manufacture when I really put my mind to it, it's not enough to convince me to change my overall strategy in order to game the Fair Trading Prices.

The fact is, I have a lot of irons in the fire:

• Meeting American Express Delta Platinum $50,000 spending threshold to earn 1.4 Skymiles per dollar;
• Meeting $20,000 Chase British Airways minimum spending requirement for 100,000 Avios;
• Earning just 1% cash back on my first $6,500 in purchases on my American Express Blue Cash card, with its woefully low credit limit;
• Meeting $3,000 minimum spending requirement on American Express Hilton HHonors Surpass for the 50,000 HHonors upgrade bonus.

While that last item isn't a large spending requirement, I am attempting to meet it at merchants that offer 6 HHonors points per dollar, which is a huge time-suck for me since my local gas station has been sold out of PayPal My Cash cards for weeks.

Conclusion

The competition goes on! For more real-time information on the state of play, you can follow me on Twitter or search for the hashtag #milemadness.

Update: Momentum shutdown

As my regular readers know, back in February I took a day trip down to Philadelphia in order to pick up a Momentum prepaid Visa. I had some initial difficulties activating the card, but then grew excited about the fact that Momentum could be loaded with Vanilla Reload Network reload cards, and unloaded using bank "cash advances" with a fee of just $1.

If you follow me on twitter, you know that a few days ago I was suddenly no longer able to log into my online Momentum account. At the time, I could still access the online phone system and find out my remaining balance of 3 bucks and change.

Today I decided to dig into the situation and figure out what's going on with my card, but found that the phone tree no longer recognized my card number.

Since I couldn't log into the website, and couldn't talk to a customer service representative, I filed a complaint with the FDIC about Bancorp, which is pretty much the only thing you can do at times like these.

My Transaction History

As I've done previously with my shutdown reports, I'm happy to share my own loading and unloading transaction history:

• February 15: purchase and $10 initial load;
• February 26: Square swipe for $9;
• February 27: $2,000 Vanilla Reload Network load;
• February 27: $1,995 cash advance;
• March 1: $2,000 Vanilla Reload Network load;
• March 1: $2,000 cash advance;
• March 3: $2,000 Vanilla Reload Network load;
• March 3: $2,000 cash advance.
• ~March 5: shutdown

Conclusion

What can I say? I redeemed 8,000 Ultimate Rewards points for an Amtrak Guest Rewards transfer which got me to Philadelphia and back. And I was able to liquidate $6,000 of Vanilla Reload Network reload cards at a cost of $3. So I probably broke roughly even on this experiment.

And I would (and will!) happily do it again for you, gentle readers.

Update: JH Preferred

Back on January 31, I shared some of my preliminary impressions of the JH Preferred prepaid Visa card. An Incomm product like MyVanilla Debit cards, the JH Preferred card was also "Vanilla-reloadable," but with no monthly fee and no transaction fee, which I argued made it the perfect candidate for Evolve Money liquidation. I also shared several posts from Flyertalk about account shutdowns after what seemed like pretty typical usage of the card.

On February 16, I related my experience unsuccessfully trying to get a $4,995 cash advance at my trustworthy local bank branch.

As I said in that post:

"I was ultimately able to liquidate my $5,000 JH Preferred balance by making 3 Walmart PIN-based debit transactions."

More information on load limits

Now that I'm entering my second calendar month with the card, I'm able to report some very interesting news: I loaded $1,000 in Vanilla Reload Network reload cards to my JH Preferred card on March 1, and was able to load an additional $1,000 each day thereafter. In other words, it appears that the $5,000 monthly load limit is based on the calendar month, not a rolling 30-day period.

Additionally, I was able to load $1,000 on March 6, 2014, even though that brought my total calendar month loads to $6,000. An additional load on March 7 was unsuccessful, so it's not clear whether the actual load limit is $6,000, or if there was some kind of technical error that allowed me to load an additional $1,000 this calendar month.

What is the shutdown risk?

I ask this not because I have an answer, but because I don't know. It certainly seems like the kind of activity I've had with the card – large loads and immediate unloads – is the kind of behavior that would attract shutdown risk. But my account is still open.

I've mentioned before that it's best not to take Flyertalk reports at face value, because there are certainly members there who have a vested interest in discouraging people from taking advantage of their preferred hacking techniques.

I'm not saying that's what happened here. But I am saying that – for now – it appears that JH Preferred cards have a slightly longer shelf life than I initially suggested.

I know my readers will share their own experiences in the comments.

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!

More thoughts on buying Marriott elite status

Way back in July of last year I wrote a kind of silly thought experiment about buying United Premier Silver status by status matching to Marriott Platinum elite status and then taking advantage of the RewardsPlus partnership between the two programs. That post has no comments so I have no idea whether anyone liked the idea or not, but I do remember reading some reports of success with the technique on Flyertalk.

This year I've had cause to start thinking about a slightly different thought experiment. I carry a Chase Marriott Rewards Premier card, which comes with 15 "bonus nights," which count towards elite status each year. Additionally, the card awards 1 "bonus night" for every $3,000 spend on the card. That means that in order to achieve mid-tier Gold status you would need to spend $105,000 on the Premier card, and to achieve top-tier Platinum status (and United Premier Silver) you would need to spend $180,000 on the card.

That's patently insane.

On the other hand, if you had already earned 49 elite-qualifying nights, you would have to almost-equally crazy to not spend $12 (for example) to put an additional $3,000 in spend on the card and earn Gold elite status through the end of the next program year.

Which got me to thinking: wouldn't it be nice to know the break-even point, where the amount you would need to spend on the Premier card in order to achieve the next level of elite status is justified by the additional benefits of that status?

The Model

For the sake of modeling, I'm forced to make a few assumptions, the most important of which is that the number of paid nights you stay this year is a good predictor of the number of paid nights you'll stay next year. After all, if you won't make any paid stays next year, then it wouldn't matter if elite status were free; it still wouldn't be worth anything.

Next, remember that on paid Marriott stays, you'll earn 10 Marriott Rewards points per dollar, plus 20% bonus points as a Silver elite, 25% bonus points as a Gold elite, and 50% bonus points as a Platinum elite. Since the Premier card comes with Silver elite status, spending up to Gold earns a bonus of 4.17% over Silver, and spending up to Platinum earns a bonus of 20% over Gold status.

Here are the two most extreme examples of buying up to Gold status:

• 15 "bonus nights," 0 paid nights: $105,000, no bonus points;
• 15 "bonus nights," 34 paid nights: $3,000, 4.17% bonus on 34 paid nights.

And here are two extreme examples of buying up to Platinum status:

• 15 "bonus nights," 35 paid nights: $75,000, 20% bonus on 35 paid nights;
• 15 "bonus nights," 59 paid nights, $3,000, 20% bonus on 59 paid nights.

An Example

This year based on my current reservations I'll have 24 elite qualifying nights, meaning I'd have to spend $78,000 to earn Gold elite status, and $153,000 to earn Platinum elite status.

Based on the 7 paid nights I've already earning this year, at an average of $76.04 per night:

• Gold status would earn an additional 342 Marriott Rewards points, a rounding error;
• Platinum status would earn an additional 1711 Marriott Rewards points, or roughly 1.01 Marriott Rewards points per dollar spend on the Premier card.

The Data

I hate to admit it, but I can't give you the "break-even" point I promised above. Your break-even point will depend entirely on the value you put on Marriott Rewards points (and the other benefits of elite status).

What I can do is give you a simple tool that allows you to determine your own break-even point. You can use the following chart, and your own valuation of Marriott Rewards points, elite benefits like free continental breakfast, upgrades, access to club lounges, and United Premier Silver status to decide whether buying up is right for you:

This chart translates the bonus points you earn from your newly acquired elite status into "points per dollar" earned with your Marriott Rewards Premier credit card. The intuition is that while you're only technically earning 1 Marriott Rewards point per dollar spent on the card, the elite bonus points you earn as a Gold or Platinum elite are also in some sense "earned" by your credit card spend.

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.

How to follow my #milemadness

As I posted last week, for the month of March I'm participating in a good-natured competition with a number of miles and points bloggers to see who can manufacture the most spend. The competition privileges speed, since we’re competing within a specific time limit and with a limited “bankroll" of $5,000: every dollar we manufacture has to be liquidated before it can be spent again. Obviously that’s a slightly different game than the one we normally play, where floating money from month to month is one of the many perks of manufacturing spend. But it creates a level playing field where we can show off all our nimblest tricks for pushing as much money as possible through our most lucrative credit cards.

During the competition I’ll be posting here on the blog as usual, but I’ll post one additional update per week, when the competition's judge, Frequent Miler, has tallied up the previous week’s results, linking to his official tally and giving my commentary on the state of play.

However, if you’re interested in seeing my day-to-day progress, you should follow me on Twitter, where my handle is @FreequentFlyr. Each day on Twitter, in addition to my running commentary, I’ll also post a single tweet summarizing my day’s activities, in the following format:

If it's not obvious, "BOD Bankroll" refers to the amount of money left in my bankroll at the beginning of the day. Today’s was $5,000 since today is the first day of the competition. “Spend” of course refers to the amount of manufactured spend I put on my credit cards, including any fees I incurred. "EOD Bankroll" is the amount left in my bankroll at the end of the day after subtracting the day’s manufactured spend. “Unloaded” is the amount of spend I’ve liquidated, which will be available in my bankroll at the beginning of the next day. And “Tomorrow’s bankroll” is the total amount I’ll have available to spend the next day.

This isn’t an official score, which will be calculated by Frequent Miler at the end of each week and at the end of the competition. Rather, it’s a running, unofficial score so you can follow my progress more closely (if you want). Hopefully some of the other competitors will adopt a similar format so you can easily see the state of play on a daily basis.

Let the games begin!

Developing: Momentum prepaid Visa

I've long been curious about the Momentum Prepaid Visa, one of the many cards issued by The Bancorp Bank. There's virtually no information available about it online, and it has an unusually sparse and confusing Flyertalk thread.

Getting the Card

The first reason there's so little information about the Momentum card is that it has an extremely limited geographic availability. You can only apply for the card at one of a fairly small number of Money Mart and Loan Mart check-cashing locations. You'll need to visit their store locator tool to see if there's a location near you or somewhere you'll be visiting soon.

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that back on February 15 I took an Amtrak Northeast Regional train down to Philadelphia to visit the Money Mart on Market Street there and apply for a card.

It cost $10 to purchase a temporary card, with an additional minimum deposit of $10, so a total of $20 in cash was required to walk away with a temporary card.

The "application form" is a trifold brochure that asks for some basic information, including your Social Security number, and asks you to choose between the "flat fee" and "pay as you go" plan. Here's a picture of a spare application I grabbed from the store:

On the back of the brochure is information about the card's fees and limits:

Selecting a Card

As you may be able to make out above, you can choose between two "plans:"

• the "flat fee" plan has a $10 per month "maintenance fee," but no charge for signature and PIN transactions;
• the "pay as you go" plan has no monthly fee, but charges $1 per signature and PIN transaction.

There are a few other irrelevant fee differences, but that's basically it: if you plan to make more than 10 transactions per month, select the "flat fee" plan, otherwise you're better off with the "pay as you go" plan.

Activating the Card

Once I had my temporary card, I just threw it in a drawer until my permanent card came about a week and a half later. Once that permanent card arrived, I naturally had to activate it.

The first thing to point out is that the application distinguishes between a blue, "flat fee," card and a green, "pay as you go" card. Since I applied for a "pay as you go" card, I was given a green temporary card. But when my permanent card arrived, it was blue!

Additionally, some folks on Flyertalk have reported receiving a permanent card, with their name printed, at the check-cashing store itself. So at the moment it doesn't appear that there's any rhyme or reason to the card's color scheme.

Finally, and this is just embarrassing, but I had completely forgotten that the clerk at Money Mart repeatedly told me that my default pin was the last four digits of my Social Security number.

So don't let this happen to you: your default pin is the last four digits of your Social Security number! You'll need to input that default pin to register your permanent card (you can then easily change it).

Loading Momentum

Momentum prepaid Visa cards are loadable using Vanilla Reload Network reload cards.

If you look at the "card fees and limits" above, you'll see the third line from the top reads:

"Maximum Daily Card Load – All others  $7,500"

I have no idea what that's supposed to refer to. However, in the terms and conditions that were sent along with the permanent card, there's a much clearer limit:

"The maximum number of times you can load your Card per day is five (5), so long as the Card balance does not exceed $10,000."

Once my permanent card had arrived and was activated, I was able to load $2,000 in Vanilla Reload Network reload cards without any issue in a period of about 5 minutes.

Unloading Momentum

Here's the part that I'm particularly excited about. According to the same terms and conditions included with the permanent card:

"The maximum cumulative amount that may be withdrawn through a participating bank (over-the-counter withdrawal) per day is the total available balance on the Card."

After loading my $2,000 to the card, I walked down to my trusty local bank and asked for a "cash advance" of $1,995. A "cash advance," as my readers know, is a very expensive method of taking cash out of a credit card. However, over-the-counter cash disbursements are processed identically by tellers, and I have yet to meet a bank teller who knows the phrase "cash disbursement," which is the term Visa uses for over-the-counter withdrawals from debit cards.

The "cash advance" processed successfully, and when it posted to my Momentum card a few hours later it incurred a fee of just $1.

Remaining Questions

I'm excited about my new toy, but there are a lot of questions I don't have the answers to yet:

• Is the daily load limit really $2,500?
• Is there a monthly load limit and, if so, is it a calendar month or rolling load limit?
• Is there really no limit on over-the-counter withdrawals?
• Does the "flat fee" plan waive the $1 over-the-counter withdrawal fee?

And of course, the biggest question of all: what is the shutdown risk of this card?

Bancorp issues a lot of prepaid debit cards, and they're all vulnerable to shutdown sooner or later. However, there's no question that some cards are more vulnerable than others, so it's not a foregone conclusion that the Momentum card isn't worth your time.

That's going to become clearer in the coming weeks and months. How will you find out? From your humble blogger, of course.

Have a great weekend.

What's up with Alaska Airlines First Class?

Alaska Airlines First Class has a bit of a queer reputation. It may be one of the least aspirational long-haul first class product in the world. For example, in her trip report on her flight to Hawai'i, Mommy Points said of the seats:

"Of course these are not the fancy 'lie flat' type of seats, but they weren’t bad, and were certainly an upgrade over coach."

"An upgrade over coach" may be the best "damning by faint praise" of a first class seat I've ever read. Did they pressurize the cabin, too?

On the other hand, 100% bonus Medallion Qualification Miles and a 50% class of service bonus was enough to convince me to pony up for paid(!) first class tickets for me and my partner to fly to Kaua'i for Christmas with my family. Of course, I redeemed Barclaycard Arrival miles against the upgrade from refundable coach, turning the holiday into a cheap last-minute mileage run for my last year of Platinum Medallion status with Delta.

Four flights; eight options; one vegetarian dish

As we were hanging out in the terminal at Boston's Logan airport, my partner turned to me and asked, "this is a pretty long flight, they're going to feed us, right?"

I answered, "Hey, we're flying in first class – they've got us taken care of."

Then I started thinking, and Googled, "vegetarian food in Alaska first class." The results were not encouraging.

Let's take a look at the dishes offered on the first three legs I flew (the 4th menu didn't make it home with me):

Pretty standard airplane fare: a choice between a slab of meat and a pasta dish with red sauce. We had nothing to worry about after all!

After a night in Portland and a dinner at Pine State Biscuits, we headed to the airport for our flight to Kaua'i. Here's the menu for that flight:

Here Alaska Airlines broke with longstanding airline tradition and replaced the boring pasta dish with...another slab of meat!

After a relaxing week on the Garden Isle, we begrudgingly headed back to the airport and boarded our flight back to Portland, where these dishes were served:

Here Alaska decided to get even more adventurous and replaced the second slab of meat with...shellfish!

On our final return flight after a very relaxing New Year's weekend in Portland, we had two breakfast options. I enjoyed the quiche (with bacon), while my partner picked her way through a plate of scrambled eggs...with a "beef braised hash." I have no idea what a beef braised hash is, since the flight attendant was happy to serve the eggs without it, which brings me to...

Alaska Airlines flight attendants are amazing

All four legs of our trip were made incredible by the great, friendly, attentive flight attendants. They were happy to do anything possible to accommodate our dietary restrictions, happy to keep our glasses full, and even had a pretty good comedy routine congratulating passengers on getting to spend the holidays in Hawai'i. I love having a good rapport with flight attendants; it's part of the charm of flying for me.

But the hard product is pretty bad

Even "bad" might be too strong a word. But it's uncomfortable in a number of nagging ways:

• There are no USB or AC power outlets. That's not the biggest deal in the world, but it does mean on a long flight, especially if you're connecting to another long flight (fortunately, we had an overnight stay in Portland between our transcontinental and Hawai'i legs), you're going to need to manage your battery use aggressively on your electronic devices;
• The personal entertainment players don't fit on the tray tables during meal service. Instead of having a seat-back or fold-out entertainment system, Alaska distributes pretty sizable personal video players. They work great, and have great battery life and video selection, but they take up a lot of space. Once your meal is served, you've got to find a place to stash this unwieldy object, hopefully without losing your place in whatever movie or show you're watching. That's not fun;
• And it's true: the seats don't recline very much.

Conclusion

As Mommy Points remarked so concisely, it's an upgrade over coach, and I wouldn't hesitate to fly Alaska First Class again if the price was right.

In fact, I'm taking Alaska's non-stop service between Boston and Seattle for Frequent Traveler University in late April, and I'm technically eligible for an upgrade on those flights as a Delta Platinum Medallion.

Fingers crossed!

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.