That was fast: Hawaiian changes Hilton transfer rate

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

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

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

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

Update: JH Preferred spending limits

Background: Alert: JH Preferred limitations and shutdown reports
Background: JH Preferred cash advances: your miles may vary
Background: Update: JH Preferred

As you can see from the above background reports, the JH Preferred card is one that I've looked into in some depth. It's also a card about which there isn't a lot of information publicly available online.

Over the course of this month I've been using my own JH Preferred card fairly aggressively in order to manufacture as much spend as possible for the #milemadness manufactured spending competition. And that's caused me to run into one additional limitation of the card, in addition to those mentioned in the posts above.

Limitations on PIN-based debit card transactions

Between March 1 and March 13, 2014, I loaded $10,000 in Vanilla Reload Network reload cards to my JH Preferred account, unloading the same amount using PIN-based debit transactions at Walmart.

Today, I loaded an additional $1,000 without any problem, but was unable to make any PIN-based purchases at Walmart. Immediately fearing the worst, I made a signature-based "credit" transaction that was approved.

I ended up successfully unloading the remainder of my balance using a (credit) Amazon Payments transaction.

I dug up my cardholder agreement and found neatly filed with it an "Important Notice Regarding Changes to your JH Preferred Prepaid Visa Card:"

"The maximum amount that can be spent on your Card per month is $10,000.00."

From my experience, it appears that limit is enforced on PIN-based debit transactions, but not on signature or online credit transactions.

Conclusion

While I consider the above information valuable in its own right, for those seeking to take maximum advantage of the JH Preferred card, I also want to suggest that when your JH Preferred card is declined for the first time, don't panic. You may not have been shut down; you may simply have run up against the $10,000 monthly PIN-based debit transaction limit.

The next question I intend to investigate and report back on: is the $10,000 purchase limit based on the calendar month or a rolling 28-, 30-, or 31- day period?

Another trip to New York!

And you know what that means: more Uber signup links!

Thanks to my loyal readers I only spent a few bucks on cab fares on my last trip to New York, so it's time to fill my Uber credit balance back up. Yours too!

Back in January, in order to get $45 in Uber credit you needed to spend $5 on an Uber Groupon code. That deal's no longer available, but there's an even better, free, promo code that will give new users a $25 credit in addition to the $20 signup bonus you get for using my link.

To get the $45 in Uber credit, follow these steps in this order:

1. Sign up for Uber using my referral link (or anyone else's, but come on);
2. While signed into your new Uber account, click on the "Promotions" tab at the top and enter the promo code "Hipmunk".

Unlike the Groupon code, which worked for accounts that were already open, I was not able to apply the "Hipmunk" promo code to my existing Uber account.

My next application cycle

Background: What's in my wallet?

Compared to many travel bloggers, I rely on signup bonuses for a relatively small part of my travel needs. For example, my Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard came with a 40,000 "mile" signup bonus, worth $444 in statement credits against travel purchases.

However, since it earns 2 miles per dollar, worth 2.22% cash back against travel purchases, it's also my go-to card for non-bonused manufactured spend, and I've earned and redeemed many tens of thousands of miles with the card. The 40,000 mile signup bonus is a great incentive to include it in any application cycle, but it's not the only reason to get the card, and in a lower-signup-bonus environment the card might still be worth applying for — at least for the first, fee-free, year.

All this leads me to say that since I rely on manufactured spend more than signup bonuses, it's more important for me to find the right combination of cards on the earning side than merely waiting for the highest signup bonuses. For example, I applied for the American Express Blue Cash back in January because of its earning potential, not its signup bonus — then I included a few cards with valuable signup bonuses to round out my application cycle.

The cards I'm waiting for

There are a few cards I don't yet have, which are going to complement my current holdings nicely. I plan to apply for these cards during my next application cycle:

• Bank of America Alaska Airlines Signature Visa. The signup bonus for this card went as high as 50,000 miles back in December, during what I called a perfect storm of signup bonuses. It's currently stuck at 40,000 miles after spending $10,000 within 6 months, which is a great offer. But I'm hoping it pops back up to 50,000 sometime soon, so I can keep earning Alaska miles after May 31, when the Bank of America Alaska Airlines debit card finally disappears;
• American Express Starwood Preferred Guest Personal or Business. This card has a 25,000 Starpoint signup bonus, and the ability to earn Starpoints, which are incredibly valuable for hotel stays, but also transferable to partner airlines and redeemable for paid airline tickets. In other words, if approved I'll be putting this card in heavy rotation, despite its earning rate of just 1 Starpoint per dollar;
• Chase Ink Bold or Plus. I write about the earning potential of these cards fairly regularly, mainly when I'm envying people who already have them. I've grown increasingly disgusted with my Chase Sapphire Preferred card, since I put my travel purchases on my Arrival card and just don't eat out all that often (no reimbursed business expenses here!). I'm looking forward to changing my Sapphire Preferred to a Chase Freedom card (doubling my quarterly bonus earnings) and adding an Ink Bold or Plus to retain the flexibility of my Ultimate Rewards points.

What's missing

After picking up those three cards I'll have access to virtually all the most valuable points currencies. But there are a few cards I'm still considering for their other benefits:

• Chase Hyatt Visa. I've written about this card before when contemplating whether it's worth renewing for its annual free night certificate (short answer: yes, if you'll use it). It simply isn't the case that staying at a Hyatt property is the best option for me very often, which makes it a tough decision to spend a hard credit pull on the card without specific upcoming plans;
• Membership Rewards. American Express has a number of cards with lucrative Membership Rewards earning structures, but until I can find a few reliable venders where I can maximize those bonus categories, I'm not willing to commit to a $95 or $175 annual fee, given the signup bonuses currently available;
• Club Carlson Premier Rewards Visa Signature. I already have the business version of this card, and I love it. The personal version has a slightly higher annual fee ($75 vs $60), and gives an additional 40,000 Gold Points on each account anniversary. That's a great value, but I'm not convinced it's worth another $75, given that I can manufacture 40,000 Gold Points whenever I want, without paying $75 or waiting for my account anniversary!

Those are the cards that are currently on my mind. What do you think: what cards do I need to include in my next application cycle?

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.