US Bank's quietly great credit card

I got into a discussion on Twitter back in May about the most "under-covered" credit cards in the travel hacking blogosphere, and decided to lay out my argument here for why the US Bank Flexperks Travel Rewards credit card might be the second-best credit card for the working travel hacker.

The "old" Blue Cash card still gives 5% cash back in all the best bonus categories

The best card currently available is the American Express Blue Cash card, which gives unlimited 5% cash back at gas stations (for purchases up to $400, then 1%), drug stores, and grocery stores after spending $6,500 on the card each year of card membership.

That's so lucrative I've argued that even if you prefer airline miles for high-value "aspirational" redemptions, in many cases you'd be better off simply buying those miles with your 5% cash back rather than earning them with the airline's co-branded credit card.

But for any number of reasons your spend on a Blue Cash card is – at some point – going to be throttled.

Most of us book revenue tickets from time to time

Over at Milenomics, one of my favorite travel hacking blogs, the author strives for EQM-Zero, on the grounds that it's so easy to earn rewards currencies that spending actual money is a mug's game. The ideal year of travel for Milenomics is the year he earns no elite qualifying miles – the year he doesn't pay a penny to the airlines directly.

I agree with everything about that — except that some rewards currencies book into paid fare classes.

For example, if you earned Barclaycard Arrival miles through the RewardsBoost portal when American Express gift cards were still available there, you might have been earning up to 6.6% cash back — if and only if you were redeeming your Arrival miles for paid hotel rooms or airline reservations. If your total costs after liquidation were 1%, that would make for an 80% or higher discount on your travel, which is competitive with virtually any loyalty currency out there.

The other typical case of booking into a paid fare class is when award redemptions simply aren't competitive with revenue fares. Delta's stingy low-level award availability means there are times you might be faced with a sub-$300 ticket that would cost 40,000 Skymiles.

Note that I haven't said anything about earning elite status here: in the current climate of airline devaluations I think most travelers are better off ignoring the elite status treadmill and, as Milenomics puts it, Being Your Own Elite.

The Flexperks Travel Rewards card is cheap

The annual fee for the Flexperks Travel Rewards card is $49. They have a gimmick, however, whereby after you spend $24,000 on the card each cardmember year, you earn 3,500 bonus Flexpoints. And then they let you redeem those 3,500 Flexpoints against your $49 annual fee (getting 1.4 cents each in value).

Flexperks Travel Rewards are (not that) convoluted

Many credit card rewards programs give you options to redeem your miles for revenue tickets and other cash equivalents:

• Citi ThankYou points can be redeemed for mortgage and student loan rebate checks, or revenue tickets booked using their portal;
• Chase Ultimate Rewards points can be redeemed for cash back at 1 cent each or for revenue tickets at 1.25 cents each through their booking portal;
• Barclaycard Arrival miles can be redeemed for half a cent each in cash back or 1 cent each against travel purchases over $25 made with the card;
• American Express Membership Rewards points can be redeemed for 1 cent each for revenue tickets using their booking portal.

US Bank's program, by contrast, is more complicated: Flexpoints can be redeemed in bands, starting at 20,000 Flexpoints for revenue tickets costing up to $400. Up and down the chart, Flexpoints are worth as much as 2 cents (a $399 flight will cost 20,000 Flexpoints) and as little as 1.33 cents (a $401 flight will run you 30,000 Flexpoints).

Unlimited 4% in gas or grocery is terrific

If unlimited 5% cash back in both gas station and grocery store bonus categories is the gold standard, unlimited 4% earning at one or the other must be a close second.

Besides its annoying redemption bands, the Flexperks Travel Rewards card has one more twist: you earn 2 Flexpoints per dollar spent at either gas stations or grocery stores (or airline tickets) each statement cycle; you receive the bonus Flexpoints in the category you spent the most in.

Of course, to receive 4% back in value you'd need to hit the absolute top of a redemption tier with each and every redemption. Without a doubt, that's a tall order.

But now watch this.

Unlimited 2.66% in gas or grocery is also very good

It's true that the Amex Everyday Preferred, with its $95 annual fee, offers 3 Membership Rewards points per dollar spent at gas stations (with 30 monthly transactions), which can be redeemed at 1 cent each for paid travel or transferred to their travel partners.

It's also true that the Chase Ink Plus and Bold (also with $95 annual fees) earn 2 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar on up to $50,000 spent at gas stations. Those points could be redeemed for 2.5 cents towards paid travel or transferred to their partners, where it would be easy to get more value from them, for example on short-haul Avios redemptions.

But I know of no other card that offers unlimited 2.66% in cash value per dollar spent at either gas stations or grocery stores. And remember, that's the absolute minimum value you'll receive – the higher your fares are within each redemption band, the more valuable your Flexpoints become.

It actually gets better

I know this is getting a bit long already, and you might already be convinced. But there are two more things I'd be crazy to leave out:

• The Flexperks Travel Rewards card earns 3 Flexpoints per dollar spent on Kiva loans. Even if you redeemed your Flexpoints for cash (at 1 cent each), you can use this card to earn 3% interest on as much money as Kiva will let you lend out. If you focus on short, 6-month loans, you can earn low-risk, 6% interest on your savings using this card;
• With each Flexperks flight redemption, you also receive up to $25 in credit against purchases made with the operating carrier during your trip. If you are already redeeming Flexpoints at the top of a band, that can push you over 2 cents each. And if all else fails, you can buy a $25 gift card from your flight's operating carrier on the day of travel. Note that you do have to call into US Bank after your travel is completed to request the credit. 

Applying for US Bank cards sucks

You knew there had to be a catch, and here it is: many people with multiple recent credit card applications have trouble getting approved for US Bank credit cards.

The single most important thing you can do to increase your chances at approval is to freeze your IDA and ARS credit reports. I get e-mail from readers at least once a week lamenting the fact that they applied for a US Bank card without freezing those reports and ended up being denied, despite their perfect credit profiles.

It doesn't cost more than the price of a couple certified letters, and it can help you get in on one (or two) of the most lucrative credit cards available today.

So my suggestion is to do it, and do it today.

Why I'll be loading Serve at Family Dollar (for now)

If you've been following the relevant thread on FlyerTalk or received one of the seemingly targeted e-mails from American Express (I haven't received one yet), you know that American Express has entered into a partnership with the Family Dollar discount store chain to allow Serve accounts to be loaded with cash or debit cards at Family Dollar registers.

How it works

The stars finally aligned today and I made my way to a nearby Family Dollar (after popping into Walgreens to pick up a Vanilla prepaid debit card).

The cashier and manager hanging out by the front door were easily the two nicest minimum wage employees I've met (note to Walmart!), and while they naturally hadn't heard of any e-mail, memo, change, or even Serve itself, they were totally game to play around with it for me.

I grabbed one of the famously mysterious "fake" Vanilla Reload Network cards from the prepaid card rack (where, intriguingly, I also saw OneVanilla cards hanging) and walked it up to the counter. The cashier scanned the bar code on the reverse side, entered $500, and I was prompted to swipe my Serve card. The register then showed a total amount due of $500 (not, importantly, $503.95).

I swiped my freshly acquired Vanilla prepaid debit card, entered any PIN I liked, and the register reported success. A few moments later I received the standard e-mail from American Express indicating the load was successful, and it was immediately reflected in my online balance.

Why it matters

Reading this blog post you may well be saying to yourself that you can't imagine any reason you would ever load a Serve card at Family Dollar. And you might be right!

But part of being the most effective travel hacker you can be is knowing all the opportunities available out there, so you should at least be aware of this opportunity.

Personally, I will be loading up my Serve card at Family Dollar for as long as this opportunity lasts, for the simple reason that I'm a busy guy, and my visits to Walmart are particularly busy. I already have too many things to take card of on each visit there, so the ability to displace some of my Walmart loading activity to another (incidentally, closer and more convenient) store location is a big win in my book.

You may or may not find that to be the case in your own miles and points strategy and in your own geographic location. But if, for example, you've been lamenting the end of OneVanilla cards' debit functionality at Walmart, perhaps because you have a particularly lucrative card for drug store spend, you might want to hop onto your preferred mapping service and see if you have a Family Dollar store near you.

"Pound Foolish" is a pretty good book

I recently finished "Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry" by Helaine Olen, and thought I'd share some of my initial reactions to the book, since it's a topic that's related to travel hacking in odd ways.

Personal Finance is a fantastically lucrative industry

As someone who has never had the good fortune to pick up one of Suze Orman's exhortations to "stand in my truth" or "own the power to control my destiny," I had no idea this industry really existed at all.

I thought "personal" finance was just meant as a juxtaposition to corporate finance or government finance. It turns out it's something of a term of art for "charismatic salesmen telling you how to live – with an emphasis on buying more personal finance products."

While there are certainly people who need help organizing their finances, the only personal finance advice I've ever followed is pretty simple:

1. Don't pay interest if you're earning less interest on your investments than you're paying on your debt;
2. Max out your IRA contributions;
3. and invest in Vanguard target retirement date funds.

If really hard-pressed, I might add something like "spread your IRA contributions throughout the year to account for natural fluctuations in prices."

That would add up to a medium-length article, but it would make for a pretty short book. Nonetheless, these hucksters write countless books, host popular TV shows, and exhort their followers to engage in unbelievably convoluted schemes, the riskiest of which involve buying real estate speculatively and engaging in options trading with borrowed money (what my brother refers to as "unlimited downside" trading).

No one shares easy ways to get rich on the stock market

The "efficient markets hypothesis" gets a pretty bad rap, but at its core contains a basic truth: opportunities to take advantage of differences between public information and asset prices are vanishingly short-lived.

If a person really knew a sure-fire way to pick stocks or design stock-picking algorithms that invariably resulted in profitable trades, that person would receive a huge salary and even bigger annual bonus implementing that strategy for any one of thousands of investment banks, hedge funds, or sovereign wealth funds – not writing a monthly newsletter or hosting a TV show on a fourth-rate cable channel.

Of course, the real problem is that even if the schemes of personal finance "experts" worked for some or even most people, there's no way to know in advance if you're one of those people.

Olen is right about the little things and wrong about the big things

Olen is absolutely right about all this, as far as it goes. There is, however, an odd current running through the book, of hopelessness in the face of the massed forces of banks, publishing houses, cable news channels, and in-person appeals.

In fact, she more or less endorses a fanciful scheme by Teresa Ghilarducci to replace individual retirement savings with a universal forced savings program. Here's a rundown of the program in Olen's words:

• "create a pension plan for all of us by having workers and their employers contribute a minimum of 5 percent of pay into a guaranteed account via mandatory automatic deduction;"
• "all this money would be placed in United States bonds which would promise an annual minimum return of 3 percent above the rate of inflation, so participants would be protected from market downturns;"
• "And who would manage all this money? Ghilarducci would shift the funds from the retail/commercial sector...to the institutional sector, and to hedge funds that mange our nation's pension monies at a significantly lower cost."

Well, did you see the slight of hand there? The same money that was just invested in United States bonds with a guaranteed rate of return was suddenly being "managed" by the "institutional sector." So which is it: is the money in risk-free Treasuries with a special, higher interest rate, or is the money being "managed" by hedge funds, i.e., invested into markets that fluctuate over time?

What do travel hacking and personal finance have in common?

I view travel hacking as the antidote to the madness that is the personal finance industrial complex. That's because when we manufacture spend, we aren't guessing about the performance of our rental properties or scrambling to find money to pay the mortgage: we see our costs up front and we see our returns every time a credit card statement closes.

When we book award tickets, we easily calculate the value we receive per mile redeemed and compare it to our acquisition (and opportunity) costs, to make adjustments to our miles and points strategy.

So I struggled while reading Olen's book to find the best way to express this fundamental fact: the house can be beat, it just can't be beat through magic. It can be beat through a clear-eyed and thorough evaluation of all the tools available, good organization, and a willingness to change along with the game.

Conclusion

With all that said, "Pound Foolish" is a rollicking good and often funny trip through every part of the personal finance industrial complex, from advisors who are paid based on the number of times they churn their clients' investments each year to the television channels that promote day-trading as a get-rich-quick scheme for the struggling middle class. Pick up a copy at your public library (like I did) or order a copy through Amazon.

REloadit report: opportunities and pitfalls

Since CVS stopped allowing Vanilla Reload Network reload cards to be purchased using credit cards, many people naturally turned to competing reload products. After Green Dot's MoneyPak reload product, one of the most prominent is REloadit, a product of Blackhawk Network (rather than Incomm, the producer of Vanilla-branded prepaid products) sold at many grocery stores nationwide.

I wrote about REloadit back in May, in the context of manufacturing spend at low or no cost using T-Mobile prepaid debit cards which, when loaded using REloadit cards, refund the $3.95 purchase fee to your card's balance.

Since writing that post, I've started experimenting with REloadit cards and have some very curious datapoints to report.

REloadit-compatible prepaid debit cards

You can find REloadit-compatible cards on this site. Besides the T-Mobile card mentioned above, the two most important ones to note are PayPower (since you might be accumulating a growing stack of unregistered temporary cards already) and Serve, the now-slightly-superior-to-Bluebird checking account alternative by American Express.

REloadit packs come in different designs

Last year I wrote about the the plethora of Vanilla Reload Network reload card designs and the opportunities each redesign promised.

REloadit packs come in at least four designs, and each design is sold by a different grocery store chain near me. I don't have pictures of the fourth design, but I do of the three designs I've personally experimented with.

Here's a REloadit "classic:"

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Here's what I think of as a "second-generation" REloadit pack (I'll explain why in a moment):

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And finally, here's REloadit 3.0 (now rebranded to "Reloadit"):

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I bought all three of these cards within the span of a week. So why did I put them in this order?

The "third-generation" Reloadit card comes last because it's the current branding of their website. The distinction between REloadit classic and second-generation REloadit cards is more important, however.

First- and second-generation REloadit cards have different functionality

If you've experimented at all with Evolve Money, the free online bill payment service, you've no doubt wondered what exactly they mean when they say you can pay your bills with "cash" online.

It turns out they give two options: something called Evolve Pay Bucks which – to the best of my knowledge – no one has ever seen in the wild, and REloadit cards.

Unlike the many Vanilla Reload redesigns over the lifetime of that technique, and as strange as it sounds, first-generation REloadit cards do not work with Evolve Money.

What if you accidentally bought a handful of first-generation REloadit packs?

Needless to say, when I discovered this today, I was more than a little peeved. I had already successfully experimented with third-generation REloadit (or "Reloadit") packs using Evolve Money, so had purchased a few REloadit cards with precisely that purpose in mind.

After Evolve Money returned a not-particularly-helpful error advising me to call Blackhawk directly, I was eventually able to reach a customer service representative (try entering 16 0's when prompted for a card number) who both assured me the funds on the card were available for loading and that she had never heard of Evolve Money or any other REloadit-compatible bill payment service, other than PayPower.

Fortunately, I do have access to PayPower cards, so I registered one of my temporary cards and quickly loaded it up with over $1,000 in REloadit packs on my way out the door to Walmart, keeping in mind that PayPower charges its steep $5.95 monthly fee within a week of purchasing the card, and not wanting to pay that fee for access to my own money.

If it were July already, I would have attempted to load the funds to my Serve account, but I was already more than a little worried that my money had been claimed by marauding prepaid pirates, so I seized the opportunity to load the funds while I could.

Conclusion: and PayPower shut me down

When I got home, my access to my PayPower online account had already been revoked, so I assume my same-day loading and unloading activity resulted in my account being shut down.

Since I got my money out and won some hard-earned datapoints for my readers, I'm perfectly satisfied with the experience. And of course, once I'm able to experiment with loading my Serve and T-Mobile accounts with REloadit packs, I'll have more to report.

The question that matters about the US Airways credit card

Signup bonuses play a vanishingly small role in my miles and points strategy. They consume, on the other hand, approximately 95% of the the attention of most miles and points bloggers, one reason I scarcely read any other bloggers these days. It's trivially easy to manufacture 100,000 American AAdvantage miles should you foresee a need for them, while most bloggers will tell you only a madman would forego the chance to "opportunistically" acquire them at a cost of just $250. Then, as if to emphasize the absurdity, they spill even more ink over a 5,000 Starpoint increase in the signup bonus for the American Express Starwood Preferred Guest card!

Ongoing benefits (like companion tickets) and lucrative bonus categories are miles ahead of signup bonuses in my decision making.

So in all the supposed "assessments" of changes to the Barclaycard US Airways MasterCard after the merger with American Airlines is completed (for example see here, here, here) I always look for one piece of information that's invariably missing: what's going to happen to the 10,000 miles anniversary bonus offered by the US Airways MasterCard once it becomes an AAdvantage card?

Barclaycard hasn't made a decision yet

It's clear that if Barclaycard had made a decision about what's going to happen to the "anniversary mile" version of the card, they would have shared it. In fact, they've already mailed out an update on what changes will be made to the card's ongoing benefits (eliminating the card's companion ticket and 5,000 mile discount on award bookings, most notably).

But they haven't shared what's going to happen to the anniversary miles.

Barclaycard wrote oddly specific terms and conditions

Let me preface this by saying the terms and conditions of the US Airways MasterCard include the same language found on all such documents:

"The APRs, fees, and other account terms, as well as the benefits and features associated with the account are subject to change to the extent permitted by law."

That being said, the language related to the anniversary miles is extremely specific:

"Anniversary Bonus Miles: Beginning with the first anniversary of Account opening and every anniversary thereafter, Cardmembers will be awarded 10,000 Anniversary Miles."

Barclaycard has a very expensive team of lawyers

If Barclaycard believed that they could eliminate the anniversary bonus miles without legal risk, they would do so. The fact that they claim not to have made a decision yet is strongly dispositive to me that they believe they do not have the ability to eliminate the anniversary bonus miles for cardholders who signed up for the card under that offer.

Credit card contracts are different than loyalty program terms and conditions

Loyalty program terms and conditions as written today have a plethora of conditions that protect the provider from any legal liability for future enhancements (devaluations) to the program.

Credit card terms and conditions, on the other hand, are real contracts entered into between customers and banks for mutual benefit, and there are substantially more restrictions on the kinds of changes that can be made to them, with or without notice.

Further, Barclaycard is bound by state consumer protection laws and would be vulnerable to claims in every state they have cardholders if they were to make a change they didn't believe was airtight from their lawyer's point of view.

Conclusion

I don't know anything more than anyone else pontificating about the coming changes to the US Airways credit card. But whenever you see an article purporting to explain those changes, now you know what to look for: does the author have any additional information about the anniversary miles, or are they just reciting their Barclaycard-approved talking points?

Delta companion ticket follies

I've written before about my affection for the American Express Delta Platinum credit card. A big part of the value the card provides, even at its new, higher $195 annual fee, is in the annual companion ticket. Now that my companion ticket has posted to my account, and I've had a chance to experiment with it, I thought I'd share a datapoint or two.

New fare classes, old terms and conditions

When you take a look at the certificates and credits in your Delta "My Wallet," you'll see one set of fare restrictions on the Platinum companion certificate:

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If you click on the certificate's "Terms & Conditions," however you'll see a different set of fare restrictions:

"Seats are limited in L, U, T class of service."

In fact, the expanded list is the applicable one: it is possible to use the companion certificate to book into X and V fare buckets.

Each direction must be booked entirely into the same fare bucket

This restriction is both counter-intuitive and can be a real nuisance. While searching for tickets back to my ancestral homeland for Thanksgiving, I found what seemed like the ideal companion ticket reservation:

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A simple roundtrip with four legs in economy, each leg booked into an eligible L, U, or T fare bucket.

This reservation is not eligible for a companion ticket redemption.

While Delta and their apologists would love to explain this limitation with reference to the technical limitations of Delta's reservation software, like all of Delta's "IT problems" it coincidentally works exclusively to the detriment of their customers.

In order to successfully make a companion ticket reservation, all the legs in each direction must be booked into the same fare bucket. Each direction, on the other hand, can be booked into the same or different fare buckets, as long as they are eligible fare classes under the terms of the companion ticket.

The value of the companion ticket depends on your other options

Perhaps the most important thing to know about the companion ticket is that it has to be paid for using your American Express Delta credit card.

And that's unlikely to be your most lucrative card for travel reservations, when you could instead be booking paid airfare using a Barclaycard Arrival+ card.

Failing that, you might be paying for your revenue tickets by redeeming US Bank Flexpoints for up to 2 cents each, earned in a bonus category like gas stations or grocery stores.

Alternatively, you might consider redeeming Ultimate Rewards points at 1.25 cents each, earned at no net cost at office supply stores like Staples.

Finally, you might be earning Delta Skymiles for hundredths of a cent each using the Suntrust Delta check card, and redeeming them for 1 cent each on Pay With Miles redemptions, which you're also eligible for as a Delta American Express cardholder.

Conclusion

I will probably end up using my companion ticket not for an expensive Thanksgiving trip this year, but for a $300 – $400 weekend trip this fall. That's not because the companion ticket is a bad deal (it's not), it's because it's not a way to actually save money, compared to the other options I described above.

Any charge I make to my American Express Delta Platinum card will actually have to be paid back with real money — and the whole reason I started travel hacking is that I don't have enough money to pay for all the travel I want to do!

Are you watching for PayPower prepaid debit cards?

Longtime readers know that back in New England, I had more or less constant problems manufacturing spend in two of my favorite bonus categories: gas stations and grocery stores. A few days or weeks after discovering a source, it would inevitably dry up, never to be replaced, or a memo would come down from management requiring cash for the purchases I was interested in making.

Since moving to the Midwest, I've been surprised daily by the options available in virtually every store here. One option I've only recently had a chance to experiment with are PayPower "reloadable" prepaid debit cards.

Are they free or are they cheap?

PayPower cards got some publicity recently when in many markets they went "fee-free;" that is to say, rather than their old $3.95 purchase fee, or the $4.95 activation fee of OneVanilla prepaid debit cards, or the $5.95 purchase fee of many PIN-enabled grocery store gift cards, the PayPower cards stopped charging any activation fee at all at purchase. Within about a week of activation, however, their monthly maintenance fee of $5.95 is still charged, so it's important to liquidate these cards as soon as possible.

In my market, the cards still come with a $3.95 activation fee. While not free, they do allow me to take advantage of grocery store bonus categories while paying less than I was at CVS for PIN-enabled OneVanilla cards.

Set your PIN – but don't register!

In theory, the cards you buy at your local grocery store are only temporary cards, meant to be replaced by a permanent card once you register your temporary card.

It turns out, however, that the PayPower phone tree allows you to set a PIN for your temporary card without providing any personal identifying information.

Just call the number on the front of your card, wait for the prompt, enter your card number followed by the pound key, the card's expiration date and CVC code, then choose option 3. You'll be prompted to enter your desired PIN code twice, and then notified when the PIN code has been successfully set.

No workaround, but remember your point-of-sale updates

These cards can be easily liquidated at Walmart through any of the most popular PIN-based transactions: loading prepaid cards, buying money orders, or making bill payments, and unlike OneVanilla cards before the latest changes, no "workaround" is required: these are immediately identified as PIN-enabled debit cards by Walmart payment terminals.

That doesn't mean you can let your guard down. The point-of-sale updates I've written about (here and here) are still in effect, so you'll still need to keep in mind, for each transaction type, whether the cashier or the customer goes first. Almost no cashiers are aware of the differences, so you may need to gently guide your cashier through each transaction.

I know many of my readers will also be pleased to know that, while not personalized, temporary PayPower cards are not branded in any way as gift cards, which may make them more palatable for some Walmart cashiers, although unfortunately not for those who insist on the cardholder's name being embossed or printed on the card.

Conclusion

Grocery stores are notoriously skeptical of large credit card purchases of prepaid debit and gift cards, so you'll want to take your time investigating as many store locations as possible and familiarizing yourself with the cashiers and managers. Be ready to provide photo ID without hesitation or complaint, and most importantly, be ready to take no for an answer.

The lower a profile you keep, the more likely your cashiers and managers are to be comfortable running larger transactions for you, and the more likely these opportunities are to remain available for you and others in your community.

What do no-blackout-date policies really mean?

During last weekend's trip to New York, I ran into a problem that I think is fairly common: a property won't show award availability, even though standard rooms are still available at cash rates.

In case readers run into similar situations, I thought this would make a useful resource: hotel chain policies on award blackout dates.

Club Carlson

According to Club Carlson's website:

"As a Club CarlsonSM member, you can redeem your Gold Points® for free Award Nights at more than 1,000 Carlson Rezidor hotels worldwide – with no blackout dates on standard rooms."

While attempting to make a reservation at the Radisson Martinique, I discovered that even though standard rooms were still available for sale, I was not able to redeem Gold Points for one. Indeed, you can see this is still true today:

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Since I was getting down to the wire planning the trip, I decided to reach out to Club Carlson and see if they could make me an award reservation anyway. The phone agent I spoke to was singularly unhelpful, so I tried Twitter. The agent asked me to e-mail her, and over e-mail she told me:

"Rooms using points for reservations are based on availability and hotels only set aside a certain amount of rooms for redemption reservations, promotions, discounts, etc."

In other words, their "no blackout date" policy means nothing: while there aren't any systemwide blackout dates, hotels can make rooms unavailable for redemption any time.

I've since discovered that the Radisson Martinique makes rooms available for weekend redemptions sometime Wednesday afternoon. So if you are interested in making a reservation there, try the Club Carlson website then to see if they've opened up any award availability.

Hilton HHonors

Here's the Hilton policy on blackout dates:

"Use your HHonors Points to book a free standard room at any of our hotels and resorts worldwide, with no blackout dates."

And indeed, while I was looking at award availability at the Hilton Molino Stucky Venice, I discovered that while there were no award nights available for some nights:

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there were also no paid rooms available for the same dates:

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Marriott Rewards

In this FAQ, Marriott explains:

"Blackout dates traditionally refer to a limited number of dates on which a hotel could choose not to accept redemptions. With our “No Blackout Dates” policy, hotels will no longer have blackout dates for redemptions. Hotels may limit the number of standard rooms available for redemption on a limited number of days."

In case that sounds an awful lot like a blackout date, Marriott goes on to clarify that redemptions might not be allowed if:

"The date is an approved Inventory Control Date. On a limited number of nights, hotels may limit the number of rooms available for redemption. You may be trying to redeem on one of these nights and the hotel has already reached its maximum number of redemptions."

In other words, hotels can limit points redemptions if the date is one when people particularly want to stay at the hotel.

Hyatt Gold Passport

According to the Hyatt Gold Passport terms and conditions:

"Hyatt Gold Passport Free Night Awards apply when standard rooms are available at the Hyatt Daily Rate. Standard rooms are defined by each hotel and are not subject to blackout dates."

That seems pretty airtight, but there were enough reports of difficulty booking standard rooms that just this May a Hyatt representative explicitly stated on FlyerTalk:

"As long as the Hyatt Daily Rate and a standard room is available, you are able to redeem your Gold Passport free nights."

While seeing whether I could make an award reservation for December 31, 2014, in New York City, the two properties that still had (astronomically expensive) paid rates available seemed to show award availability:

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Once I clicked through, however, I was told that:

"The special offer/rate you have selected is unavailable during the dates you have selected, or it is not offered at this property."

It appears that these properties have tricked out their inventory such that they're offering only "Advance Purchase" and "Bed and Breakfast" rates, presumably knowing that if they offered any "Hyatt Daily Rate" rooms they'd have to offer those rooms on points, as well. This may be within the letter of the no-blackout-date policy, but in my view still violates the spirit of the policy, not that anyone cares about my views on hotel management.

IHG Rewards

Like Marriott and Club Carlson, IHG Rewards "no blackout date" policy is so full of loopholes you could drive a truck through it. Here's the relevant passage from the terms and conditions:

"Rooms are limited, subject to prior sale and availability of allocated resources and may be unavailable during high demand periods."

In other words, there are no blackout dates, just dates when the allocated resources don't allow you to make an award reservation.

Starwood Preferred Guest

The SPG terms and conditions state in no uncertain terms:

"An SPG Member may redeem Starpoints for single or double occupancy rooms at SPG Participating Hotels including, without limitation, for Free Night Awards."

The New Year's Eve test

It's hard to get a sense of how these programs and policies work in a vacuum, so I figured it'd be fun to run a little experiment. Which programs would allow me to redeem points for free nights at their Manhattan properties on December 31, 2014 (and what kind of value could I get from such an award)?

• Club Carlson: Radisson Martinique, no rooms available;
• Hilton: Hilton Manhattan East, $690.91 or 70,000 HHonors points, 0.99 cents per point;
• Marriott: Lexington New York City, $591.13 or 40,000 Marriott Rewards points, 1.48 cents per point;
• Hyatt: No Hyatt Daily Rate rooms available, so no award availability (see above);
• IHG: Manhattan Midtown West, standard rooms available but "Reward Nights rooms are sold out for one or more of the dates you selected at this hotel."
• Starwood: Four Points by Sheraton Manhattan Chelsea, $1,150 or 12,000 Starpoints, 9.5 cents per point.

In other words, Starwood and Hilton seem to vigorously apply the letter and spirit of their no-blackout-date policies.

Whatever policy IHG has barely qualifies as "no blackout dates."

Hyatt seems to allow their properties to play games with inventory, which is unfortunate, but all things considered, they do seem to have a relatively strict policy, and one supported by management.

The only real surprise here is Marriott, and it's a pleasant one: although their terms and conditions allow them to designate New Year's Eve as an Inventory Control Date, they haven't done so, and kudos to them for it.

Anatomy of an award trip: weekend in New York City

One piece of feedback I regularly get from readers is that while I write a lot about the earning side of miles and points, they'd like to hear more about the redemption side. To be sure, I've written about how I booked vacations to Prague and Philadelphia, and commented on specific things like the weirdness of Alaska Airlines' long-haul first class cabins.

But frankly, while I do more leisure travel than most people I know, or most people my age, it mostly follows a familiar pattern: visiting friends and family or taking a long weekend to visit a new or beloved city.

And when booking those trips, I mostly follow a few simple steps:

1. Look at my points balances;
2. Check award availability;
3. Book an award ticket, if available;
4. Book award nights, if available;
5. Charge everything else to my Barclaycard Arrival.

You might ask where point valuations come into play in this system, and the answer is they don't. That's because as I never cease to remind people, by the time you're making reservations, it's too late to change the number or type of points you have. Only once you know how you in fact use your miles and points can you know what they're worth – that is to say, how much money they save you.

I took an award trip to New York City last weekend that illustrates this point nicely.

Getting there: low-level Delta award ticket

My partner and I were able to book two low-level award tickets leaving Thursday evening on a non-stop and returning Sunday morning with a connection in Detroit. We booked the trip less than two weeks before departure, when tickets were pricing out at about $460 each.

Total cost: 25,000 Delta Skymiles, $10. Total value: $460. Value per point: 1.84 cents.

In fact, the exact itinerary we booked would have cost $651, but there's no way we would have paid that much, so the lowest available fare for those dates is a better point of comparison.

Whether you're earning 1.4 Skymiles per dollar, 1.5 Skymiles per dollar, or generating boundless Skymiles with the Suntrust Delta Skymiles Check Card, 1.84 cent-per-Skymile redemptions will make that spend competitive with either a 2% or 2.22% cash back card. Of course, at high levels of spend the Delta Platinum and Reserve American Express cards have other benefits, as well.

Staying there: Hilton Points and Money award

We spent our first night in Manhattan at the Millenium Hilton on a Points and Money award, paying $118.25 and 32,000 HHonors points. For all three nights, the best alternative rate I was able to find was $206 after tax at the Ludlow Hotel.

The Millenium Hilton was a terrific property, and was the first Hilton property I've stayed at that allowed us to take the complimentary Gold Elite continental breakfast by room service. Lots of digital ink has been spilled over taking the Andaz Wall Street's Diamond breakfast benefit by room service, but I hadn't realized that benefit was offered by some Hiltons as well. This was my first time ever ordering room service, and I thought it was a very nice touch.

Total cost: 32,000 Hilton HHonors points, $118.25. Total value: $206. Value per point: 0.27 cents.

While 0.27 cents is well over my money cost of acquisition (0.13 cents), it's well below my opportunity cost of acquisition, since rather than earning 6 HHonors points per dollar (1.62% cash back) with my American Express Surpass card at bonused merchants, I could be earning 2% or 2.22% cash back at the same merchants.

The crucial point here is that this wasn't a "bad" redemption just because in retrospect the spend used to generate the necessary points could have been used more profitably on another credit card. That ship already sailed.

What it does mean is that before I earn any additional HHonors points, I need to take a hard look at my upcoming travel plans and decide whether those plans are better financed with cash back or HHonors points. Having done so, I know I have some 0.45-0.5 cent redemptions coming up, so I'll happily continue to use my Surpass card at bonused merchants.

Staying there: Club Carlson last-night-free award

For our last two nights, I redeemed 50,000 Club Carlson Gold Points for two nights at the Radisson Martinique on Broadway.

Total cost: 50,000 Gold Points. Total value: $412. Value per point: 0.82 cents.

Redemptions like this one are why I argued Club Carlson points can sometimes be worth as much as a penny each. Since my US Bank Club Carlson Business Rewards card earns 5 Gold Points per dollar spent everywhere, the dollars spent on the card in order to make this award redemption earned about 4.1% cash back. Since I have other high-value award redemptions coming up soon, I know I'm on the right track continuing to manufacture spend on that card.

Conclusion

The only value that miles and points could possibly have is the value you get for the redemptions you make. By looking at your past and future award redemptions (and the cost of your paid travel) you can determine which cards deliver outsized returns over a 2% or 2.22% cash back card.

Every change is an invitation to greatness

Do you remember April 1, the day CVS registers started the transition to blocking credit card usage for purchases of some prepaid cards? It's also the day I wrote that manufactured spend is here to stay. I took the change in coding at CVS as an invitation to explore other avenues of manufactured spend, and found that my reliance on Vanilla Reload Network reload cards was acting as an unnecessary throttle on my manufactured spend.

For example, rather than just buying OneVanilla cards for just a dollar more each, I had been relentlessly looking for new Vanilla-reloadable prepaid cards, each with pitifully low monthly load limits and a constant threat of shutdown (also, also, also, and also).

It was easy, it was cheap, and it was predictable.

Once the Vanilla Reload Network stopped being the backbone of my manufactured spend (and once I had more time to experiment and explore), I found to my chagrin that I'd been wasting my time: there was a whole big beautiful world of manufactured spend out there!

While I had already known about many of the techniques I use today, I cockily assumed they weren't worth my time, and I was wrong.

Something's going on with Vanilla prepaid debit cards

No one knows for sure who implemented the changes, whether they were intentional or not, or whether they're permanent or temporary. But for the last few days reports have appeared all over FlyerTalk and Twitter about OneVanilla prepaid debit cards, the famously convenient alternative to Vanilla Reload Network cards (since any 4 digits can be used as a card's PIN, without online or phone registration).

For the time being, OneVanilla and most, if not all, prepaid debit cards issued under the Vanilla brand (you'll find a small ice cream cone on all such cards) cannot be used at Walmart store locations for the three most popular kinds of manufactured spend transactions: money order purchases, bill payments, and loading of prepaid card products like Serve and Bluebird.

Non-Vanilla prepaid debit cards still work fine

Besides Vanilla, there are several other brands of prepaid debit cards, most of which are PIN-enabled, and most of which cost a dollar more for the $500 variety. Many of them are sold at frequently-bonused merchants like gas stations and grocery stores.

If you're looking for a substitute for OneVanilla cards, you might consider (slowly!) experimenting with those cards, if you have credit cards that still make it worth paying their higher activation fees.

But always look for alternatives to the prepaid treadmill

When I switched from my dependence on Vanilla Reload Network reload cards to OneVanilla prepaid debit cards, my manufactured spending increased substantially. But my time commitment also expanded, and not all of it was necessarily fun (though the travel it paid for sure was!). So I also started experimenting with techniques that wouldn't necessarily involve constantly visiting the same stores over and over, day after day.

And in fact, the current limitations on the usefulness of OneVanilla cards come just as I had started accelerating my use of other techniques, which don't require PIN-enabled debit cards at all.

Conclusion

Today you might be willing to pay $5.95 instead of $4.95, just like back in April you might have been willing to pay $4.95 instead of $3.95. But the more serious about this game you are, the more aggressively you should be looking for techniques that cost less, not more!

Best of all, there's a whole community out there willing to help you, with one big caveat: you have to first be willing to put the necessary work in to understand this game we love.

In the comments I'd love to hear reports of successes and failures using my readers' own favorite prepaid products.