Having a routine is fantastic. Also dangerous

Back in September, Matt at Saverocity wrote this post about the potential problems of a travel hacker getting so "locked in" to one or two loyalty programs that they're unable to take advantage of other, potentially more lucrative programs sitting right under their nose.

Conveniently, I was name-checked in the post, so I guess I'm entitled to respond.

Matt thinks our limiting factor is time and attention; I think it's value

Here's the marker Matt laid down, challenging us slackers to rise above the hobgoblins of our little minds:

"I don’t think anyone would have the gumption to do this. But what if you had to drop all your existing programs for 6 months. The world wouldn’t end, and if you were dedicated, you’d be forced to learn a lot about other things outside of your knowledge base. Humans are notoriously good at adapting and evolving when forced to do so, but if you give us the choice...we’d rather not."

Today, I can manufacture up to $120,000 per cardmember year on a US Bank Flexperks Travel Rewards card and earn 2 Flexpoints per dollar (at gas stations or grocery stores) or 3 Flexpoints per dollar (in charitable spending), worth up to $4,800 or $7,200 in paid airfare.

I have unlimited time and attention (this is my job), but what I don't have is the willingness to give up concrete, quantifiable value in favor of spending months diving deep into alternative rewards programs on a speculative basis.

Having a routine is fantastic

Much of my monthly manufactured spend proceeds according to a familiar routine. I know which merchants will sell me which products in which quantities, and I buy them with the cards that give me the most value, starting with bonused spending categories and working my way down.

Far from limiting my frame of reference, I find a consistent routine, developed based on the actual credit cards and loyalty programs that I use to pay for my actual travel, gives me more mental bandwidth to dedicate to studying new techniques and calculating how I can integrate them into my travel hacking practice.

Having a routine is (can be) dangerous

What Matt gets exactly right is that if you focus on a single method of manufactured spend, or on credit cards issued by a single bank, or on a single method of liquidation, then you're making yourself vulnerable to local, regional, or national policy changes.

If you travel hack recreationally, that may not be the end of the world; a lot of people who were manufacturing huge volumes before Vanilla Reload Network cards became harder to buy stopped completely once they became increasingly restricted, and never thought about the game again.

No deal lasts forever

At the time of writing, I understand that Target stores are not allowing Prepaid REDcards to be loaded with debit cards. Is this the end?

Honestly, probably not.

But if it is, did you convert all your Serve and Bluebird cards to Prepaid REDcards in anticipation of the deal lasting forever? Why? Serve cards can still be loaded at Family Dollar stores using any PIN-enabled debit card. Bluebird cards can still be loaded at Walmart with US Bank-issued MasterCard and Metabank-issued Visa cards sold at Staples.

The most lucrative deal, the biggest secret you're keeping, even from your fellow travel hackers, won't last forever. When it ends, you can either have a range of unrelated deals to fall back on, or you can find yourself scrambling to learn about other techniques to meet your ongoing travel needs.

Conclusion

There are only 6 programs I earn miles and points in with any intensity:

• US Bank Flexperks
• Hilton HHonors
• Chase Ultimate Rewards
• Delta Skymiles
• Barclaycard Arrival+ miles
• Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan (for crediting paid flights operated by American and Delta)

On the one hand, Matt is right to point out that any constellation of miles and points programs that are earned to the exclusion of other programs raises risks: the risk of devaluation, the risk of increased attention to accounts, the risk of available techniques changing or drying up.

On the other hand, a simplified routine based on the actual value of the points you're earning and, even more importantly, the points you're redeeming, may give you the cognitive freedom you need to stay on top of new and developing techniques.

The single best award redemption, by transfer partner: Chase Ultimate Rewards

As my regular readers know, I don't chase "aspirational" redemptions; I earn the miles and points I need to pay for the trips I want to take as cheaply as possible.

But many of you do chase aspirational redemptions! That gets me into hot water whenever I point out that a Chase Ultimate Rewards point is worth 1 penny (its cash redemption value), or that American Express Membership Rewards points are hard to redeem for cash.

So in the spirit of reconciliation, I though it would be fun to put together a list of the absolute best redemption values for the transfer partners of each flexible rewards currency. Since I'm most familiar with Ultimate Rewards points, let's start there.

Airline Partners

As a reminder, here are the Chase Ultimate Rewards airline transfer partners:

• United MileagePlus
• British Airways Executive Club
• Korean Airlines SKYPASS
• Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer
• Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards
• Virgin Atlantic Flying Club

United MileagePlus

Two of the best international first class products, Lufthansa and Singapore, belong to the Star Alliance, and United MileagePlus miles can be redeemed for first class on either airline at their partner award prices. But which is the better redemption?

One-way award seats in Lufthansa first class between New York and Frankfurt cost 110,000 MileagePlus miles, plus $5.60 in taxes and fees. Unless you're a MileagePlus elite, you'll also pay a $75 close-in ticketing fee, since Lufthansa first class seats are generally made available to United only a few days or weeks before departure.

At the time of writing, Lufthansa first class seats between New York and Frankfurt cost $11,049 on October 10, a date Lufthansa first class award seats are also available. Less the $80.60 in taxes and fees, that gives a redemption value of just about 10 cents per Ultimate Rewards point.

We can actually do a hair better than this by flying not to Frankfurt, but to Tokyo's Haneda airport via Frankfurt. This itinerary also costs 110,000 MileagePlus miles, but retails for $952 more, at $12,001, giving us 10.8 cents per MileagePlus mile:

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By comparison, Singapore's JFK-Frankfurt flight costs a mere $7,108. In any case, since Singapore Air is also a Chase Ultimate Rewards transfer partner, Lufthansa walks away with an easy victory here.

British Airways Executive Club

A safe choice for best British Airways redemption is a 4,500-Avios American Airlines short-haul flight like Norfolk, VA, to Charlotte, NC, which can get you about 9.9 cents per Ultimate Rewards points.

Knowing that Brazil forbids airlines from adding fuel and passenger surcharges to tickets, I was hopeful that a route like Sao Paulo — London would generate an astronomical value per Avios. But it turns out those flights don't get more expensive by distance in the way that Avios redemptions do! A first class seat from Sao Paulo to London costs just $5,783, which at 120,000 Avios gives a piddling 4.8 cents per point.

You're better off moving to Norfolk.

Korean Airlines SKYPASS

A popular use of SKYPASS is to book cheaper award tickets from the US mainland to Hawaii than those available on domestic US carriers. So, for example, while a Delta Skymiles award ticket to Hawaii from the continental 48 costs a minimum of 45,000 miles roundtrip, a SKYPASS award ticket costs just 35,000 miles.

Delta flies nonstop from Atlanta to Honolulu, so let's use that as our basis for comparison. A roundtrip departing March 8 and returning March 16, on which there's low-level award availability, costs $1,134. Less $11.20 in taxes and fees, that returns a SKYPASS redemption value of 3.24 cents each. That's not bad for SKYPASS miles, but it's not the best.

That's because Korean Airlines SKYPASS miles can also be redeemed for first class on Korean. On April 4, 2016, a first class flight from New York JFK to Seoul Incheon costs $10,032, but just 80,000 SKYPASS miles plus $104.20 in taxes and fees, giving 12.4 cents per SKYPASS mile, the highest transfer value for Ultimate Rewards we've seen yet!

It should be possible to kick that up another few cents per point by booking a single first class award from New York to Sydney for 120,000 SKYPASS miles, but I cannot for the life of me get the Korean Airlines website to price out such an award.

Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer

Remember the disappointing, $7,108 New York - Frankfurt flight operated by Singapore that I mentioned above? The good news is that it costs just 57,375 KrisFlyer miles (after their 15% online booking discount) and $203.30 in taxes and fees, or just over 12 cents per KrisFlyer mile.

There are more expensive Singapore Airlines routes, but they cost many more KrisFlyer miles such that you're unlikely to do better than the above. For example, it costs $984 to continue in first class to Singapore from Frankfurt, but 36,125 more KrisFlyer miles. At 2.7 cents per mile, that's a pretty good redemption in its own right, but it drags down the overall redemption value significantly.

Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards

Since Southwest is a revenue-based program, you're not doing to do better than 1.6-1.7 cents per Rapid Rewards point unless you have the Companion Pass. If you do, congratulations, you can get up to 3.2-3.4 cents per Rapid Rewards point when booking Wanna Get Away fares.

For example, with the Companion Pass you could fly two passengers from Baltimore, Maryland to Aruba for 11,620 Rapid Rewards points and $31.20 in taxes and fees, a $407.60 value, giving you 3.24 cents per Rapid Rewards point.

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club

Virgin Atlantic has a number of partner airlines that could potentially offer some value, like South African Airways. Their website even contains this mysterious language:

"Economy Class Mileage* 40,000
Business Class Mileage* 50,000
Between Dakar and New York***"

Mysterious because South African Airways does not fly from Dakar to New York, although it's possible to book itineraries connecting in Washington Dulles. Maybe that's what they mean?

Virgin Atlantic does partner with Delta, which basically makes it a poor man's Skyteam partner. You can fly from the US to Europe for 100,000 Flying Club miles roundtrip, as long as you can find Delta low-level availability, compared to 125,000 Skymiles for the same awards. You can fly anywhere in Africa for 120,000 Flying Club miles roundtrip in business class, compared to 140,000 Skymiles to northern Africa and 160,000 Skymiles to South Africa (I think — no award charts, remember?).

I couldn't find any low-level availability on Delta metal to Johannesburg, but a roundtrip business class flight with award availability between New York and Dakar priced out at $3,375. Assuming Virgin Atlantic charges the same taxes and fees as Delta, $127.60, you could get about 2.7 cents per Flying Club mile on such an award.

Hotel Partners

Here are the Chase Ultimate Rewards hotel transfer partners:

• Hyatt Gold Passport
• Marriott Rewards/Ritz Carlton Rewards
• IHG Rewards Club

Hyatt Gold Passport

There are two places you can look for the highest redemption values in a program like Hyatt Gold Passport. You can look at properties in the highest categories during the property's high season (after all, they're there because they're expensive!), or you can look at properties in the lowest categories during major events. So, which approach yields the highest redemption value?

I looked at a range of top-tier properties, and the best I could do was at everyone's favorite aspirational beach resort, the Category 6 Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa, where rates go up to $2027 in early January, or 8.1 cents per point. Then Grant pointed to a May 29, 2016, stay at the Park Hyatt Milan, when the Hyatt Daily Rate is $4577 — and rooms are still available for 30,000 Gold Passport points, or 15.26 cents per point.

Other top-tier properties offer fine redemptions, but nothing like that: the Category 7 Park Hyatt Sydney charges about $814 on January 25 (the day before Australia Day), or 30,000 Gold Passport points, for about 2.7 cents per point.

What about on the low end? During CES in Las Vegas, you can book the Hyatt Place Las Vegas for 8,000 Gold Passport points or $338, about 4.2 cents per point. My main problem searching for these low-end redemptions is that enough people have obviously had the same idea that room rates are extremely difficult to find during the Super Bowl, Kentucky Derby, Indianapolis 500, and other high-profile events! So if you want to secure an outsized value during those events, book as early as possible!

Marriott Rewards

Obviously the best Marriott Rewards redemption will involve a Hotel + Air Package, which allows you to buy much more valuable airline miles at a deep discount. Since we've already established that 110,000 MileagePlus miles are worth 10.8 cents each ($11,880), let's use that as our baseline and figure out where to redeem our 7, Category 5 nights.

The most expensive Category 5 Marriott Rewards property I found is the Courtyard Paris Saint Denis, where you can redeem your 7 nights for a stay that costs $3,027, bringing your total return on 250,000 Marriott Rewards points to $14,907, or 5.96 cents per point. That's true, however, If and only if you begin your 7-night stay on July 4, 2016.

Award rooms are not available for those dates. Marriott Rewards is a terrible program.

IHG Rewards Club

IHG Rewards properties get so exorbitantly expensive in points, so fast, that the best awards will invariably be on their PointsBreaks list. I've spent a couple lovely summers in Brno, Czech Republic, so I was pleased to see that I could get 3.6 cents per IHG Rewards point at the Holiday Inn Brno on October 13, which would otherwise go for $180.12.

The best rates found on Hotel Hustle's Hot Rates page top out at 1.94 cents per point (exclusive of taxes), so if you're looking for outsized value from your Ultimate Rewards points, stick to the PointsBreaks list (or look elsewhere).

Conclusion

When I started writing this post I thought this would be an easy and fun exercise. It turned out to be difficult, time-consuming, and boring, which I hope speaks to my basic point: seeking the "best" value from your miles and points is a thankless chore.

You'll always be better off redeeming your miles and points for the trips you actually want to take, rather than the ones some blogger tells you are the best.

Buying Broadway tickets (is expensive)

On Tuesday I wrote that I was going to New York to see Hamilton, the smash hit Broadway musical. Commenter BetterByDesign astutely asked,

"How the heck did you find Hamilton tickets? Or did you just throw cash into the venture?"

Long story short, I just threw cash into the venture. There are ways to save money on Broadway tickets, but not as many as I'd like.

TKTS for when you don't care what you see

If you're already in New York City, you can head down to the TKTS ticket booth on Times Square (lines can be very long at this booth), the South Street Seaport, or in Brooklyn. They offer discounted tickets to same-day shows on an as-available basis.

If you're just in New York for a weekend, you are going to be stuck with whatever tickets TKTS has available, since there's no way to predict which shows will be offering tickets on a given day.

I've seen some great shows using TKTS, like A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder (Tony award for Best Musical in 2014) and Pippin (Tony award for Best Revival of a Musical in 2013).

Full price box office tickets

If you want to see a popular show and live in New York, you can buy full price tickets from theatre box offices (TKTS also sells full price tickets for future performances). Popular shows sell out far in advance, but you can save hundreds of dollars by paying the face value of your tickets rather than buying them on the resale market.

The resale market

If you don't live in New York and have a particular show you want to see, that leaves the resale market. There are many resale sites, and many of them charge additional administrative fees which can add up to hundreds of dollars. However, most of the sites carry the same inventory, as resellers upload the same ticket to multiple sites to increase their chances of making a sale (sounds familiar, right?).

Having said that, this was my general strategy for paying the lowest price for our Hamilton tickets.

Use SeatGeek to find the cheapest reseller

SeatGeak is a ticket-reselling aggregator, which shows prices available on a range of other ticket reselling sites. They will sell you tickets themselves, but they will also tell you on which other ticket reselling site the tickets were found. For example, here are some tickets available for the January 9, 2016, evening performance of Hamilton:

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In this example you can see SeatGeek is listing tickets for sale on:

• uberseat
• ravetix.com
• TN Direct
• Prime Entertainment

You'll also see tickets sold on FanXchange, TicketCity, and other reselling sites.

Find out how much the tickets are reselling for on the original reselling site

After you've selected a few promising seats, you'll want to see how much the tickets are actually selling for on the original reselling site. In the example above, SeatGeek shows the cheapest ticket as $314 at uberseat.

On uberseat's website, the cheapest tickets price out at just $268:

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Sure, you can save some money cutting out SeatGeek, but there's another reason to go directly to the reseller's website: SeatGeek doesn't participate in cash back portals.

Search your favorite cashback portal for payout rates

Here are the ticket resellers that I easily found participating in TopCashBack:

• ScoreBig. 12% cash back, $30 off purchases of $250 or more in October using code "trickortreat"
• TicketLiquidator. 12.5% cash back, $10 off purchases of $350 or more using code "TLFALL"
• TicketCity. 3% cash back.
• VenueKings.com. 13% cash back, $4.99 off purchases of $40 or more using code "TRICKORTREAT5"
• PurchaseTix. $9% cash back.

Conclusion

You're never going to make money buying tickets on reselling sites, but using these techniques you can start to get your ticket prices down into the ballpark of full price box office tickets.

Personally, since Delta was paying for our tickets to New York City, I ended up splurging a little bit and buying orchestra seats for Hamilton, but if you're planning far enough in advance and don't care where you sit, you can use these techniques to pay under $200 per ticket for mezzanine seats, for the hottest show of the year!

Two new tools to help plan airline redemptions

An impressive achievement of the travel hacking community is spreading information about the frequent flyer programs of non-US carriers, which allow Americans to take advantage of their award chart sweet spots, earning rates, routing rules, and even domestic lounge access in the case of Star Alliance carriers.

On the other hand, that's a lot of information. I can't do much more than keep a few rules of thumbs in mind when searching for award tickets: Avios for short flights, American for off-peak awards, Lufthansa for domestic first class.

In the last few weeks two travel hackers contacted me to share tools they've designed to streamline the process of comparing award charts. I told them I'd take a look and share my thoughts here.

Eric Boromisa's Award Calculator

Eric contacted me in September to share his Award Calculator. He's selling the Calculator through a site called Gumroad. If you use the offer code "freequentflyer" you'll get $7 off either the "economy" or "full" version of the product. Full disclosure: Eric gave me a free copy of the file to experiment with.

So what is the Award Calculator? It's an Excel spreadsheet that's been programmed to calculate the cheapest mileage cost for awards between "North America" and another country. The "economy" version can calculate award costs in economy, and the "full" version returns the mileage cost of premium cabin awards as well.

The most important thing about the Calculator is that it doesn't find the mileage redemption which costs the fewest miles (although it does show the mileage cost in all the included programs). It calculates the cheapest mileage redemption using values you yourself provide.

This creates the program referred to in data processing as "garbage in, garbage out." If you don't provide the right values, then the calculating function will generate useless values. Unfortunately, rather than simply telling you to provide you own values, Eric provides default "market" values.

These "market" values are nonsense: Lufthansa and Air Canada are both Starwood Preferred Guest transfer partners, but Eric's default value for Miles & More is 2.8(!) cents each, while Aeroplan miles are valued at just 1.9 cents each. Is it because Aeroplan is also an American Express transfer partner? Maybe, but there's no way to tell.

In other words, if you want to use the "best value" calculating function, be sure to manually assign each program's currency the correct value, which I would argue is the cash value of the manufactured spend you use to generate that currency rather than cash back. If you don't have access to a currency (for example, I don't have any Membership Rewards-earning cards), just assign an arbitrarily high value to that currency.

I've played around with the Award Calculator for a few weeks now and my overall impression is that it's an impressive first step, but it's not a finished product and it's not yet worth $12-$22. A few funny oversights (Air France doesn't fly La Première to France anymore? Someone should tell them!) need to be fixed, and it would be nice if assigning a value to transferrable currencies automatically populated all their transfer partners with imputed values at the correct transfer ratio.

Again, if you're interested in trying it out for yourself, you can buy it at Gumroad for $12-$22 using the offer code "freequentflyer" (I don't receive any compensation if you do, I think Eric is just trying to track where his sales are coming from).

AwardAce is simple and beautiful

Just this morning a reader reached out to share his site AwardAce with me, and it blew my socks off. The site is simple, powerful, and beautiful (also free).

In its current form, you only have to make three selections: your departing airport, arriving airport, and whether your flight is one-way or roundtrip. You can also filter by award program (basically making it a simple, uniform award chart for every included program) or transfer partner (Chase, American Express, Citi, or Starwood Preferred Guest). 

Then AwardAce produces a color-coded table showing you the mileage cost in a variety of programs:

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The site just launched in August and it's not perfect yet. For example, in my searches the large grid only showed "off-peak" American Airlines and "short-haul" MileagePlus award prices, and the creator doesn't appear to be aware that British Airways Executive Club miles can be redeemed on Alaska Airlines. Additionally, Lufthansa Miles & More isn't shown as a transfer partner of Starwood Preferred Guest, which is an easily-fixed oversight.

The site works best on international flights where its database really shines, rather than on domestic flights where there are more moving pieces than it can easily accommodate.

The site is also restricted to nonstop and one-stop flights, so if you are planning a trip that requires two connections, you have to eliminate one or more stops to find the correct cost. For example, the site easily calculates the mileage cost in 7 programs between Detroit and Prague:

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But a search between Indianapolis and Prague generates an error, even though Delta flies 7 nonstops daily between Indianapolis and Detroit. That's not a bug, it's simply a limitation built into the tool you need to be aware of.

I'm not sure what the creator's eventual plans are to monetize AwardAce, but for now it's free and awesome.

Beware Delta bearing voluntary denied boarding compensation

It's no secret that I think Delta runs the best domestic airline operation in the United States. They have incomprehensibly good on-time and completion statistics compared to the competition, and their mainline jets are clean and comfortable. It's a great airline.

However — and this may not be totally surprising — they don't love giving away money.

Delta's voluntary denied boarding compensation is more restrictive than their competitors'

When you volunteer to give up your seat on a flight that's overbooked, airlines will offer voluntary denied boarding compensation, which usually takes the form of a voucher valid for use only on the airline you were originally scheduled to fly on (rather than the cash you'd be entitled to for being denied boarding involuntarily).

Both United and American allow such vouchers to be redeemed for any passenger. It's true that American doesn't make redeeming vouchers easy (you have to present your voucher in-person at an American ticket counter or mail it to a post office box in Florida), and it's true that flying United is a special kind of hell, but the vouchers are, in fact, relatively easy to redeem (in American's case, as long as you have a stamp handy!).

For a few years now, Delta's electronic credit vouchers have only been redeemable in situations where the "bumped" passenger is one of the passengers on the new reservation. According to the terms and conditions of the voucher I received back in August:

"5. REDEMPTION/TRANSFERABILITY: VOUCHER IS NON-TRANSFERABLE UNLESS ASSIGNED TO SOMONE TRAVELING WITH THE ORIGINAL VOUCHER OWNER ON THE SAME RESERVATION AT THE TIME THE VOUCHER IS BEING REDEEMED."

My experience redeeming an electronic credit voucher

When I lucked into a $1,300 voluntary denied boarding voucher back in August, I knew the restrictions on transferability and assumed that I would redeem the voucher for my own flight to Europe next summer, while redeeming Flexpoints or Skymiles for my partner's ticket.

Then life got in the way. And by "life," I mean my partner listened to the original cast recording of Hamilton and said, "Hey, let's go to New York."

Fortunately, we have two daily nonstop flights to New York City, so this was not a heavy lift. Even better, those nonstop flights were just $206 roundtrip! In fact, those flights are so cheap that it became hard to decide how to pay for them. They're far too cheap for a Flexpoints redemption. Ordinarily I'd redeem Ultimate Rewards points at 1.25 cents each, but all my current Ultimate Rewards earning is reserved for a few upcoming transfers.

That's when I remembered: I have $1,300 in Delta credit!

Electronic credit vouchers can't be redeemed for multiple passengers online

When redeeming an electronic credit voucher for a single-passenger itinerary, it is either greater than or less than the cost of the flight you're redeeming it for. In other words, you either owe money, or will be issued a residual credit voucher.

When redeeming a voucher for two passengers, things aren't so simple. Here's what it looks like when I try to redeem my residual balance for a similar itinerary:

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What you're seeing is the that my $862.60 voucher is only being applied against my own fare. The second passenger's $341.20 fare has to be charged to a credit or debit card.

When I asked Delta's normally-helpful @DeltaAssist Twitter team what to do, they told me the only way to redeem my voucher was to call in:

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Delta tried to charge me for two direct ticketing fees — then lied to me and charged me one anyway

Call in I did, and eventually got on the line with a reservations agent who understood exactly what I wanted to do.

But instead of the $412.40 my tickets had priced out to online, he quoted me a whole $50 more. When I asked about the discrepancy, he explained that since I was making my reservation over the phone, there was a $25 per-ticket direct ticketing fee.

I told him that since the tickets couldn't be booked online, I expected him to waive the direct ticketing fee. He agreed, and came back again telling me that my total was $437.40 — again, $25 higher than the tickets had priced out online.

This time he explained that while he could waive my direct ticketing fee, he couldn't waive the second passenger's direct ticketing fee.

At this point my readers can imagine that I was more than a little frustrated. So I explained again that the only reason I was calling in the first place is that the ticket I wanted to book couldn't be booked online (you'd have to be crazy to book a ticket over the phone if you could help it!).

My agent went back to his supervisor again, then came back and told me that my residual travel voucher would be $887.60 — $1,300 less the correct $412.40 my tickets priced out at online.

I immediately logged into my account and saw this:

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The residual voucher had been reissued less the $25 direct ticketing fee the agent assured me had been waived.

Conclusion

I immediately contact the @DeltaAssist Twitter team — again — and they submitted a refund request on my behalf.

This is the kind of miserable nickel-and-diming that it would be nice to believe Delta was capable of rising above. How many people have to call in to redeem these vouchers and don't think to ask how the phone agent arrives at the final price?

At the end of the day, when you accept voluntary denied boarding compensation for taking a later flight, you are doing a favor for the airline that is able to get their flight out full and on time. It would be nice if the airline was able to appreciate that and make it as painless as possible to redeem those vouchers for any eligible itineraries.

One-time opportunity to buy 450,000 Choice Privileges points for $1,600

Via Drew at Travel is Free, until December 8, 2015, there's a one-time opportunity to buy 450,000 Choice Privileges points for $1,600. That's not exactly how Drew framed it, so I'll walk through the essential elements of the deal.

Chase Ultimate Rewards transfers to Amtrak end December 8, 2015

Through December 7, 2015, it is possible to buy Amtrak Guest Rewards points for 1 cent each by transferring Chase Ultimate Rewards points (worth 1 cent each when redeemed for cash) to Amtrak Guest Rewards.

Amtrak Guest Rewards Select and Select Plus elites can transfer up to 50,000 points to Choice Privileges per calendar year

One Amtrak Guest Rewards point can be exchanged for 3 Choice Privileges points, but only if you have elite status with Amtrak Guest Rewards, which starts at 5,000 Tier Qualifying Points.

The Bank of America Amtrak Guest Rewards MasterCard earns both Amtrak Guest Rewards points and Tier Qualifying Points

The $79-annual-fee Amtrak Guest Rewards MasterCard earns 20,000 Amtrak Guest Rewards points after spending $1,000 within 90 days of account opening.

It also earns 1,000 Tier Qualifying Points each time you spend $5,000 with the card, up to 4,000 Tier Qualifying Points per calendar year.

Finally, it earns 1 Amtrak Guest Rewards point per dollar spent.

Buy 450,000 Choice Privileges points for $1,600

Here's how this one-time opportunity works:

1. Transfer 110,000 Ultimate Rewards points to Amtrak Guest Rewards ($1,100 cash value);
2. Sign up for the Bank of America Amtrak Guest Rewards MasterCard ($79 annual fee);
3. Spend $20,000 with the MasterCard ($421 opportunity cost compared to 2.105% cash back on unbonused spend);
4. Earn an additional 1,000 Tier Qualifying Points;
5. Transfer 50,000 Amtrak Guest Rewards points to Choice Privileges in each of 2015, 2016, and 2017 (before your elite status expires on February 28, 2017).

You'll end up with 450,000 Choice Privileges points (well, hopefully you'll be redeeming them as you go, since Choice Privileges points do expire) after having paid $1,600 in fees and foregone cash back.

Should you do this?

I went on something of a Choice Privileges tear back in July, and had a lot of fun researching and writing about the program. The key thing I learned was that there are a lot of Choice Privileges properties in the world.

The second thing I learned was that properties start at 6,000 Choice Privileges points per night.

In other words, for your $1,600 you could buy 75 nights at a 6,000-point property ($21 per night) or 56 nights at an 8,000-point property ($29 per night).

Alternatively, you could buy 7 nights at a 60,000-point Preferred Hotels & Resorts property, paying $228 per night for a property like the Hotel Monaco & Grand Canal in Venice, which retails for over 350 Euros per night in June.

Just keep in mind you won't have the final 150,000 Choice Privileges points until January, 2017, which makes this what we call a "long con."

Conclusion

I'm normally pretty blasé about deals like this which require large up-front cash investments and only speculative returns later on.

But this is a deal I'm actually tempted to jump on! Keep in mind that the only truly time-sensitive part of the deal is the transfer to Amtrak Guest Rewards by December 7, 2015. You can transfer any number of points speculatively now, and then follow steps 2-5 of the technique next year, allowing you to make transfers in 2016, 2017, and early 2018.

Of course, if you naturally earn Amtrak Guest Rewards points and elite status through your travel, the deal is even sweeter, allowing you to transfer just enough Ultimate Rewards points to allow you to maximize the next three years' Choice Privileges transfer limits.

Finally, remember to redeem the points you earn! If you commit to this technique and end up with hundreds of thousands of Choice Privileges points, don't let yourself be stingy with them while you wait for the perfect redemption to come along — stay at Choice Hotels properties!

Read the comments!

I've mentioned before that I rarely read other blogs anymore. Of course the affiliate bloggers just repeat the same bought-and-paid-for content over and over, but even the good guys only occasionally post something that piques my interest. There are a few reasons for that:

• deals come in waves, and the current wave involving buying and reselling discounted gift cards while earning bonus Ebay credit doesn't have any interest for me;
• even many non-affiliate bloggers focus on earning huge airline mile balances for premium cabin international travel. I only take one or two international trips per year, so those aren't awards I chase as diligently as other bloggers do;
• I'm already earning the miles and points I need for the trips I want to take, so big signup bonuses or earning rates in unrelated programs don't interest me much.

There are exceptions: I'll certainly hop on the Discover/Apple Pay 10%/20% cash back deal, for example.

The experiment

Having said that, I know that a lot of the best information on my blog is found in the comments that readers leave about their own experiences testing out the ideas I write about and sharing their own tips and tricks. That being the case, I decided to run a fun experiment: I'd take a popular blog with a focus on manufactured spending, and go back and read every single comment in a range of recent posts (excluding weekend reviews, roundups, and summaries).

I was hopeful that there would be gems even more valuable than those found in the posts themselves. Here's what I found.

Hack Uber surge pricing

In order to avoid Uber surge pricing, reader Mike commented:

"You could also be dishonest and drop your pin somewhere outside the surge zone, then call the driver and tell them where you actually are. I’ve never done this before but it works if he driver agrees."

Open American Express Offer-eligible subaccounts

Since Serve and Bluebird (but not Prepaid REDcard) accounts are eligible for Amex Sync offers, you might want to create multiple subaccounts, each of which can be synced with a separate Twitter account. Frequent Miler responds to a reader by saying:

"You can use your own name if you want to. You might want to change something each time to be able to tell them apart."

Use American Express offers to buy cheap Southwest and Delta miles

Over the holidays last year 1800Flowers offered 30 Southwest or Delta points per dollar. Frequent Miler reminded a reader how to use these offers to buy Southwest and Delta miles for 1.33 cents each.

Amtrak's new program won't allow "saver" redemptions

In the comments to his review of the new Bank of America Amtrak co-branded credit card, Frequent Miler points to this FlyerTalk post where an Amtrak representative says "saver" fares won't be eligible for redemption under the new Amtrak Guest Rewards program.

Acme Markets accepts Apple Pay

If you live in New Jersey, you might be excited to know that Acme Markets, "a supermarket chain in the Delaware valley," sells $500 Visa gift cards and accepts Apple Pay, according to commenter DavidNJ.

Conclusion

Keep in mind that these are just the five comments that jumped out at me from the first three pages of Frequent Miler's blog archives. But there are many, many pages of blog archives, and there's also a search function!

So if there's a particular technique you're interested in datapoints about, you should search for posts about it, and read every comment.

There's no telling what you'll find!

Topping up accounts, or, throwing good points after bad

Marriott Rewards is the worst hotel loyalty program: it has all the low earning rates and high property costs of IHG Rewards, with none of the potential upside offered by IHG's PointsBreak list and occasional lucrative promotions.

Nonetheless, I have a small balance of Marriott Rewards points that I'd love to redeem if an opportunity ever presented itself. The problem is that the kind of downtown Marriott properties I wouldn't mind staying at are so expensive that I only have enough points for a single night. In that way, my balance is like a free night certificate: great if you only want to stay one night, but worthless if you're trying to plan an actual vacation.

When topping up an account can make sense

Of course, Marriott Rewards is a transfer partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards, which means I can top up my account at any time and suddenly have enough Marriott Rewards points for a longer stay.

Under most circumstances that would be crazy: Ultimate Rewards points are worth 1 cent each when redeemed for cash, which is virtually never true of Marriott Rewards point redemptions.

Here's where the worthlessness of unredeemed points is such a useful framework. Since I have no plan to redeem my existing Marriott Rewards points, they're worth nothing to me as long as they're just sitting in my account.

That means that even if it doesn't make any sense to transfer all 35,000 Ultimate Rewards points required to stay at a Category 7 Marriott like the Courtyard Portland City Center, it can make sense to transfer 5,000 points to top up your account from 30,000 to 35,000:

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For an upcoming trip to Portland, I have 2 nights booked at the Hilton Portland & Executive Tower for 80,000 HHonors points, with an imputed redemption value of approximately $280 ($13,333 in bonused spend with an American Express Surpass co-branded card). Since I have a Marriott Rewards balance of just over 58,000 points, I'd have to transfer 12,000 Ultimate Rewards point to replace those two nights with two nights at the Courtyard Portland City Center.

Since my current, unredeemed 58,000 Marriott Rewards balance is worthless, that means I have the opportunity to pay $120 and recoup at least $280 in value from HHonors points. That's a no-brainer.

Conclusion

Remember, besides saving money, redeeming your existing points balances whenever possible has a unique upside: it gives you an instant snapshot of what your points are actually worth, which lets you decide critically whether to continue earning them, or to shift your earning to other, more valuable loyalty currencies.

Are office supply store Visa gift cards cheap or expensive?

This post was inspired by a comment left by reader net netty to my post on dealing with the new Visa gift cards being sold at Staples. S/he wrote:

"And I agree that everyone might have their own priorities but you are doing it wrong and giving bad advice if you are paying 6.95 per 1,000 UR pts."

This reminded me that it might be useful to write about how I decide between various methods of manufacturing spend: which techniques to use; which cards to use them with; and which to set aside for later.

Liquidation bandwidth is usually more limiting than purchase bandwidth

The simplest way to think about developing a manufactured spend strategy is by allocating your liquidation bandwidth across your current (and potential future) credit cards.

That usually means assigning bandwidth to your bonus-earning cards first; if the same $500 in spend will earn 500 Marriott Rewards with one card or 1,000 Ultimate Rewards points with another, the bonus-earning card is strictly superior, not least because Marriott Rewards is an Ultimate Rewards transfer partner.

A slightly different situation arises when trying to compare two different techniques with different price points and earning rates.

For example, Chase Ink cards earn 2 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent at gas stations, and 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent at office supply stores. The higher earn rate, however, comes at a higher cost: $6.95 per office supply store 1,000 Ultimate Rewards points, versus $4.95 or less per 1,000 gas station Ultimate Rewards points.

That means on a cost-per-point basis, gas station manufactured spend is the cheaper, and therefore "better," technique.

And indeed, in a world with unconstrained liquidation bandwidth, that would be the end of the analysis.

But in the real world of liquidation constraints, the analysis is turned upside down! The same 1,000 Ultimate Rewards points earned at office supply stores use up just $200 in liquidation bandwidth, compared to the $500 used up by gas station gift cards.

A travel hacker with access to only these two techniques and $5,000 in monthly liquidation bandwidth could earn 15,000 more Ultimate Rewards points monthly by choosing office supply stores over gas stations. Even if you value Ultimate Rewards points at just 1 cent each, office supply stores produce a small profit of $25.75 over gas stations.

That's because $1,000 in liquidation bandwidth costs $34.75 in office supply store activation fees and earns 5,000 Ultimate Rewards points ($15.25 in profit). Gas station fees for $1,000 in liquidation bandwidth are just $9.90, but that spend earns just 2,000 Ultimate Rewards points — and just $11.10 in profit.

Of course there are other liquidation constraints: office supply stores may sell cards that are easier to liquidate at Walmart, while gas stations may sell harder-to-liquidate Vanilla-branded gift cards.

On the flip side, for many people time is the most important liquidation constraint, and 25 $200 cards are without question more time-consuming to liquidate than 10, $500 cards.

Conclusion

Hopefully this post illustrates the importance of taking a liquidation-first approach as you develop your own manufactured spend strategy: allocate your liquidation bandwidth across all your credit cards and manufactured spend techniques, starting with the cards which maximize the value of each liquidated dollar. Usually, that means using your highest bonus spend categories first, and only then working your way down to unbonused (but hopefully still-valuable!) credit card spend.

Is the 100k British Airways Avios offer the worst major signup bonus?

[Editor's note: I'm currently traveling so responses to comments and e-mails may be slightly slower than usual. —FQF]

Regular readers know I don't chase signup bonuses any more, for two simple reasons:

• if I need some particular loyalty currency for my strategy, then I can't wait until an elevated signup bonus comes along to start earning it;
• and if I don't need that loyalty currency for my strategy, then I don't need a lot of points any more than I need a few of them!

Think of signup bonuses as temporary bonus earning rates

The appeal of large signup bonuses to travel hackers is that they offer much larger earning rates than even the bonused earning rates of cards you'd otherwise use to manufacture spend.

For example, signing up for a Chase Sapphire Preferred card with a 40,000 Ultimate Rewards point signup bonus after spending $4,000 in the first three months produces a net earning rate of 11 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent for the first $4,000.

Since the next-highest earning rate is 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent at office supply stores with the Chase Ink cards, if you value Ultimate Rewards points highly enough you might rationalize applying for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card (but please product change to Freedom as soon as possible!).

Comparing bonus earning rates

Before we can say whether a particular signup bonus is good or bad, we have to establish a frame of reference. So here are 11 popular signup bonuses and their associated earning rates (data from Frequent Miler's Best Offers page). These aren't the absolute best offers out there, just what I hope is a representative sample; in other words, the cards I'd apply for if I were building a strategy from scratch.

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The mean signup bonus from these cards is an earning rate of 21 miles or points per dollar spent meeting the minimum spending requirement.

The British Airways bonus is tiered — but only the first tier makes any sense

The 100,000 Avios signup bonus for the Chase British Airways Visa is earned in three stages:

• 50,000 Avios after spending $2,000 within 3 months;
• 25,000 additional Avios after spending a total of $10,000 within 12 months;
• 25,000 additional Avios after spending a total of $20,000 within 12 months.

Since the card earns 1 Avios on every dollar spent, that means this card has three bonus earning rates:

• 26 Avios per dollar on the first $2,000;
• 4.13 Avios per dollar on the next $8,000;
• 3.5 Avios per dollar on the next $10,000.

In other words, the signup bonus is slightly above average for the first $2,000 you spend (although there's an identical offer with the annual fee waived the first year), but radically below average for the next $18,000 in spend.

Even if you relentlessly chase signup bonuses, you should use the $18,000 in spend this bonus requires meeting the minimum spending requirement for the signup bonuses of other, better cards.

The second and third bonus tiers are better than manufactured spend for earning Avios and only Avios

Spending $18,000 on the Chase British Airways Visa, above and beyond the $2,000 bonus tier, will earn a total of 68,000 British Airways Avios.

Spending $18,000 on the Chase Ink Plus at office supply stores will earn 90,000 Ultimate Rewards points, which can be transferred to Avios at a 1-to-1 ratio.

That leaves you with a 22,000 Ultimate Rewards point surplus. If your cheapest method of manufacturing non-bonused spend costs $7.90 per $1,000 in spend, and office supply store manufactured spend costs $34.75 per $1,000 in spend, you'll spend $483.30 manufacturing spend at office supply stores instead of putting your cheapest manufactured spend on the British Airways Visa.

Since 22,000 Ultimate Rewards points are worth $220 when redeemed for cash, you'll end up with a $263.30 surplus using the British Airways Visa instead.

Is that worth doing? You already know my answer: it's worth doing if you have a specific, high-value use in mind for those Avios.

Conclusion

Avios are a valuable, but not versatile, rewards currency. If you can find domestic low-level American or Alaska award space, Avios will almost always be the best way to book it.

Many bloggers will tell you that Avios are best for nonstop flights, and they're right: they're best for nonstop flights, but you'll often end up paying the same or fewer Avios even on itineraries with connections.

Likewise, if you can fly on Iberia metal to Spain and then connect to your final destination (or just visit Spain!), Avios provide a cheap way to get across the pond.

But since Avios are only rarely the best way to book long-haul awards, unless you have a plan for such a large balance, you're better off not earning them.