My Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond tier match experience

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Background

As my regular readers no doubt already know, on November 19, 2015, the official Hyatt Concierge Twitter account sent out a tweet asking, "Looking for a new loyalty program? DM us and let’s talk."

The travel hacking blogosphere subsequently went absolutely nuts. Things then seem to have proceeded in three stages:

  1. In Stage 1, the first few hours after the tweet was sent out, Hyatt was matching all elites in other hotel loyalty programs to their Diamond status. So a Hilton HHonors Gold elite could be matched to Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond status, as long as they could show a stay with HIlton in the last year.
  2. The door quickly shut on Stage 1, and in Stage 2, only Starwood Preferred Guest Platinum elites were being matched to Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond status. Elites with programs besides Starwood Preferred Guest could be matched only to Hyatt Gold Passport Platinum status (the same status that comes with their co-branded credit card).
  3. Shortly after that, even Starwood Preferred Guest Platinum elites were only being matched to Hyatt Gold Passport Platinum status. As I understand it, this is the current state of play, and Stage 3 continues to this date. For way, way more datapoints read the FlyerTalk thread on the topic, starting at the end for the most recent datapoints.

My tier match experience

I sent my first e-mail to Hyatt Gold Passport on November 20 with my Hilton HHonors Diamond status information. Since the door had already closed on Stage 1, I was told that only Starwood Preferred Guest Platinum elites were being matched to Hyatt Diamond status, and that I could only be matched to Hyatt Platinum status.

Since I wasn't at home, I replied with a screenshot from the SPG app on my iPhone. A few days later, they replied that they couldn't use that to match me to Hyatt Diamond because it didn't have my Starwood account number.

I replied again with a screenshot from the desktop version of the Starwood Preferred Guest website, and again a few days later they replied that they couldn't read the file I sent them.

Finally, I printed the screenshot as a PDF file and they were able to open that. Again, after waiting a few days I finally received a response that I had been matched to Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond status, which was immediately reflected online.

The total time my tier match took was 23 days from my initial submission on November 20 to my final tier match confirmation on December 13, 2015.

The key lesson is that it seems people were entitled to treatment based on the "Stage" during which they submitted their original request. In other words, even if they required additional documentation, the earlier you submitted your first request, the more likely it was to be honored.

Life as a Diamond

After being notified that I'd been matched to Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond status, I had three priorities:

  • Where it makes sense, rebook stays I currently have with other chains at Hyatt properties instead. For example, for our upcoming trip to New York City, I was able to replace a $473.90 Hilton reservation with a $503.12 Hyatt reservation which will earn me 3 elite night credits and an elite stay credit.
  • Where possible, apply suite upgrades to my paid Hyatt reservations.
  • Match my Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond status to Mlife Platinum status.

Suite upgrade rules are confusing

Much digital ink and already been spilled on this topic, so the only point I'll make here is that each Hyatt brand — and even property — refers to their "base-level" suite differently. The Grand Hyatt Berlin has a "Grand Suite King," the Grand Hyatt New York has a "Junior Suite," and the Grand Hyatt San Francisco goes straight to "Executive Suite."

In other words, unless you're familiar with a particular property, you don't have any way to easily check whether the suites for sale online are the suites that are eligible for Diamond suite upgrades.

Mlife Platinum status doesn't seem to be instantly available

As soon as my Diamond tier match was processed I went to this page to request a match to Mlife Platinum status. While the request was processed successfully, my Mlife status wasn't updated!

I asked around on Twitter and my guess is that Hyatt only occasionally updates the database of Gold Passport elites which it makes available to Mlife. Since that process isn't instant, you won't have immediate access to Mlife Platinum benefits.

Since Hyatt Gold Passport is offline until December 19, I haven't been able to try again, but I'm optimistic I'll be matched to Mlife Platinum once the system comes back online.

Conclusion

I've mentioned to multiple folks going through the process of tier matching that this offer, while woefully mishandled and generating a lot of ill-will on the part of people who felt they'd been cheated, is still going to be a business coup for Hyatt.

That's because people like me who are already top-tier elites in multiple programs would never consider earning up to Hyatt Diamond from scratch, but as matched top-tier Hyatt Diamonds will make sure we requalify each year with 25 stays or 50 nights, which have to be either paid or "Points + Cash" reservations.

Kiva loan duration and repayment schedules

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I don't write about making Kiva loans very much anymore, mainly because I don't make Kiva loans anymore! But Kiva loans are a still-working technique to manufacture an uncapped amount of spend in a potentially lucrative bonus category.

I say "uncapped" and not "unlimited," because Kiva loans are very much limited — they're just limited by your ability to find loans that fit within your risk tolerance, not by Kiva's online loan system.

Even if you're just interested in using manufactured spend as a part of your overall savings portfolio, Kiva loans are a strong choice: earning 3% cash back on 6-month loans generates "something like" 6% APY — and you get paid your interest up front (or at least when your next statement closes).

Kiva loan repayment schedules are rarely uniform

At the most recent Travel Con Matt from Saverocity made an important and I think overlooked point about Kiva loans: a loan's repayment schedule is rarely uniform. In other words, a 6 month loan will almost never be repaid in 6 equal installments. Instead, it's more common to see a repayment schedule like this:

If you make a loan to Eliza today, despite the loan having a "7-month" repayment term, you'll get 64.7% of your money back by April 1 — just 108 days from now.

Why it matters (and why it might not)

I take saving seriously, despite not doing enough of it myself. That's one reason why I get upset at so-called "robo-advisors" claiming to do things they cannot do.

If you do want to include "alternative" investments in your savings portfolio, it's important to evaluate them critically; it's just as easy to make mistakes valuing a high-interest savings or checking account as it is when picking a mutual fund.

Fortunately, in the case of Kiva repayment schedules, you have a big advantage: you get to pick the loans with the repayment schedules that best suit your needs! By picking "front-loaded" repayment schedules, you have access to more of your money faster, letting you put it back to work and increasing your actual APY above the 6% a simple "6-month loan" model would suggest.

That's the good news. The bad news is that Kiva isn't enthusiastic about people cycling money in and out of their accounts rapidly. After doing so for a few months, I was told that I could no longer make online withdrawals, but would instead have to request paper checks. They did not, in fact, enforce that restriction (I was still allowed to request withdrawals online), but as a general rule it's not ideal to use techniques with manual oversight as aggressively as we do techniques that are largely or entirely automated.

In other words, while Kiva loans are a great and still-working technique to manufacture uncapped amounts of spend, you probably can't replace your entire savings portfolio with short-term, high-quality loans.

Use these 3 weird programs to search Star Alliance award space

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In Chapter 5 of my occasionally-selling ebook, I discussed the technique of using All Nippon Airways' search tool to find Star Alliance award space. Recently, they made some changes to their award search function which makes it somewhat less convenient to use while searching for Star Alliance award space.

But it's still relatively easy to find partner award seats if you know where to look.

Step 1: United Mileage Plus

United Airlines is a US-based airline, which means most readers likely already have a Mileage Plus account. Log in, then search for a one-way or roundtrip award flight from your origin to destination and see what United comes up with.

Step 2: Air Canada Aeroplan

Air Canada's Aeroplan frequent flyer program has online access to partner award space on airlines that United Mileage Plus doesn't. It's slightly difficult to find their online award search tool, but just log into Aeroplan and visit this URL to get started.

Step 3: All Nippon Airlines

All Nippon Airlines has made some odd reconfigurations of their website which makes it harder, but not impossible, to search across the entire Star Alliance. You can now only search roundtrip or multi-city flights.

Once you log into your account, you can search for roundtrip or multi-city flights between any Star Alliance cities. In other words, once you find an arbitrary city pair with Star Alliance availability, you can search for availability between any other other Star Alliance cities by inputting the existing availability as the "first" or "second" leg.

Then you should be able to call and book the Star Alliance availability using whichever program you happen to have your mileage balances with.

Conclusion

You don't normally have to use every technique for every award booking you make; often, the first search you make will simply throw up the award seats you need. But when it doesn't, make sure you've exhausted every possibility before you consider paying cash for your seats.

Use Hipmunk to find positioning flights

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There are a lot of websites you can use to search for paid flights. Kayak is one of the most popular, but Orbitz, Expedia and Priceline will all find you tickets as well. If you're booking paid flights with Ultimate Rewards points you'll need to use their internal search engine, and the same is true of US Bank Flexpoints.

All those sites work, and they all have roughly similar search features: you can search for specific dates or flexible dates, you can specify your cabin of service, and you can filter by airline and time of day.

What none of them let you do is filter by different times of day depending on the day of the flight. Let me explain.

Award availability often requires positioning flights before or after the award segments

Award availability is the aspect of travel hacking that we have the least control over. Whether or not an airline makes seats available on the dates we need them is entirely at the discretion of the airline. While much digital ink has been spilled over the best ways to find award seats, ultimately it's not something we can predict in a reliable way.

Further, when award availability does become available, it may not exactly suit our needs. There may be award seats from an alliance hub city, but not on flights from your home airport to the hub. If you're committed to booking the award seats, that means you'll need a positioning flight: either a paid flight or an award on a different carrier that gets you to the airport in time to take your award flight.

Of course, positioning flights can be necessary at the beginning or end of a trip.

Use Hipmunk to find positioning flights

When you search for flights with every other search engine I know of, you can filter by time of departure, but that filter applies to every day searched. For example, on ITA Matrix filtering by "early morning" departures returns early morning departures for every day within the search range:

HIpmunk is the only flight search engine I know of that lets you filter by departure times across day boundaries. For example, I have an upcoming award flight booked on Air Berlin between Berlin and New York City. But I don't live in New York City, and there's no oneworld award space between New York City and my hometown, which means I need a positioning flight.

Since we don't want to go into the city (we'll be getting back from 17 days in Europe), I'd like to search for the cheapest flight that leaves either the evening we arrive in New York or the next morning. In other words, I'm fine staying overnight at the airport if it saves us some money, but I'm not willing to wait to fly out until the next evening.

Lo and behold, Hipmunk found me the perfect flight:

We'll stay overnight at JFK, leave early the next morning, and be back home early that afternoon.

"Pop Finance" is a pretty good book

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This is a review of "Pop Finance," by Brooke Harrington. You can find all my previous book reviews here. If you're interested in buying a copy, I hope you consider using my Amazon Associates referral link.

I first heard about "investment clubs" from my Italian immigrant barber back in New England. He and some of his business associates and cronies get together once a month and contribute a nominal sum to a common pot. They then vote on which stocks to buy with that month's contributions.

My barber seemed to realize that this was a strange way to invest in the stock market, but explained that the real point wasn't necessarily to pick winning stocks, but as a forced savings vehicle: if you wanted to hang out with your buddies, you needed to find $50 to save each month, which was enough incentive to get people to save money who otherwise wouldn't bother.

With that in mind, I was excited to stumble across "Pop Finance," an ethnography of investment clubs in the San Francisco Bay Area written by Brooke Harrington. The principle research behind the book was conducted over the course of 1998 — in other words, at the peak of the 1990's tech bubble — with followup research in 2004, in the midst of the Bush Administration stock market doldrums.

Mass participation in the stock market is something that requires explanation

Today, popular ownership of publicly-traded shares, either individually or through mutual funds, is so common that it seems part of the natural order of American economic life. So it's worth pointing out that this isn't the only way that it's possible to save money, whether for retirement, health care, or educational expenses.

To this day, it's perfectly legal to simply save half your salary from age 25 to age 65 in FDIC-insured vehicles like savings accounts and certificates of deposit that earn market interest rates on the money saved. That volume of savings would allow you to then continue spending the same amount of money (half your lifetime salary) from age 65 to age 105, with a little left over depending on where market interest rates happen to fall during your lifetime.

Of course, Social Security exists, so you don't need to replace your entire annual consumption through savings — Social Security will replace 18-90% of your income (depending on your lifetime earnings), so you only need to replace the remaining portion, meaning you can spend more than 50% of your income and still spend the same amount during your working life and your retired years.

A private pension replacing even more of your income would mean even less savings would be required to smooth out your consumption over your entire lifetime.

Harrington convincingly argues that mass participation in the stock market, in her case in the form of investment clubs, was the result of two factors that made the above logic fall apart in the 1990's:

  • Corporate defined benefit pensions were replaced with defined contribution plans, often self-directed and invested in stocks and bonds;
  • Between 1985 and 1995, real wages declined while corporate profits tripled. In other words, for the average American, saving half their salary in FDIC-insured savings vehicles would mean a decline in living standards in retirement, while purchasing "the market" would mean an increase in living standards in retirement, or even early retirement.

Finally, I'll add that obviously the overwhelming majority of Americans today are incapable of or unwilling to live on half their salary. There are many reasons for this: status anxiety, a feeling that they've "earned" the right to enjoy their money, and of course in the case of prosperous coastal cities, the accelerating cost of living.

Ultimately, that means either settling for a much lower standard of living in retirement, or investing in riskier assets with a higher potential rate of return than FDIC-insured savings vehicles.

Day trading is a very intuitive way to invest in the stock market

Once you've decided that the stock market is the only way to secure the lifestyle you envision for yourself in retirement, day trading is the obvious method of doing so: since different stocks move in different directions on a daily basis, by buying stocks before they go up, and selling them before they go down, you can earn more on a daily basis than in a whole year of FDIC-insured interest.

In fact, if your wins are big enough and your losses are small enough, you don't even need to be right a majority of the time! After all, one 10% gain offsets four 2% losses with 2% left over as your profit, not annually, but daily!

Investment clubs are day trading by committee

Investment clubs, like day traders, also purchase individual stocks for short term profits. The problem is that unlike an actual day trader, investment clubs can't react quickly to changes in the prices of their stocks. At the beginning of March a club may vote to buy Pfizer, the stock may peak in mid-March and be lower than where they bought it by the time they get together again in April. And at that point, they have to vote on whether they think it'll do it again!

One club Harrington profiles attempts to deal with this problem by putting stop-loss orders on all their stock holdings: if a stock declines by 20%, they sell the stock — then frequently buy it again at their next meeting, when the price has had time to recover!

This is not a good way to invest

I believe virtually all people should save for retirement in Vanguard target retirement date funds.

But even if you have a different risk tolerance than the ones reflected in Vanguard's target retirement date funds, you probably should implement that risk tolerance through low-cost indexed mutual funds.

But even if you believe that you're preternaturally gifted at predicting the short-term movement of stocks, you should simply act on your gift by buying and selling stocks, not waiting weeks at a time and then spending time convincing your fellow investment club members that you know which direction a stock will move before your next meeting.

But creative forced savings mechanisms are pretty cool!

That brings me back to my Italian barber. He is really convinced that many members of his investment club would save nothing if they weren't saving $50 a month in monthly club contributions.

And at the same time, over a working lifetime, $600 per year invested in the broad stock market really will return more than the same $600 invested in FDIC-insured savings vehicles.

So I'm all in favor of crazy schemes to force yourself to save! Here a few I came up with that make at least as much sense as investment clubs:

  • Every time you withdraw money from an ATM, withdraw an extra $20 and set it aside for a monthly retirement savings contribution;
  • Deposit your credit card cash back rewards into a designated retirement savings account;
  • When you redeem your miles or points for an award trip, deposit the cash value of the trip into a designated retirement account — be your own mileage broker!

A final note on tax-advantaged accounts

It's no secret that I'm a strong advocate for simplifying the US income tax code. Not simplifying it and reducing rates, just simplifying it, full stop.

One reason for that is that the current configuration of tax advantaged savings vehicles (employer-based retirement and health savings accounts, traditional and Roth Individual Retirement Accounts, and the mortgage interest deduction) leads people to spend extraordinary amounts of time gaming the tax code instead of simply saving money.

In other words, once you've maximized your tax advantaged savings vehicles by contributing to a 401(k), IRA, and buying an unnecessarily expensive house, you feel like you've done all the savings necessary (perhaps adding a 529 College Savings Plan as icing on your tax-advantaged cake).

But that's ridiculous: it's perfectly legal to simply buy stocks and bonds. You can invest in a Vanguard target retirement date account in a taxable account, and it will generate the same long-term returns as the identical fund held in your tax-advantaged accounts. You just have to pay long term capital gains on the returns when you eventually sell (although you avoid the 10% early withdrawal penalty on the exact same fund if held in your IRA).

I just bricked my Bluebird account (for the next 28 days)

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Today I'm going to share a very simple, very stupid mistake I made. In fact it's so simple, and so stupid, that it's unlikely to help any of my readers. But sharing is still caring, so here we go.

Background

I manage 3 full-service prepaid American Express cards: one Bluebird account (in my name), one Serve account and one Target Prepaid REDcard account (I haven't moved that one to Serve yet).

For the first year or so of managing the Serve card, the bill pay function simply didn't work. I assume this was a version of the e-mail address bug that afflicted quite a few people, but I didn't worry about it, for two reasons. First, since the bill pay function on my Bluebird account has always worked, I could simply send $2,500 per month to that account and pay my credit card bills from there. Second, I also control the external checking account linked to the Serve account, so could simply withdraw the remaining $3,500 monthly and pay my bills from that account.

When a Prepaid REDcard came under my control, I followed the same pattern, except the card wasn't linked to an external checking account, so I only manufactured $4,500 in spend per month with the card: I sent $2,500 to my Bluebird account and withdrew $2,000 per month from free ATM's, the respective limits on each kind of transaction.

Bluebird has a $100,000 limit across all Spend Money transactions

There are six activities that American Express categorizes as "Spend Money" transactions:

  • Merchant Transactions
  • Pay Bills
  • ATM Withdrawals
  • Send Money Transactions
  • Transfers back to the linked Bank Account

It should be nearly impossible to reach that $100,000 spend limit: you can only add $5,000 per calendar month in cash and $1,000 from a linked debit card, which if maxed out would only come to $72,000 per calendar year.

But I was sending myself $4,500 per month from the Serve and REDcard accounts under my control!

Bluebird customer service is surprisingly helpful

When I attempted to make a bill payment this morning, the error message simply said the transaction couldn't be completed and to call customer service. Fearing the worst, I called in immediately. Unfortunately, the frontline representative couldn't pull up my account because their system was undergoing "routine maintenance," but she did offer to transfer me to the technical team.

The representative in the technical department took just a few minutes to look up my total amount spent so far this year, which was just over $96,000, and told me I had just under $4,000 left to spend this calendar year. While I had him on the line, I made a bill payment for the exact amount he specified, and the payment went through as usual, leaving me with a stranded $900 balance until January 1, 2016.

Conclusion

I only fell into this situation because I thought I was being clever: by pooling as much money as possible in my Bluebird account, I wouldn't have to add each of my credit cards to each of the American Express prepaid accounts I controlled. That turns out to have been too clever by half.

So learn from my stupid mistake: take the time to add your payees to each account you control, and you'll never come close to hitting the $100,000 calendar year limit on Spend Money transactions.

Anatomy of an Award Trip: Summer in Europe

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I've written a few times about this trip before (as recently as yesterday), but now that it's locked down, I thought I'd share one of my patented Anatomies of an Award Trip!

Getting there: Turkish Airlines to Budapest

Turkish Airlines economy award space is wide open for next summer, so I transferred 50,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points from my Ink+ account to United Mileage Plus, where I already had 10,000 orphaned miles. The ticket is booked out of Chicago, since there's never any award space on United from our hometown to O'Hare, so we'll pay an additional $60 for two bus tickets, which I included in the total cost below.

Total cost: 60,000 Mileage Plus miles and $81.80. Total value: $2,449.20. Value per point: 3.95 cents per Mileage Plus mile.

Getting back: Air Berlin to New York City

Air Berlin award space isn't as good as Turkish Airlines award space next summer, but I didn't have too much trouble finding two economy award seats, which I booked using a combination of Avios and cash. I actually don't have our tickets home from New York City yet, but I assume I'll just throw some Delta Skymiles or US Bank Flexpoints at that problem eventually.

Total cost: 26,000 Avios and $358.18. Total value: $1,539. Value per point: 4.54 cents per Avios.

Staying there (1): 9 nights in Central and Eastern Europe

I pieced the bulk of this trip together by first booking 3 pre-devaluation pairs of nights at Club Carlson properties in Central and Eastern Europe, then filling in the gaps with post-devaluation points, plus one paid night. Here are the totals:

  • 3 nights at the Radisson Blu Beke Hotel, Budapest. Total cost: 45,000 Club Carlson Gold Points. Total value: $294.54. Value per point: 0.65 cents per Gold Point.
  • 3 nights at the Park Inn Danube, Bratislava. Total cost: 18,000 Gold Points and $2.12. Total value: $239.05. Value per point: 1.32 cents per Gold Point.
  • 2 nights at the Radisson Blu Style Hotel, Vienna. Total cost: 50,000 Gold Points. Total value: $475.53. Value per point: 0.95 cents per Gold Point.
  • 1 (paid) night at the Hilton Vienna Danube Waterfront. Total cost: $146.

Staying there (2): 6 nights in Germany

From Vienna, our plan is to spend 6 nights in Germany, split between Berlin and the home of my partner's relatives in Bavaria. I recently orchestrated a complicated trade for 2 free Hyatt credit card signup nights, so I'll likely redeem those for two nights at the Grand Hyatt Berlin, a $458.05 value.

Conclusion

Looking over the awards I booked to piece this trip together, I see that I'm consistently getting more value from my miles and points redemptions than I would by booking my flights and hotels with fixed-value points like Barclaycard Arrival+ miles and US Bank Flexpoints. That's the kind of ongoing feedback I continually use while deciding whether to collect airline and hotel loyalty currencies, versus more flexible fixed-value points.