That the thought of all the wasted spend makes me sick haha
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It is a lot smaller than I remember it…
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Wondering what time Rupee Drop is…
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Highly recommend having your entire front yard dug up for a new cesspool; after 25 years of cultivating your garden a Dune landscape is a fresh of breath air. or something.
Looking for the silver lining - even after our longish almost-all-points trip down to Miami and Orlando this year as well as a long points weekend for a wedding in North Carolina AND multiple points stays upstate at DD’s college, the spend on college and the yard project has brought our points earning way up over my May update.
I’m down to working on a 20K MR bonus for spend on an AU Gold card and stringing along my Hilton Surpass spend until the end of that window in January so that I earn the free night certificate (FNC) and points as far out as possible.
My next play as of now will be to go for the Hilton Aspire (outlined way back in thread) - which will earn a 2nd FNC. Then I’ll probably continue spend on the Surpass card in 2025 when we don’t have other SUBs to work on - once I hit $15K on that I’ll earn a 3rd FNC.
Goal: The new Conrad Orlando (also mentioned back in thread), or some other fancy shamnciness.
#keeponkeepinon
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If you have any Southwest trips booked right now, might want to take another look at the points and garden that reservation - they’ve dropped some flights.
I have booked an entirely placeholder “Christmas Resort Vibes” trip in December that I am pretty sure all of us cannot do, so may be more of an exercise in practice than time for excitement (yet.) Could turn into just myself and DD I suppose, but it feels weird to do a trip without everyone.
(I should probably get over that feeling, getting harder to have everyone on the same page with college kids.)
| But - the trip down from NY to MCO dropped in half for us - now a measly 5,481 Southwest points for a sweet, sweet, non stop. |  |
With 2 Companion Passes in the family (until mine expires in December, anyway) that translates to a puny 10,962 points for FOUR people.
Flight down lands at MCO on a Sunday afternoon and the Dolphin did not have any points availability that night. So, I grabbed the Hilton Buena Vista Palace with points thinking we could walk over to DS for food and Dole Whippiness and general wanderings.
We could even roll our carry-ons over to DS on Monday and take a bus over to the Dolphin if we wanted to save on Uber, I suppose. A little hassle-y probably, though.
I’ve got 2 Dolphin nights booked with a free night certificate and points. Plan would be nothing more than check out decorations at resorts, enjoy Crescent Lake when it isn’t 127 degrees out, eat stuff.
Will try for another late Dolphin check out on Wednesday, then head over to MCO Hyatt Regency for the last night and an earlyish flight out Thursday.
Thumbnail cash cost of trip: $2,938 (not including food).
Actual out of pocket: Somewhere around $335.
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I need to book flights tomorrow! Trying to do a 3 night something for the weekend after Christmas. Just don’t know WHAT that something is!!
(Any suggestions are welcome 
)
Leaning towards a nice resort with heated pool with decent views (thinking mountians, lake or desert) or a quick 3 night cruise out of FL.
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FWIW, Hyatt is having a 20% points back when redeeming for their Homes & Hideaways locations.
Might be some good opportunities there if you can find a good SW deal to line up!
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Combining two threads here.
We are currently in the process of purchasing a DVC Resale contract. The Title company we are working with (DVC Title and Escrow) allows us to pay up to $5,000 deposit on a credit card with no fee. They also said we could pay the rest of the purchase price on a credit card, but there is a 3% fee.
So my plan is to pay the deposit on a card we have right now that will finish off its SUB. We are then going to start another card that has 0% APR and a decent sign up bonus and gets 2x points. We will then pay the rest of the contract along with the 3% fee. The 2x points will help counteract that fee along with earning another SUB. We have the cash to pay but it is currently in a savings account earning 4.5% so going to leave it in there until we get close to the end of the 0% APR period and then we will pay it off after earning some interest.
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Nice move! Congrats on the new contract! 
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Coming back to say I continue to use this hack - I let several months go by since using it last since we were working on other non-apple series.
But, just applied it to my most recently used Apple ID without issue - so I have it free until mid-February, which should give me enough time over the holidays to catch up on all the new seasons.
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Anyone playing the Rakuten game, the $40 referral offer is back: If someone signs up using your referral you and the other person both get $40.
If you have your Rakuten set to earn Amex Membership Rewards instead of cash, you’ll get 4,000 MR worth about $64 using base values.
(This is not my referral link, just a link to the page to generate your own link):
(I did place my referral in the sanctioned Liner referral Google Sheet.)
I believe the new account needs to make a qualifying purchase through Rakuten within 90 days.
BTW: Apparently this is gameable as there are unlimited referrals allowed, but Rakuten shut down is of course possible. (I don’t bother gaming this one, myself, Rakuten support is annoying and I don’t want to have to fight to get the bonus.)
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Credit Card bonus peoples: Triple Dip season is nigh upon us.
Remove thine hats in reverence and reap the triple if that is your belief.
For a quick summary of what this even means, check out today’s Miles Earn and Burn blog.
I am thinking of pushing up my plan for the Hilton Aspire card a little bit for some extra oomph from the triple, but not sure yet since the resort credit on that card is a bit trickier to reap than other types of credits.
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In case this is useful for anyone…
Black Friday deal:
99 cents/month for Hulu (with ads) for a year,
or $2.99/month for the Disney/Hulu bundle (both with ads.)
Pretty great deal.
I pay $19.99/month for the Disney/Hulu bundle no ads right now (but my Amex Plat refunds it.)
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Starbucks peoples: Easy 20% return, today only:
(One per account, sadly.)
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Not sure how often this might come up, but an interesting perk of CLEARME service I bet most people aren’t aware of:
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Now is the time of year for people to be a little more diligent in checking their Chase, Amex et al card-linked offers: in my experience the holiday season brings out the better ones.
In particular, always watch for cash back / statement credit offer for stores that also sell gift cards.
Last month I saw the return of the “Spend $200 get $50 back” at Lowe’s on my Amex Blue Business Plus card - I used it to buy Google Play gift cards which I use to pay my monthly YouTubeTV charge.
Yesterday, it popped back up on the card! Going to use it to buy some AMC gift cards we plan to give to nephews for Christmas. 
Just remember: you have to add card-linked offers to your card before that
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Speaking of $50: A Tricksy Interlude
Both my wife and I have Sapphire Preferred cards, each of which has a $50 annual hotel credit if you book through the Chase travel portal.
My initial plan for those credits was to use them for 1-off nights when traveling. I’ve been able to do that a few times: driving back from the north of Vermont, one of our college visit stays.
But right now I still have a $50 credit left on my card and just haven’t been able to fit it into any of our stays this year.
With the end of December looming, I’m trying a tricky trick:
I have booked a REFUNDABLE 1-night stay at one of the hotels up near my DD’s University. The charge immediately hit my Sapphire - I’ll watch for the credit to hit, wait a reasonable amount of time and then cancel. $50 credit should stick. 
Important Issue with Chase Portal: You REALLY want to make sure the hotel you are booking in the portal is a refundable rate - AND DOCUMENT IT. Even if you know the hotel you are booking is always refundable out in the normal world, the Chase travel portal is a weird baby.
There was one Hampton Inn room I booked up at Geneseo NY that the portal listed clearly with both “refundable rate” and a “non refundable”. When I selected the refundable option (a few $ more) - the detailed terms clearly said the booking was indeed NOT refundable. Now, I was 100% going to stay at this hotel so it was not an issue - but out of morbid curiosity I called the travel portal support to attempt to confirm that the REFUNDABLE rate I selected was actually refundable.
They put me on hold for 11.37 days and finally came back to say it was NOT, too bad, so sad.
Which was a very bogus glitch IMHO.
As a precaution, for this booking I picked a date the night before Spring Break next semester just in case I really had to use it (I could stay over that night to break up the trip to bring DD home.) But I also triple checked and screen-shotted ALL of the small print terms to be sure that in this case the REFUNDABLE rate does seem to be refundable. Guess I will see.
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This has worked for me! I hope it works for you 
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