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This one definitely falls under the category of "if I don't make a note to myself right now, I'm going to immediately forget how to do this next time." It's a super-specific problem:  I have a flight leg with a confirmed 40 PlusPoint upgrade into Polaris.  I need to change this leg to a different day/time.  I know that my new flight has PlusPoints ✅ instant-upgrade seats available. (I used Seats.aero and then manually verified the availability on United.com) I'm using United.com to change my flight and the search results only show me one option: a deeply-discounted fare + 80 PlusPoints to upgrade I would prefer an option with a less-discounted fare that only requires 40 PlusPoints I would prefer not to call United to have them sort this out. (In my case, the Australian United phone center is only open normal business hours, not 24/7) The solution: Change the flight on United.com (from a desktop browser) and manually set the 'Search by Fare class' fiel

As previously discussed , we're doing 3-player mode for 2024 (one of us United 1k, one is Plat, one Gold), but as I'm currently booking travel for July, I'm already thinking about status for 2025.  Status match to Qantas? Tim's work visa for the US is delayed ( sigh ), so he likely won't be moving to New York until mid-2025 at the absolute earliest, so there's still going to be lots of trans-Pacific flying happening. Qantas is supposed to launch their new nonstop New York – Sydney service in 2025 , but that will likely be on an unpredictable time schedule much like Tim's work visa. I mention this because I thought that route might make it worth it for him to do the "secret" status match to Qantas (Oneworld) from United 1k.  But even if all of the economics of that worked out, will that flight even be pleasant? With our current situation, I really don't mind the 14 hours between Sydney and the US West Coast, but having to then immediately get o

I mentioned recently that I made the absolute rookie error of not hitting the minimum spend on a new card. It's definitely the kind of thing I'll kick myself about over and over and over again. But then I'm looking at my statement for a different card I was churning and noticed this:  the big work expense I was using to hit the minimum spend unexpectedly coded as one of this card's bonus categories -- meaning that this single transaction yielded me 88,000 more points than I was expecting. This definitely made me feel a bit better about my stupid mistake on the other card.