point fu

Thus far, I've avoided ever having a single American Airlines mile. Despite what you might think, I don't have a strong desire to know the ins- and outs of every system out there. Plus, they're legendary for having terrible award availability . The trip itself, not the way I get there, is still where the bulk of my energy is spent. Thus far, Alaska and British Airways partner redemptions have been "good enough" for my OneWorld/American Airlines needs and I've been able to avoid dealing directly with them. Neither Chase UR nor Amex MR points can be transferred to them, so the only option is to start accruing them, or do a SPG/Marriott transfer which can take multiple days (or weeks if their newly-combined IT department is having another flareup of digital heartburn). Yesterday in trying to help my husband find a flight home from a family emergency in Montana, my Alaska/British strategy finally hit a wall. I knew exactly which flight he wanted to be on, yet ne...

Amazon brought back their promotion where you get 20% off if you use Amex points during checkout. Since pay-with-points is a bad deal, most people are simply using one single Amex point to pay 1¢ of their order and then reaping 20% off their whole order. Details from the July promotion are here , but the short story is that for this November offer, Amazon and iTunes gift cards are now excluded, so I need a different strategy. First off, I needed to follow the steps to see if I was targeted for this offer – and luckily I was. Basically what I'm looking for is a brain-dead way to quickly dump $500 worth of items into my Amazon cart that will end up only costing me $400 with the 20% off promo. But in choosing what to get, here's some food for thought: don't buy anything overpriced only buy things I actually need and would buy otherwise don't buy things that spoil or expire don't buy things that are time-consuming or difficult to use If you're a fre...

The MTA is doing a targeted Amex offer for $10 off when you use Apple Pay to spend $10 or more on their MTA e-tix app . You can use the offer 3 times for up to $30 back. The app lets you purchase, store, and activate digital tickets for Metro North and Long Island Railroad trains. Most importantly, the app lets you skip the lines at Grand Central, which can be incredibly long on holiday weekends and at rush hour. Log in to your Amex account and make sure you click "View All" to see if you're targeted. Also, make sure you use the targeted Amex card for Apple Pay when buy your tickets. To set the targeted card as the default in Apple Pay, open the Wallet app on your iPhone, press and hold on the desired card, and then drag the card to the bottom of the stack. ( Sidenote to Apple: this interface makes no sense whatsoever ). full details

(updated: feb ‘24) she especially pretty at sunset The food and mezcal in Oaxaca are as amazing as we'd heard. We've been four times now, and I'm sure we'll go again. We're not experts by any means, but here's a few bits we learned. Checklist It cools off a lot at night, so your hotel/AirBnB might not need AC Book mezcal tours and nice restaurants EARLY, Oaxaca is a popular destination Book a private airport transport if you don't like SuperShuttle-like communal taxis Install DiDi app (no Uber in Oaxaca) Bring sunscreen and a hat (high UV index even in winter) Go slow! High altitude means you'll get winded easily Eat everything! Enjoy their blossoming cocktail and microbrew culture, too Consider day trips to Hierve al Agua, Arbol del Tule, Tlacolula market, and Monte Alban Gabe's and my  Google map    🗺️ Before you go There are few fancy western chain hotels . There's a Holiday Inn and a couple of Marriott boutique hotels (Escondido and Otr...

This week everyone was surprised when Capital One announced that they were going to allow their points to be transferred directly into airline points programs. It's been interesting to see all of the various blogs doing their analyses without ever really bringing up the fact that no one knows if this is going to be an instant points transfer (like with Chase and Amex) or a multi-day process (like with SPG/Marriott points) . What's a bit irksome for me about the mainstream blogs' coverage is that they seem to have forgotten how normal people use their points. Given how few airlines let you put tickets on hold (Korean and Virgin Atlantic both come to mind), a slow transfer like SPG's means that you risk marooning your points if you transfer them and the award vanishes by the time your points show up. This has actually happened to me and it's stressful and irritating. UPDATE (Dec 2018): The first real-world tests of transfer times are coming in, looks like...

I've posted before about my general feeling about hotels . The short version is that I don't really like western "posh" hotels because they're expensive and yet they still don't offer the amenities I actually want:  in-room espresso a Toto Washlet in the room a free, communal hot spring bath that's open late so I can soak my feet after a long day of sightseeing liquor vending machine so I don't have to pay $47 (and wait 45 minutes) for two gin and tonics from room service on-site laundry machines In other words, I'm annoyed that Japanese businessman hotel mainstays like APA and Dormy Inn are ( largely ) only in Japan. When I do have to stay at a western hotel I generally try to save some money or at least snag some bonus points. There are a lot of ways to do that – search with Rocketmiles , look for Amex offers, use Hotels.com's "say 10 nights, get one night free", etc. On our recent trip to Israel , though, I tried a ne...

We're repeating last year's holiday routine this year – from New York to Phoenix, then to Portland, then back to New York. We fly Economy domestically most of the time, but during the holidays it's so crazy that we usually spring for First just to avoid some of the mayhem that comes with winter holidays and airports. New York to LA and SF have their glamorous Mint and P.S. planes, but most other west coast cities generally have normal domestic recliners in First. Then there's the added annoyance that nearly all of the eastbound flights are redeyes, and since I'm a very light sleeper, I despise redeyes unless I can lay down. But in all of this poking around for holiday flights I found two interesting ones I didn't know existed: A United 757 with lie-flat seats to Phoenix (flight 230 leaving JFK at 19:30)  A Delta 757 with lie-flats on a direct flight from PDX to JFK (flight 1756 at 12:49). Near as I can tell, this flight is seasonal . I logged on...

Just a quick note to confirm that I've been able to get the 5,000 point "AT&T Wireless For Business" Amex Offer bonus by making a $151 payment to my AT&T personal account. I've done the $151 charge twice now and got the 5,000 bonus both times. I think the offer expires at the end of November , but AT&T lets you overpay your cellular bill and the negative balance carries forward, so you should still be able to take advantage of it if you haven't already.

I just left the Apple Keynote in Brooklyn , where they just announced a major overhaul to the MacBook Air. The gamut of the screen they used in the theater made the new laptop look orange and I got super excited. Once I got to the press hands-on area though I realized that it was the same ambiguous “gold” color as the new Apple Watch. Girl look how orange you look! Just for fun and comparison (the lighting in there was crazy), I pulled out my new Rose Gold Amex to compare... and, well, one man’s "gold" is another man’s "rose gold", apparently. The card is just slightly lighter… (click for full resolution) If it had been bright metallic orange it would have been a no-brainer to get the new Air but now I'm kinda torn between this and the new iPad Pro with the keyboard case. Adobe now has a full version of Photoshop running on the iPad Pro and their demo blew everyone away when she moved from a flat Photoshop image seamlessly into an animated aug...

After upgrading my Gold card to Platinum at the beginning of this year, I was actually sorta bummed that I no longer had a card that got me a bonus on groceries. I did the math and we spend around $8,000 a year on groceries, and that's a decent amount of points to leave on the table by not earning some kind of multiplier. Then Amex rebooted the Gold card to help it compete with the Chase Sapphire line and they added a 4x bonus on "Supermarkets". Lots of the professional bloggers were sloppily reporting that this as a "groceries" category, even though the Terms and Conditions explicitly mention that there's no bonus at Costco or other warehouse clubs. I don't shop at those kinds of places, instead I try my hardest to buy everything at our local neighborhood gem, Essex Market . This place is the heart and soul of Manhattan's Lower East Side, and I love supporting the small Dominican and Chinese grocers under its roof. There's no way I would star...