Author: Daniel Tahara

Did You Know? You Can Have Authorized User Cards Removed from Your Credit Report

January 29, 2016 / / 22 Comments

I know better than to mess with the Devil(‘s Advocate), so I figured out a different tagline for this post than my previous one. Still pretty reminiscent, but it gets the point across…

Anyway, I tried a couple of experiments with authorized user cards in order to see if I could stretch out my paltry, 1 year 3 month average age of accounts. In particular, one experiment I tried was seeing if I could force Amex to backdate my Member Since date (not the account opening date, which was discontinued) by adding myself as an authorized user on my parents’ account and then somehow parlaying that into backdating on my cards that were opened before the rule change (hint: this failed miserably). Continue reading →

Lessons learned from flying Southwest

January 27, 2016 / / 0 Comments

I haven’t paid for a Southwest flight, yet I’ve flown tens of thousands of miles with them.

All my travel has been free. Or at least very close to it. The points took me maybe an hour to earn (via a credit card) and cost $99 for the initial annual fee. The voluntary deboard (VDB) vouchers I’ve earned ($392 and $456) were earned on flights that I paid for with points and another voucher.

Free has its costs Continue reading →

The Most You Should Pay for a Hotel: Choice Hotels

January 23, 2016 / / 1 Comment

This is the sixth in a series of posts on how to save money on hotel bookings by purchasing rewards points. For a more detailed explanation and walk-through of the theory, see the first post on Hyatt hotels.

Choice Hotels wasn’t in my initial list of chains to review because of how weird and restrictive their loyalty program is, but given their large footprint and a few requests for a writeup, I realized it would probably be useful to look at. So, without further ado… Continue reading →

The Most You Should Pay for a Hotel: Starwood

January 21, 2016 / / 1 Comment

This is the last in a series of posts on how to save money on hotel bookings by purchasing rewards points. For a more detailed explanation and walk-through of the theory, see the first post on Hyatt hotels.

Today we will be looking at the last major hotel rewards program, Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG), which will hopefully remain in tact through the end of 2016 but may not be long for this world due to the merger finalized earlier this year. Continue reading →

The Most You Should Pay for a Hotel: Marriott

January 20, 2016 / / 3 Comments

This is the fourth in a series of posts on how to save money on hotel bookings by purchasing rewards points. For a more detailed explanation and walk-through of the theory, see the first post on Hyatt hotels.

The Details

Marriott Rewards is actually two programs in disguise, offering rewards for both the standard set of Marriott branded properties as well as the hyper-luxurious Ritz Carlton portfolio. Because of this, it has fourteen separate categories for its hotels — nine for Marriott and five for Ritz Carlton. It’s award charts are as follows: Continue reading →

The Most You Should Pay for a Hotel: Hilton

January 19, 2016 / / 1 Comment

This is the third in a series of posts on how to save money on hotel bookings by purchasing rewards points. For a more detailed explanation and walk-through of the theory, see the first post on Hyatt hotels.

The Nuts and Bolts

Disclaimer: This is a big fat dud. Tomorrow’s on Marriott should be interesting, though, as there are a couple of angles from which to approach the hack.

I’m somewhat loathe to talk about Hilton hotels, since their HHonors program is one of the worst around in terms of redemption rates, and that’s if you can actually find award availability in the first place. That said, it is one of the largest chains in the world, and there is some value to be had if you look hard enough, so here it is. Continue reading →

The Most You Should Pay for a Hotel: IHG

January 17, 2016 / / 3 Comments

This is the second in a series of posts on how to save money on hotel bookings by purchasing rewards points. For a more detailed explanation and walk-through of the theory, see the first post on Hyatt hotels.

The Nuts and Bolts

IHG Rewards Club is a slightly special snowflake since they offer two ways of buy points from them. Since there have been plenty of posts giving detailed explanations (see here for a good one), I won’t go into detail on how to purchase the points, other than to say that that the second method utilizes the points and cash option on bookings and IHG’s unique mechanism of refunding the total points cost if you cancel your booking. In practice, the purchase costs are: Continue reading →

The Most You Should Pay for a Hotel: Hyatt

January 15, 2016 / / 13 Comments

Generating miles and points at low cost takes time and organization, and most people have neither the time nor ability to juggle tens of credit cards. Unfortunately, a lot of travel hacking is targeted at the minority who can, leaving behind those who are just looking to save money on their twice-a-year family vacations.

So, what about those casual travelers? Can you still use miles and points to your advantage? Or more generally, when your points balances are limited, can you still save money without compromising on comfort? Continue reading →

Bet You Didn’t Know: Capital One Has a Secure Chat Option

January 11, 2016 / / 1 Comment

Apologies to Julian at FrequentMiler for swiping the name of his column, but I actually didn’t know this existed until I accidentally found it today.

Secure chat is good for a lot of things, in particular confirming your eligibility for various offers or performing account maintenance without having to sit on the phone for a long time. Even if you’re someone who enjoys hold music (no, really; these people exist), having a paper trail is really useful in ensuring you get your promised benefits (this has saved me with both Citi and Bank of America). Continue reading →

Amex Gave Us a Red Card and Served a Blue Bird on a Platter

January 10, 2016 / / 1 Comment

One day, when class participation was particularly poor in my eighth grade U.S. history class, my teacher told us that “Opinions are like belly buttons. Everyone has one.”

Nowhere is this more true than in the blogosphere, where my teacher’s claim might better be stated as, “Opinions are like belly buttons. Everyone must have one.” That being the case, here’s mine: Continue reading →

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