Category: math

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 →

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 →

Status makes your points worth less

October 10, 2015 / / 6 Comments

As many followers of Miles Per Day will know, Virgin America is offering a promotion where transferring 80,000 Membership Rewards points to the Virgin America (VX) Elevate program will grant you VX Gold status until February of 2017. For frequent VX flyers, this could be a great deal because it offers free Main Cabin Select upgrades (typically $50 a pop) and increased earnings on cash fares. Continue reading →

Strictly Speaking: Sometimes, there is a right answer

October 8, 2015 / / 10 Comments

Last week, Esther and I were trying to figure out the best use of our points for an upcoming trip to Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji. I had initially covered four nights in Sydney with my IHG balance (140,000 points for 4 nights at the Holiday Inn Old Sydney), and we planned on redeeming Orbucks for our stay in New Zealand, so we were left trying to figure out what to do about Fiji.

After some research, Esther settled on the Intercontinental Fiji, and it’s not too hard to see why: Continue reading →

A theoretical travel hacker walks into a bar….

September 24, 2015 / / 11 Comments

A theoretical physicist walks into a bar….

Oh wait, that’s not right. In theoretical physics, everything happens inside a perfect vacuum.

No, I don’t expect you to have taken college physics (or even high school physics, for that matter) to get something out of this post. All you need to know is this: in physics, a perfect vacuum is a space that doesn’t have any external forces or influences so that when you do some sort of calculation (say, how far a meteor will travel in a given amount of time), you don’t have to take into account things like friction, gravity, or air resistance. That is to say, you can calculate without making any other considerations. Continue reading →

SPG’s ‘Open the World’ promo: Is it worth your time?

September 9, 2015 / / 4 Comments

Last week, SPG announced their ‘Open the World’ promotion, which offers a grand prize of a week-long vacation at one of their exclusive resorts, as well as free night certificates, Amazon and Amex gift cards, and SPG points. You can play twice a day by entering your SPG number and email address here.

Like all of my friends, I’ve been dutifully playing twice a day, although my efforts thus far have been to no avail. Which begs the question, is this really worth my time? Continue reading →

$2 off $250 Visa Gift Cards (slight moneymaker) at GiftCardMall!

September 3, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Get $2 off $250 Visa Gift Cards (VGCs) at GiftCardMall with code:

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At $5.95 per gift card, this comes out to a cost of $5.95-$2 = $3.95 / $250 = 1.6% excluding credit card rewards. So this is a (slight) money-maker if you use a 2% cash back card but is otherwise a reasonable way to meet minimum spending requirements if you have a way of liquidating the VGCs (e.g. Redbird).

I also checked the terms at Simply Best Coupons (referral link — thanks!), which offers 0.5% cash back on VGC purchases from GiftCardMall, and they don’t seem to explicitly forbid using coupon codes. As with all things, YMMV. If the cash back gets credited, though, this is an even better deal at $2.70/$250 = 1.08% before credit card rewards! You can find GiftCardMall by searching for “visa gift cards”. Continue reading →

Leave the Cannoli, Take the Cash

September 2, 2015 / / 4 Comments

A few weeks ago, when an opportunity arose to buy Mastercard Gift cards (MGCs) at-cost (i.e. without the activation fee), Esther and I got into a discussion about whether to buy those MGCs with a points-earning (Alaska Airlines Visa) or cashback (Fidelity Amex) card. To add some color, I was having this conversation on my phone from the Las Vegas strip, with my family asking just who I was so busy texting ;). Continue reading →

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