Wedding Challenge: Starting Point

Last week, I announced a challenge to earn enough miles/points to pay for a upcoming west coast wedding.

As a reminder for the challenge to be a success, I need to earn the following miles/points:


     1)     25,000 United MileagePlus

     2)     45,000 Hyatt (Gold Points)

     3)     Enough points for $100 gift cards


To ensure openness, here are my current balances of my accounts:

United Airlines:

Hyatt GoldPoints:

MyPoints:

SwagBucks:

Ultimate Rewards:

With my starting balances laid out on the table, the hard part starts now. I need to start earning.

As a reminder, here are the rules;

• No new credit cards ie no points earned from new credit cards can be used

• Can't buy points

• Have to earn the points by end of 2014

• Can use Swagbucks and MyPoints

• Can't just transfer miles from Ultimate Rewards; have to earn them from today on to transfer

Let's get earning.

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Wedding Challenge

In your 20s and 30s, weddings seem to pop-up on a non-stop pace. Your friends from high school & college, your cousins and co-works are all starting to walk down the aisle for the first or second time.

Photo Credit: http://www.onscreenweddings.com

Attending weddings is not cheap; especially, if you have to travel to the wedding. The costs of attending a wedding away from your where you live add up: airfare, hotel, rental car, food, booze, gifts etc. The cost only increases if you are a member of the wedding party. Last year, I wrote about Christopher Sledzik, "who racked up $10,000 in debt by attending 12 different weddings and being of 3 different wedding parties over an 18 month period."

10,000 Gs of debt from weddings. That's ridiculous. However, I can see how you can rack up debt by attending weddings. Its difficult to say no to a friend's wedding invitations. Your friends are getting married, your other friends will be there, and it you know its going to be an awesome time.  But I wonder is there a better way to reduce travel costs to weddings?

For this reason, I am coming up with The Wedding Challenge.

The goal of the challenge is to earn enough miles/points to pay for the airfare, hotel nights and a $100 gift for an upcoming wedding. Let's assume the following things:

• Wedding is located on the West Coast i.e. requires air travel

• 3 hotel nights 

• $100 gift - which I feel like is average wedding gift

Like all of my challenges, there are rules:

• No new credit cards ie no points earned from new credit cards can be used

• Can't buy points

• Have to earn the points by end of 2014

• Can use Swagbucks and MyPoints

• Can't just transfer miles from Ultimate Rewards; have to earn them from today on to transfer

Success on this challenge will be achieve by hitting the following milestones:

      1)  25,000 United MileagePlus 

      2)  45,000 Hyatt (Gold Points) - 15,000 a night or $200 worth of Hyatt GCs

      3)  Enough points (most likely from Swagbucks or MyPoints) for a $100 gift card to 

           some department store

My goal of this challenge is to show people that attending a wedding for cheap is possible not that I am cheap. For my friends and family, I would travel the world to celebrate their nuptials. However, the cost of attending weddings is one of the main reasons why people can't attend. 

Do you have a wedding you need to travel to in 2015? Join my Wedding Challeneg to see if you can reduce the cost of attending by earning miles & points.

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Amtrak & Ultimate Rewards Saves My Christmas

Due to my workload, I booked my trip to Connecticut for the holidays, on the weekend beforehand. Therefore, my chooses were very limited. I decided on the following itinerary:

When flying to Connecticut, I typically I fly either Southwest or US Airways. Both have direct flights to BDL (Hartford/Springfield) from the DC area. The flight cost me an arm and a leg:

When I check-in on Monday, United notified me that my flight was oversold and that they may need volunteers. At the time, they were offering $150 for the voluntary bump. I added my name to the list. I had all day to get home..why not?

The day of my flight, Christmas Eve day, I was running late. I left my apartment later than I want to, but plenty of time to get to the airport. Luckily, I had TSA PreCheck and flew through security in minutes. Strange at DCA, nowadays. 

Arriving at the gate 30 minutes before boarding, I joined the line to speak with an agent. The line was 6 people deep, but I overheard that the flight was oversold by 7 people. My chances of getting a bump looked likely. The people in front of me were asking stupid questions ie "is this the flight to Newark," "I have a seat assignment, do I need to check-in." Finally, it was my turn. "Do you need volunteers still?" "YES!" Still $150? No, I am offering $350.

Then the next problem. The agent did not like that my final destination was BDL. He kept looking for other volunteers, which upset me. I kept on throwing out suggestions including Boston or Providence. Neither of those options provided acceptable options for him. He started looking for other volunteers including those flying to Europe and Africa.

I tried one more option, would they buy me an Amtrak ticket? That's an option, but only if they have tickets. A quick call to Amtrak and I became the new owner of $350 United voucher.

Now the next problem, he could only get me a ticket to Newark Airport's train station:

http://www.panynj.gov/airports

But I was going to Connecticut. Regardless, I took the voucher and train ticket and raced to the Union Station.

Wikipedia

I arrived at the airport at 11:15 am for my 1pm trip. I went to the Amtrak ticket desk to exchange my ticket to Newark for one to Connecticut. After talking to three agents and a supervisor, they all agreed that I could not exchange the ticket. I would have to buy a ticket from Newark's Airport to Connecticut. The cost $45. No problem, I handed the credit card over. Then I looked at the tickets:

• Leave 1pm from Washington, DC and arrive at Newark Airport at 4:30 pm. 

• Exit train, wait for another train to depart at 6:30 pm and arrive in Berlin, CT at 9:45 pm.

Arriving at 9:45pm would ruin my Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve is when my entire family gets together. I sulked away from the ticket counter to find food. Now its 11:35am and I have 90 minutes to kill....

At this point, I am seriously regretting my decision to take the bump. Then a major light bulb came on my head: I have Ultimate Reward Points.

Ultimate Reward Points transfer at a 1:1 ratio to Amtrak's Guest Rewards. More importantly, Ultimate Rewards points transfer instantaneously to Amtrak Guest Rewards.

                                    

I was so excited about my discovery that I walked out of a food line without paying for my food. I went back to pay later. A quick look at my watch its 11:40 and I remember something about a 12 noon train.

I quickly opened up my work laptop and personal laptop to transfer Ultimate Reward points to Amtrak. A one-way Northeastern ticket cost only 4,000 points.

At the same time, I was booking the award ticket. Time was ticking down and I had no idea if award tickets were still available for a train leaving in 15 minutes. After transferring 4,000 UR points to Amtrak, I tried to book the ticket without luck. I kept on getting this error.

I knew the points were in my Amtrak account. I refreshed the page and tried again. Success!

Now the next problem, I had to get my ticket from the machine and get to the train in 6 minutes. I threw both laptops in the bag without shutting them off and ran. I ran dodging people to find a ticket machine. Of course, the machine did not pull up the ticket with my credit card. Now, I had to find the email with the confirmation code...time was short and so was my patience. Find the email with the confirmation code and my ticket printed. Then I rushed to the train...

With minutes to spare, I boarded the 12 (noon) train headed north. The train was packed, but I found a seat and settled in for my 5 hour trip. In the end, I remember family from southern Connecticut was coming to Christmas Eve and they were more than happy to pick me up from a train station near their home.

In the end, Ultimate Rewards saved my Christmas Eve. 

BTW...I cancelled the train ticket from Newark to Berlin via telephone, so I lost no money.

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Chase Sapphire First Friday's Are Back

In 2013, Chase Sapphire holders earn 3 miles per $1 spent on restaurants on the first Friday of every month. This is an additional 1 point than the normal earn on this card for restaurants. The program was suppose to end in 2013 by this advertisement:

However, I was surfing the ultimate reward portal today and this advertisement appeared:

And this advertisement from the Chase website:

It looks like this great promotion is back for 2014!

A few months ago, I did a post on 4 Ways To Maximize this promotion. One of these ways, earned me close to 20,000 points last year.

Defiantly a promotion to think about each first Friday.

Happy Dining Out!


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Final Results: How Many United Miles Did I Earn In August?

In July, I wrote about 31 Ways To Earn United Miles. In August, I wanted to challenge myself to earn as many United miles as possible.

I made four rules that I had to follow:

   1) Spend the least amount of non-justified money ie money I wouldn't spend anyway

   2) Everything has to be ethical - would my grandfather be embarrassed by what I am doing?

   3) Can only apply for one new credit card that earns United miles

   4) Only miles earned in August and credited by September 30th count

Now the big question: how did I do?

Drum roll please . . .

My goal was to earn 75,000, so I am very pleased with earning 78,000+ miles.

Here is how I did it:

First, I applied and was approved for the Chase Ink Bold.

After spending $5,000, I would earn 50,000 Ultimate Reward Points, which can be transferred to United MileagePlus at 1:1 ratio. I earned 56, 558 points from the credit card.

Here is a breakdown of how the points were earned:

The other 22, 443 miles in a variety of other ways

The graphic shows I earned 22,734. That number includes 280 miles earned from Opinion Miles Club (see here) and some points earned from my United Credit Card.

Here are the ways I earned the other miles:

Here is how I earned the other 22,000+ miles:

  760 - Opinion Miles Club
  500 - eMile
1500 - Marriott Gift Cards (expired)
 186 -  Purchase on my MileagePlus Shopping Mall
1932 - Chase United Credit Card Purchases
1150 - ScoreBig
5000 - Purchases on my Chase Sapphire - Transfer from Ultimate Rewards
1120 - Dining Rewards
5670 - Purchase from Shoes.com
2500 - Vinessee Wine Purchase
2000 - eRewards Surveys

Now the question, how much money was wasted?

Here are the items that I paid money for and the amount of money I deem wasted:

Marriott Gift Cards - spent $1 on shipping
Kiehl's (MP Shopping Mall) - nothing
Scorebig - $10 (the extra cost of money)
Vinessee - $10 (the wine was only worth $5 a bottle)
Shoes.com - nothing, needed both pairs
Chase Ink Bold - $31.60 - 8 VRs @ $3.95 each
-------------------------
Total: $52.60 wasted


Conclusion:

78,000 miles with $52.60 wasted is amazing.

My little experiment goes to show that anyone can earn miles with a little bit of effort. Yes, 80% of my points came from credit cards. However, I didn't really purchase anything, except VRs, that I didn't need. For those wondering, I use the wine for the anniversary party and gifts.

Overall, the amount of ways you can earn miles/points is numerous. The only thing standing in your way is you.

Did you participate in my challenge? How did you do?

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Update: Earn Up To 16 Rapid Reward Miles Per $1 Spent @ Marriott

I wrote here about how to earn 16 Rapid Reward Miles Per $1 spent at Marriott. I wanted to follow-up with my experience. Even though I did the United promotion (expired), it is very similar to the Southwest promotion.

As a reminder, you can earn Rapid Reward miles for buying Marriott gift cards.

•       $100 = 1,200 Rapid Rewards Miles
•       $250 = 3,000 Rapid Rewards Miles
•       $500 = 6,000 Rapid Rewards Miles

I ordered my gift card on August 8th and the points still have not posted.

My next recommendation was to purchase the gift cards with the Chase Sapphire card to earn 2x per $1. As expected, I earned the 2x Ultimate Rewards points per $1 on my next statement.

When its time to book your Marriott hotel stays, go through the Ultimate Reward shopping portal to earn 2 additional points per $1.

I am happy to say I earned my points this way as well. I book the stay on July 30th, stayed on August 24th and the points were credit to my Ultimate Reward account on September 8th.

My final suggestion was to switch your Marriott accounts to earn MileagePlus/Rapid Reward miles; instead, of Marriott points. I never did this, because I learned that by doing so I might not be eligible for the Unexpected Bonus's free night. Therefore, I left those points on the table. However, I did earn a free night.

If you haven't participated, this is a great way to quadruple dip: earn points for buying the gift card, using your Chase Sapphire, booking the stay, and staying with Marriott. These type of promotions are rare.

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Tapping Out - I'm Done with US Airways Grandslam Lite

I'm done! I'm finished! I am tapping out! I can't take it any more....

Yes, I am tapping out of what I dubbed here as US Airways Grandslam Lite.  As a quick refresher, one earns bonus points for completing purchases at particular merchants. The more purchases one makes, the more bonus points that one earns up to a 100% bonus.

On May 23, Mommy Points wrote that she decided against participating based upon the unclear rules. Even with the unclear rules, I decided to move forward. Participate now; argue about the details later. I even had a plan to maximize the twelve hits to get earn the 100% bonus:

Hits 1-6 - Dining Rewards

Hit 7 - SkyMall

Hit 8 & 9- FTD/1800 Flowers - Mother's Day Gifts

Hit 10 - Wine Insiders

Hit 11 - Dividend Storefront (Best Buy)

Hit 12 - Dividend Storefront (Kiehl's)

My intention was to spend no more than $100 on unnecessary expenses ie things I don't need.

Now 45 days into this promotion, I have only completed 3 dining reward stays. 3 visits to the local smoothie shops and now I don't know if it is worth the money to continue.  

I forgot to send flowers for Mother's Day and I don't really need anything from the SkyMall. With that, I am down three hits and a ton of points.

On top of that, I was planning on counting purchases at Staples, Best Buy and Kiehls that I needed to make anyway. However, when I compare what I could earn with the US Airways Storefront compared to other shopping portals, I don't think its worth it. For instance, I could earn 1 point at Staples, 2 points at Kiehl's and 1 point at Best Buy with the US Shopping Portal. However, at the Ultimate Reward Portal, I can earn 1 point at Best Buy, 2 points at Staples, and 4 points at Kiehl's.  Some might argue that with the 100% bonus, I might be better off making the purchases through the promotion. I would agree except that I value Ultimate Reward points more than US Airways points.

For these reasons, I have decided to tap out and call it quits on the US Airways Grandslam lite.

Best of luck to all those still participating! 

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George Costanza was right: Double Dipping is OK!

Everything that happens in the world can always be brought back to Seinfeld somehow. In an 1993 episode, George accompanies his current girlfriend to her aunt's wake. It is at the wake that a young boy accuses George of double-dipping his chip...



George was correct "double-dipping" is perfectly ok, especially in the points world. In the points and miles world, the double-dipping doesn't involve chips, but rather earning extra points.

For instance, on our Memorial Day trip, we stayed at two Marriott to participate in Marriott's Unexpected Bonus. We earned Marriott Reward points for every dollar we spent on the hotel rooms. Most people would be happy with getting points for their stay. However, you shouldn't! I earned an additional 2 Ultimate Reward points per $1 spent by simply going to the Marriott website through the Ultimate Reward portal.

Purchase Date Rewards Merchant Rewards Earned

5-17-2013 Marriott 226 extra points 5-17-2013 Marriott 280 extra points

Marriott isn't the only hotel that one can double-dip. In the Ultimate Reward Portal, one can earn additional points with Best Western, Choice Hotels, Holiday Inn/Intercontinental Hotels. Also, the Ultimate Reward portal allows one to earn points on travel booking sites Hotwire, Hotel.com, Orbitz, and Travelocity. Almost every airline and hotel chain has an online points/miles earning portal. However, not all point earning portals allow points to be earned for booking hotels through them.

For many this is not earth shattering news. Double-dipping is common practice in the points community; actually Frequent Miler writes about it all the time. This is the cheapest way of earning points, because it doesn't cost you a thing except extra time. The hardest part of earning points this way is remembering to go though the portal first. I am guilty of leaving valuable points on the table by forgetting to go through the portal first. I always kick myself after I hit the submit button.

George was correct, Double-Dipping is perfectly acceptable.


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I never learn . . .

Since taking on this hobby, there is one lesson I still have not learned. I write this post hoping that you learn from what I have not.

The lesson: sign-up for every offer; even if you don't think you will use it.

The lesson sounds easier on paper than in practice. Almost every day, there is an offer from this hotel or that airline. Each offer is tempting, but some don't make sense to me at the time. For example, Hyatt has  quarterly promotions, which I don't sign-up for, because I don't have any stays with Hyatt lined up. This is the wrong attitude. I have not encountered a situation where signing up for a promotion results in a negative consequences.

Case in point:

A few months ago, all the blogs (read here, here, here) were a buzz about a 5,000 Mileageplus bonus for spending $1,000 on the Chase United MileagePlus card from August 1st to October 31st. I registered for the promotion, as I already met the spend requirement earlier in the month. After the promotion started, United pulled the offer and stated it was suppose to be targeted. No hard feelings...you win some, you lose some.

Well, today I checked my United account and there was 5000 miles from a Chase promotion, which I can only assume it was the one above.  This time I won!!!

The lesson is sign-up for promotions/offers. You never know when they will turn out in their favor.

Groupon and LivingSocial

I must confess. Two years ago, I was a Groupon and LivingSocial addict. I would buy daily deals almost every week. I would try new restaurants, visit new museums, and do new activities.

I had to pull the plug on my love of Groupon and LivingSocial. I came to this realization when I looked at the number of Groupons, I bought, but had expired without me using them. I was wasting too much money and not getting a return on my money.

Something changed over the past month and I am buying Groupons and Livingsocial deals again, but I am being selective. A Groupon to my favorite restaurant, great! A Livingsocial deal to Brookstone, perfect!

My courtship with Groupons and Livingsocial has been triggered by two things:  a new found self control and founding out that I can earn points for buying these deals. Many of the shopping portals are giving points out for buying deals from Groupon and Livingsocial.

Here are a few of the current point offers:

LivingSocial:

Chase Ultimate Rewards: 3 pts per/$ 

United Milageplus: 2 pts per/$ 

USAirways: 2 pts per/$ 

American Airlines AAdvantage: 3 pts per/$ 

Delta: 2 pts per/$ 

Southwest: 2 pts per/$ 

Priority Club: 3 pts per/$ 

Groupon:

Chase Ultimate Rewards: 4 pts per/$ 

United Milageplus: 2 pts per/$ 

USAirways: 1 pts per/$ 

American Airlines AAdvantage: 2 pts per/$ 

Delta: 2 pts per/$ 

Priority Club: 3 pts per/$ 

Southwest: 2 pts per/$ 

By taking an extra minute by going through a shopping portal first, you will earn points on every dollar that you spend. It is important to note that you will earn points only on the money that you spend. For example, if you get a $50 Groupon to a new restaurant for $25, you will earn points on the $25. Using the Chase Ultimate Rewards, that 100 points for an extra minutes worth of work. 

Take an extra minute and earn points for those Groupons and LivingSocial!

Review: Grand Hyatt Denver

Back in September I wrote about our many culinary adventures in breakfast and beer while in Denver and I realized I never wrote about our stay at the Grand Hyatt Denver. For our stay we paid for one night for $150 and cashed in 12,000 Chase UR points for the next night.

The hotel is located in the middle of downtown Denver and is a perfect place if you want to walk all over downtown like we did. It's just a few blocks from the 16th Street Pedestrian Mall which is a great spot to go for shopping and food. It also features a free bus route to take you up and down the pedestrian mall if you don't feel like walking. This location is also perfect to walk over to the LoDo district which has lots of great restaurants and unique shopping as well as the Rockies baseball stadium.

Kelsey flew in early in the day so she checked us in and the hotel was great about leaving a key for me at the front desk for when I arrived. We were given a free upgrade to a "corner king" room which was just a bit larger than the regular king room.

The best part about this room is that we were at the end of the hallway. I like being farther away from the elevators as it is usually much quieter than the middle of the hallway where people can often be heard coming and going at all hours of the day. The hotel was very quiet and modern, but nothing spectacular.

The room had an entryway that led into the main bedroom which featured a large king bed, a flat-screen tv, dresser/desk combo and a large window overlooking parts of downtown Denver. The living area was laid out a bit strange though since the tv was sitting on the dresser and was only really able to be viewed from certain angles from bed and the desk. On the right side of the room was the bathroom with marble tiled bath/shower combo, again nice, but nothing special.

Entrance 

Bed/TV

Dresser/Desk 

Bathroom and Closet

Overall the hotel was nice for what we needed, which was as a base to explore the city from. But everything else was just average. The staff was nice, but not nice for any longer than they had to be. Every time I went to the desk I had to wait at least a few minutes before being helped. When we were getting ready to leave we enquired about check out and were told it wasn't available, despite having status with Hyatt. They simply wouldn't budget and the lady who checked us out was more interested in gossiping to her co-worker than helping us find the best way to the airport. So those interactions made a nice hotel turn into just an average hotel.

"View" of downtown Denver