Category Archives: Hotels + Points

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American Express Hilton Aspire Resort Credit Applied Toward Restaurant Purchase in 3 Days

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Good afternoon everyone, happy Friday.  From June 1 through August 31, American Express Hilton Aspire Credit Card members can now use their $250 resort credit toward restaurant purchases.  To test this out, I made a small restaurant purchase at Panera Bread (through their app) on June 1.  On June 4, the statement credit posted as HILTON RESORT CREDIT.  A 3 day turnaround time for statement credits is pretty standard for American Express.  The one downside with the $250 Hilton Resort Credit is that there is no tracker that shows how much you have spent or redeemed toward the $250 cap.

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Hilton Grand Vacations (Timeshare) Package Extended Expiration Date & Free Change to Other US Resorts

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Good afternoon everyone, I hope your week is going well.  This summer, Laura and I were supposed to go to Boston and New York City for a week.  Then the Coronavirus Pandemic hit.  We recently cancelled our entire trip, including our JetBlue award flight from SFO-BOS, our Hilton free night stay in Boston, our Amtrak trip from Boston to NYC, our hotel stays in NYC, and our American Airlines award flight from LGA-DFW-SNA.  Part of our stay in NYC was at a Hilton Grand Vacations resort with the purchase of a timeshare package (and mandatory timeshare presentation).  Fun read: Profiting from 2 Timeshare Presentations in Hawaii (Secret: Attend, but do not Buy!)

Long story short, I originally bought the timeshare package in November 2018 and have extended / renewed it a few times over the years.  After cancelling my NYC timeshare package, I learned about the extended expiration date and the ability to change to another Hilton resort in the US for free.  More details at the bottom of the post.  My original timeshare package was $286 and gave us 2 nights in NYC (choice of 4-5 properties), $100 Spend a Night on Us voucher (hopefully no headaches like last time), $100 Elevated Rewards Dollars (Hilton resort credit during our stay), and 5,000 Hilton Honors Points (worth ~$25).  The original timeshare package expiration date was November 15, 2019.

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Sweet Retention Offer on Chase Marriott Bonvoy Business Credit Card ($99 Annual Fee)

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Good afternoon everyone.  A few weeks ago, I wrote Reconsideration Strategy for Credit Card Annual Fees During Coronavirus Pandemic.  In that post, I shared all of my credit cards with annual fees that were coming due soon and my plan for retention offers.  While I struck out with American Express regarding my American Express Gold Card and American Express Hilton Aspire Credit Card, I did score a sweet retention offer on my Chase Marriott Bonvoy Premier Plus Business Credit Card.

I don’t believe this credit card is still available for new applications, but if you have another Chase Marriott business credit card, you should be able to product change to this card.  According to the card benefits, there is really nothing very special about this credit card except for the fact that you get a free night certificate every year that is valid at Marriott properties that cost up to 35,000 Marriott Bonvoy points.  If you spend $60,000 on this credit card, you will earn a second free night certificate.  The credit card has a $99 annual fee.  The annual fee just posted to my account, so I decided to call Chase to see what kind of retention offers were available.

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Work from Home Diary 11: My Thoughts on TWG Turning 7 Years Old Today

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Good morning everyone, I hope you had a great weekend.  I started sharing my thoughts regarding working from home in a series of Work from Home Diary posts.  Feel free to share your work from home feelings in the comments section below.  For today’s update, I wanted to let you know that Travel with Grant (the blog) turned 7 years old today!  Wow, I can’t believe it’s been 7 years since I started blogging in May 2013.  Back then, I talked about Award Wallet, ITA Matrix, Credit Karma / Credit Sesame, using BA Avios to fly to Hawaii, converting Hawaiian Airlines miles to Hilton points, $500 Visa Gift Cards at Office Depot, and much more.

I thought about sharing my 7 favorite blog posts or top 7 most read blog posts, but thought I would share my thoughts on blogging and my continued goals as a blogger.  Back when I started my blog, I was a ferocious reader of Frequent Miler (still am), Million Miles Secrets, The Points Guy, Frugal Travel Guy, Mile Value, and Travel Blogger Buzz (love you George).  These were blogs that I looked up to and admired for their content and entertainment.  I’m not a full time blogger (and never have been), but the dream of working on a secluded beach with a laptop on my lap and big floppy hat on my head always made me smile. Continue reading →

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PSA: Check Amazon Gift Card Balance for Missed Allowance Reloads

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Good afternoon everyone, I hope your week is going well.  Since I have several credit cards and only use a few on a daily basis, I put small recurring charges on some of my cards so that the credit card statements are generated every month.  I do this for a 3 main reasons:

  1. If you do not use no annual fee credit cards for several months, the bank may decide that you do not need that credit card and may close it automatically for you.
  2. I have 2 Bank of America Better Balance Rewards Credit Cards (no longer available) where I get a quarterly bonus of $30 per card (I have a linked BofA checking account) for making a purchase and paying my bill on time.  I don’t want to manually make a purchase or risk forgetting to make a monthly purchase on those cards.  It’s an easy $30 bonus x 4 quarters x 2 cards = $240 cash.
  3. I have credit card referral links on my blog and if a reader signs up for the card using my referral link, I get a referral bonus (airline miles or hotel points).  The bonus points do not automatically transfer to the airline or hotel account if a credit card statement is not generated.

For those reasons, I use Amazon Allowance to automatically charge $5 to several cards every month.  The funds are automatically added to my Amazon gift card balance and I usually receive several of the below emails on the 15th of the month.  But unfortunately, for some reason, I only received 2 emails, instead of the usual 8.  I did some digging and it looks like only 2 of my Amazon Allowances processed correctly and the 8 other allowances were skipped.  If you have allowances set up, I recommend checking your Amazon account to see if they processed correctly.

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