Category Archives: Trip Reports

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Random News: 10,000 Chase Ultimate Reward Points Courtesy Adjustment, JetBlue Mosaic Match & More

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Good morning everyone, sorry for being MIA the last few days.  I don’t have anything major to share, but this might help a few of you out.  If you recently were approved for a Chase Ink Plus Business Credit Card with the 60,000 point sign up bonus, you can contact Chase and have them match you to the 70,000 point sign up bonus.  My 60,000 Chase Ultimate Reward Points and the 10,000 courtesy adjustment Chase Ultimate Reward Points just posted on my new Chase Ink Plus Business Credit Card.  To learn more, read Doctor of Credit’s post.

Chase Ink Plus 70k Bonus

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Happy Blogiversary! Travel with Grant Turns 3 Years Old + Amazon Giveaway

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Update 5/7/2016 at 11am PT: Here are the 3 winners I selected:

  • Adam said “I actually was inspired by yours to have my own Amtrack train trip! Thought about it in the past, pulled the trigger after your reports ;)”
  • Christina said “I love your blog and also I loved meeting you at in Chicago at FTU Advanced (you’re really a friendly and modest fella). Congrats on your anniversary Grant! I learned all about AmEx offers and Serve from you. I earned enough AA miles through MS to take my daughter to Paris this year. Thank you and keep up the good work!”
  • Seth said “You had a contest one time to have people come up with the best weekend trip you could take for a single sign up bonus (or something like that). I actually ended up taking a trip very similar to the one I came up with, and I never would have thought of it without the great prompt and information from your site!”

Thank you to everyone who entered the contest and for all the great interactions over the last 3 years.  Happy Mother’s Day weekend everyone!

Good morning everyone, happy Wednesday!  Oh, by the way, Travel with Grant turned 3 years old yesterday.  Pretty crazy, right?  I can’t believe it’s been 3 years already, time sure flies by.  I sometimes get asked for advice about blogging and I always tell people the same thing: “Starting a blog is easy, but keeping it going day in and day out takes a lot of work.”  During the first few months of blogging, you feel like no one reads your blog or cares about your blog.  I used to get jealous of other bloggers who had tons of readers and received several comments on each post.  Why was no one reading or commenting on my blog posts?  Over time, I learned that readers like to read and not leaving a comment does not mean anything bad.  If I had written something wrong/bad, I’m sure the commenters would have let me know right away.

Looking back at my first month of blogging, I had a total of 3,314 total pageviews, now I can (occasionally) pass that number in a single day of blogging.  My blog traffic quickly climbed the first year during the golden age of MS (Bluebird, Serve, Vanilla Reload Cards, PayPal My Cash Cards, churning credit card, retention bonuses, etc.).  My blog was off to a great start!

TWG Stats May 2013

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SF Travel Hackers Meetup (4/27), FTU Las Vegas (4/29-5/1) & Fremont Meetup (5/14 or 5/15?)

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Good afternoon everyone.  This is super last minute, but I wanted to let everyone in the Bay Area know that there is a SF Travel Hacker Meetup tomorrow night.  I will be there along with several other miles/points/MS/travel enthusiasts.  This month’s topic is about booking airline awards, so it should be very educational.  Food and drinks may be provided, if we are lucky :)

  • When: Wednesday, April 27 @ 7-9pm
  • Where: Dev Bootcamp, 633 Folsom Street, 6th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94107 (Google Map)

SF Travel Hackers Meetup April 27

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Spirit Airlines Credit Card Holders: Find Off-Peak Award Tickets & Avoid Award Booking Fees

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Good afternoon everyone, I have another award booking post that might interest some of you. This is a follow up post to my Spirit Airlines Credit Card introduction post.  If you have a Bank of America Spirit Airlines Credit Card, like myself, you might be sitting on a handful of Spirit Airlines miles.  The Spirit Airlines “loyalty” program is tricky, since miles expire within 3 months if you do not earn or redeem miles during that period.  Having the Bank of America Spirit Airlines Credit Card allows you to earn 2x miles on all purchases and makes it easy to keep your miles from expiring.  I have a $5 monthly Amazon auto-reload set up on this credit card to keep the miles in my Spirit Airlines account from expiring.

The main perk of the Bank of America Spirit Airlines Credit Card is the ability to access off-peak award tickets, starting at 2,500 Spirit Airlines miles for short one-way flights.  That sounds like a pretty good deal, right?  Yes, but there are a few pitfalls to be aware of first.

Spirit Airlines Award Chart

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Transfer SPG Points to Virgin America; Book Hawaiian Airlines Award Ticket with VX Elevate Miles

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Good morning everyone, greetings from Denver, Colorado.  I am working on a few upcoming blog posts about my recent trip to Lima, Cusco, and Machu Picchu, but in the meantime, this post will show you how to use your SPG Points to book a Hawaiian Airlines award ticket using Virgin America miles.  Back on April 13, 2016, SPG added Virgin America as a transfer partner, thus making this post possible.

Long story short, I needed a flight from Maui (OGG) to Kona (KOA) and this Hawaiian Airlines flight looked perfect.  The only problem was the $96 price tag for a 35 minute flight.  I reached out to my friends on Twitter and was told that the best way to book a Hawaiian Airlines award ticket was using Virgin America miles.  Here is the process I went through to book the Hawaiian Airlines award ticket using Virgin America miles.

HA Flight

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