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Alaska Airlines Buy One, Get One Free Promo (Must Attend San Jose Sharks NHL Game on 2-27-2020)

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Good morning everyone, I hope your week is going well.  I love going to hockey games and cheering on my local San Jose Sharks hockey team.  If you live in the Bay Area and are a hockey and Alaska Airlines fan, here is a deal for you.  If you go to the New Jersey Devils at San Jose Sharks hockey game on Thursday February 27 at 7:30pm at SAP Center, you will receive a Buy One, Get One Free voucher for an Alaska Airlines flight – you just need to pay the taxes and fees on the second ticket.  According to StubHub, tickets to the game are currently selling for less than $20, but I usually buy my tickets a few minutes before the game starts for a few dollars cheaper.  This is pretty similar to the yearly San Francisco Giants & Alaska Airlines deal for BOGO tickets.

If you are not a local, I recommend staying at the AC Hotel by Marriott San Jose Downtown (category 4, 20k-30k points / night) or the Hyatt Place San Jose/Downtown (12k points / night).  Both hotels are a short walk away from the SAP Center and there are several good restaurants in the area.

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Image source: https://www.alaskaair.com/ondemanddiscount/ssl/discountcodeclaim.aspx?campaignid=ec6588

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What are your Valentine’s Day & President’s Day Travel Plans?

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Good afternoon everyone.  I apologize for not blogging much the last 2 weeks.  My real job (day job that pays the bills) has been really busy the last 2 weeks and I haven’t had the energy to write on my blog.  Laura and I are going to a wedding next weekend, so we don’t have anything special planned this weekend.  I’m very excited to spend Valentine’s Day with my wife (our first Valentine’s Day as a married couple) and we are going out to dinner tonight (Thursday) to avoid the craziness of Friday.

With that said, I wanted to hear what my readers are up to for Valentine’s Day and President’s Day this weekend.  If you have any special plans or just spending a relaxing weekend at home, I would love to hear about it.  Share your thoughts in the comments section.  Happy Valentine’s Day from the Thomas’ and have a great weekend everyone!

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5 Things You Should Know Before Getting the Chase Sapphire Reserve

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The media has been abuzz since the Chase Sapphire Reserve was first announced in 2016, and with the recent annual fee increase, many people are wondering if this card is still the premium card it once was. If you haven’t yet taken the plunge, there are a few things that you might want to know before applying. Here’s a complete rundown of one of my favorite credit cards: the Chase Sapphire Reserve.

Yes, there’s an annual fee, but…

…it comes with a ton of perks, which I’ll talk about in detail later. In fact, the Chase Sapphire Reserve annual fee has been the talk of the town over the past few weeks because Chase just upped the annual fee from $450 to $550. Honestly, this change hasn’t been as catastrophic as some folks projected it to be; the extra hundred bucks is peanuts compared to the benefits and entitlements that Chase already had. Chase has added partner benefits to offset the bump, and they’ll be more useful for some people than others. Either way, if you take advantage of your card benefits, you’ll easily end up saving more than $550 per year.
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What’s in Grant’s (iPhone) Wallet?

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Good morning everyone, I hope you had a great Super Bowl weekend.  I was down in Orange County enjoying the warm weather, but now I am back up in the chilly Bay Area.  I’ve been wanting to write about this topic for a while, but my final motivation was reading 2 Frequent Miler articles: What’s in Nick’s wallet? and What’s in Greg’s wallet?  The first thing you should know about me (if you already didn’t know) is that I am a millennial and I live in the Bay Area, so I can go weeks without using cash.  For that reason, my wallet is built into my iPhone XS case.  I use the Urban Armor Gear (UAG) iPhone Case ($30 on Amazon) that has room for 4 cards: my drivers license and 3 credit cards.  Which 3 credit cards do I carry with me on a daily basis and which credit cards do I have in my ApplePay Wallet?

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Where is the No Annual Fee Hyatt Credit Card?

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Good afternoon everyone.  In the conclusion of my recent post, I stated that if I had to keep only 5 credit cards with annual fees, I would sadly have to close my hotel credit cards.  After I wrote that post, I decided that I would rather downgrade my hotel credit cards to no annual fee credit cards like the Marriott Bold or American Express Hilton.  I was curious if every hotel chain had a no annual fee credit card, so I decided to create this table showing the hotel brand, no annual fee credit card and the annual fee credit card.  Some hotel brands have several credit cards with different annual fees, so I chose to show credit cards with annual fees in the $75-$95 range.  A few things stood out to me… Hyatt was missing a no annual fee credit card.

Hotel Brand No Annual Fee Credit Card Annual Fee Credit Card
Choice Barclays Choice Privileges Visa Signature Credit Card N/A
Hilton American Express Hilton Honors Credit Card American Express Hilton Honors Surpass Credit Card ($95)
Hyatt N/A Chase World of Hyatt Credit Card ($95)
IHG Chase IHG Rewards Club Traveler Credit Card Chase IHG Rewards Club Premier Credit Card ($89)
Marriott Chase Marriott Bonvoy Bold Credit Card Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Credit Card ($95)
Radisson US Bank Radisson Rewards Visa Credit Card US Bank Radisson Rewards Premier Visa Signature Credit Card ($75)
Wyndham Barclays Wyndham Rewards Visa Credit Card Barclays Wyndham Rewards Visa Credit Card ($75)

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