Tag Archives: American Express

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My Top 10 Most Read Blog Posts of 2020

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Good afternoon everyone, I hope your week is going well.  Every year, I like to check out my stats from Google Analytics to see which blog posts were the most popular.  I created 2 lists by looking at all blog posts written in 2020 and then I looked at which posts were read the most in 2020, but written in a previous year (#stayingpower).  I will list the blog posts from top to bottom based on pageviews, share the original published date, and provide a short summary of each blog post.  If you are curious, here were the most popular posts from 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2016.

2020’s Most Read Posts (Written in 2020)

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How Many Transferrable Points Did I Earn & Spend with AMEX, Chase and Citi in 2020?

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Good afternoon everyone, I hope your week is going well.  I don’t know about you, but 2020 was the year I earned a lot more transferrable points than I spent.  I am hoping that in 2021, I will be able to spend a lot more points than I did in 2020.  For this post, I looked at my 3 favorite transferrable points programs (American Express Membership Rewards Points, Chase Ultimate Rewards Points, and Citi ThankYou Points).  I looked at my starting balances on January 1, the number of points I earned in 2020, miscellaneous point transfers in/out, the number of points I redeemed in 2020, and the ending balance on December 31 (I don’t have any plans on redeeming any points in the next few days).  For a quick calculation, I earned 350K points across the 3 programs and spent a total of 211K points (most were with Chase’s Pay Yourself Back feature).

American Express Membership Rewards Points

  • Starting Balance on Jan 1: 240K
  • Points Earned in 2020: 201K
  • Points Redeemed in 2020: 4K
  • Ending Balance on Dec 31: 438K

With American Express, I earned 201K AMEX MRs with 3 cards (American Express Business Platinum Card, American Express Gold Card, and American Express Blue Business Plus Credit Card).  The Biz Plat had many pandemic bonus categories like wireless phones, shipping charges, and Dell purchases.  The Gold Card had bonus categories for restaurants and grocery stores, along with high referral bonuses.  And the Blue Biz Plus offered 2x everywhere and was my go to card when I wasn’t working on meeting minimum spending requirements on new CCs.  Across all 3 CCs, I received a total of 65K AMEX MRs from referral bonuses.  To view your points summary, click here.  To view your redemption history, click the View Redemption History link.

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My Rock Solid 2021 Airline, Hotel & Credit Card Predictions

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Good morning everyone, I hope you got a good laugh out of my post from yesterday: Reviewing my Embarrassingly Wrong 2020 Travel Predictions.  Long story short, my 2020 predictions were terrible (I had 3 correct and 12 wrong predictions).  I am hoping to redeem myself today with my super-solid, 100% guaranteed-to-happen predictions for 2021.  My crystal ball just got back from the crystal ball repair store and here are my airline, hotel, and credit card predictions for 2021.

My 2021 Airline Predictions

  • Alaska Airlines or Southwest Airlines will make their “convert travel funds to airline miles” feature a permanent feature on their site.
  • American Airlines will finally become a Citi ThankYou Points airline transfer partner.
  • Delta Airlines or United Airlines will introduce a “Cash and Miles” payment option for award tickets (pay 10,000 miles or pay 8,000 miles + $40).

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Reviewing my Embarrassingly Wrong 2020 Travel Predictions

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Good morning everyone, I hope you all had a great weekend and a Merry Christmas (if you celebrated the holiday).  Since 2020 is almost over (thank goodness!), let’s review My Wildly Ambitious 2020 Airline, Hotel & Credit Card Predictions.  To be honest, I totally forgot that I wrote this post and I haven’t looked at it since it was published on December 30, 2019.  Here is what I wrote last year for my predictions and my thoughts on each prediction (correct in green and wrong in red):

My 2020 Airline Predictions

  • Alaska, American, Delta, or United will introduce a “Cash and Miles” payment option for award tickets. Clarification: This is not to be confused with Delta’s “Pay with Points” option where you get 1 CPP for each Delta SkyMiles for paid flights. I’m thinking more along the lines of the way British Airways and Avianca do it for award tickets.  No?  I haven’t booked any airline tickets in 9+ months, but I don’t think this prediction came true.
  • Allegiant Airlines, Frontier Airlines, Spirit Airlines, and Sun Country will announce a merger, but I’m not sure who will merge with who.  No, there were no airline mergers in 2020 among these airlines, but I expect to see some mergers of domestic and international airlines next year.

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AMEX Delta SkyMiles Sign Up Bonus Missing from Statement, But Appear Next Day in Account

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Good afternoon everyone, I hope you had a great weekend.  2 months ago, I applied for the American Express Gold Delta SkyMiles Business Credit Card.  At the time, the sign up bonus was for 60,000 Delta SkyMiles after spending $3,000 in 3 months.  In the first month, I spent $1,580 and in the second month, I spent $1,425, for a total of $3,005.  I expected to get the sign up bonus after the second credit card statement closed, but to my surprise, the sign up bonus was not shown on the credit card statement.  I did some digging and found out that the sign up bonus did post to my Delta account, but it was not shown on my credit card statement.  I thought that was really strange, so I wanted to share that in a blog post.  Here is the order of events…

On November 16, my first credit card statement closed and I received 1,580 Delta SkyMiles after spending $1,580 on my credit card.

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