Tag Archives: Bank of America

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Hawaii Travel Hack: Combine Alaska Airlines Companion Fare & Hawaiian Airlines Award Ticket

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Good morning everyone, happy Wednesday.  I am writing to you from the WiFi-connected Golden Gate Transit bus, heading to work in San Francisco.  I love Hawaii and I have written a few posts about traveling to Hawaii over the last few years.  Some of my favorite posts about Hawaii include:

Recently, I was trying to book a flight from Lihue, Kauai, Hawaii (LIH) to San Francisco (SFO) or Oakland (OAK).  I will show you how I used a Bank of America Alaska Airlines Companion Fare and Virgin America miles to book a Hawaiian Airlines award ticket.  But first, take a quick look at these route maps from Alaska Airlines and Virgin America.  Those 2 airlines offer lots of flights, but there are only a few routes to Hawaii, and not every major Hawaiian airport is served.

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My March App-O-Rama Credit Card Sign Up Bonuses Post

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Good morning everyone, I hope you are all having a great week.  By the time you read this post, I will be ATVing around the island of St. Kitts (I know, tough life).  Anyway, I wanted to talk about one of my favorite topics – credit card sign up bonuses.  In March, I discussed Which 10 Credit Cards am I Considering for my March App-O-Rama and then in early April, I wrote about my March App-O-Rama Results.  In this post, I will share with you my plans (if any) for redeeming my miles and points.  If you have any better suggestions than the ones I share in this post, please let me know in the comments.  Thank you!

To get started, I was approved for the Bank of America Alaska Airlines Visa Signature Credit Card and the Bank of America Alaska Airlines Business Credit Card.  Both credit cards offered 30,000 Alaska Airlines miles after spending $1,000 in 3 months along with an Alaska Airlines Companion Ticket (which can now be used on Virgin America).  I have a few other Alaska Airlines Companion Tickets in my Alaska Airlines account, so I will probably not use them all.  60,000 Alaska Airlines miles is worth ~$900 to me (valuing Alaska Airlines miles at 1.5 CPP).  I don’t have an exact use in mind, but I like flying on Virgin America first class when I fly from SFO to JFK.

Alaska Airlines Personal Business 30,000 Mile Bonuses Posted

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ICYMI: Travel News Roundup for Saturday, May 6, 2017

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Here’s all the news that caught my eye this week – let me know if you learn something new!

Airlines + Miles

The TSA is reportedly piloting a new requirement in Kansas City (MCI): forcing passengers to remove any paper products from their luggage. Yet another reason to get Global Entry if you don’t have it already. [Schneier on Security]

American Airlines has a new promotion where you can earn up to 10,000 points for transactions with their shopping partners. [Mommy Points]

American Airlines also announced that they plan to cram so many seats into their new 737 MAX planes that some rows will lose two additional inches of legroom. [CNN Money]

Hawaiian Airlines unveiled a brand and livery refresh. It looks pretty slick! [The Design Air]

JetBlue and Icelandair announced a frequent flier partnership. [USA Today] Continue reading →

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Tonei’s January Credit Card App-O-Rama Results

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Buenos diás everyone. I’m not usually one for credit card App-O-Ramas, typically preferring to apply for credit cards one at a time when they have high bonuses, but at the end of January, I decided to throw caution to the wind and apply for five new credit cards in one day, from three banks: Banco Popular de Puerto Rico, Bank of America, and Chase.

Banco Popular de Puerto Rico

I finally decided to jump on the Banco Popular de Puerto Rico 60,000 Avianca LifeMiles offer that Grant wrote about in December. Like Grant, I also got instantly approved with a large credit line.

Image of the front of an Avianca LifeMiles Vuela Visa card with "Mr Grant Thomas" on the front. The numbers have been blacked out.

My card looks just like this, but it doesn’t have Grant’s name on it.

I paid my annual fee in February and made purchases on the card in March and April, but my LifeMiles balance is still zero. I emailed customer service to ask about it but got an automatic reply to call for assistance – when I did so, the representative (who I could barely hear) just said it takes 6-8 weeks for miles to post and that I should keep an eye on my balance at lifemiles.com. I’ll also email LifeMiles customer support and see if they can check whether I might have a duplicate LifeMiles account. Continue reading →

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What’s on my Mind: Tucson, Orange County, San Diego and my March App-O-Rama Results

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Good morning everyone, happy Friday Thursday!  I’ve had a pretty busy week this week: Monday I was watching NCAA March Madness Final (bummer the Zags lost); Tuesday I went to see Bassem Youssef (the Egyptian Jon Stewart) speak at UC Berkeley; Wednesday I got $202 loge/mezzanine tickets to see Hamilton in SF; and tonight I am flying to Tucson for a wedding this weekend.  Even though I haven’t had much time to write this week, I have a few blog posts brewing in my mind.  Before I get to what’s on my mind, I wanted to share some travel plans for the rest of April.

  • Tucson, AZ (Friday-Sunday April  7-9) for a wedding.  Anyone have any recommendations for restaurants, bars, hikes, or other activities that are close to Tucson?
  • Orange County, CA (Friday-Sunday April 14-16) for Easter weekend.  I will do an OC miles and points meetup on Saturday afternoon, stay tuned for more details.
  • San Diego, CA (Saturday-Sunday April 29-30) for fun.  I am seeing my friend/writer Shelli and organizing a SD miles and points meetup on Saturday or Sunday, stay tuned for more details.

A few weeks ago, I wrote Which 10 Credit Cards am I Considering for my March App-O-Rama?  In that post, I shared the credit cards I was considering and you guys gave me some good feedback.  I don’t have all the credit cards in the mail, but I have a good idea of which credit cards were approved and which ones were denied. Continue reading →