Tag Archives: Barclays Bank

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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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My Best Practices for New Credit Cards and Sign Up Bonuses

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Good afternoon everyone, I hope your week is going well.  I recently completed the minimum spending requirement for 4 different credit cards (My October 2020 Credit Card App-O-Rama Results) and wanted to share my best practices for new credit cards and sign up bonuses.  I currently have 32 credit and charge cards open and have had 90 other cards since I started travel hacking in 2011.  To the best of my knowledge, I have never missed a credit card sign up bonus by not completing the minimum spending requirement.  Feel free to use all, some, or none of my best practices with your next credit card.  For this post, I am going to use a fictitious credit card as an example to illustrate some of the pitfalls to avoid.

ABC Credit Card has a sign up bonus of 50,000 points after spending $3,000 in 3 months with a $95 annual fee.  You apply for the credit card on January 1 and your application is pending.  Your application gets approved on January 5 and your new credit card arrives on January 15.  You activate your new credit card on January 18.

Credit Card Tidying and Organization

When your new credit card arrives, I recommend activating it immediately.  Then set up online access to view and track your purchases.  If you get paid monthly, you may want to change the bill due date to a date that is more convenient for you (unfortunately, this may not be possible until after the first statement closes).  For simplicity, I like to have all my credit card statements close around the same date, so that I do not need to remember several different credit card due dates or statement closing dates.

If you are concerned about accidentally making a cash advance purchase, call the credit card company and ask to lower your cash advance limit to $0.  If you were approved with a small credit limit and have other credit cards from the same credit card company, ask if they can transfer some of your credit limit over to your new credit card.  If you want to receive your statements electronically, sign up for electronic statements (I will explain why below). Continue reading →

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Strange Things About my New Barclays Wyndham Rewards Earner Business Credit Card

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Good morning everyone, I hope your week is going well.  A few days ago, I wrote Barclays Wyndham Rewards Earner Business Credit Card Application & Reconsideration Process.  In that post, I wrote about my application, reconsideration, and approval process to get the new Barclays Wyndham Rewards Earner Business Credit Card.  Long story short, I had to send physical copies of my driver’s license, social security card, and a utility bill in my name to Barclays to verify my identity (even though I am an existing Barclays credit card holder).  That was just the first of many strange things related to this credit card.  In this post, I will go through some of the other strange things I noticed.  But first, here is the front and back of the credit card (nothing strange here).

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Barclays Wyndham Rewards Earner Business Credit Card Application & Reconsideration Process

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Good morning everyone.  Earlier today I wrote Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Credit Card Application Process & Reconsideration Phone Call.  In today’s post, I will write about the Barclays Wyndham Rewards Earner Business Credit Card, my application process, and the hoops I had to jump through to get approved via the reconsideration process.  First off, the Barclays Wyndham Earner Business is a relatively new credit card from Barclays but the credit card has some great features.  The sign up bonus is 45,000 Wyndham Rewards Points after spending $1,000 in 3 months.  You also get Wyndham Diamond Elite Status (great for matching to Caesar’s Diamond Elite Status), 10% rebate on redeemed points toward free nights, and 15,000 points every anniversary you keep your credit card, all for a $95 annual fee.  I was hoping for an instant approval on my credit card application, but Barclays had other plans for me.

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Why Do We Keep 16 No Annual Fee Credit Cards?

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Good afternoon everyone, I hope your weekend is off to a great start.  A few days ago, I wrote a post titled I Paid $4,588 in Credit Card Annual Fees in 2019 – Was it Worth it?  In that post, I shared the 21 credit cards that I plan on keeping and how I justify paying the annual fees on those credit cards.  I felt bad for the 16 no annual fee cards that Laura and I have and decided to write a post about them too.  Roughly half of the no annual fee credit cards were downgraded / converted from a credit card with an annual fee.  Besides the rewards that some of the no annual fee credit cards provide, keeping no annual fee credit cards open long term is good for your credit score.  It improves the length of credit history (average age of accounts), which represents 15% of your total credit score.  It also helps with the amounts owed (your credit utilization ratio), which represents 30% of your total credit score.  Lastly, it helps with payment history (paying your credit card bills on time), which represents 35% of your total credit score.  For more info, check out this Doctor of Credit page.

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Image source: https://www.kiplinger.com/article/credit/T017-C000-S002-how-your-credit-score-is-calculated.html

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