Tag Archives: Credit Cards

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Reminder: Denver / Front Reminder: Range Travel Hackers Meetup on Saturday, July 28

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Good afternoon everyone.  I will be in Denver this weekend and organized an event with the Front Range Travel Hackers Meetup group.  I have been to a few of these Meetup events and they are always very fun and informative.  If you are in the Denver / Front Range area, please join us this weekend.  Please RSVP to the Meetup event so the organizers can tell the restaurant how many people to expect.  I’m looking forward to drinking some good beers, seeing some familiar faces, and meeting new travel hackers.  Cheers!

  • Where: Kokopelli Beer Company, 8931 N Harlan St, Westminster, CO 80031 (Google Maps)
  • When: Saturday, July 28, 2018 from 12:30 – 3pm

a group of people sitting around a table

If you have any questions about the Meetup, please leave a comment below.  Have a great day everyone!

a close-up of a credit card

A Globalist’s Thoughts on the New Chase World of Hyatt Credit Card

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Is the new Chase World of Hyatt Credit Card the fantastic, Hyatt hit-it-out-of-the-ballpark card it’s being touted as? Is it worth the hype? For being able to reach elite status through spend, perhaps. Is it worth both having and using? Well, the signup bonus is indeed generous. As a Hyatt Globalist who has already qualified for Globalist again next year, and as a holder of the Chase Hyatt credit card for many years, I’ve been thinking about the pros and cons of the newest version of this card. Yes, there are cons, too. Continue reading →

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Do This Now: Change Default Payment Setting in Venmo to Private

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Good afternoon everyone.  Venmo just updated their app and made privacy a key component of the app.  Doctor of Credit also shared this article from a researcher who analyzed 18 million Venmo users from last year to see who users were paying and what they were paying for.  The main conclusion from the researcher was that most users’ transaction details (except dollar amounts) were publicly available and that most users had no idea that they could make their transactions private.  You might think that sharing your Venmo transaction details publicly is no big deal, “I have nothing to hide.”  But what if you went to the same bar every Thursday evening and paid you friend for “Drinks at Bar123.”  If you had a stalker, they could easily figure out your habits and find you.  That might be an extreme example, but it is possible.

In today’s post, I will show you how to easily change your default payment settings to private.  You can also retroactively change your past payments to private.  As an example, when I sign into my Venmo app, I can click on the globe icon and it will show me all public payments in real time from around the world.  I do not know any of these people, but yet, I can see who they are paying and what they are paying for.  Let’s go through the Privacy on Venmo screens and learn about the different privacy setting levels.

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a credit card with numbers and symbols

Synchrony Bank Cathay Pacific Credit Card Churning 12 Month Language

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Good morning everyone, happy Friday.  I don’t know about you, but I am exhausted.  This (Prime) week has been draining and I am thankful that we made it to the weekend.  I just have a quick post to share about the Synchrony Bank Cathay Pacific Credit Card.  I got this credit card on August 25, 2017 and knew the $95 annual fee was coming right around the corner.  Usually, I like to wait for the annual fee to post, see if I can talk the rep out of charging me for the annual fee or downgrade to a no annual fee card.  I had a bad experience recently where I tried to do that with the TD Bank Aeroplan Credit Card and it was a real headache. Let me explain…

I called TD Bank the day after my statement closed that showed the annual fee.  I asked the rep if she could waive the annual fee (not possible), then I asked if she could downgrade my card to a no annual fee version (also not possible), so I decided to close the card.  I thought all was good until a month later, I received a statement in the mail showing the $95 annual fee, a $35 late payment fee, and a $1.50 interest charge.  Furious, I called TD Bank and told the rep that I closed the card so I should not (and I would not) pay the annual fee and other fees.  She said that since I called after the annual fee posted, she could not reverse the charge.  I complained that that was not correct.  She put me on hold for a few minutes, talked to her supervisor, and then said that all charges were taken care of and no payment was necessary.  Dealing with TD Bank left a bad taste in my mouth and I didn’t want to go through a similar experience with Synchrony Bank, so I decided to close the card before the annual fee posted.  The following day, I received this email from Synchrony Bank with a link to a letter.  What the letter said interested me…

a screenshot of a email

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Chicago Seminars Travel Conference Tickets Now on Sale (October 19-21)

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Good evening everyone, I hope your Amazon Prime Day shopping is going well.  A few hours ago, tickets for Chicago Seminars went on sale.  They are $111 for 2.5 full days of travel advice, networking, drinking, more networking, more drinking, and maybe some sleep too.  I love going to Chicago Seminars and I am so excited to go back.  I just bought my ticket and airfare for the event.  There are limited seats available, but when I purchased my ticket at around 5:30pm PT, there were 472 tickets available.

a screenshot of a register

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