Tag Archives: Gift Cards

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Tonei’s 2016 Year in Review: A Record-Breaking Year of Travel and Reselling

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Buenas tardes from Cancun! I wanted to tell you all a little bit about how my last year went. In 2016, I blew past my previous record for miles traveled, went all in on gift card reselling, moved to Mexico, and picked up a handful of credit cards and bank signup bonuses along the way.

Travel

I flew just over 197,000 miles last year, a significant increase from my previous record of 125,000 miles in 2015. The change was mostly because I did a lot more flying across oceans – my 2015 trips were entirely in the Americas, but I spent a lot more time in Europe and Asia in 2016.

Tonei's 2016 flight map, courtesy of openflights.org

Tonei’s 2016 flight map, courtesy of openflights.org

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Lowe’s $10 Off $50 AMEX Offer = $200 Amazon Gift Card for $160

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Good evening everyone, I hope you are all having a great holiday season.  Tomorrow afternoon, I will fly from LGB (Long Beach) to JFK (New York City) to spend New Year’s in New York City.  But before I start packing all my warmest winter clothes, I braved the low 60 degree weather in SoCal to visit my local Lowe’s.  I had the below Lowe’s AMEX Offer ($10 off $50) added to 4 of my AMEX cards and I still needed to do some gift card shopping.  If you have this AMEX Offer linked to your cards and have not met the spending requirement, you only have a few days left since the offer ends on December 31, 2016.  As long as the charge is authorized on/by 12/31, you will receive the statement credit.

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I ended up buying a $200 Amazon Gift Card and doing a split tender at the register to charge $50 to all 4 AMEX cards.

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New Writer Q&A with Tonei

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Good morning everyone, I hope your Sunday is going well so far.  Here is the second Q&A post with my new writer Tonei.  If you missed the first Q&A with Whitney, I recommend checking that out too.  It seems like I have known Tonei for a long time, even though we only met last year.  We tend to have similar travel styles and approaches to travel hacking.  I always enjoy listening to Tonei’s travel stories, adventures, and misadventures.  Tonei is very resilient when things go wrong and tries to put a positive spin on things, just like I do.  Eric, myself, Dawn, and Tonei (pictured below) are co-organizers of the ever expanding SF Travel Hackers Meetup group (1,300 members and constantly growing).  Without further ado, take it away Tonei…

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Bay Area Travel Hackers co-organizers in our unofficial uniforms. (Tonei is on the far right)

  • Name:  Tonei Glavinic
  • Location:  Mexico City, Mexico
  • Preferred Airline or Alliance:  Alaska Airlines + its Global Partners
  • Preferred Hotel:  I love Starwood properties, but usually end up staying at IHG hotels since they have such great promotions.

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Southwest Airlines Gift Card Balance Checker Broken – Here is the Fix

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Good morning everyone, I hope you all had a great weekend.  I had a great weekend-long road trip with brother down to Salinas, then Pismo Beach to ride ATVs on sand dunes, then up to King City, then hiking at Pinnacles National Park, and then wandering around the Winchester Mystery House trying not to get lost.  Anyway, I recently purchased a few Southwest Airlines egift cards and I wanted to check their balances before adding them to my travel spreadsheet.  Like I’ve done many times before, I went to the Southwest Airlines website and clicked the “Southwest gift card” link in the footer.

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FTU Advanced Orange County (October 28-30) and Seattle (February 24-26)

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Good morning everyone, I hope your weekend is going well.  We are only 1 week away from FTU Advanced in Orange County (October 28-30).  FTU stands for Frequent Traveler University and is a travel conference with your favorite travel bloggers from Boarding Area and beyond.  I will be attending the conference, but I am not presenting.  I am flying down from SFO on Friday night after work, so I won’t be able to attend the Friday night happy hour (someone, please drink for me).  I am staying at home, not at the host hotel (The Westin South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa), but I will be at the conference all day Saturday and Sunday.  I will be wearing my classic Travel with Grant shirt (much to the chagrin of Devil’s Advocate).  If you see me, don’t be afraid to say hello :)

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