Good afternoon everyone, happy Friday! I was working on my Buy Miles & Points Page and found 4 offers that are ending soon. Always check the math to make sure that buying miles & points makes sense for you. Do not buy miles & points speculatively unless you have a use in mind. With that said, here are 4 offers that end soon. Up first, IHG Hotels is offering up to a 75% bonus, depending on the number of IHG Rewards Club Points you purchase. This offer expires today – August 13.
Good afternoon everyone, happy Friday! I was working on my Buy Miles & Points Page and found 3 offers that are ending soon. Always check the math to make sure that buying miles & points makes sense for you. Do not buy miles & points speculatively unless you have a use in mind. With that said, here are 3 offers that end soon. Up first, IHG Hotels is offering up to a 75% bonus, depending on the number of IHG Rewards Club Points you purchase. This offer expires on August 13.
Good morning everyone, I hope your weekend is off to a great start. 8 years ago today (back on May 1, 2013), Travel with Grant was born! Even though I am not a full time blogger and writing this post from a secluded beach, I’m still very happy and grateful to still be writing and sharing my thoughts with my readers. Every year (when I remember), I like to write a birthday / blogiversary post about TWG. If you want to reminisce through the years, check out these old posts: Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, Year 4, Year 5, Year 6, and I forgot about year 7 during the Coronavirus Pandemic (oops).
Before I share my top 8 blogging moments, I wanted to share some advice I learned about blogging:
Without further ado, here are my top 8 travel & blogging moments (in chronological order):
May 1, 2013 – Travel with Grant is born. I was between jobs at the time and thought that having a blog would help me get a job. A few months later, I started working at Panasonic Avionics (in-flight entertainment and global Wifi provider), so maybe my plan worked out. I had never started a blog, so I brainstormed blog names and chose Travel with Grant over Grant’s Trips because when you type out the URL, it looked like www . grant strips . com and I didn’t want people to be dissapointed when they clicked the link. Looking back at the first few months of blogging is like looking at your work from kindergarten now that you are in college. Thankfully, my writing, logo, and blog layout improved over time. Continue reading
Good evening everyone. 2 years ago, I wrote Track Hotel Free Night Certificates & Credit Card Annual Fees with my Spreadsheet. In that post, I shared my strategy for keeping track of free night certificates. If you have several co-branded hotel credit cards (like the Chase World of Hyatt Credit Card or Chase IHG Rewards Premier Credit Card), you need to keep track of free night certificate expiration dates so you do not forget to use them before they expire or you run out of time to use them at a good property (the hotel is not going to remind you to use your free night certificate – they want you to pay the annual fee and forget to use your free night certificates). Here are the unused free night certificates I have, as of March 2021. I sorted the list by the expiration date of my free night certificates, so I know which free night certificates I need to focus on first.
The inspiration for this post came from a recent Miles to Memories post called Don’t Fall Into The Free Night Certificate Fuzzy Math Trap! In that post, Mark shared all the downsides of free night certificates, like short expiration dates, some certificates only work at certain hotel categories or on certain days, etc. I totally agree with all of those downsides, but I had the pleasure of redeeming 2 free night certificates today and wanted to share an upside I found with free night certificates.
Good morning everyone, happy Friday! After I published How Much Did I Pay in Credit Card Annual Fees in 2020?, several readers asked if I could share how much value I received from each credit card in 2020. Today’s post is also a sequel to my 2019 post (I Paid $4,588 in Credit Card Annual Fees in 2019 – Was it Worth it?). All 24 of these credit cards were opened before January 1, 2020, and no sign up bonus is included. For simplicity, I did not include the value of miles or points earned from credit card spend, since that is somewhat subjective (and most of the miles and points were not spent in 2020). I counted all credits, reimbursements, retention offers, and referral bonuses at dollar face value. For hotel free night certificates, I have several from 2020 that expire in 2021 and 2022, so I am using a standard value of $100 for each hotel free night certificate.
I went through all of my credit card statements and online accounts to see which Credit Card Benefits I used in 2020 and those values are summed up in the CCB $ column. If I received a retention offer, that is listed in the RO $ column. I listed the credit card annual fee in the AF $ column. Lastly, I used this formula to calculate the Profit or Loss (P / L column) for each credit card: CCB $ + RO $ – AF $ = P / L
I sorted the credit cards alphabetically and split them up into 3 smaller groups. Here are some thoughts from the first group:
| Credit Card Name | Credit Card Benefits | CCB $ | RO $ | AF $ | P / L |
| AMEX Business Platinum | $400 Dell credit; $198 airline reimbursement; $160 wireless phone credit; $158 shipping credit; $96 AMEX Offers for Dell & AT&T | $1,012 | $200 | $595 | $617 |
| AMEX Gold | $120 dining credit; $100 airline reimbursement; $60 AMEX Offer for Shop Small | $280 | $0 | $250 | $30 |
| AMEX Hilton Honors Aspire | $250 airline reimbursement; $250 resort credit (used at restaurants); 1 Free Night Certificate (expires 7/2/22) (worth $100) | $600 | $0 | $450 | $150 |
| AMEX Platinum Delta SkyMiles | Downgraded to no annual fee American Express Blue Delta SkyMiles Credit Card to avoid paying annual fee | $0 | $0 | $0 | |
| Bank of America Alaska Airlines (LT) | Alaska Airlines $99 Companion Fare expired in 2020 | $0 | $0 | $75 | -$75 |
| Capital One Venture Rewards (LT) | $100 referral bonus | $100 | $59 | $59 | $100 |