Tag Archives: US Bank

a woman holding her hands up with a man in front of him

Travel Challenge: Could you MS During the Week to Pay for a Weekend Trip?

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Updated at 9:30am PST on 1/31/2015: the winners of the contest have been chosen.  Scroll to the bottom of this post to see who won.

This is an idea that came to me a few weeks ago, but I never gave it much thought until writing my recent tell-all MS posts (Part 1: My Manufactured Spend and Redbird Loading Strategy and Part 2: My Manufactured Spend Strategy with PayPal, Chime, Meetups, Reselling, and More!).  If you assumed the miles, points, or cash back posted right away (rather than when the statement closed), could you MS during the week to pay for a weekend trip?

The Rules

To make things more realistic, let’s ignore credit card sign up bonuses and only focus on using the credit cards and prepaid cards you currently have today.  Timing is everything, so let’s assume today is the first of the month and all your monthly MS limits have been reset (Bluebird, Serve, Redbird, PayPal, etc.).  Your net out of pocket expenses should be $100 or less.

cash

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US Bank FlexPerks $24,000 Spend Bonus and PayPal Extras MasterCard 50,000 Point Annual Cap

FlexPerks Visa Signature Card

Good morning everyone, just a few quick credit card related pieces of information to pass on.  Back in October, I wrote about the US Bank and Visa Checkout promo.  It looks like the 1,000 bonus FlexPoints just posted to my account a few days ago.  If you signed up for the promo, you should see your bonus points post soon.  I also found out that I had spent over $24,000 on my US Bank FlexPerks Credit Card, which earned me 3,500 bonus FlexPoints.  Apparently, I can redeem 3,500 FlexPoints to pay for my $49 annual fee.  I plan on calling US Bank and asking them to waive the annual fee.  I didn’t spend $24,000 on their card to not have to pay the annual fee, that is ridiculous.  I will let you know how that call goes in a few months.

FlexPoints Visa Savings Edge and $24,000 Spent

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Random News Part 3: Club Carlson 40,000 Anniversary Points, Discover It Cash Back, and American Express Platinum Travel Credit

Club-Carlson-Cards

Random News Part 3: Club Carlson 40,000 Anniversary Points, Discover It Cash Back, and American Express Platinum Travel Credit

Good evening everyone, here is part 3 of my Random News (part 1 and part 2).  Two months ago, I received the following email from US Bank regarding my Club Carlson Personal Credit Card.  After waiting two months, I am glad to report that my 40,000 bonus Club Carlson points have posted to my Club Carlson account.

Club Carlson Anniversary Bonus

My statement closed last night and the 40,000 bonus points show up on my statement.

US Bank Club Carlson Renewal Bonus 40,000 Points

The 40,000 bonus points were deposited immediately into my Club Carlson account and are ready to be spent.

40,000 Club Carlson Bonus Points

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Guest Post: 5 Card App-O-Rama (Diners Club, Club Carlson, US Airways, Southwest Airlines Plus, and Citizens Bank)

Which Credit Card

Guest Post: 5 Card App-O-Rama (Diners Club, Club Carlson, US Airways, Southwest Airlines Plus, and Citizens Bank)

Good morning everyone, I hope you are having a great holiday season with your friends and family members.  Today, I have a guest post from my friend Nigel, where he is sharing his experience with his recent App-O-Rama.  Take it away Nigel…

In brief, an App-O-Rama (AOR) is a strategy in the miles/points community where an individual applies for multiple credit cards within a short period of time to maximize their odds of getting approved for multiple credit cards.  For me, this typically involves submitting four or more applications within seconds of each other in the hope that the banks don’t denied me for “too many inquires.”

With my Experian inquires starting to pile up from prior AORs, I wanted to limit this AOR to two Experian hits.  After doing some research on the Credit Boards credit pull database (link), I discovered that applications for the Diners Club Elite Credit Card have reliably resulted in a Transunion inquiry.  I was quite excited at the news, except there was one problem…

Diners Club Application Unavailable

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US Bank FlexPoints to the Rescue when Throw Away / Hidden City Tickets Backfire

FlexPerks Visa Signature Card

US Bank FlexPoints to the Rescue when Throw Away / Hidden City Tickets Backfire

The purpose of this post is not to debate the moral or ethical issues behind throw away / hidden city tickets, but rather to share my friend’s costly story.  For those unfamiliar with throw away / hidden city tickets, the concept is pretty easy to understand:

  • Flights from City A to City B cost $200.
  • Flights from City A to City C with a connection in City B only cost $100.
  • Purchase a ticket from City A to City C and leave the airport in City B.
  • Gary @ View from the Wing has a great post regarding the pitfalls of throw away / hidden city tickets.

Airlines obviously frown upon this technique (similar to my card counting analogy from yesterday) and discourage passengers from booking throw away / hidden city tickets.  I unintentionally used this technique when I was coming home from Dublin with my family a few years back.  The outbound route was LAX-BOS-DUB and the inbound route was DUB-ORD-LAX on United / Aer Lingus.  I wanted to visit my grandparents in Atlanta, so instead of flying the last segment (ORD-LAX) with my family, I bought a ticket to ATL on Delta.  I believe this is technically considered throw away / hidden city ticketing, but I didn’t care.  It would have cost more money to change my United ticket from ORD-LAX to ORD-ATL than it cost to buy a separate Delta ticket from ORD-ATL.  There is a lot of gray area, as you can probably tell.

ORD-LAX or ORD-ATL

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