Tag Archives: US Bank

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My Wild & Crazy 2023 Airline, Hotel & Credit Card Predictions

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Good morning everyone, I hope you had a great New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day! One of my yearly traditions is to write my predictions for the coming year and you can check out how I did in 2022 here: Let’s Review my 2022 Airline, Hotel & Credit Card Predictions.  I plan on doing a mid-year review in July to see if I am on track, but without further ado, here are my predictions for 2023…

My 2023 Airline Predictions

  • American Airlines or Alaska Airlines will be added as a transfer partner from a transferable points currency.
  • British Airways will change their award chart to calculate the number of Avios needed on a combined distance flown, not on a segment by segment basis.
  • Delta Airlines or United Airlines will introduce a “Miles and Cash” payment option for award tickets (pay 10,000 miles or pay 8,000 miles + $40).
  • Southwest Airlines will work very hard to make up for their December 2022 travel nightmare by offering a transfer bonus from Chase and spending offers on their credit cards in January 2023.

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How Much Money Did I Make from Bank Account Bonuses in 2022?

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Good evening everyone, happy New Year’s Eve!  Doctor of Credit has a Best Bank Account Bonuses page that he keeps up to date with the best offers each month.  In that master post, he links to individual bank account bonuses with helpful information regarding the bonus details, how to avoid monthly fees, when to close the account, how often you can open a new account, and much more.  For the last 8 years, I have been opening new checking accounts, savings accounts, brokerage accounts, and cash management accounts for the new member bonuses.  At the end of each year, I share my results on the blog.  Over the last 8 years, I have made over $20,000 in bank account bonuses.  You will receive 1099-INT tax forms every year, so you have to pay taxes on the bank account bonuses, but sometimes you can fund the opening deposit with a credit card and earn miles, points, or cash back.  If you are lucky, you can meet a minimum spending requirement by funding a new checking account or reach a high spending target to earn more rewards.  Here are my results from the last 8 years with links to corresponding yearly summaries:

Drum roll please… Here are the 18 new accounts I opened in 2022 that paid out $4,485 in bonuses:

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Let’s Review my 2022 Airline, Hotel & Credit Card Predictions

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Good afternoon everyone, happy New Year’s Eve!  Since today is the last day of the year, I wanted to review My Wild and Crazy 2022 Airline, Hotel & Credit Card Predictions.  6 months ago, I wrote My 2022 Midyear Review of Airline, Hotel & Credit Card Predictions where I shared my 4 out of 26 correct predictions.  Hopefully I was able to pick up a few more correct predictions in the second half of the year.  Without further ado, here are my predictions and the results…

My 2022 Airline Predictions (2 / 7)

  • Alaska Airlines or Southwest Airlines will bring back their “convert travel funds to airline miles” feature. – I still cannot believe this feature exists but Alaska and Southwest are not using it.  Maybe we will see this feature again in 2023.
  • American Airlines will return as a Citi ThankYou Points airline transfer partner. – I still cannot believe that Citi can’t get American Airlines to come back to the ThankYou Points portal, not even for a short trial period.  I’m hopeful this will happen in 2023.
  • Avianca will give Turkish Airlines a run for their money for domestic Star Alliance awards. – No, I don’t think this happened in 2022.
  • British Airways will let you use Avios to pay the taxes, fees, and fuel surcharge portion of award tickets. – Yes, you can pay a large portion of taxes / fees / fuel surcharges with British Airways Avios (link).
  • Delta Airlines, Southwest Airlines, or United Airlines will introduce a “Miles and Cash” payment option for award tickets (pay 10,000 miles or pay 8,000 miles + $40). – No, I don’t think these airlines introduced this feature in 2022.
  • JetBlue will partner with another US airline for award bookings. – Yes, you can book JetBlue flights using American Airlines miles (link).
  • United Airlines will be a transfer partner with Brex, Citi, or American Express. – Wrong! I should have guessed united Airlines would partner with Bilt Rewards.

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I Paid $4,043 in Credit Card Annual Fees in 2022 – Was it Worth it?

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Good evening everyone, I hope your week is going well.  With the end of the year right around the corner, I decided to publish my 2022 version of credit card annual fees I paid this year.  For comparison, here are my previous credit card annual fee posts:

For this year’s post, I decided to break up the list of credit cards into 5 sections:

  • Annual fees paid on new credit cards with sign up bonuses
  • Annual fees paid on credit cards that received retention offers
  • Annual fees on credit cards that have been upgraded / downgraded / product changed
  • Annual fees on credit cards that I closed
  • All other credit cards

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Product Change US Bank Credit Card to Redeem Rewards Below Minimum Redemption Threshold (Altitude Go to Cash Plus)

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Good afternoon everyone, happy Labor Day Weekend!  This post may not be very exciting, but the principles behind this post are useful.  Let me explain…

When US Bank converted my US Bank Radisson Rewards Credit Card into the US Bank Altitude Go Credit Card, I used it for a few weeks before deciding that I wanted to product change to another US Bank Cash+ Credit Card (for the 5% cash back categories).  At the time, I had 31 points on my Altitude Go, so if I had decided to close my credit card instead, I would have lost those 31 points (worth 31 cents).  But instead, by product changing from one card to another, US Bank converted my unredeemed rewards into statement credit (31 points = 31 cents).

This is noteworthy because of the minimum redemption threshold normally required for the Altitude Go: “U.S. Bank points are worth a penny each when redeemed for options like cash back, travel, gift cards or merchandise, although minimum redemption requirements apply. (You need at least 2,500 points for cash back or gift cards; 1,000 points for travel or merchandise.)”  US Bank has a similar minimum redemption threshold on the Cash Plus that went into effect on June 1, 2021.

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