It is all she really wanted this time around. After all the years we have been using, applying for credit cards, flying, and playing with promotions in the travel hacking game, we have come to the conclusion at least one of us is going to change our mode of operation, and it will be Katybug.
This advice is not intended for newbies in the travel space, but for those with huge mileage balances already socked away to consider:
We have more miles and points now than we know what to do with. I personally think all signs point to a round of devaluations in the loyalty markets. I would rather hedge at least one of our bets and not load up further on miles and points I think will possibly soon lose value. Katy has a substantial amount of inquiries on her credit file and if no offers are really jumping out at us, she is going to slow down. I’ll still play aggressively with more card offers, but we’ve really got all we need for now.
Last month Katy applied for and was approved for the limited time 100K Amex Platinum card with $10K minimum spend. With recent changes in the feasibility of easily manufacturing spend and that big $10K number facing us, she applied only for the Chase Sapphire Preferred Mastercard version. This is a non affiliate offer that was available on the Mastercard.com website. The terms and conditions were the same as the more popular Visa version we all carry, with the first year fee of $95 waived, 40,000 points after a $3,000 spend in 3 months and double points on travel and dining. At present Katy does not have a Chase Sapphire Preferred Visa card, but holds the Ink Plus card associated with the blog business. She needs a personal card with Chase that does more for her than her United card. As of this writing her decision is still pending but we will gladly switch out the United card for her new Mastercard version of the Sapphire Preferred card. From everything I have read online, the Mastercard version is considered a different card than the Visa version and hence available for the 40K sign up bonus.
We know for a fact that she will use this card on a daily basis to increase her Ultimate Rewards balance and the 40K sign up bonus will come in handy for this December’s trip back to the Hyatt on Kauai.
In the next 90 days we will make the spend on these two recent additions to her card portfolio and at the same time the number of inquiries in the last two years will drop as the result of previous applications falling off her credit report. That is a good thing.
If there is a devaluation coming across the loyalty programs hopefully we can use these recent additions before it happens, and not just continue to build and build more than we need.
After all these years in the game I still believe that your credit is one of your most important assets.
And what the heck, if another monster offer shows up, she will be in play for another monster. From now on we’ll use two different strategies and still see the world at prices we can afford.
Deal of the Day
For today’s Deal of the Day American Airlines AAdvantage® has provided 2500 AAdvantage® miles for the best deals, fares, promotions, anything related to American Airlines, their oneworld partners or AAdvantage® partners. Add it to the comments section of this post or this afternoon’s Deal of the Day post by 11:59PM ET (with your first name, last initial, and home airport) to be eligible to win.
