That said, the redemption side of things can occasionally be frustrating and time consuming, especially on international trips or especially complex itineraries.   We’re all busy with our lives, family and jobs and sometimes we can use a little help with booking these awards, which is when we think it is very reasonable to hire an award booking service.

The thing is, they are normally prohibitively expensive which defeats the purpose of “free travel,” right?

As he’ll explain below, Alexi did a lot of research and personally used Dominik Żmuda from the BoundlessMiles Award Booking Service and we can’t recommend him highly enough.

So read Alexi’s case-study below and when you find yourself short on time when it comes time to redeem, let an expert like Dominik Żmuda take over and remove all the stress from the process

Alexi’s Case for Using an Award Booking Service

One of the best things about running this website with Brad is that we have extremely complementary skill sets.

Now I’m not gonna toot my own horn, but I will call out a few of Brad’s tremendous strengths. He’s detail oriented, has uncanny business sense, and is terrific at strategic planning.

And when we put together the Travel Miles 101 course curriculum, it became clear that we had very different areas of interest.

Which is all sort of a long way of saying that I have never really enjoyed spending my miles as much as I have enjoyed earning them.  Because of this personality quirk I often waited a little bit too long to book my trips, and didn’t get the maximum value out of my earned miles.

So the question was out there, what could I do (in light of my obvious laziness) to make better use of my miles?

And I essentially could see only two solutions:

A. I could force myself to study the ins and outs of award booking and to book my trips further in advance.

or

B.  I could outsource the award booking to an expert.

And this post is really all about Option B.

I ended up reaching out to numerous awards booking services and offered to market their business if they came up with excellent deals for the Travel Miles 101 community.

And boy did they step up.

We were offered a number of amazing deals but one stood head and shoulders above the rest. And that was from Dominik Żmuda of BoundlessMiles.

And in order to check out the experience I took a test drive of his services.  I charged him with the following assignment:

“Here is my information for the trip:

4 people traveling on points from Portland, OR to Sapporo, Japan on 7/12.  We will travel from Sapporo to KIX on 7/17.  Then KIX back to PDX around 7/29 to 8/2.  I will purchase my own seat separately with cash as I am attending an educational conference.

Business or first seats are great, but not crucial.

Here are our miles totals.

(all displayed in me/wife format.)

Ultimate Rewards:  226,891 / 180,210
Amex MR:  215,935 / 0
SPG:  91,000/  724
Citi ThankYou: 62,571 / 0
Alaska: 84,761/  42,505
American: 145,197 / 75,520
United: 53,656 / 36,838
BA:  0 / 26,050
Virgin Atlantic: 13,842 / 0

I’d love to use my American miles before the deval…

-Alexi ”

A few emails later and I am to happy report that the process was amazingly smooth and the results were astounding.

We ended up with four first-class tickets from Portland to Tokyo then to Sapporo and Osaka, Japan and back to Portland.

Outbound was on United and the return was on American Airlines.  The Sapporo to Osaka flight was booked using British Airways Avios.

Dominik Żmuda took care of all the booking and this amazing first class trip for four ended up costing us a total of 600,000 miles (a combination of American, United, British Airways, Chase Ultimate Rewards, and Starpoints) and $382.64 including Dominik’s fee, all taxes and surcharges!

Since I am increasingly finding that there are not enough hours in my day to get everything done, paying to book a trip like this for only $160 extra was a total no-brainer.

If you have a trip coming up and want a bit of help booking it for a more than reasonable price, I cannot recommend Dominik Żmuda’s service at BoundlessMiles highly enough.

BoundlessMiles can be reached here:

https://boundlessmiles.com

The post Save Time and Money with an Award Booking Service appeared first on Travel Miles 101.

Another benefit is that you can combine these points with one family member.

Chase Ultimate Rewards Redemption Options

There are 3 options to redeem Chase Ultimate Rewards points

These are in increasing order of potential value.

1. Redeem for cash or statement credit at a value of 1 cent per point. This means 50,000 points can be traded in for $500 in actual cash. While this is a terrible redemption generally, it is still real cash in your pocket, which is not insignificant.
2. Book your travel within the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal at a value of 1.25 cents per point (or 1.5 cents per point if you have the Chase Sapphire Reserve). So 50,000 points equals $625 of travel booked through the UR portal. While this is not an especially good redemption rate, the flexibility is significant and depending on your travel needs this is a plausible option.
3. Transfer your Chase UR points to one of their 13 transfer partners. These points are actually sent, with just a few clicks of the mouse, from your Chase UR account to your account at one (or more) of the airline and hotel transfer partners.

You can transfer them in any multiple of 1,000 points and in most cases these transfers occur instantly.

The flexibility this affords is significant as you can retain these points in your Chase account until the moment you need to redeem them; you find the award availability, transfer your points, hit refresh in your rewards account and they will be there to use for your booking.

Partner Options:

Our favorite transfer partners are: British Airways, United, Southwest and Hyatt

Other options: Jetblue, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Flying Blue (Air France & KLM), IHG, Marriott, Virgin Atlantic, Singapore Airlines and Emirates.

This redemption option #3 is the most potentially lucrative, but with that upside comes the limitations of award availability at the airlines just like with traditional frequent flyer miles (which they become upon transfer).

How to Redeem and Transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards Points

The post Chase Ultimate Rewards Redemption Options appeared first on Travel Miles 101.

How to Search for Hotel Award Availability

We use these three websites for many of our hotel award bookings; once you get the hang of searching for hotel award availability it really is pretty straightforward!

1. How to Search for an Award Night with Marriott
2. How to Search for an Award Stay with Hyatt
3. How to Search for an Award Night with Hilton

One of our favorite tools to find award availability is Hotel Hustle. This allows you to set free alerts on specific dates for hotels you are interested in, so when availability opens, you get an email right to your inbox!

Action Step:

1. Go to each of these websites and run some tests for future award bookings in cities you hope to visit.

The post How to Search for Hotel Award Availability appeared first on Travel Miles 101.

How to Use Hotel Rewards

This post will introduce some of the main concepts and programs and the next lesson will show you how to search for award availability at each hotel.

Airline award seats are the true constraint in the travel rewards world because they are so limited at the Saver Level, and that’s why our entire focus thus far has been on planning a strategy for earning and maximizing airline miles.

Lodging is also far more flexible than air travel because in addition to the options of choosing between hotels on the traditional “Star” scale you have alternatives such as couch surfing, hostels, camping, staying with friends, etc.

Because of this, people value hotel nights differently based on what they otherwise would have spent in cash and it’s hard to pin down a true “value” (or opportunity cost) for these award nights. Except for the rare few who would pay cash for business or first class, a flight is a flight, and you would have to spend that money to fly anyway. There’s objective value there.

That all said, you can easily save a whole lot of money on your future travel by earning hotel rewards points and we want to give you an overview of a few of our favorite programs and reasons why hotel award nights are so easy to book.

Why are hotel rooms so easy to book with points?

The major hotel chains have a policy where if they have any “standard” rooms remaining to be booked for a cash stay, you CAN use your points to book that room.

This is a huge benefit, because if you consider a hypothetical 300-room hotel, a significant portion of those rooms are “standard” (essentially anything that doesn’t have a label like “deluxe”, “upgraded”, “suite”, etc.) and the hotel is rarely at full occupancy so nearly every night each year will have availability up until the very day of the stay.

To add further to the flexibility that affords you, the major hotel chains often have multiple hotels in each city, so if the hotel you want happens to be booked, there are usually other options.

Our favorite tool to find hotel rooms to book with points is Award Mapper:

http://www.awardmapper.com/

The plentiful hotel award availability benefits you with the timing of your point accumulation strategy for specific trips as well:

In most cases you will book your award flights 6-11 months prior to the trip and at that point you can start your hotel point strategy based on the hotel options in the specific cities you are visiting.

This just-in-time strategy is possible because you can book these hotel award nights often until the last moment and there are no “close in booking fees” like you’ll see on some airline award tickets if you book within 21 days or so.

Alternatively, most hotels booked with points allow you to cancel up to 24 hours before and will give you a full points refund. Thus you can book and then change your reservation if you need to.

Lots of flexibility!

Our Favorite Hotel Rewards Programs:

Our favorite by far:

• Hyatt: Park Hyatt, Andaz, Grand Hyatt, Hyatt Regency, Hyatt, Hyatt Place, Hyatt House

The contenders:

• Radisson: Radisson, Radisson Blu, Country Inn and Suites, Park Inn, Park Plaza
• Marriott: All Marriott brands plus former Starwood brands: Aloft, Element, Four Points, Le Meridien, Sheraton, St. Regis, The Luxury Collection, Westin, W Hotels
• IHG: Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, Candlewood Suites, InterContinental, Staybridge Suites and more.
• Hilton: Hilton, Hilton Garden Inn, Hampton Inn, DoubleTree, Embassy Suites, Conrad, Homewood Suites, Waldorf Astoria and more.

Hyatt has the best award chart by far: you can find their Category 1 and 2 hotels for 5,000 and 8,000 points per night respectively (even Cat 3 and 4 only cost 12k and 15k per night respectively!).  And these Cat 1 and 2 hotels are often Hyatt House and Hyatt Place hotels with free breakfast!  The downside is their hotel footprint is significantly smaller than the major chains like Hilton and Marriott, so you won’t find a Hyatt in every city you’re visiting.

The “contenders” all have significant numbers of hotels, so you’ll be able to use your points as you travel across the world.  But their award charts, especially at Marriott and Hilton, leave you spending 30,000+ points per night for an average hotel room.

That said, their currencies are easy to amass significant quantities of, so maybe it all evens out eventually.

But if you’re looking to put your regular spending on a card and have a Hyatt credit card or a Chase Ultimate Rewards-earning card, you can get a nice Category 1 Hyatt for only 5,000 points, which is really great value.

A final introductory point to make on hotel bookings:

You can use your fixed value credit cards to pay for your lodging, so this is yet another way to save money on this aspect of the trip.

These fixed value cards are of particular importance to those who can find great deals on cash bookings, or who might normally book inexpensive lodging options such as Airbnb or hostels. Just pay for the lodging with your fixed value card and you can then wipe out the expense with your ‘miles’ after the fact.

The post Introduction to Hotel Rewards appeared first on Travel Miles 101.

Sweet spots:  You hear the term mentioned often in the travel rewards world, but what exactly are they and what makes them so “sweet”?  A sweet spot is generally where you use a feature/quirk from one airline’s award chart to fly on their partner airline for fewer miles than normal.  Like many good things in life, sweet spots don’t last forever, so here are the current sweet spots that we love, in no particular order:

AA Country Based Sweet Spots

With your AA miles, you can book cheap award flights on Oneworld partners within their home countries.  For example, Finnair is a Oneworld partner from Finland and you can use your AA miles to book 10K one way awards within Finland.

United Distance Based Sweet Spots

There’s some sweet spots within the United MileagePlus program that you should be aware about and are extremely useful.  Many times when you travel to a country, you don’t just stay in one city.  Rather you may hop from one city to another.  With United you can book some pretty cheap one way flights within a country or region.  For instance, 5K one-way flights in Japan?

Sweet Spots Across Different Programs

Here’s a handful of sweet spots that could be of interest to you.  Some of the “lesser known” mileage programs offer some great deals.  One that could appeal to many is this sweet spot to Europe using Lufthansa’s Miles & More program.  Did you know that you could book round trip flights from select cities in Europe to select American cities for 55K?

British Airways Avios Sweet Spots

The British Airways Avios program and the Iberia Avios program are very similar.  They’re practically cousins.  The BA Avios program is also distance based so short haul flights are where this program really shines.  In the training guide we showed you how to search for award space and book your flights with Avios.  Here’s a list of best uses that you should definitely check out.

Alaska Airlines Miles To India

Getting to India on points and miles is pretty tough.  Cash prices are usually pretty expensive and award routes are hard to find.  There is a great way to get there using miles and it also involves flying First Class.  With Alaska’s partnership with Japan Airlines, you can get to India in luxury AND include a stopover in Tokyo for only 70K!

Other International Sweet Spots

These mostly involve premium cabins, but they provide a great bang for your points and miles.  They provide tremendous value for your hard earned miles and allow for the opportunity to experience some premium cabins that many of us wouldn’t be able to otherwise.  One great example of this is flying Royal Air Maroc in business class one way to Casablanca (CMN) for 44K Etihad miles!

Conclusion

There are numerous ways to get immense value out of your points and miles.  Whether it’s on a domestic economy flight or a first class flight to Asia, there are ways to not only save money, but save points as well.  The opportunities that points & miles can provide are endless and all it takes is time and patience to find the desired routes for your next vacation.  Which of these sweet spots appeals to you?

The post The Top Sweet Spots in Travel Rewards appeared first on Travel Miles 101.

This is especially true if you can fly these 2 airlines in the United States:

• American Airlines
• Alaska Airlines

What Alliance Does British Airways Belong In

You may have heard of airline alliances such as Star Alliance and Sky Team, but what are they?  An airline alliance is a group of airlines that team up to provide routes to consumers around the world, and the consumer can earn benefits from their preferred airline while flying on a partner airline.  For example, American Airlines doesn’t fly into Colombo, Sri Lanka, but Sri Lankan Airlines does.  Sri Lankan Airlines is part of the same airline alliance as American Airlines.  An American Airlines loyalist can earn some of the same benefits from American Airlines on Sri Lankan Airlines and vice versa.  The alliance name is Oneworld, which is the one that British Airways belongs to also.

So how do airline alliances affect our hobby?  Well in this example, you can redeem British Airways miles on an American Airlines flight since they are in the same alliance.  Not only that, but you can redeem British Airways miles with their partner airlines too, such as Alaska Airlines and Aer Lingus.  These two airlines are not (yet!) part of the Oneworld alliance, but since they partner with British Airways, then you can redeem miles with them.  This is where the British Airways program becomes extremely useful for everyone, especially if you don’t fly on British Airways.

The British Airways Award Chart

Below you’ll find a British Airways miles chart we created to help you determine the price for your award flight in miles.  Keep in mind that for these sweet spots, your flights must be direct flights since British Airways will price each flight segment individually on your award flight.  Another thing to know is that Zone 1 awards are not available to, from or within the US.  Don’t let that scare you though, there is a lot of value to be found from this program:

So how do you read the chart above?  The price for your flight segment is based on the geographical distance between where you are departing from and your destination.  So, let’s say you want to fly within the US.  That means that Zone 1 won’t apply since flights are in the US.  If the distance of your flight is between 1-1,151 miles, then you would pay 7,500 Avios for your one-way flight.

If you plan to fly a short route in Europe, then you can utilize Zone 1.  If you find a short flight, between 1-650 miles, then your off-peak price for that flight would only be 4,000 Avios.  That’s amazing!  Now you may be wondering how you find out the distance of your flights.  In the next section we’ll discuss a couple of tools to help you prepare for an Avios award booking.

Great Circle Mapper & Wandr.me

So now that you understand how the British Airways mileage chart works, let’s see how to determine the distance of the flight you’re wanting to search for.  There are two great tools that you can use to help you find the distance of your flight, which will allow you to figure out the price of a potential award flight.

The first tool is the Great Circle Mapper.  This provides you with the exact distance between two airports and shows the route on the map.  To further illustrate how the Great Circle Mapper works, let’s take a look at an example.  Let’s assume we want to find the distance between Dallas and Mexico City.  Here are the steps.

Once you’re on the Great Circle Mapper Page, enter in your route on the search box.  In this case it’s DFW-MEX.  Once you enter your route, click on “Map”

On the next screen, you’ll see your search results.  Notice how the map between the two airports is displayed.  At the bottom you’ll also notice the total miles for this segment.  In this case it’s 935 miles

So with that information, you can view the British Airways miles chart to see how much your flight would cost.  Again, since this flight originates in the US, it doesn’t qualify for Zone 1 pricing.  As mentioned previously though, since it is under 1,151 miles, it would price out at 7,500 Avios!

The next tool that I find super useful is the Wandr.me Avios Calculator.  It’ll provide you the Avios price for the routes that you search.  Another feature that I like is that it’ll allow you to see the direct routes and their Avios pricing from the airport of your choosing.  Let’s take a look at how to do this.

Once you’re on the Avios Calculator page, enter in the route information.  After that click “Search!”  In this example, we’ll show you the same DFW to MEX route.

On this screen, you’ll see all the available routes from Dallas to Mexico City and their prices in Avios.  As mentioned previously, for this to be a sweet spot you need to focus on the direct routes as British Airways prices each segment of your award flight.  Notice the first row of the search results.  This direct flight shows the price of 7500 Avios.

If you’re only interested in seeing the nonstop routes, click on the link that says “Search nonstop routes on a map”

After clicking on “Search nonstop routes on a map”, you’ll come to this screen which looks a little intimidating at first.  In the search field at the top, you can enter in an airport that you want to search.  In this example we will search for Dallas (DFW).  Then click “Go!”

Your search results will show all of the direct flights from the airport entered, in this example it was Dallas, and color code them according to their price in Avios.  As you can see, there are several flights that would price at 7,500, 10,000 and a couple priced at 12,500 Avios.

If you want to zoom in on a particular part of the map, you can zoom in by clicking on the “+” at the top right hand corner of the map.  Notice the numerous options at 7,500 Avios from Dallas!

If you want to look at a different part of the map, simply put your mouse on the map until the cursor turns into a small hand, then click and drag the map to the area you want to see.

As you can see, there are a lot of options that price out at 7,500 Avios out of Dallas.  This really gets your imagination going on what the possibilities are.  I encourage you to play around with the file and check on the airport that you want to fly out of to see what options you have out of there.  It’s very easy!

Looking For Award Space

Now that we know what certain routes should price at, let’s take a look at trying to find award space.  Finding award space isn’t difficult at all and this guide will help you to do so.  The British Airways website has a pretty good search function when looking for Oneworld alliance flights.  If you want to search other sites for award availability, you can check out American Airlines or Qantas as well.  This guide will show you how to search for Oneworld flights on British Airways.

The first step is to go to the British Airways website.

One you’re on the homepage, you must log in to your British Airways account.  Enter in your login credentials and click “Log in”.

Once you’ve logged in, hover over the Book tab then click on “Book a flight with Avios”

Next fill out your search information.  Enter in where you are flying out of, your destination, desired date and then click on “One way only”.  Since British Airways prices out each segment, we only want to look for one way flights.  Then click on “Get flights”

In this example we are searching for Dallas to Mexico City

Here are the search results.  Notice how there are several direct flights from DFW to MEX available.  One thing that is nice about the British Airways search tool is that it tells you how many award seats are available.  Each of these routes have at least 7 award seats available in economy, which is excellent for a large group!  Another thing to notice is that these are not flights on British Airways metal, rather they are on American Airlines.  That’s what is great about this sweet spot.  You can get some cheaper award flights using British Airways Avios on some of their partners.

When you find the route you want, click on the seats you’re wanting to book

Here is the total price for your chosen award flight.  You’ll notice that the price in Avios is exactly what we saw when searching through the Wandr.me site.  7500 Avios and about $35 in fees is a great deal!  To proceed with the booking, click “Continue” and follow the prompts to finalize.

Just to compare, these same flights using American Airlines miles would cost you twice as many miles at their saver level.  Definitely keep the British Airways program in mind when booking your next short flights.

As you can see, you can find some sweet deals using British Airways Avios on short, direct flights on some of their Oneworld partners.  Ideally, you don’t want to use British Airways Avios on British Airways flights because of the exorbitant surcharges that are imposed on British Airways award flights.

Super Sweet Spot To Europe

On this guide you’ve learned how valuable British Airways Avios can be and how they can be used for incredible value, but the fun doesn’t stop there.  While these short direct routes are considered “sweet spots”, there’s an even better one that could interest you if you want a cheap flight to Europe.  It involves flying to Ireland!

As we’ve discussed throughout this guide, British Airways Avios is a distance based award program, so if your flight falls within certain zones, your award flight should price according to the chart based on availability.  The same principle applies to this sweet spot as well.

The shortest route from the US to Europe on a British Airways partner airline is from Boston to Dublin.  You can use your Avios points to fly on Aer Lingus for cheap depending on award availability, but how much would it cost?  Take a look at the screen shots below.  Notice how the distance between Boston and Dublin is 2,993 miles which would fall in Zone 4 on the award chart.  To confirm the price we can see on the Wandr.me site that it would cost 12,500 Avios.  That’s a steal for a flight to Europe!

This is an amazing sweet spot!  If you’re able to find award space to and from Europe on this route, the round trip award flight would only cost 25K Avios in economy.  With this being only a 6 ½ hour flight, economy is just fine in my opinion, especially at these saver levels.

Finding Award Space

Now that I have you salivating over this sweet spot, how do you go about finding award space for it?  This one is a little awkward since we wouldn’t search the traditional Oneworld websites.  To search this award, you would need to search through United website.  You only need to do this to see if there is award space on your specified dates.  These are the steps to search for award space on Aer Lingus.

First go to the United website.

Once you’re on the home page, enter in your search criteria.  Click on “One-way” then check the box that says “Book with miles”.   Enter in your from and to cities.  In this case, from will be Boston and to will be Dublin.  Enter your desired departure date and number of travelers.  Then click on “Find flights”.

After that you’ll be prompted to sign in to your MileagePlus account.  Just close out of that pop up window.

Next you will see a few search results.  However we want to see the full 30 day calendar so that we have more options to consider.  To do so click on “View 30 day calendar”

Here you’ll notice that the calendar has expanded to provided a 30 day view of award availability.  For the purposes of this guide, we’ll choose April 28^th to see which flights are available.  When you search on your own, check for Saver Award availability, direct flights and the option with the lowest fees.  Keep in mind that the award prices on this search are in United miles, which is why the price is different.  That doesn’t matter though since you would be paying in British Airways Avios over the phone.  All that you need to worry about at this point is finding Saver level award space on the United website.

After selecting the desired date, check out your flight options below.  The first option available is operated by Aer Lingus and is a direct flight.  This is what you want to look for when searching for your award flight.  Again, don’t worry about the 30K miles shown below.  That is not the number of miles required if paying with Avios.

Now that you know which route that you want to book, make sure that you have enough British Airways Avios into your account.  If you need more points, you can transfer points from your Ultimate Rewards, Membership Rewards or Marriott Bonvoy accounts to your British Airways account.  Once you have the right number of points, call British Airways to book your award flight.  Then pack your bags!

Conclusion

The British Airways loyalty program is extremely useful, whether it’s for short domestic flights or short international flights on Oneworld partners.  You can save a considerable amount of your hard earned points by using this program.  With this guide you can see which routes are available from your desired airport, search for a route distance and search for award space.  You’re well on your way to your next “free” trip!

The post How to Use British Airways Avios for Amazing Sweet Spot Deals appeared first on Travel Miles 101.

How to search for Airline Award Seats

Here are some tutorials that walk you through searching for awards seats at United.com, AA.com, Delta.com, Southwest.com and BA.com.

We use these 5 websites for 95%+ of our own award booking searches, so as an introduction you will be well served by understanding the mechanics of searching these sites.

• Finding Award Space on United Airlines
• Finding Award Space on American Airlines
• Finding Award Space on Delta Air Lines
• Finding an Award Flight on Southwest
• Finding Award Space on British Airways

Action Step:

1. Go to each of these websites and run some examples for future award bookings you plan to make from your home airport. It helps to get a feel for the functionality and to see what availability you can generally find at the Saver Level.

The post How to Search for Airline Award Seats appeared first on Travel Miles 101.

You may not think that you qualify for a “business” credit card, but I would guess that you actually do.

Within the realm of credit card applications, owning a business doesn’t mean you necessarily have a registered business. It doesn’t mean you have employees. And it certainly doesn’t mean that you’ve made a significant income at your business.

There is a broad definition of what qualifies as a “business” for credit card purposes. If you do any coaching, consulting, babysitting, selling on ebay or etsy, etc., refereeing, tutoring, the list goes on…

How to Apply for a Business Credit Card

When you apply for your business credit card you should simply and honestly report your business income to date, and you also record your personal income. Both of these factors will be taken into account when the credit card company decides whether or not you’re creditworthy.

The business card will be secured with your personal credit score. So your business’ creditworthiness is essentially your own creditworthiness.

As an example I currently have two businesses. One was a Pizza catering business that has yet to turn a profit. And the other was my personal finance website.

When you apply for cards you should be honest about past revenue but optimistic about future revenues, and forceful about your need to have a business line of credit to keep business and personal expenses separate, and persuasive about the crucial need for the credit card to successfully launch your venture .

You should report the business as a sole-proprietorship and use your Social Security number as the tax ID number on the application.

The application will ask you for an EIN, but you can still enter your SSN.

So why bother applying for business credit cards for a business that is not yet profitable in the first place?

1. First, if you have a business, you can apply for business credit cards and earn more miles & points! This is particularly useful because all credit card companies were not created equal. Currently Chase blows the other credit card companies out of the water in terms of the quality, quantity, and variety of their products, both business and personal.
2. Some of the best cards out there are business cards. My favorite business card to use is the Chase Ink Business Preferred Credit Card, both for its generous sign up bonus, its incredible spending bonuses, and for the access it allows to the excellent Ultimate Rewards online shopping portal. Chase also has business versions of popular airline cards from Southwest and United, Amex has the Delta business as well as Gold and Platinum cards, Citibank has an AA business card and Capital One has a number of attractive business credit cards. Simply put, saying no to business cards leaves a lot of miles on the table.
3. Though your business card application will be reflected on your personal credit report with a hard credit inquiry, your credit utilization ratio will not be affected by subsequent business card spending. As previously discussed, the credit utilization ratio is one of the most important factors in determining your credit score. So business cards are a great resource for making big purchases that might otherwise negatively impact your score.
4. Business cards often have excellent protections such as car rental collision coverage, extended warranties, and travel insurance.
5. There are other business card specific perks such as lounge access, rental car discounts etc.

So the take home here is that this is America and you too can be (and probably already are) an entrepreneur in some way. You can proudly claim the mantle of a business owner and I’m sure that if you do so, you will find your new identity as a business owner highly rewarding.

The post Business Credit Cards appeared first on Travel Miles 101.

If you do close your card, the larger concept to remember is that you absolutely do not want to lose your points!  That’s what we want to explore today, so let’s look again at the 3 main types of travel rewards cards as they relate to closing cards:

The 3 Types of Cards and Not Losing Points

1. Fixed Value Credit Cards:

Fixed value points from the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card, Wells Fargo® Propel®, and Capital One Spark Miles for Business and similar cards reside in your credit card account. There is no way to transfer these points out of your account, so you must redeem them before closing the card.

If by some chance you still have tens of thousands of points remaining (and thus hundreds of dollars of value), you could strongly consider paying the fee to keep these points alive for one more year.

Alternately, you can cash them in for 1/2 value as a simple statement credit. So 40,000 points would normally be worth $400 for a travel redemption but it would only be worth $200 as a cash statement credit.

Either way, you should not allow these points to be lost when you close the card, so plan accordingly.

2. Co-Branded Airline & Hotel Cards:

These points were already sent from your credit card account to your rewards account at the airline/hotel, so they are no longer related to the credit card. You can close your card without losing any points previously earned. These points of course are still subject to the expiration policy of the airline/hotel, but you would not lose them when closing your card.

Quick Tip: You can extend the expiration on all your points in the airline/hotel account by making one small purchase on the credit card the month before you plan to close the card (and pay it off before you close the account). Even a $2 cup of coffee will send 2 points to your rewards account and that will ‘reset the clock’ on your entire store of potentially tens or hundreds of thousands of points.

3. Transferable Points Cards:

Transferable points like Chase Ultimate Rewards, AMEX Membership Rewards and Citi ThankYou reside in your credit card account. If you close the credit card while the points are still there, you would in fact lose them.

The real simple way to avoid losing your points is to transfer them to a partner airline/hotel before you close your credit card. Once transferred, they are yours to keep.

We prize these transferable points for their flexibility, so in a perfect world you can retain them in a different credit card account and retain that transfer flexibility for a future redemption.

Example: Let’s say Brad has a Chase Sapphire Preferred Card with 50,000 points and he needs to close it. His wife Laura has a Chase Ink Business Preferred Credit Card account that she just opened recently. Brad can transfer his 50k Chase UR points to Laura’s account and combine the points there, thus retaining the flexibility until Laura has to close her card a year later.

You can combine your Chase UR points with another one of your Chase UR cards or with a card held by your spouse/domestic partner.

The strategy for AMEX Membership Rewards would be to open another MR earning card such as the Blue Business Plus. This no annual fee card still allows you to keep your MR alive instead of speculatively transferring.

Brad’s Card Closing Consideration:

Like my entire travel rewards strategy, I take the low stress approach to closing my cards. Alexi will explain his optimized version, but mine is much simpler.

I track when I open every card and I have a simple formula built in to show the date 11 months later, which is when I need to make the decision to keep the card open or close it. I glance at my spreadsheet every so often to make certain I’m aware of upcoming card closing requirements.

When I do make the decision to close a card, I first make certain that I’m not in danger of losing any points as we described above.

Then I just call up the number on the back of that card and to paraphrase, here is what I tell them,

“I’d like to close my credit card today; I’m not really using this credit card any longer and with the annual fee coming due in the next few weeks I just can’t justify paying the $xx dollar fee. I recently opened a new card from X Bank and I intend to use that one going forward, so I’d appreciate if we can cancel this card today.”

It is usually a 2-5 minute phone call and I’ve never had an issue with a surly representative or anything.

On occasion they will offer to waive the annual fee for the next year or offer an annual retention bonus, and in that case I’ll gladly keep it open.

Alexi’s Card Closing Process:

My approach to closing cards is slightly different from Brad’s, but not much.

I am not a spreadsheet guy for the same reason that I’m not a very good photographer: I lack the discipline to step away from my own life and record events. Although I am more than happy to crunch numbers, I know myself well enough to know that I cannot be relied on for reliable data entry.

The first step for me is deciding whether I want to close the card at all. I happily keep my favorite cards (like the Chase UR premium cards) open and pay the annual fee because the benefits of those cards are well worth the annual fee to me.  For other cards, however I find that I no longer have them in my wallet after a year and I just can’t justify paying an annual fee on an unused piece of plastic.

I think the sweet spot for closing those no longer useful cards is about 10-11 months after I have opened them. The reason for this is that there is still some time on the clock, so I can finish paying off my bills and get credit for all of my points earned if I have a remaining balance.

In any case, the way that I keep track of my card openings, for the purposes of the timing of account closures, is that I keep all of my cards wrapped in a rubber band in a sock drawer. I order the cards chronologically by the month of their expiration dates, which almost always corresponds to the month when the annual fee will be charged.

So if the month were March I would pull out all of my cards with a May expiration date and determined what needed to be done with those cards.

What I personally do these days requires even less organization: I wait for my annual fee to be charged on my bill and then if I no longer want the card I call customer service to discuss the cancellation.

I am alerted to the annual fee both via a Mint.com alert, and the “fees charged” line on the credit card statement which I dutifully check on every monthly (paper) bill.

Using this method I’ve never had to actually pay an annual fee I didn’t intend to, but I will admit that there is some small risk of having to do so in the future.

There are several advantages however, as I see it.

1. I don’t have to really keep track of anything, just reflexively react when the annual fee comes due.
2. Tracking annual fees is almost effortlessly incorporated into another task which I must do periodically anyway: paying bills.

So that’s my system and it works for me. And Brad’s system is every bit as solid. The key, of course, is to find the system that will blend in with your own lifestyle and personality, to minimize work and the chance of failure.

The post Closing Credit Cards appeared first on Travel Miles 101.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m downright messy. I’m disorganized. And I’m highly chaotic.

At the very least it’s ironic, but allow me to shine the best possible light upon this exercise. If Mr. Messy himself has managed to concoct a system that has allowed him to easily stay organized while going through many cards for himself and his wife each year, then surely that system has some value?

Organizing the Strategy Plan

Before we begin let’s take a birds-eye view of the strategy so that we can figure out what needs to be organized from the start.

• We will have to keep track of how many cards and which specific cards we have opened.
• We will have to keep track of our bills in order to pay them on time.
• We will have to keep track of our credit score to make sure we haven’t made any errors and no one is committing fraud upon us.
• We will have to keep track of what miles and points we have accumulated and when they expire.
• We will have to keep track of annual fees to avoid paying them unnecessarily.
• And (happily) will have to keep track of all of our wonderful travel itineraries that we will book with our miles.

1. Keep track of credit card applications

It is important to know when you apply for credit cards so you know when you must hit your spending bonus, and when you may reasonably reapply for that card at a future date.

My method here is quite simple. Each time we open cards I record the date of the applications, the list of cards that I have applied for, the bonus requirements, the promised bonus, and whether or not I was approved.

2. Keep track of bills

This is an important one obviously it is emphatically not worth pursuing this if you carry a balance or sink your credit score by paying your bills late.

My method here is decidedly low-tech:

All of my credit card bills are non-electronic paper bills. Each week I gather up all of my bills and I pay them.

On each bill I note the bank account (or pseudo-bank account) I paid the bill from, the date the bill was paid, and the amount.

Then I file all of my bills in chronological order in a simple accordion file. That way if there’s ever any dispute I can go back and figure out which bank was supposed to pay the bill and for how much.

As a safeguard I also have all of my credit card accounts registered with Personal Capital (the essential free tool I use to track my financial life). That way if there is ever a late fee assessed, or an annual fee assessed, I know about it the day it goes through and can address it.

3. Keep track of credit scores

This one’s pretty easy. I joined both CreditSesame.com and CreditKarma.com for free. They send me updates whenever there is a new alert on my credit report, and allow me to keep track of my credit score on a rolling basis.

I also pull my free credit report about once a year.

4. Keep track of miles and points

I use AwardWallet.com keep track of my miles and points balances and expiration dates. This is kind of the Personal Capital of miles and points. But it does have some flaws, like being locked out of United, and Southwest’s websites. For keeping track of those currencies I simply use the offending companies’ proprietary apps on my smart phone.

5. Keep track of annual fees

My approach is to simply wait for the annual fee to show up on my monthly credit card bill and then call the company. Using this method I have never had to pay for an annual fee on a card that I wished to close.

Recall that Personal Capital helps me to see when annual fees are charged the day they are charged. This is a definite “your mileage may vary” approach, as it is not inconceivable that at some point you could get stuck with an annual fee that you did not wish to pay.

6. Keeping track of travel itineraries

I use TripIt.com for this purpose. This is a clever and free app that works as such:

1. When you’re emailed a reservation confirmation, you simply forward it to TripIt’s email address.
2. TripIt then organizes all of your itineraries chronologically by trips.
3. All of your trip information is then easily organized within TripIt’s smart phone app on your phone.

I was first introduced to this product when I got a free year of their Premium package with a past credit card. But all of the best aspects of the application are available in the free version, so regardless, this app is highly recommended. (Particularly if you are disorganized like the author!)

Brad’s Method:

If you’ve been following along in the course, it will come as no surprise to you that my method of organizing is low-tech.

Simple is how I roll. Or looked at more favorably, I believe taking the complexity out of life makes things smoother and less stressful.

I just rely on my trusty excel file to keep track of everything. Because Laura and I don’t open an enormous number of cards per year, there isn’t quite as much to track.

Our process:

1. The Cards

When we open a new account I log the info in my excel file and the card immediately goes into my wallet to start the process of hitting the minimum spending requirement.

In the Excel file we keep a running list of the cards we’ve opened and the approximate dates we would consider closing them. When that date arrives, we’ll call the credit card company to discuss our options.

For all closed cards I fill that excel row in a red color to denote that it is closed and that’s about it.

2. Tracking Miles, Expiration and Itineraries

Again, I lean heavily on my excel file here.

I have a running list of my approximate point balances in each of the accounts and in another cell I list the last account activity so I know when I have to be at least aware of an expiration issue.

We only travel a few times per year, so keeping track of itineraries is fairly easy. I have a folder in my Gmail account where I store my confirmations, so I can easily refer to everything at a glance.

I also do the old fashioned thing and print each confirmation to take along with us on the trip.

And that’s about it!

The post Getting Organized appeared first on Travel Miles 101.