Stepping Up the Game, My Next Churn!

What's better than going to the airplane bathroom to change into PJs provided by the airline and coming back to your seat that has magically transformed into a bed?

PJ's received from my Cathay Pacific First class

Seat turned into a bed with down comforter!      

Sending your parents on that trip instead! As you can guess, it will cost me a good portion of my accrued miles, but hopefully it will be enough for them to finally stop bringing up the time I tried changing the grades on my report card in high school.

To keep my points balance at a reasonable level, I will need to do another round of applications. These are the ones I've signed up for and where I'd like to eventually spend them:

Daft Trip Around the World! How this Punk did it!

One of my dreams was to fly first class on an international flight. I did it last year.

Now, I'm completing my next dream of going around the world in First/Business for less than the cost of an economy ticket to Asia or Europe.

Do we have your attention yet?

Triple Card Churn Part 1: Signing Up (American Airlines and Southwest)

At the time of this writing, I am sitting at Gate 12 of LAX waiting for my (delayed) Southwest flight back to Portland for the weekend. This trip was purchased last minute partly because of Goober's terrible planning, but mostly because I didn't mind spending ten bucks for the roundtrip ticket.

And since this blog is about cheap travel and not fail travel, I guess I won't go into the details of why Goober won't be meeting up with me in Portland or on Mt. Hood for snowboarding. (To be fair, his schedule wasn't entirely within his control. Also, he has admin privileges on this blog, and I don't want him to delete this post.)

I've made a few of these $10 flights this winter, and I'm pretty sure I acquired the taste for inexpensive trips. Unfortunately, my miles are running low, and it's time to get more. I usually work on one card at a time, so I'm stepping out of my spending comfort zone for a triple helping of cards: two American Airline cards (Visa and American Express) and one Southwest card.

Since this blog started, you guys have been reading how we've done this or completed that. Now I'm inviting you to start at beginning of a churn period and see how I'm going to attempt it.

Jump on it!

That feeling on your last day of vacation, realizing you won't be served breakfast in the beach-side cabana tomorrow (pictured above). Worse yet, dreading opening that inbox that you have neglected to the point that it almost disappeared. Just like your vacations, miles deals begin and end quickly, especially the lucrative ones. Recently, there was one deal that lasted less then 24 hours for a AMEX Platinum card that I failed to jump on. Read more about lessons learned on this deal!

Vanilla Cards - A Hard to Find Treasure

Vanilla Reload Network cards are part of the Vanilla Ink Bold strategy. These are sometimes tricky to find due to a couple reasons:

• In larger cities you have competition of other people trying to buy them out.
• Some of the stores will have them but will only allow a cash transaction

Vanilla Ink Bold

Ladies and Gentlemen, how would you like to travel business class to Europe or Asia round trip for $300-$400 dollars? Yes, the price of a cross country domestic flight in economy could get you a much better vacation, but where's the fun in that? This system takes a little reading to understand, a little more work then other deals, but in the end it is easier than it sounds and well worth the trouble. 3 steps to follow!

Plastic Balling: Increasing Your Credit Score through Churning

In our Credit Basics section we have described how your score is calculated by lenders. After being asked, "Doesn't opening and closing credit cards negatively affect your score?" it dawned on me that we have not fully explained how we use this game to not only keep our scores stable, but earn the status of what my old roommate called "Plastic baller"!

Chase Ink Bold

The Chase Ink Bold is a business charge card that is the keystone card in the Vanilla Ink Bold strategy. The benefits for this card are:

• The current promotion is 50k Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR) points after you spend $5,000 in the first 3 months. 
• Normally, the promo is a spend of $10,000 in three months, so get it now!
• 50k UR points are basically worth ~$500, but you can always find more efficient ways of spending the points.
• 5x points per dollar spent at office stores or on utilities like cell phone/landlines, internet and cable.
• 2x points for dining and gas. 1 point per dollar for everything else.

If used correctly, you can earn a crazy amount of UR points that can be used on various airlines and hotels.

Presenting... the "King of Cards", Starwood Preferred Guest - American Express

For the past five years, the Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) American Express (AMEX) has ruled the wallets of travel hackers, knighted savvy spenders to elite status, and allied itself to hotels and airlines alike.

The SPG AMEX comes in two forms: personal and business. The current promotion is at 25k. About two or three times a year, the promotion is at 30k points. (See "Important Note" at the bottom of the post.)

But if its only a measly 25k, why have so many bloggers been calling it the king of cards for the past 5 years?