 American Express has lot of cards with no annual fee. Couple of popular no annual fee cards are Amex Everyday card and Amex Blue Cash Card which earns Membership rewards points and cashback respectively. American Express also has annual fee option available for these same cards and they usually differ in the earning's in categories. For e.g. the Blue Cash Card earns 3% cashback at U.S. Supermarkets whereas the Blue Cash Preferred would earn 6% cash back (On up to $6,000 in purchases per year). So, although the annual fee for the preferred version is $95 you do get 3% additional earning and so if you reach the max spend cap for the year, you would earn additional $180 which would easily cover the $95 fees. Interestingly American Express is known to provide upgrade offers usually in 2nd year of card membership. Depending on the type of card (Cash back or Membership rewards) you would either earn certain amount of points (for e.g. 10,000) or cashback (for e.g. $100) when you upgrade and spend certain amount on the upgraded card with 3 months or so. The good part is that these offers would show up on your American Express account and these is no hard credit pull or inquiry. Also since this is an upgrade offer they usually do not come with "once a lifetime bonus restriction". For e.g. one of our account has an offer of earning $150 by upgrading to Blue Cash Preferred and spending $1,000 with new card within first 3 months after the upgrade.  Upgrade offer for Blue Cash Preferred Card Similarly if you have other partner cards such as no fee Hilton Honors card or Marriott card it might be worth checking if there are any targeted upgrade offer available. So, login to your American Express accounts and check for your targeted offer. Do note that if you never had the "premium" version of the card before you might be excluded to get the bonus again in future if you decide to apply for that premium card directly.
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 Lot of Airlines where you accrue miles have different mileage expiration policies. American Airlines miles expire after 18 months if there is no accrual or redemption activity on the mileage account. There are many ways on extending the expiration of American Airlines miles and you can see most of the partners here. But most of activity requires you to make some purchase either through AA Shopping mall or perform donation to participating partner non-profit.
You only need to earn 1 mile to extend the validity of your American Airlines miles by another 18 months and there is an easier way to do just that. You can register for AwardWallet service for tracking your miles (If you are not register, It is free to join with option of upgrade for a free. You can use my referral here) . After registering you can add your American Airlines account to your AwardWallet account (You can also add other users whose account you manage and whose American Airlines miles you wish to extend to this AwardWallet account). Once registered if you visit any of the blog posts they publish and comment you will earn 5 American Airline miles for 1 or more comment on unique blog posts published by them (Once the comment is approved and once per day). You need to be logged in your AwardWallet account and just before you submit the comment you can select the American Airlines (AA) account you wish to credit 5 miles. The miles usually gets deposited within 5 business days once the comment is approved. You can read more about this feature here. So, next time if you have American Airlines (AA) miles expiring and you want to extend them quickly you have AwardWallet to your rescue! Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.  Hilton Honors points expire after 12 months of inactivity (either earning or redeeming). To avoid the expiration you need to have activity on your account. There are many available ways to extend that expiration for another 12 months, but here we want to list the quick and easy ways to keep those points alive.
Shop with points with Amazon: Hilton provides an ability to redeem your points at Amazon. You can redeem 500 points for $1 spent on Amazon (which is a poor value if your sole purpose to use it for spending on Amazon). The good news is you can use this way to extend the expiration of your points. The best way is to purchase a $1 Amazon e-gift card sent to yourself or anyone you want to. Although Hilton advertises that you need to use minimum of 500 points, at the time of this writing you can pay partially as well by redeeming just 5 points for $0.01 on that purchase. The remaining $0.99 can be paid with any of your credit card. Hilton provides more details on this partnership here. Transfer points to your friends or family: Hilton allows points transfer free of cost. You can transfer up-to 500,000 points in a year to a single person in a year. That's a good amount of transfer without any cost. You can transfer the points to a person who has any recent Hilton Honors account activity (In last 12 months) or has various Amex Hilton Cards. More details can be found here. Transfer American Express Membership Reward Points: If you have any Amex Membership Reward Points earning card then you can use that to transfer 1,000 Membership Reward Points to 2,000 Hilton Honors points. This will extend your Hilton Honors points for another 12 months. Also, American Express occasionally has transfer bonuses as well such as current targeted bonus of 10% to 50% for points transfer to Hilton, but in any case you will need to transfer minimum of 1,000 Membership Reward points. You can begin your transfer here. So, above 3 are the quick ways to get your Hilton Honors points secured for another 12 months. Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.  IHG published the PointBreaks list on Feb 25th, 2019 for hotel reservations valid till May 31st, 2019. As IHG have moved from 1 tier of PointBreaks bookable at 5k points to 3 tier of PointBreaks bookable for 5k, 10k and 15k points there are more opportunity of getting discounted award at more participating hotels albeit at lesser percentage discount.
The issue with the PointBreaks list is that the participating hotels make available limited number of nights in this promotion which can get filled up pretty quickly if those are tourist destinations. So what's the best bet to get on this discount? The answer is speculative reward booking if you have available points and know the approximate dates you might use those reward nights. For e.g. below is current list of worldwide hotels (excluding United States) as of this writing which can be booked for 10,000 IHG reward points. ONTARIO, CANADA Holiday Inn & Suites Oakville @ Bronte SASKATCHEWAN, CANADA Holiday Inn Express & Suites Regina Downtown Holiday Inn Express & Suites Saskatoon Centre Staybridge Suites Saskatoon - University COAHUILA, MEXICO Holiday Inn Express Torreon GUANAJUATO, MEXICO Holiday Inn & Suites Leon Plaza Mayor Holiday Inn Express & Suites Silao Aeropuerto - Terminal GUERRERO, MEXICO Holiday Inn Chilpancingo JALISCO, MEXICO Staybridge Suites Guadalajara Expo NUEVO LEÓN, MEXICO Crowne Plaza Monterrey Aeropuerto PUEBLA, MEXICO InterContinental Presidente Puebla QUERETARO, MEXICO Crowne Plaza Queretaro SAN LUIS POTOSI , MEXICO Staybridge Suites San Luis Potosi VERACRUZ, MEXICO Crowne Plaza Tuxpan DOMINICAN REPUBLIC Crowne Plaza Santo Domingo EL SALVADOR InterContinental San Salvador-Metrocentro Mall BELGIUM Holiday Inn Express Gent ITALY Holiday Inn Express Rome - East RUSSIA Holiday Inn Express Moscow - Khovrino TURKEY Holiday Inn Bursa - City Centre Holiday Inn Istanbul - Tuzla Bay ALGERIA Holiday Inn Algiers - Cheraga Tower LEBANON Crowne Plaza Beirut INDIA Crowne Plaza New Delhi Rohini PHILIPPINES Holiday Inn Baguio City Centre As you can see there are quite a few hotels outside of United States as of this writing but the list dwindles down as more and more folks book these hotel reward nights. So, if you have any dates where you can potentially stay at these hotels, book the reward nights NOW!! Most of these hotels allow cancellation without penalty for reward night's if cancelled before 48 hours of intended stay date (do check the terms for the property as some of them might require earlier cancellation). If your plans change and you can no longer stay on those dates you can easily cancel your reservation without penalty but at the same time you can speculatively guarantee that those hotels are booked at PointBreaks reward rate. (Tip - If you do not know the exact dates, you can make separate 1 night reservation's so you can cancel the one's you don't need at the future date thus giving you some flexibility). So, go ahead and book the discounted reward nights at participating IHG hotels while available and use it hopefully! Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website. |
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