July 5, 2014

Good To Know: Chase Freedom Accounts Now Shows Rewards Earned Per Transaction!

One of the nice features of a card like the Chase Sapphire Preferred is that when you log into your online account and click on an individual transaction, you can easily tell how many Ultimate Rewards you earned for that transaction such as my parking expense below.

Glad to see I got 2x on my parking expenses in Canada

Glad to see I got 2x on my parking expenses in Canada

It was an easy way to verify you were correctly earning 2x points on all dining and travel expenses. However for a long time, this functionality on the Chase Freedom was not available. I’m glad to report  (though I’m not quite sure when the change was made)  this functionality now exists for Chase Freedom cardholders!

Each quarter the Chase Freedom card offers a different 5% bonus category but it is capped at $1,500 of spending in that category to earn the full 5%. After $1,500 it reverts back to 1% so it is important to track your spending by category if you wanted to max out the $1,500 without going over. The old way to track this was either waiting for your month end statement to see what was coded to the bonus categories or to use Chase Blueprint, a free service that tracked your spending in predefined categories.

Now though you can simply log on into your Freedom account and view the rewards earned per transaction.  I logged into my Chase Freedom account and expanded the view on three transactions that should qualify for 5x points as they were all restaurants.

5x Points Earned as Expected

5x Points Earned as Expected

As you can see, it now shows how many points I’ve earned on a transaction level and I’m no longer forced to wait for my month end statement or to use Chase Blueprint.

Kudos to Chase for rolling out this feature to Freedom cardholders! Now start using this to track the 5x categories for Q3, which is gas stations and Kohl’s.

P.S. While I am probably Chipotle’s biggest fan, I did not spend $366.25 on myself at Chipotle. Give me a few weeks though and I might come close to that…

July 2, 2014

Quick Deal: Take 20% Off Your Next JetBlue or Frontier Flight

I stumbled across two offers that for whatever reason haven’t gained much traction in the points & miles blogosphere that could allow you to take 20% off your next JetBlue or Frontier flight! While I’ve highlighted several Frontier promotion codes in the past, I’ve never seen a JetBlue discount code this high at 20%!

1) Frontier 20% Promotion – To celebrate their 20th birthday, Frontier is offering 20% off all domestic flights between July 12th and December 12th (with blackout dates around but not on Thanksgiving unfortunately) using promo code RGIFT2U. The downside is all travel must be booked by July 4th. Additionally, you must book your flights on FlyFrontier.com and enter the promo code in the approriate field.

Enter Code RGIFT2U Like Above

Enter Code RGIFT2U Like Above

I think we will be taking advantage of this offer as Andrea & her friends are looking to go to Portland for a long weekend in September and the return one way flight is pricing crazy at $260+ currently. Using this promo code knocked the price down to $218 which is more reasonable.

Frontier

Link to Promotion – Frontier RGIFT2U Promotion

2) JetBlue 20% Promotion – Utilizing their partnership with Dunkin’ Donuts, you will receive 20% off a JetBlue flight when you purchase specially marked 16oz bags of coffee at participating Dunkin’ Donuts locations.  A 16oz bag of coffee goes for $10 at Dunkin’ so it probably makes sense to buy a bag of coffee, even if you don’t want the coffee at all just for the coupon code (price out your flights beforehand to make sure) since the code will most likely save you greater then $10. [PSA announcement – Please donate the coffee if you are just buying it for the code.]

Unfortunately the travel window is much smaller and comes with some restrictions:

  • Book now through September 1, 2014
  • Travel between Sept. 8 and Oct. 30, 2014
  • Offer blacked out between Oct. 10 and Oct. 14, 2014
  • Valid for roundtrip airfare only
  • Book only at jetblue.com/promo

Link to Promotion – 20% off JetBlue with Dunkin’ Donuts

I don’t have any plans to make this JetBlue deal work for me but if I had some fall travel still to book, I would definitely look at JetBlue now.

July 2, 2014

Point & Center: $50 Off Hotels, Southwest Flies International & More…

Point & Center is a new feature here where I share some of the big news and offers in the points and miles world that necessitate their own blog post. Think of it as a 60 second summary of some of the highlights in the points and miles world today.

1) Expedia is offering $50 off a hotel booking over $200 if you book via their mobile app. Via Million Mile Secrets, click on their special 4th of July coupon link here and enter your cellphone number to get a unique coupon code. Book your reservation via their mobile app (download it first if necessary) and enter the coupon code Expedia texted you to take $50 off if you book by July 7th and stay before December 31st.

2) As of yesterday, Southwest Airlines now flies international to several destinations in the Caribbean and Mexico. Based on your travel needs, I think this could drastically increase the value of Southwest points for some of you. Legacy carriers like American, United and Delta all charge 35,000 miles roundtrip but I’ve found many itineraries on Southwest to be pricing significantly cheaper. Here is an example from Long Island, NY to Aruba in September pricing out at only 24,220 points!  Before you book your next Caribbean or Mexico getaway, remember now to always give Southwest a check as well for the best deal (both in dollars or points).

Only 24,200 points roundtrip!

Only 24,200 points roundtrip!

3) As highlighted in Points & Miles 101, Starwood SPG points are quite valuable as they can transfer to airlines at a ratio of 1 SPG point to 1.25 airline miles if you transfer in increments of 20,000 points. Well American Airlines has announced a promotion where you will receive a 20% bonus on the miles transferred from Starwood to American Airlines. So if you follow my advice and transfer in increments of 20,000 points, you will end up with 30,000 American Airlines miles instead of the standard 25,000 miles. I wouldn’t make any speculative transfers but if you need miles to book an AA award, this is a nice little bonus to save you some valuable SPG points.
UPDATE: This works for US airways as well!

4) Frontier is giving away 20 $100 gift cards and $1,000 off Frontier flights to one winner for celebrating their birthday by liking them on Facebook. I don’t heavily promote contests like these but it literally took 8 seconds to enter it, so why not? The link to enter the contest can be found here – Frontier Birthday Bash.

I hope you enjoyed the inaugural edition of Point & Center – feel free to let me know your thoughts on this and I can make this a more regular post!

June 30, 2014

Award Trip Breakdown: First Class Flights to Alaska for $5

Andrea and I just got back from an Alaskan cruise (which I highly recommend) and in order to get to Alaska to meet the cruise, we had to book flights to Anchorage from New York. This post goes over exactly how we booked first class flights to Anchorage for $5.

When looking for flights to Alaska from New York during the summer, we quickly came across one realization: Flights are really freaking expensive! It was over $300 one way and it was difficult to find itineraries that were under $300 and did not involve really long layovers. I quickly realized I needed to use miles to get the best flights.

If you read other points and miles bloggers (and you should), they generally do not recommend redeeming miles from the legacy carries (America, Delta, United, US Airways) for domestic coach travel (12,500 miles one way) and especially domestic flight class (25,000 miles each way). Domestic first class is just essentially a bigger seat, some free entertainment and a meal that ranges from disgusting to somewhat eligible but at a cost of double coach travel.

United Domestic First Class

United Domestic First Class

However, looking at our situation, I decided to look for first class awards for the following reasons:

  • Flying NY to Alaska is over 8 hours of actual flying. That’s longer than many flights to Europe from New York. Most airlines charge 30,000 miles in COACH for one way travel to Europe, so for 5,000 less miles on a longer flight I got a better seat, food, drinks and entertainment.
  • First Class flights were pricing near $800 for our date. This resulted in per mile value of 3.2 cents ($800/25,000*100). For a domestic redemption this is fantastic as a good redemption can range from 1.5 – 2 cents per mile.
  • Since I’m 6′ 3”, I prefer business class and up on any flight over 6 hours. This isn’t to say I couldn’t survive this flight in coach (I’ve done 11 hours in coach) but I do value a more comfortable experience for 8 hours.
  • I have over 3 million miles across currently and every day I hold miles, they lose value. I don’t gain anything for holding them but instead as shown by the recent devaluations made by the airlines, my miles tomorrow may not get me as far if the cost of a trip in miles is increased.

Searching for availability was quite easy for this trip and I found some availability with United connecting in San Francisco. This would enable us to actually have lie-flat seats on the JFK to SFO segment before flying SFO to ANC. However, due to a schedule change, delays and cancellations this isn’t what we actually flew. I will discuss what happened to our initial flights and the process to fix them in a followup post on this.

Summary of Flights:

Departing (booked): United Airlines JFK-SFO-ANC for a cost of 25,000 miles plus $5 in taxes per person for First Class.
Departing (actually flown): United Airlines EWR-ORD-ANC for a cost of 25,000 miles plus $5 in taxes per person for First Class.

Miles Used: Transferred 50,000 Ultimate Rewards from my Chase Sapphire account to United. These points were obtained by using my Chase Sapphire Preferred card.

In short, we traveled to Alaska in style in First Class to start our cruise for a cost of 25,000 miles plus $5 per person. Compared to economy flights with long layovers over $300 and First Class flights costing $800, I think we made the right choice.

What do you think?

 

June 25, 2014

Amazing Deal Alert: $58 Roundtrip Flights From New York to Cape Cod

I just a notification from The Flight Deal (they are a great follow for airfare deals) that JetBlue is selling round-trip flights from JFK to Cape Cod for only $58!! The best part is it is available for the summer months!

Key Things To Know:

  • You must fly into Hyannis, Cape Cod (airport code HYA)  and depart from JFK
  • Availability is from July to September
  • Dates are scattered but still available (see example below I pulled at 4:15pm EST)
  • Book on JetBlue.com or Orbitz.com (others probably work but have not confirmed)

  • $58 Flight!

    $58 Flight!

 

Who is going to the Cape for a long weekend?