🛫 Travel, Points & Miles
💸 How To Redeem Points and Miles for Max Value
Nick from the Frequent Miler and I have experienced the luxuries of travel, like flying first class and staying at some of the best hotels in the world for FREE, all thanks to points and miles! So we recorded this episode to help you do the same — we share our best strategies, worst redemption options, basics of transferring points, optimal ways to structure a trip, finding availability, tips for hotel and airline programs, and so much more!
🍽️ Today Only: Earn Up To 16x Points on Dining!
Bilt Rewards members (which is free to join and doesn’t require the Bilt Mastercard®) can earn up to 16x points today through its dining program, which recently added 20k new restaurants.
You need to join Bilt Rewards here, active the offer in the Bilt app and link your existing credit cards. Then you'll earn 5x Bilt points on top of whatever points you earn from your linked cards. If you have Bilt Gold or Platinum, you’ll earn 10x points and if you have a Bilt card you'll get 16x total points, because it earns 6x on dining on the 1st of the month.
Today’s offer is capped at $500 of restaurant spend, which means you could earn up to 8,000 Bilt points (which can be transferred to 14 airlines and 4 hotel programs). Since I want to maximize this deal and don’t usually spend $500 on dining in one day, I’m planning to just go buy a $500 of gift cards at our favorite local spots (of which there are few in the Bilt Dining program).
🛫 Southwest Is Finally On Google Flights
For the longest time, Southwest was the only major U.S. airline that didn’t display its flight inventory on Google Flights, but now you can browse and compare Southwest fares on Google Flights.
🏨 Summer Hotel Promos
Wyndham: Earn Up To 20k Points
You can earn up to 15k points for stays at Wyndham by registering and booking directly by 8/31, and completing your stay by 9/3. If you book with a Wyndham card, you'll get an additional 5k points. Register here.
Hyatt: Double Elite Nights
Hyatt’s latest promo with Thompson and Dream Hotels lets you earn double elite nights for all stays before 7/15. These also stack with their Brand Explorer Promotion or their new hotel offer. Register here.
🤑 Latest Deals
💸 Robinhood: Unlimited 1% Brokerage Transfer Bonus
Robinhood is offering an uncapped 1% bonus on transfers from external brokerages into Robinhood individual investing accounts through 06/28/24. I'm actually leaning towards taking advantage of this offer and will likely also be getting the Robinhood Gold Card, which offers 3% cash back on everything, with no limit on earning. I'm pretty excited to use it for tax payments this year, which have a 1.82% credit card fee, so it'd be a net 1.18% cash back on tax payments.
💰 Points & Miles on Sale
Two programs have points on sale right now. They're probably best used if you have a specific redemption in mind:
- Marriott: 0.83¢ each with 50% bonus (through 7/24)
- Air France-KLM: 1.79¢ with 70% bonus (through 6/10)
As an example, I booked a summer SFO-CDG flight (in biz class) on Air France for 45k points + $205 taxes. If we didn't have the points, I could have bought them for $807, making the total cost $1,012 after taxes. That's about 50% off a paid ticket (if bought as part of a $4k round trip) or 80% off the price of a one-way paid ticket (~$5k). I shared more on summer award bookings in Monday's episode (at 27:12).
🕵️ Great Finds
🤫 Legendary Investor’s Secrets of Success
My former boss, the legendary Silicon Valley investor Andy Rachleff has been one of the most incredible mentors in my career (and life). This episode is packed with his practical advice and invaluable lessons to help you achieve success in your professional and personal life.
📈 The Impact Of Presidential Elections On U.S. Stocks
Nick Maggiulli wrote an interesting article about the history of how the U.S. stock market has performed after a Presidential election. He analyzes whether the markets favor Biden or Trump and tries to predict how each candidates policies might affect your personal finances.
📱 Cell Phone Plan Comparison Tool
Cell phone plan expert Stetson Doggett has a free cell phone plan comparison tool, which includes 402 plans from 54 carriers. The FCC recently mandated wireless carriers to put 'Broadbrand Labels' on their phone plans (similar to nutritional labels on grocery items) to promote transparency on monthly prices, additional charges, upload and download speeds, and discounts, which has made it so much easier to compare plans.
🤩 Recommendations
👨🏻🍼 Father’s Day Gift Ideas
Here's a list of a bunch of products/services I love that might make for a good Father's day gift :)
- Moft iPhone Wallet
- Ten Thousand Midweight Tech Hoodie
- Ooni Pizza Oven
- Cocktail Codex Book
- Shokz OpenRun Pro Headphones
- Theory11 Box One
- Eight Sleep Pod 4 Ultra + $200 off
- Tug-o-wobble Game
- Nike Vaporfly Shoes
- Storyworth + $10 off
- MasterClass + 15% off
- Indochino Custom Suits + 10% off with code ALLTHEHACKS
- Vuori + 20% off (my favs = Sunday Performance Joggers, Kore Shorts and Strato Tech Tees)
📺 The Bear
I really enjoyed this series about the journey of a fine dining chef who takes over his family sandwich shop after a death in the family. I also can't wait for the Season 3 premiere later this month. You can stream The Bear free on Hulu or Disney+.
Editor’s Note: The content on this page is accurate as of the posting date; however, some of our partner offers may have expired. Opinions expressed here are the author's alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.
