I love credit cards so much! v3.0 (see first page for add'l details)

[apollodi]

Can't say because we don't know what the weather will do. We were down on snowpack last month but over thr past 2 1/2 weeks got 6+ feet of snow in the cascades and pt angeles and area got hit harder than normal. Snow level is going back up this weekend and it'll rain at snoqualmie. We've had skiing for memorial day weekend before or it could all be gone.

Were I'm at we got less than an inch of snow last week while other areas got more, this was unusual but also shows how weird and unpredictable our weather can be.

I'd plan preferred with a backup and see if you can find info from actual hikers on what they do that time of year.

We were in Mt Rainier and Olympic in mid July last year. Obviously the later you can go the less likely you‘ll see snow. We did the easy hikes so not too far up the mountain in Mt Rainier. We did see a few sections on the trail at Sunrise with snow. Like @afan said, it will all depend on this winter And how fast it melts.

I don't think we saw any snow at Hurricane Ridge.

Have fun whichever you choose.

Thanks for the advice! We'll keep our reservation at Mt. Rainier and add a backup at Olympic. I'm going to nix the North Cascades this early in summer.

 

[Judique]

Amex offers - yesterday I checked all my cards around 9am looking for the Staples offer. Nada.

Went out shopping and came back about 3pm and checked again - there it was on my Amex SPG Biz. So now I have to spend $1500 on that card by June, including the Lowes offer. That will take care of a nice chunk of next years dues.

However, I am very disappointed in Chase offers. Everybody getting the Hyatt House and Place offers except me and between Nov and Dec I put almost 2K on just the Hyatt card, and $73 on the Freedom card. The CF got 8 offers. The 'used' Hyatt card got 2 offers. I was excited about possibly getting the Hyatt offer as I have a Hyatt I want to book for an overnight in February. I'll still use my Hyatt card as it pays the most in points at an actual Hyatt, but I want the 15%!! Having a slight hissy fit here.

 

[ski_mom]

@miztressuz

Thank you for all the tips! They are all very helpful. I’ve priced out all the lines cruising to Alaska next June and NCL is the only one that has a room for 5. It’s an oceanview but it’s already $7500. Dh wants to do an excursion that cost almost $3500 so I need all the tips I can to bring the cost down.

I don't know the ages of your kids, or if this would interest you, but we are also a family of 5 and have always found it cheaper to have two rooms. We usually book the 3 kids in one room and DH and I in another. Sometimes my mom goes on our cruises with us and then we book three 2 person rooms. We don't spend a lot of time in the rooms anyway, so that has worked for us in the past.

 

[Judique]

This is NOT the first time that @SouthFayetteFan has strayed. The FIRE thread has long been his piece on the side, although I think the spreadsheet is a good indication that the RotR is a more serious relationship. But, none of us are entirely innocent. I mean, we all LOOK, at least... and maybe post once in a while.

Yeah, I'll be looking around the DVC boards where I used to post quite a bit, but after 20 years I don't get much excited about it.

The Fire thread just moves so slow, along with the hotel thread, that I forget about both. Still interesting when something new gets going.

 

[Limes96]

I’m interested in how to use discounted gift cards on cruises too. Curious to know if they can be combined or if you can use them to make irregular payments (like not once a month, more like....whenever), or are they good just one time when making the reservation/deposit.

 

[hsmamato2]

For all you parents out there whose kids are older and you're thinking about getting rid of toys... my inexpert and personal experience suggests that Legos are definitely a good bet. Really regretting the temper tantrum I had this summer where I took bins full to Salvation Army in a fit of rage instead of spending the time to to through and sort them. My older son also gave away probably 20 ships (mostly Star Wars) to his younger cousin. I'm sad he didn't want to keep them or go to the trouble of selling them but at least it's all in the family!

I did have a couple unopened boxes of assorted things and those are the ones I currently have listed and that seem to be garnering the most interest.

Oh, and also some random Disney things have sold (of course!)

We have a Lego round in our family.... my Brothers had a TON of classic stuff from the 80's...which they gave to my boys when they were the 'age' to play with them...who added a TON more sets a figures (about 2-19 yo,they like them but they're busy now) who then gave the HUGE lot of Legos to their little boy cousins (6 and 10) who are happily playing with them...I'm sure they'll be passed along (all 600 million pieces!) to the newest set of boys in the fam in a few years...(they're currently babies still) and yes, we have lots of 'sets of boys' in our family (kind of funny,we're on our 4th 'set of boys' playing with those legos) I come from a fam with a wide age range of siblings...and it shows in the ages of our kids! I must say it felt GOOD to pass along all those LEgos in giant garbage bags

 

[happ]

I forgot to mention that I called Capital One about my Venture hitting one year and waiving the AF. They said they can't proactively waive it so they'll have to wait until it hits my account. I was approved 1/17 last year and I still haven't seen the AF for this year. I guess I just keep waiting until I see it and then call?

When I called them about the fee on my Spark card a few years back, I called several times before and after the fee posted. I think it was a week or two after that I was finally successful. They actually "upgraded" my card to permanently remove the fee. I don't know if that ever happens with the Venture card or if it's just a biz card thing.

 

[punkin]

Interesting because last year I had SW as my airline, charged 5.60 x 12 flights all reimbursed. Plus EBCI x6.
Man AMEX likes to make credits unusable.

Absolutely. I am not happy. IMO this makes DH's platinum AF too much to justify. He got a retention offer this year so one more year...then I'm dumping it.

 

[alryan]

If anyone is using Serve to pay bills, keep a close eye on your payments. I think there was some system refresh done and I've had to enter payees back in, but my payments are ending up in the wrong accounts, or just not going through at all. Amex sent me the physical check that Serve sent to them, saying Amex didn't know which account to apply it too because there was no indication of an account number (although I filled out that field in Serve), so now I have to figure out what to do about that. Meanwhile I'm making the full payment out of my regular checking since the bill is due. What a mess. I guess I'll go for transferring the balance to a checking account from here on out with that Serve account.

I sent a check through Bluebird today and I'm hoping that works ok; the ones earlier this month posted fine. It's strange that only the Serve account is whacked since they both run on the same platform.

Ugh! What a hassle. I have one I'm waiting on from 1/17, but it said it was delivered today so hopefully it shows up tomorrow. Hopefully you can send that check to another Amex account that you have.

 

[Lain]

So guys... I have a confession to make. And it's not easy to say this... but I've been cheating on this thread...

You see... this new ride, Rise of the Resistance (RotR) opened up at WDW. And there was a thread...and one thing led to another...and I became their spreadsheet guy. I didn't intend for it to happen, I promise!! I only looked, I didn't touch!!

Don't worry...after I head to Disney World next week, I promise I'll break it off!!! Please forgive me!!!

Once a cheater, always a cheater. How are we supposed to trust you ever again!?!

Well if that’s how you feel I guess I could take all of my credit card wisdom and gifs somewhere else...

Alright, we will forgive this one dalliance but let's not let this happen again No need to ever speak of the RotR thread again....

I feel like I just woke up to an argument in what seems to be an emotional and economically abusive relationship.

 

[Rjw615]

My SW biz statement closed yesterday- however my pending points still hasn't posted. My personal SW closed earlier in the month and they posted right after the statement closed, within a couple hours.

How long does it normally take the SW biz points to post?

 

[ski_mom]

Question on redeeming from the barclay Arrival+. I am wanting to use our points for a vrbo rental for my daughter's college graduation this spring. I'm somewhat up in the air as far as how many from my extended family are coming, so I have two big houses rented for the weekend and may end up needing only one. I've had to put the refundable deposit down on them and I was planning to use the Arrival+ points to "pay" for the weekend. If I use points to erase the charges now and end up cancelling one of the two houses, will it mess with the refund on my credit card? It would be fine with me if I got the points back instead of an actual credit since I didn't actually pay money for it anyway, but I just want to make sure I don't lose out on the use of the point.

After re-reading, that seems confusing, so I hope you can follow what I'm trying to ask lol!

 

[ski_mom]

My SW biz statement closed yesterday- however my pending points still hasn't posted. My personal SW closed earlier in the month and they posted right after the statement closed, within a couple hours.

How long does it normally take the SW biz points to post?

My last statement closed on a Friday and I didn't receive the points in my SW account until the following Tuesday. I don't know if it was because of the weekend, but I thought that seemed like a long time! I usually don't pay that close of attention, but it was my bonus points, so I wanted to see them in my account!

 

[hsmamato2]

I would not press your luck with Points Expiration policies...but I have a strange DP to share.

I had 220 orphaned Hilton points. Last activity was 4/22/18 so those should have expired last year. I just logged in, and I still have 220 points...

Again, I wouldn't count on this, but just something worth noting. I keep track of all of my point expiration dates with a spreadsheet too! Luckily some don't expire now (notably or me - Southwest). But my large Marriott stash requires some babysitting because I wouldn't' want to lose a million of those, even if there's a 50% chance I'll be Bonvoyed when I go to use them!

I have a bonvoy points question,do they still let you pool the points? I tried with Dh's acct,and they didn't do it,used the link to transfer on their site....it's annoying b/c I have some 'orphan' points just sitting there....

 

[DaveL]

My SW biz statement closed yesterday- however my pending points still hasn't posted. My personal SW closed earlier in the month and they posted right after the statement closed, within a couple hours.

How long does it normally take the SW biz points to post?

I think it might just be the time of year. My points always seemed to post the day after statement close, but this last one was delayed about 4~5 days after statement close.

 

[afan]

Thanks for the advice! We'll keep our reservation at Mt. Rainier and add a backup at Olympic. I'm going to nix the North Cascades this early in summer.

You can search for when the north cascade highway opens and if you can find the date for each year it'll give you an idea. It's a huge deal for the people up there and always on the news. But I'll be honest, I don't pay attention to what month it happens. The other to check is white pass, it often closes for the season and is near mt rainier. We've used memorial day weekend before but there was also tons of snow on the sides of the road.

Your plan sounds good though.

 

[hsmamato2]

Hey all. My kiddo woke me up way too early so I thought I’d use this time to (try to) catch up.

I haven’t been around much because I’ve been busy, but also so exhausted. The long weekend didn’t really help, despite staying local, what with spending time with the kiddo and trying (finally) to get our home in order for the new year. Is it still only January?

The churn goes on!

I finished my CS Platinum and Hilton Aspire MSRs way too quickly, and both SUBs posted promptly. I got a 15k MR/$2k MSR retention offer on my Gold, despite spending over $30k on its 4x categories last year. Not great, but not bad considering it’s a card I’m keeping anyway. I guess the takeaway is spend, but don’t spend too much on only the bonus categories? I’m taking the MSR on my Biz Platinum a little more slowly, and spending organically where it makes sense on the rest of my Amex cards to keep the pop ups away. Meanwhile, DW is on her way to building up her MR balance. She finished the MSR on her 45k MR Green and we used the Away credit to get a blush pink carry on for DD that she happily wheeled around on our trip to Hawaii. DW also finished up her 25k MR Biz Green and picked up the tiered 75k MR Biz Gold recently. DW also got the Hyatt card, and I plan to get my own sometime after I get back under 5/24. It’ll be a long couple of months until then.

On redemptions, I don’t know if it’s premature to say, but we bought DVC at Aulani — with points. We’re still doing the paperwork and the balance isn’t due for a few weeks, but yeah, we've got our DVC account and points and – it’s happening!

This is something DW and I had thought about for years, but the timing or budget never seemed right. Meanwhile, we’ve spent some part of our last four holidays at Aulani as well as an impromptu trip there last October, and too many thousands of dollars on Disney Gift Cards. And we’ll likely keep returning to Aulani as long as we continue to visit family in Hawaii. It just made sense. And it really is our happy place. We looked into resale, and we took a tour while at Aulani (and scored $150 in Disney Gift Cards), and in the end we felt more comfortable buying direct and adding on via resale later. And hey, we'll get a "blue card"! Although we’re probably getting a little more than half the value going direct vs. resale, being comfortable with the purchase was important, and we’ll get the 2019 UY points that we've noticed are [along with 2020 UY] often stripped from a lot of contracts on the resale market, and that gives us some time to find a resale contract that’ll work as an add-on. We just had to make the money work. So I’ve cashed out 1.2 million MR and 500k UR to fund our purchase, and we don’t have to worry about anything out of pocket or when we'll "break even." We’ll hit several MSRs with this purchase, and pay for it with cash from points. It’s a tidy circle.

I never thought about using credit card rewards to buy DVC, but then @hulagirl put the thought into my head. Thank you for the inception, @hulagirl.

And special thanks to @calypso726, @3 DD love princesses, @PolyRob, @speedyfishy, @wendow, @kmc8826, @striker1064, @vanjust14, @bernina, and anyone else I might’ve missed for all the encouragement and advice along the way.

I was looking at award space on United for next Christmas over the weekend, and wow dynamic pricing is really in effect. Last year, I was able to book saver award seats to HNL for 22.5k miles per person, each way. This year, economy saver awards are running 45k miles per person, each way. I think I’m going to have to try a different approach this year.

But hey, while I was clicking around United’s schedule, I noticed I could fly my family to Japan over Thanksgiving week for 35k miles per person, each way. So I’m going to! (I think we’re going to be in Japan while @ten6mom is still there!) It’s crazy to think United will fly us all the way to Japan for fewer miles than it would take to fly to Hawaii. But here we are. So a little past midnight, with my ladies asleep, I made a snap decision to forego our family tradition of spending Thanksgiving at Disneyland and taking the family to Tokyo instead. If we spend Thanksgiving Day at Tokyo Disneyland, that still counts right? Anyway, I booked our flights using United miles. Sadly, no lie flat seats for us. I’m flying a family of 3 and have a little redshirt who’s not in the game yet, so I need to budget our points and miles. I’ll be using my airline fee credits to bump us up to Economy+. I transferred some UR over to Hyatt and booked three nights at the Andaz Toranomon Hills for 30k/night. I used Hilton points, and booked three more nights at the Hilton Tokyo Bay for 80k/night. I need to math that last one out. Anyway, it’s an amazing feeling to have planned all this out in less than two hours, and very humbling to realize I have the points and miles to do all of this. I ran all this by DW in the morning, and she eagerly agreed it was a good change of pace. But before then, it was 2 a.m., and like my man Ted Mosby said,

Keep on churning on!

 

[LuckyMamaInDE]

I think we got upgraded to a better view. We didn't have any casitas behind us and we had a view of the golf course and the "boulders". It was amazing! It's a huge resort and guys in golf carts drive you around everywhere. And you're not even supposed to tip them, it's included in the resort fee, which we of course, didn't have to pay since we used a reward night. I love that about Hilton. The Aspire is really making me loyal to Hilton. Because of their promotions and the spend that will be reimbursed on the Amex, we earned about 10k points on two free nights!

Wait, no resort fees on reward nights with Hilton??!! I'm going to plan on dh and I applying for Hilton cards on the same schedule

I've saved that resort to my travel bookmarks. It looks perfect for a midwinter getaway

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

I have a bonvoy points question,do they still let you pool the points? I tried with Dh's acct,and they didn't do it,used the link to transfer on their site....it's annoying b/c I have some 'orphan' points just sitting there....

I believe you can transfer them still. You might need to call though. I’m actually not familiar with this transfer link...interesting although it seems it didn’t work.

 

[first*toright]

I have a bonvoy points question,do they still let you pool the points? I tried with Dh's acct,and they didn't do it,used the link to transfer on their site....it's annoying b/c I have some 'orphan' points just sitting there....

You can transfer 100k points per year to another member, but that's it. I think I did have to have DH call to transfer from his account to mine (gave him the phone number and both MR account numbers) and it worked.