Tag: American

Should You Earn Rental Credits or Frequent Flyer Miles for National Car Rentals?

I’m a big fan of National Car Rental’s Emerald Aisle program. I’ve been a member for 20 years now (Ugh, Really? 20 years?)  For all that time and for all those rentals, I’ve never earned a single rental credit with National. I’ve earned frequent flyer miles for my rentals instead. For my travels, I just don’t rent cars often enough so it would take me forever to earn a free rental day.

National gives you 1 rental credit for each rental. If you rent a car for more than a week, you can earn extra credits. Here’s a breakdown of the earning for longer rentals since this information isn’t easily found on National’s website. It took some digging and I’m not surprised they want to keep this a secret:

Continue reading “Should You Earn Rental Credits or Frequent Flyer Miles for National Car Rentals?”

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How to Donate Your Miles and Points to Support Hurricane Harvey Victims

I know watching the news stories about the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey can make you feel helpless. The scope of this event just causes you to feel numb and you want to do something but don’t know how you can help.

Luckily, most of the airline and hotel programs are making it easy to contribute in any way you can. Even if you don’t have cash to spare, you can donate those random points you have here and there to the recovery effort.  Face it, it’s better to donate them than redeem them for some magazines that you’ll never read. Personally, I have points with LaQuinta and Choice that I’m going to donate right now.

Here are the links to the program pages where you can make donations.

(Thanks to our reader John B. for the tip on this way that you can to contribute to the relief effort)

Continue reading “How to Donate Your Miles and Points to Support Hurricane Harvey Victims”

How To Avoid Extra Credit Card Fees During International Travel

Going on an international trip is very exciting but it can also be very expensive. Using a credit card to pay for purchases when traveling internationally is often the best way to get a good exchange rate and the rate your bank gets will be better than the one you’ll get on your own if you exchange cash. Using a card also means that you don’t have to carry around a bunch of cash with you. However, many cards will add on a “foreign transaction fee” to any transactions made with anything except your home currency. Here’s an easy way to keep from paying that extra 2-3 percent on all of your purchases while away.

Continue reading “How To Avoid Extra Credit Card Fees During International Travel”

How To Sign Up For Airline Frequent Flyer Programs

You should always sign up for an airline’s frequent flyer program. First of all, it’s free. In addition, having your information on file with the airline saves you some time when making a reservation. You can also put your Known Traveler Number (KTN) into your profile if you have enrolled for TSA Pre✓® or Global Entry, which you should do if you travel even somewhat regularly.

Here are the links to the programs from the major US Airlines along with how long the miles you earn are good for. Note that while many plans will claim your miles will “never expire,” they will deactivate your account, thereby cause you to lose any miles earned, if you don’t have a qualifying activity within a certain time frame.

Continue reading “How To Sign Up For Airline Frequent Flyer Programs”

I Asked Airlines How I Could Make Sure I Would Sit With My Kids and Here’s What They Said

After writing about the family who was split up in middle seats throughout the plane on our United flight to Chicago, I wasn’t expecting the response we got from our readers. We received a number of comments from readers with differing viewpoints. One one hand, we received two comments that I’m sure United would be just thrilled to read:

  • I won’t be flying with United. My kids won’t handle being separated from me.
  • Yup. Not flying United.

Continue reading “I Asked Airlines How I Could Make Sure I Would Sit With My Kids and Here’s What They Said”

Buyer Beware: Do your homework before booking a flight with a “basic” fare

I was doing some serious travel planning over the last two weeks. We are focusing on taking several shorter trips this year and that means I need to book more flights than usual for us. Since I’ve been booking our domestic flights with my Southwest miles or on JetBlue, I haven’t paid much attention to changes the major airlines like American, Delta
and United have been making. I did know they started to offer bare bone, or basic Continue reading “Buyer Beware: Do your homework before booking a flight with a “basic” fare”

We are flying to Charlotte for $25!!!!

Forgive the clickbait headline. But truth be told, we really are flying for an out-of-pocket expense of less than $25. How? Thanks for asking!

big-gay-al-howd-i-fly-to-charlotte-for-25-thanks-for-asking

Not all trips on points and miles are glamourous. Some are rather plain, yet important. Like when you and your wife want to fly to Charlotte for a friend’s wedding in little over than a month from now.

When I first started looking at flights, I was like “That’s like less than 500 miles. It can’t be that expensive of a flight.” Continue reading “We are flying to Charlotte for $25!!!!”