Chase Archives - Your Mileage May Vary

Chase Sapphire Reserve Premium Rental Car Benefits

The Sapphire Reserve is Chase’s premium travel credit card. It provides an unmatched combination of points earning and travel insurance coverage. When it comes to travel perks included with the card, it’s right in the pack with other cards offering a Priority Pass membership and Global Entry reimbursement. Many of the other travel benefits supplied by the card come from it being a VISA Infinite card, some of them being premier level membership with several rental car companies.

If you’re interested in signing up for a Chase Sapphire Reserve or just want to hear more about the card, check out our full review.

To find out what benefits the Sapphire Reserve provides, it’s necessary to log into your Chase account. If you have more than one Chase card, click on the Sapphire Reserve and then open the drop-down box “Things you can do”

Clicking on card benefits takes you a page showing several benefits of the card:

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This Monster Sign Up Bonus Is Back, And It Caused A Flashback To Why I Started This Blog

In 2016, I saw headlines on several blogs that I followed about a credit card sign up bonus that was too good to pass up. Here’s what one article from back then said about the card:

Breaking news: one of the best (and certainly one of the biggest) miles & points offers is now back. For a limited time, you can earn a total of 100,000 British Airways Avios points after applying for their signature card and meeting a number of spending requirements.

One of the best offers. I needed to get in on this limited time offer so I went to the Chase website and signed up for the card. I was instantly approved and started spending. The amount needed to get the bonus wasn’t small.

The first 50,000 points are easy—you’ll get them after completing a $2,000 minimum spend in three months. This is worth it on its own, even if you can’t earn the additional 50,000 points for spending more.

For the adventurous, you’ll be able to earn an additional 25,000 Avios for spending $10,000 within the first year, and then another 25,000 Avios for spending $20,000 within the first year.

I decided to go big but I wasn’t all in. I set a goal to spend the $10,000 on the card for 75,000 Avios. I passed on the $20,000 bonus points and the Travel Together Ticket that came with spending $30,000 on the card.

It took several months but I eventually hit the spending threshold and had over 85,000 Avios. Now what?

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How I Spread Out Our Credit Card Spending For The First Half Of 2019

It’s now the second half of 2019. Besides being a good time to look at how we’re doing on our New Year’s Resolutions (I’ve joined a gym but I’m not going as much as I’d like), it’s as good of a time as any to look at our points and miles situation.

Some bloggers are looking at their progression on qualifying for status with airlines or hotels (Ben from One Mile at a Time wrote about his progression, and congrats to him for figuring out it doesn’t pay to be loyal). Since I couldn’t care less how many nights I’ve stayed at a hotel chain or how many miles I’ve flown with an airline, what can I look at?

After sign up bonuses for credit cards, ongoing spend is the next most important way I accumulate points and miles. Looking into where I’m putting that spend and if it fits the plan I have for our points earning is a smart thing to do.

Thanks to Quicken and some scrap paper, here’s a breakdown of our spending for the first six months of 2019.

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Southwest Wants Everyone To Have A Companion Pass

Remember the good old days, when no one but the points and miles junkies, travel hackers and Southwest frequent flyers knew about the Southwest companion pass? The item that, depending on your situation, could be the single most valuable item in your arsenal.

If you’ve never heard about the companion pass, it’s issued to Southwest flyers who accumulate more than 110,000 Rapid Rewards points in a single year. The pass, good for the rest of the year you earn it and for the entire following year, lets a companion fly for free on as many flights as you take (except for the taxes and fees). The companion ticket is available as long as an additional ticket is for sale, regardless of the price of the additional ticket. This means you can book the last cheap ticket on the plane and your companion can get a free ticket even it costs much more than yours did. Southwest even lets you change your companion up to three times each year so you’re not stuck traveling with the same person all the time. 🙂

Unless you flew on Southwest regularly, I’d assume for business travel, you had to know the tricks of the trade to get a companion pass. Those days are over.

It seems that now Southwest wants everyone to get a companion pass.

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How Did I End Up With Three Different Point Value Marriott Free Night Certificates?

One of the great perks of the Marriott co-brand credit cards from Chase has always been the free night certificate you get every year at your account anniversary. When Marriott Bonvoy finally consolidated the credit card portfolios of American Express and Chase to only offer one type of card in each category (entry level, premium, luxury and business), it left in its wake a number of no longer available cards with varying benefits.

I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have to all the changes. I knew that I’d have a bunch of free night certificates. Probably more than I’d like to have and that’s something I’ll need to take care of in the future. But for now, I just need to figure out how to use all of these free night certificates.

Herein lies the problem. All of the certificates are for different point levels. Continue reading “How Did I End Up With Three Different Point Value Marriott Free Night Certificates?”