Tag: Membership Rewards

Are You Short Delta Skymiles For An Award? American Express May Lend You The Miles

Delta SkyMiles. I’m sure some people love the program while others despise them for doing away with award charts and generally making changes whenever they want with no notice to members. I tend to fall somewhere in the middle. While I hate that they sometimes charge an unbelievable amount of miles for some flights, I’ve also been able to find awards for decent prices on both Delta aircraft and with their partners, like Virgin Atlantic.

That means I’m in a constant cycle of earning Delta Skymiles and using them for redemptions. Fortunately, American Express partners with Delta and you can transfer Membership Rewards to Delta Skymiles, albeit for a price. American Express and Delta also offer a number of co-brand cards like the Gold Delta Skymiles American Express card so it’s pretty easy to add to your Skymiles balance.

But what if you’ve exhausted all other options and are still just a few hundred or thousand Skymiles short for a redemption? Continue reading “Are You Short Delta Skymiles For An Award? American Express May Lend You The Miles”

What Credit Cards Are In Our Wallets (September 2019)

Every once in a while, I like to go over which cards Sharon and I are carrying in our wallets. Doing so gives you a look behind the scenes of how to put a plan of earning points and miles in practice. We each have a different approach to earning miles and points. I try to earn the maximum points for each transaction without too much effort, and her desire to exert the least amount of thought into the process (Note from Sharon: Hell yeah! LOLOL!), the cards we carry are different.

There’s a method to my madness, as I manage to balance the two approaches and come to a plan where we maximize earning while minimizing effort (and still keep our marriage together). (Note from Sharon: Again. Hell yeah!)

Writing this post also forces me to evaluate if I’m actually doing what I say I’m going to do or seeing that I’ve gotten a little lazy (which I had). After some shuffling, here are the cards that now reside in our wallets.

Continue reading “What Credit Cards Are In Our Wallets (September 2019)”

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

I know watching the news stories about the devastation in the Bahamas caused by Hurricane Dorian can make you feel helpless. After a while, you just feel numb and you want to do something, do anything, 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 the cash to spare, you can donate those random points you have here and there to the recovery effort. Even better, you can donate points if you have more of them than you know what to do with. Face it, it’s better to donate them than redeem them for some magazines that you’ll never read, overpriced luggage or an Amazon InstaPot.  Continue reading “How to Donate Your Miles and Points to Support Hurricane Dorian Victims”

What’s The Best AMEX Card To Add An Authorized User To Open Up Points Transfers To Partner Programs?

As of September 1, 2019, American Express is only allowing cardholders to transfer Membership Rewards to partner accounts of authorized users and those authorized users need to have been added at least 90 days ago. What does this mean?

You still are not allowed to transfer (or pool) Membership Rewards between accounts, even with your spouse, family member or authorized user(s). This rule is more restrictive than Chase and Citi, which both do let you send points between accounts.

What you can currently do is transfer Membership Rewards points to the partner accounts of people who are authorized users on one of your American Express cards that earn Membership Rewards. For example, I can transfer Sharon’s Membership Rewards to my Delta SkyMiles account. I can also send my Membership Rewards to my dad’s ANA Mileage Club account, which is exactly what I did to help them have enough miles to book their trip to Bali and Thailand. When I did this, I added him as an authorized user to my account and a day later I could transfer the points. That’s no longer possible due to the 90-day hold period before you can make transfers to new authorized users.

Continue reading “What’s The Best AMEX Card To Add An Authorized User To Open Up Points Transfers To Partner Programs?”