As first reported on Doctorofcredit blog, American Express has recently added  new verbiage to ALL of its credit card offers: To put it in simple terms, Amex may or may not give you the sign-up bonus after you’ve been approved for the card and met minimum spending threshold. And according to terms, there isn’t anything […]

Last week Nancy wrote a post on taking partial vacations with kids, and all the controversy her parenting style has stirred up on a certain family travel internet board. Hmm, I wonder what those folks would say if I told them that my husband  and I are planning to go to South Pacific for two […]

Now and again I like to feature real-life examples of utilizing frequent flyer miles or looking for most optimal ways to do so. Today I will be dissecting my cousin-in-law’s plans for flying to Europe in May of 2019  (with her permission). It will be a week-long wedding anniversary trip with just her husband. Their […]

Update: this hotel is now a category 3. During Memorial Day holiday weekend, my husband and I had a chance to stay two nights in Hyatt Place St. Petersburg/ Downtown hotel. It’s a relatively new property that costs only 5,000 Hyatt points per night. On paper it looks like a spectacular bargain. And it is… with […]

When a credit card pays out 5% cash back or an equivalent in points, it definitely gets plenty of coverage in the blogosphere. And for a good reason. Most cards pay only 1-2% cash back, so this is a huge bump on earning rewards. When you have a card like Chase Freedom, it gets even […]

Los Angeles has never appealed to me. I know several of my readers happen to be Angelenos, so please, don’t take offense! I had a flight connection in LAX a number of times (on our way to Hawaii). Since I redeemed miles, I could have added a free stopover according to  program rules, but didn’t […]