👋 Hi Reader,

Happy Memorial Day weekend! Hope you enjoy the long weekend and get to spend some quality time with friends and family! Here are some quick highlights of today's newsletter:

• 💰 Lots of points are on sale, but should you buy?
• 📉 How long-term investors think about risk
• 🏨 How bad was the big Hyatt devaluation
• ✈️ New award flight option for biz class to Asia
• 🔄 Three new transfer bonuses to hotel programs
• 🛏️ Bunk beds on flights are coming soon
• 🏋️ Award-winning documentary on beating the odds

If you enjoyed reading this newsletter, I'd really appreciate it if you would forward this to a friend who might too! And if that's you, make sure to subscribe here. Thank you so much!

Chris

📉 How Long-Term Investors Actually Think About Risk

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Learn to handle market volatility and build long-term wealth in a world dominated by market fear, inflation concerns, and nonstop financial noise. Ben Carlson and I discuss why investing remains psychologically difficult, how to think about global diversification, when to reevaluate your portfolio, and the risks most investors still overlook.

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📋 My Past Week

• Don't worry, that's not our new blue Cybertruck... but for 7 hours on Tuesday while our car was in the shop, it was our loaner vehicle. Despite it not being that much wider than many big SUVs, it felt like we were driving a boat around town. Needless to say, there won't be a Cybertruck in our future.
• While the kids seem to get sick every few weeks, I usually manage to avoid it. Unfortunately, that didn't hold true this time and I was out of commission for a few days this week. I'm feeling great now, but still playing catch up from missing a few days.
• Every year this guy Aaron comes through our neighborhood knocking door to door offering to wash all the windows on the house. We were gone a few times he stopped by but I managed to find him outside at ~6p one day and asked if he could do our windows. He asked if he could come over in 20 minutes and get it done before the end of the day. How could I not want to support that attitude? And now our windows all look fantastic!
• We made Coconut Fish and Tomato Bake for the first time this week and it had everything you want in a dinner. It was delicious, lots of flavor and so easy/quick to make. We made it with some Halibut that Amy's dad caught (thanks Tom!), but you can use almost any type of fish. Hope you enjoy it!
• For the past few months, my daughter's class has been studying different artists and doing a piece of art in their style. To celebrate the unit, they hosted an art show, where each kid had a docent badge and took their parents on a tour of the "gallery" and showed off their paintings, mobiles, pottery and more. It was so cute seeing to see her so proud to show off her hard work!

⭐ My Top Picks

💰 Lots of Points on Sale, Is It Worth It?

Lots of points are on "sale" right now, but should you buy any? First, you should know that the non-sale price for points in most programs is so high, that a sale could still be a terrible deal. So make sure to consider how the price compares to the value you might get from the points. If you don't have a value in mind, I suggest looking at Frequent Miler's valuations. For example, if you look at all the current sales below, only IHG and LHW are on sale for less than most valuations. That doesn't mean you can't get value from other deals. I just wouldn't recommend buying points unless you have a very specific use case in mind, where you know it's worth the investment.

• ⭐ IHG: 100% bonus, 0.5¢/point​
• ⭐ LHW: Up to 100% bonus, 6¢/point​
• Emirates: Up to 50% bonus, 2¢/point​
• EVA Air: Up to 30% off, 2.8¢/mile​
• Finnair: Up to 50% bonus, 1.45¢/point​
• Frontier: Up to 150% bonus, 1.08¢/mile​
• Hyatt: 20% bonus, 2.17¢/point​
• Qatar: Up to 50% bonus, 1.53¢/point​

🏨 Hyatt Award Chart Devaluation Now Live

The Hyatt devaluation announced last month went live this week and many properties will now need more points to book. That said, so many people were expecting that every property would be priced at the highest end of their new five tier award chart, and thankfully that wasn't the case. While many properties did go up in price, at least one that I had booked actually went down (so I canceled and rebooked it). With such negative expectations across the industry, I'm feeling surprisingly happy with the current "smaller" devaluation. Most of all I'm happy it's over, because I felt a ton of pressure before the changes to try and make as many speculative bookings as I could.

✈️ New: Book Philippine Airlines Online with Avios

Qatar Airways Privilege Club just enabled online award booking for Philippine Airlines, which opens up a new path from U.S. transferable points to Asia. Business class from the US is 110,000 - 154,500 points, but availability is actually pretty good. Every single transferrable points program I know has at least one Avios program in it and you can move Avios freely between all Avios programs, so this should be an option available to a ton of people. Full details here.

🛏️ Air New Zealand Launches Economy Bunk Beds

I didn't choose to highlight this because I expect that many people will be flying to New Zealand soon. However, I love seeing airlines doing innovative things to make it easier to sleep on long-haul flights for much less than a business class ticket. Air New Zealand launched their SkyCouch years ago, and these new "Skynest" sleeping pods are already on sale for JFK-AKL and cost $495/4hrs. While $124/hr is expensive, business class on the same flight seems to run ~$250/hr and you have to pay that price for the full 18hr. Earlier this year United also announced their "Relax Row" which has a similar proposition.

🔄 3 New Transfer Bonuses to Hotel Programs

Similar to points being on sale (see above), I don't tend to look at transfer bonuses unless I have a definitive plan to use the points (and it's a good deal). For the right redemption, the I Prefer and Bonvoy bonuses could make sense, while the Wyndham bonus is probably not worth considering. That said, none are exciting enough for me to speculate on.

• Citi: 25% Bonus to Wyndham Rewards (6/13)
• Citi: 30% Bonus to I Prefer Hotel Rewards (6/13)
• Popular Bank: 55% Bonus to Marriott Bonvoy (6/30)

🍿 My Recommendation

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Prisoner No More is a short award-winning documentary that follows Tae Jin Park, a young man diagnosed with cerebral palsy, who overcame so many physical limitations to make one of the most incredible transformations I've ever seen. It's an amazing story that redefines what the human body and mind are capable of. It's free to stream on YouTube.

📰 The Rest of the Week

💳 Credit Cards & Points

• Air France/KLM Card: Now Earns 3x on Bilt Rent — I prefer Bilt points, but could help if you're going for Flying Blue status
• Amex: Fanatics Joins as a Transfer Partner — I'm not using this, but interesting to see Amex adding non-travel transfer partners.
• Top Travel Portal: Adds Price Match Guarantee​

✈️ Airline News & Promos

• British Airways: Raising Taxes & Fees on Awards — Fees were already prohibitive, so doesn't change much for me.
• Emirates: Skywards Devalues Awards ~15% 5/21 — Haven't ever transferred to Emirates, so probably won't affect me.
• Rove Miles: Up to 15x at Select Merchants, Stacks With Paze — Great stacking opportunity with the 10x Paze promo.

🏨 Hotel News & Promos

• Kimpton: Summer Password "In bloom and out of office"​
• Fairmont: Endless Summer Sale, Up to 30% Off​

💎 Award Deals

• 🇲🇦 Casablanca: Royal Air Maroc biz from 55K Alaska​
• 🇹🇷 Istanbul: Turkish biz wide open from 65K​
• 🇦🇹 Vienna: Austrian biz from 70K Aeroplan​
• 🇩🇪 Germany: Lufthansa biz from 60K Aeroplan​
• 🇵🇭 Manila: Philippine Airlines biz from 110K Avios​

🔗 Card-Linked Offers

• Amazon: 1,200 points on $150, up to 3,600
• AT&T Fiber: $75 Back on $75​
• Chewy: $15 Back (or 2,500 MR) on $75​
• CVS: 25x Miles In-Store​
• DISH: $85 Back on $89.99​
• Hertz: $75 Back on $325​
• IHG: $50 Back on $250+​

To find and activate offers across all your cards in one place, I love using CardPointers (30% off here)

🏦 Bank / Brokerage Bonuses

• Popular Bank: Up to $1,500 Business Checking​
• SoFi: $815 Checking Bonus, Stacked With Swagbucks​
• Ally Invest: 3.5% IRA Contribution Match​
• KeyBank: Up to $500 With New Checking​

🛒 Other Deals

• Airbnb: Adds Car Rentals, Grocery & FIFA Experiences​
• Amazon: Resale Memorial Day Event, Up to 40% Off​
• Domino's: Free Pizza if Team USA Gets a Red Card

💬 Parting Thoughts

As always, thanks so much for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts on today's newsletter, and if you enjoyed it, please let me know why!

Chris