👋 Hi Reader,

Happy Saturday! Hope your weekend is off to a great start. Here are some highlights from today's newsletter:

• 💰 How to earn points on your savings and investments
• ✈️ Big Southwest Rapid Rewards changes
• 🏦 3 bank & brokerage bonuses worth $3K+
• 🥇 United makes it harder to earn top-tier status
• 🏨 Hyatt points transfers get much easier
• 📱 Two 200k+ welcome offers to earn points on saving

If you enjoyed reading, please forward this email to a friend who might too! And if that's you, make sure to subscribe here. Thank you so much!

Chris

💰 Earn Points on Your Savings and Investments

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Learn how to earn airline miles and transferable points on money you’re already saving or investing. I compare mileage-earning bank accounts from Bask, United and Alaska, the new Bank of America and Alaska transfer partnership, Silo’s brokerage rewards program, and Symphony’s higher-yield approach. Plus, the welcome offers ending this fall that change the first-year math and more.

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📋 My Past Week

• We got our Lectric Xpedition 2 and it's been fun to bike the girls to school. It surprisingly doesn't take that much longer and they still think it's like going on an amusement park ride. I'm sure that feeling might wear off, but until it does, we'll keep it up!
• Last weekend we had another amazing trip to Carmel Valley Ranch (CVR) with the kids and my parents. It's so great to have a perfect staycation spot that takes Hyatt points. The highlight this time was all the incredible food Chef Andrew Juinio created for dinner. We never wanted to leave the resort for dinner and got to try almost the entire menu. Even if you're not staying there, I highly recommend stopping by Valley Kitchen for dinner, where you have to try the Crispy Shrimp, Adobo Chicken, and Our Chevre dishes.
• While at CVR, my oldest daughter got an opportunity to do a beekeeping experience and it was so great. Not only did she have so much fun, but we all learned a ton about bees, our kids are no longer scared of them when they're flying nearby, and we're now strongly considering setting up a hive at our home and harvesting honey. Stay tuned for how that experiment goes!
• I'm very excited to get an iPhone Duo and woke up early yesterday to pre-order one. Unfortunately it seems like everyone else in the country had the same idea and Apple had a much more limited supply than needed. I currently have an estimated ship date in late December, but hopefully I'll at least be able to test it out at an Apple store and see if I think I'll really like it or just upgrade to the 18 Pro.
• I'm in Chicago right now for the Points Travel Festival, and on the way out I had a few backup flights booked on points that I could cancel free before departure. Normally I wait until the doors are closed to cancel, but this time I canceled all my backups after getting seated. Unfortunately just minutes later, we had a mechanical issue that slowly pushed our departure out 5 hours. Then after landing 5 hours late, our gate wasn't available and we sat on the tarmac for another hour. Somehow we ended up landing later than the backup flight I canceled, which was also half the price in points. I will forever wait until we push back from the gate to cancel any backup flights.

⭐ My Top Picks

✈️ Southwest Overhauls Rapid Rewards Program

Southwest is overhauling its Rapid Rewards program on 1/1/27, and the biggest (and unfortunate) change is that credit card welcome bonuses, referrals, and anniversary points will no longer count for Companion Pass. Instead, unlimited Companion Pass access will be reserved for Platinum status, which requires 140K tier-qualifying points (TQPs) or 100 flights. However, as part of adding milestone rewards in between their 3 new status levels, you will be able to earn 3 Companion Pass trips after hitting 95K TQPs, which might be enough for many people.

The other changes include 3 new status tiers, points redemptions for seat upgrades, international airline partners, and a premium card with lounge access. Also, on a positive note, earning TQPs with credit cards will be easier than it is now (1 TQP per $1 spent). Overall, I think the changes are negative, but not as bad as I was expecting. That said, I think this will be the last year I earn Companion Pass, which will probably result in a lot less Southwest travel going forward.

🥇 United 1K Status Gets Harder to Earn

United is making it harder to earn elite status in 2027. Starting 1/1/27, only spending-based Premier Qualifying Points (PQP) will qualify you for status (they've gotten rid of flight-based PQFs). Fortunately, Silver, Gold, and Platinum requirements remain unchanged, but Premier 1K will jump from 28K to 32K PQPs. Though if you hold an eligible co-branded United card by 12/31, you'll get a 5% PQP head start. I don't fly enough to earn United top-tier status from PQPs and it's way too expensive to earn UA status from credit card spend, so this won't impact me, but it's not a great trend that top-tier status is getting harder to earn across many airlines.

🏨 Hyatt Points Transfers Finally Go Online

Finally, some good points news! Hyatt allows free point transfers between members, but historically required emailing a signed PDF, which was a slow process. Now, you can gift points to another member for free on the Hyatt website. The only catch is a new cap each calendar year of 525K points sent/received and maximum of six transfers. Also, both accounts need to be 60 days old for transfers.

🔍 Two Ways to Earn Points on Cash

This week's episode focused on ways earn points on cash, and two of those options have welcome bonuses of 200k+ points. Even better, both platforms have indicated they'll be launching transfer partners for their points next month. These offers are supposed to end on 10/31 and you can find details on each platform in the episode.

1. ​Silo Markets: Brokerage firm that lets you earn up to 0.5x points on your balance PLUS a 250K welcome bonus when you sign up via a referral link (here’s mine) before 10/31 and get their $80/month Platinum plan. While Silo is a new company, their entire brokerage infrastructure is built on top of the long-established Interactive Brokers, which made me feel much more comfortable transferring investments to the platform.
2. ​Symphony: iOS savings app that offers 5% cash or 5x points on your savings, plus a welcome bonus of up to 1 million points (~3x extra points on balances up to $330K, paid out over 12 months). Note that Symphony isn’t a traditional savings account and comes with its own risks, so please do your homework.

📰 The Rest of the Week

💳 Credit cards & points

• Amex: Leak hints at FHR credit needing 2-night stays in 2027 — Unconfirmed, but this would take the FHR credit to something I'd probably never use, which would be a huge devaluation to Amex Platinum cards for me.
• Amex (Blue Business): Up to 50K MR points or $500 — This is a great bonus if you want the no annual 2x/2% cards, but there are better bonuses if you're focused on earning the most points.
• Citi: AAdvantage biz double-dip extended to 2028 — This is a great way for 2 people to earn status off the same spend.
• Rove: JetBlue added 1:1 with 20% launch bonus — Can be good for partner biz awards, but not worth it for JetBlue flights.

✈️ Airline news & promos

• Points on Sale — As always, these deals are only worth it with a high value redemption in mind. I'm never a fan of speculatively buying points unless you know a program incredibly well.
  • Aeroplan: Buy points at 1.38¢ with a 90% bonus​
  • LifeMiles: Buy points at 1.35¢​ with up to a 145% bonus​
  • Qatar: Buy points at 1.44¢ with up to 60% bonus​
• Southwest: Free Wi-Fi fleetwide by fall 2027 — I'm really excited to see more airlines jump on this bandwagon (ideally with faster Wi-Fi too).

🏨 Hotel news & promos

• Hyatt: 1.5x Aeroplan points on stays + status challenge
• Marriott: 20K points on Caribbean/LatAm packages
• Preferred Hotels: Up to 35% off last-minute bookings​

💎 Award deals

• 🇧🇷 Brazil: AA Biz to São Paulo From 50K Atmos​
• 🇨🇷 Costa Rica: Andaz Peninsula from 35K Hyatt points​
• 🇭🇰 Hong Kong: Biz class from 91K Asia Miles​
• 🇮🇹 Italy: Biz class from 55K Atmos points​
• 🇯🇵 Japan: JAL 30% Off Economy Awards from US​
• 🇸🇬 Singapore: 30% off November KrisFlyer Awards​
• 🇦🇹 Vienna: Biz class from 75K Aeroplan points​​

🔗 Card-linked offers

• Capital One: $200 off $500 biz travel hotel/car​
• Hertz: $75 off $350​
• Hilton: 20K points on $200 spend — This is a pretty great deal if you have a stay coming up.
• Hotels.com: 10% off, up to $125​
• JetBlue: $50 off $400+​
• Miraval Resorts & Spas: $200 off $1,000​
• Norwegian Cruise Line: $150 off $750​
• Venture X Business: $500 credit after $3K bookings​

🏦 Bank bonuses

• Popular Bank: Up to $900 checking bonus​
• SoFi: Up to $737 checking bonus via Swagbucks
• TastyTrade: Up to $2,000 brokerage bonus​

🛍️ Other deals

• TopCashback: $40 bonus after $10 cashback​

💬 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