👋 Hi Reader,

Hope your weekend is off to a great start! Here's a preview of everything in today's newsletter:

• 🏖️ How we booked a $20,000 vacation with points
• ✈️ American fee hikes: lock lower prices by 8/23
• 🏨 3 new Marriott card offers: 4 free nights & up to 150K points
• 🔗 $100 back at Accor, $75 at Hertz, $40 at Walmart
• 🧔🏻 My anti-aging "cheat code" for your face
• 🚗 Premium cards might be increasing your car rental rates
• 🔄 New transfer bonuses: 30% Avios & 40% Turkish
• 💳 Some Amex referrals jump to 45K points

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 We Booked a $20,000 Vacation w/ Points

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Amy and I booked a last-minute week in Bora Bora that would have cost over $20,000, almost entirely on points, including business-class flights and inter-island travel. Learn why we chose Bora Bora over Fiji, how we navigated a Marriott award search quirk, and then three nights in why we decided to pay more to switch resorts.

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📋 My Past Week

• I'm writing this from Denver, where I'm at the first of a few points & miles related events this year. Since I work for myself at home, it's really nice to have a community to hang out with a few times year that feels a bit like my "colleagues". It's also fun to nerd out on points stuff with other people and spare my wife from being the only person I typically have to chat with.
• We used 3x Stubhub credits (thanks Dad!) to buy tickets to the Beauty and the Beast musical in San Francisco and went to the matinee on Wednesday. It was our girls' first theatre event and they were fully captivated and loved it. My wife and I loved it too and I definitely recommend checking it out if you're near any of the 30+ cities it stops in over the next year.
• Our youngest daughter is finally comfortable enough riding a bike on her own, which meant we got to take our first family bike ride without carrying the kids on the back of our bikes. There's still some room for improvement before we tackle longer rides, but I'm already seeing a future of all of us biking to dinner or the farmer's market and I'm so excited for it.
• Including parents and siblings, more than half of our immediate family has a birthday in a 3-week period of the summer, so every year we just have a big family birthday party for everyone. This year we did a big lobster bake at my sister's house and it was so much fun. We've decided as a family (both sides) that we don't do gifts for siblings any more, but it's still a lot of fun trying to find unique gifts for our parents (also our kids, but they're much easier). If you need a gift for anyone who likes to garden, we gave my mom a subscription to this Seed of the Month club.
• I spent a ton of time the past 2 weeks trying to plan out the content for the podcast for the rest of the year and I am so excited for some of the episodes lined up. There's a good mix of solo and guest episodes as well as some new topics we've never covered before like becoming a better storyteller and creating a healthier home.

⭐ My Top Picks

🚗 Car Rental "Discounts" Can Cost You $$

A writer at Upgraded Points was pricing a 10-day National rental in Cancun and found the rate tied to their Amex Platinum "discount" was increasing the rate by so much that taking the card off the profile saved $520. So always make sure to check the rates with different discounts, including searching while logged out as well.

✈️ American Airlines Raises Card and Lounge Fees

American is repricing almost everything on 8/23 and it's a mixed bag:

• Citi Executive: Annual fee going up to $696 — If you fly a lot on AA, all the new coupons/perks on the card will probably make up for the fee (especially if you can make use of the $500 AA Vacations credit).
• Admirals Club: Membership fees increase by up to $550/yr — If you want to bring guests into the AA lounge, it'll now cost you an extra $500-$550/yr. This makes the Executive card much more appealing by comparison.
• Upgrades: No more coach to biz upgrades — For transcon and Hawaii routes, AA Elites booked in economy will now only get free upgrades to premium economy instead of business, which definitely sucks for top tier AA elites.

🏨 Marriott Cards: Up to 150K Points or 4 Free Nights

Marriott is now offering 3 new welcome offers across their card lineup:

• ​4 free nights, up to 50K each — If you can make good use of the 50k awards (which can be topped up to 75k with points), this is definitely the best offer right now, especially on a <$100 annual fee card.
• ​150K points + $250 credit — This offer has been higher in the past, and given the >$500 high annual fee, you'd really need to want to have the card to act now.
• ​125K points + $150 credit — For a mid-tier annual fee it might seem like a good offer, but given the value of Bonvoy points, I feel like there are better options out there.

🔄 New Transfer Bonuses: 30% Avios, 40% Turkish

Two transfer bonuses showed up this week, and the Amex one is the first bonus to Avios in about a year. Neither is worth transferring speculatively, but if you already have plans in mind, this could be a great bonus.

• Amex → Avios: 30% bonus, first in about a year​
• Citi → Turkish: 40% bonus, capped at 125K point transfer​

🧔🏻 Recommendation: Wild Roman

Now that I'm in my 40s, I've finally accepted that I should probably be taking better care of my face. To do that, I wanted products with natural ingredients and no chemical junk, which is why I landed on Wild Roman. Their Face Routine Set is dead simple, all natural and feels like an anti-aging cheat code for your skin. Through 8/31, you can get 40% off, plus unlock a free gift and free shipping. Or use code CHRIS-HUTCHINS for 15% off everything else.

📰 The Rest of the Week

💳 Credit Cards & Points

• Amex: Referral bonuses up to 45K points — These are targeted, so check all your cards to see if you have the elevated offers.
• Bank of America: Travel portal moves to Agoda — This is a big improvement that will bring many more hotels and airlines.
• Capital One: Move credit lines to/from Discover — An easy way to shift an unused limit onto the card you actually want more room on.

✈️ Airline News & Promos

• Frontier: GoWild Fall/Winter Pass for $199​
• Rate.com: 50K Alaska miles for a mortgage — Rare to earn miles on a mortgage, but the rate you get matters far more than 50K miles, so shop around.
• United: 5x miles on Make-A-Wish donations through 8/31​

💎 Award Deals

• 🇮🇩 Bali: Alila Villas Uluwatu from 35K Hyatt​
• 🇨🇱 Chile: Biz class to Santiago from 50K Alaska​
• 🇳🇮 Nicaragua: Private Island from 240K Hilton​
• 🇹🇨 Turks & Caicos: Ritz-Carlton from 106K Marriott​
• 🇻🇳 Vietnam: New Park Hyatt Phu Quoc from 25K Hyatt​

🔗 Card-Linked Offers

• Accor: $100 back on $500+ at Luxury Brands — Covers Raffles, Fairmont, SLS and Sofitel, so 20% off if you already have a luxury stay planned.
• Hertz: $75 back on $325+ or $100 on $500+ — The $75 is a Citi Offer and the $100 is an Amex Offer. Both need one single transaction, not cumulative rentals. Also make sure you're not trading off good rental car coverage for a discount.
• Uber & Lyft: 15% on Uber (ends 8/10) or 10% on Lyft — The Uber one ends Monday and runs through several issuer portals, so check yours today if you're riding this weekend.
• Walmart: $20 off $60, usable twice via Amex — $40 total on things you were buying anyway is about as easy as Amex Offers get. Online only.

Several of these are targeted, so check your own accounts to see which ones you have.

💬 Parting Thoughts

As always, thanks so much for reading! Hit reply and let me know what you think. I read every response. 🙏

Chris