Milenomics² Podcast Episode 258: Heightened Welcome Bonuses and Booking Puzzlers

0:19  Heightened Credit Card Offers

• BofA Alaska Business 75k

• $4,000 in 90 days

• $95 AF not waived

• https://go.bofa.com/q/akbizcardpromo or https://www.alaska75k.com

• Citi Executive 100k

• $10,000 in 3 months

• $595 AF not waived

• Includes AA lounge access

• Direct Link

• Schwab/Morgan Stanley Amex Platinum

• Schwab: 125,000 for $8,000 in 6 months Direct Link

• Morgan Stanley: 150,000 for $8,000 in 6 months Direct Link

• Offers expire 6/11/2025

• Mesa Homeowners Credit Card

• 50,000 for $5,000 in 90 days

• Earns points equal to the amount of your mortgage each month you spend $1,000

• Points are worth 1cpp towards travel booked through their portal -or- can be transferred to Finnair Avios (which in turn can be transferred to other Avios airlines) and a few other quirky transfer partners including Accor

• 3x Home improvement, decor, maintenance, utilities, and daycare

• 2X Groceries, gas and EV charging

• $200 annual Thumbtack (home maintenance and cleaning) 

• $120 annual Wag! (pet care) 

• $120 annual The Farmer’s Dog (pet food) 

• $120 annual Lowe’s Credit ($30 per quarter) 

• $100 Armadillo Home Warranty 

• $65 toward $65 Big Box Membership (warehouse clubs)

• $0 AF

• Must apply through app, use promo code Bonus50

• FM writeup

11:35 Bluebird/Serve to be Discontinued June 2026 (DoC)

• Looks like we won’t be getting back in

• Everyone’s shut down eventually. 

The Summer of Deadlines: 

13:18 Southwest changing everything May 28. 

• Be sure to listen to the recent checking in episode with Brian M

• Get those credits transferred and in the right combination to continue having unlimited expiration. 

13:45 Last Call for Amex -> Hawaiian Transfers

• Ends June 30, 2025

• Pretty great that this backdoor option to transfer bank points to Alaska materialized so quickly after Alaska acquired Hawaiian

• And pretty great that it remained around for so long, with a clearly defined end date

• Discuss: 

• How many MRs are you going to speculatively transfer over?

• Should I keep miles stored at Hawaiian? Or is it better to transfer them to Alaska now?

20:35 Citi Devaluing ThankYou Point Cashouts to .75cpp Starting 8/24/2025

• For strata cards this means 3x earning is 2.25 cents per $1

• Bad for cash out angle.

• AA transferable TYP seem to be around the corner

• Probably somehow related to that

• Still better than Amex cash out (thanks for the reminder Teddy!)

• Double cash may be spared and linking might mean continued 1cpp cash out Link

• Don't hold TYP cash out quickly

25:10 Barclays Losing Airline Cards, Gaining Car Company Cards 

• Hawaiian airlines card will be going away soon, or at least closing for new applications Link

• Nice quick and easy application for Alaska miles

• Alaska VP says this will concern to a BofA Alaska card at some point

• Also losing AA, Barclays seeks to score new partnerships with….GM MasterCard Link

• Terrible bank. Once JetBlue is bought out then Barclays won't have a single airline card. 

29:42 Puzzler: 35k Alaska -or- 33k CapOne?

• PHX - BOS on AA First, amazingly with partner space open

• Have: 180k Alaska, 600k Hawaiian, 500k CapOne

• Alaska wants 35k for AA First

• 33k CapOne transfers with 20% bonus to Qantas, 39k for AA First

• Which to use?

33:28 Fare Buckets (Especially in First Cabins)

• Might seem like the most basic thing in the world, but I’d like to talk about it

• 1st seat: $500

• 2nd and 3rd seat: $700

• 4th seat: $1,000

• If you search for 4 seats all will be priced at $1,000 pp, so it behooves you to book separately

• But how do you go about actually booking this if you ultimately want 4 seats?

• In this scenario it was with Delta, so it lacks the lottery element you might have with a carrier like AA where low priced award tickets need to be factored in

• I booked 1 with miles

• Then 2 with Amex MRs (5% Insider Fare, 35% Business Platinum, hoping to trigger $500 back on $2,500)

• Now I need that last seat. Do I book it with miles now as a placeholder? Or do I let it simmer hoping they’ll drop the price on the 4th seat?

• In this case it’s 3 seats out of 20 and no other seats are assigned besides us and it’s 7 months out

44:03 Newport, RI Vacation Rental

• Wanted to stay in a unit we’ve rented before, managed by a company that dominates the market

• Booking direct I saw availability in the unit we wanted, but there’s a twin 2nd unit that’s a tad nicer that I saw available on AirBnB/Hotels.com/Priceline/etc on the dates we wanted around 4th of July - but that unit showed unavailable for the dates we wanted on the management company’s availability calendar

• I had to believe the management company’s availability calendar was accurate, so I didn’t want to book through a 3rd party then have a tussle when the management company said it wasn’t actually available on those dates

• They’d probably just stick us in the unit that showed availability on their site, but I was tempted to poke at it because of all the discounts you can get through CapOne Shopping

• That said, the management company shrewdly charges more for listings on 3rd party sites so it would have been a wash at best

• No Vacasa here

• What would you do in this kind of situation?