Updated Marriott Links

The business version is here and the personal link here. Spend $3,000 for 75,000 points. No fee for the first year. Personally, I like the business card more because it hates me less and there’s still a chance I’ll get approved for it. Have a great weekend, nerds!

 

National Rental Giveaway

Thanks to generous reader Daniel, I have a pair of free rental day codes at National to share. These will expire on June 15th. As always, I wish I could give stuff out to everyone but it just isn’t possible. I’ll pick 2 people randomly on Sunday night. Please make sure your email entry goes to the contest address below. I don’t read messages there, so feel free to leave it blank. The subject should be, “National Rental.” Good luck!

JetBlue And Southwest

A tale as old as time…common as sarcasm on the internet…regular as the guy who eats prunes for lunch every day…here are today’s sales for JetBlue and Southwest. Sure, maybe I’ll never own my dream home with a white picket fence as big and bright as Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth. But I sure as hell will accomplish my other lifelong goal…looking at sales from JetBlue and Southwest every week until I die.

Creative Thinking

It’s tough to get a hotel room for the Super Bowl.

Obvious statement, right? So when you see articles like this and then listings like that…it’s not a coincidence. I think the connection is pretty clear. You’ll find similar stuff at New Year’s Eve in Times Square, big college football rivalry weekends, Sundance, etc. Most people don’t have an obsessive interest in travel deals like us. And they don’t normally stockpile huge amounts of points. So some creative nerds search out opportunities and look for dates/locations to be announced…

Monday Triple

Time to catch up with updates (on something other than Tom Brady’s hand). Thanks to reader Charles for sending these…

  • Nice offer from Avis here. It’s worth 6,000 Virgin Atlantic miles for a rental of 2 or more days. Not bad at all. But it isn’t as good as the recent 5,500 United mile offer some of you got from Hertz. An example of how hard the strong rental offers have been hit is here.
  • Filing with TurboTax? Might as well pick up 1,000 Southwest points for it.
  • Charles reminded me to look at American’s reduced mileage awards. Can’t say I’ve checked that page out in a few months. The latest list is an improvement (at least from the last time I perused it). More importantly, now that I’m using the word “peruse,” am I officially an old fart?