Comment by scarface74
4 years ago
My wife and I are “hybrid digital nomads”. We fly around the US staying in hotels (mostly Hiltons) from mid March through the end of September. The other half of the year we own a unit in a “Condotel” in Florida that gets rented out like a hotel when we aren’t there to cover the cost. We also don’t have cars and depend on Ubers and the occasional rental car for ground transportation.
We will be in at least 13 cities this year. Some vacations. Some “nomadding” and some a little of both.
I also travel for business 7-8x a year (cloud consulting at $BigTech)
All that to say, credit card rewards and loyalty points makes traveling, staying on budget and being able to enjoy more expensive places possible.
For our major categories, we get the following “returns” from credit card points/loyalty points (miles, hotels, transferable credit card points)
- Hilton hotels - 20-25%
- Hyatt Hotels - 20%
- Delta/American Airlines - 14%
- Groceries/Dining Out - 5.5%
- Uber - 4.2%
- everything else 2.4%
Then there is also the concept of “churning” where you sign up for cards just for sign up bonuses. Those can be worth between $600-$1200 per card.
Ask me anything…
What is the carbon footprint of that lifestyle?
Would any plane not fly if I weren’t on it?
Yes, most certainly.
You are part of the aggregate like it or not and this is aggregated demand that gets this plane flying.
You are free to do what you want but you can’t deny your impact. Given your post you probably have by yourself the carbon footprint of two to three families.
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I think the thinking of the prior poster here is
1) it's not just you, it's your partner too. So that's two seats x # flights/yr.
2) with the extra seat miles you are occupying, airlines can sustain their existing routes/itineraries or expand them if they're at capacity.
At a larger scope it can be viewed as: will the airline fly more flights with its existing fleet? Will the airline buy more aircraft to fly more flights? If yes to either, then your argument breaks down.
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How do you manage to get 20-25% on Hilton hotels? True, I never accomplished anything more than Silver membership, but I also read the analysis that one Hilton point is worth like 0.6 cent. It takes a while to accumulate even 100.000 points, and then that's worth maybe 1 free night.
I don’t redeem HH points for any less than .7 cpp. You get a free night when you pay all of your nights with points.
But as far as collecting points. Each time I stay at a Hilton, per dollar, I get:
- 10 base points
- 10 points for being Diamond (automatic with the Amex Hilton Aspire)
- 14 points on the Aspire card.
That’s 34 points minimum or around 24%.
But Hilton ran a 3x special the third quarter of last year followed by two 2x specials for 54x and 44x. At 54x that’s almost 38% back.
I don’t use more than 70K points per night or 280K points for 5 nights (fifth night free).
Our “housing budget” is $3500/month. We spend that on our own place during the winter and hotels the rest of the year and the income pays for our mortgage at our “winter home”. I’m also traveling for reimbursed work trips. That means at times, I’m collecting points for two hotels at once if my wife doesn’t come with me.
Thanks for the details :)
Seems like Amex Hilton Aspire card is the key here, just not sure how to get one, not living in the US, and having no credit history there. I assume they require some exorbitant income level as well?
Anyway, seems like just getting Diamond status gives you quite a bonus. I'm in this weird situation where I plan to go to US for the next 3-6 months, and I am actually considering living in Hiltons the whole time :)
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> Then there is also the concept of “churning” where you sign up for cards just for sign up bonuses. Those can be worth between $600-$1200 per card.
This doesn't work for long, IME. The banks quickly get wise to you, and won't give you any more bonus cards, at least for a while.
There is an entire crowd source science around how to churn and different companies have different policies.
For instance signing up for business cards using your SSN as the EIN doesn’t show up on your credit report.
Once you have one card from Amex, they don’t do a credit pull for additional cards. Between personal and business, Amex has six Delta cards and four versions of the Platinum.
That means you can apply for as many Amex business cards as you want with no effect on your credit.
Chase has a hard 5/24 rule where you can’t have opened more than 5 cards with any issuer within 24 months. But that doesn’t include business cards.
You also have to space credit card applications out. It also helps that I have a long credit history. I opened my first card in 1996.
> Chase has a hard 5/24 rule where you can’t have opened more than 5 cards with any issuer within 24 months. But that doesn’t include business cards.
I've never been able to get a Chase card.
> You also have to space credit card applications out. It also helps that I have a long credit history. I opened my first card in 1996.
I think I applied for too many at once. Also I take advantage of those 0% introductory APRs and run a balance (only paying the monthly minimum for the duration, and paying the remainder as one lump sum before it expires), which adversely affects my score.
Banks seem to be OK giving cards to known churners. It should be trivial to figure out. My theory is it's either because the marketing department is happy to show off the success of their campaign, or that the banks are leveraging the high credit scores of churners to reduce the risk on-paper of customers with lower credit scores.
There are various rules that the companies use.
Sone companies like Amex have a “once per lifetime rule” and others make you wait four years and others don’t give you sign up bonuses for the same “family” of cards.
Marriott for instance has restrictions between Chase and Amex cobranded cards.
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I love the idea but it seems like you’d have to be quite a minimalist when it comes to personal belongings. Do you keep stuff in storage when you’re not occupying the condo?
We threw away everything we owned that wouldn’t fit in three suitcases - two checked bags and one carry on.
Of course, I also have a large bookbag with my laptop a second portable display, my iPad and often a client laptop since we aren’t allowed to install a customer’s VPN on our work computers.
It’s a very freeing experience