Quick Points High: Today’s Must-Knows

Greetings from a Panera in Oklahoma City (welcome to the non-glamorous side of business travel).   In more glamorous news though, I am flying to LAX tomorrow for a girls weekend with two of my besties in Santa Barbara. Looking forward to trying out Kimpton’s new hotel, The Goodland.  I love that Kimpton offers Inner Circle members a free night at new hotels along with a $50 credit to the on-site restaurant and am excited to take advantage of this perk for the first time! Been pretty behind on this blogging thing lately, but here’s a quick recap of what you need to know.

Will be relaxing here in just over 24 hours now. photo from firsttoknow.com

• Today is the last day to book IHG award nights before 452 hotels change categories tomorrow. Points with a Crew made a map for quick reference.
• According to Deals We Like, you can earn a possible 7,500 Club Carlson points for calling US Bank to complain about dropping the bonus award night.

• Earn an easy 1,000 AA points. Tip: Skip to the end of the videos and then refer to the answers posted by The Flight Deal.
• If you are a Bank of America cardholder you can access many museums for free this weekend. Full list of participating museums here.

• A contributor on The Points Guy recently posted a thorough Denver airport overview. As my current home airport, I’ll throw in this tip: All terminals are connected by the same train past security. You can quickly and easy access airline clubs (American’s in “A” and United’s (2) in “B”) even if your gate is in a different terminal!
• Earn 2,000 Rapid Rewards points for referring your friends to Southwest (500 each, up to 4x). If you’re not yet a member, you can sign up using my referrer code 344810189 for 250 bonus miles.
• Check your email for an Ebates flash bonus of $5 after spending $25 today. If you are not yet a member of Ebates (my favorite shopping portal—I’ve earned $120 so far just by clicking through before making travel bookings or online shopping!), you can use my link for an extra $10 cash back bonus.
• The United Explorer Card from Chase temporarily increased it’s public offer to 55,000 (including 5,000 point bonus for adding authorized user). Check out this post from Doctor of Credit on how to also get a $50 statement credit!
• Citi has increased offers for both the ThankYou Premier and Prestige cards right now. Miles Abound compares both cards. We are both overdue for a good credit card app-o-rama so will likely get one of each.
• Frontier is running another sale for $19 flights. This 7News Denver story points out the cheapest fare out of Denver is actually $39, and compares various routes to Southwest’s prices. As always, do your own analysis before booking and don’t forget to factor in Frontier’s baggage fees (even for carry-on luggage).

How to change your name on key documents and travel accounts

UPDATE 11/15/15: More detailed information provided below for how to change your name online with Delta.

We’ve been married over a year and a half and I’m finally, finally finishing changing my name. I was excited and proud to take my husand’s last name and I legally changed it right away. I got a new driver’s license and social security card and changed it in all the “easy” places. But for various reasons including upcoming international flights under my maiden name, my passport not expiring for another couple years, and there just being oh so many damn travel accounts to tackle, I held off.

Passport
My passport will be expiring during our next international trip so the time came to finally make the change. Changing my name on my passport was actually the easiest step. I completed the application online, and mailed it in along with my current passport, a check for $110, a passport photo and a certified copy of our marriage license. I got my new passport in the mail less than a month later, but am still waiting for them to return my original documents to me.

Quick Points High: This week’s travel news

This week was a busy one for me on the road for business in Houston. I had a TSA nightmare trying to travel with two different names on my identification and boarding pass, which I’ll post about later. But other than that a really nice trip, including return stays at the Hyatt Regency Houston (superb breakfast spread!) and the Drury Inn and Suites in The Woodlands (free happy hour!), and got to drive a brand new 2015 Jeep Patriot with just over 1,000 miles on it (love National’s Executive Aisle!)

Here’s a recap of what’s been happening in the miles and points world this week:

Hotels

• The dreaded day is here, Club Carlson is getting rid of the bonus award night offer for credit card holders. This is a pretty big blow for our personal travel plans, so I’ll be sure to dedicate a full post to the implications and our next steps surrounding this announcement, but in the meantime you can check out this Mommy Points post.
  

  The Radisson Blu Le Vendome Hotel in Cape Town opens June 1. Make your reservation for future dates BY June 1 to lock in the bonus award night.

• Wyndham is drastically changing their award chart. I agree with Million Mile Secrets that this actually a good move for the most part, since all-inclusive hotels seem to be included. It does appear that the Barclays Wyndham Rewards card has already dropped the sign up bonus from 45,000 points (now 3 nights) to 30,000 points (2 nights).
• 1,000 points to update your Hilton HHonors password offer extended (expires 4/10/15)
• Last week I received 60,000 Club Carlson points for participating in an online focus group. It was only an hour long, actually enjoyable and a super easy way to earn enough points for two free nights at a luxury hotel. A good reminder to always open emails from hotels, airlines, etc.
• Marriott Rewards one million points giveaway with mobile-check-in. See this TravelBlawg post for more info.

My top five favorite features on Mint.com

I’ve been using Mint.com for years to manage my finances (thanks Chels and Kellen, for telling me about it all those years ago!) But since we started applying for more and more credit cards, mint.com has become especially useful!

Here are some of the features that we have found most helpful about Mint:

1. Budget—We went through and entered all of our fixed expenses each month, such as rent, insurance, car payments, student loans, cell phone/Internet/cable Netflix/Hulu Plus (free two week trial!), bills, etc. This gave us a good idea of what we have remaining each month when you subtract fixed expenses from our disposable income, which helped us to set budgets for things like groceries, gas and entertainment. Mint helps us to be realistic with how much we are spending each month.
   
2. Monitoring transactions—with 30+ cards it’s hard to regularly log in to each account, or view individual statements, to scan for errors or potential fraudulent charges. I try to be in the habit of scanning this page every day or every other day, and I’ve caught several incorrect charges. It’s also helpful to know when annual fees hit. Though many people like to call and cancel before the annual fee is due, I usually wait until it hits as you usually have anywhere from 30-180 days to get it reimbursed. We just had a big slew of annual fees hit and are making some decisions right now, so that will be covered in more detail in a future post.
   
3. Payment due reminders- on the home page Mint will tell you which cards have upcoming payments due, and you can also sign up to receive email reminders. Typically as a part of my card set up process, I enroll in automatic payments, so this usually isn’t a big deal but it’s nice to have the reminder there or in your inbox.
4. Tracking reimbursable expenses—We both travel frequently for work, and at least with my position I am able to put all expenses on a personal card, then be reimbursed for it later. I love this system since I am able to receive all of the credit card points, but it can be frustrating to know our budget is off by several thousand dollars while waiting for the twice monthly reimbursement check. Mint has a feature that allows you to mark items as “reimbursable.” Step by step directions:

– Go to the ‘Transactions’ tab, and locate the transactions you want to edit
– Check multiple transactions (checkbox) to activate ‘Edit Multiple’ button – if it turns gray, the button is activated, the button is near the “Edit Rules” option 
– Click on the button to begin editing 
– Type in your desired description and categories, you may also: 
    a) Edit the ‘Rules’
    b) Edit the ‘Tags’ – make sure to check the box to apply the tags. 
– Click ‘I’m Done’ to save your changes

5. Free credit score feature—You can now get your free credit score, with no credit card required on Mint.com. I prefer to use Credit Karma and Credit Sesame, along with the free scores provided by several banks now, but it’s always helpful to have one more free credit score resource.