Happy Monday! I hope you had a great weekend! It is October 1 – the start of the last quarter of 2018. That is just incredible to me that this year has flown by so fast!
I had some travel mishaps last week that ended up taking me a little longer than I had planned to get around but the biggest thing I lost was sleep! The whole trip was coach and very early flight times left me with 2 out of 4 nights with no sleep and the middle 2 were really just 3 hour naps each night. 🙂 At least I am caught up now! Speaking of catching up, I missed last week’s summary post so this post will be from the last 2 weeks of relevant posts.
Apple Watch Series 4 Testing!
One thing I am pretty excited about is that I have been putting the new Apple Watch Series 4 through its paces over the last week or so and head-to-head with the similarly priced Garmin Forerunner 645. I will have an impressions post out soon before the final review and comparison but this is the longest I have gone with just an Apple Watch on my wrist in a long time!
Miles, Running, Deals
- New Transfer Bonus: Book Short-Haul Flights in the US for Just 5,300 Amex Points! – If you have Amex Membership Reward points, you can use them to transfer to Avios and get some nice deals on short-haul flights!
- An Incredible World Marathon Record Happened in Berlin Yesterday – It has been two weeks now since this incredible new world record but if you have not heard about it yet, it is definitely worth a read!
- Subscribe for This Running Store’s Newsletter – If You Like Deals on Fitness Gear – One of the search terms that brings some of the most visitors here is deals on Garmin watches. If that is something you enjoy finding, you will want to subscribe to this newsletter to get in on some pretty sweet deals that they run (that is where I picked up my latest Garmin Forerunner 645 – at an awesome price!).
- Here is Your Checklist for the 2019 Boston Marathon Travel Plans – Congrats to all of you who got in to the 2019 Boston Marathon! Some of the hotels in this post may be booked up now but at least take the time to check out the checklist and get your travel in order!
- This Hilton Credit Card Offer is Underrated and Undervalued – Don’t Make that Mistake! – To be clear – I get nothing for the card link in this post! 🙂 If you like to stay at hotels for free and are a mid-tier type of traveler, this card deserves a look! With no annual fee, minimal spending, and a big bonus, this could be a good card to get you at least a couple of free hotel nights. Plus, you get cash back!
- Highest Offer Ever! Hilton Ascend Offer for 150,000 Hilton Points – Same as the Aspire! – You will see this offer almost exactly nowhere else – that is because it is not available through public channels or affiliate channels. The only way you can get this offer is through referrals from other cardholders. If you have never had this card, this is definitely the highest offer ever and a pretty good one!
- Great New Change for American Express Referral Offers – For Hilton, SPG, Maybe Others? – This is a really nice development from Amex that will now allow you to have people sign-up for cards in a card family that you only have one card for – and you still get the points. Yeah, that was confusing so go ahead and read the post!
- Highest Point Offer: No-Fee Hilton American Express Card Offer of 100,000 Hilton Points – If the offer above for this card was not for you (the post about the underrated and undervalued deal) because maybe you would like to trade out the $100 for 25,000 more Hilton points, check out this offer.
- Highest Offer Now Available: Delta Reserve with 70,000 Miles and 10,000 Elite Miles – Hey, guess what? This is another offer that you will not find many places because this one does not have an affiliate link! You will find posts elsewhere about the business version which shares the same offer so you can actually take your pick – or get both, if you have not already had them!
- Big JetBlue 50,000 Point Offer on the JetBlue Business Card – When it comes to airline credit cards, the JetBlue card is one that offers a pretty much fixed value to the bonus. This card offer has a sign-up bonus, before the annual fee, of $750. Not bad! If you are a JetBlue flyer, or just like “free” travel, give this card a look!
- Delta and American Airlines Bump Up Bag Fees – New Southwest Ad Can Now Be Made – That didn’t take long – in fact, it was less than a month! That is how long it took for JetBlue and United to share their love of increased baggage fees with Delta and American. Now, Southwest can really run one incredible ad to highlight how baggage-laden travelers could actually pay for their entire trip with the money they save by not flying one of those other carriers and paying their baggage fees.
- This Is a Baggage Fee I Would Be Ok Paying – If the Airlines Would Offer It – Since airlines want to raise fees, at least give us a fee that we could pay that would actually give us something for our money! This is one such fee I wouldn’t mind paying…
- 4 Tips to Avoid Paying Baggage Fees – If you are allergic to paying for baggage fees, here are 4 tips to help you avoid it. In fact, with these new fees, you may be able to even fly in domestic first class for less than those bags would cost you – and you get the bags for free, too!
- Use Marriott Points to Bid on an Ultimate NYC Marathon Pre-Race Dinner – If you are a lover of fine food and will be in NYC for the marathon, you could use Marriott points to bid on this ultimate pre-race dinner! There are other travelers/runners that are interested – this auction has tripled in the cost of points since I wrote the post!
- How American Express Could Make Amex Offers Better – and More Efficient – Amex Offers are a great way to save money – and even make a little money sometimes. However, after all this time and with all the data they have, it should be the time for them to make a change that could make them better for all parties involved.
- The Latest Southwest Schedule Extension – Good for the Boston Marathon and Into June, 2019 – Hey, speaking of no bag fees and marathons, if you want to use Southwest to fly to and from the Boston Marathon, you can now do that!
- The 2019 Boston Marathon Cut-Off Time Was Tougher Than Ever! – Annnd, continuing on with the Boston Marathon, if you didn’t make the cut-off this year but had a qualifying time, you are not alone. It was the toughest year yet and over 7,000 runners got the denial letter.
- The Boston Marathon Qualifying Times Are Changing For 2020 and Beyond – Because of that tough cut-off time, the BAA was prompted to change the qualifying times for the 2020 Boston Marathon. This means you now know that you have to be faster to make it. But, at least you don’t have to be as fast as runners needed to be many years ago – check out the post for a historical view at the qualifying times.
- This American Hotel Suite Costs $75,000 Per Night! – $75,000 or 6 million Chase Ultimate Reward points – that is how much it would cost you to spend about 20 hours in the most expensive hotel suite in America. Make sure you check out this awesome looking suite because that is as close as any of us will get to it!
And that is it! As you can tell, I am trying to mix in more running posts with the deals and travel. If running is not your thing, don’t leave us! Just skip those posts and keep on with the ones you do like! In this blog space, there is often the pressure to chase the stories that will bring the most clicks and views because that is what brings in the ad revenue.
However, I honestly am at the point with blogging that writing about someone doing something on an airplane that no one should ever do is not really what interests me to write about. I love running, travel, tech, and deals so that is what I am trying to spend my writing time on. Hope you can find something in that mix that interests you!
But, if you really do have a desire to scratch that itch to find out about the guy that passed gas on an airplane, there are plenty of other posts on the internet about that! 🙂
