McGarvey's Words: Journalist…Podcaster..Speaker

by Robert McGarvey

It is time to play hard. Winning at travel rewards requires cunning, guile and, well, a determination to win.

I just won but I am still amazed at what I did to pull this off. It wasn’t hard – quite the contrary – but it seemed so unlike me.

Regular readers will recall that a few months ago I got a barebones Southwest Air credit card via Chase – $69 fee per year. It delivers minimal perks. But – crucially – it offered 50,000 SWA miles when spending $1000 in the first couple months of the card.

I had a trip for two to Dallas on my calendar, just a handful of miles in my Southwest account and not much more at American, and, no, I am not flying Frontier or similar discounters because I’m not. So I was looking at around $700+ out of pocket for air for a short trip to Dallas from Phoenix for two.

I did the math and it seemed to me I was out $69 if I get the card plus, say, $20 in lost Amex miles value for the $1000 spent to collect 50,000 miles – but I would collect $700 in value with the two free tix. Case closed, I got the card, and yesterday I booked the flights for about 52,000 miles (I had the extras in the account from a years ago flight on SWA) plus $11.20.

Add it up and I’m out about $100…but I saved $600 net.

Probably I will cancel the SWA card when it comes up for renewal.

It took me a few seconds to apply for the card, it will take about the same to cancel it.

And then I’ll move on to another card with a sign up bonus. Probably Alaska Air because it has rich payoffs (even if I don’t see me flying it but the transfer partners are plentiful – oneworld members plus a handful more including Aer Lingus).

What is so strange about all this is that, just a few years ago, I looked with pity upon friends who were deeply immersed in playing the credit card and mileage games. It seemed like so much effort. And yet here I am.

What’s changed? Really, it all changed when the airlines ditched their awards charts and instituted “dynamic pricing” aka what the market will bear and, suddenly, roundtrip shoulder flights to Europe in Economy Plus (not business class) cost over100,000 SkyMiles on Delta and who would have thought the cost could hit that mark?

I had always thought miles were a kind of adult Monopoly money and, boy, did that become plainly fact in the era of dynamic rewards pricing where airlines seem to work on the belief that there always is a greater fool so let’s push the cost higher and someone with a bunch of miles who believes they were “free” will plunk them down.

That’s not me. Miles I earned flying are miles I feel in my body. I worked for them, I earned them.

Now, miles I get for playing a sign up hustle are different. They are free or close to it.

And, really, the only way to play the miles game now is hustling for sign up bonuses. Earn ’em, spend ’em, move on.

by Robert McGarvey

Don’t think the question is academic. Here’s a firm prediction: we will all be seeing more loyalty plans that involve fees and probably we will pay to join some.

Part of the reason: Wall Street loves recurring fee income. Zuora, which bills itself as an expert on the subscription economy, says: “To investors, the  primary appeal of recurring revenue models is the value of predictable recurring revenue, particularly in comparison to one-time transactions. For example, a $20 million dollar company with eighty percent recurring revenue can count on sixteen million dollars at the beginning of every year. That figure is stable and predictable. Management can plan and invest accordingly.”

Yep.

Already we are chronically pinged to join Uber One ($9.99/month – don’t ask me what the bennies are; I haven’t joined), DashPass via DoorDash (also $9.99/month, altho free to some Chase credit card holders), Panera’s Unlimited Sip Club ($11.99/month buys a free beverage every two hours), and now hotel operator Ennismore has launched its Dis-loyalty club where members pay $18/month to belong.

Watch: if this Ennismore play catches on, many more hotel groups will follow suit. They are desperate to wow Wall Street and a loyalty program with a membership fee would be just the ticket.

And Dis-loyalty just may catch on. Its monthly fee is high but it builds in real value for users.

First however, what’s an Ennismore? Part of Accor, it’s a collection of 75 hotels and 150 restaurants including The Hoxton, 21c Museum Hotels, SO/ Hotels, SLS, and Mama Shelter. Dis-loyalty perks are real. 50% off just opened hotels, 20% off a first stay at a hotel, 10% off return stays, 10% off food and drink at the 150 restaurants, a daily free coffee or tea daily at any of the restaurants and bars.

Did I mention there are no blackout dates?

Notice: you don’t have to earn points, or even track them, to be eligible for a benefit. If the benefit is part of the program it’s yours for the taking.

Live near an Ennismore property, for instance, and a daily coffee would put you richly in the black on a membership. Add a monthly restaurant meal and also a hotel stay and, suddenly, Dis-loyalty is like winning the lottery.

For Ennismore it’s a win too: that member doesn’t need to be marketed to.

And, again, investors love this kind of recurring income.

Personally I belong to a number of loyalty programs: Bonvoy, Hilton, Avis, National -all with elite status via Amex Plat. I also belong to Delta Sky, American Air, Southwest frequent flyer programs. I pay for none.

Would I pay for any? Sure, for the same reason I pay for Amex Plat – if the program paid for itself.

But only if it did.

I would not pay for any that I belong to because I just don’t get enough value to justify it.

But Ennismore’s Dis-loyalty definitely does deliver value if you work it: “As a lifestyle company, with roughly 40% of our gross revenue coming from restaurants, bars, and coffee shops, once you do the maths, it doesn’t take much for you to work out the give-get,” Sharan Pasricha, Ennismore founder, told Fast Company.

One hitch with Dis-loyalty is that hotel reservations have to be made at the Dis-loyalty website. Accor Live Limitless points also are not earned.

But for people who already stay at Ennismore hotels and live near restaurants and already use them, at least a little, Dis-loyalty is a deal. The Fast Company writer notes that Ennismore is opening a new resort this fall in the Maldives – with rates starting at $1282. Stay just two nights at 50% off is $1282 in savings – which would pay for 5+ years of Dis-loyalty.

And the name itself encourages that. It’s called Dis-loyalty because it’s aimed at people who like to try new things, said Pasricha.

I can definitely see a US based boutique hotel group embracing this idea – perhaps Ace or the Standard. Maybe a prolific restaurateur – maybe the Bobby Flay club or the Danny Meyer Pack. The key is to load a program with enough perks to make membership pay for itself.

This is a trend I expect to explode – if the hoteliers don’t screw it up.

by Robert McGarvey

I have long been something of a fan of TripAdvisor, especially when it comes to booking at an independent hotel. Yes, my confidence in it was rocked when it became evident that the site had deleted posts claiming sexual assaults by hotel employees. And then there were the reports of hoteliers offering bribes to guests who had posted cranky reviews if they took them down.

And probably the biggest problem in recent years has been a growing army of scribblers who for a dollar or three write up favorable reviews of hotels they have never stayed in – never even seen in person. But, frankly, this hasn’t bothered me as much as it has bothered others because I thought – possibly stupidly – that I could spot such reviews. The language was usually stilted, the praises were generic, and – always – they were too favorable.

I have long believed it is normal to write a cranky review of a place that disappointed – while you are waiting, maybe an hour, for room service to bring your morning coffee why not tap out a blistering write up?

When I see positive reviews I have been skeptical – but some have convinced me they are honest. I had persuaded myself I could spot the phonies and read the honest ones.

But there now is a new player in town and it will put all the scribblers out of work because it is AI. The Guardian has the headline: Fake reviews: can we trust what we read online as use of AI explodes?

The Guardian’s thesis: “Artificial intelligence produces plausible verdicts on hotels, restaurants and tech in an instant.”

You doubt it? So did I I. So I went to the free version of ChatGPT – https://chat.openai.com/ – and asked it for a review of Enchantment resort in Sedona, a property I know and have followed for a couple decades. It came back with a long review that included this: “Enchantment Resort offers a truly enchanting experience in the heart of Sedona. The combination of stunning natural beauty, luxurious accommodations, superb dining, and exceptional service creates a memorable and rejuvenating getaway. Whether you’re seeking relaxation, adventure, or a spiritual retreat, Enchantment Resort is an ideal choice.”

The review is written in first person and – notably – it included that the easy access to hiking trails from the resort is a real plus. That is true.

Was there anything false? I don’t think it’s in the “heart” of Sedona – it’s out of town – but, really, the review was otherwise accurate.

Duplicate this experience yourself. Here’s the prompt I used – write a review of enchantment resort in sedona. (With large language model AI tools, they kick into action when given a prompt, kind of an AI variant a Google search command. Good prompting takes practice. If you don’t like what you get back, try another prompt.)

The ChatGPT review worried me. So I went to Google’s Bard – https://bard.google.com/ – and gave it the same prompt.

Bard came back with what I judged a better, even more credible review. Again it’s written in the first person and it even included a list of Cons:

• Expensive
• Some of the amenities, such as the spa and golf course, can be costly
• The resort is located in a secluded area, so it can be a bit of a drive to get to Sedona’s main attractions

Bard concluded: “Overall, I would highly recommend the Enchantment Resort to anyone looking for a luxurious and relaxing vacation in Sedona. It is a bit pricey, but the experience is worth it.”

How will we spot these AI generated reviews? Probably we won’t. The Guardian’s reporter, Patrick Collinson, observed that before we could spot fake reviews by their bad English, today “one sign that a review is fake will be that the sentence structure is a bit too perfect.” How are your Chicago Manual skills these days?

Meantime, TripAdvisor et. al. had been fighting trench wars with bogus posters – Collison said it identified 1.3 million fake reviews in 2022, a year that I’d guess saw fewer reviews than most because who was traveling then?

A scary reality is that Bard and ChatGPT spit out those reviews in seconds.

TripAdvisor isn’t clueless about this. It notes in a recent report, “As with all new technologies, the benefits of generative AI also come with challenges, and we expect to see attempts from businesses and individuals to use tools like ChatGPT to manipulate content on Tripadvisor. Our Trust & Safety team will continue to monitor the use of these tools on the platform and will take all available steps to stay ahead of threats to Tripadvisor’s brand integrity.”

Good luck with that. Arguably, AI tools could be trained to spot AI generated content – a kind of real world Terminator battle – but, for now, I am swearing off looking at “user” reviews of anything, from Amazon products to hotels and restaurants.

The machines are winning this battle.

by Robert McGarvey

Here’s the good news about the record setting Phoenix heat wave where day after day highs are greater than 110 and night time lows are above 90, sometimes even 95: so far the impacts on Sky Harbor Airport are minimal.  The airport says that it is good to fly up to 122 and we haven’t quite gotten there.

That is the end of the good news.

The rest is all bad.  We are in the longest, hottest heat spell in recorded Phoenix history. This is felt by all of us but especially by the 5000 or so unsheltered Phoenicians who live outside on the streets and sidewalks. They are dying this year – at least six so far this year but there will be more.

Yesterday I saw this misery on the faces of 100 or so who had come indoors at a church to get a few hours of relief.  I was there, with 10 volunteers, to bring them lunch as they sat indoors in air conditioned comfort.

For them the problem isn’t the daily high it’s the night time low which is so high it amplifies the Phoenix Heat Island Effect which is a fancy way of saying our concrete and asphalt roads and sidewalks and buildings absorb and radiate heat and this cranks up our temperatures 10 to 15 degrees.

There is only one 24 hour heat respite shelter available in Phoenix. There are over 100 daytime shelters with ac and there are unofficial ones (libraries, shopping centers, anyplace a homeless person can duck into to get some water, use a toilet and get a few minutes of cool air). But the nights are the worst this year.

For some years now I have coordinated a group that feeds homeless in Grace Lutheran’s downtown Phoenix Heat Respite Program. I got involved because on my daily walks downtown I saw misery that I had never seen before, not even walking in Manhattan and Jersey City on frigid winter days.  Cold kills, make no mistake, but if there were a homeless misery scale I would bet Phoenix at 118 is worse than Jersey City at 8.

I remember asking a career letter carrier in Jersey City – he had so much tenure on the job he had his pick of routes and his was a few streets lined with big, leafy trees that give shade on hot days and catch a lot of rain on rainy days – which was harder for him, summer or winter, a 100 degree/98% humidity summer day or an 8 degree winter day.  He did not hesitate.  Summer, he said, because Post Office regulations and local laws limited how much he could strip down whereas in winter he could always add another layer.

You see this in action in Phoenix in summer. Many of the homeless wear so little it skirts up to public lewdness but the police don’t do much – in fact they do as little as they can get away with regarding the homeless except when lately platoons of them have been dragooned into clearing away homeless tent encampments in what people call The Zone downtown, an area that had housed around 1000.  Yes, that is classic whack a mole – the cops know it, the homeless know it, everybody but a judge and some city officials knows it.  

Back inside Grace Lutheran yesterday, we served a lunch of beef tacos (nobody requested the vegetarian option we were prepared to provide), rice and beans, housemade pico de gallo, salad, a horchata drink, and housemade cupcakes.  We brought a Catholic priest – from St Mary’s Basilica a few blocks away in downtown  where most of our volunteers are parishioners – and he said a short prayer before service commenced and he, along with some of our volunteers, dined with the homeless because they are we and we are they.

Did we do any good? In past summers – and I think I’ve done this eight summers now –  I had no doubt we brought a few hours of pleasure to the homeless.

This year, I know we did no harm, but did we actually help in this season of misery? 

Yesterday I found myself thumbing through Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth and thinking about writing The Wretched of the Desert.

The faces and the bodies of the Phoenix homeless this year are those of people in a death camp and they know they are. They are angrier, more aggressive, more on edge.

It is harder to reach them.

But we try because someone has to.

And that is on us because there is nobody else.

To donate to Grace Lutheran’s Heat Respite program, follow this link.  We at St Mary’s have adequate funding for our heat respite work, by a donation from a single donor.  But we also encourage donations to Andre House which nightly feeds around 500 homeless year-round and where many of us also volunteer regularly.  

by Robert McGarvey

The credit card interchange wars are back. And the future of your credit card rewards may hang in the balance.

“Interchange” – for those not fluent in the arcane language of banking – refers to the swipe fee merchants pay to banks when they accept MasterCard or Visa. That $1 at retail reduces to maybe 98 or 97 cents in the merchant’s pocket.

Big deal?

Well, yes. Billions of dollars are at play and one of the benefits funded by interchange fees are the rewards offered by many credit cards, from cashback to travel discounts. Basically, banks decide to split the swipe fee with consumers to induce more use of their cards.

Swipe fees have been under attack for years. Merchants despise them. Advocates for low income consumers and those who don’t use credit cards also hate them – because, say many, it’s this group that funds the rewards we reap by paying higher prices at retail.

Enter Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) who has had a loathing for swipe fees literally for a decade, probably longer.

Durbin, a powerful figure in the US Senate, has been pushing his Credit Card Competition Act for some years. What it would do is give merchants a choice of multiple card processing networks and, says Durbin, this will give consumers lower prices because merchants would be able to dodge the Visa and MasterCard rails and use cheaper processing options.

In 2022 that bill went nowhere. But 2023 is a new deal and now Durbin has bipartisan support, including Senator J. D. Vance (R-Ohio).

The bill’s current language applies only to cards issued by banks with more than $100 billion in assets.

That is exactly four banks in the US. Remember that number.

Over at The Points Guy, founder Brian Kelly has weighed in with a bylined piece headlined: Here’s why your credit card perks could be going away Here’s the nub of his argument: “A law with highly unfavorable consequences for those who love credit card points and rewards is currently being reintroduced on Capitol Hill. The Credit Card Competition Act of 2023 (“the Big-Box Bill”) proposed by two U.S. senators — Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Roger Marshall, R-Kan. — would be disastrous for consumers, especially the millions of consumers who get immense value from cash-back and travel rewards on credit card transactions.”

Opponents of the bill also say – with some accuracy – that a 2010 Durbin bill which resulted in lower swipe fees on debit card charges produced no meaningful discounts at retail for consumers.

Is today different? Stephanie Martz, chief administrative officer of the National Retail Federation, said in a prepared statement: “It’s time for big banks and global card networks to compete the same as small businesses do every day. Skyrocketing swipe fees have been driving up prices for consumers for far too long, and we are confident this is the year Congress is going to say it’s time for that to stop. Competition will bring these fees under control and strengthen security at the same time.”

Over at The Points Guy, Kelly plays another card: “This legislation would allow big-box retailers — like Walmart and Target — to choose cheaper, less safe credit card processing networks that expose private consumer information to foreign networks in China and Russia without regard to the value that consumers derive from rewards and many other credit card benefits.”

And yet…US financial institutions have an enduring record of providing feeble security for consumer data and every year many millions of our records are snatched up at criminals. It just isn’t easy to mount a coherent argument claiming that our current domestic security for credit card data is bulletproof.

Here’s what this argument comes down to: big box retailers love the Durbin bill because they can count literally billions in savings. I doubt many small retailers give a hoot because they probably are too busy fighting for survival to ponder topics like this. Might it still benefit them? Probably, sure, a little bit.

Will merchants pass on lower prices to us? That’s unknown. But if a WalMart passes on even a fraction of its savings that would ripple through the retail landscape.

Will our credit card rewards go away? NRF’s Stephanie Martz, in a statement to Bankrate, pooh poohed that scare: ““Rewards are banks’ main marketing tool for getting a consumer to choose a Visa or Mastercard from one bank over another and they are unlikely to give that up. The $11 billion that would be saved under this legislation is only a fraction of the swipe fees collected on credit cards last year, so banks would still have plenty of revenue left to cover rewards.” 

Remember, the bill applies only to cards issued by the very biggest banks. Most cards would not be affected.

Also remember the Stanford research that says the dirty secret about credit card rewards is that they are enjoyed by the well off but paid for by the poor.

So now are you pro or anti Durbin?

by Robert McGarvey

Pick the odd man out that has no place in a discussion of where to get startup funding: angel investors, friends and family, venture capitalists, or a CUSO?

It’s a trick question because all four are good sources of capital for early-stage companies, but you probably pointed at CUSO because you hadn’t heard of it before.

Join the club: few startup entrepreneurs have a clue. But that is overlooking an important source of possible funding that may also deliver plenty of customers too.

Continued at Startup Savant

by Robert McGarvey

I couldn’t resist the offer. The mailer popped in my box – genuine US mail – and the headline blared Earn 40k 65K Bonus Miles.

The sender was Delta where, despite me having no memory of having have ever paid for a flight on it, I have cashed in miles and points (via Amex) to get three roundtrips to Europe in the past 10 years.

The 65K miles had my attention. I had scorned prior 40k mile offers but at 65k it got a second look from me. Probably I could cash that in for two roundtrips to NYC from Phoenix.

This is an Amex card with a $99 annual fee, free in the first year. The only requirement for collecting the mileage bonus is spending $2000 in the first six months.

The card has the usual airline card perks – free first checked bag, priority boarding and an intriguing wrinkle where award flights are discounted 15%.

What about my cashback strategy? It remains in play but as I’ve said I don’t see it generating more than $2000 or $3000 for me this year and while that is a pleasant spiff, it’s not ample for me to change my life course. Getting more cashback would necessitate me putting a lot more time into this than I am prepared to do.

But the 65k miles in effect just fell into my lap. The value of the 65k points is around $900, per The Points Guy’s calculation. It may even be higher with that 15% discount on awards tickets.

It will be effortless to get the bonus. I’ll probably spend the $2000 on groceries and, yeah, I sacrifice 3% back on a Venmo card – but the Gold Card offers 2% back (in miles) on groceries so that’s, what, a $20 loss. No big deal.

I also pat myself on the back for resisting the Alaska Air current 50k miles account opening bonus, but that’s mainly because Alaska doesn’t go a lot of places I want to go to.

Will I keep the Delta Gold card after the first year? Hard to say but probably. If I dump any card in my wallet it’s likely to be the Southwest card which I got for a 50k miles signing bonus that I already know what I’m spending it on.

But there is and likely will continue to be lots of motion in my credit card inventory. I’ll tell you this: after years of having a static deck of credit cards, this year there has been more shifting and additions to my cards than I can recall before in this century. But there’s a reason: it just is getting harder to intelligently play the credit card rewards and airline mileage rewards games and win. The rules keep changing, the “prices” keep going up, and the only way I see to play this is to keep in motion myself. The era of having one mainstay card – Amex Plat for me – that was used everywhere that accepted Amex simply are over.

Heraclitus called it right: The only constant in life is change.

by Robert McGarvey

It was about six months ago – in the midst of galloping inflation – that I decided to shift my credit card strategy from accrual of mileage and points that could be converted into miles (e.g., Amex’s Membership Rewards) into a focus on cashback, cold, hard cash. The reason: soaring, dynamic prices for rewards tickets have increasingly made that game unenticing.

And there’s an undeniable value to the cash that is on offer with cashback cards.

How has that strategy fared for me?

Consider this a mid-term report card.

The Amex Plat card for me mainly is a tool for accruing Membership Rewards points but this year already I have gotten $100 in cashback on a NYTimes subscription ($20 per month) plus $90 in Uber cash. Just this month I also got $40 back on a Zoom subscription, $50 on a Saks purchase, and $30 on a Wine.com purchase. Plus my wife gets a free Clear membership ($189 value, which covers the $175 that card costs).

All in I am up $310 so far this year.

With Amex Blue Preferred, a recently acquired cashback card, I am up $169.96 in cashback since January 1, roughly the incept date for the card. Almost all of that is in regard to grocery spending (at 6% cashback). Add in $250 for hitting a $3000 spending goal in the first six months.

The Affinity Cash Rewards card – which returns 5% on Amazon purchases and 2% on groceries, gas, and restaurants – has put $303 in my pocket since incept in late winter. $200 of that was a bonus for spending $3000 in the first 90 days. This card is fee free.

Discover has put $76 in my pocket, almost entirely produced by 5% back on groceries in Q1.

A fee free Chase Amazon card – 5% back on Amazon and Whole Foods purchases – put $187 in my hands in the first half of the year. For now I am using this card only at Whole Foods.

A Chase Southwest Air card put 50,000 miles in my account for spending $1000+ in the first month. I have no plans to use this card except for an occasional Southwest flight.

That’s $986 plus the $310 from Plat, which puts me up about $1296 in the first 6 months.

The important fact: although I had fretted that playing the cashback game would take up too much time, in reality I spend very little time or energy attempting to maximize my benefits. Let’s be honest: I am not earning enough cashback to justify a lot of effort on my part. So what I have devised is a no brainer, no thought approach that aims to produce cashback without worrying about maximizing the rewards.

Most days I carry only four credit cards with me and just about every purchase I make goes on one of the four.

But I don’t lose sight of the reality that this cashback emphasis simply is not going to make much difference to my personal finances. That’s why I have no plans to add more cashback cards to my weaponry. Probably I could eke out a few more dollars in cashback rewards by adding a few more cards but there are limits to my wallet capacity and my willingness to use brainpower to seek to put the right card in play at the right time.

So I’ll probably pull out around $2000 in cashback this year and if I succeed in continuing to put in minimal effort it will be a good return.

What about travel rewards? In the past year I added something over 100,000 to my Membership Rewards account, a mix of purchases and bonuses. I have diluted my focus on this but, obviously, old habits die hard. Besides, quite a few vendors are on auto pay with Plat and I have not wanted to put in the energy to rearrange those relationships.

The small spend I am diverting to cashback wouldn’t make much difference to my travel rewards availability. What would is if I added another credit card with a rich signing bonus that will produce a couple flights to Europe. Maybe I will. Right now I feel no urgency – prices in much of Europe have gone bonkers and I will bide my time until the current travel mania abates. But the really big gets will be had with signing bonusses, not with grinding out a couple pennies here and there with cash rewards or accumulating handfuls of Membership Rewards points with Amex Plat spends.

Call this my hybrid strategy and I plan to continue to keep it simple.

by Robert McGarvey

Baby Boomers, stand back. We – and of course I am a Boomer – no longer are the leading consumers and cravers of credit card rewards. Guess what, we are not in second place either.

This is according to Morning Consult data that looks at share of an age group that belong to a travel rewards/loyalty program. That could be anything from belonging to Marriott’s Bonvoy program to collecting airline miles through accumulating Amex rewards points.

Personally I do all three.

But I am also aware that we are speeding on fast forward into a generational shift in the travel business where Boomers, who have been the industry’s stars for perhaps 40 years, are moving to the sidelines.

We will not be replaced by Gen X. Just not enough of them and, apparently, they are not avid collectors of points. Morning Consult says just 38% of Gen X (born 1965-1980) belong to a travel rewards program. That puts them in fourth, last, place in the generational claim to be top of the travel pile.

Where are Boomers (1946-1964)? Third place with 41% of us belonging to a travel rewards program.

Gen Z (1997-2012) has 42% participation.

And hats off to Millennials (1981-1996) where 48% – almost half – are in a travel rewards program.

Why? eMarketer observes that travel costs are up significantly “so travelers will likely turn to loyalty and rewards programs even more for perks or discounts.”

And costs are in fact up. Per NerdWallet, “the overall cost of travel is up 18% compared with April 2019 and up 2% versus the same month in 2022.”

Some prices are up a lot more: “U.S.-to-Europe tickets are averaging $1,300 round trip, per deal-spotting site Hopper — a 50% jump from last year. Tickets to Asia, meanwhile, are up a staggering 70% compared to pre-pandemic figures, averaging nearly $2,000 round trip,” reported Axios.

It’s a no brainer to use points and miles – especially for international airfares – this year.

But you know the question that is not addressed in these data: how many different travel rewards programs do individuals belong to? I can think of three airline programs I belong to (and a fourth where I have a handful of orphaned miles), two hotel programs (Hilton and Bonvoy where I have elite status in both via Amex Plat), I have two airline credit cards, of course there’s Amex Plat and that rewards program, there’s a stash of points at Diner’s Club. That’s nine that I am aware of and I am sure there are memberships that I have forgotten.

My point is that maybe Boomers still are the princes and princesses of rewards travel because we just might belong to a lot more programs than members of other generations and we almost certainly have bigger stashes of accumulated points and miles, simply because we have been at this a lot longer.

But there is one more data point to mull: Morning Consult data show a powerful correlation between participation in a travel rewards program and income. Makes sense. Travel for business usually is associated with higher income jobs and leisure travel is the province of those with discretionary income. Why collect miles and points if you don’t travel?

Just 29% of us with incomes below $50,000 belong to a travel rewards program. But 76% with incomes of $100k or more do belong.

Of course then there is the uglier side of this discussion where many economists say that it’s the poor who pay for the credit cards rewards of the rich. Aaron Klein, a senior fellow in economics at the Brooking Institute, is quoted in Vox: “The American payment system has evolved into a reverse Robin Hood whereby middle-class and working-class Americans who pay with a debit card, prepaid card, or cash are subsidizing the wealthy, who pay less for everything.”

And that’s because it’s the rich who reap the rewards — a fact shown by the Morning Consult numbers. All of us pay higher prices to pay for the credit card rewards and it mainly are the rich who get them.

by Robert McGarvey

Do you have a bucket list?

Most everybody I know has one. Antarctica is on a lot of bucket lists (personally I open my freezer, look at the ice for a minute and the thought of traveling there vanishes). Tibet is on some lists and it might be on mine except it ceased to exist a long time ago. Moscow and St. Petersburg are on a few lists but, pending regime change, I won’t visit either. Ditto Tehran. Rome, Paris, Berlin are on some lists but I’ve been to all and, yes, would happily return but have nothing planned.

Here’s the deal. As I have aged my bucket list has decidedly grown smaller. There are many, many places that I know – although they are desirable – I almost certainly will never go. New Zealand is a case in point – just too far. The Baltic Republics are another for instance – which shouldn’t be confused with the Balkans where I also probably will never go although I admit Albania tempts me (with a gorgeous shoreline and also Roman ruins) as an add-on to a Greece vacation so maybe I will go to the Balkans, just not the Baltics.

With age there also comes a realization of diminishing time. I just don’t have a month to spend poking around South America and, yes, I have been, perhaps 25 years ago, to Chile (lovely country, by the way) and I am tempted by both Peru and Argentina (an odd couple if ever there were) but I sincerely doubt I will want to put in the time to know either and the idea of a quick, check the box (done that!) trip to either holds no appeal to me. Too much wear on the body for too little benefit.

Look, it’s not just countries that aren’t on my travel to do list, it’s around 24 US states, too, that I have never visited and I doubt I ever will, from Idaho to New Hampshire and Kansas to Alabama. Some states make the no go list because they are culturally unacceptable to me (just as I probably am culturally unacceptable to them). Others make the list because they, well, offer no reason to want to go. I have some friends who are determined to check off all 50 states for a bucket list goal but I am satisfied with the 26 or so I have been to and am doubtful I will check off any further states. (Note to state tourist boards: this means you. I ain’t going, don’t ask.)

What about Iceland? Yes, it scores high on the travel lists of many friends but not mine. There’s a hot tub in my backyard I never use and if the idea of going to Iceland popped into my mind I’d go sit in the hot tub until the idea vanished.

What about Tanzania? Possibly. What Baby Boomer who grew up watching Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom wouldn’t have curiosity about the Serengeti, the big five animals, and all the rest? If ever there were a prime bucket list trip this is it.

Ditto Egypt and the pyramids. Leading edge Boomers grew up watching a lot of TV horror movies about mummies and pharaohs and pyramids and just about all of us got an implanted idea that Egypt was a place to see – and the idea sticks with me. Even if not a one of those movies was shot on location.

But probably the second biggest possibility of a bucket list trip I might take is China, where I have never been (unless you count a 1997 trip to Hong Kong a few months after the handover). If there is a nation that is charting a specifically 21st century it is China and that is not to ignore its human rights abuses and its fast and loose relationship with facts and truths. But Shanghai, Chengdu, essentially instant cities of over one million in population, what’s soon to become the planet’s biggest auto industry (say good night, Detroit, Tokyo too), a huge tech sector, a rich intellectual, artistic and spiritual past – if ever there were a nation that deserves to be on a bucket list it’s China.

But China ranks second. What’s first? A 2027 500 mile walk of the entire Camino Frances. I slot it for six weeks when it will be probably my final Camino. This trip already has a place in my calendar.

Will I get there? That’s the question, isn’t it? Bucket lists are inherently aspirational, that is, things to live for. And I am all in with that idea.

What about you and your bucket list?