🌎 Book a South America trip for $0

Estimated read time: 4 minutes and 5 seconds

Good morning from a boat in the middle of the Baltic Sea! 🌊

Get your coffee ready, because we’ve got some fun stuff on deck today:

• 💳 Top Cards Update (April 2026)

• ✈️ Singapore and Marriott partnership update (good news)

• 🤔 Premium versus entry-level card: Which is best?

💳 Top Cards Update (April 2026)

I don’t know if you know this, but today is officially April. 📆

That means it’s time to update you on the best credit card offers for this month. And there has been a big update…

As you know, the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card currently has a limited-time offer: Earn a $250 travel credit and 75,000 miles when you spend $4,000 within the first 3 months from account opening.

It’s one of the best welcome offers we’ve ever seen on the card, and the best offer so far in 2026.

The update is…

That offer is ending soon… on April 13, to be exact.

But here’s the good news:

It’s not too late to get it. And you should. And I’ll tell you why. Right now.

The $250 credit

This credit makes the offer a no-brainer, because it justifies the annual fee for at least two years, making those 75,000 bonus miles feel more “free.”

You can use the credit for all kinds of travel booked through the Capital One Travel portal.

That means $250 toward car rentals, flights, and hotels.

For example, if you want to take a long, 3-day weekend in Vancouver (which you should), you could book three nights at this hotel through the Capital One portal for $317 total:

After the credit, you’re paying just $67 out of pocket for three nights in an expensive city.

And after that, you still have those 75,000 miles to play with.

Speaking of those…

Capital One miles are super versatile

You can transfer Capital One miles to more airline and hotel partners than any other U.S. bank.

The list includes favorites like Flying Blue, Aeroplan, Avios, Virgin Atlantic, and some more niche programs like Japan Airlines, EVA Air, and Accor.

But even if you forget about transfer partners and just go for simplicity, you can always use them to offset travel purchases at one cent per point.

Doing this can, in many cases, be an even better deal than transferring points.

For example, you could book this flight from Chicago to Cartagena, Colombia (a lovely city) for $83 one-way.

After using your Capital One card to pay, you can make that purchase disappear using just 8,300 miles.

No extra taxes and fees, no transfer partner madness, no award availability.

That means you could fly a family of FOUR round trip to South America for just 66,400 miles TOTAL, with no extra taxes.

Not bad for a card with an annual fee under $100.

Once you’re in Cartagena, you could book a 5-night stay at this hotel for $226 total, which can be covered entirely by that $250 travel credit.

Now you’ve turned this card offer into round-trip flights to South America and a 5-night stay for $0 out of pocket.

Anyway, here’s the bottom line:

If you have been mulling this offer over, you can stop mulling. It’s going to be gone soon, and you should jump on it now before it’s too late.

✈️ Singapore and Marriott partnership update

I’ve written in the past about the partnership between Marriott Bonvoy and Singapore Airlines – specifically, how you can unlock a status match to get elite perks when flying on United Airlines.

Now, there’s been another enhancement to one of the partnership perks that we haven’t talked about: The ability to convert Singapore miles to Marriott points and vice versa.

This has always been a thing you can do. Until now, Singapore miles have converted to Marriott at a 2:1 ratio, which is not optimal.

But as of today, this ratio has been upped to 4:3 – meaning 1,000 Singapore miles now become 750 Marriott points.

It’s still not optimal, but here’s why it’s good for these particular programs:

Singapore miles have a hard expiry date of 36 months.

There is no way to extend them without paying cash. Unlike most programs, you can’t transfer miles, earn miles, use miles, or make a purchase to extend them. They just disappear.

With this new transfer increase to Marriott, you have a solid “bail out” option if your miles are about to expire.

Personally, I have around 56,000 Singapore miles that expire in 1.5 years. 👇

I had transferred them to Singapore to book a specific flight that I ended up having to cancel at the last minute, and they’ve been sitting there since then.

If a year and a half passes and I still haven’t used them, I can at least turn them into 42,000 Marriott points, which I wouldn’t be too upset about.

Anyway, this is niche – but if you are like me and get stressed out about expiring points, it’s good information to have in your back pocket.

🤔 Premium versus entry-level card: Which is best?

There’s something that’s been keeping me up at night lately…

You see, last year, this premium card increased its annual fee, added a bunch of credits, and changed its earning rates.

And now, I’m having a really hard time justifying the annual fee – and have been considering downgrading it to the much lower-annual-fee card.

At the same time, I used the travel insurance on that premium card last year to get reimbursed for a $1,300 trip that I cancelled.

Anyway, a lot of people struggle to decide between those two cards. So in this week’s Daily Drop YouTube video, we break down both cards and explain all the details to help you (and maybe me) decide which one is best.

That’s all for today, my friends. Have a great day.

Love you,

60.1699° N, 24.9384° E

With contributions by Sam Anthony.