📉 These two sweet spots just got nerfed

Estimated read time: 4 minutes and 5 seconds

Good morning from Tallinn, Estonia! 🇪🇪

I’m working from the spa today – taking sauna, steam, and cold plunge breaks every 30-ish minutes.

With that in mind, today’s newsletter will be quite chill:

• 🤺 Portal Kombat: Apple edition

• 📉 These two sweet spots just got nerfed

• 🛥️ A Mediterranean cruise… but make it a yacht

• 😂 Meme

🤺 Portal Kombat: Apple edition

We often talk about booking through portals like Rakuten to earn cash back or transferable points.

But sometimes, booking through an airline shopping portal can be way more rewarding.

And for today only (March 23), that’s exactly the case.

Airline portals are offering elevated rewards when you shop with Apple:

• American portal: 3.5x

• United portal: 4x

• Atmos portal: 4x

• Delta portal: 3.5x

Quick refresher on how this works:

Instead of going directly to Apple, you click through one of these portals first… then complete your purchase like normal.

Same price, same checkout – but with airline miles layered on top like a nice, tasty frosting.

Let’s say you’re buying this $1,699 MacBook Pro.👇

If you click through the Atmos Rewards shopping portal first, you will earn 6,796 Atmos Rewards points from the purchase.

That’s already enough to book a short-haul flight on Alaska Airlines or American Airlines, like this one from San Francisco to Portland, which costs just 5,000 points.

So, just the portal earnings from your laptop already get you a free flight.

But it gets better… 😏

You also earn points on whichever credit card you use for the purchase. For example, if you used the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card (which earns 2x miles on everything), you’d end up with another 3,398 miles.

If you book a cheap cash flight like this one, you could offset the entire purchase using 3,000 of those Capital One miles.

So now, from one purchase you were already going to make, you’ve earned two free domestic flights (and still have some points left over).

A couple of quick things to know:

• You need to click through the portal before buying (that’s how the miles track)

• Some products are excluded (new iPhones, Vision Pro, etc.)

• And this is TODAY only

If you’ve been planning an Apple purchase, this is one of those rare chances to turn everyday spending into more free travel. ✈️

📉 These two sweet spots just got nerfed

Okay… I’ve got bad news, and I’ve got bad news. Which one do you want first?

ThankYou points just took two of its best sweet spots out behind the barn and put ‘em down. 🐴 🔫

The following two hotel programs will devalue as follows:

Yeah… that’s not a small tweak. It’s pretty devastating, to be honest.

These were two of the only outsized hotel sweet spots in the entire ThankYou points ecosystem – and a big reason ThankYou points were worth racking up in the first place.

But here’s the part that matters:

We’re still living in what will soon be known as the “good ole days,” because these changes don’t take effect until April 19.

That means we can still transfer points now at very good ratios and save a lot of money and points on travel.

Let’s look at Preferred Hotels first, where we can still quadruple our ThankYou points.

This 5-star hotel in Kyoto costs around $400 per night, or 50,000 I Prefer points.

With the current 1:4 transfer ratio, you only need 12,500 ThankYou points to book it.

That’s… kind of absurd for Kyoto.

Starting next month, that same booking will cost you 25,000 ThankYou points per night, which is already the same deal we can get using Capital One miles (which also transfers at a 1:2 ratio).

Choice Privileges is getting hit, too.

Right now, you can book hotels for as little as 8,000 Choice points, which is just 4,000 ThankYou points at the current ratio.

Even higher-end Choice properties top out around 30,000 points, or 15,000 ThankYou points per night – which is still a good deal.

This Choice property in Stockholm, for example, costs 30,000 Choice points or over $400 per night with cash.

After the devaluation, all of that gets worse. So if you’ve got ThankYou points sitting around, here’s my advice:

Look ahead at any travel plans you have for the rest of this year. If Choice Hotels or Preferred Hotels could fit into those plans, transfer points accordingly.

This is just another reminder that in this game, sweet spots don’t last forever – the best way to use your points is always “now.”

😂 Meme

That does it for this Monday edition, folks. Have a great day, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Bye-bye,

59.4370° N, 24.7536° E

With contributions by McKay Moffitt, April Wilson, and Alison Carrico