You probably already know about the upcoming Daily Getaways sponsored by American Express and the US Travel Association.  The idea is that every day from April 9 through May 11, a new travel deal will become available at 1 PM ET.  In past years there have been some really great deals which often sold out very quickly.  If there is a deal that appeals to you, check the Daily Getaways site for a link to “like” the merchant on Facebook and you will get a code that allows you into the presale an hour earlier.

Currently, the first three weeks of deals are available to view (not to buy).  To see them, go to Daily Getaways and click on the “Calendar” tab.  There is a potentially great deal for buying points in the third week (see details in this TravelBy Points post).  In addition to that deal, I’m tempted by the Marriott deal in week 2.  On April 18th, Marriott TravelCards will be available for a nice discount.  The prices start off at 11% off of face value, but if you pay with an American Express card, you get 10% off of that for a combined price of 20% off.

In order to maximize my savings, I’ll do the following:

1. Buy Marriott TravelCards via the Daily Getaways promotion
2. Book Marriott stays by first going through the Ultimate Rewards Mall for 3 points per dollar
3. Prior to my Marriott stays, I will call to request a Platinum Elite Challenge.  This will give me Platinum status for the rest of the month in which I signup plus 3 more months after that (or longer if I stay 18 nights during that time).  In addition to possible upgrades and other perks, Platinum status will increase the points I earn from my stays by 50%.

In case you have questions about how the TravelCards can be used, here are the listed Terms and Conditions:

Within 10-14 business days of purchase, you will receive your Marriott TravelCard via U.S. mail at the shipping address provided at purchase. Upon receipt, visit any Marriott brand hotel property worldwide to redeem for stays, dining, spa treatments or golf.

• Marriott TravelCards may be used at all JW Marriott^® Hotels & Resorts, Autograph Collection^SM, Renaissance^® Hotels, Marriott^® Hotels & Resorts, Courtyard^® by Marriott, Fairfield Inn^® & Suites, SpringHill Suites^®, Residence Inn^®, TownePlace Suites^®, and Marriott Vacation Club^®(rentals only), and participating hotel retail, spa, golf, or food and beverage outlets.

• Card is a pre-paid card, not a credit card, and is property of and issued by MI Fulfillment Services, LLC. Protect card like cash.

• Card cannot be applied to group, special corporate/negotiated, catering, associate, or other discounted/non-commissionable rates.

• Card cannot be used when reservation is booked by a travel agent or other third party.

• Card cannot be used to secure a reservation.

• Card is not redeemable for cash and change will not be returned except as required by law. Change is not provided by hotels. See pre-paid card terms and conditions.

• There are no blackout dates on TravelCards.

• Card is not replaceable if lost, stolen, or destroyed.

• Marriott TravelCard and Marriott GiftCard terms vary.

• Card becomes inactive when all value has been redeemed.

• Each transaction will be debited against card balance; if transaction exceeds balance, user must pay the difference.

• To check card balance visit gifts.marriott.com or call 1-800-442-6132. For balance information outside the U.S. and Canada use the AT&T Direct^® access number for the country you are calling from with 1-800-442-6132.

• Use of card confirms acceptance of terms above.

• All sales are final.

What do you think?  Do you see any Daily Deals worth getting?

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In January I reported my strategy to buy Delta Platinum status and a million miles.  The idea is to use gift card churning and other tricks to spend a total of $110,000 on two credit cards (Delta Reserve and Platinum) in the calendar year.  Most of these tricks result in getting most of my money back so I won’t go poor doing this.  By spending $60K on the Reserve card and $50K on the Platinum card I will earn 50,000 Delta Medallion Qualifying Miles towards Platinum elite status.  The remaining 25,000 miles needed for Platinum status will be earned through flying.

In that same post, I suggested the possibility of earning an average of 20 points per dollar on spending I put on the Platinum card.  If I manage that, I would earn a total of 1 Million miles on top of miles earned directly from credit card spend and from flying.  Note that I’m primarily focused on earning elite status.  The million mile target is more of a nice-to-have bonus if I get there.

To meet these goals, I would need to spend, on average, $2115 per week using my Delta cards, and I would need to earn almost 20,000 points or miles per week in shopping portals.

So, with 7 weeks into 2012 accounted for, how am I doing so far? I’ve spent an average of $2195 per week so I’m slightly ahead on spending, and I’ve earned just over 24,000 points and miles per week from shopping portals.  I’m ahead there too!  Of course, the Nordstrom 36X deal accounts for most of my success on the latter point, but still it’s nice to see!  Hopefully we’ll continue to see mega-deals every couple of months so as to keep up the pace!

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I recently reached Delta Platinum status thanks to a mileage run, a signup bonus (10K MQMs for signing up for the Delta Reserve credit card), and a large roll-over of miles from the previous year.  Prior to this, for the past several years, I’ve had Gold status on Delta.  The difference with Platinum is that upgrades have become much more likely and I can now cancel or change award reservations at no cost up to 72 hours prior to a flight.  Since reaching Platinum status, I’ve flown 6 legs on Delta and I’ve been upgraded on all of them.  I’ve also taken advantage of free changes to award tickets twice already!  I already know that I do not want to lose Platinum status next year!  But how?

Flying

An interesting outcome of this points and miles hobby is that now that I have a huge stash of airline miles, using them is less appealing than ever before.  The reason?  When I fly using miles, I do not earn miles and so I get no closer to keeping elite status for the following year.  There are several approaches I can take to solve this conundrum (which I’ll write about in the future), but mostly I’ll look to use miles for big international trips where I can fly business or first class on miles, and I’ll pay for regional flights.

A bigger difficulty I’ll have with keeping elite status is that my job has changed to where I no longer travel for work.  There is no doubt that work-related travel was the primary reason I even achieved Gold status in the past, so reaching Platinum status by flying will be harder than ever!

Mileage runs are always an option.  I’ll keep my eye out for really great ones (let me know if you see any!), but I don’t see this as my primary avenue for reaching Platinum

Spending

A great alternative to flying many miles on Delta to achieve elite status is to spend huge amounts of money on certain Delta credit cards.  The Delta Reserve card awards 15,000 MQMs after $30,000 in spend and another 15,000 after $60,000 in spend.  Similarly, the Delta Platinum card awards 10,000 MQMs after $25,000 in spend and another 10,000 MQMs after $50,000 in spend.  I have both of those cards (one personal and one business), so I can theoretically earn up to 50,000 MQMs by spending a lot.  I would need a total of 75,000 MQMs to reach Platinum, and I know from experience that I can easily earn the 25,000 extra from flying.

Can I really spend that much money?  Can I really spend $60,000 on one card and $50,000 on another for a total of $110,000 in one year?!  Unlike Lucky and Gary, I do not have reimbursable business expenses, so it won’t be easy.  I would need to spend $5000 per month on the Reserve card and just under $4200 per month on the Platinum card to reach this goal.

My strategy will be to concentrate first on the Reserve card since it has a higher rate of return (.5 MQMs per $ for the Reserve vs. .4 MQMs per $ for the Platinum).  I should be able to average $3000 in personal spend per month, and I can afford to make Kiva loans to make up the difference to get me to $5K.  So, meeting the challenge with this card will be fairly easy (except that I will continue to put travel and dining expenses on my Chase Sapphire Preferred for its extra points in those categories, so maybe this won’t be that easy).

With the Platinum card, I will look for opportunities to spend money and get most of it back (e.g. Perpetual Point Machines, Gift Card Churns, etc.).  In December, for example, I used gift card churning techniques to spend over $2000 in a single day and I earned a huge number of points, and I got most of my money back.  This is the type of opportunity I’ll continue to look for going forward.  Whenever possible, I’ll share the details in this blog.  Will I make it to $50K of spend on this card using these techniques?  I think so, but only time will tell.  In the December gift card churn I earned over 20 Ultimate Reward points per dollar spent.  I doubt I will do that well with all of the churns, but if I do, and if I spend $50K with similar gift card churns, I will end up with well over 1 Million points and miles as a result!

Credit Card Churns

The strategy I described above will make it difficult for me to churn credit cards aggressively.  Credit card signup bonuses that require large amounts of spend will be difficult to take on since I’m already committed to very high spend on my Delta cards.  So, at least for 2012, I will be less aggressive than in the past with credit card signups.  I’ll wait for the big, can’t pass them up, offers rather than trying to score big every 91 days.  I understand that many readers have an opposite approach: maximize credit card churns and focus spending on meeting signup minimums.  This is a great approach too, and it will get you huge numbers of miles and points.  For me, though, I enjoy the PPM / Gift Card Churning game and I highly value Delta elite status so I choose to put my focus there.

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Note: I started writing this post before reading that The Points Guy is considering signing up for this card.  Brian, this one is for you:

At first blush, you would have to be insane to sign up for this card.  It comes with a jaw dropping $450 annual fee which is not waived the first year!  However, if you look a bit closer, you just might be swayed.

What you get for the annual fee (just the highlights):

MQMs:

The first year you have the card, you will be given 10,000 MQMs (Delta Medallion Qualifying Miles) after your first purchase.  Since I’ve argued that the fair trading price for MQMs is about 3 cents each (see How much should you pay for elite qualifying miles), this signup bonus is worth at least $300

Sky Club Access:

Once you have this card, you and two guests can get into any Delta Sky Club.  A Delta Sky Club membership costs between $300 and $450 (depending on your elite level).  Personally, I would never pay for that, though.  So, I would peg this benefit at about $150, but you should really judge for yourself how much it is worth to you.

Companion Certificate:

After the first year, when you renew the card, you receive a a free companion certificate.  This will allow you to essentially buy two tickets to and from anywhere in the continental US for the price of one.  Note two big downsides: the companion does not earn miles or MQMs and you and your companion will not be eligible for upgrades.  I like to use these certificates on regional jets that don’t have first class anyway.  Personally, I value this benefit at about $250.

Priority Upgrades

If you are on the upgrade list on a flight and other frequent fliers have the same status as you (e.g. Silver, Gold, Platinum, or Diamond) and they bought tickets in the same fare class as you, you will jump ahead of them because you hold this card.  This benefit is unlikely to help you very often, but if you fly a lot it will probably be the difference between first class and coach at least once a year.  I’ll call this one a $50 benefit (even though circumstances could make it worth much more).

Total benefits first year: $500
Total benefits ongoing years: $450

So, as you can see, the card pretty much pays for itself with its benefits.  If you value the particular benefits listed above, you might want to seriously consider this card.

Benefits from Daily Spend

If you don’t spend a lot on this card, the benefits are minimal.  You will earn one Delta Skymile per dollar on most purchases, and two Delta Skymiles per dollar on Delta purchases.  Compared to several other cards, this is pretty lame.  Where the card shines, though, is if you manage to put exactly $30K or $60K of spend on the card in a year:

Big Spend Benefits

Once you reach $30K in spend in a calendar year, you will be awarded with 15000 bonus miles and 15000 Medallion Qualifying Miles (MQMs) which will help you get to the next level of elite status at Delta.  The same benefits kick in again at $60K of spend.  So, if you manage to put exactly $30K or $60K of spending on your card each year, you will earn 1.5 SkyMiles and .5 MQMs per dollar spent.  According to my Fair Trading Prices chart, SkyMiles trade at 1.29 cents each whereas MQMs trade at 3 cents each.  This means that you would earn 1.29 * 1.5 + 3 * .5 = 3.435 cents of value per dollar spent on the card!  This is really an outstanding rate of return for non-category spend (some cards offer better rates of return for spend within categories such as gas stations, grocery stores, etc.).  Theoretically, you could spend $30K on Amex Gift cards by going through Big Crumbs to earn 1.6% cash back and increase your overall rate of return to about 5 cents per dollar!  The more highly you value elite qualifying miles (MQMs), the more attractive this option is likely to be to you.

Conclusion

If you are a frequent Delta flyer and you value Sky Club access, this card is a good one to keep in your wallet or in a drawer.  If you are also a big spender, this card is a surprisingly strong contender!  Personally, I plan to use tricks for spending a lot of money and getting most of it back in order to spend $60K per year on this card!

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Today Frequent Miler and Delta Points are joining forces to present a combination blog post!  Read Delta Points first to get the big picture, then make your way to Frequent Miler for step by step details.

Intro

In Delta Point’s post, he showed that it is possible for a couple to earn Delta’s most coveted Diamond status for one person and valuable Gold status for another.  Gold status gives you access to priority security lanes, priority boarding, free upgrades to First Class (when available), and more.  Diamond status is the very top tier of Delta’s elite system.  It puts you first in line for upgrades, allows you to make free changes to award travel, and in rare cases may even secure for you a private ride in a Porsche to take you from the airplane to your car!

All of these benefits do not come for free, however!  In order to make this work, you and a spouse (or relative, or friend, etc.) must each signup for two expensive credit cards ($450 annual fees!), and must each spend $120,000 within a calendar year: $60,000 on each card.

You should only consider this venture if you already have great credit ratings, you are already a relatively high spender, you pay off your credit cards every month, you have extra money in the bank, and you’re willing to take on some risk.  Yikes.  Are you still with me?  If so, read on and I’ll show you step by step what to do.

Preparation

• You and partner: Signup for the personal Delta Reserve Credit Card.  $450 Annual Fee.  This card includes SkyClub access and some other good perks, so it’s not a complete waste of money!  One great perk is that it puts you ahead on the upgrade list of other flyers with the same fare class and elite status as you.  And, after the first year, it almost pays for itself with a free companion pass.
• You and partner: Signup for the business Delta Reserve Credit Card. $450 Annual Fee. This has mostly the same perks as the personal card, so you should really only do this if the purpose is to go for high level Delta elite status.  In order to get to the business application, start by clicking through to the personal Delta Reserve application.  When you see “Are you a small business owner? Click Hereto find out about the Delta Reserve for Business Credit Card,” follow the “click here” link.
• Timing:  Credit card signups should be done right away!  In order to reach such high spend in a calendar year, you’re going to want to start spending on those cards as early in January as possible.

Spend $5K per card, per month

In order to reach $60K of spend on each card, you’ll want to spread out this spending across the year.  An easy way to spread the risk is to plan to spend $5000 on each card, each month.  Below is one way to do this.  Remember, this is just a suggested approach, you may have other options you prefer.

Personal Card:

• Put all of your day to day spending on this card
• Make sure to use your credit card, wherever possible.  Don’t use cash if you don’t have to!  Use the card for everything as small as a cup of coffee to as large as insurance payments, utilities, etc.
• At the end of every month, take a look at your spending for that month.  By logging into your account online, you can see “Recent Activity”.  Make sure to look at both completed transactions and “View Pending Charges” to see how much you spent in the past month.
• Figure out how much more needs to be spent to get to $5000 in spend.  Go to Kiva.org and loan the difference using your credit card.  Over time, you will get almost all of you money back, and in the meantime you will do some good in the world!  For details about this, see How to maximize points and virtue through Kiva loans.

Business Card:

• If you have business expenses, put all of them on this card.  If you have your own business that can benefit from advertising, consider putting up to $5K per month into ads.  If that would work for you, then you’re done!
• Assuming you do not have big business expenses, another approach to spending lots of money is “gift card churning”.  You can read about it here: The Art of Gift Card Churning.  The general idea is to buy gift cards at a favorable rate (or with a big rebate) and then find the best option for liquidating those cards so that you either make a profit or, at least, loose as little as possible.  Follow Frequent Miler posts regularly to learn about new gift churning opportunities as they come up.  To see one example, please read Mileage Run Shopping: Buying 162,000 Miles for $500.

Year End Gifting

With the approach laid out above, you and your partner will each get 60,000 MQMs that can be kept or gifted to another person.  For this to work, your partner must gift those MQMs to you.  Between your 60,000 MQMs, these gifted MQMs, and your MQM signup bonuses, you will exceed the required 125,000 MQMs for diamond status!  In future years, you will get 120,000 MQMs through this approach and will need to fly for the final 5,000 (not a difficult requirement at all!).

Once you make Diamond status, Delta will offer you your choice of two “choice benefits”.  One benefit you should choose is to grant Gold status to your partner.  The other benefit you can choose is 25,000 bonus miles.  With these miles and many more credit card miles, you will have more than enough to reward your partner further by redeeming for free international business class trips!

Is it all worth it?

With the money spending ideas shown above, you are likely to get most of your money back in the long run, but there is some risk, and your money will be tied up for some period of time not earning interest and unavailable for other investments.  So, in addition to the combined $1800 in annual credit card fees, these costs need to be considered as well.  With interests rates very low these days, let’s estimate this cost as 2% of money spent towards Kiva and gift card churning.  Let’s also assume that 75% of your total spend go towards those things.  In that case, the cost of this effort can be estimated as 2% of (75% of $240) = $3600.  Add in the credit card fees, and the total comes to $5400!  But we’re not done yet!  You could have spent all of that money using a 2% back card (see The Cost of Credit Card Points), so by spending all of this money on Delta cards, you are giving up $4800 in cash back!  Adding up all of the costs, we come to $10,200!  Yikes! (Hat tip to The Travel Abstract for reminding me about the cost of credit card spend)

Before you scoff at this, though, let’s look at what you gain:

• Diamond Elite status (worth about $3500)
• Gold Elite status (worth about $1000)
• 385,000 redeemable SkyMiles (worth about $4900 in fair trading price)
• Four companion passes each year, after the first year (worth about $200 each)
• Sky Club membership (worth about $300)

So, in total, the benefits are worth about $10K per year.  You will just about break even.  Is all of this effort worth it?  It depends how much you value top tier elite status.

Scaling Back

To a large extent, the prescription above is more of an academic proof that buying Diamond status is possible rather than a recipe for what you should really do.  The truth is, though, that Diamond status is not worth anything if you don’t fly much!  And, if you do fly a lot, you really don’t need to “buy” so many MQMs.  I’m not saying that the idea is a bad one, but rather that you should think about scaling it back.  Instead of getting two Delta Reserve cards per person, consider yourself getting two Delta Platinum cards instead.  The Platinum offers fewer MQMs (20K instead of 30K) for less spend ($50K instead of $60K), and the annual fee is $300 less!  So, if you scale back as described, you will save $600 in annual fees and have $20K per year less required spending.  Your partner will still need to get the Reserve cards, though, because that is the only card that would allow them to gift MQMs to you.  With this scaled back approach, you will earn a total of 100K MQMs per year (not counting signup bonuses).  125,000 MQMs are needed to get to Diamond status.  So, after the first year, as long as you fly enough to cover the final 25K, you’re golden diamond!

A note from Frequent Miler and Delta Points about credit card applications: If you use the links in our posts to signup for any of the listed credit cards, we will receive a referral fee and we’ll be very grateful!  If you’re willing to help us out in that way, and if you will be signing up for multiple cards, please consider using links from both posts.  Whether you use our links or any other method to signup, you will receive the same signup bonuses and card benefits.

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Disclaimer: This content is not provided or commissioned by American Express. Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of American Express, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by American Express. This site may be compensated through American Express Affiliate Program.

A few days ago I took a look at my family’s Delta MQM balance for the year. MQMs are Delta’s “Medallion Qualifying Miles” (most non-Delta people refer to these as EQMs: Elite Qualifying Miles). In order to get elite status on Delta, you need 25K MQMs to reach Silver status; 50K MQMs to reach Gold, 75K to reach Platinum, and 125K to reach Diamond. Bonus miles awarded for things like hotel stays and credit card purchases don’t count as MQMs, so for the most part you have to actually fly that many miles each year to get and retain status. There are exceptions: some Delta credit cards award MQMs when you achieve very high spend levels on the cards; also Delta occasionally runs promotions that let you gather up MQMs through other means such as hotel stays, point transfers, or charitable giving. Currently the only offer like that is through Hilton in which it is possible to earn 250 MQMs for each two night stay.

Anyway, back to the family: I found that I have already earned enough MQMs to keep my Gold status for another year (but I’m a long way from Platinum). My wife and son, though, were each about 4000 MQMs from the next level. With 4K more MQMs, my wife can make gold status for the first time, and my son can retain his Silver status for another year. We already had one flight planned that will earn about 1200 MQMs each, but that isn’t nearly enough.

For hard core travel hackers, a mileage run is a flight taken for the sole purpose of earning elite qualifying miles. I’ve never done this, but might consider it someday. There is no way, though, that I can convince my wife and son to hop on a plane for no purpose other than to fly and fly back. Fortunately, we have friends in Seattle and have been meaning to visit them. So, for the dual purpose of seeing great friends and achieving elite status, we booked our flights for a weekend in Seattle.

Is it worth it? Maybe not if the sole purpose was to earn miles. However, we really do want to visit our friends. We couldn’t use Delta miles to go there because then we wouldn’t have earned miles for the flight. Instead, I dug out my US Bank FlexPerks card that has been gathering dust for a while. The one great thing about the FlexPerks card is that it has pretty good redemption value for flights. With FlexPerks points, you can purchase any ticket up to $400 in value for only 20,000 points. So, each point is worth up to 2 cents each if tickets cost close to $400, plus you earn miles for the flight just as you would if you purchased the flight yourself. The awesome thing, for this trip, is that the tickets priced out at $390 each! Talk about wringing out the most value you can from points!