American Express Small Business Saturday

Don’t let this easy offer pass you by.  Last year I was the owner of one measly American Express credit card and my wife didn’t even have one.  Last year American Express wanted to thank all of the small businesses who accept their credit cards.  Their idea……Give every American Express cardholders a $25 statement credit for anyone who spends over $25 at a merchant who accepts American Express credit cards.  (You have to register using their registration link too).

Saturday the 26th of November 2011 is the next Small Business Saturday.

I saw this as a great marketing event for American Express.  My brother and I got on the phone to call a few local companies to ask them if they accept American Express before we went in for dinner.  We tried a couple of locations and I can only imagine that everyone else who registered for the promotion did the same.  All of the sudden local companies get a ton of phone calls asking them if they accept American Express.  (Cha-Ching)

At the time my brother invited me to dinner (As it wasn’t going to cost him anything) to a local restaurant.  Later that night my wife and I went shopping and she picked up a shirt and a bracelet that put the total purchase over $25.  Within a week Amex had already credited our account the $25.

This Year

This year is going to be different.  Now my wife and I both have a Starwood Preferred Guest® Credit Card from American Express and I have my Blue Sky from American Express(R). This means that we will be scoring $25 per credit card, for a grand total of $75!! Thank you Mr. American Express!

We haven’t lined out our purchases quite yet, but I’m sure we will eat at a local restaurant next Saturday night, and then go shopping for some Christmas gifts, or we might even treat ourselves to a massage. Who knows?

Prepare for the American Express Small Business Saturday by scoring your own American Express Credit Card. I recommend the Starwood Preferred Guest from American Express.

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Thanksgiving

As I look back over the last year I see that I have been blessed in so many ways….

Family

This year I was blessed to have a health, happy, and cute baby boy Max.  He was born in June and has brought so much happiness to our family already.  Family means so much to me and I am thankful that I have a wife and a little boy to brighten my day.

Travel

Since last Thanksgiving I’ve been able to take a number of trips.

  • Cruise to the Southern Caribbean visiting US and British Virgin Islands, Antigua, St. Lucia, and Barbados.  The cruise left out of San Juan, PR, so I was able to see the Pearl of the Caribbean
  • A week in Costa Rica with my wife as our last trip before our son joined us.  I vividly remember Max kicking me in the back as I snuggled up to my wife one night.
  • A motorcycle trip of over 1700 miles visiting Northern Idaho, Banff National Park, Glacier National Park, and many other places along the way.
  • A visit to the Sweet Carolinas with my wife and son.  It was his first trip!
  • A family trip to Tennessee where we were able to visit family and see many fun things.  We spent a day at Dollywood, went to a UT football game, rode down the Virginia Creeper, and saw the Biltmore Home.

Traveling is something that I love, and now that I can do it for free it is even better.  It is great planning a few wonderful trips each year.  My wife has become quite the wanderluster and my son is already jet setting.  Together we’ll visit many places, and we won’t be paying very much to do it either.

Work

I blog on the side because I enjoy it, but it would never pay the bills for a week!  This is just because I enjoy sharing my experiences with other people.  It would be great if it could be a full time job, but I don’t know that I see that in the cards for me.  I work at BowenGroup in Idaho Falls and I sell Health, Life, and Disability Insurance.

My work has provided a living for our family and a little bit extra so we can take time off and travel.  I enjoy my work and I enjoy working with people.

Country

Although I’m rather pessimistic about our country sometimes, I love this place.  I want our country to thrive and for the people who live here to be safe, and be self-sustainable.  Visiting Camp Lejuene Marine Corp Base in North Carolina this year has given me a much greater appreciation for our military.  They sacrifice MUCHO so we can enjoy this freedom.  Thank you for your service.

I look forward to another year of life, travels, and fun.  Thanks for Wanderlusting with us.

Score the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card and get 40,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points. These are worth $500 in travel, or they can be transferred to United.

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Upgraded to Delta Skymiles Platinum Card

I’m coming full circle in my immersion into the credit card world.  I’ve had a couple experiences with attempting to cancel a card to avoid paying an annual fee, and had great outcomes so far.

In my attempt to cancel the Citibank AAdvantage card that got me half of my miles for my family’s trip to Colombia, I didn’t even have to weasel my way into an $85 credit to offset my annual fee – they just offered it, straight up.  That way I keep the card open for at least another year, accumulate more miles, and extend my credit history.

I canceled Nicole’s card without any problems.  I would have liked to have kept it open to, but nothing was offered and I figured I wanted to make room for more anyways.

Most recently, I set out to cancel my Delta Gold Skymiles card, the card that gets me a free bag on Delta flights and that got me enough MQM to start to feel like a big-shot with Silver Medallion status and pretty regular first-class upgrades.  I called up and tried to muster a genuine tone as I proclaimed that I wanted to cancel.  I tried to get the associate to sweeten the pot by saying that I had five cards and was going to cancel two of them.  The best I got despite my haggling was an offer for a $50 credit – half of the annual fee.  I stalled and said I’d have to call back.  I got creative and started scouring the American Express site to look into upgrading my Gold Card to a Platinum Card and hit the jackpot – an offer for 10,000 Skymiles, 5,000 of which are MQM. (I couldn’t find it outside of my login, so if you’re looking to do the same, login to your account first).

I did have to fork over the $150 annual fee, but the platinum card has the added bonus of a free companion certificate each year (which is easily worth $300), and of course I called back to take them up on their offer for the $50 credit.

This year my Delta miles took me to Roatan, Honduras (35k), and bought a ticket for my brother-in-law to come out for his sister’s wedding (32.5k).  With the extra 10k I just piled on, I’ve still got 125k that are burning a hole in my awardwallet.

Wanderlust with us on Facebook!

 

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Food and Currency Quiz

We’ve decided to spice up this week’s quiz by adding a food. You have to name the food, then where it comes from and the currency that they use there.

Wanderlust with us.

Watch your Experian credit score each month for FREE with CreditSesame.com.

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Legends of Credit Carding

I’ve been involved in using my credit to secure free travel for the last year an a half.  I’ve learned a lot in that time frame, and hopefully it has benefited you.  Sharing the information has been a lot of fun for me, and I’ve enjoyed helping other people accomplish their goals of seeing the world.  It seems like everywhere I go I’m known as the insurance guy who loves to travel.  I don’t mind this stigma.  I really enjoy both, although I really enjoy traveling more.

I have taken a very conservative approach to the whole credit card approach.  I think that it has been good for me to make sure that I don’t make any mistakes.  I’ve been able to learn from some great people out there like frugaltravelguy, millionmilesecrets, and thepointsguy.  I read their blogs on a daily basis.  It seems like more and more are popping up everyday.  It is fun seeing other people get excited about the same things that drive you, it brings a feeling of camaraderie to the whole thing.

Over the course of the last year and a half I’ve only applied for four credit cards for me and four for my wife.  We’ve still been able to accumulate a lot of points, but not near as many as a lot of you guys.  It has been very lucrative and I’ve already been enjoying the fruits of my labors.

A New Legend is Born

I was reading through some material tonight about traveling when I came across someone who made a goal to earn 500,000 points/miles from a single churn.  I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the audacity that this guy had to make the jump. He has actually proven that it can be done as you can read about his results on his results page.

He compares himself to Evil Knievel, and I see the comparison right off the bat.  I am very impressed and he did a great job lining out how he has done this work.  He has quite a hill to climb as far as the minimum spending requirements.  He has created a great tool to track all of your spending requirement goals.  You can find it on his resources page.

I am grateful for his willingness to share the information of how this will affect his credit with all of us.  Hopefully it can help us to find out how to combine inquiries with all of the credit card agencies and how it will affect his credit in the long run.

I’m also hopeful that these credit card companies still continue to make money off of someone besides me so I can continue to take advantage of their offers.  It is exciting to apply for a new card and start working toward a new spending requirement.  I enjoy accumulating and spending.  This has been great because it has nothing to do with the hard earned dollars that I make at work, but has become a side hobby that has allowed me to learn how to get my travel for free.

Remember that sharing this information with others will always benefit you.  Help them to get started as maybe Ben, Rick, Darius, Brian, or I have helped you to learn how to travel for free.  You will get more excited for them as they sail off and see the world.

Thanks for Wanderlusting with us.


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Join our Facebook Group!

Our avid readers number in the hundreds, but we’ve only managed to scrape together 50 fans on Facebook thus far.  Because Facebook fanhood is the modern-day popularity contest, we’re ramping up our efforts with a little shameless self-promotion.

WorldWanderlusting holds these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created explorers, and that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unquenchable thirsts, that among these are history, adventure, and the pursuit of unique cultures.

Paying to pursue these objectives is often difficult with so many other demands tugging at your billfold – which is why we’re trying to help you build up an arsenal of frequent flyer miles and hotel reward points simply by carefully and effectively managing your credit as you seize opportunities provided by zealous marketing campaigns.  If you’ll stick around, we’ll show you how you can go from wanderlusting to wandering, and we’ll also point you to many other bloggers who are discussing these very same issues.

If we have a niche, it’s in trying to give you ideas for once you’re “in-country.”  We’re not as well-traveled as we’d like to be, but we’ve seen a good chunk of the world and learned (sometimes the hard way), what to do and what not to do.  If you’re after something different than the all-inclusive resort experience when you leave the country, then bookmark us in your favorites.

If you’re reading this and enjoying it, we already consider you a fellow wanderluster, and we’d like you to “like” us, and then tell your friends to “like” us, who will then tell their friends to “like” us.  It’s like a chain letter, but instead of winding up with stacks of letters with dollar bills, we end up with lots of “likers” on Facebook and a broader audience to share our travel tips for cost-conscientious wanderlusters around the world.

We’d also welcome you to follow us on Twitter, though admittedly we’re light on Twitter posts.

We appreciate your continued interest and invite you to send us any thoughts or suggestions as to how we can be more effective in providing information that pushes you past the brink of daydreaming about travel and makes you go through with it.  We also hope to be useful in your planning.

Get the Delta Gold card while the bonus has been increased temporarily!

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Virginia Creeper Trail

downhill bike trail

Railroads were huge in the late 1800’s.  Sometimes they went to great lengths to build railroads over mountains that probably should never have been built.  This is the case of the Virginia Creeper Trail. They built a railroad that went up and over the hills of Western Virginia. The scenery is absolutely beautiful. I can’t believe the effort that it must have required to build this trail. They had to build over hills and valleys. They didn’t use as much steel because the wood was so abundant.  We went over 24 bridges that were built of wood within the 17 miles that we biked.

Luckily the ride is almost completely downhill. You don’t have to be Lance Armstrong in order to make it to the end. It took me about two hours to do the ride, and I only really pedaled for the last 10 miles or so. The first part almost requires brakes more than it does pedaling. The curves are gentle and you never get going too fast as it used to be for a railroad. You know that they never would have built a railroad with steep declines and sharp corners.
bike ride
Fall came earlier here than it did in Knoxville.  So keep in mind when you are trying to visit that the fall season here comes earlier, so if you want to see the fall colors plan on coming at the beginning of October. The whole ride is filled with beautiful valleys and trees surround you almost the entire time.

How to Ride the Virginia Creeper Trail

The ride begins and ends in Damascus, Virginia. The town probably has a population of 1000 people, but has some fun shops and is located directly on the Appalachian Trail. I’m sure lots of hikers have found their way to a pizzeria on their long journey.

downhill biking

Fall on the Virginia Creeper Trail

I completely recommend you taking a trip on the Virgina Creeper Trail.  It was a lot of fun and would be easy to do with children.  You can rent a cart for your children to ride behind you, or you can add on a bike to yours so your child can pedal as well.  They make it all available to you.  It runs about $22 for them to shuttle you to the top of the mountain and let you use one of their Specialized bikes.  It seems pretty reasonable for a three hour span of fun.

They also have signs all along the way that talk about the vegetation and the landscape.  It is definitely recommended!

Score the Starwood Preferred Guest card while the spending requirement has been lowered!

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