Welcome Back!

Hope everyone is doing well 😊 

The long Memorial Day weekend was wonderful, even if it was very rainy. Nothing like a 3-day weekend once in a while (or more than once in a while 😉)!

The extended weekend allowed me to catch up on a little bit of sleep, and book some travel that I’d been pushing off! More weddings and bachelor parties coming up this year means more flights to be booked! It just feels so great when points pay for these things, by the way!

My next trip coming up is a quick one to Mexico for the World Cup! I’ll share more about that next week, but I’m incredibly excited for it 🎉

The stories are a bit sad (when it comes to points & miles news these days, its mostly not good), but here we go nonetheless.

In today’s edition:

• 🪦 RIP Citi Custom Cash 🪦

• 🏦 Transfer Bonuses ✈️

• 🪦 RIP Close-in AA Awards? 🪦 

• 📰 Other Stories & Deals 💰️

• 💳️ Best Card Signup Bonuses 💳️ 

🪦 RIP Citi Custom Cash 🪦

Well, we have some rumors that Citi is discontinuing the Custom Cash card soon, if not already by the time this email goes out…

And it looks like there have been notices sent out to bank employees as well:

I never had this card, but always thought it was a very solid card! 5x on the top spend category on the card each month, at up to $500. A solid deal and pretty much a lock for 2.5k points every month for any one that spent $500 on one category on this card and put it away until the following month. And, if you had more than one Custom Cash, even better 💸

So the guidance seems to say product changes are also no longer possible going forward, which is sad. If this is true, I’d guess that people will eventually get product changed to something else, like the Double Cash or Strata…

Citi does have other solid cards, like the Strata Elite and Strata Premier, but the Custom Cash was a really nice way to get points without an annual fee. Darn! I don’t even have the card and I’m sad about this - I’ll share updates here as they come in. 🤞 

🏦➡️✈️ Transfer Bonuses

A chart of transfer partners by bank, along with other information, can be found here! New transfer bonuses not present the week before are in bold. Two notes: 1) that any transfers to Avios essentially include British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Finnair, and Qatar, and 2) that if you have the Chase Aeroplan credit card, any Aeroplan transfer bonuses are 10% extra!

Noting that Bilt bonuses are usually only one day, on the first of the month, and the transfer ratios vary by Bilt status. For June’s promotion, it looks like this:

• Blue = 25% bonus

• Silver = 50% bonus

• Gold = 60% bonus

• Platinum = 100% bonus (125% with upgrade)

🪦 RIP Close-in AA Awards? 🪦 

Some additional bad news: American Airlines seems to be pulling some award availability for close-in bookings ☹️ 

This hurts for spontaneous and sudden bookings. So what’s going on is:

• Within 5-6 days of departure, nonstop domestic award availability is being pulled. This is for American and for partner award availability.

• Itineraries with stops, and international itineraries are still up.

• This applies only for saver-level availability. There is higher level pricing available still, but nothing at saver level.

This is a real shame - close-in bookings typically yield the highest value (value based on a cents per point metric), as close-in flights have a set mileage cost but are very high in cash price…

Alaska Atmos Rewards had short-hauls on American at 4.5k each way, which now is gone. I believe within the 5-6 day threshold, it’ll now start at 7.5k miles, which is basically a 67% devaluation if booking within 5-6 days of departure. Brutal 😢 

This could be a temporary change, and I hope it is. So the options now are probably to book a slight bit earlier, or to book close-in nonstop domestic flights with other airlines. If there are any updates here as well, just like in the earlier story, I will share updates.

📰 Other Stories & Deals 💰️

• 🏦 Chase increased its business card referral bonus back to 40k per referral - you can still only get this referral when the person you referred is getting their first ever Chase business card, though!

• 🇺🇸 Bank of America’s updated Preferred Rewards introduced some new monthly entertainment credits!

• ✈️ Get 45% off Base Fares on Breeze with code BIRTHDAY, through Friday!

💳️ Best Card Signup Bonuses 💳️ 

Again, the usual solid cards:

• Chase Sapphire Preferred^® / Reserve®

• Chase Freedom Unlimited^®/Flex^®

• Amex Gold & Plat

• Capital One Venture X

Do search for public links for the above cards to compare signup bonuses to make sure you get the highest one (incognito mode, Resy, etc.).

For cards with elevated signup bonuses (targeted bonuses are not included), I’ve got:

📤️ Spread the Word! 📤️

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Hope that all makes sense! That’s all for this week’s edition of Sense per Point.

Wishing everyone a wonderful rest of your day and week 😊 

- Sean Kim

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