McGarvey's Words: Journalist…Podcaster..Speaker

by Robert McGarvey

The credit card interchange wars are back. And the future of your credit card rewards may hang in the balance.

“Interchange” – for those not fluent in the arcane language of banking – refers to the swipe fee merchants pay to banks when they accept MasterCard or Visa. That $1 at retail reduces to maybe 98 or 97 cents in the merchant’s pocket.

Big deal?

Well, yes. Billions of dollars are at play and one of the benefits funded by interchange fees are the rewards offered by many credit cards, from cashback to travel discounts. Basically, banks decide to split the swipe fee with consumers to induce more use of their cards.

Swipe fees have been under attack for years. Merchants despise them. Advocates for low income consumers and those who don’t use credit cards also hate them – because, say many, it’s this group that funds the rewards we reap by paying higher prices at retail.

Enter Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) who has had a loathing for swipe fees literally for a decade, probably longer.

Durbin, a powerful figure in the US Senate, has been pushing his Credit Card Competition Act for some years. What it would do is give merchants a choice of multiple card processing networks and, says Durbin, this will give consumers lower prices because merchants would be able to dodge the Visa and MasterCard rails and use cheaper processing options.

In 2022 that bill went nowhere. But 2023 is a new deal and now Durbin has bipartisan support, including Senator J. D. Vance (R-Ohio).

The bill’s current language applies only to cards issued by banks with more than $100 billion in assets.

That is exactly four banks in the US. Remember that number.

Over at The Points Guy, founder Brian Kelly has weighed in with a bylined piece headlined: Here’s why your credit card perks could be going away Here’s the nub of his argument: “A law with highly unfavorable consequences for those who love credit card points and rewards is currently being reintroduced on Capitol Hill. The Credit Card Competition Act of 2023 (“the Big-Box Bill”) proposed by two U.S. senators — Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Roger Marshall, R-Kan. — would be disastrous for consumers, especially the millions of consumers who get immense value from cash-back and travel rewards on credit card transactions.”

Opponents of the bill also say – with some accuracy – that a 2010 Durbin bill which resulted in lower swipe fees on debit card charges produced no meaningful discounts at retail for consumers.

Is today different? Stephanie Martz, chief administrative officer of the National Retail Federation, said in a prepared statement: “It’s time for big banks and global card networks to compete the same as small businesses do every day. Skyrocketing swipe fees have been driving up prices for consumers for far too long, and we are confident this is the year Congress is going to say it’s time for that to stop. Competition will bring these fees under control and strengthen security at the same time.”

Over at The Points Guy, Kelly plays another card: “This legislation would allow big-box retailers — like Walmart and Target — to choose cheaper, less safe credit card processing networks that expose private consumer information to foreign networks in China and Russia without regard to the value that consumers derive from rewards and many other credit card benefits.”

And yet…US financial institutions have an enduring record of providing feeble security for consumer data and every year many millions of our records are snatched up at criminals. It just isn’t easy to mount a coherent argument claiming that our current domestic security for credit card data is bulletproof.

Here’s what this argument comes down to: big box retailers love the Durbin bill because they can count literally billions in savings. I doubt many small retailers give a hoot because they probably are too busy fighting for survival to ponder topics like this. Might it still benefit them? Probably, sure, a little bit.

Will merchants pass on lower prices to us? That’s unknown. But if a WalMart passes on even a fraction of its savings that would ripple through the retail landscape.

Will our credit card rewards go away? NRF’s Stephanie Martz, in a statement to Bankrate, pooh poohed that scare: ““Rewards are banks’ main marketing tool for getting a consumer to choose a Visa or Mastercard from one bank over another and they are unlikely to give that up. The $11 billion that would be saved under this legislation is only a fraction of the swipe fees collected on credit cards last year, so banks would still have plenty of revenue left to cover rewards.” 

Remember, the bill applies only to cards issued by the very biggest banks. Most cards would not be affected.

Also remember the Stanford research that says the dirty secret about credit card rewards is that they are enjoyed by the well off but paid for by the poor.

So now are you pro or anti Durbin?

by Robert McGarvey

Pick the odd man out that has no place in a discussion of where to get startup funding: angel investors, friends and family, venture capitalists, or a CUSO?

It’s a trick question because all four are good sources of capital for early-stage companies, but you probably pointed at CUSO because you hadn’t heard of it before.

Join the club: few startup entrepreneurs have a clue. But that is overlooking an important source of possible funding that may also deliver plenty of customers too.

Continued at Startup Savant

by Robert McGarvey

I couldn’t resist the offer. The mailer popped in my box – genuine US mail – and the headline blared Earn 40k 65K Bonus Miles.

The sender was Delta where, despite me having no memory of having have ever paid for a flight on it, I have cashed in miles and points (via Amex) to get three roundtrips to Europe in the past 10 years.

The 65K miles had my attention. I had scorned prior 40k mile offers but at 65k it got a second look from me. Probably I could cash that in for two roundtrips to NYC from Phoenix.

This is an Amex card with a $99 annual fee, free in the first year. The only requirement for collecting the mileage bonus is spending $2000 in the first six months.

The card has the usual airline card perks – free first checked bag, priority boarding and an intriguing wrinkle where award flights are discounted 15%.

What about my cashback strategy? It remains in play but as I’ve said I don’t see it generating more than $2000 or $3000 for me this year and while that is a pleasant spiff, it’s not ample for me to change my life course. Getting more cashback would necessitate me putting a lot more time into this than I am prepared to do.

But the 65k miles in effect just fell into my lap. The value of the 65k points is around $900, per The Points Guy’s calculation. It may even be higher with that 15% discount on awards tickets.

It will be effortless to get the bonus. I’ll probably spend the $2000 on groceries and, yeah, I sacrifice 3% back on a Venmo card – but the Gold Card offers 2% back (in miles) on groceries so that’s, what, a $20 loss. No big deal.

I also pat myself on the back for resisting the Alaska Air current 50k miles account opening bonus, but that’s mainly because Alaska doesn’t go a lot of places I want to go to.

Will I keep the Delta Gold card after the first year? Hard to say but probably. If I dump any card in my wallet it’s likely to be the Southwest card which I got for a 50k miles signing bonus that I already know what I’m spending it on.

But there is and likely will continue to be lots of motion in my credit card inventory. I’ll tell you this: after years of having a static deck of credit cards, this year there has been more shifting and additions to my cards than I can recall before in this century. But there’s a reason: it just is getting harder to intelligently play the credit card rewards and airline mileage rewards games and win. The rules keep changing, the “prices” keep going up, and the only way I see to play this is to keep in motion myself. The era of having one mainstay card – Amex Plat for me – that was used everywhere that accepted Amex simply are over.

Heraclitus called it right: The only constant in life is change.

by Robert McGarvey

It was about six months ago – in the midst of galloping inflation – that I decided to shift my credit card strategy from accrual of mileage and points that could be converted into miles (e.g., Amex’s Membership Rewards) into a focus on cashback, cold, hard cash. The reason: soaring, dynamic prices for rewards tickets have increasingly made that game unenticing.

And there’s an undeniable value to the cash that is on offer with cashback cards.

How has that strategy fared for me?

Consider this a mid-term report card.

The Amex Plat card for me mainly is a tool for accruing Membership Rewards points but this year already I have gotten $100 in cashback on a NYTimes subscription ($20 per month) plus $90 in Uber cash. Just this month I also got $40 back on a Zoom subscription, $50 on a Saks purchase, and $30 on a Wine.com purchase. Plus my wife gets a free Clear membership ($189 value, which covers the $175 that card costs).

All in I am up $310 so far this year.

With Amex Blue Preferred, a recently acquired cashback card, I am up $169.96 in cashback since January 1, roughly the incept date for the card. Almost all of that is in regard to grocery spending (at 6% cashback). Add in $250 for hitting a $3000 spending goal in the first six months.

The Affinity Cash Rewards card – which returns 5% on Amazon purchases and 2% on groceries, gas, and restaurants – has put $303 in my pocket since incept in late winter. $200 of that was a bonus for spending $3000 in the first 90 days. This card is fee free.

Discover has put $76 in my pocket, almost entirely produced by 5% back on groceries in Q1.

A fee free Chase Amazon card – 5% back on Amazon and Whole Foods purchases – put $187 in my hands in the first half of the year. For now I am using this card only at Whole Foods.

A Chase Southwest Air card put 50,000 miles in my account for spending $1000+ in the first month. I have no plans to use this card except for an occasional Southwest flight.

That’s $986 plus the $310 from Plat, which puts me up about $1296 in the first 6 months.

The important fact: although I had fretted that playing the cashback game would take up too much time, in reality I spend very little time or energy attempting to maximize my benefits. Let’s be honest: I am not earning enough cashback to justify a lot of effort on my part. So what I have devised is a no brainer, no thought approach that aims to produce cashback without worrying about maximizing the rewards.

Most days I carry only four credit cards with me and just about every purchase I make goes on one of the four.

But I don’t lose sight of the reality that this cashback emphasis simply is not going to make much difference to my personal finances. That’s why I have no plans to add more cashback cards to my weaponry. Probably I could eke out a few more dollars in cashback rewards by adding a few more cards but there are limits to my wallet capacity and my willingness to use brainpower to seek to put the right card in play at the right time.

So I’ll probably pull out around $2000 in cashback this year and if I succeed in continuing to put in minimal effort it will be a good return.

What about travel rewards? In the past year I added something over 100,000 to my Membership Rewards account, a mix of purchases and bonuses. I have diluted my focus on this but, obviously, old habits die hard. Besides, quite a few vendors are on auto pay with Plat and I have not wanted to put in the energy to rearrange those relationships.

The small spend I am diverting to cashback wouldn’t make much difference to my travel rewards availability. What would is if I added another credit card with a rich signing bonus that will produce a couple flights to Europe. Maybe I will. Right now I feel no urgency – prices in much of Europe have gone bonkers and I will bide my time until the current travel mania abates. But the really big gets will be had with signing bonusses, not with grinding out a couple pennies here and there with cash rewards or accumulating handfuls of Membership Rewards points with Amex Plat spends.

Call this my hybrid strategy and I plan to continue to keep it simple.

by Robert McGarvey

Baby Boomers, stand back. We – and of course I am a Boomer – no longer are the leading consumers and cravers of credit card rewards. Guess what, we are not in second place either.

This is according to Morning Consult data that looks at share of an age group that belong to a travel rewards/loyalty program. That could be anything from belonging to Marriott’s Bonvoy program to collecting airline miles through accumulating Amex rewards points.

Personally I do all three.

But I am also aware that we are speeding on fast forward into a generational shift in the travel business where Boomers, who have been the industry’s stars for perhaps 40 years, are moving to the sidelines.

We will not be replaced by Gen X. Just not enough of them and, apparently, they are not avid collectors of points. Morning Consult says just 38% of Gen X (born 1965-1980) belong to a travel rewards program. That puts them in fourth, last, place in the generational claim to be top of the travel pile.

Where are Boomers (1946-1964)? Third place with 41% of us belonging to a travel rewards program.

Gen Z (1997-2012) has 42% participation.

And hats off to Millennials (1981-1996) where 48% – almost half – are in a travel rewards program.

Why? eMarketer observes that travel costs are up significantly “so travelers will likely turn to loyalty and rewards programs even more for perks or discounts.”

And costs are in fact up. Per NerdWallet, “the overall cost of travel is up 18% compared with April 2019 and up 2% versus the same month in 2022.”

Some prices are up a lot more: “U.S.-to-Europe tickets are averaging $1,300 round trip, per deal-spotting site Hopper — a 50% jump from last year. Tickets to Asia, meanwhile, are up a staggering 70% compared to pre-pandemic figures, averaging nearly $2,000 round trip,” reported Axios.

It’s a no brainer to use points and miles – especially for international airfares – this year.

But you know the question that is not addressed in these data: how many different travel rewards programs do individuals belong to? I can think of three airline programs I belong to (and a fourth where I have a handful of orphaned miles), two hotel programs (Hilton and Bonvoy where I have elite status in both via Amex Plat), I have two airline credit cards, of course there’s Amex Plat and that rewards program, there’s a stash of points at Diner’s Club. That’s nine that I am aware of and I am sure there are memberships that I have forgotten.

My point is that maybe Boomers still are the princes and princesses of rewards travel because we just might belong to a lot more programs than members of other generations and we almost certainly have bigger stashes of accumulated points and miles, simply because we have been at this a lot longer.

But there is one more data point to mull: Morning Consult data show a powerful correlation between participation in a travel rewards program and income. Makes sense. Travel for business usually is associated with higher income jobs and leisure travel is the province of those with discretionary income. Why collect miles and points if you don’t travel?

Just 29% of us with incomes below $50,000 belong to a travel rewards program. But 76% with incomes of $100k or more do belong.

Of course then there is the uglier side of this discussion where many economists say that it’s the poor who pay for the credit cards rewards of the rich. Aaron Klein, a senior fellow in economics at the Brooking Institute, is quoted in Vox: “The American payment system has evolved into a reverse Robin Hood whereby middle-class and working-class Americans who pay with a debit card, prepaid card, or cash are subsidizing the wealthy, who pay less for everything.”

And that’s because it’s the rich who reap the rewards — a fact shown by the Morning Consult numbers. All of us pay higher prices to pay for the credit card rewards and it mainly are the rich who get them.

by Robert McGarvey

Do you have a bucket list?

Most everybody I know has one. Antarctica is on a lot of bucket lists (personally I open my freezer, look at the ice for a minute and the thought of traveling there vanishes). Tibet is on some lists and it might be on mine except it ceased to exist a long time ago. Moscow and St. Petersburg are on a few lists but, pending regime change, I won’t visit either. Ditto Tehran. Rome, Paris, Berlin are on some lists but I’ve been to all and, yes, would happily return but have nothing planned.

Here’s the deal. As I have aged my bucket list has decidedly grown smaller. There are many, many places that I know – although they are desirable – I almost certainly will never go. New Zealand is a case in point – just too far. The Baltic Republics are another for instance – which shouldn’t be confused with the Balkans where I also probably will never go although I admit Albania tempts me (with a gorgeous shoreline and also Roman ruins) as an add-on to a Greece vacation so maybe I will go to the Balkans, just not the Baltics.

With age there also comes a realization of diminishing time. I just don’t have a month to spend poking around South America and, yes, I have been, perhaps 25 years ago, to Chile (lovely country, by the way) and I am tempted by both Peru and Argentina (an odd couple if ever there were) but I sincerely doubt I will want to put in the time to know either and the idea of a quick, check the box (done that!) trip to either holds no appeal to me. Too much wear on the body for too little benefit.

Look, it’s not just countries that aren’t on my travel to do list, it’s around 24 US states, too, that I have never visited and I doubt I ever will, from Idaho to New Hampshire and Kansas to Alabama. Some states make the no go list because they are culturally unacceptable to me (just as I probably am culturally unacceptable to them). Others make the list because they, well, offer no reason to want to go. I have some friends who are determined to check off all 50 states for a bucket list goal but I am satisfied with the 26 or so I have been to and am doubtful I will check off any further states. (Note to state tourist boards: this means you. I ain’t going, don’t ask.)

What about Iceland? Yes, it scores high on the travel lists of many friends but not mine. There’s a hot tub in my backyard I never use and if the idea of going to Iceland popped into my mind I’d go sit in the hot tub until the idea vanished.

What about Tanzania? Possibly. What Baby Boomer who grew up watching Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom wouldn’t have curiosity about the Serengeti, the big five animals, and all the rest? If ever there were a prime bucket list trip this is it.

Ditto Egypt and the pyramids. Leading edge Boomers grew up watching a lot of TV horror movies about mummies and pharaohs and pyramids and just about all of us got an implanted idea that Egypt was a place to see – and the idea sticks with me. Even if not a one of those movies was shot on location.

But probably the second biggest possibility of a bucket list trip I might take is China, where I have never been (unless you count a 1997 trip to Hong Kong a few months after the handover). If there is a nation that is charting a specifically 21st century it is China and that is not to ignore its human rights abuses and its fast and loose relationship with facts and truths. But Shanghai, Chengdu, essentially instant cities of over one million in population, what’s soon to become the planet’s biggest auto industry (say good night, Detroit, Tokyo too), a huge tech sector, a rich intellectual, artistic and spiritual past – if ever there were a nation that deserves to be on a bucket list it’s China.

But China ranks second. What’s first? A 2027 500 mile walk of the entire Camino Frances. I slot it for six weeks when it will be probably my final Camino. This trip already has a place in my calendar.

Will I get there? That’s the question, isn’t it? Bucket lists are inherently aspirational, that is, things to live for. And I am all in with that idea.

What about you and your bucket list?

by Robert McGarvey

It occurred to me the other day as I packed for a trip that just maybe the biggest change in my packing isn’t in the clothes (remarkably similar to what I packed 30 years ago) but in just about everything else.

Remember, now I prefer a backpack – a 35 liter Cotopaxi or a 40 liter Osprey – whereas decades ago my bag of choice was a big garment bag, mainly because folding clothes has never been a skill of mine. Still isn’t but I have grown to accept wrinkles, in my face and my clothes. A backpack is a functional choice and it is a change for me but it by no means is the biggest change in how I travel.

Probably the even bigger change is in the tech I tote and that’s despite the fact that tech today is a near universal reality whereas 30 years ago it was something of a rarity.

Rare it may have been but back circa 1990 I always brought a Toshiba T1100 Plus laptop, a modem, extension cords, a power bar, a screwdriver, and still more to insure I could in fact plug into the hotel’s phones and access CompuServe and/or AOL which were the online networks I used in those days. I also owned an acoustic coupler that I occasionally brought. Sometimes I also packed a bulky tape recorder (with spare D batteries) and a three pound Tandy-100 notebook which ran on batteries, had a tiny 8 line display and could store data on audio tape (thus the tape recorder). I remember transcribing an interview with Gerry Adams, the legendary Northern Irish politician, as a sat in a Belfast guest house and pecked away on the Tandy (which probably is the only oldtime tech I wish I still had – it was genuinely cool).

Add up all that weight I had to be lugging 20+ pounds of tech.

Looking back I have no real idea why I was so fixated on staying connected. I got few emails (I remember when CompuServe charged for emails). The Tandy could do most of what the Toshiba could do and, well, I guess I was just exhibiting my inner tech geek in my fondness for bringing so much gear on my travels.

But now it is 2023 and I travel light. Very light. For a computer my choice today is either a 9th generation iPad which cost under $300 and weighs about a pound or a Samsung Galaxy S6 Lite tablet which also weighs around a pound and cost $250. Note: I used to buy iPad Airs with all the bells and whistles but it occurred to me I didn’t use those features so I went cheap this past year. Either device does just fine with email, web searching, and the occasional writing chore.

Oh, the tablet, whichever I bring, also will double as my portable library with around 2000 Kindle books on tap in my library. Just think about how much weight that alone eliminates from my baggage.

WiFi is built into both tablets, no modem needed.

If I want I can bring a $30 Fosmon mini keyboard (it fits in a shirt pocket) or a lightweight Logitech keyboard, also $30. I probably will only bring a keyboard if I anticipate writing lengthy documents.

Of I course there’s also an iPhone 12. On it is a $23 Hindenburg field recorder app that recorded five interviews on a recent trip – very good sound quality without using an external microphone. The iPhone also can produce a powerful hotspot to handle my devices if I prefer to avoid public WiFi at hotels, airports etc (which I often boycott – security issues make using them unwise unless you deploy robust VPN).

Add in a USB cord or two and a USB outlet plug and tech is handled.

In a pinch, of course I could take quite good, even printable, photos with the phone (but I don’t customarily do photography). But if I had to I could.

Total weight is maybe three pounds, max.

And of course I can actually do much, much more with today’s pared down gear. Less is more.

How has your packing changed in your years of business travel? Speak up in the comments below.

by Robert McGarvey

Everywhere I turn suddenly the word I hear is AI. AI can do this, it will do that, but can it in fact plan our travels?

Remember, the AI tools are 1.0 versions. They are very, very far from perfect.

Case in point: moments ago I asked ChatGPT, the current AI leader, to plan a two night business trip from Phoenix to Dallas. Seems simple right? A fast flight via American or Southwest, stay in a hotel near the event, and that’s 75% completed.

Not with ChatGPT. Here’s how it started: “Start your journey early in the morning and drive from Phoenix to Albuquerque, which is about a 6-hour drive.”

Note: I specifically asked this: Plan a two night trip from Phoenix to Dallas. The itinerary I got back showed one night in Albuquerque, one night in Amarillo and one night in Dallas, then returning home., presumably by driving but those details are not specified.

I gave Bard the same direction and it at least put me on a plane. It also suggested a trip to the G W Bush Library at SMU; I didn’t know it was there.

For day 1, Bard suggested: “In the evening, have dinner at one of Dallas’ many great restaurants. I recommend Tei-An, Uchiko, or Fearing’s Restaurant.”

Not bad actually. Score one for Bard.

I next asked ChatGPT to plan a six day walking itinerary on the Camino Ingles in northern Spain. A big win: it started me in Ferrol, not A Coruna which is the bigger city in that part of Galicia, but a pilgrim needs to start a few miles west in Ferrol if he/she wants a Compostela, an official document testifying to completion of a pilgrimage to Santiago.

As for Bard it returned a route of 93 kilometers…which is shy of the 100 minimum to qualify for a Compostela.

The ChatGPT route involved 117 KM.

The Stingy Nomads stages route – a human created route; I’ve found them reliable on past Caminos – comes in at 116 KM.

Score one for ChatGPT.

Next test: I asked both to plan a three night trip to Belfast to see the history of “the Troubles.”

Bard did ok, suggesting a Black Taxi tour to travel the Falls Rd, the Shankhill, and the Crumlin Rd museum. But on Day 3 it fizzled out with a suggestion to see the Titanic Museum. A fine stop for many but it has nothing to do with the Troubles.,

As for ChatGPT, it waived a white flag: “The server had an error processing your request. Sorry about that!”

You probably heard the recent story of tourists in Hawaii who, following GPS. drove directly into a harbor. There’s video. Personally I think that incident has more to do with human error than machine error but, then again, I have not see the directions the tourists were given, nor do I know what GPS mapping tool they used. Maybe it was in fact a machine malfunction.

But back to AI and travel. My best guess is that two or three years from now, AI will be able to plan most business trips literally in seconds with high accuracy, assuming the question is framed properly. The “prompts” – as they are called in AI – are crucial in shaping the results. Poor questions will produce poor results.

Why am I optimistic that better times are just around the bend? Partly it’s because the AI tools will get better – their databases will grow and their speed will accelerate. Partly it’s because we will get better at shaping our prompts.

Give it a couple years and about all that will be left for travel agents will be trips involving enormous complexities and poor source materials – such as travels in sub-Saharan Africa or India. I’ve tried to plan such trips myself and frankly gave up.

For now, however, by all means play with AI, even ask it simple questions. But always remember the machine is fallible. I just asked Bard the best steak houses in Manhattan and came back with a list headed by Peter Luger which happens to be in Brooklyn and, well, don’t ask Pete Wells what he thinks of the joint. On this list of 10 there were at least two more that just do not belong on any list of the best steak houses in Manhattan.

I asked ChatGPT the same question and, again, it offered up Peter Luger and on its list of five one other – clearly – did not belong.

But both named Wolfgangs which is at the top of my list.

The answers will keep getting better. Give AI time.

By Robert McGarvey

Call this my Brancatelli moment.

A trip for two from Phoenix to Dallas loomed on my horizon and, suddenly, I found myself grumpy about the $800 or so I’d be out of pocket for the airfare.  That seemed downright exorbitant. And then my Brancatelli moment happened.

I was looking at my email inbox and, lo, there was an offer for a Southwest credit card.  $69 annual fee and the perks are meager – Basically 2x points on Southwest purchases and two EarlyBird check ins yearly (valued at $15 to $25 apiece).

But the kicker is a bonus of 50,000 points after spending $1000 in the first three months of the card. Use that for the Dallas fares as well as applying the EarlyBird check in and that’s around $840 in value (-$69 = $771).

I already have spent about $500 on the card – paid for my wife’s Southwest ticket for a business trip. That adds 1000 points to my tally.

Yeah, I’m probably forfeiting around $25 in cash back on other cards – round it off as $745 in savings.

Where Brancatelli comes in is with his standard advice that really the only way to win the points and miles game today is with signing bonuses.  In January he wrote this: “Get a new credit card, score the increasingly large acquisition bonuses, then get the next card for its acquisition bonus. Assuming you don’t roll over and pay interest, the strategy is the best and cheapest way to roll up masses of miles and points. It’s the equivalent of found money since you’re not spending anything you otherwise wouldn’t spend and you earn far more miles and points than you would by flying and staying in hotels–or charging to your existing cards.”

Before signing with SWA I’d found myself noodling the bizarre idea of getting an Alaska AIr card with a 70,000 mile signing bonus and what made that thinking so strange is that Alaska flies to pretty much nowhere that I am likely to go to so the card would be inert plastic in my wallet. 

Then the Dallas trip popped into my mind and, sure, SWA has the worst reputation of just about any domestic carrier and apparently the problems are rooted in an ancient computer system.  But an identified problem is a fixable problem so call me optimistic.

For some months I have preached the need for a fast spend of miles because the probability is high that they will be worth less next year. As airlines mint more miles to sell to credit card issuers they use the other hand to devalue the very same miles. Burn ‘em when you get ‘em. That’s what I’m doing with the Dallas trip.

Will I cancel the card a year from now when the $69 fee arises? Probably. You may have heard credit card “experts” saying that canceling a card will lower your credit score but if it’s true it’s only a minimal impact – unless it’s a card with a large and unused credit limit. That’s because percentage of credit used is indeed a key metric in credit scores. My SWA card has a small credit limit. It’s disappearance won’t matter to my credit score.

Don’t hard pulls on your credit – in account openings – lower your credit score? Again, it’s a marginal ding unless there are lots of new accounts.

So no worries. Last year I canceled a United card and saw no impact on my credit score.  I opened two cashback cards and an REI card and, again, no significant impact on my score. If you have prime credit (a FICO score >660) there’s scant reason to fret about these matters.

Next year I imagine I will nab a Delta Gold card – currently offering 60,000 bonus miles; $99 annual fee. That’s issued by Amex and that’s good because I think I am maxed out on the Chase 5/24 rule which denies issuance of a new Chase card if the applicant has opened five or more new credit card accounts in the past 24 months across all banks.

This merry go round will keep on spinning.  Grab the bonuses and use them fast. That – to repeat – is the only way to win in the rigged airline awards game.

By Robert McGarvey

A passenger on your flight is flagrantly drunk. Is this OK with you? Or do you disapprove?

A baby cries – ok or no?

A couple has a public display of affection – are you tolerant or not?

Blogs and newspapers are chock full of flagrant inflight misbehavior – here are a few record-setting FAA fines imposed for genuinely over the top misbehavior including head butting flight attendants and attempting to open airplane doors in flight.  No reader will dispute that these passengers are completely out of line and my vote is to ban them forever from flying commercial.

It’s with the peccadillos, the smaller violations, where doubts arise, even down to: is this okay behavior or isn’t it? Let the debates begin.

For instance: is it ok for a passenger to listen to audio without wearing a headset? Ask me and the answer is: Nope.  If I wanted to hear c & w flying to Madrid I’d have downloaded some to my phone. I just don’t want to hear what you want to hear. What’s your opinion? Before answering understand that there’s a recent YouGov poll that took a deep dive into exactly these types of behaviors.  Are they social infractions? Or ignorable instances of individuality? Vox populi.

Understand: the most widely disapproved behavior is drunkenness with 55% calling it completely unacceptable and another 20% saying it is somewhat unacceptable. That is the high water mark in this exercise with 75% thumbs down.  By the way, 4% called it completely acceptable and of course we know where those sports fans come from. The miracle is that they were sober enough to record a response.  

The most widely accepted behavior: crying babies.  9% called this completely unacceptable while 20% said it’s completely acceptable.  

As for passengers not using headsets, 59% call it wrong.  

Try this one: is it wrong for a passenger to remove footwear (shoes, socks, etc)?  51% say it is.  Just 25% say it’s ok, kind of.  Color me puzzled because I usually remove shoes on international flights (I can’t recall doing it ever on a domestic flight) – but my socks stay on even when flying to Madrid.  I don’t feel a twinge of guilt about doing this.

Here’s a flash point: is it ok to fully recline a  seat (in coach)?  You may remember I have written often and favorably about KneeDefender so that’s probably a tip off to my position and, yes, I think a fully reclined seat in coach is a violation of the social contract.  Do most travelers?  Yep. just 21% think it’s acceptable, while 53% label it unacceptable.

A few more questions to ponder:

Is personal grooming inflight ok? That’s hair combing, nail clipping etc.

How about chatty seatmates – ok or nay?

What’s your tolerance for loud and noisy children (not babies)? Are they out of line on a plane?

Backing up, public displays of affection are fine with 28% but 39% walk the Puritan line and say save it for home. What’s wrong with a public kiss? Don’t ask me, ask them.  I see no problem with displays of affection.  Better that than displays of disaffection such as slapping or punching.

As for personal grooming, 55% give it the green light.  

As for that chatty seatmate, 39% say it’s fine and and 34% just shrug that they have no onion on this.  That neutral group is the largest of any of the survey questions which surprises me.  I thought opinions would be stronger, pro and con.

And when kids are loud and noisy, 51% want to 86 them. Just 22% say it’s acceptable.

Which shows: what do I know?  Just about nothing and that’s why these surveys intrigue me. I know what I think is ok – but it is fun to find out where the larger public disagrees.

Even when they are wrong.