Two Citi AAdvantage Cards Offering 50k Miles until 12/31/12

Update 12/13/12: Today is the last day to apply for these official 50k offers!

I noticed a new offer on citi.com today for 50k AA cards. This is perhaps not as good as the 50k offers that appear without landing pages, as those credit the bonus points all at once, but better than the usual 30-40k official offers. With this offer you get 40k points with the initial minimum spend and then 10k more with an additional spend requirement, making this almost like a retention bonus. I'm still happy to see it, though.

The offer states:

"Earn 40,000 bonus miles after making $3,000 in purchaess in the first 3 months, and additional 10,000 AAdvantage bonus miles after $10,000 in purchases in the first 12 months of cardmembership."

If you met both requirements for two-stage bonus points, you'd end up with 63,000 AAdvantage miles, not a bad haul. That's 50,000 bonus miles plus the one mile per dollar you'd earn on $13,000 in spending (unless you earned a greater multiple by making some purchases from AA).

Here is a link to the landing page that goes to both offers.

MommyPoints has a good overview of the AA card offerings here:
http://boardingarea.com/blogs/mommypoints/top-5-family-credit-card-deals/

If you're flying AA between now and 12/31, whether you've booked already or not, you should click on this: http://bit.ly/AAThanksYou

Double miles for free!

HT to Lucky; I saw it on his blog first and then AA posted it to facebook.

From the AA facebook post:

Thank you for your support and loyalty in recent months. To show our thanks, we’re offering AAdvantage® members double elite-qualifying miles and points through December 31, 2012. Visit http://bit.ly/AAThanksYou to learn more.

AMEX Passbook Integration is Live

Per the @AmericanExpress twitter feed, they are now live on Passbook. I was very excited to hear that, because I imagine I'll use it a lot more than, say, American Airlines. The boarding pass thing where you get push notifications if your gate changes sounds awesome, but apps like this and Starbucks will help me more on a daily basis.

You need to follow this link in Safari on your iOS device: http://aexp.co/vn0 

I registered one card, and it worked, but I wondered about my other cards. I asked the helpful folks at @AskAmex, who replied almost instantly that you can currently link up to three cards with Passbook. Not bad, but I told them I'd look forward to it automatically adding all your cards in the future.

9/28/12 update: I discovered today that "Cards issued by third-party financial institutions are not currently eligible for this program." That means my Macy's and Citi AAdvantage AMEX cards will have to be lonely until Passbook can handle them.

How to take still photos while recording video on the iPhone5

There is a lot to say about the new iPhone5, but one thing that might not be evident is how to take advantage of the feature to take still pictures while shooting video. If you do a google search, right now the results only talk about the addition of feature, not how to actually use it. While shooting, a camera button will appear near the red recording indicator. That's it!

This is both obvious and non-obvious at the same time...that button reminds me a lot of the button to switch between front- and rear-facing cameras, so it might be easy to miss if you are trying to figure out how to take stills. A friend of mine asked how to use this feature, so I figured I'd post an example.

The image below is not a good example of what the iPhone can do as far as image quality; it's just there to illustrate where the still image capture button is located. I was moving quickly in a dark room, filming my dog in front of my shoes.

Purchase Decision on the iPhone5

I've decided to buy an iPhone 5. It's not as if I'll be the only one, but I'm sharing my thoughts because until today, I was not sure I would upgrade. The thing I did not see coming is that the purchase decision is as much about the resale value of my old iPhone as it is about the features of the new one. 

I wrote recently about spending two years with the iPhone 4, and it has been a great experience. In that post, I said "it will take quite a good offering to convince me to part with cash and my old phone for a new one." When I said that, I did not anticipate just how little cash it would take to make the upgrade happen.

Everyone is talking about 4G, but speed is a non-issue for me. It was hardly part of my purchase decision at all. 3G has been good for me in DC. I wish it was faster, yes, but if you download more than several gigabytes you will either get throttled (if you have "unlimited" data) or cut off because you hit your cap. This means that I can't do anything truly new on 4G/LTE. The things I could do on 3G, I'll be able to do faster now. However, anything that requires so much data that it was not possible over the older, slower, connection is still out of reach.

My fiancée has the 4S, and she's not upgrading; I think if I had the 4S then I'd also skip this model. However, coming from the 4, I am really looking forward to the new phone. The camera is going to be the biggest difference for me day-to-day. Faster and better low light performance is even more important than the increase in megapixels. 

There are numerous other improvements that, while not convincing on their own, add up to a nice package. More importantly, I sold my old phone for $175 to gazelle.com today. I could have gotten more on ebay (it is really amazing how much resale value these things retain), but that's extra hassle and dealing with bidders who might not pay. I haven't decided which model phone I'll get, but it'll probably be the base 16GB (although I wish the base was 32GB now). Granted, I'll have to sign a contract, but the ability to move up 2 generations for $25
out-of-pocket was a huge part of my decision. I am considering the 32GB model as well as applecare, so I may end up spending a bit more, but I have definitely decided to buy.

AMEX BlueCash Everyday

The American Express BlueCash card was the third and final new credit card I got in June. And when I say June, I mean late at night on June 30th.

June was an eventful month for me in the world of credit cards. I upgraded my AMEX Premier Rewards Gold card to the Platinum card. Additionally, I applied for (and got) the Chase Amazon Rewards Visa. I was well into the process of becoming a credit card rewards geek and already planning future applications a few months ahead. Something was missing, though. Something I didn't want to go without: grocery store rewards.

I was thrilled with the Premier Rewards Gold card, and I needed something to replace my extra points on grocery store purchases. Granted, this card is not a Membership Rewards card, but cash back is not a bad deal. With the PRG card, I earned 2X Membership Rewards on grocery and gas purchases. I get gas purchase rewards on a couple of other cards, but nothing else in my wallet gave earnings multiples on grocery stores. Enter the BlueCash card, which gives three points per dollar on grocery purchases. The full multiples listing is below:

-3% cash back on groceries
-2% on gas stations and department stores
-1% everything else
-2.7% foreign transaction fee (clearly not a card to use overseas)
-Redeem for cash back or statement credit any time for $25 or more

I gave careful consideration to the BlueCash Preferred card, which offers a whopping 6% cash back on grocery purchases. It has an annual fee of $75, while the Everyday version I got has no annual fee. I did the math, and it would be worth the annual fee to double grocery rewards from 3% to 6% for me. Nevertheless, I opted for the Everyday version. I'm getting married next year and just could not justify paying an annual fee, even though it would be worth it. However, I am planning to upgrade to the Preferred version of the card next year.

A note about that...I discovered after applying that you CANNOT upgrade this card if you've had it less than a year. It's not AMEX; it's a consumer protection law that has an unexpected side effect. You can read about that here.

The wild card here is department stores. That is not a benefit I've seen offered on other cards, and I'm not sure how much it will benefit me. Nevertheless, it's not a bad thing to have. 1% cash back on everything else is not great, and is really the bare minimum you should be earning. Now that I've met the $1,000 spend requirement for the $100 signup bonus, this card will get only grocery and some gas purchases unless the department store category turns out to be useful.

Activity Can't Save Old SouthWest Credits

This may not be news to anyone, but I have confirmed that there is nothing you can do to keep your old SouthWest credits from expiring short of purchasing a reward ticket with them. I only had four credits, so it didn't make sense for me to purchase the balance needed to get to a new ticket. That new ticket would only have been valid for a year anyway, and SouthWest is not a main airline for me.

As background, SouthWest introduced a new rewards system last year that replaced credits with points.  Under the new system, points don't expire as long as you have activity within 24 months. The old credits expired in two years no matter what you did. I was hoping that after the transition, posting some activity would keep the old credits active, so I used the SouthWest mall shopping portal to buy some new headphones from Apple for in-store pickup.

Alas, no such luck. The points for the purchase had no effect on the expiration date of my old credits. That's okay; I was not upset. The old credits were always supposed to expire. I just figured there would be no harm in trying to keep them active. I pinged SouthWest about it, and they responded in less than a day with a friendly boilerplate explanation. I say friendly because it was worded much better than most of the "copy and paste" replies I've received from companies.

If you need to convert your old credits and buy a ticket, this blog has a great overview of the process.