I have The Gold Card from American Express as my business credit card and have always had difficulty finding things to spend the points on. I’m not a huge fan of gift cards but fortunately AMEX doesn’t play the game of diluting point values at lower gift card prices. For example, Citi’s ThankYou Network turns 6,000 points into a $50 gift card, diluting the value of a point by a small percentage. $100 gift cards are 10,000 points though, giving you a true “penny a point” conversion. Anyway, with AMEX’s Membership Rewards I’ve just converted them into either Home Depot cards or Roy’s Restaurant cards (Roy’s is a Hawaiian fusion restaurant that my wife and I absolutely love).

LUV Gem in Membership Rewards Catalog

In browsing the site the other day, I discovered that you can convert AMEX Membership Reward points into Southwest Rapid Rewards (Frequent Flyer) points! Each SW point costs 1,500 AMEX points, plus a small excise tax. 16 SW points equals one free domestic flight, so it costs 24,000 AMEX points (plus $12 in fee) for a domestic flight. Compare that with any other major airline and you’ll find that the minimum point to free flight ratio is 25,000 plus ridiculous booking fees (not to mention luggage fees, food fees, headache fees). Another great aspect of this is that you don’t have to buy all 16 points at once. You simply enter in your frequent flyer number and the points are transferred over. If you are only a handful of points away from a free flight, just buy as many points as you need.

Value of Southwest Voucher

Is it worth it? Well, I’ve sold Southwest vouchers on eBay and Craigslist years ago for about $300 a piece. This was before you could extend the expiration date on the voucher ($50) but now I just keep them for my own travel (you also aren’t allowed to sell them, but I was in college and $300 goes a really long way!). With soaring fuel prices, the vouchers are worth anywhere from $350 to $400. The 24,000 points is worth $240 in gift cards so you’re really coming out ahead, even after adding in $12 of fee. This trumps any gift card by far.

Southwest Rules!

I’m a huge fan of Southwest Airlines and one of the reasons is because they the best frequent flyer program ever (giving us free champagne on our flight out to our honeymoon in Hawaii was awesome too!).

There’s a reason why Southwest’s profits jumped 11% whereas other airlines have been tanking. [Consumerist]

(Photo by Cubbie_N_Vegas)

If you want to compare the economic policies and plans of Presidential hopefuls John McCain and Barack Obama, CNN Money has a good comparison between the two on a variety of issues from Social Security to Personal Taxes.

Jeremy at Generation X Finance has a very good explanation of why the GAO report of 2/3rds of companies paying zero tax is political hogwash. Besides Jeremy’s good points, famous United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit judge Learned Hand once said - “Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes. Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands.”

SVB tackles the question of saving for college, a question I’m going to put off for a little while.

Nickel’s favorite cashback credit card is the Blue Cash from American Express, a card I don’t have. It seems to have a lot of great features, like a comparison of your cashback performance, and good cashback categories as well.

The Consumerist confirms once again why I love Southwest in publishing it’s top 3 most and least “fee crazy” airlines. Southwest was they’re #1 least fee crazy airline.

Flexo wrote about a study that says sleep makes you smarter.

Have a great long weekend!

The Dow opened on January 2nd, 2008 at 13,261.82 and opened on July 1st, 2008 at 11,344.64 - for a spectacular fall of over 1,917 points. Don’t calculate the percentage, it’ll just make you throw up.


This week, a barrel of oil (NYMEX Sweet Crude) topped $145. A barrel of oil cost an average of $15.70 ten years ago (adjusted to 2007 dollars). I will be investing in a Flintstone-mobile. Here are the latest energy prices on Bloomberg. *sigh*


Can someone with better math, or better descriptive skills, explain why a 50% difference is only considered “slight?” We expected 40,000 fewer jobs in June, there are actually 62,000 fewer jobs… but it’s only slight. “Job losses in June were slightly worse than the 40,000 expected by economists surveyed…”


Starbucks to close 600 stores with 12,000 affected workers. Stockholders rejoice as SBUX jumped 4.6% and MBA professors sob as one of the most referenced marketing case studies gets a black eye. At least there’s always Southwest.



Royal Caribbean’s Project Genesis, a cruise ship yet to be named, will be the most expensive and largest cruise ship ever constructed and will cost a mere $1.24 billion dollars. It will carry 6,400 passengers, weight 220,000 gross registered tons, and displace more water than a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. (it wasn’t announced this week, in fact it was announced over a year ago, but it was worth putting in this week just because!)

Have a great Fourth of July Weekend!

(I’m going to start doing Week in Numbers [WIN] every Friday afternoon, please let me know what you think!)

Until June 30th, get $25 off a future $100+ Southwest Airlines round-trip flight when you purchase a $100+ Southwest gift card from Southwest.com using a US-issued Visa card. The Southwest gift card has no fees and no expiration date, so you can buy it now and use it whenever.

The $25 credit will be emailed to you and will likely be in the form of a credit voucher (I ordered a gift card but the credit doesn’t come for 4 weeks, but I’ve had credits before from canceled flights). Thankfully Southwest’s credit vouchers are like cash, have no expiration date, and are usable on all flights but subject to these restrictions (including blackout dates and an expiration date); so there’s no little risk of being screwed in the future (Thanks Ceo Reom!). I know a lot of other airlines’ vouchers are much harder to use, they’re specially coded and you can only use it on the worst possible seat of the worst possible flight.

$25 off $100 is a pretty good deal, that’s like being able to check in a bag at one of the other airlines! (have we upgraded from “nickel and diming” to “five and fiftying” yet?)

The fine print after the jump:
(read full article…)

One of the tricky things about being “recently married” is that the missus was in name limbo. “Technically,” she’s my wife with my last name (that’s right!). “Legally,” she still retains her maiden name until she goes to the Social Security Administration to change her SS card name and the DMV or MVA to change her license name. So what happens when we get a check written out to her new name? Trickiness! Headaches! But not to fret, I’ll try to capture everything we’ve done so that it can be as painless as possible for all you newlyweds out there.

First, just to cover the check situation, she just needed to sign her new name (what the check was made out to) followed by her former name (the name on the account), to deposit the check. In reality, unless the issuer contests it, chances are anything reasonable would’ve worked.

Now, onto the name changes…

Marriage License

This is the linchpin of the whole name changing operation. Everything requires this and no names can be changed without the signed marriage license or certificate. The fact that it’s been issued is proof enough that the state recognizes the marriage and the signature is proof that the marriage went through, the document was never notarized, as is required of many legal documents, but having a notary there probably would’ve killed the mood.

Driver’s License

You’ll need to go to the DMV/MVA (whatever the place is called in your state) to make this name change request. In Maryland, you’ll need to go to a full service location with your marriage certificate and current license. Like every other trip to the DMV/MVA, I’d budget a healthy few hours and a few dollars to take care of this but somehow my wife was able to get in and out on a Tuesday morning in about half an hour (they run two different queues and the driver’s license queue was ridiculously short that day). The great thing about this step is that you are immediately issued a new license, there’s no need to wait around for one to be mailed to you.

Social Security Card

Changing your name on a Social Security Card is a bit trickier and the Social Security Administration provides this guidance, which is essentially you need to fill out a new application. You can mail in the application with the original or certified copies support documentation (proof of citizenship, legal name change, and proof of identity), but I would just go into an office rather than risking the mail. One gotcha here is that you need to bring proof of your old name too, so an expired Passport will do nicely.

Your Company HR

This step is crucial after you change your name with Social Security because your employer will be reporting Social Security payments. Depending on your company, this could be a pain or this could be a cinch. Either way, contact HR about changing your name and you will need, at most, the same documents you used for Social Security.

Passport

If your passport was issued within a year of the marriage, you’ll need to fill out a Name Change, Data Correction, and Limited Passport Book Replacement Form: DS-5504 and send it in with two Passport photos, a certified copy of your marriage certificate, and your old passport (and $60 if you want expedited service). If it was more than a year, you’ll unfortunately need to apply for a totally new Passport with Form DS-82 (and pay $60).

Online Accounts

Strangely enough, changing your name on online accounts turns out to be a bigger PITA than anything. For example, we are both members of Southwest’s Rapid Rewards Frequent Flyer program and for her to change her name, she needs to send the request in writing along with a photocopy of the marriage certificate and her driver’s license. At first I thought, “why the hassle?” until I realized it was all in the name of security, and rightfully so. I recommend starting this process as soon as you get the driver’s license because the processing time could be a few weeks.

Right now we’re sitting on a two hour layover in Oakland, CA on our way to Hawaii for our honeymoon. Our trip thus far has taken us through Kansas City on Southwest and we were reminded once again why Southwest is easily my favorite airline. We were the only two people on the flight from Baltimore to Kansas City that would continue on to Oakland and we arrived ten minutes early so we had some time to chat with the flight crew. They asked us where we were going and my wife said we were flying onto Honolulu for our honeymoon. They said their congratulations and we thanked them, everyone smiling all around, and we thought nothing of it. A new flight crew came on board to help the first flight crew clean up and then we were on our way. About five minutes before we were to land in Oakland, the a member of the flight crew came on the PA and said “We wanted to congratulate two of our passengers who recently got married, everyone please give them a round of applause!” There was clapping all around, some more congratulations, and then one of the crew walked over and gave us a bottle of Korbel champagne!

Before you cynics out there chalk it up to something devious, you have to know one thing… you can’t actually buy champagne on board. This wasn’t someone just grabbing one of a million bottles and handing it to us in a nice gesture, this was far more than that. One of the Baltimore-to-Kansas City flight attendants had to have picked it up and passed it onto the new flight crew. That’s some serious customer service, I have never heard of anything like that.

So, in addition to fares that can’t be beat, a speedy seating policy (some might call it herding but I have absolutely no problem with it, you can’t expect great fares and to be coddled), great flight crew attitudes and company personality, you can add on a personal touch that you can’t get from many airlines, budget or otherwise.

So Southwest, that’s why we LUV’d you before and why we will continue to LUV you. And if there’s an executive out there, the crews were the ones on Flight 1945 out of Baltimore at 1:05PM and the crew on the continuation leg from Kansas City to Oakland, they deserve some serious kudos. Thanks!

(As a testament to technology, I’m writing about this from the Oakland terminal… the above said act just happened about an hour ago)

The current economic nature of the airline business is a blessing for flyers and a nightmare for airline employees and shareholders, but this situation won’t last forever. Eventually a few big airline companies will fold, a few budget airline companies will become bloated, and the great prices and frequent flyer plans we see today will slowly disappear. So while the pickings are still lush, let me introduce Southwest’s Rapid Rewards program.

Basics:
Each one-way flight is worth a point. You receive a free round-trip ticket after 16 points in one calendar year, or eight flights.

Value of a Point:
You can find these Rapid Reward Vouchers on sale on Ebay for around $300 a piece, which makes the value of each point approximately $18.75. The average major carrier will required 25,000 miles for a domestic flight and if we figure that flight to cost $300 on Southwest, each mile is worth about 1.2 cents, which is approximately what industry experts value a mile at. To convert the points into miles, you’re getting approximately 1,562.5 miles per point.

1 Point = $18.75 = 1,562.5 miles

When you compare prices of flights, that’s where it starts to get a little interesting. The cheapest flight possible on Southwest is a $39 one-way flight (worth 1 point), so you are in essence only paying $20.25 one-way when you factor in the value of a point. However, this isn’t predicated on whether you sell the ticket or not because if you plan correctly, you can use that rapid reward ticket for a flight across the country that will cost way more than $300. Also, when you use the rapid reward ticket, you get the Fully Refundable version of the ticket, not the Fun Saver Non-Refundable Cancel-And-You’re-Hosed ticket.

Additional Ways to Earn Points
There are always ways to earn bonus points, some of them absolutely free. Gone are the days when you would get 4 points per booking via Southwest.com but here are a few good ones:

• Book At Southwest and get 3 Points per Roundtrip (Exp. April 1st)
• Double Credit Cities - Depart out of or arrive in one of a few select Southwest hubs and receive double credit (4 pts) - Currently Baltimore/Washington International (BWI) and Chicago Midway (Exp. March 31st).BWI Double Credit bonus extended to Aug. 3rd!
• Sign Up for A Southwest Visa Card - You get 1 point per $1,200 spent (compared to $12 from a 1% Cash back card, you are earning more from this reward) and 4 points for signing up. The Annual Fee is $59 but the 4 points are worth $75.
• Download DING - Southwest’s newest software that allows them to send deals directly to your desktop. Sign up for the Rapid Rewards newsletter and they might send you an offer of 2 points for signing up!