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Up to 50% bonus on purchased Alaska Air Miles
Emails are being sent out to Alaska Air Mileage Plan members titled the “Instant Mystery Bonus”. Basically, it is a “mystery” how big your bonus will be when you purchase miles. The promotion runs until September 29th, and if you are targeted for 50%, you are getting the best ever Alaska Air promotion. If you’re needing to shore up your balance to make that dream trip a reality, I’d say that this is a great time to do it. However, I wouldn’t advise just buying miles on speculation…you never know what will happen – like a huge Emirates deval. Here’s a look at the promotion where you can receive up to a 50% bonus on purchased Alaska Air Miles.
The MYSTERY will sooooooon be revealed!
Here is the email that you will receive. It’s not until you click on the link that you will be prompted to enter your Alaska Air information and…
BAM! We scored 50% BYAW BYAW BYAW
This couldn’t have come at a better time, really. I’m in the midst of planning a trip and needed some extra Alaska miles. As you can see below the deal is structured so you earn a bigger bonus the more points you buy.
Including taxes the deal comes to 1.97 cents per mile.
However, if you were to use these points on travel on foreign partners you should be able to recoup the taxes at the end of the year. Gary Leff wrote an article on this which you can find here. For me, I’m looking to redeem my miles on foreign carriers, namely Cathay Pacific or Japan Airlines ( once their flights become avail to Alaska ), on business or first class flights to Asia: 50k or 70k, respectively. If we remove taxes from the valuation, we’re looking at just over 1.8 cents per mile. At that valuation, I’m buying a one way business class flight to Asia on Cathay for $900. That is a SICK value.
Removing taxes I’d be paying $900 for a one way flight to Asia on Cathay:
That ain’t shabby folks. You can see my review of Cathay Pacific business class here. It’s a great product featuring reverse herringbone seats that lie flat. They also serve Johnnie Walker Gold…which is a great blended scotch. B-YAW!
The Chase Sapphire Preferred is a great starter card that earns Premium Ultimate Rewards that can be transferred into over a dozen partners many of which are US based.
Welcome Offer
60k Points after $4k spend in 3 months
80k offer in branch currently – I think this should be online soon
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
Super solid welcome offer.
If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex℠and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash , Ink Business Unlimited you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners
Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.
- 3x on dining
- including eligible delivery services for takeout
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Ultimate Rewards – Chase Travel Portal
- $50 Annual Credit on hotel stays purchased via Ultimate Rewards/Chase Travel
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 10% Anniversary Bonus
- Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred® continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel Portal and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including primary rental car insurance, purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 13 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in the Chase Travel center for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Primary rental car coverage is my favorite
There is currently an 80k offer after $4k spend in 3 months available in branch, and up to 90k after $6k spend in 6 months. I suspect some version of this will be online soon if you don’t want the hassle of going into a branch.
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 60k is a very, very good offer. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back. .
Main Cast:
Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.
Supporting Cast:
Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on.
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