Guest Post: Sky Pesos Collector
How this Bum got 9 round trip flights, 17 Hyatt hotel nights, 8 Wyndham nights, 2 indie hotel nights, and 4 rental cars for FREE using BowTiedBum methods!
Intro
Below is a guest post from Slack User: Sky Pesos Collector. He was able to book 9 round trip flights, 17 Hyatt hotel nights, 8 Wyndham nights, 2 other hotel nights and 4 rental cars for free using BowTiedBum methods.
While he got different cards than what’s outlined in the quarterly plans, he was still able to crush the game using manufactured spending techniques discussed in the Substack posts and Slack.
As always if you have any questions or on unclear about anything, feel free to ask in the Slack Group (DM me for access if paid sub).
Below is his unedited guest post:
Sky Pesos Collector Intro
At the end of May, I had finally finished booking my trips for 2024. I wasn’t exhausted, I was thrilled. So I posted in Slack that I had booked 9 round trip flights, 17 Hyatt nights, 8 Wyndham nights, 2 nights at an indie hotel & 4 rental cars. All for the low, low price of free award points. Yes, that is 27 nights of hotel stays & it doesn’t include my two Delta Stays credit that I used, which tbh sucks, but it’s another two free nights at a $150/night hotel. Here’s how it went down.
Making A Plan
For P2 & I, Our plan was to travel the country and see some national parks and cool cities in 2024. We also have two out of state weddings to attend and I have bachelor party in Vegas, baby. My alma mater just joined the SEC so we’re going to all their road games this year. Plus we wanted to do one trip to Canada.
With that knowledge, SouthWest, Delta & AA would be our best options for flights & Hyatt is almost always the best hotel. For Vegas, the Wyndham biz gives you diamond status & lets you stay at Caesar’s properties with no resort fee if you match diamond status to Caesar’s diamond. So now, we had a plan.
Collecting points for booking these trips started at the tail end of 2022. Southwest has something really cool: the companion pass. The city we live in doesn’t have a major hub for any airlines nor does it have international flights. The advantage to this is we aren’t locked into one airline having monopoly on flights at our airport.
The Cards That Got Us There
The Southwest cards are the main cards that got us all these trips, but they aren’t the only ones. I’ll list those in the next section. Keep in mind, I didn’t optimize cards well before this year.
12/22: SW RR Plus 75K points
2/23: SW RR Biz: 60K points
With these two cards + companion pass til the end of 2024. I got a ton of trips of it, all are round trip unless otherwise noted:
2023:
PHX, Oak (SF to Yosemite to Tahoe trip. Super cool trip),SLC, Hon (for 20k points. Total. And I could take P2 for free because of companion pass.)
2024:
Hou, Las, MSY, ATL, From MSY (one way)
Yes, we’re going to New Orleans twice this year.
So that’s 8 round trip tickets + a 1-way flight with just two cards. Pretty awesome & P2 gets to go on all of these with me for free.
Other Cards Used & Tips
Other flights booked include: Buffalo (Then heading to Canada) and PDX. Plus the other leg to MSY. All on AA first class.
The cards I used for the AA trips were the Citi AA Biz (8/23- 70K) & the Barclays AA Aviator (11/23- 75K).
Knowing that I had the flights booked, I had to gain some hotel points. Hyatt is my favorite hotel chain because of how easy it is to accumulate Chase points so I wanted those. I grabbed CIU (12/23) at 90k points and then here is the list of the rest of the cards I got in 2024:
US Bank TC+ (1/24): $500 bonus
US Bank Biz Altitude Connect (1/24): 60K Bonus ($600)
Delta Plat: Upgrade offer of $200 SC, 20K delta points for 3K/6mo (2/24)
Wyndham Earners Biz: 50K bonus. I’m not counting the extra 50k they give you for 15k spend in 12 mo. (3/24)
Wyndham Earners Plus: 100K (3/24)
CIC: 75K had to recon 3 times to get this one (3/24)
Amex Delta Gold (3/24): 85K
Values of $1100 from USBank, $1600 from Amex (including delta stays credits & sky pesos at 1.7 CPP), $1650 from Barclays (1.1 CPP Wyndham minus 170 in AF), and $750 from chase. This doesn’t include spend. That number will be higher up now that I know how to MS better.
Some of you may be asking why I didn’t just get the Alaska Cards in stead of AA cards?
That’s because I got rejected for them in February. I opened a checking account and put 5k in there. Got antsy and applied after a month instead of waiting the advised two months.
Anyway, remember how I said I booked 17 nights of Hyatt in the intro? It doesn’t matter if you remember cause you may notice that I probably don’t have enough Hyatt (Chase) points for that just from CC sign-ups. I got the rest from joining this group & learning to use the Fluz office supply store. Here’s some tips applying to different banks:
Barclays: They gave me a 20K CL on the AA aviator back in November. P2 isn’t churning right now, but was she has happy to be added as a P2 to complete the bonus requirements of 1 purchase from an AU for an extra 15k points. I applied for the Wyndham cards on the same day & Barclays combined the hard pulls into one. Had to recon but they have the best recon in the universe. I just had to split the 20K CL between the two new Wyndham cards and the old aviator card. I got the earners+ first because they made me verify business info (I have a legit sole prop). Oh and did you know they can only do verify by mail like it’s the 1990s? Good ole Barclays. These two cards got me 8 nights + I have plenty of leftover points.
US Bank: They are my sleeper bank because you can just keep applying same day and they will combine hard pulls. Don’t stop til you’re denied. The downside is that their points are 1 CPP unless you redeem for GCs & they have to be used in $25 increments unless you use real time rewards. I haven’t found a way to get them above 1 CPP, but I’m confident there is a way that I just haven’t figured out yet. Using this to reimburse myself for rental cars & the two nights at an indie hotel.
The MS Methods
Now, Bum has posts on all of these so I won’t get too in depth here but will provide some tips. I’m new to Buying Groups, Fluz and Aligned Incentives so I’m just going to talk about Bank Accounts & DFS here with some tips I learned after becoming a bum. Also the Fluz method is leaving me with so many extra Chase points. So thank you, Bum!
I play DFS for fun so it isn’t truly MS, but if you use DFS just know that you have to play through your deposit 1x before you can withdraw to a different method than your deposit method. PrizePicks only accepts Visa, which includes Fluz Visas. Underdog accepts Amex & it codes as a purchase.
For bank accounts look for banks that are Chex sensitive and do those first. Doctor of Credit has the best list of Chex-sensitive banks that I’ve seen.
I learned this next tip by searching slack: Freeze your chexsystems before applying and only unfreeze if requested. I did not know this before but if you fill out an application but don’t submit it, the banks will still do a pull on Chex. Almost all banks that have application pages that use the “meridian link” or “XAMobile” page will have CC deposits. (Shoutout to WavyDave for that)
Also Search for credit unions. I will also just go to a random city’s subreddit and search “credit union” then click on a post & read the comments. Some of these will allow CC funding. I found one of my favorite CU’s using this method.
Also r/churning has a weekly bank bonus post. Yes, that is for bank bonuses but also the reason why some of these banks get mentioned is because of CC funding.
One more method I use is my local grocery store that lets me buy MOs with a GC for .59. Every VCG & MCGC I’ve used has worked there which is nice. They also don’t care if its a GC, it just needs a pin.
2025 Plan & The Takeaways
I’m getting married in 2025 so that’s where just about all my points are going… First class in Delta using those SkyPesos, of course. I’m 4/24 & plan on staying under 5/24 to be flexible for hotel options for our destination wedding. Most of the rest of the cash back I get will just go towards paying for the wedding & traveling to football games in 2025.
Knowing this, my Q3 plan looks like this:
Apply for as many USBank cards as they’ll let me have, which was 5 (Lev, 2 Alt Connects & 2 TC+.) All went pending 7-10 days & all at elevated bonuses. Fingers crossed cause this would be worth $3600.
CIC: Mid-June. Being cautious because I had to recon 3 times for my last one. I had to cancel a SW biz & wait a week before being approved last time. 75K possible points or $750 (but really closer to $1500 using Hyatt).
Amex Biz Gold or Plat: Plus I can get a Schwab Plat for cashout options. I’m also open to advice on which cards to get.
The main takeaway of this post is that you should always be reading between the lines & looking up how you can reach your goals. Make it as simple as possible. Ask questions in slack but more importantly answer questions if you think you know the answer. Someone will correct you if there’s a better way so don’t be scared. Also read r/churning posts, DOC comments & flyer talk comments. If people are talking about something, they are probably using it to their benefit. Try to figure out what they’re doing.
Get your plan together, figure out how to get there & learn so you’ll be able to book whatever trips you want.
Disclaimer: None of this is to be deemed legal or financial advice of any kind.