Time and again, I have debated about what is the best way to rent a car?
Do you get them via points redeemed from your credit card rewards programs such as Chase Ultimate Rewards or Amex Membership or just use plain old cash.
I tried this out with various car rental agencies such as Avis/Budget and Hertz/National et al. The costs tagged at the end of the return has convinced me that you are better off paying them off with your cash. You could join the loyalty programs and simply get offers such as one day off or weekend rental off - programs which you cannot redeem in your reward portal. If you must use points, you could always redeem the points for gift cards and then use it at a car rental company. So use cash, enjoy the ride and save your points for other biggies such as air reward travel or gift cards.
Like everything else, it boils down to your requirement and what you got at hand.
Thursday, August 21, 2014
How to use Evolve billpay and Money Orders
Evolve billpay is a pretty nifty tool that is available as of start of 2014. www.evolvemoney.com is a startup that lets you paybills using your debit cards. In an age, where one simply links one's accounts online and forgets about it, it is kind of pain to use services such as Evolve Money. That is, until you recognize the full power behind them. You cannot use credit cards on this site. Only debit cards and gift cards are allowed. Yep, gift cards. That is where the reptilian part of the brain should fold your hands and play with the fingers. The kind that a honey badger would do.
With gift cards being accepted, you could simply follow the templates and load up on gift cards from those credit cards where you could earn high percent category bonuses. Once you have the gift cards, simply key them in and pay off the bill. The whole setup is very easy and all online and not worthy of a picture. It is quite easy and the site remembers your billers as well as old debit card info. I use them for my utilities payments or internet payments among others.
The big bonus feature is it can also be used for some mortgage payment. Some months, when I have to make extra payments on the principal, it is much easier to log into this site and just payoff with a handy gift card.
What else do you do with any remaining gift card? Money order is the answer. While Wal-Mart and USPS are likely places, both of them might stop or already have stopped accepting non banking debit cards. Which means only grocery stores are the left over options. For me, the payments such as rent on an apartment is done by money order since the property management does not accept any other form of payment nor has any online interface. Speaking of which, there are some good online tools for rent pay such as WilliamPaid or RentShare but all of them charge quite a bit high transaction fees. If you don't mind them or are desperate to achieve a credit card spend, they could be one way. But if money order is an option, and in most cases they are, then it is quite easy to convert your debit gift cards to money orders using grocery stores. They charge between 29-99 cents and are quick and painless. Once you get them, remember to write down the name of the payee and put it in a safe place. You could deposit it using ATM or mobile apps in Chase or Bank of America or Wells Fargo or any of the leading banks with apps out there.
Money order is one handy tool in your arsenal with which to liquidate your holdings. Evolve money gives you a legit outlet to pay bills and accumulate some points in the interim.
With gift cards being accepted, you could simply follow the templates and load up on gift cards from those credit cards where you could earn high percent category bonuses. Once you have the gift cards, simply key them in and pay off the bill. The whole setup is very easy and all online and not worthy of a picture. It is quite easy and the site remembers your billers as well as old debit card info. I use them for my utilities payments or internet payments among others.
The big bonus feature is it can also be used for some mortgage payment. Some months, when I have to make extra payments on the principal, it is much easier to log into this site and just payoff with a handy gift card.
What else do you do with any remaining gift card? Money order is the answer. While Wal-Mart and USPS are likely places, both of them might stop or already have stopped accepting non banking debit cards. Which means only grocery stores are the left over options. For me, the payments such as rent on an apartment is done by money order since the property management does not accept any other form of payment nor has any online interface. Speaking of which, there are some good online tools for rent pay such as WilliamPaid or RentShare but all of them charge quite a bit high transaction fees. If you don't mind them or are desperate to achieve a credit card spend, they could be one way. But if money order is an option, and in most cases they are, then it is quite easy to convert your debit gift cards to money orders using grocery stores. They charge between 29-99 cents and are quick and painless. Once you get them, remember to write down the name of the payee and put it in a safe place. You could deposit it using ATM or mobile apps in Chase or Bank of America or Wells Fargo or any of the leading banks with apps out there.
Money order is one handy tool in your arsenal with which to liquidate your holdings. Evolve money gives you a legit outlet to pay bills and accumulate some points in the interim.
How to Load PayPal Cash cards
Why Templates? gives you a set of valid reasons on why to use such templates or basic workflow diagrams on a day-to-day basis. To summarize, if you run out of big bonus spend cards (or soon enough you will), the world of category rewards aint so bad. You could make some decent money, though not as much as the 100k or 75k cards. But still, I think it makes sense to pursue this during lull times. The reason to use templates is to simplify your process and think less about which cards and where to spend. I just print them out and put it in my room or car. If you wanna go real agile (software programmers know what I am talking about), you could print it out and paste it in your study room or bed room. Trust me, it just frees up the mental resources down the line. These money loading business could quickly go out of hand with you not knowing where you loaded and how to verify it, which store to go and which card to put the spend on. The best way is to just write it down, the good old-fashioned way. Eventually, it will evolve to just a bunch of templates that you could be tweaking as these rewards structure, the way the prepaid cards are loaded and the credit card programs inevitably change.
Now that we have seen the Amex prepaid cards usage as intermediary, it is time to move on to other cards. One card that has often helped me meet the minimum spending requirements as well as the category bonuses is the PayPal cash card. The Paypal MyCash card is a form of prepaid card which can be bought from 7-Elevens mainly. Since Chase and Discover classify this as gas station, you are likely to get the 5% category bonus which in a given quarter, on a $1500 spend, amounts to $75 per card. That is not super much, again, but enough to go to that fancy restaurant and chug it all in, in a guiltless fashion :).
The PayPal MyCash card can be loaded immediately from the paypal.com/MyCash website. So it is very similar to the Vanilla Reload card network. There is a monthly load limit of $4000 which after years of bugs seems to have been fixed by PayPal (finally) in July 2014 where this limits resets at the start of calendar month.
The PayPal MyCash card costs $3.95 and is the least expensive card out there. And hopefully this card and 7-Eleven sticks around though many 7-Elevens accept only cash due to some abuse by over zealous spenders. It is an effective tool to meet minimum spending.
For category bonus, apart from Discover IT, Bank Amerirewards and Chase freedom, the Chase Ink+ or Chase Bold offer 2%.
Is it worth it or really any cost benefit analysis is there? At 2% its a bit difficult to justify. At 5%, it seems there are reasons to justify. There are some cards which offer 4% such as the USBank Flexperks, provided you use their redemption programs.
This is one of the main bread and butter programs for many including myself. This method gives decent payout. You are coming out ahead with 40 bucks after spending $1000 on the 5% category cards. So that is $160 when you are in full flow. With Bank of America cards, that is 3% instant cash back. Still that is decent enough reward points. Who would not like $80 after expenses per month for other stuff? It is like fun money or charity money or just restaurant money to try out new stuff.
Like in all other programs, use this one too with discretion and don't get shut down by PayPal or 7-Elevens. As long as you buy something and pay bills, you are using other services and hence would be in good standing with these companies.
Now that we have seen the Amex prepaid cards usage as intermediary, it is time to move on to other cards. One card that has often helped me meet the minimum spending requirements as well as the category bonuses is the PayPal cash card. The Paypal MyCash card is a form of prepaid card which can be bought from 7-Elevens mainly. Since Chase and Discover classify this as gas station, you are likely to get the 5% category bonus which in a given quarter, on a $1500 spend, amounts to $75 per card. That is not super much, again, but enough to go to that fancy restaurant and chug it all in, in a guiltless fashion :).
The PayPal MyCash card can be loaded immediately from the paypal.com/MyCash website. So it is very similar to the Vanilla Reload card network. There is a monthly load limit of $4000 which after years of bugs seems to have been fixed by PayPal (finally) in July 2014 where this limits resets at the start of calendar month.
The PayPal MyCash card costs $3.95 and is the least expensive card out there. And hopefully this card and 7-Eleven sticks around though many 7-Elevens accept only cash due to some abuse by over zealous spenders. It is an effective tool to meet minimum spending.
For category bonus, apart from Discover IT, Bank Amerirewards and Chase freedom, the Chase Ink+ or Chase Bold offer 2%.
Is it worth it or really any cost benefit analysis is there? At 2% its a bit difficult to justify. At 5%, it seems there are reasons to justify. There are some cards which offer 4% such as the USBank Flexperks, provided you use their redemption programs.
This is one of the main bread and butter programs for many including myself. This method gives decent payout. You are coming out ahead with 40 bucks after spending $1000 on the 5% category cards. So that is $160 when you are in full flow. With Bank of America cards, that is 3% instant cash back. Still that is decent enough reward points. Who would not like $80 after expenses per month for other stuff? It is like fun money or charity money or just restaurant money to try out new stuff.
Like in all other programs, use this one too with discretion and don't get shut down by PayPal or 7-Elevens. As long as you buy something and pay bills, you are using other services and hence would be in good standing with these companies.
Using Square Cash with Debit Cards
Why Templates? gives you a set of valid reasons on why to use such templates or basic workflow diagrams on a day-to-day basis. To summarize, if you run out of big bonus spend cards (or soon enough you will), the world of category rewards aint so bad. You could make some decent money, though not as much as the 100k or 75k cards. But still, I think it makes sense to pursue this during lull times. The reason to use templates is to simplify your process and think less about which cards and where to spend. I just print them out and put it in my room or car. If you wanna go real agile (software programmers know what I am talking about), you could print it out and paste it in your study room or bed room. Trust me, it just frees up the mental resources down the line. These money loading business could quickly go out of hand with you not knowing where you loaded and how to verify it, which store to go and which card to put the spend on. The best way is to just write it down, the good old-fashioned way. Eventually, it will evolve to just a bunch of templates that you could be tweaking as these rewards structure, the way the prepaid cards are loaded and the credit card programs inevitably change.
So how would you load money using Square Cash and Debit Cards. Just like the Bluebird or Serve cards, it is mostly done online. In fact, it is much easier given that there are no restrictions in Square Cash similar to the Amex cards. So I just use two emails, register them both online and two different checking accounts. Then I just one debit card to send $1000 a time into email account 2 and from there to bank account 2. Again, dont abuse or overuse this system. Once deposited, use this funds for legitimate bill pay or student loans. I use mine for sending mortgage payments from account 2. It makes it easier to manage if I have one checking account from where the mortgage payments are made.
So how would you load money using Square Cash and Debit Cards. Just like the Bluebird or Serve cards, it is mostly done online. In fact, it is much easier given that there are no restrictions in Square Cash similar to the Amex cards. So I just use two emails, register them both online and two different checking accounts. Then I just one debit card to send $1000 a time into email account 2 and from there to bank account 2. Again, dont abuse or overuse this system. Once deposited, use this funds for legitimate bill pay or student loans. I use mine for sending mortgage payments from account 2. It makes it easier to manage if I have one checking account from where the mortgage payments are made.
How to Load Bluebird from Chase/Amex/Others Cards
Why Templates? gives you a set of valid reasons on why to use such templates or basic workflow diagrams on a day-to-day basis. To summarize, if you run out of big bonus spend cards (or soon enough you will), the world of category rewards aint so bad. You could make some decent money, though not as much as the 100k or 75k cards. But still, I think it makes sense to pursue this during lull times. The reason to use templates is to simplify your process and think less about which cards and where to spend. I just print them out and put it in my room or car. If you wanna go real agile (software programmers know what I am talking about), you could print it out and paste it in your study room or bed room. Trust me, it just frees up the mental resources down the line. These money loading business could quickly go out of hand with you not knowing where you loaded and how to verify it, which store to go and which card to put the spend on. The best way is to just write it down, the good old-fashioned way. Eventually, it will evolve to just a bunch of templates that you could be tweaking as these rewards structure, the way the prepaid cards are loaded and the credit card programs inevitably change.
In the last post, we saw how to load Amex Bluebird/Serve from American Express Credit Cards. In this post, I am slightly tweaking the template to use other cards such as Chase or Barclay's as well as other American Express cards to load the Serve account offline. The limit is $5000 per month and daily limit is $2000. Though, to not really raise any flags, I tend to keep it in the $500 - $1000 range per day. The modus operandi is pretty similar. Chase Freedom for instance used to give 5% on drugs purchases. Chase Ink+ or Bold gives 2% (not much) or simply have very high sign up bonus spending requirements. Hence, I use these cards using the picture below and just execute them rapidly. For instance, the $5000 minimum spending requirement is entirely attainable within a few days though you have a 90 day limit to get over to that level of spending :).
In the coming days, I plan to put on more templates as well as possibly apps if there is significant interest which would make life easier to accumulate reward points.
In the last post, we saw how to load Amex Bluebird/Serve from American Express Credit Cards. In this post, I am slightly tweaking the template to use other cards such as Chase or Barclay's as well as other American Express cards to load the Serve account offline. The limit is $5000 per month and daily limit is $2000. Though, to not really raise any flags, I tend to keep it in the $500 - $1000 range per day. The modus operandi is pretty similar. Chase Freedom for instance used to give 5% on drugs purchases. Chase Ink+ or Bold gives 2% (not much) or simply have very high sign up bonus spending requirements. Hence, I use these cards using the picture below and just execute them rapidly. For instance, the $5000 minimum spending requirement is entirely attainable within a few days though you have a 90 day limit to get over to that level of spending :).
In the coming days, I plan to put on more templates as well as possibly apps if there is significant interest which would make life easier to accumulate reward points.
How to Load Serve from Amex Cards
Why Templates? gives you a set of valid reasons on why to use such templates or basic workflow diagrams on a day-to-day basis. To summarize, if you run out of big bonus spend cards (or soon enough you will), the world of category rewards aint so bad. You could make some decent money, though not as much as the 100k or 75k cards. But still, I think it makes sense to pursue this during lull times. The reason to use templates is to simplify your process and think less about which cards and where to spend. I just print them out and put it in my room or car. If you wanna go real agile (software programmers know what I am talking about), you could print it out and paste it in your study room or bed room. Trust me, it just frees up the mental resources down the line. These money loading business could quickly go out of hand with you not knowing where you loaded and how to verify it, which store to go and which card to put the spend on. The best way is to just write it down, the good old-fashioned way. Eventually, it will evolve to just a bunch of templates that you could be tweaking as these rewards structure, the way the prepaid cards are loaded and the credit card programs inevitably change.
One of the hallowed programs are the American Express one and the ones depicted on the picture below is the American Express branded Blue Cash family one (so Blue cash Preferred, blue cash - old and new one). You could also substitute this with the new EveryDay card and EveryDay card Preferred. In each of these cards, you basically buy the gift cards/vanilla reloads/one vanilla gift cards/whatever from CVS/7-eleven/whatever and then load directly into your BlueBird/Server Card from the money kiosk at Family Dollar/Wal-Mart/CVS itself/whatever. Note that at the time of this writing, the Wal-Mart/CVS does not work as their softwares no longer support loading money. It is their company policy rather than regulatory or any such thing. Hence the reason I have put whatever, since one door closes inevitably leads to another one opening. You could use any of these cards and then check your point balances and decide for yourself. This is probably my bread and butter way to earn credit card reward points. This also seems to be the most popular one for the other bloggers out there. Again, dont over use or abuse it and just use other strategies mentioned in this blog and you should be mostly fine.
Also note that Amex really does not consider 7 - eleven to be a gas station or a standalone gas station so likely, you would not be getting any points off that.
Workflow Diagram/Simple picture to load money from Amex Credit Cards to BlueBird:
One of the hallowed programs are the American Express one and the ones depicted on the picture below is the American Express branded Blue Cash family one (so Blue cash Preferred, blue cash - old and new one). You could also substitute this with the new EveryDay card and EveryDay card Preferred. In each of these cards, you basically buy the gift cards/vanilla reloads/one vanilla gift cards/whatever from CVS/7-eleven/whatever and then load directly into your BlueBird/Server Card from the money kiosk at Family Dollar/Wal-Mart/CVS itself/whatever. Note that at the time of this writing, the Wal-Mart/CVS does not work as their softwares no longer support loading money. It is their company policy rather than regulatory or any such thing. Hence the reason I have put whatever, since one door closes inevitably leads to another one opening. You could use any of these cards and then check your point balances and decide for yourself. This is probably my bread and butter way to earn credit card reward points. This also seems to be the most popular one for the other bloggers out there. Again, dont over use or abuse it and just use other strategies mentioned in this blog and you should be mostly fine.
Also note that Amex really does not consider 7 - eleven to be a gas station or a standalone gas station so likely, you would not be getting any points off that.
Workflow Diagram/Simple picture to load money from Amex Credit Cards to BlueBird:
Why Templates?
Once you are post the big sign up rewards phase and you just apply to them on the side, you are on the hunt for something more sustaining and gains you point in perpetuity ( or at least till the credit company kicks you in the rear :D). There are many combinations of stores, rewards and cards among many other variables that come into play. In this series, I would start covering a few of them. I would put them all under the "Template" tab as well as put it in the "Badge It" link. I think these are the unique points and features of this blog. I have seen no other blogs or forums which provides tools at this level. The idea to provide this tool is to give you the workflow which can be followed to maximize your rewards and spend in a sustainable way. Note that I am not going to post something crazy like double hoops (buying gift card A and then buying gift card B OR buying items and then returning them or selling them on eBay OR relying too much on cash back portals) because each of this step involves more extra steps and extra process on your brain. Your mental resource should be free and have fun doing this activity. It should be similar to doing your daily spend and getting paid to go to Disney doing that. Of course, with limited bonus points sign up, the category bonuses are the best way and in many ways even better than the big sign up bonuses.
So why do you need such templates and apps to make life easier? Do they make life easier at all? Or is it just go to grocery and pick up cards there and at CVS and 7-elevens along the way? Often times, I found myself asking what cards to use. Which stores to go? what are the limits? What is the best way to liquidate the cards? When to get the money orders? When to get the paypal cards as there is a limit of 4 grands per month on them? Which store to get your money order from? (Do you know Food lion gives money order for 49 cents - the lowest I have found among any grocery stores including Wally)
Now imagine, your Siri or Android or Cortona or your car or whatever suddenly becomes so smart that it has developed the artificial intelligence to track your habits. It automatically tells you that for this month you have yet to buy some more gift cards or money orders and then alerts you to the nearby drug stores or gas stores and also tells you in specific which card to take in and swipe? It updates all this info real-time. Chances are all these are being done by you. And rightfully so. There is no Robot yet to go to a gas store and show your id and get the card. Besides that wont work either. So these are the steps that has to be done by you. But what about other steps. Could it be automated by a software. Being a software programmer, my first instinct is to program anything that I find that I am doing or at least the ones where they repeat. But few experiments and side projects showed that it would be essentially just a bunch of business rules that need to be coded. Now, instead of over thinking this problem, we could look at it from a process view. In the enterprise world, not everything is computerized or automated. Many processes where the payoff is better with manual actions, easy instructions are laid off so that a human can follow these instructions. As a matter of fact, these steps are often so simple that any untrained human should be able to do that. The genesis of products such as iPhone or iPad were that any child would be able to use it without documents. And in such processes, the automation is done at a process level. So in essence, you would see that there are workflow diagrams or actionable steps which if you do then you reach a point or state. Repeatedly doing this over a period of time nets you a tangible benefit - in this case, good amount of points and cash.
Removing the stress and thinking factor from one of your most critical faculty - mental processes leads to looking at this activity in a fun way and doing more of it thus getting more points along the way. Your mental strengths and resources are limited. Attention span is drastically dropping. How we wish that there was a Staples Easy button for this task! ( or every other one in life ). The end goal of this site is to reach a state where we list or create those tasks, tools, apps and processes so that you just print them out and execute it like a robot. Thus freeing up your mental resources for the stuff where you could actually use it.
And that is why I am creating these simple templates. Print them and stick them to your rooms and cars (in the trunk of course!) or wherever you can view them. Put them in your index cards. Whatever it takes to just have them just when you need them and not before/after that. Customize them. Share them. Badge them or do whatever you want with them.
So why do you need such templates and apps to make life easier? Do they make life easier at all? Or is it just go to grocery and pick up cards there and at CVS and 7-elevens along the way? Often times, I found myself asking what cards to use. Which stores to go? what are the limits? What is the best way to liquidate the cards? When to get the money orders? When to get the paypal cards as there is a limit of 4 grands per month on them? Which store to get your money order from? (Do you know Food lion gives money order for 49 cents - the lowest I have found among any grocery stores including Wally)
Now imagine, your Siri or Android or Cortona or your car or whatever suddenly becomes so smart that it has developed the artificial intelligence to track your habits. It automatically tells you that for this month you have yet to buy some more gift cards or money orders and then alerts you to the nearby drug stores or gas stores and also tells you in specific which card to take in and swipe? It updates all this info real-time. Chances are all these are being done by you. And rightfully so. There is no Robot yet to go to a gas store and show your id and get the card. Besides that wont work either. So these are the steps that has to be done by you. But what about other steps. Could it be automated by a software. Being a software programmer, my first instinct is to program anything that I find that I am doing or at least the ones where they repeat. But few experiments and side projects showed that it would be essentially just a bunch of business rules that need to be coded. Now, instead of over thinking this problem, we could look at it from a process view. In the enterprise world, not everything is computerized or automated. Many processes where the payoff is better with manual actions, easy instructions are laid off so that a human can follow these instructions. As a matter of fact, these steps are often so simple that any untrained human should be able to do that. The genesis of products such as iPhone or iPad were that any child would be able to use it without documents. And in such processes, the automation is done at a process level. So in essence, you would see that there are workflow diagrams or actionable steps which if you do then you reach a point or state. Repeatedly doing this over a period of time nets you a tangible benefit - in this case, good amount of points and cash.
Removing the stress and thinking factor from one of your most critical faculty - mental processes leads to looking at this activity in a fun way and doing more of it thus getting more points along the way. Your mental strengths and resources are limited. Attention span is drastically dropping. How we wish that there was a Staples Easy button for this task! ( or every other one in life ). The end goal of this site is to reach a state where we list or create those tasks, tools, apps and processes so that you just print them out and execute it like a robot. Thus freeing up your mental resources for the stuff where you could actually use it.
And that is why I am creating these simple templates. Print them and stick them to your rooms and cars (in the trunk of course!) or wherever you can view them. Put them in your index cards. Whatever it takes to just have them just when you need them and not before/after that. Customize them. Share them. Badge them or do whatever you want with them.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Best cards for gift cards
If you are like me, often time apart from cash back, the second best option is the gift card. Many reward programs such as the Ultimate Rewards from Chase or American Express Membership rewards which often best and diverse array of gift cards that are redeemable for hotel gift cards, car rental gift cards, airlines gift cards, amazon or any other retailer gift cards as well as restaurants. However, barring the cash back gift cards, not all programs have good gift cards in them. I have burned my hand in several local credit unions rewards program when they did not have good redemption options. As a thumb rule, the best cards for gift cards are usually tied to a reward program rather than a credit card.
As in most cases at the moment, Chase leads the pack of credit cards which have a good amount of gift cards in their arsenal through their Ultimate Rewards program. Second runner-up is the Discover Program which also has quite a good number of options. Topping off the third rank would be the American Express which lags only because some of their redemption options are not up to par when it comes to certain merchandisers such as Wal-Mart or Target,
So the list would look something like:
1. Chase Freedom: The added benefit should you have a checking account with them is the 10% bonus that accrues at the end of year. The other major benefit is you could transfer points between various members for free and in a rather painless fashion. Another mention here is Chase Sapphire Preferred.
2. Discover IT: The best feature that I think is unique to this card, at least when it started was its integration with amazon checkout process. Deducting the points directly from your amazon checkout bill is amazing and seamless. No bugs there! It just makes you want to go shopping at Amazon again and again.
3. American Express EveryDay cards: Mainly for the Membership rewards program, these cards have two flavors, one paid and another paid but nevertheless both accrue points into the Membership Rewards program. If you don't mind shelling annual fees then, Amex Gold and Platinum cards are the way to go. They have huge bonus points and category rewards on daily spend. But not as much as other cards that we will cover in future.
As in most cases at the moment, Chase leads the pack of credit cards which have a good amount of gift cards in their arsenal through their Ultimate Rewards program. Second runner-up is the Discover Program which also has quite a good number of options. Topping off the third rank would be the American Express which lags only because some of their redemption options are not up to par when it comes to certain merchandisers such as Wal-Mart or Target,
So the list would look something like:
1. Chase Freedom: The added benefit should you have a checking account with them is the 10% bonus that accrues at the end of year. The other major benefit is you could transfer points between various members for free and in a rather painless fashion. Another mention here is Chase Sapphire Preferred.
2. Discover IT: The best feature that I think is unique to this card, at least when it started was its integration with amazon checkout process. Deducting the points directly from your amazon checkout bill is amazing and seamless. No bugs there! It just makes you want to go shopping at Amazon again and again.
3. American Express EveryDay cards: Mainly for the Membership rewards program, these cards have two flavors, one paid and another paid but nevertheless both accrue points into the Membership Rewards program. If you don't mind shelling annual fees then, Amex Gold and Platinum cards are the way to go. They have huge bonus points and category rewards on daily spend. But not as much as other cards that we will cover in future.
Monday, August 18, 2014
Carpe Diem posting model
Now many bloggers out there use different schedules to print their posts. Some use nightly builds or post schedule so that the twitterverse and blogosphere etc are neatly aligned for the posts next day morning. Some use paid bloggers - big ones from big companies who can afford it. Some use regular bloggers who just draft the articles regularly and then time it to publish it in future. All of this methods have common themes - they lack spontaneity and creativity. In the world of just in time, real-time information, it is tough to keep up with twitter type service if you were to blog so far in advance. Having a reactionary model based on social media gives less analysis time to actually check up on the offer and compare and contrast with the other offers and check whether it pays to participate in said offer.
Here is where we differ. We use carpe diem model. We blog spontaneously based on the most recent available information. We don't blog in advance. Rather than that, we collect all knowledge information at one go and blog that particular period till we have completely analyzed and broken down the options for you. That way, when the real world offers hit, we are pretty much ready to make on the spot decision on how this offer stacks up, whether to wait or move on and when to exit.
This approach helped us tremendously during the Spring of 2014 when back to back big credit card offers hit in the form of Citi AA Executive card and then the Chase Ink card. The Citi one started with 60k offer then scaled it up to 70k and then 80k and then finally 100k offer which is where we pounced and took the offer. The well oiled templates in this blog means we achieved the 10k spending within a period of 15 days. This led us to cancel the Citi card soon after that and get the $450 annual fee reimbursed. Bottomline, we came out ahead with 100k bonus points, $200 credit, $450 annual fee reimbursed, couple of entries into lounge - all with a short and quick 10k spend. Same thing with Chase Ink, though we did not cancel this account. It makes sense to hold on to this account for a long time. The 60k bonus points offer was a good one and it typically comes around June or July of a year. This blog gives you that kind of insight so that you know not to knee jerk react to any offer. Rather wait and chew on in, take our advice and then act when the time is about right. Only if we could do something similar on the stocks world!
Meanwhile, this approach is why the carpe diem model of blogging fits us. There will be times where this blog will have tons of published materials while other days there will be some lull. Which is pretty typical if you think about it. Not all credit card companies and banks line up with offers all day. They have cooling off period. Just like the Summer of 2014. They will wait for some time and then again back towards the end of the year, they will rake the bonus points and offers up. So we will fill in as per the need and not as per the affiliate demands or web hosting economics. Rather, honey badger blogs when it has to blog.
However, we do promise that we would blog fairly frequently and in between rather than long periods of silence.
Here is where we differ. We use carpe diem model. We blog spontaneously based on the most recent available information. We don't blog in advance. Rather than that, we collect all knowledge information at one go and blog that particular period till we have completely analyzed and broken down the options for you. That way, when the real world offers hit, we are pretty much ready to make on the spot decision on how this offer stacks up, whether to wait or move on and when to exit.
This approach helped us tremendously during the Spring of 2014 when back to back big credit card offers hit in the form of Citi AA Executive card and then the Chase Ink card. The Citi one started with 60k offer then scaled it up to 70k and then 80k and then finally 100k offer which is where we pounced and took the offer. The well oiled templates in this blog means we achieved the 10k spending within a period of 15 days. This led us to cancel the Citi card soon after that and get the $450 annual fee reimbursed. Bottomline, we came out ahead with 100k bonus points, $200 credit, $450 annual fee reimbursed, couple of entries into lounge - all with a short and quick 10k spend. Same thing with Chase Ink, though we did not cancel this account. It makes sense to hold on to this account for a long time. The 60k bonus points offer was a good one and it typically comes around June or July of a year. This blog gives you that kind of insight so that you know not to knee jerk react to any offer. Rather wait and chew on in, take our advice and then act when the time is about right. Only if we could do something similar on the stocks world!
Meanwhile, this approach is why the carpe diem model of blogging fits us. There will be times where this blog will have tons of published materials while other days there will be some lull. Which is pretty typical if you think about it. Not all credit card companies and banks line up with offers all day. They have cooling off period. Just like the Summer of 2014. They will wait for some time and then again back towards the end of the year, they will rake the bonus points and offers up. So we will fill in as per the need and not as per the affiliate demands or web hosting economics. Rather, honey badger blogs when it has to blog.
However, we do promise that we would blog fairly frequently and in between rather than long periods of silence.
Monday, August 11, 2014
Best Rewards Programs
This blog is US specific. Without too much blurb, the best rewards programs in the credit card/debit card et. al segment is the Chase Ulimate Rewards. It is easy to accumulate, has good credit cards in it and redemption options are great.
The top two
Ultimate Rewards program has lot of redemption options including cash, gift cards and most importantly transfers to other partner airlines and reward programs. This is an extremely valueable tool to keep your reward points from expiring. The program itself is simple and easy to enroll and available with credit cards such as Chase Freedom, Chase Sapphire and Chase Preferred. It is also available with the Chase Ink and Chase Bold business cards. Since this blog is not affilated with anyone at the moment, I am not going to link all the cards. They can all be found in the Chase website.
Close runner up is the American Express Membership Rewards Program. Like the Ultimate Rewards, this also has transfers, cash back option (not too useful!) and the gift cards (some good and some not so much). Gathering this points is a bit of pain though.
Other Notable programs
Citi Thankyou points are very useful, especially when redeeming to Mortage or Student Loans besides giving a lot of gift card options.
The Discover Rewards Program is very similar to the Citi Thank you Rewards program in terms of redemption options. It has an added benefit of being directly redeemable at Amazon. This is a standard template for other rewards programs run by Barclays, US Bank and others.
The Bank of America cash back programs or the cash back programs run by regional banks or credit unions are also notable for their simple cash back rewards structure.
The top two
Ultimate Rewards program has lot of redemption options including cash, gift cards and most importantly transfers to other partner airlines and reward programs. This is an extremely valueable tool to keep your reward points from expiring. The program itself is simple and easy to enroll and available with credit cards such as Chase Freedom, Chase Sapphire and Chase Preferred. It is also available with the Chase Ink and Chase Bold business cards. Since this blog is not affilated with anyone at the moment, I am not going to link all the cards. They can all be found in the Chase website.
Close runner up is the American Express Membership Rewards Program. Like the Ultimate Rewards, this also has transfers, cash back option (not too useful!) and the gift cards (some good and some not so much). Gathering this points is a bit of pain though.
Other Notable programs
Citi Thankyou points are very useful, especially when redeeming to Mortage or Student Loans besides giving a lot of gift card options.
The Discover Rewards Program is very similar to the Citi Thank you Rewards program in terms of redemption options. It has an added benefit of being directly redeemable at Amazon. This is a standard template for other rewards programs run by Barclays, US Bank and others.
The Bank of America cash back programs or the cash back programs run by regional banks or credit unions are also notable for their simple cash back rewards structure.
Most Recent Updates from Credit Card world.
All blogs have various links and posts which often gets outdated fairly quickly. It is a pain to maintain them so I am going to maintain this link as the most go to place in the internet - the one with THE facts about the most recent and up to date news related to the best credit card and reward program out there. I will maintain it on a day to day basis. So any time tweet or any online talk forum talks about it, I would come here and update it as long as it is the best deal out there. As is the nature of this blog, I am not linking to any affiliates nor any parent companies. If at all required, I will directly link to the bank which issues the credit card. This helps the site stay hygenic.
Without much adue, the best credit card program out there today for bonus is:
Personal Sign up Bonus:
Chase Saphire Preferred (fees waived for first year)
Barclays Arrival+ Card(fees waived for first year)
American Express Gold/Platinum (if you dont mind the fees)
Personal Ongoing Basis:
American Express Cash (Old one gives 5% cash back after $6500): Nice rewards, category bonuses and a simple, basic card
American Express Blue Cash Preferred (6% upto $6500): Has annual fees but nice rewards!
Chase Freedom : Nice rewards, category bonuses and a simple, basic card
Discover It : Nice category bonuses
Bank of America Cash Rewards - Neat and clean reward structure
Business Sign up Bonus and ongoing basis:
Chase Ink+ Card
Chase Bold Card
Face it, at one point the bonuses are going to dry up or you are going to be banned from applying. So the best way to evolve and graduate to next level would be to get the cards with good rewards on ongoing basis. So say you load up lots of gas, then go for the 5% gas rewards card. As you can see, there is no one best card. Different cards do different things well. As a consumer, you cannot jugle between cards frequently. Hence, it makes sense to keep a few of them for specific purposes. For instance, if you shop at Brooks Brothers, no card from any issuer is going to beat their store brand card. No card will beat the Exxon Rewards in Exxon Mobil Stations. So, individual spend matters a lot and this blog will just list down all the cards. It is your job to find the best offers and best cards that suit you! Having said that, we will make it obvious and the above cards are something that would perform well on an average basis. These are kind of the o(log n) algorithm average case performance. For the best constant time performance, analyze your spend using tools such as Mint.com or YNAB and then target anything over $200 for niche rewards.
Without much adue, the best credit card program out there today for bonus is:
Personal Sign up Bonus:
Chase Saphire Preferred (fees waived for first year)
Barclays Arrival+ Card(fees waived for first year)
American Express Gold/Platinum (if you dont mind the fees)
Personal Ongoing Basis:
American Express Cash (Old one gives 5% cash back after $6500): Nice rewards, category bonuses and a simple, basic card
American Express Blue Cash Preferred (6% upto $6500): Has annual fees but nice rewards!
Chase Freedom : Nice rewards, category bonuses and a simple, basic card
Discover It : Nice category bonuses
Bank of America Cash Rewards - Neat and clean reward structure
Business Sign up Bonus and ongoing basis:
Chase Ink+ Card
Chase Bold Card
Face it, at one point the bonuses are going to dry up or you are going to be banned from applying. So the best way to evolve and graduate to next level would be to get the cards with good rewards on ongoing basis. So say you load up lots of gas, then go for the 5% gas rewards card. As you can see, there is no one best card. Different cards do different things well. As a consumer, you cannot jugle between cards frequently. Hence, it makes sense to keep a few of them for specific purposes. For instance, if you shop at Brooks Brothers, no card from any issuer is going to beat their store brand card. No card will beat the Exxon Rewards in Exxon Mobil Stations. So, individual spend matters a lot and this blog will just list down all the cards. It is your job to find the best offers and best cards that suit you! Having said that, we will make it obvious and the above cards are something that would perform well on an average basis. These are kind of the o(log n) algorithm average case performance. For the best constant time performance, analyze your spend using tools such as Mint.com or YNAB and then target anything over $200 for niche rewards.
How to keep points alive?
In the previous post, we saw how to have a simple, home-grown rewards tracker where you just enter the program name and the expiration date. In this post, we will explore this more to make this productive, simple and actionable to you. One thing I have found to be very useful is having an online doc. That way you can access the document regardless of the device or the OS that you are on. I am usually on a ton of those and lots of OS in every single laptop and not to mention office and remote access. The doc itself, as we saw last time, need not contain any confidential data and just have the expiration dates across each program. Now as you enter this document, feel free to include any targeted programs that you think you might need in say 5 years from now. Alaska Airlines program is one such for me. It had 0 points for close to about a year and then got few hundred points from various promotions. I just plan to keep it open for few years and then scale it up as I plan a trip to Alaska. But I don't see that happening for years since I have a very specific Aurora related reason to visit Alaska. Not to digress but the time (specific month in a year) and duration ( new moon day) are highly limited. Hence, I plan for such trips and wait patiently accumulating points for such trips. Such programs can make entry into your excel so does the airlines that you might take weekly or regularly for business purposes or for visiting family.
Now, as soon as you enter these values in an excel document online, Immediately note it down in a calendar tool that you regularly use like Outlook or Google Calendar. Set a weekend entry for a month before that. This particular month, transfer some Membership Rewards or Ultimate Rewards points to the said account. Usually those are in increment of 1000 points. If that sounds too much or you are in no position to spare that much points, check the rewards dining program of the said program. Chances are it is enrolled in Rewards dining program - a concept in which you go to locally listed restaurant from their website and spend say 25 bucks. Since one dines out here and there, it is just a matter of choosing the right restaurant and then putting that money on a credit card. Make sure that you enroll this credit card in that Rewards program so that when you spend $25 dining out, similar amount of miles is posted in your enrolled rewards program. And you should see that the expiration date has been reset in your program by another year. It is a simple, quickest and most frugal way to keep your points alive. It is very efficient for long haul mile gatherers. I am targeting one United mileage account to have a million miles so that some day in future I can take a really expensive international air trip for free. Posting miles intermittently also has the added advantage that your account will live longer and have a larger shelf life. It is always nice when the customer service rep. says: "Thanks for being a member since 2002". They pay more attention to you and also might wink on that seat upgrade or give access to a lounge for free. Seriously, this has happened to me. Multiple times, JetBlue bumped to an earlier flight. American airlines gave me lounge access while Southwest gave free vouchers.
So keep them all alive if possible or as many do, just target a few and keep them alive. Personally, there are so many options out there and limited opportunities if you target a few that I think it makes sense to target all of the airlines. For instance, I am no fan of Delta or US Airways but their partners are pretty good and might fly on your route. But I do accumulate them if they are just a few clicks away. Better than me spending that time on Reddit or Wikipedia. Or you could always donate the miles to charities. So you always have the options down the line as to what to do with all those hard-earned miles :D.
Bottom line: The best two-way to keep your points alive: transfer from Ultimate Rewards or similar programs OR enroll your credit card/rewards program into a Rewards Dining Network program.
Some Dining Network link:
http://www.rewardsnetwork.com/ : American, Delta, United among others
http://www.rapidrewardsdining.com/: Southwest
If you have any suggestion to keeping your points alive, please put them in the comment section. Happy Dining for keeping points alive!
Now, as soon as you enter these values in an excel document online, Immediately note it down in a calendar tool that you regularly use like Outlook or Google Calendar. Set a weekend entry for a month before that. This particular month, transfer some Membership Rewards or Ultimate Rewards points to the said account. Usually those are in increment of 1000 points. If that sounds too much or you are in no position to spare that much points, check the rewards dining program of the said program. Chances are it is enrolled in Rewards dining program - a concept in which you go to locally listed restaurant from their website and spend say 25 bucks. Since one dines out here and there, it is just a matter of choosing the right restaurant and then putting that money on a credit card. Make sure that you enroll this credit card in that Rewards program so that when you spend $25 dining out, similar amount of miles is posted in your enrolled rewards program. And you should see that the expiration date has been reset in your program by another year. It is a simple, quickest and most frugal way to keep your points alive. It is very efficient for long haul mile gatherers. I am targeting one United mileage account to have a million miles so that some day in future I can take a really expensive international air trip for free. Posting miles intermittently also has the added advantage that your account will live longer and have a larger shelf life. It is always nice when the customer service rep. says: "Thanks for being a member since 2002". They pay more attention to you and also might wink on that seat upgrade or give access to a lounge for free. Seriously, this has happened to me. Multiple times, JetBlue bumped to an earlier flight. American airlines gave me lounge access while Southwest gave free vouchers.
So keep them all alive if possible or as many do, just target a few and keep them alive. Personally, there are so many options out there and limited opportunities if you target a few that I think it makes sense to target all of the airlines. For instance, I am no fan of Delta or US Airways but their partners are pretty good and might fly on your route. But I do accumulate them if they are just a few clicks away. Better than me spending that time on Reddit or Wikipedia. Or you could always donate the miles to charities. So you always have the options down the line as to what to do with all those hard-earned miles :D.
Bottom line: The best two-way to keep your points alive: transfer from Ultimate Rewards or similar programs OR enroll your credit card/rewards program into a Rewards Dining Network program.
Some Dining Network link:
http://www.rewardsnetwork.com/ : American, Delta, United among others
http://www.rapidrewardsdining.com/: Southwest
If you have any suggestion to keeping your points alive, please put them in the comment section. Happy Dining for keeping points alive!
Friday, August 8, 2014
August app run
In the latest app run in August, I checked out few hotel cards. The ones that stood were the Marriot Chase Rewards, Citi Hilton Signature (especially since there is no annual fee) and the Amex Starwood cards.
On the cash back or travel cards, the one card that has rivalled the Chase Sapphire preferred is the Barclays Arrival Card. They have two flavours - one with 20k sign on bonus and another with 40k bonus. The 40k bonus is valued at roughly $500 worth of travel redemptions on certain airlines. The points earned are valued at 2.2% as the arrival plus card has a return of 2% and can be redeemed for extra 0.2% for travel. This is a good card to have in the wallet, though a little hard to get approved. So the best advice here would be to apply for the Barclays card as soon as you begin applying for various other credit cards. Not having much credit history tends to give you an upper leg in getting the card approved.
Barclays arrival plus card can be found here.
The Citi Hilton Visa Signature, 60k bonus point offer is the best one available. Link can be found here.
On the cash back or travel cards, the one card that has rivalled the Chase Sapphire preferred is the Barclays Arrival Card. They have two flavours - one with 20k sign on bonus and another with 40k bonus. The 40k bonus is valued at roughly $500 worth of travel redemptions on certain airlines. The points earned are valued at 2.2% as the arrival plus card has a return of 2% and can be redeemed for extra 0.2% for travel. This is a good card to have in the wallet, though a little hard to get approved. So the best advice here would be to apply for the Barclays card as soon as you begin applying for various other credit cards. Not having much credit history tends to give you an upper leg in getting the card approved.
Barclays arrival plus card can be found here.
The Citi Hilton Visa Signature, 60k bonus point offer is the best one available. Link can be found here.
Thursday, August 7, 2014
Legal, Privacy, Disclaimer bbblah ...
So, in a nutshell, in layman version:
1. This blog is not liable for anything
2. This blog is not liable to anyone
3. We are not affiliated with anyone. In true startup altruistic mentality, we are just going to link the best credit cards and offers and DIRECTLY link them to banks and not via any third party links.
4. We have to eat too. So likely we will have a different link for affiliates and inform our readers of the same if and when we link them.
5. We wont do any sneaky sub-text links or some such to get few bucks of referrals.
6. Transparency would be key for us and we are open for improvements and change. If you feel strongly about any content and want us to change, please reach us out here.
1. This blog is not liable for anything
2. This blog is not liable to anyone
3. We are not affiliated with anyone. In true startup altruistic mentality, we are just going to link the best credit cards and offers and DIRECTLY link them to banks and not via any third party links.
4. We have to eat too. So likely we will have a different link for affiliates and inform our readers of the same if and when we link them.
5. We wont do any sneaky sub-text links or some such to get few bucks of referrals.
6. Transparency would be key for us and we are open for improvements and change. If you feel strongly about any content and want us to change, please reach us out here.
Affiliate Disclosure
As of July 2014, we are not affiliate with any companies. We have no relationships with any banks, finance companies so we are not hawking credit cards or bank accounts. Though these are responsible accounts to open for any one, right now, we are not focussing on geting you on the bandwagon on some company so that we could earn some commissions. Though there is nothing wrong in that, there is a conflict of interest and depends on the blogger to tread it carefully on the site. Part of the reason of this site was to sidestep all such bloggers out there who provide travel and other info and link you to various sites – usually ones paying the highest payout at the moment. Our philosophy is to grow and gain good traction amongst loyal readers. Beyond that, we will just continue what we enjoy doing most – which is to provide the most creative tools out there for maximizing spend. We are not going into “manufactured spend” or outrageous strategies which would involve buying/selling and move you from your real life. Rather the intention of this blog is to minimize such steps and hopefully we all reach a point where we are spending less than 10 minutes in this and another say 10 minutes looking into finance and so on. We do this during the work week, during work hours and leave the rest of the time for other pleasurable things such as fun and family. Hence, dont expect “breaking news” from us during weekend! As part of getting you the latest info, I would also be scouring the twitter and online forums to get you the best link. As a rule, most links that would be in my sites, would directly link you to the bank. This keeps things neat. Affiliates are tough to get by, they have conflict of interest and I dont want this blog to convert into amateur content site with dumb comments under the guise of hilarity. Nor do I want contextual ads. Nor creatives or links to banks and credit cards when it is much easier to do a quick internet search and get the best links yourself.
Many times even when you get the links, the banks do not honor the points mentioned in a flyer as it is not targeted at you. Taking screenshots etc are not a worthwhile endeavour. There is no point is hustling and haggling with a poor customer service rep from a big bank.
Better yet, follow these strategies:
1. Select the card or bank account which makes most sense to you.
2. Visit their website directly from our website
3. Call the representative and courteously ask for any promo or bonus offer. Most often, they would honor or point you in the right direction.
4. Before calling, do a simple internet search using different search engines, social media searches and gather the highest bonus information for your product – credit card or any card or bank account. Just keep them on the side after listing them.
5. Compare notes with what customer service rep says with this list. Usually they will give you a good offer if you have good credit and have not pissed them off in the past. If not, take some time to build a good relationship history with them. In the long run, it will pay huge dividends.
6. Settle down on one good offer and dont worry about the lost offer or that you are getting few thousand points less. The higher payouts are anyway highly targeted and built on a model that only so much applications would get approved. Remember, they are on a budget too.
7. Dont worry too much about this hustle as there is a next one right around the corner.
8. … does this ever end ???
Remember, it is not the end of the world. Hustling requires time and patience. It happens only over time. There is no perfect algorithm for this, Even seasoned hustlers and point collectors or milers make mistake. It is just a side bit. So dont beat yourself up. There is always tweaking and continous improvement needed. There is change to deal with in an era of rapid information changes and flows. Change is the only constant in this game of rapid and contigous evolution.
Many times even when you get the links, the banks do not honor the points mentioned in a flyer as it is not targeted at you. Taking screenshots etc are not a worthwhile endeavour. There is no point is hustling and haggling with a poor customer service rep from a big bank.
Better yet, follow these strategies:
1. Select the card or bank account which makes most sense to you.
2. Visit their website directly from our website
3. Call the representative and courteously ask for any promo or bonus offer. Most often, they would honor or point you in the right direction.
4. Before calling, do a simple internet search using different search engines, social media searches and gather the highest bonus information for your product – credit card or any card or bank account. Just keep them on the side after listing them.
5. Compare notes with what customer service rep says with this list. Usually they will give you a good offer if you have good credit and have not pissed them off in the past. If not, take some time to build a good relationship history with them. In the long run, it will pay huge dividends.
6. Settle down on one good offer and dont worry about the lost offer or that you are getting few thousand points less. The higher payouts are anyway highly targeted and built on a model that only so much applications would get approved. Remember, they are on a budget too.
7. Dont worry too much about this hustle as there is a next one right around the corner.
8. … does this ever end ???
Remember, it is not the end of the world. Hustling requires time and patience. It happens only over time. There is no perfect algorithm for this, Even seasoned hustlers and point collectors or milers make mistake. It is just a side bit. So dont beat yourself up. There is always tweaking and continous improvement needed. There is change to deal with in an era of rapid information changes and flows. Change is the only constant in this game of rapid and contigous evolution.
My Philosophy
My philosophy behind this blog is simple: provide tools, apps, strategies so that there is less chaos and confusion and more actionable items which the readers can simply follow to maximize their gains.
When there are lot of credit cards and rewards, there is a lot of if / else that can be done which change over time and it is hard to keep up to date on most of these. For most people, reading up flyer talk forums or many of the forums is not possible. For me personally, I would not wish to devote more than 10 minutes a day on this. Even that would be hard pressed at times. Though there are micro blogging tools and readers to aggregate data, it is often hard to keep up. It is similar to technology world. On top of that, there are simply too many information streams to keep track of. This site would not be able to keep track of all that but it is a niche, highly focussed site on credit cards only. It is not going to hide behind travel or any such flavor blogs. This is a credit card blog. Maximize spend using the strategies we outline here is the key mantra. As this evolve, we might follow similar philosophy to other blogs which we will link out here.
There are tons of blogs out there on variety of topics. There is no point in rehashing or repeating them over. No point in just presenting old wine in new bottle – new format or new presentation styles or some such. So no “mobile” version or different media versions would be there for any of these new blogs. They will have something new or at the minimum strive to reduce the noise out there in information highway.
When there are lot of credit cards and rewards, there is a lot of if / else that can be done which change over time and it is hard to keep up to date on most of these. For most people, reading up flyer talk forums or many of the forums is not possible. For me personally, I would not wish to devote more than 10 minutes a day on this. Even that would be hard pressed at times. Though there are micro blogging tools and readers to aggregate data, it is often hard to keep up. It is similar to technology world. On top of that, there are simply too many information streams to keep track of. This site would not be able to keep track of all that but it is a niche, highly focussed site on credit cards only. It is not going to hide behind travel or any such flavor blogs. This is a credit card blog. Maximize spend using the strategies we outline here is the key mantra. As this evolve, we might follow similar philosophy to other blogs which we will link out here.
There are tons of blogs out there on variety of topics. There is no point in rehashing or repeating them over. No point in just presenting old wine in new bottle – new format or new presentation styles or some such. So no “mobile” version or different media versions would be there for any of these new blogs. They will have something new or at the minimum strive to reduce the noise out there in information highway.
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