travel-tips | Fat Wallet Refugee

I am getting ready to fly out tomorrow morning for a trip to visit my father in Port Townsend, Washington. I will be flying out from RDU in the wee hours of the morning and touching down around second breakfast (10AM).

I’ll be flying on Delta Airlines. I booked the flight on my American Express Delta Blue. Unfortunately, I forgot to use my accrued miles for the booking. I tried asking a phone rep if they could apply a credit using my points, but they wouldn’t allow it. I’ll just have to keep saving my miles for now.

It’s about a 6 hour flight, so I will be needing to grab a bite to eat before I ship out. I am thinking I’ll swing by the Starbucks in the terminal for something to nosh on before boarding. The last time I flew, they gave us crackers and liquor. I probably can’t count on similar amenities.

I’ll just be packing my phone, watch, and their chargers for electronics. I had planned on bringing my DSLR, but my mother needs it for recording, so I’ll stick to the phone for my photography.

That should actually be easier for uploading, I won’t need to fumble around with memory cards. I can only imagine losing a MicroSD card in-between the seats mid-flight. It might be something like that one time I lost an SD card down the A/C vent in my Nissan LEAF.

I expect to be away for about a week, so I won’t be playing games much. Sadly I think the first Landmark contesting period for the second season of Rome will be while I am airborne.

I have paused all of my eBay shops and this afternoon I swung by the post to ship the out the last few parcels. I am looking forward to finishing out this 4th quarters sales on a high note and beating last years totals.

Thanks for reading!

The next in this series is At Airport Awaiting Boarding

Over the years, I have used my Delta Blue to fly to JFK in New York City a couple of times to visit family. I also had a wonderful flight to Guadaloupe for a Caribbean sailing trip.

Earlier this year, I gifted my accrued miles to my mother so she could fly to Lisbon, Portugal, to visit her guru, Mooji-baba.

I’ve had my Delta Blue since 2018.

Before that, I had a Delta Debit card from SunTrust. I didn’t stick around for the merger with Truist, so I retired my Debit and opted for the nicer Credit card.

Of all the credit cards I have signed up for, I think the Delta Blue is my favorite. A close second was the Capital One Walmart card that was recently discontinued. I had an 11k limit on the Wally card, much more than the 4k limit I have with my Delta card.

But I rarely charge more than 1k on my card in a month. I make it a point never to leave a balance on my cards month to month. I still rely on many of the tricks I learned on the old Fat Wallet Forums.

More recently, I have been using the Skymiles card as my default payment source on PayPal. When I pay for shipping labels on eBay, the charge to the card earns me some extra miles. I’ve stacked up 6,678 miles from the labels since I began Thrifting in July.

I am planning a trip to Seattle, WA, next year to see family members. I expect I will be booking that flight using miles alone if eBay sales continue at the current rate.

The point-earning categories are a bit limited with this card. I get 2x points when I buy anything from Delta, 2x points when I hit up Starbucks or go to Wendy’s, and 1 point on any other spending. So for every dollar I spend at Goodwill or the Treasure Hunt store, I get a mile.

There’s no annual fee since this is considered an entry-level Delta card. The downside with that is you don’t get any of the perks that come with the higher-end Gold or Platinum cards.

A consolation, perhaps, is that neither the Gold nor Platinum gets lounge access. That perk is only available for Reserve cardholders. But those poor souls are eating a $640 annual fee.

There is a signing bonus of 10k miles if you spend 1k in the first three months. That’s fairly standard with lowbie cards like this.