Thanks Jennifer Garner. I hope you've gotten over the fact that Ben Affleck was fucking your nanny. Too soon? Don't care.
My beef with the Capital One Venture card is that it markets itself as a travel reward card by saying you get double miles on every purchase. Sounds good right? Except first you have to understand what the fuck a mile is worth. In this case, 100 miles is worth a dollar. You might be thinking this isn't bad, but the fact is, you're not getting miles on any airline. Rather this is the mechanism for how you redeem your "miles":
What this means is that you're basically getting a refund by redeeming your "miles" after you've made the purchase. To me, this is basically getting 2% cash back, but only being able to use that cash back on travel purchases. You still might think this doesn't sound bad, except for the fact that this card comes with a $59 dollar annual fee (that's waived the first year). That's what makes this card a piece of shit.
There are 2% cash back cards on the market with no annual fee like this Citi Card. It gives 1% cash back on purchases, then 1% back when you pay it off. Effectively 2%. If you argue that you have to pay the balance off in full each month to get the 2%, then you shouldn't be using a fucking credit card because you're an irresponsible person who enjoys paying ungodly interest rates.
Now if you were duped by thinking the Captial One Venture card was a travel card and wanted to look into those, Chase Cards are the shit. Depending on what Card you have, a point on Chase can be redeemed for $1.25 to $1.50 in travel, making that ratio much better than the piece of shit Capital One card. I explain it a little in this post here. I'm not going to re-hash everything here, because my point is not to sell anyone on the Chase Cards, but rather talk about what a shitty product the Capital One Venture Card is.
Saw this graphic on Instagram and it really got me thinking. Is Big Ben underrated? With the exception of 2012 where that shit stain Joe Flacco managed to win a Super Bowl in a contract year, Brady, Manning and Roethlisberger have monopolized AFC super bowl appearances since 2003.
Before I go on, I'm a Steelers fan, but I'm looking at this objectively. The last decade plus the rivalry was Manning - Brady. Football is a team game with 11 guys on the field, so more often than not, QBs get more credit than they should when they win, and more blame than they should when they lose. One thing great quarterbacks do though, is elevate the play of their receivers. I would make the argument that Big Ben has done that on the level of Manning and Brady.
Sure Manning got to start his career with Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne, but he also made guys like Austin Collie, Pierre Garcon, Dallas Clark, and Jacob Tamme fantasy relevant.
Brady won Super Bowls in 2003 and 2004 with assclowns such as David Givens, Deon Branch, David Patten and Troy Brown. That feat to this day is still greater than anything else Brady has accomplished. Those receivers SUCK, yet are all 2x Super Bowl Champs. They're to receivers what Trent Dilfer is to being called a "Super Bowl winning QB"
It was really impressive to see Brady's stats go off the charts when he had Randy Moss and Wes Welker to throw to. But Brady is the constant. Aaron Hernandez went and decided to murder two people and ruin the Pats two-TE sets? No problem, the Pats kept winning without him.
Big Ben has played with some stars like Hines Ward and Plaxico Burress. But he also made guys like Antwaan Randle El, Santonio Holmes, and Mike Wallace look good. Randle El left for the Redskins and didn't do much, Santonio Holmes was banished to the Jets and never heard from again, and Wallace was the best deep threat in the league when Big Ben was his quarterback, but since then became a journeyman WR playing for Miami, Minnesota, and now fucking Baltimore.
So should Big Ben be mentioned in the same breath as Brady and Manning? I think so. Roethlisberger doesn't have the Super Bowl count Brady does, nor has he stuffed the regular season stat sheet like Manning, but he's been the center piece of a franchise that is a threat in the playoffs nearly every year, and like Brady, the cast around him changes, but he's the constant.
Maybe he doesn't get the same amount of credit because he doesn't have a huge fucking forehead and enjoy eating drunk college kid pizza:
Maybe it's because he's not a fucking dreamboat that wears UGGS:
Bottom line is this: fair or not, quarterbacks are judged by Super Bowls. If he gets his 3rd this year, he's on the Mount Rushmore of QBs for this era. He falls short, he's relegated to the good but not great category (after all, he'll only have one more Super Bowl ring than Joe fucking Flacco).
Facebook used to have a notes section (remember that?) so I decided to start doing inappropriate diary entries. Turns out I only got around to doing one because there was no way I could top this one. So in honor of #TBT, enjoy.
Jan 12, 2013
Dear Diary,
I ran 3.86 miles today. I know that's a strange number, but there's a reason for that. I had planned on running 5 miles, but around mile 2 I felt a medium-to-large sized turd tapping at my butt-hole. "Great," I thought, "all this running should knock the feces loose so I can have a really satisfying colon cleanse when I get home." I thought I could hold it indefinitely and continued to run. Bad idea. I continued to my 2.5 mile turnaround point but was forced to stop at mile 3.86 and proceeded to walk. If I kept running, all that bouncing would have opened my release valve and plastered shit all over me since I was wearing compression shorts. I'm being generous when I said I was walking. More accurately, I was waddling like someone who spent a long weekend in the big-house getting prison-raped with nothing but powdered soap for lube. At this point, I started to get pissed for running on this bike path because it provided zero cover in case I needed to take an emergency deuce. There were no woods, no tall bushes, none of that shit available in case I needed to unleash the fury. Just plenty of cars rolling by at 20 MPH along with other fellow runners and couples out walking their dogs and babies. Dammit - I started cursing my luck. I had always made fun of [name redacted] for having to take a shit in someone's front lawn when he was walking home hammered, but at least he had the cover of night. I was in broad daylight. Since I didn't want people to start wondering what size of a cock I took up my ass last night, I put my hands on my hips, put my head down and walked slowly so it just looked like I was really tired from a long run. Sand-bagging at its finest. Meanwhile, the pressure continued to build. I contemplated ducking into Shorebreak (Pizza and Taphouse) to use their facilities, but I didn't want to run the risk of extra steps in case they tried to pull that "customers only" bullshit on me and I'm not sure if I could ever patronize this fine establishment again if I horrified the cute 19-year-old waitresses with the scene of a grown man involuntarily defecating in his shorts.
So the long march home continued.
I came to the end of the bike path and only had to cut through two condo complexes to make it home, but at this point, I really felt like l was going to shit my pants. I desperately looked for some shrubbery. There was one that provided light cover and wasn't directly behind anyone's condo so no one would just happen to peer out their window and see some weird dude taking a squat. I fought my way to the center of the bush and was about to let loose when I turned around...SON OF A BITCH. There's a runner right there stretching before she starts her run. While there was a decent chance I could shit without her seeing me, there was no way I could do it without her hearing (or smelling) me. I take pride in the farts I have that proceed my shits. Foiled I continued home through the two parking lots repeating to myself over and over "don't shit." I remember how happy I was to have my condo in view, but also thought how tragic it would be if I lost control of my bowels in the parking lot when I was so close to my goal. My hands shook as I reached for my keys to unlock my door and I raced inside, stripped off the shorts, and successfully sat down on my toilet and dropped off a load that felt like it was roughly a third of my body weight. I shuddered a few times as a result of the after-shock shits and let out a sigh of relief. Moments like this are what makes life worth living.
Let me first say that this wasn't some sort of life hack where I got enough points to pull this off in a couple of months. It took more than a few years, and I play the long game when it comes to points and patiently accumulated them until I found a trip I wanted to take. The good news is, you could probably do a similar trip in 12-18 months.
THE PLANE TICKET
This part is pretty straight forward. In the Fall of 2015 I applied for the Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card and it had a sign up bonus of 50,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points after spending $4,000 in three months. Chase points are the shit because you can transfer them on a one-to-one basis to partners such as United and Marriott. There are others, but those are the two I primarily use, so that's all I really pay attention to. You can also book flight/hotel directly through Chase's redemption system. Now, you may be skeptical and say, "What's 50,000 points worth?" Chase's redemption system gives you 1.25 cents per point, so that bonus is worth $625 in travel, and since Chase is basically purchasing the flight/hotel on your behalf, so you don't have to deal with blackouts and all that other bullshit when it comes to redeeming travel.
This past fall, the new kid on the block was the Chase Sapphire Reserve that offered a 100,000 point bonus (which is fucking absurd, which is why it's dropping down to 50,000) along with higher 1.5 cents per point redemption. After I got that bonus, I had accumulated enough points to book a roundtrip flight from Denver to Sydney. Ended up being 132,637 for a ticket that cost just under $2000. Not bad.
THE HOTEL
I don't like redeeming random nights with my Marriott points (though I have), my main goal was to save up for a 7-night + United Miles package. In this case, I spent 290,000 Marriott points to get a 7-night stay at this pimp ass category 8 hotel in Sydney, along with 55,000 United miles to boot. Gotta turn back the clock all the way to 2009 when I was moving from Arizona to Virginia. I planned out a road trip and decided to sign up for Marriott rewards and only booked Marriott hotels on the way. A few months later, I decided to sign up for the Marriott rewards credit card that offered a sign up bonus as well as 5 points per dollar when used to book a Marriott hotel and 2 points for travel and dining per dollar. I used this from 2010 - 2015 for those purposes to rack up points. I also preferred to book a Marriott whenever possible. I know some people aren't brand loyal and like to book on Orbitz, Hotwire, etc. That's all fine and good, because those people aren't getting a 7-night stay at the fucking Sydney Harbour Marriott Hotel at Circular Quay.
Now I'm super psyched to see this down under:
HOW CAN I DO THIS?
The cool thing about all this is that if you haven't opened any new credit cards in the last two years, you can get started and get a shitload of points quickly. Chase has this asinine rule that if you've got 5 credit card accounts opened in the last 24 months, they'll deny you most of their cards. That said, here's my list of bonuses to get to amass points:
Chase Sapphire Reserve - 100K bonus if applying in a Chase branch, 50K online, $4000 spend/3 mo Chase Ink Preferred - 80K bonus, $5,000 spend/3mo - this is a business card, a lot of people don't know this, but if you sell tube socks to Navy guys on Ebay, you have a sole proprietorship, which means you can quality for a business card. Chase Sapphire Preferred - 50K bonus, $4000 spend/3 mo Chase Marriott Rewards - 80K bonus, $3000 spend/3 mo AMEX Starwood Preferred - 25K Starwood bonus, $3000/3 mo - this makes the list because due to the Marriott-Starwood merger, you can transfer your points between the rewards program and 1 Starwood point is equal to 3 Marriott points, making this bonus 75K Marriott points
Doing the math for you, you can get up to 230K chase points and 155K Marriott points in around 15 months. You can do some serious damage with that.
All of these cards have bonus categories like spend on travel, dining, etc. I could explain it here, but I really don't feel like typing all that shit out. You can read about it on your own, the information isn't hard to find. One other cool thing though, is that Chase has some no-annual fee cards that earn points in different areas better than the Reserve/Preferred and you can transfer points between those cards so you can use different cards but amass points into one pool. Sounds a little confusing, but you can read up on that elsewhere too.
Finally, I'm not advocating you go into debt to get these bonuses. The beauty of points is collecting rewards for money you were going to spend anyway. Don't go out there buying something stupid like Justin Bieber concert tickets just to hit your bonus spends.
TLDR - There are a lot of good bonuses out there that can get you free travel. People who think travel redemptions are too complicated and prefer cash back credit cards only like vanilla ice cream and missionary sex.
