Grand Central Terminal Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Join the Electric Railroaders’ Association on the afternoon of Saturday April 5, 2014 for their 32nd annual guided tour of Grand Central Terminal.
Grand Central Terminal is one of New York City’s most iconic landmarks, and it turns 101 years old this year.
This majestic terminal, officially dedicated on February 2, 1913 at the pinnacle of American long-distance rail travel, originally served as the crown jewel for New York Central Railroad. Today, it services Metro-North Railroad passengers and over 20 million visitors annually. After extensive renovations in recent years leading up to its recent 100th anniversary, Grand Central Terminal is better than ever.
The tour will cover architectural and structural features of the station, including a plethora of platforms, corridors, concourses, rooms and secret passages, as well as various types of locomotives and car equipment.
Participants will learn about upcoming plans for the terminal, such the major ongoing East Side Access Project connecting it to the Long Island Rail Road.
The tour is led by Dan Brucker, Metro-North’s official Grand Central historian. Check out some You Tube videos of Brucker. This guy is colorful and demonstrative!
Tickets for the Tour of Grand Central Terminal
Tickets are $25 per person, and entries must be mailed in by March 1, 2014.
Today I received a surprise check in the mail from Ebates, an online shopping portal.
I don’t remember what I bought online, but it reminded me to check out Ebates’ current payouts on travel purchases.
The best travel deal I found on the Ebates site was for 8 percent cash back on IHG Hotel Reservations.
IHG properties range from budget to luxury: Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, InterContinental, Staybridge Suites and Candlewood Suites all fall under the IHG umbrella.
Of these, Holiday Inn Express is my current favorite. We stayed at a HI Express near Asbury Park, NJ in September. While the location away from the beach was not inspiring, we had a very pleasant stay. We enjoyed the free WiFi, free breakfast, and the swimming pool. The room was clean, modern, and spacious. When traveling with kids and teens, a few extra square feet can make big difference in comfort!
The fine print from Ebates states that cash back is only available for commissionable IHG rates. Specially negotiated rates such as IHG friends & Family are not eligible for cash back. Further, it may take up to 40 days after travel is completed for cash back to show up in your Ebates account.
11 Percent Cash Back on IHG Hotels with Upromise Credit Card
If you are intrigued by this deal, there is an even better offer open to holders to the Upromise MasterCard. You may have heard of the Upromise college savings program.
Well it turns out that Upromise is not just for college students or their parents.
Anyone can open a Upromise account and receive cash back from certain purchases.
The best deal is via the Upromise MasterCard, which pays 5 percent cash back on all purchases through the Upromise online shopping portal. The portal includes a slew of travel websites that pay additional cash back over and above the five percent.
IHG hotels, for example, currently pays 6 percent, for a total of 11 percent cash back. Not bad.
11 Percent Cash Back on Priceline Hotels with Upromise Credit Card
What’s more, if you prefer to save money with Priceline for “Name Your Own Price” hotel reservations, you can also get 11 percent back: 5 percent by using the Upromise MasterCard via the Upromise shopping portal, plus 6 percent additional from Priceline. Now you are talking real savings!
In fact, you will find over 900 online merchants including a slew of popular travel sites in the Upromise shopping portal. Many of the popular travel sites are represented — including Orbitz, Expedia, Hotwire, Westin, Hotels.com, Carnival Cruises, and many others. Used in conjunction with the Upromise Credit Card, you will be well on your way to earning 10 percent cash back on travel.
To earn and receive cash back earnings, you must be a Upromise member, pay for purchases with your Upromise MasterCard and register your credit card to your Upromise account. To become a member and register your credit card, go to Upromise.com/activate.
What’s the downside?
Online shopping portals can be frustrating to deal with. Sometimes “cookies” that track your online activity will prevent the cash back portal from properly crediting your purchase. Also, if you use the wrong coupon code, you may not be eligible for cash back.
Some days, I am ready to give up on online shopping portals, but on days when a check comes in the mail, my faith is restored!
There are affiliate links in this post. Thanks if you choose to use them!
American Express is offering some cardholders a credit of $75 on their bill if they make a purchase of $375 or more at Virgin America.
That amounts to a 20 percent discount on air travel!
You can check to see if you have been targeted for this offer by logging in to your American Express account and looking under the “Offers for You” tab. You must select the offer to apply it to your credit card account.
In my experience, credits on qualified “Offers for You” purchases post immediately to your account.
With so many free museums in Washington DC, it is easy to overlook those attractions that charge admission.
That’s why the International Spy Museum, which has one of the most creative marketing departments out there, has partnered with Metro to provide transit users a discount on admission.
Spy Museum Discount Admission
Just show your Metro SmarTrip® card and receive $7 off the normal admission price of $21.
The offer is valid through March 21, 2014, and cannot be combined with other promotions.
Metro Smart Spy Twitter Contest
While you’re at it:
Every week @intlspymuseum and @wmata will tweet a clue about a cloak and dagger site on the rail system.
Once you find the secret site, tweet a selfie with the photo clue and #metrosmartspy.
This will officially enter you in a contest, with a chance to win an unspecified spy prize.
Hey folks, I could not find any actual entrants into this contest. It sounds like fun and it looks like you’d have a great chance at winning!
Just days after I posted my definitive one year review of the Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ World Elite MasterCard®rumors started circulating on the internet about changes to the card’s minimum purchase requirement.
Today, those rumors were validated.
Previously, if you spent $1,000 within 3 months of opening the Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ World Elite MasterCard®, you would get 40,000 bonus points worth $400 toward any travel purchase. That is a very generous offer for opening new credit card. What’s more, you’d earn 10 percent back on all redemptions for travel expenses, so the payout is worth $440.
In my definitive one year review, I argued that I know of no other credit card with such a generous bonus offer for such a low minimum spend requirement.
Now, the minimum spend requirement is going to be increased to $3,000 in a 3 month period.
Does an increase in the minimum spend requirement affect my evaluation of the Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ World Elite MasterCard®?
Absolutely! Arguably, $1,000 in spending over a 3 month period is fairly doable for many households. Triple that requirement, and you would have to move your major purchases to the new credit card, which is not always easy to accomplish. If you are not easily able to meet the increased minimum spend requirement, you might want to hold off applying for this card until you anticipate some major expenses.
Cash back credit cards like the Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ World Elite MasterCard®are not worth it if they cause you to spend more money than you would ordinarily. An increase in the minimum spend requirement makes this offer less accessible to many people.
If you have been considering Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ World Elite MasterCard®,you can read more about my take on the pros and cons of this offering here.
Have you enjoyed watching the winter Olympics this year?
If so, you’ve probably noticed that Visa is a corporate sponsor.
Wouldn’t if be fabulous to attend the games in person? It would be a once in a lifetime experience! What if you could attend every Olympic Winter Games for as long as you live?
To promote its association with the Olympic games, Visa is running a contest to win a trip to the Olympic Winter Games for life!
Every time you use your Visa credit card from January 1 through February 28, 2014 and you will be automatically entered to win a trip to the Olympic Winter Games for life, every four years beginning in the winter of 2018.
One grand prize winner of the Visa Olympic Winter Games Trip for Life Sweepstakesand one guest will receive round-trip airfare and accommodations for two, round-trip event transportation, and tickets to Olympic events.
Michelle Singletary, who writes the nationally syndicated column, “The Color of Money,” is my favorite personal finance writer. She dispenses down-to-earth advice for the average person, and it is usually spot on. So in December, when she featured a new book on credit cards in her column, I took note.
The book, Confessions of a Credit Junkie: Everything You Need to Know to Avoid the Mistakes I Made, by Beverly Harzog is a cautionary tale by someone who got themselves into serious credit card debt, and managed to dig her way out. What was shocking to me, was that Ms. Harzog was a Certified Public Accountant when she found herself drowning in debt. Speaking from her personal experience as well as her professional expertise, Ms. Harzog’s book discusses:
The seven ways to use a credit card to rebuild credit
How to get out of debt using a balance transfer credit card–and pay zero interest while doing it
Credit card strategies to save on groceries, gas, and travel
As someone who tries to keep to a budget and never charges anything I don’t have the money to cover, I could not really identify with Ms. Harzog’s story of extravagant spending on designer clothing, which she relates in the early chapters of the book.
Where the book really shines, however, is in the plain English discussion of the laws governing credit card issuers, and in particular, the different regime covering personal and business credit cards.
Harzog details consumers’ rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).
I just noticed that a $95 annual fee had posted on my December statement for the Chase Ink Plus credit card. Ugh. I really don’t like to pay bank fees!
I opened the Chase Ink Plus card in November 2012 for the 50,000 bonus Ultimate Reward Points (worth $625 in travel) which easily transfer to Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, and Amtrak for award travel.
The Chase Ink Plus is a small business credit card and I have been using it for my environmental consulting business. The card pays 5x points on routine purchases at office supply stores, and on various telecommunications expenses, 2x points on gas and hotels, and 1x point on everything else. I have set up most of my routine business expenses like the phone bill, long distance provider, web hosting fees, internet access, etc. as automatic payments on the Ink Plus credit card.
By the time I noticed the annual fee, I had already missed the 60-day deadline for closing the card and requesting a fee waiver. I called Chase to see if it would be possible to get a fee waiver anyway. Frankly, I really didn’t want to close the card or downgrade it at this point, because it would mean transferring automatic payments from a dozen different vendors to another credit card.
This was a really fun event that is likely to be repeated every January henceforth. Not only did we get to see areas of the museum that are normally off-limits to visitors, but we also got to catch up on newer features of the museum like the space hangar.
My favorite part was going up in the control tower, which offers a fantastic view of the runways at Dulles International Airport (IAD). It was a blast!
The second Saturday of each month at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center from 10 am – 3 pm. is Super Science Saturday!
The museum has also scheduled a series of Heritage Family Days at their downtown location on the National Mall, as well as at the Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. Family Days offer a wide variety of hands-on activities, presentations, and opportunities to meet pilots, astronauts, and scientists.
