Goooooooooooood morning and welcome back to Daily Drop. I’m writing to you from 39,000 feet over the Labrador Sea, on my way back home to Toronto.
I’ve been away so long that I can’t wait to be back home for a while… I swear I can already smell the poutine and Tim Hortons coffee from here…
Here’s what we got in store for you today:
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🤓 Travel Hacking Word of the Week: Product Switching
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One of the questions we get from readers is:
“What do I do after I’ve had a credit card for a year or two and am not getting enough value to keep it? Won’t it damage my credit score if I just cancel cards every year?”
And the answer is yes - if you cancel every card you open after a year, you will damage your credit score. But thankfully, that is not an option you’ll need to resort to very often.
Whenever an annual fee hits one of my cards, I always ask the following question:
Keep, downgrade, or cancel?
It’s an age-old question that’s mystified even the greatest of minds.
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Two of those options are self-explanatory. If the card is bringing you tons of value that outweighs the annual fee, you keep it.
If you’re done with the card and hate getting free travel, you cancel it (not recommended).
But what is this “downgrade” option I speak of?
This is where product switching comes into play.
You see, cards are oftentimes part of a “family,” usually made up of cards using the same rewards program.
For example, cobranded hotel cards from the same bank are a card “family,” while the in-house Capital One travel cards are also part of the same “family.”
They’re basically different tiers of the same card type.
Cards in this category can often be upgraded or downgraded to other cards in the same family.
So why do this instead of canceling a card?
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You aren’t opening or closing any account. In the eyes of the credit bureaus, it’s the same account with the same history. This means you don’t incur a hard inquiry, and your average credit history from the previous card continues to the new one.
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Many card families have either a low-fee card or no-fee card. If you can switch to a card that you don’t have to pay for, you leave yourself open to more potential rewards, without the hassle of needing to justify a high annual fee.
But here’s where things get pretty cool… In addition to downgrading a card, you can also use this strategy to upgrade to a card within the same family.
Certain banks, namely the one that rhymes with “Ballerican Grexpress,” frequently have upgrade offers.
An upgrade offer is essentially the bank offering you the option to turn your card into a higher-tier version, with an added bonus that typically resembles a welcome bonus.
For example, if you have a Hilton co-branded credit card with no annual fee, you might get an offer to upgrade that card to the next level up, and receive some amount of points for doing so.
… and there is a way to strategize around this if you want to get into some hardcore travel hacking techniques…
That’s because, during your lifetime, you are eligible to receive both a welcome bonus AND an upgrade bonus on the same card.
Confused?
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That’s okay. Let’s talk about it, buddy.
Let’s look at this hypothetical set of cards belonging to the same family:
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You could theoretically get six bonuses from this family, by doing the following:
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Open Card 3, receive welcome bonus
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Open Card 2, receive welcome bonus
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Upgrade Card 2 to Card 3, receive upgrade offer
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Open Card 1, receive welcome bonus
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Upgrade Card 1 to Card 2, receive upgrade offer
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Upgrade second Card 2 to Card 3, receive upgrade offer
Essentially, you can receive an upgrade offer after having already received a welcome offer on the same card type, but not the other way around.
Obviously, this is something you could do over the course of years. but if you plan ahead, this is definitely the best way to continue to get massive bonuses from your cards for years to come.
Anyway, you have many options when it comes time to renew your card for another year. So crunch the numbers and don’t be afraid of that pesky annual fee.
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🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia launches free tourist transit visa
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Saudi Arabia is a country with some pretty strong ambitions.
For one, they’re building a hyper-futuristic supercity in the middle of the desert. They also plan to allow 100 million tourists into the country by 2030, despite issuing the very first tourist visa just a few years ago.
To aid in this quest, the government has launched a free stopover visa for religious and/or tourism purposes.
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Here’s how this works:
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Simply book a flight on Saudia or Flynas, with a layover in a Saudi Arabian city
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When checking out, you’ll have the option to extend your stay in Jeddah, Riyadh, or another city by up to 96 hours
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Tourist visa will be issued instantly along with your ticket
I think this is awesome. Saudi tourist visas are some of the most expensive in the Middle East, so having a way to enjoy the rich culture and history of the country without breaking the bank is pretty sweet.
Plus, if you do a 24-hour stopover, they’ll even include a free night hotel stay with your ticket.
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To top things off, the government is also putting together 24, 48, and 96-hour itinerary recommendations, allowing you to maximize your time in the country.
I will DEFINITELY be taking advantage of this before the end of the year, as I have quite a few friends in the Kingdom, and the government is making it really easy to utilize this new visa.
The program already went into effect on Monday, so go ahead and book your Saudi stopover fun times whenever you’re ready.
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🔥 Amazing travel pun monologue
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I was perusing the internet the other day and I came across this amazing little paragraph that tells a story using country (and some U.S. state) puns. It’s pretty incredible. Check it out:
You're probably Ghana think "no one will Bolivia. There's just Norway."
I thought I Kuwait but then I Saudi Turkey, Iraq of ribs and a Canada best sauce and my Bahrain was like Oman, I Israel Hungary... so Iran to the kitchen to put Greece in the pan.
I hoped it could get Finnish quickly and because I was Russian, I didn't Czech the label and accidentally added Chile.
I ended up in a hospital in Taiwan. I received Taipei blood and discharged. I had nowhere Togo and it was the worst situation I've ever Benin. I thought my wife would be worried or Rwanda where I've been.
I needed food and thought Alaska. I phoned her and asked "Kenya bring me a sandwich?" she brought me pineapple on a bun because she knows it's just Hawaii roll.
The end.
I wish I could give credit to whoever made this, but it seems to have been uploaded to upjoke.com anonymously. So whoever you are, thank you for your service my friend.
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That’s gonna do it for today, friends! Have you ever done a credit card product switch? Will you be visiting Saudi Arabia to take advantage of their free stopover program? Let me know by replying to this email or reaching out on social media.
Have a lovely day 💕
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