美国国家公共电台 NPR How One Man Used Miles To Fulfill His Dream To Visit Every Country Before Turning 40

 

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Now we have a story of people who earn credit card points as though it were a game. They go for sign-up bonuses and point multipliers and balance transfers. But it turns out you can lose the credit card points game, too. Here's Darius Rafieyan.

DARIUS RAFIEYAN, BYLINE¹: It's 7 o'clock on a Tuesday night, and in a crowded bar in downtown Brooklyn, 20 or so people have gathered to sip² craft beers, nibble³ at appetizers⁴ and talk about credit cards.

JANICE LINTZ: Well, I've taken out over 46 credit cards in five years and earned 2.6 million miles just in sign-up bonuses.

RAFIEYAN: Janice Lintz is a regular at the Reach for the Miles meetup. It's a gathering⁵ of travel hackers⁶ and deal optimizers who meet once a month to trade strategies for maximizing credit card rewards. For her, earning points is a kind of sport.

LINTZ: I just came back this morning from Easter Island. Plus, I got 26,000 points from that. Plus, because American Airlines was late for a flight, they gave me another 7,500 points. So I'm not sure where I came out, but I think I may have, like, been paid to go to Easter Island and Uruguay.

RAFIEYAN: And Lintz isn't alone. Nearly 90% of all the money spent on credit cards last year was on rewards cards. And as points have become more popular, so too have websites like Million Mile Secrets and The Points Guy, which help consumers game the points system. Meanwhile, card issuers have been pushing more and more generous rewards all in an effort to entice⁷ customers to borrow and spend more. But for people like Janice Lintz, it's just one more way to beat the credit card companies at their own game.

LINTZ: So I even make money paying my taxes. I make quite a few thousand dollars by paying my capital gains taxes.

RAFIEYAN: I spoke⁸ with one person who opened a credit card and immediately bought $3,000 worth of Amazon gift cards just to qualify for the sign-up bonus. Another person filled up their garage with blenders to take advantage of a promotion⁹ offering extra points on appliances. One dad, he even tried to enroll¹⁰ his newborn in a frequent flier program, only to be told that you have to be at least 2 years old to start earning miles. And of course, the ultimate badge of honor among this crowd is the outlandish travel story, like the guy who flew first class to Dubai for less than $20.

And then there's Stefan Krasowski. He used his points to visit every single country on earth before he turned 40. The last one on his list - Syria.

STEFAN KRASOWSKI: On one-day notice, I was able to be on a plane to Beirut and in Damascus by nightfall.

RAFIEYAN: Points can open the door to extraordinary experiences if you have the time and the discipline. But one survey found that nearly 60% of the people who have rewards cards don't pay off their balances each month.

RON STROBEL: They're so focused on the rewards aspect of it that a lot of time I think they just look past the potential downside.

RAFIEYAN: Ron Strobel is a certified¹¹ financial planner. He sees clients come in all the time, excited about all the points they're going to get with their new credit card.

STROBEL: They'll even pull that card out, and they show it to me, you know, like they're bragging¹² about it (laughter).

RAFIEYAN: But many of those same clients wind up racking up charges, incentivized by that little hit of dopamine they get each time they earn a point. That's what happened to J.D. Malone. He and his wife got sucked into a rewards program a few years ago after opening a Costco cash-back card.

J D MALONE: It changed the way we spent money. We were shopping for a brand-new couch, and I mean, one of the things that we talked about was, oh, hey, if we buy this $2,000 couch, you know, that's nice, but if we buy this $3,000 couch, well, we're going to get more cash back for that. So we might as well buy the $3,000 couch.

RAFIEYAN: When they got their year-end statement, they found that they'd charged more than $40,000 on that card, and for all that, they got about $600 in cash back.

MALONE: It was painful. I mean, to be honest, it was sickening. We were like, this has to change.

RAFIEYAN: J.D. and his wife enrolled¹³ in financial literacy classes. They cut up about 18 of their credit cards. And now they say they spend a lot less money. Basically, they traded the rush of earning points for thousands of extra dollars in their bank account.

Darius Rafieyan, NPR News, New York.

(SOUNDBITE OF BOOKA SHADE'S "SACRED")

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 sip   

v.小口地喝，抿，呷；n.一小口的量

参考例句：

• She took a sip of the cocktail.她啜饮一口鸡尾酒。
• Elizabeth took a sip of the hot coffee.伊丽莎白呷了一口热咖啡。

3 nibble   

n.轻咬，啃；v.一点点地咬，慢慢啃，吹毛求疵

参考例句：

• Inflation began to nibble away at their savings.通货膨胀开始蚕食他们的存款。
• The birds cling to the wall and nibble at the brickwork.鸟儿们紧贴在墙上，啄着砖缝。

4 appetizers   

n.开胃品( appetizer的名词复数 )；促进食欲的活动；刺激欲望的东西；吊胃口的东西

参考例句：

• Here is the egg drop and appetizers to follow. 这是您要的蛋花汤和开胃品。 来自互联网
• Would you like appetizers or a salad to go with that? 你要不要小菜或色拉？ 来自互联网

5 gathering   

n.集会，聚会，聚集

参考例句：

• He called on Mr. White to speak at the gathering.他请怀特先生在集会上讲话。
• He is on the wing gathering material for his novels.他正忙于为他的小说收集资料。

6 hackers   

n.计算机迷( hacker的名词复数 )；私自存取或篡改电脑资料者，电脑“黑客”

参考例句：

• They think of viruses that infect an organization from the outside.They envision hackers breaking into their information vaults. 他们考虑来自外部的感染公司的病毒，他们设想黑客侵入到信息宝库中。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Arranging a meeting with the hackers took weeks againoff-again email exchanges. 通过几星期电子邮件往来安排见面，他们最终同意了。 来自互联网

7 entice   

v.诱骗，引诱，怂恿

参考例句：

• Nothing will entice the children from television.没有任何东西能把孩子们从电视机前诱开。
• I don't see why the English should want to entice us away from our native land.我不明白，为什英国人要引诱我们离开自己的国土。

8 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

9 promotion   

n.提升，晋级；促销，宣传

参考例句：

• The teacher conferred with the principal about Dick's promotion.教师与校长商谈了迪克的升级问题。
• The clerk was given a promotion and an increase in salary.那个职员升了级，加了薪。

10 enroll   

v.招收；登记；入学；参军；成为会员（英)enrol

参考例句：

• I should like to enroll all my children in the swimming class.我愿意让我的孩子们都参加游泳班。
• They enroll him as a member of the club.他们吸收他为俱乐部会员。

11 certified   

a.经证明合格的；具有证明文件的

参考例句：

• Doctors certified him as insane. 医生证明他精神失常。
• The planes were certified airworthy. 飞机被证明适于航行。

12 bragging   

v.自夸，吹嘘( brag的现在分词 )；大话

参考例句：

• He's always bragging about his prowess as a cricketer. 他总是吹嘘自己板球水平高超。 来自辞典例句
• Now you're bragging, darling. You know you don't need to brag. 这就是夸口，亲爱的。你明知道你不必吹。 来自辞典例句

13 enrolled   

adj.入学登记了的v.[亦作enrol]( enroll的过去式和过去分词 )；登记，招收，使入伍（或入会、入学等），参加，成为成员；记入名册；卷起，包起

参考例句：

• They have been studying hard from the moment they enrolled. 从入学时起，他们就一直努力学习。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He enrolled with an employment agency for a teaching position. 他在职业介绍所登了记以谋求一个教师的职位。 来自《简明英汉词典》