Beginning the next chapter
This is Life Amplified, a newsletter about thoughts on life, business, travel, and upgrading it all. And I’m two weeks late! But for good reason, important life updates below.
In this issue:
What’s next for me
How to get your travel strategy in order
The rise of U.S. airports
Latest and greatest travel tips
Good cruise deals
All Business class is not created equal
Why Argentina is one of the best deals in travel
I’m always taking requests! Anything you want me to write about? Topics, travel plans, deals, etc. Submit here. (One of the topic of this issue was from a submission!)
What’s next for me
Earlier this week I started a new role at General Catalyst, a large global venture capital fund, focusing on external relations and responsible innovation. I’m back in New York!
General Catalyst invests in startups across a wide variety of industries and stages, with a big focus on responsible innovation (more here on what that means). Previous investments include Airbnb, Snapchat, Anduril, Canva, Stripe, Classpass, Coda, Livongo Health, Color, Deliveroo, Gitlab, Warby Parker, Grammarly, Gusto, Jet.com, and more.
When I applied to Stanford, I wrote my essay on understanding what makes people successful, and opening it up to more people. I’m excited that this role leads to exactly that. And when I thought about what to do after graduation, I followed one mantra more than others: Work for very smart people.
And in other news, today the Financial Times announced my book proposal, Merit in the 21st Century, was shortlisted for the 2022 Bracken Bower Prize (awarded to the best business book proposal for an author under the age of 35). Finalists will be announced later this month, with the winner in December.
How to get your travel strategy in order
Between credits cards, points, travel plans, ideas, recommendations, and more, it’s hard to keep track of everything and can get overwhelming quickly. I’ve built a fairly good organizational method, built off Notion with backing/links from Google Sheets and a few other resources (Notion is a fantastic app, my entire life is essentially built off of it). The way I approach organization is:
Payments/Finances: Mint.com (note: any aggregator will work, and I’ll likely switch as I don’t love Intuit’s dominance)
Personal budget: Google Sheets, custom-made (I’m working on converting to a template for you all)
Credit card renewals/fees: Google Sheets, custom-made
Travel itineraries: Notion (you can share Notion pages with anybody)
Travel ideas, recommendations, and wishlists: Again, Notion—just write it down anytime you think of it!
Point trackers: Awardwallet.com (Note: It doesn’t work with every program)
Loyalty accounts: Notion
The rise of U.S. airports
In case you missed it, U.S. airports are becoming…good?
I think people love to complain, and they always will, but complaints about airports like LaGuardia are quickly becoming obsolete. In fact, it’s true about a lot of U.S. airports:
SFO: San Francisco’s new Harvey Milk terminal opened last year and is beautiful while showcasing a lot of local SF staples
ORD: Chicago is building a new global terminal, adding several new concourses, and opening a $1B renovation to Terminal 5, after revising the runway configurations over the last few years
EWR: Newark is in the midst of rebuilding Terminal A, with Terminal B on deck next, and United just opened their best (non-Polaris) Club in Terminal C that is a huge leap from past iterations
JFK: An $18 billion redevelopment underway includes rebuilding Terminal One, creating Terminal Six, and expanding Terminals Four and Eight
IAH: Houston Intercontinental is modernizing rapidly, overhauling the international terminal, and has the best restaurants of any airport I’ve seen
LAX: In preparations for the 2028 Olympics and 2026 World Cup, LAX is undergoing $14.5B of projects building a new air train, renovations to Terminals 2, 3, 4, and 6, all complimenting the new midfield Tom Bradley concourse
DEN: Denver is expanding the airport by 30% and renovating most terminals
SEA: Sea-tac recently complete an overhaul of the North Satellite, is underway in renovating the South Satellite, and opening a new $1B international terminal
DFW: The new Terminal F is finally back in the planning stages
MCO: Orlando is embarking on a $4B expansion plan, opening Terminal C this year
SLC: Salt Lake’s second phase of their new airport opens in 2024
SAN: San Diego is embarking on a $2.2B new terminal opening in 2025
PIT: Pittsburgh’s new $1.1B terminal launched construction in 2021
MSY: New Orleans’ new $1B terminal opened this year and received rave reviews
MCI: Kansas City’s $1.5B terminal replacement project broke ground in 2019
I could go on, but you get the point. Flying domestically after 2025 when many of these projects are complete will be a wholly different experience than what we’re used to. Go infrastructure spending!
A rendering of O’Hare’s new Global Terminal, set to open in 2028
Latest and greatest travel tips
Unfortunately the travel industry is still running red-hot (AA even said they’re selling 80% of business seats right now, vs. 60% normally). That doesn’t lead many deals to be had!
American AAdvantage has returned their status challenge. Be warned: it’s not easy. More here.
Virgin Atlantic (the UK carrier) has a pretty fantastic deal through Nov. 7th, offering up to 50% off all awards. Now, there’s a few catches, including that you must sign up for Virgin Red, the discount comes as a rebate (so you still need to transfer the full amount), and the U.K. has very high flight taxes. Still, this means you can fly Business Class for ~25K miles plus a few hundred dollars, which is a great value. More here.
Chase is offering a 30% bonus to transfer points to Air Canada Aeroplan. Aeroplan is one of the best mileage programs in the world, and this is a tremendous deal if you have any travel coming up! More here.
Both airlines and hotels are selling miles in very good deals right now. You always need to do the math, but often during a sale, you can buy miles for cheaper than what the item actually costs. (So for example, you could spend $8,000 on a Lufthansa First Class ticket, or you could buy 92k miles from Avianca for $1,308 and book the same flight). You must make sure there’s availability with points before doing this! And many programs have maximums on the number of miles/points you can buy a year. This is great for expensive/luxury redemptions, however.
A reminder that the best way to fly to Hawaii with points is via Turkish Miles
Japan is re-opening! The Yen is down against the dollar and it’s a great time to go. The best way to fly is with Virgin miles on ANA flights, but your experience may vary in finding availability. More here.
Good cruise deals
I have a confession: I’ve never been on a cruise. But I’ve always watched the market out of curiosity. Stock analyst C. Patrick Scholes had an interesting report on the cruise industry earlier this year; summary: it’s not great.
The best deals right now are for Alaska cruises. Alaskan cruise prices are down 15-20% from pre-pandemic levels (compared to -5% for Caribbean and flat for European). While January and February are traditionally the best months to book cruises, prices for next summer are already pretty attractive: Royal Caribbean as low as $400 for a 7-night interior room in peak season (July), Celebrity from $470, and even Princess from $649.
It may or may not last; Scholes upgraded Royal Caribbean’s stock this month based on stronger bookings in September and better pricing power, particularly among luxury cruises. This makes sense to me as inflation is hurting the average consumer more.
What do you say, a nice budget cruise to Alaska next summer?
All business class is not created equal
For most people, business class is a very aspirational experience, something that is saved for and treasured. But there are tiers of this experience, and you want the best. When people talk about Business Class, they’ll analyze “hard product” and “soft product”. The hard product is the seat, the soft product is the service.
Within Business Class, there’s typically some stack rank order that looks like (from worst to best):
European-style short-haul: Economy seats, with the middle seat blocked off and extra legroom, and nicer service
American-style Low Cost Carrier: Business recliners, no extra service
American-style Short-haul: Business recliners, nicer service
Angle-Flat Open: These were cutting edge in the mid 2000s, but don’t recline all the way, and you rarely see these anymore
Lie-Flat Open: Some variation of a lie-flat seat (180-degrees) typically reserved for flights >5 hours
Business Suite: A lie-flat suite with a door (the latest and greatest)
As far as I’m concerned, the first three are never really worth going out of your way for. There’s only so many airplane seat manufacturers in the world, so you’ll find many airlines use similar seats (often referred to as “Apex”, “Reverse Herringbone”, etc. There’s about 50 designs globally.)
I always use seatguru to check the exact plane I’m booking a ticket on to confirm the hard product. Even the same airline may fly many different types of products. And if I have airline options on similar routes, I always read trip reviews to understand the soft product (typically from a trusted blog like One Mile at a Time).
Why Argentina is one of the best deals in travel
I talked about Argentina last month as a place to visit sooner rather than later. And y’all know I love deals. Argentina is by far the best value place I have traveled to in the last few years.
Why? The Black Market exchange rate. This sounds sketchy, but the “Black Market” in Argentina is actually very accessible. Essentially, the Argentine government has long had currency controls, constraining how many Argentinian Pesos can be changed into U.S. Dollars (or other currencies). Basic economics would tell you this is a bad idea, and has led to two currency exchange rates: the Official Rate, and the “Blue Dollar” Rate.
The Argentine economy is theoretically priced at the official rate—if you use an ATM or a credit card (even an American one), you get the official rate at 153 ARS:1 USD. [Note, last December this was 100:1, so a 50% decline in a year].
The Blue Dollar rate currently is around 290:1. That means if you withdraw $100USD from an ATM, you get 15,300ARS. But when you exchange currency on the street, you get 29,000ARS. That’s how much people want USD.
You can exchange bills on the street, or you can do it the (much safer) way and just Western Union yourself money—yes, Western Union even gives you the Black Market rate, and you can pick it up at official locations.
That also means everything is on sale for foreigners. When you look at hotels, you’ll see the Official Rate price. For example, the 5-star Park Tower hotel in downtown Buenos Aires may show $270 per night on Marriott’s website. If you show up and pay in cash (Argentinian pesos), you will pay ~$140 per night.
Argentina is amazing, one of the most naturally blessed countries I have ever been to. The most amazing meals, complete with incredible steak and wine, for under $30. Beautiful scenery and wineries. Great service and generally fine safety.
No one will advertise these discounts, and you have to walk around with wads of cash, but I haven’t seen deals this good ever while traveling. Given it’s in the Southern Hemisphere, Summer is just beginning!
(Three recommendations: Finca Adalgisa (an amazing hotel in Wine Country), Budeguer (an amazing under the radar vineyard near Mendoza), and Alto El Fuego in Bariloche (the best meal I had))
That’s all! I’ll try to get the next edition out before Christmas. Thanks for reading this far!