July 18, 2026

💰 My Top Picks, Recommendation & More (7/18/26)

This week, we’ll cover a big 250K point brokerage bonus, two new airline and hotel partnerships, best-ever 100K bonus ending soon, putting "Die With Zero" into practice, my favorite game meets YouTube, AA and Choice points on sale, and more!

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📉 Putting "Die With Zero" Into Practice

Chris and Brad Barrett revisit "Die With Zero" and confront how much harder Bill Perkins' ideas are to live than to agree with. They dig into when frugality flips from superpower to liability, the maximizer's struggle to let go, optimizing for the perfect Tuesday over the once-a-year trip, and giving money to your kids while it still matters.

📺 Watch or 🎧 Listen

⭐ My Top Picks

💰 Big 250K Point Brokerage Bonus (Ends 7/31)

I moved a lot of my investments over to Silo to start earning points on my brokerage balance. Now, through the end of the month, new customers can earn a bonus of up to 250,000 points, which can be cashed out as $2,500 or (very soon) transferred to airlines and hotels. There are two membership tiers at Silo ($20-80/mo), but they unlock earning 0.5x points on your investments, which usually covers the fee.

Also, because Silo is built on top of the 40+ year-old Interactive Brokers, I didn't have any worries about moving my investments to a new startup and I haven't had any issues using them the past 6 months. More details on Silo and the bonus are here.

🤝 Two New Airline + Hotel Partnerships

I have elite status with Marriott and Hyatt, so I was excited to see these two partnerships, however, best I can tell, the only real benefit I *might* ever use is a small flight credit on Air Canada.

Hyatt & Air Canada Aeroplan

Hyatt and Air Canada just launched a new partnership that helps Aeroplan elites and cardholders earn Hyatt Globalist in as few as 20 nights. A similar status challenge for Hyatt elite members is coming soon. In addition to status, you can also convert points between the two programs (at a poor ratio), redeem points for flight certificates and free night awards (possibly a good deal), and if you're Hyatt Globalist, you'll get a free C$20 Air Canada credit each year. More details here.

Marriott & Japan Airlines

Marriott and JAL's partnership is also best used for status. Every Marriott elite will earn free JAL FLY ON points when linking accounts, but only Titanium and Ambassador Elite will earn enough to get JAL status without additional flying. If you happen to have JAL status, you can also get free Marriott status, but it'll need to be Diamond or higher to earn Marriott Platinum. They've also enabled point transfers, but the ratios aren't that exciting. More details here.

📺 Recommendation: Mafia

One of my favorite games to play with a group is Werewolves/Mafia. I've played 100s of times since first learning it at a leadership retreat in college and it never gets old. If you haven't played, here's one of many sites with the rules, but this one happens to sell a beautiful card deck to play with that I've owned for a few years. If you want to see it in action, someone recruited a bunch of tech founders/investors to play and made the very entertaining video above. If you like this kind of game, don't have a big enough group, or want a shorter game, definitely check out Coup.

📰 The Rest of the Week

💳 Credit Cards & Points

DFW: New Bank Lounge Now Open in Terminal D
Hawaiian: Co-Brand Cards Raise Bonus to 70K Atmos — This might be the last chance to get a bonus on this card if you're looking for more Alaska miles.
IHG: Best-Ever 100% Transfer Bonus — Even at 100%, this isn't a great deal.

✈️ Airline News & Promos

American: Buy Miles For As Low As 1.88¢ — For the right AA use case, this could make sense, but I wouldn't do it speculatively.
Frontier: Adding Starlink Wi-Fi Across Its Fleet — Still not enough to get me to fly Frontier.
United: Mile Play: Up to 15K Bonus Miles — Worth checking what you get if you have upcoming UA flights.

🏨 Hotel News & Promos

Choice: Points 50% Off, Best Sale of the Year — Worth it if you have a trip in mind.
Wyndham: 25% Off Caesars and 2x Points

Editor’s Note: The content on this page is accurate as of the posting date; however, some of our partner offers may have expired. Opinions expressed here are the author's alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.

Hi, I'm Chris Hutchins 👋

Founder / Host

I love sharing my quest to optimize and upgrade my life. Previously I was Head of New Product Strategy at Wealthfront, co-founder and CEO of Grove (acquired by Wealthfront), co-founder of Milk (acquired by Google) and a Partner at GV, where I focused on seed and early stage investments.

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