A Look Back At Mine & Other Sites Predictions For 2018 – How Did We Do?

Every year I like to make a number of predictions for what I think will happen in the upcoming year, but before I do that I like to have a look at my predictions from the previous year. A number of other sites also made predictions for 2018 so I thought why not have a look at theirs as well.

My Predictions

Original predictions found here

  • Best Basic Savings Rates Will Hit 2% APY. When I made this prediction the highest basic saving rate was 1.65%, we are now up to 2.5% so well above the 2% APY I was predicting. The fed raising rates definitely helped here. One point to me.
  • 2%+ Credit Cards Will Be A Thing Of The Past. This one was kind of a cheat, I wrote it before the USAA and JCB cards were discontinued but published it after the fact. We also briefly saw Chase offered 3% back first year on the Chase Freedom Unlimited. You also still have the Alliant card offering 2.5%/3% back still. Zero points to me.
  • Southwest Will Announced Negative Changes To Companion Pass For 2019. I said the either the pass would cost more points, credit card points wouldn’t count or some other major negative change would happen. It definitely got more difficult to get the pass with Chase adding new restrictions, but I was expecting a much more dramatic change. Zero points to me.
  • Mobile Wallets Will Dominate. I think I’ve made this prediction three years in a row, it’s never been right but I’d say this year it’s actually be the complete opposite. Samsung Pay basically killed their rewards program by reducing the amount of points you earn by half and also increasing the number of points required for redemption. I’m going to give myself negative one point for this prediction.

As you can see I end up with a total of 0 points out of 4 predictions.

Frequent Miler

Original predictions found here.

  • A US airline will introduce Basic Economy awards. Delta does offer basic economy awards on some routes now. One point.
  • A hotel chain (or brand within a chain) will eliminate resort fees. Unfortunately not the case. Zero points.
  • Marriott will offer free breakfast to Gold and Platinum elites at resorts. Technically this is incorrect, Marriott gold members don’t get free breakfast. That being said it was just really a rename of elites. One point.
  • Marriott will announce details of the combined Marriott / SPG rewards program and it will look a lot like Marriott Rewards. Marriott did announce details of the new program. I guess the award chart is similar (especially for 2018 pricing) but with the introduction of peak and off peak pricing it’s not that similar. I’ll give this a half a point.

2.5/4

Milenomics

Original predictions found here

  • An Overall Strong Economy Will Be Awful For Traditional Miles and Better Still for Bank Points. Not really sure how to measure this one. N/A
  • Competition for payment processing will heat up and we will be the beneficiaries. This seems to be another mobile payments prediction. Gonna have to give this one zero points as well.
  • Rising oil prices will push airline tickets up in cost. According to this, airfare increased by an average of 3.5% in 2018. The highest since 2011. We also saw crude oil prices increase as well. One point.
  • The end of 25,000 points for low level domestic flights. Don’t think this has happened. Zero points.
  • Credit Cards: Sign up bonuses will trend upward. I’d need to see some hard data, I think all things being equal credit card bonuses are always going to increase when it comes to miles/points as those miles/points are being devalued at the same time. That being said, it felt like bonuses did increase on average. One point.
  • Citi Double Cash Will Devalue. This card is still going strong. Zero points.
  • At least one major GC issuer will start to issue GC without PINS. Again I don’t remembering this really happening. Zero points. 
  • Interest rates on savings will continue upward. The true AOR will return in 2018 or early 2019. Interest rates have continued to increase, but we still aren’t at the stage that dumping it into a CD is that attractive. To be fair this prediction was for late 2018 early 2019 and I don’t think we are far from this occurring. I won’t rate this one yet.

2/6

No Home Just Roam

Original predictions found here

  • Marriott Added As A Membership Rewards Transfer Partner. This was more a result of the merger than anything else, but still correct. One point.
  • La Quinta To Launch A New Credit Card. La Quinta is still surprisingly without a co-branded credit card partner. At the time I thought this was a good prediction. Zero points.
  • IHG To Add Benefits To Spire Elite Status. As far as I know nothing was added, but I care so little about elite status I might have forgotten about something. Zero points.
  • Chase Will Increase The Number Of Cards Not Impacted By 5/24. Sadly this one was correct, now all Chase cards fall under this rule. One point. Zero points Update: Apparently I can’t read, this was suggesting the complete opposite.
  • Hyatt Will Allow Rewards Stays To Count As Eligible Nights Towards Status. This was actually announced at the end of 2017, but after the No Home Just Roam article was posted. One point.
  • IHG Will Increase The Annual Fee On Their Credit Card. Chase launched two new IHG cards to replace the old one, in the process the annual fee was increased. One point.
  • Citi Will Launch / Relaunch Spending Offers On Their Credit Cards. Unfortunately we haven’t seen anything on this front. Zero points.

3/7.

Running With Miles

Original predictions found here

  • Southwest Companion Pass. Similar to mine and just as wrong. Zero points.
  • SPG Program Disappears. SPG/Marriott merger was finally completed in 2018. One point.
  • Revenue Based Award Tickets. More airline programs have gone towards dynamic pricing, but it’s not strictly revenue based in most cases. Zero points.
  • Fewer Approvals. This is fairly vague, but there were definitely more credit card restrictions put in place to reduce the amount of approvals in 2018. One point.
  • Premium Economy is the New Business. I honestly don’t really follow this sort of stuff close enough to know. N/A
  • Mobile Rewards. Again similar prediction to mine and again just as wrong. Zero points.

2/6.

TPG Predictions

Original predictions found here

  • Big bonus opportunities will still be available. Talk about a broad non-prediction prediction. I guess this was right, but I’d hardly classify it as a prediction. I’ll give a pity point on this one.
  • Bank of America will try to get another foot in the door. Bank of America didn’t release any new high annual fee card in 2018. Zero points.
  • Interest rates will rise. This was specifically talking about credit card interest rates, but interest rates across the board increase. One point.
  • You can skip the signature. Actually a really good prediction, in April all of the major credit card payment networks no longer required a signature, although merchants may still request one. One point. 
  • Your face will replace your card. I don’t know of any merchant/card issuer using face ID as a verification tool in this way. Zero points.
  • Complaints about your card may fall on deaf ears. The government shut down hasn’t helped and it does seem the current government is hell bent on removing as much funding from the CFPB as possible. One point.

One pity point, three points and two zero points. We will call it 4/6 or 3.5/6.

Jeffsetter

Original predictions found here.

Honestly I don’t follow Hawaii closely enough to know how accurate any of the predictions are.

Final Thoughts

I’m in the process of writing up my predictions for 2019, although after reading back how poorly my predictions did last year I’m wondering if I should bother. I think No Home Just Roam had the best predictions for 2018, 4/7 is a good result and some of the predictions aren’t things I would have been confident of saying going into 2018. Update: I’m stripping No Home Just Roam of the title considering they got the Chase 5/24 really wrong. Title will instead go to Frequent Miler.

 

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scott
scott (@guest_702570)
January 8, 2019 15:50

I would give you +1 for the Southwest Companion Pass prediction. I had the pass since 2013 and don’t see how I’ll be able to get another one with their new rule. I don’t have a business and Chase has made it harder to qualify with a “fake” business.

chaseaholic
chaseaholic (@guest_702152)
January 7, 2019 23:05

Do your predictions!

I thought you were too hard on yourself:
I think you were at least 1/2-3/4 correct on WN CP.

And way less 2%+ cards exist now than they did in the past (though I guess if we count the 5 seconds the Arrival Premier was around maybe not?)

J. Grant
J. Grant (@guest_702141)
January 7, 2019 22:47

Clearly we’re all reading the wrong blog. Years of experience give TPG a HUGE boost here, wouldn’t you all agree? Jokes aside, mobile wallets are gaining traction actually, +1 point for that one. I actually see people using them this year as opposed to last year, when, everywhere I went, people looked at me like I as crazy.

sdsearch
sdsearch (@guest_702128)
January 7, 2019 22:29

Regarding: “La Quinta To Launch A New Credit Card. La Quinta is still surprisingly without a co-branded credit card partner. At the time I thought this was a good prediction. Zero points.”

Depending on how look at this, maybe this should be negative points or a fraction of a positive point?

La Quinta and WyndhamRewards announced a merger last year, which wasn’t predicted in the above. So for that alone, perhaps a negative point?

But as a result, the winning program will obviously be the way bigger WyndhamRewards, so once the programs themselves actually merge, La Quinta will essentially get the WyndhamRewards credit cards from Barclays, so they don’t need one on their own any more since the merger was announced. So maybe a fraction of a positive point for that? 🙂

flip
flip (@guest_701849)
January 7, 2019 16:56

I write for a popular NFL fan site and generally do not write articles that are popular with the norm. When I am wrong they love to point it out but when I am right I rarely get accolades for it. That is just part of the game of writing and looking into the crystal ball.
Do the article, if you’re wrong, you’r wrong. No worrying about spilled milk.

Stan
Stan (@guest_701676)
January 7, 2019 13:46

my 2019 prediction is TPG remains an obnoxious worthless trash site

Mark
Mark (@guest_701709)
January 7, 2019 14:22

Bwahahaha. I’ll wager money on that.*

*I will wager the money using my garbage Capital One card (affiliate link here) that earns 1.5 crap miles for all gambling purchases.

Abey
Abey (@guest_701674)
January 7, 2019 13:46

My 2019 predictions:

(1) Amex will get stricter with Business cards and occasionally request business documents, (like BOA, Barclays and US Bank).

(2) Citi will finally launch their own Business card like a TY Premier or Prestige version.

(3) Chase will announce a 2x UR card on all purchases similar to Double Cash, Spark, Blue Plus but will have an annual fee.

(4) Hyatt will raise the 5K category 1 hotels to 6-7K.

(5) With the flooding of Priority Pass cards, Lounges will get stricter and add restrictions and limitations.

Abey
Abey (@guest_701651)
January 7, 2019 13:29

Love this post. And absolutely do predictions. It gives a certain hype and hope for a brighter future even if it doesn’t end up happening 😊

Peter
Peter (@guest_701635)
January 7, 2019 13:19

lol – “Talk about a broad non-prediction prediction. I guess this was right, but I’d hardly classify it as a prediction.”

Here’s my 2019 prediction – I predict that TPG will still be around at the end of the year 😉

Biggie F
Biggie F (@guest_701624)
January 7, 2019 13:06

Just to get in my first complimentary comment of the new year: This post typifies the intellectual honesty and just plain hard work and attention to detail that makes this blog so useful.