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JAMES CRAMER, our other personal-finance columnist, is a new contributor to TIME, but he's familiar to millions of investors. A former newspaper reporter, he now manages a Wall Street hedge fund. He explains the market's latest moves in frequent television appearances and on the investing website thestreet.com which he helped launch. His investing commentary and advice nicely combine the perspective of an active market pro with the verve of a sports fanatic. We're pleased to have Cramer aboard, and hope you will let us know what you think of him and our other columnists...
...accommodate without cutting off their paying customers. Hotel rooms and airline seats are increasingly--and exasperatingly--scarce during peak travel times, which makes it harder and harder for travelers to redeem their points in the traditional fashion, even though such offerings are still the bread and butter of frequent-travel programs. With the average travel-frequency program costing $25 million to maintain, travel suppliers know they had better offer alternatives to their members, who may be shut out of award redemptions during popular travel seasons. So the trick is to find other ways to meet their obligations...
...hotel rooms, rewards now come in the form of highly orchestrated fantasies, charitable works and gobs of expensive merchandise. "It's a great time to be a member of these programs," says Randy Petersen, editor and publisher of InsideFlyer magazine, a monthly industry publication. Petersen, the foremost expert on frequent-flyer programs, has been analyzing and publishing information about these programs for the past 12 years. "There's more out there to earn than just free airline tickets," says Petersen, who earns close to a million miles annually from the 50 to 70 business trips he takes each year...
...specified mortgage brokers. "I can get miles by using my Bell Atlantic cell phone and making calls using MCI. What a concept!" says Ira Birns, 35, assistant treasurer with Arrow Electronics in Melville, N.Y. Birns has about 800,000 miles through his memberships in the AAdvantage and Marriott Rewards frequent-traveler programs...
...Steve Graham successfully bid for. Participants can attend in person or phone in or write in their bids ahead of time. Hotel companies offer auctions as well, but InsideFlyer's Petersen says the airline auctions tend to have sexier awards. Take Northwest's: since 1996, WorldPerks, the frequent-flyer program of the airline, based in Minneapolis, Minn., has conducted three bidding sessions--in Detroit, Minneapolis and at Sotheby's in New York City. No minimum bids are required, and the proceedings are open to any of WorldPerks' approximately 17 million members worldwide. Some of the 25,000 people who have...