1. The Barclays JetBlue Premier Mastercard has an increased sign-up bonus of 100,000 TrueBlue points after $5,000 spend in 90 days, and the $499 annual fee is not waived for the first year. They’ve also made negative changes:

    – 25 Tiles award for status is now at the end of your cardmember year
    – Basic economy tickets no longer get BlueHouse lounge access with this card
    – Companion fare statement credits post after travel is completed

    Strange flex by Barclays the week after they lost their AA card portfolio to Citi, but ok.
  2. The Citi AAdvantage Globe Mastercard, which continues to be the stupidest Citi AA card, has an increased bonus of 90,000 AAdvantage miles after $5,000 spend in four months.
  3. Two airline portals have Mother’s Day shopping bonuses, expect more before Sunday:

    – Alaska Atmos Shopping: 1,200 points for $400+ in spend through May 11
    – United MileagePlus Shopping: 2,500 points for $400+ in spend through May 11

    Giftcards.com’s terms and conditions now vary across portals, but none preclude these bonuses.
  4. SoFi Crypto is $120 cash back or 12,000 points at Rakuten for new SoFi Crypto accounts, provided that you buy $30 of crypto. SoFi will also award between $5 and $1,000 of crypto “randomly” for new accounts through June 30.

    SoFi churns are a thing friends.
  5. The AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue program updated its 24-month mileage expiration policy: Now any mileage earned will reset the expiration clock, regardless of source.

Happy Tuesday!

Next SoFi innovation: “randomly” assigned haircuts.

  1. American Express has a 30,000 bonus for new personal checking accounts after receiving at least $7,500 in cumulative direct deposits in the first 90 days. These accounts are unfortunately not churnable.
  2. American Express has new targeted offers for:

    – 10,000 Membership Rewards for adding an authorized user to the personal Gold card and spending $2,000 in six months
    – 15,000 Membership Rewards for adding employee cards to the business Gold or business Platinum and spending $4,000 in three months

    Watch out and make sure you see the offer before applying on the employee card side, the same links also have non-bonused versions.
  3. The Rakuten American Express card has an increased sign-up bonus of $200 after $2,000 spend in 90 days, provided you apply by today (or apply next month when the offer inevitably returns for two days). This card is useful for multiple reasons, including:

    – It’s a third party American Express (which also has AmEx Offers)
    – With the right Bilt status, it’s an uncapped 2x grocery Hyatt card
    – It can also be an uncapped 2x grocery Membership Rewards card

    The +4x on all Rakuten spend looks enticing too until you see its annual $7,000 cap.
  4. Best Western has two stackable promotions in the US, Canada, and the Caribbean, registration required for each:

    – 1,000 bonus points per night between May 11 and September 7
    – 5,000 bonus points per two nights between May 10 and September 7

    You (unfortunately?) also have to stack these with stays at Best Western.
  5. American Express has a 10% transfer bonus to JetBlue TrueBlue through May 11, making the transfer ratio 1,000:880 because #americalovesmath.

Happy Tuesday!

Best Western already held its traditional hotel fire in 2026, so statistically speaking your stays should be fire-free.

You’ve no doubt heard it in 1,000 other places so I won’t belabor the point, but Spirit shutdown over the weekend. I’m sure any of you that had Spirit plans had a backup, and I’m sure you already know to do a chargeback for outstanding fares if you don’t already have an automatic refund. For those keeping score at home, my prediction was wrong: I’d guessed in January that we’d lose them by April, but they held out until May 2.

  1. The Citi AA Platinum Select personal Mastercard has an offer for 80,000 AA miles after $1,000 spend in three months, and the annual fee is waived for the first year. Any random six digit number will work on the application, but I’m partial to 311437 for reasons.
  2. The Chase IHG personal cards have a targeted bonus of 3,000 bonus points on $1,000 spend through June 25.
  3. Staples has two Visa gift card promotions:

    – $200 Visas for $199.05 online
    – $200 Visas fee-free in-store through Saturday

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  4. Chase Ultimate Rewards has two transfer bonuses:

    – 65% to Marriott Bonvoy through May 15
    – 20% to AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue through May 27

    The 65% transfer bonus to Bonvoy brings it into the realm of an ok deal, but still not in the range of a speculative transfer.
  5. Capital One has a 20% transfer bonus to Qantas Frequent Flyer through May 31. This one has great utility for Emirates First redemptions specifically.
  6. Major US airlines have airfare deals for stranded Spirit passengers for travel in the next week or two. Most of these work whether or not you’re actually a stranded Spirit passenger, and some of them are actually sort-of a good deal.

Happy Monday!

The MEAB prediction machine.

  1. Do this now: Check for targeted offers from Hilton. I got 2,000 bonus points per stay, but various offers exist including stacking stays for up to 15,000 points.
  2. Kroger stores have a 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards excluding Amazon and flexible fuel gift cards, and on fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards running through Tuesday, May 12.
  3. The Chase Sapphire Reserve personal card has an increased sign-up bonus of 150,000 Ultimate Rewards after $6,000 spend in three months. This bonus is available via referrals, so use someone’s referral and make their day. If you don’t use a referral, you’re probably using someone else’s affiliate link so be intentional.

    Also, yes this is a good card offer, and no, it’s not the bee’s knees, the cat’s meow, or the chicken’s foot. Yes, I made that last saying up.
  4. The personal Chase IHG cards have increased sign-up bonuses:

    – IHG Premier: 150,000+35,000 points after $3000 spend in three months and $6,000 spend in six months, respectively
    – IHG Traveler: 90,000 points after $2,000 in three months and $4,000 spend in six months, respectively

    These aren’t currently available via referrals but my tea leaves suggest they might be on Monday. Of course, I’m really bad at tea leaves.
  5. H-E-B stores have a $20 H-E-B gift card free with the purchase of a $100 airbnb gift card. Airbnb lets you pool gift cards in a single account.

    Say what you will about H-E-B vs Meijer, but 2026 seems biased toward the former.

And some small news items:

  1. Citi is ending ThankYou Points sharing between different cardholders on May 17. This was previously limited to 100,000 a year times n, where n = (1 + shenanigans).
  2. AirFrance/KLM FlyingBlue has released its May promo awards for travel through October. US cities include almost all of the airline’s international routes, which should tell you something about demand, especially on the lower leg on the K-shaped economy.
  3. American Express has a 20% transfer bonus to Hilton Honors through May, bringing the ratio to 1,000:2,400. It’s not the worst redemption in the world, but that’s like saying that American cheese isn’t the worst cheese in the world: Objectively correct but missing the point.
  4. American Express’s Gold card benefits changed slightly, but it probably doesn’t matter for most of you.

Have a nice weekend friends!

The worst cheese, you ask? American cheese with ketchup.

The State of the Heroes

It’s been a while since we’ve had a new Unsung Hero candidate for two major reasons:

  1. Plenty of would-be candidates are at smaller banks and credit unions, and the volume of the greater internet would likely kill them
  2. Venture capital investment in the FinTech and credit card space has been declining annually every year since 2017, at least in terms of deal volume

Don’t worry though, a decrease in venture capital has been met with increased annual fees and coupon book crap benefits at most major banks. Oh wait, no do worry.

A New Challenger

The Citi Strata Premier is familiar card to most of us I’m sure. After all, other than rebranding the card to have more confusing naming in early 2024 and a few worth-ignoring new category multiplers, nothing significant has changed about the card. It has, however, become a standout because:

  • Its $95 annual fee is 🤏 in today’s world
  • It earns 3x at grocery, gas, and restaurants, uncapped
  • Citi payments can be shenaniganie
  • It doesn’t have any coupon book credits, other than a hotel credit you don’t need to worry about and probably won’t use
  • This card’s approvals are relatively loose
  • Citi’s transfer partners are surprisingly great
  • ThankYou points can be simply cashed out for a penny each

In other words, in a face of $195 annual fees, $25,000 bonus caps, $7 ride share credits, 0.6 cent point cashouts, Bilt cash, and lounges with 90 minute long lines, the Citi Premier card is easy, valuable, and unobtrusive.

Have a nice day friends!

It’s not all Strata Premier roses though: Leaked upcoming monthly Strata coupon.

We’ve seen a wave of shutdowns for heavy hitters from both Chase and American Express since Friday. The two banks shutting down at around the same time seems coincidental, but it’s a double whammy for a few manufactured spenders. We can talk about the reasons behind the shutdowns later, but there’s an important lesson that it’s time to reiterate:

Burn your points early and often. When you’re shutdown, you may lose them altogether.

I can only assume that you don’t want to be the guy stuck with 80 million Membership Rewards that were just confiscated, but you know what they say about when you assume.

Good luck out there!

I guess it could always be worse.

  1. Wells Fargo added Cathay Pacific’s Asia Miles as a 1:1 transfer partner, which is probably the last nail needed to secure Wells Fargo as a valuable bank currency.

    For those keeping track at home, American Express lowered their transfer ratio for Cathay Pacific from 1:1 to 1:0.8 just 59 days ago. Are we about to enter the Wells Fargo era of churning?
  2. On Friday, Bilt will have a transfer bonus between 40% and 100% to British Airways, Iberia, and Aer Lingus Avios. The bonus you’ll get depends on your Bilt status and whether or not you’re willing to spend Bilt cash, and you’ve still probably got today to earn points and have them post in time to transfer.

    In case you’re wondering if Bilt devalued the brightest spot of their dim program: Yes, they have. They’ve limited the transfer bonus to the first 100,000 miles.

Happy Tuesday friends!

If you don’t have a transferrable points Wells Fargo credit card yet, don’t worry you actually might.

  1. Air Canada Aeroplan will devalue in June. The churnosphere is largely blaming this on rising oil prices which I think is a contributing factor, but I believe a bigger factor is United exerting pressure on its partners for price parity, one such datapoint is here. The changes:

    – Atlantic business redemptions rising 5,000 – 10,000 miles on average
    – Atlantic first redemptions rising 10,000 miles
    – Pacific business redemptions rising 2,500 – 10,000 miles on average
    – Pacific first redemptions rising 10,000 miles

    Some of the edge cases have prices going down, and some have higher than 10,000 mile increases too.
  2. Avianca LifeMiles also devalued over the weekend:

    – Some partner business redemptions rising 15%
    – Some partner economy redemptions rising 21%

    Again, this honestly reeks of United.
  3. The generic Blue Business Plus and Blue Business Cash links currently have no-lifetime language (NLL) targeted offers:

    – Blue Business Plus: 75,000 Membership Rewards after $6,000 spend in four months
    – Blue Business Cash. $750 after $6,000 spend in four months

    Both cards have no annual fee, and these offers are not available via referrals.
  4. Hyatt’s May 20th category changes have been announced, and their point devaluation is happening on the same date. I hope it goes without saying, but book speculative stays now.
  5. Stop & Shop, Giant, and Martins have 10x points on Lowes cards through Thursday. Giant Food stores on the other hand are only earning 6x because the corporate overlords hate Maryland, I can only assume because one of the corporate executives has a shellfish allergy.
  6. Staples stores have fee-free $200 Mastercard gift cards through Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward / BlackHawk Network gift cards.
  7. The Delta SkyMiles shopping portal has a promotion for 500 bonus miles with $100+ in purchases at giftcards.com, or I guess if you’re basic any other store on the portal works too.

Happy Monday!

Souvenir button available at Giant Food regional corporate headquarters.