Gamer’s Monday

1. The Barclays AAdvantage Aviator Mastercard has a heightened sign up bonus of 70,000 AAdvantage miles after a single purchase in 90 days. The $99 annual fee is not waived for the first year.
   
   This card is useful beyond the sign-up bonus because it can eventually be product changed into the AAdvantage Silver card, but only after a year thanks to the CARD act.
   
2. Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, and other Just4U stores have 10x points on Zillions and Zillions Zift cards through Saturday. On Saturday when the “surprise” weekend gift card 4x event is released, you’ll get 12x. (Spoiler alert to Safeway management: Surprises that happen reliably every week with the same offer and same duration cease to be surprises at some point.)
   
3. Meijer MPerks has a bonus of 10,000 points with the purchase of a $150+ Visa or Mastercard gift card through November 9, limit one per account.
   
   Meijer sells both Pathward and Sunrise gift cards.
   
4. Giftcards.com has Gift of College gift cards available with no purchase fee. You might earn 2% back in giftcards.com rewards after registering for their program through the end of October, though Gift of College is technically excluded from that program. You will earn portal cash back if you’re sly. Always be probing, Gift of College has been ripe for weirdness in the past but eventually the money does need to end up in a 529 account.
   
5. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 or more in Visa gift cards through Saturday, limit 10. For best results:
   
   – Link your credit cards to Dosh
   – Buy in even multiples of $300
   – Look for lower fee variants if you know how to liquidate them
   
   These are Pathward gift cards.
   
6. Chase Ultimate Rewards has a heightened redemption for Apple products at a rate of 1.5 cents per point for the Sapphire Reserve or 1.25 cents per point for the Sapphire Preferred or Ink Business Preferred cards (or less on other, stupider cards). The promotion runs through the end of November.
   
   These rates beat regular Pay-Yourself-Back rates, especially if you’re in the reselling game.
   
7. There are two small business merchant processing sign-up bonuses:
   
   – Bank of America $1,000 after $100,000 processed in 90 days
   – US Bank $1,000 offer after accepting charges monthly for three months
   
   Since we’re MEABers around here, let’s caution a few items: (1) running more than a few gift cards will almost certainly get your account shut down and banned from the processor which could have repercussions on future real businesses; (2) running your own credit cards will almost certainly get your credit cards shut down, sometimes even same-day with banks like AmEx; and (3) you’ll get a 1099 for payments processed. So always be probing, but know when a fence is electrified too, and this one is.
   
   My advice is to keep these accounts completely above board if you’re going for the bonus. If you don’t have a real business for merchant processing, consider selling a few things on Facebook Marketplace. Combine with the previous item for extra #flair.

Happy Monday!

Stupider cards, prolly.