Year: 2020

Now that you’re full of can-shaped “cranberry sauce”, don’t forget to clean-up a few things for November before it’s too late:

  • Use PirateShip.com to load $20 credit to your account (AmEx Business Platinum cards’ shipping credit)
  • Prepay $20 to your cell phone bill (all AmEx Platinum cards’ cell phone credit)
  • Load $20 to your iTunes balance (AmEx Personal cards’ streaming credit)
  • Spin up an Uber burner for December if you need to (if you have an Uber Cash balance)
  • Use up any Chase Sapphire Reserve $1,000 5x grocery spend
  • Call for a retention offer on any credit cards that had their annual fee post this month
Woman falling down while loading a washing machine
AmEx cardholder using the monthly dishwashing credit

Now is probably the best time of the year to dip into reselling because the volume is, as Gwen Stefani would say, B-A-N-A-N-A-S. If you’re online or out-and-about and you see any of the following:

  • Nintendo Switch bundle with Mario Kart and 3 Months Switch Online
  • Xbox Series X
  • Playstation 5

… then buy one, two, or as many as you feel comfortable with. (My brother loves to say “Buy now, think later!” — I strongly disagree, but it might be true in this singular case.) List them on Facebook Marketplace or OfferUp and you’re almost guaranteed to make $50-$300 for each item, plus card spend, portal cash-back, dosh cash, etc.

If reselling isn’t for you, don’t stress, just play your new console and eat yo’ turkey. Happy Thanksgiving!

Gwen Stefani surrounded by a marching band holding giant bananas. Image credit: Ronin 47/London Entertainment/SplashNews.com
Gwen Stefani resells bananas.
Image credit: Ronin 47/London Entertainment/SplashNews.com

Register your Citi credit cards for 5% off of online spend, up to $25.00 per card through Monday, November 30. Yes, this works using a few online MS methods, be creative with it; if you’re not part of that game though, it’ll work on an Amazon gift card to reload your balance. Don’t forget your sock-drawer cards too, like my stupid AT&T Access [Less] card.

Southwest is offering a nationwide fare sale, and it doesn’t exclude Hawaii. Book by Thursday night, and use any schedule change hacks you may know of to goose the deal.

Virgin Atlantic is offering some excellent fares on round-trip business tickets originating in Europe (half off in many cases). This applies to both cash and award tickets, but don’t bother on the award tickets because the surcharges (YQ) are kinda ridic. If you’re US based like me, sandwich one of these fares in between two award tickets and turn it into two different trips.

A man and a seal passed out on the beach.
Recovering from a Southwest flight to Hawaii

If you’re into AA status, AA hasn’t shut you down yet, and you have any MasterCard that’s a World Elite MasterCard (like the Citi Double Cash), there’s a super-easy way to earn AA status:

  • Sign up for the MasterCard Travel service
  • Book two round-trip flights (at least one domestic) for Gold
  • Book two round-trip flights (international) for Platinum

The travel has to be completed by March 31, 2021 to qualify. What’s the rub? There’s always a rub. You have to book the flights through the MasterCard Travel concierge, I believe over the phone. There’s another rub: you’ll be flying American Airlines, for low level status.

As far as I know, this works for anyone with an AA account, but check to make sure you see the offer on the travel service home page first the details still match (and read the T&C to make sure they haven’t changed something).

Woman with revolver aimed at her head in front of a giant plate of red goo.
Playing russian roulette with AA for gooey red status.
Image credit: Ars Electronica

Until recently, you could bank monthly AmEx Uber Credits to your Uber Cash balance by using an accidental or purposeful cancel of a ride under certain conditions. That stopped working, which means you’ve currently got to use your Uber Credits as AmEx intended.

There’s a rub though, both Uber and Uber Eats are supposed to draw from your monthly expiring AmEx Uber Credit before they draw down your banked Uber Cash, but it isn’t working that way on Uber Eats. Instead, your banked cash is used and your credit stays put, ready to expire at the end of the month. If you’re one of the four people out there taking actual Uber rides it still works like it’s supposed to, but if you’re like everyone else, you’d probably rather use it on Uber Eats and you can’t with an Uber Cash balance.

Sam at Milenomics proposes a workaround: Spin up a second Uber account, de-link your AmEx Uber Credit cards from your primary account, and link them to the secondary account. That way, at least next month you’ll have those credits on an account without Uber Cash.

A trash panda (raccoon in a trash can).
Trash panda waiting on your non-free Uber Eats waste.

If you’ve got a Chase Freedom or Freedom Unlimited credit card, the 5x bonus category for Q4 is PayPal, and something called a “Walmart”. Right now, a really easy way to get some of the $1,500 spend out of the way is to buy discounted gift cards at PayPal Digital Gifts and sell them via a reputable gift card broker at or above cost (I prefer the ones that buy instantly, not the ones that operate on consignment). A few examples:

  • Adidas, buy at 80%, sell at 81%
  • Michaels, buy at 80%, sell at 80%
  • Lowes, buy at 90%, sell at 90%
  • DSW, buy at 80%, sell at 80%

Through the holidays but especially around Black Friday, check here for the current offerings and knock that spend out.

You know that you can have both a personal and a business PayPal account, right? And if you have multiple businesses, maybe more (but keep it legit, PayPal can be shutdown happy). Limits are usually 2 of each brand per account, so things scale easily.

Bent, discarded happy gift card.
This gift card isn’t happy, it’s lying.

There are some ridiculous offers out there thanks to the current economic situation, but let me call out one in particular: JetBlue 100,000 points after spending $6,000 in a year. If you’re ballsy, go for both a personal and a business version of the card for 200,000 miles.

I still have left-over B6 miles from when you could get 3x on Amazon purchases, so I’m not interested. Also, B6 only flies direct to 3 destinations from my home airport, and 2 of those three destinations are transcon red-eyes, so I’m really not interested. Finally, watch out for B6 playing shenanigans on you — point values drop as ticket price increases, so they only work well when the tickets are mostly cheap.

The second part of the double? Citi AA Business 65,000 miles after $4,000 spend in four months. I know what you’re going to say:

  • Citi?
  • AA?
  • Are you masochist?
  • So what?

Ok, all of your questions are valid. The answer to all of them: apparently Citi is much, much less sensitive to shenanigans and credit line cycling on business cards and this is possibly their best business card offer. So if you don’t have a Citi business card, this could be a decent choice.

Borges vv American Airlines court filing
With Citi & AA, you may end up in court.

There are some great and easy shopping portal bonuses for you and everyone in your household with a frequent flyer account:

  • Alaska: Spend $500, earn 1,500 bonus miles
  • American: Spend $1,000, earn 4,000 bonus miles
  • Southwest: Spend $1,000, earn 3,500 bonus miles
  • United: They suck badly, don’t bother. But, spend $1,000, earn 5,000 bonus miles

Here’s the thing though — giftcards.com awards portal bonuses on virtual Visa and MasterCards, and those can be used with several from-home MS techniques easily. You maybe surprised to find that the merchant coding gives bonus categories on certain credit cards when you buy the virtual gift cards (trust me on that one).

United Airlines Gate Agent after asking to switch seats