There have been theories floating around the community for a couple of years regarding how many American Express credit cards (not to be confused with charge cards like the Gold, Platinum, and Green) a single person can have. Depending on who you ask or where you look, you’ll find some consensus at a limit of either four or five.
Martin Luther King holiday is a strange holiday in the western US; as far as I can tell it’s not treated with the same deference here as compared to the east, and especially the southeast. I bring this up because I wanted to offer wishes for a nice holiday weekend — but for some, especially in the west, it’s not a holiday at many employers, so “gee, sorry your mom blew up, Ricky” I guess.
1.Merrill will pay you from $100 to $1,000 to move your assets, even in a retirement account, over to them and hold it there for 6 months. Unless all of your wealth is in a 401k held at your current employer, you can probably move it to Merrill easily without changing your holdings or positions. It’s also a lower total asset move than normal bonuses of this size.
2.Chase will pay you $2,000 to upgrade your account to a Chase Private Client account, which gives you a debit card that says “Chase Private Client” as the main perk (BlueCat mentions that the Arts & Culture program is a big benefit too). This one has a minimum balance of $250,000 held for 90 days though, so the barrier to entry is higher than the Merrill deal. As with that deal, you can move retirement accounts, investment accounts, or other banking system assets. This doesn’t have to be a checking account transfer.
F’up 1: The Staples fee free $200 Visa gift card Zombie deal came back from the dead again, because it’s a Zombie and that’s what Zombie’s do. It’s still limit 5, and you should still buy with a Chase Ink Cash or similar 5x office supply card (some AmEx Business Platinums should work for 5x too, if you’ve added the offer.)
F’up 2: Alaska Airlines decided it wanted to be part of the fun we had in Wednesday’s Triple, but it decided too late. You can earn $1,000 Alaska miles by spending $300 through their shopping portal. As with before, this bonus isn’t amazing so just keep it in mind for buying you’re already doing.
What’s the first thing you think of when you think of Walgreens? If you said slightly smelly poorly-lit pharmacies with aisles full of stale clearance candy from the last major holiday and dubious ties to Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes, then you’re wrong. The right answer is of course the Walgreens Prepaid Debit card. Ok, so the card isn’t available yet, but may I suggest that you put in on your radar and sign up for it the day it is?
MS Hint: There are a few prepaid debit cards out there that let you play shenanigans to fund them, an obvious example being BlueBird. But, there are others that aren’t as well known too. Look for them and see what you can do. This Walgreens one is likely to be a great tool for manufactured spend.
This is probably the most directly topical picture I’ve ever put in a post. I’m not sure how I feel about it.
Usually I’d buy Visa or MasterCard Gift Cards from GiftCards.com to hit these bonuses, but they’re kinda small right now so just keep the bonuses in mind for everything else you’re doing. For example, if you’re using buyer’s groups, these could work for Dell or BestBuy. Hint: There is a play at Sam’s club that should work for these too.
2. Discover is offering a $10 statement credit for paying your phone bill 3 times, (I paid $1.00, $1.01, and $1.02, all back to back). It may be targeted, check for an email with the subject “Earn a $10 statement credit for paying your phone bill” or “Don’t forget your $10 statement credit offer”.
3. If you have any international travel coming up in the next couple of months, call a clinic or hospital in the foreign country you’ll be in and get a COVID-19 test scheduled now. As of January 26, the US will require that you have a negative test within 72 hours to reenter the country, citizens included and if you don’t book soon, you may not be able to get an appointment.
I think we got 3 today, right? Honestly, #3 felt over-covered in the blogosphere, but it’s important enough that it bears mentioning here so you don’t get trapped while trying to get home.
SoFi is offering $25 in round-ups for January. For me, this took about 12 seconds to take advantage of, which really consisted of re-enabling my SoFi debit card for Amazon and Xfinity tiny payments in debbit, a free program that you run on your own computer. If you haven’t sent up debbit yet, it might be a good time. I realize $25 isn’t that exciting, but you set debbit up once and keep taking advantage of deals like this and the cash adds up to something substantial.
Yeah, $25 is small potatoes, but $25 buys a lot of small potatoes.
I know most of you use credit cards, shopping portals, points, and gift cards as part of your overall travel hacking strategy. Maybe my sample size is just too small, but I don’t really know of anybody including cell phone burners in that strategy regularly, and I think that’s a mistake. All you need to start with cell phone burners is an unlocked phone and some cheap SIM cards. I’m guessing a lot of you probably have an old, cracked-screen unlocked phone already in your junk drawer so you don’t even need to use your main phone for SIM swapping.
Here’s why cell phone burner numbers are useful to a travel hacker:
Uber Eats gives new accounts $25 off of orders, and $10 off for referrers. (A new account really means a new phone number).
DoorDash gives new accounts 3x$10 off of orders, and $15 off for referrers. (Remember, new account really means new phone number).
CashApp gives new accounts $5 and the referrer $5, but more importantly, you have more access to some of the excellent CashApp boosts. (New account = new phone number, blah blah blah.)
Fluz gives 3×35% off vouchers for gift cards to new accounts, and 1 voucher to the referrer. The referrer also gets a very small percentage of the commission on gift cards purchased by accounts that they referred.
Deals come up all the time that require an existing number. When you’ve got an existing number that you don’t use, you can it take advantage of that right away without affecting your main phone number. A recent but not representative example of this deal was buying 10 Xfinity iPhone SEs for $15/mo total ($1.50/phone). Lots of times, the deals only need a single phone number for port-in or trade-up, they’re not all this complex.
Are you banned by a store or an airline? Using a name variation, address variation, and a new phone number, say from a burner, will usually get you jump-started and back in the game.
There are always deals like the above coming up, and having burners lets you take advantage of them at scale.
Here’s why I’m writing this today: BestBuy and Target are both selling Ting SIM cards with two months worth of credits for $0.99. With each SIM card, you can get a new burner number. You don’t have to use them right away either; you can buy a couple now and put them in your sock drawer for when you need them or want to use them in the future.
When you set up the Ting SIM card, give them a Citi Virtual Account Number card or similar that expires before they try to start billing you for the third month so you don’t have to remember to cancel. If the number is useful, you can keep it for $5 per month by porting it to Tello. (Don’t forget to use a portal for $10+ back from Tello when you port.) I’m sure there are other ways to keep a phone number for even cheaper, but I haven’t needed to find them.
My suggestion to you: Buy least two of these sim cards for $1.98 out of pocket, then incorporate them into your travel hacking at your leisure.
One man’s crisis is another man’s opportunity for a burner.
[Update: AmEx fixed this.] American Express Business Platinum cards get $100 in credits to spend at Dell every 6 months, but right now they seem to be reimbursing at the 2020-MVI rate of $200 every 6 months. If you have one of these cards, I’d buy $200 in XBox GCs ($50 cards move the fastest) and sell at 83% instantly or sell at a higher rate if you wait a few days. Don’t forget to use a portal for extra cash back or for miles. Both “Dell Consumer” and “Dell Business” work for portal bonuses in my experience.
Check Amazon for 40% up to $40 savings off when you use Membership Rewards points at checkout, but only use 1 point, the redemption rate is terrible other than this offer. If you don’t have organic spend, buy a 3rd party gift card for later use or resale. BestBuy is my normal go-to but it won’t move at higher rates until next month so keep that in mind, or liquidate today at around 97.5%.
I wish $200 in Dell credits knocked my top-hat off.
