1. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards Mastercard, the Adam Driver of credit cards and the original MEAB Unsung Hero, has sent new rounds of targeted spending bonuses through both email and USPS. Offers reported:

    – $50 back on $750 or more in online spend through April 14 (Ben)
    – 100,000 bonus points on $750 or more in online spend through April 14 (Me)
    – 90,000 bonus points on $300 or more in travel spend once a month for 10 months (FlashStash)
    – $60 back on six or more transactions of $50 per month once a month for three months (FlashStash)

    Clearly the Shop Your Way Rewards program isn’t worried about a run on the bank, probably because that already happened to them years ago with Sears and they’re still around.
  2. Do this now: Activate Q2 5% cash back categories for various cards:

    Chase Freedom: Lowes, Whole Foods, and Amazon, all of which sell gift cards
    Discover: Restaurants and wholesale clubs, the latter of which sells gift cards
    Citi Dividend: Drug stores and grocery stores, both of which sell gift cards
    US Bank Cash+: You choose, I cheat and use utilities, but electronics and department stores are good choices for the gift card inclined

    Remember there are multiple gift card plays including cashing out Visa and Mastercard gift cards or selling third party gift cards to brokers.
  3. Kroger online has 5% off of Visa and Mastercard gift cards through March 27 using promo code MADNESS23. These will earn fuel points too, but won’t code as grocery unfortunately.

I guess it’s time for the Membership Rewards program to learn something from SYWR? Nah, bad idea.