Month: June 2023

  1. Southwest’s schedule opens through January 7, 2024 today. This booking window includes Thanksgiving and Christmas travel and while now might not be the absolute cheapest time to book travel around those holidays, it probably is very close and it’s also the time where you’re most likely to be impacted by a schedule change that lets you book into anything else ± 2 weeks between the same city pairs. (Thanks to Brian M)
  2. In addition to the relatively lucrative Citi ThankYou Point to Avois transfer bonus, there’s a 25% ThankYou Point transfer bonus to Avianca LifeMiles through June 30. LifeMiles are even more (relatively) valuable since the recent United devaluations. Sweet spots:

    – US to and from South America in business class for 50,000 points
    – East coast to Lisbon in business class for 35,000 miles
    – East cost to Zurich in coach for 16,500 miles
    – To or from Europe in business class while tacking a coach leg onto the end
    – Economy flights to or from the Caribbean for 12,500 miles each way
    – Short haul domestic US economy for 7,500 miles each way

    This promotion is bonused on the LifeMiles side, not on the ThankYou Points side.
  3. Rakuten’s in-store card linked program has 3x at Food Lion stores, and last I checked Food Lion sells plenty of things that a manufactured spender may like. If you’re lucky maybe something extra cool will shake out of this. This promotion needs to be re-added to your account an hour after each transaction to keep going.

Happy Thursday!

Pictured: Another “Thursday Triple” as seen as a carry-on on a Southwest holiday flight from Food Lion territory.

  1. Kroger has a 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercards in-store running today through June 20, a full two weeks.

    While the fuel points and third party gift card resale markets have been hovering around a local maxima, I expect that by June 20th rates will have fallen. As usual if your fuel points broker isn’t assuming liability quickly after purchase then you should probably look for another broker.
  2. Southwest has a 20% off fare sale to and from DEN and COS for travel though November 1 (with a few date caveats) with promo code SCORE20.

    DEN is a Southwest hub, so you could also consider booking a connection through DEN on two separate tickets which might price out better with the promo code than a single booking without. Of course having two separate tickets could be its own set of headaches. (Thanks to Brian M)
  3. While it’s always possible to forcibly bypass an American Express pop-up with shady tactics, or almost always possible to bypass one with co-branded spend, sometimes it’s nice to play it straight. To that end, there are Hilton links that apparently bypass the pop-up for everyone who’s tried at hilton.com/SeekingSummer.

    Which is my favorite offer, asked no one? The business card for its gas station bonus category, low annual fee, ability to earn three free-night certificates in the first year, churnability, and 150,000 point sign-up bonus.
  4. AA has updated their upgrade policy: Starting June 9, all elites are eligible for upgrades on award tickets including a single companion. Priority is changing slightly too, with tier status first and rolling average of the last year’s earned Loyalty Points second as the main factors for upgrade order; this of course means that you can manufacture-spend your way to a higher position on the upgrade list.
  5. Smart and Final stores have $20 off of a grocery purchase when buying any third party gift card except Tracphone or NET10 cards, limit one per transaction. I’ve linked to their digital weekly ad, but even there the print is so small that I’ll be surprised if you can read it even with movie-grade CIA photo enhancement technology.

A preview of next week’s Smart and Final ad. They solved the small print problem, but, uh — keep working on it guys.

Bank of America has increased the Premium Rewards card’s sign up bonus to 75,000 points after $5,000 in spend in 90 days. This $550 annual fee card is normally a sleeper in the community but should be on your radar for the right use cases, especially if you have Preferred Rewards because:

  • You get an easily gameable $300 travel credit every calendar year, for $600 total per card member year
  • You get a $150 statement credit per calendar year for various retailers including those with a legacy dating back to Han’s Deli, for a total of $300 per card member year
  • With top tier preferred rewards, this is a 2.625x everywhere Visa
  • You can probably downgrade this card within the first year for a prorated annual fee refund without repercussion, but don’t do it until you’ve gotten your 2024 credits
  • If you book paid airfare (lol, I know) with points, you get a 20% uplift pushing their value from 1.0 to 1.2 cents per point

If you don’t have Preferred Rewards, getting it in conjunction with a $750 sign up bonus brokerage transfer to Merrill May make sense too. Caveat emptor: Occasionally Merrill accounts won’t properly link to Preferred Rewards status and will require manual intervention with Merrill.

If you’re going to apply for this card, maybe grab a bunch of other BoA cards too. Between the Merrill Bonus and this one, you’re looking at $750+750+600+300-550 = $1,850 in value, and even more with Bank of America application shenanigans, uplift, or downgrades.

Good luck!

Being sad after you have to call Merrill to get your accounts linked.

Hopefully you’re recovering from any Friday afternoon RobinHood induced hangovers that may have found their way into your accounts (more to come later). To help, focus on the following:

  1. American Express has an offer for $200 back on $1,000 in spend or more with AirFrance/KLM. This one is an easy base-hit with correlation breaking, no phone calls needed; as usual you could instead just be basic and actually book airfare and fly as intended. (Thanks to hwplainview41)
  2. Giftcards.com has another promotion code for 5% off the total purchase price of Visa e-gift cards: YAYSUMMER.

    I’m still seeing 4% back on the Capital One Shopping mobile app and purchases are tracking each time for me. Limits are $2,000 per rolling 48 hours, and $600 per order, both per email address. Don’t log in for the promo code to apply.
  3. On Friday we discussed an increased sign-up bonus for a few Barclays cards, and on Saturday a link surfaced for an even better version of the Hawaiian card sign-up bonus: 70,000 miles with only a single purchase of any size. (Thanks to DoC)
  4. The Delta SkyMiles portal has a rare spend bonus: 500 miles on purchases summing to $100 or more through June 9.
  5. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have a gift card promotion for $15 or $10 off of $300 or more in Mastercard gift cards. Watch out: normally this is a negative cost deal with $15 back, but in some regions it may be $10; with the reduced payout and $6.95 purchase fees you’re looking at $403.90 for $400 in gift cards (or $303.90 for $300 in gift cards if you hate maximizing things).

    These are Pathward gift cards so make sure you can liquidate before you buy a bunch. There are still methods out there that work, always be probing.
  6. Meijer stores have $25 worth of points back on $250 or more in third party gift cards other than Amazon. Scale with multiple MPerks accounts. (Thanks to GCG)

Happy Monday!

The source of Friday afternoon’s sadness.

  1. Barclays has a few increased co-brand sign-up bonuses:

    – The Barclays AAdvantage Aviator card has a bonus of 70,000 AA miles after making a purchase and paying the $99 annual fee within 90 days of card opening. This card is doubly interesting because on day 366, you can convert it to a Barclays Aviator Silver card which is only available by product change and offers two companion tickets and $25 per day in AA inflight food and beverage credits.

    – The Barclays Hawaiian Airlines card has 70,000 Hawaiian miles after spending $2,000 in 90 days. You don’t get a backdoor conversion to a cooler card after a year though so close it on the anniversary.

    If you apply for both of these on the same calendar day Barclays will combine the credit pull, though both will eventually appear on your credit report and affect 5/24 individually. Aren’t sure if you’re eligible for a bonus? Barclays makes it easy – if you’re approved you’ll get the bonus after hitting the minimum spend regardless of the language in the application; I can only assume it’s this way because Barclays backend tech is still catching up to Web 1.0 and they’ve just migrated to NCSA Mosaic.
  2. There’s a 30% transfer bonus from ThankYou Points to Qatar Avios through June 30, which is actually a great option for several travel hacks:

    – AA or Iberia business class to and from Europe for 70,000 Avios
    – Qatar business class to and from Doha, Qatar for 70,000 Avois
    – Royal Air Maroc business class to and from Morocco for 70,000 Avios
    – Transferring your Qatar Avios to British Airways Avios and booking AA short-haul domestic for as little as 7,500 Avios

    I don’t like pooling points in a particular program and wouldn’t pool much at any airline, but it’s not hard to beat the alternative 1 cent per point ThankYou Point cash-out with Qatar Avios. (Thanks to TheSultan1)
  3. IHG Hotels now allow confirmed suite upgrades on award stays. These are available as elite choice benefits and availability opens at 14 days prior to the stay.

Have a nice weekend!

Bet you didn’t know you could use Avios to book travel on AA to Lubbock, TX to see Prairie Dog Town. Yes, this is real and it actually exists.

  1. Kroger is having another 4x fuel points promotion on third party gift cards and fixed value Visa and Mastercard gift cards Friday through Sunday.

    – Digital coupon for third party gift cards
    – Digital coupon for fixed value Visa and Mastercards

    The fuel points market isn’t as high as it was in the roaring 2021s, but it continues to adapt and recover nicely. Good fuel points brokers are assuming shutdown risk immediately or within 24 hours, so choose wisely my friends. (Thanks to GCG)
  2. I don’t cover things that I think aren’t worth your time, which is why you won’t see anything about $2,500 sign-up bonus for a bank account that requires $200,000 in new funds to be locked up for 90 days and pays 0.15% in interest; it just doesn’t make sense to waste time reading about something like that when you can easily earn 4-6% on those funds with existing savings or money market accounts.

    This philosophy means I almost never talk about Bilt, but I’m going to make an exception today because 2x everywhere for Hyatt points is definitely above the line: The first of every month is “rent day”, and you earn 2x on general spend on the Bilt Mastercard for up to $10,000 on rent day. Unfortunately today doesn’t coincide with the Kroger 4x promotion, but I guess you can’t win ’em all.
  3. Do this now: Register for Wyndham’s summer promotion for stays through September 5 booked by August 31:

    – 5,000 bonus points on two night stays
    – 10,000 bonus points on three night stays
    – 15,000 bonus points on four night stays (or longer)

    Wyndham cardholders can earn a bonus twice, non-card holders once.
  4. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card, once a Sears co-branded card, has a new targeted spending bonus:

    – 90,000 Shop Your Way points for $300 in travel spend, once per month for each month between June and December for a total of 630,000 points (!)

    Sears famously didn’t win them all either. (Thanks to birt)

Sears showing that you can’t win them all in the most Sears way possible. (Thanks to Kyle for the picture)