Weekend News Dump

1. Staples has fee free $200 Mastercard gift cards starting Sunday and running through the following Saturday, limit five per transaction.
   
   These are Metabank Pathward gift cards, so have a liquidation plan in place.
   
2. The Barclays Lufthansa Miles & More Mastercard credit card has an 80,000 mile sign-up bonus after $3,000 in spend in 90 days. The card sucks for ongoing spend at 1x and isn’t worth your time unless you want easy access to Swiss Air First Class. For that, you’ll need 182,000 miles each way for the US and Europe and Miles & More status, either via match or direct earn. So, it’s actually quite useful for aspirational travel but otherwise skip it.
   
   Don’t forget that it’s possible to clown around with Barclays to an extent. (Thanks to DoC)
   
3. Barclays has two other increased sign-up bonuses which have more general applicability:
   
   – JetBlue Plus 75,000 bonus miles after $1,000 spend in 90 days
   – Hawaiian 70,000 bonus miles after $2,000 spend in 90 days
   
   If you have existing Barclays cards, it’s best to ramp up spending for a few months on them in anticipation of applying for new cards.
   
4. The Target Redcard $40 online plus $40 in-store churnable sign-up bonus has died. The new iterations are for $50 off either online or in-store but not both, and churning restrictions have increased to between 60 and 90 days.
   
   There’s one of the new, $50 promotions going through August 19 for both the credit and the debit card, and there might be utility in a $50 RedCard credit card sign-up bonus.
   
5. Do this now: Sign-in to your Marriott account and then check your promotions page for targeted Q3 promotions. We’ve seen:
   
   – 6,000 bonus points after two stays, 7,500 more points after three, and 9,000 more points after four stays
   – 7,500 bonus points after a single stay and 15,000 more points after a second stay
   – 3,000 bonus points for your fist stay, 2,000 more for your second, and 5,000 more for your third
   – 2,000 bonus points after a single stay that includes a Friday or Saturday night, and 3,000 more points after another
   
   These are for stays through November 15. (Thanks to SideshowBob233 and DDG)

The spending ramp for easy Barlcays card approvals.