Year: 2023

Introduction

There are multiple grey markets for frequent flyer miles and bank points, and just like any other market, you’ll find that different items have different prices (shocker, I know).

Obviously you can use this to your advantage in myriad ways, but let’s talk about what I’d call the travel hacker equivalent of the bull call spread in the derivates market:

The Goal

Let’s say you need to book an AA flight with 7,500 British Airways Avios and you’ve got Ultimate Rewards points ready to go. Of course you could transfer Ultimate Rewards to Avios directly, but that’s not always the best option.

Running the Spread

To illustrate, let’s assume a few spot prices for miles:

  • Ultimate Rewards: 1.27 cents per point
  • ThankYou Points: 1.15 cents per point
  • Membership Rewards: 1.18 cents per point

With those prices in mind, here’s the play:

  • Sell 7,500 Ultimate Rewards at 1.27 cents per point (earn: $95.25)
  • Buy 7,500 Membership Rewards at 1.18 cents per point (pay: $88.50)
  • Transfer the Membership Rewards to British Airways and keep the spread ($6.75)

Is this with your time and the risk for earning enough to buy a decked out Starbucks latte? Almost certainly not. But if you’re talking the number of points needed for La Premier tickets for a couple or JAL F tickets for a family instead of a measly 7,500 Avios, the difference can be significant and may be enough to move the needle.

Caveats

There are potential pitfalls here: banks don’t want you buying and selling points, markets aren’t always fully liquid, and you have counterparty risk. You’re all adults though right? Just make sure those risks are priced-in should you decide to run the spread.

Happy Wednesday!

A guide to a modestly priced Starbucks latte, pre-inflation.

  1. Meijer stores have a bonus 10,000 MPerks points with $100 or more in Happy, Choice, or One4All gift cards through Saturday, limit one per MPerks account. Many of these can be swapped to high resale value brands like Home Depot or BestBuy. In case you don’t want the Meijer gift card, save a few of them and buy electronics for a buyer’s group or to sell on Facebook Marketplace. (Thanks to GCG, and thanks to Nuhertz)
  2. Do this now: Register for Hyatt’s summer promotion, double points on properties outside of the Americas from July 1 through September 15. Bonus earning starts on the second stay.
  3. Albertsons, Safeway, and Vons stores have $15 off of your next purchase when you buy a $75 gift card in multiple brands starting tomorrow and running through Tuesday of next week. The interesting brands for manufactured spend are Lowes, Macys, and Arby’s. Ok, ok, I’m lying about one of those, can you guess which?

    Also, apropos of nothing Safeway gift cards are available at Amazon after an extended absence so let the games begin. (Thanks to DoC)

I’ve helpfully shared this Arby’s marketing photo to remind you about what you’ve been missing.

  1. Citi ThankYou points has a 15% transfer bonus to Cathay Pacific AsiaMiles through July 22. Sweet spots:

    – JAL award flight availability before most partners can see the award space
    – Trips with up to five (!) stopovers and 2 open-jaws
    – Qatar Q-Suites for 75,000 miles each way
    – East coast to Europe in business class for 50,000 miles each way
  2. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards Card has been sending targeted offers for online spend through July 14. In my experience online spend is the same as a “card not present” transaction, so it’s easy to hit. Offers:

    -$50 statement credit with $750 spend
    – $30 statement credit with $500 spend
    – 150,000 Shop Your Way Rewards Points with $500 spend
    – 225,000 Shop Your Way Rewards Points with $750 spend

    These stack with other grocery, gas, and restaurant offers that are running concurrently. Also, yes it’s possible to knock some or all of those out online.
  3. Data points have been piling up for months that it’s possible to get unbanned from Citi. The key? Clean up that credit report.

Happy Monday!

Citi’s new “Citi Bits” cereal looks and tastes exactly as bad as you’d expect.

  1. The American Express Delta personal and business cards both have increased offers, but the business ones are the juicier versions and don’t affect 5/24:

    – Business Gold: 70,000 SkyMiles after $3,000 spend in three months
    – Business Platinum: 90,000 SkyMiles after $4,000 spend in three months
    – Business Reserve: 100,000 SkyMiles after $6,000 spend in three months

    Yes, Delta SkyMiles can suck, and yes, they can be great too. Don’t use them for business class out of the US and you’ll probably get decent value, and worst case co-brand cardholders can use pay with miles for a floor of 1 cent per mile.
  2. Staples continues the endless stream of office supply store gift card deals with fee-free $200 Mastercard gift cards starting Sunday and running through Saturday of next week, limit eight per transaction.

    Call me a rebel but I prefer the Mastercards, even if they’re issued by Pathward like these.
  3. There’s a 20% Ultimate Rewards transfer bonus to Air Canada Aeroplan through July 31. Aeroplan is now arguably the best Chase airline transfer partner for international trips even without the bonus, so the 20% is icing on the cake.

    I wouldn’t transfer speculatively though: you’ve got a month and a half to transfer and book trips, and if that doesn’t work out another bonus will show up soon enough.
  4. The Chase IHG Business card has a sign-up bonus of 165,000 points after spending $3,000 in the first three months. I know some of y’all like the recently increased Chase Marriott bonus offers, but I’d take this $99 annual fee card and bonus over those any day. Now we just need to lobby to bring back IHG PointBreaks.

Office supply stores reflecting on gift card sales this year.

  1. Do this now: Register for Q3 5x promos with the major banks.

    – Chase Freedom: 5x up to $1,500 in spend at gas stations, EV charging, and “live entertainment”. For manufactured spend, speed your way over to a gas station that’s open between at least seven and eleven
    – Discover IT: 5x up to $1,500 in spend at gas stations and with digital wallets. You can tackle this one like above, but digital wallets open other possibilities if you’re scared of being shot at your local neighborhood Sketchway Speedway
    – Citi Dividend: 5x up to $1,500 in spend at gas stations and home improvement stores. At this point, even if you’re worried about being shot, I’d just bring my Freedom, IT, and Dividend to the gas station at once, bullets be damned
    – US Bank Cash+: 5x up to $2,000 in spend at in two categories of your choice (I go with utilities and electronics stores, and there are typically games to play with your local utilities)

    Also, kudos to Citi for releasing their dividend registration and categories at the same time as the competition for the first time in <checks notes> ever.
  2. BlackHawk Network seems to have introduced another roadblock for manufactured spenders: Autodrain for amounts more than a couple dozen dollars is no longer working at major retailers. Unfortunately, the $480 aggregate per store per six minutes BHN rule is still ever present.
  3. H-E-B stores have a promotion for a $15 H-E-B gift card with the purchase of a $100 Home Depot gift card, which has a resale value around 90%. This one is limit one per H-E-B account, so scale with multiple accounts. (Thanks to GCG)
  4. Meijer stores have $10 off of $100 or more in Visa gift cards, limit one per MPerks account through Saturday. The good news? You can use the same email addresses to scale H-E-B and Meijer.

    Meijer stores sell both Pathward and Sunrise bank gift cards, and one of these things is not like the other (duh).

What could possibly go wrong at this upstanding community gas station that sells Visa gift cards and totally doesn’t have an insect infestation?

Evidently June 14, 2023 was officially declared promotion Wednesday by a secret cabal of companies in the League of Manufactured Spend and Travel Hacker Enablement, and my inbox is overflowing with promotions mixed with 4 parts lame to 1 part good. Here’s the good:

  1. Giftcards.com made last week’s Visa e-gift card sale even better, jumping from 5% back to 10% back on $100 gift cards with promo code SUMMER23 or YAYSUMMER. The Capital One Shopping mobile app has 4% cash-back which I believe is the current best offer.

    Limits are $600 per order, $2,000 per rolling 48 hours per email address. I can’t get the promo code to work when logged in, but it works fine with guest checkout at $600 or less.
  2. Southwest has 40% off of travel booked by tomorrow night for travel between August 15 and December 14 with promo code 40OFF for flights other than the two weeks around Thanksgiving.

    If you have any existing bookings between those dates, double check pricing and refund or rebook as necessary.
  3. Do this now if you hold a Chase Southwest credit card: Register for 10 points per dollar on up to $500 in spend at southwest.com. visit a grocery store by Sunday, buy a single $500 gift card, liquidate it, and move on with life. (Thanks to Brian M)
  4. Alaska Airlines has a fare sale for travel to and from Hawaii booked by tomorrow night for flights between August 14 and October 31. This one’s got more teeth than the normal run-of-the-mill airline sale.

Happy Wednesday!

A random sampling of the “4 parts lame” part of the recipe.

Editors note: I’ve been traveling over the weekend through today – I’ll be caught up in day or so. If you reached out over just about any channel and haven’t heard back: it’s not you, it’s me.

  1. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 per more in Visa gift card purchases through Saturday. For best results:

    – Try for multiple transactions back to back
    – Link your cards to Dosh
    – Experiment with different transaction sizes

    Note that the Everywhere variety of cards have lower fees than the regular variety, but unlike the past they don’t necessarily make liquidation easier and may in fact make it more difficult unless you really know what you’re doing.
  2. Meijer stores have $10 off of $100 in Visa gift cards through Saturday, limit one per MPerks account. In unrelated news, did you know you could have more than one email address, and sometimes grocery rewards programs only need an email address to sign up?

    Meijer sells both Sunrise and Pathward cards. Choose wisely my friends.
  3. The United Airlines shopping portal has 1,000 bonus miles for spending $400 or more cumulative through June 18, or an extra 2.5x points on exactly $400 spend on top of existing earnings. Sadly, Giftcards.com is still absent from the portal.
  4. Rumors of the demise of drugstores coding uniquely when paying with third party digital wallets have been debunked. Always be probing.

Happy Tuesday!

Some of those old Metabank gift cards collecting dust at Office Depot may have an extra surprise.

For reasons known only to a spotted dairy cow grazing in Lubbock, TX, the Capital One Shopping portal and mobile app:

  • Are available to anyone, whether or not you’re a Capital One card holder
  • Pay out in gift cards, not cash or miles like most portals
  • Are easily scalable with new email addresses
  • Offer different payouts on the mobile app than on the web portal
  • Offer big promotional payouts on many merchants

Perhaps the most interesting item is the last one, and there’s a recipe to make it happen somewhat reliably, even on valuable merchants. The recipe:

  • Browse for a retailer on the portal or in the app (don’t search for it)
  • Click through the portal to visit the retailer
  • Browse a few items at the retailer, interact with the site, don’t buy anything
  • Wait a few days
  • Check the app and portal a few days later, see big payout

What does a big payout look like? We’ve seen 24% for buying popular manufactured spend items and 30% for buying popular event tickets, for example. Just make sure that you move on to a new account as you approach $1,000 in cash back. (Thanks to ChurnChurnChurn)

Unfortunately the county judicial office doesn’t show up on Capital One Shopping.