Month: November 2024

One of the best pieces of business advice I ever got was at my first startup: “It takes just as long to do a small deal as it does to do a big deal.” That’s often a slight exaggeration because in business, bigger deals usually mean more people are involved, but the sentiment is still roughly correct. Focusing on the big deals is a better use of time when you’ve got a good pipeline.

We can apply that wisdom to all of this weekend’s opportunities in gift card reselling, buyers groups, online arbitrage, point alchemy, and to an extent with travel bookings too. My companion advice to the above for this weekend, specifically, is:

Set a minimum deal size and minimum effective hourly wage for all of your shenanigans. If something flashes by and it’s below that threshold, wait for the next thing. It’ll come.

Have a nice weekend!

Pictured: My first startup, or something.

We’ll try and keep it quick today, but there’s still a lot:

  1. Do this now: Register for Best Western’s promotion for 5,000 bonus points for every two nights stayed between December 2 and February 2, 2025 at most North American properties. You can earn the bonus up to four times which sounds like way too much Best Western for my taste, but you do you.
  2. US Bank has double cash back on all card linked offers and shopping portal bonuses through tomorrow night, and all the tips from last time still apply too.
  3. The American Express Delta Gold personal card has a heightened bonus of 50,000 SkyMiles and a $500 statement credit after $3,000 in purchases and making a single purchase at Delta.com within six months. You can find the offer by going through a flight booking on the checkout page, whether or not you actually buy a ticket.

    The annual fee is waived the first year, making this probably worth burning a 5/24 slot. (Thanks to DDG)
  4. Bilt Rewards has some promotions this week:

    – 3x earning on non-bonuses spend up to $500 spend through the end of November
    – Earning 0.5x on new mortgages (although they’re not truthful about being first, see Mesa)
    – Points are worth 1.4 cents each on December 1 at Amazon for Platinum members

    In churning, there’s always a pariah in a group (cf. gift card buying group A, buyers club B, and bank C), and Bilt is probably that for credit cards.
  5. American Express Offers has new travel related card offers:

    – $300 statement credit with $2,000 or more at Virgin Atlantic by December 30
    – $30 statement credit with $150 or more at Turo by April 3, 2025

    (Thanks to DoC)
  6. Office Depot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 or more in Visa gift card purchases through Saturday. For best results:

    – Link your cards to Dosh
    – Buy in even multiples of $300

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  7. Giant, Giant Foods, Martins, and Stop & Shop stores have new gift card deals starting tomorrow for:

    – 12x points on Zillions gift cards
    – 10x points on Home Depot and Uber gift cards

    There’s likely a limit of $2,000 per account, but the fine print in preview ads is too low resolution to read. UPDATE: There is a $2,000 limit, and Giant Foods doesn’t currently show the promo. It will probably still work but may earn less than other affiliates based on historical patterns.
  8. Breeze has $29 fares for travel booked tomorrow through Sunday with travel through May 22, 2025. There are a few blackouts around days that you’d expect.
  9. Giftcards.com is currently earning 2.5 miles per dollar through the AA shopping portal, which is great for manufacturing Loyalty Points.

    These are Pathward gift cards.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Never forget the AA First turkey sandwich, which unfortunately is real. Happy Thanksgiving!

About two weeks ago, several popular travel bloggers dropped hints about visiting a corporate sponsored affiliate meeting from a company named Mesa. Since then I’ve been expecting a deluge of articles about their newly launched card, but for the most part nothing has appeared. Why? I assume news is embargoed until Mesa says it’s ok to write about it, preferring to soft-launch in relative quiet with a waitlist and then go big at just the right time™. On the other hand though, you know what they say about assuming.

Anyhoodles, since I’m under no embargo and I guess I don’t care about soft versus full launch, let’s discuss the rewards system and the waitlist credit card in a no-quid-pro-quo kind of way. It’s a lot like Bilt in that there’s a way to earn points whether or not you have the card, but you can earn more with the card. It’s unlike Bilt in that its VP isn’t telling people how to game their own company, or seemingly lying about being an industry-first program to launch earning on mortgages.

Earning

Whether or not you get the card, you’ll earn a point for each dollar when you originate a new primary loan or a refinance an existing primary loan, as long as you use a “The Mesa Mortgage Marketplace Lender”, which I guess we’ll abbreviate as TMMML because reasons. You can do that up to five times per account too.

But, how good are those TMMMLs? Well, when I put in my address, I got a single option: Swift Home Loans Inc which is apparently a mortgage broker based out of Birmingham; but not that Birmingham, it’s the Michigan one. So I guess there’s exactly one TMMML (at least for my state) and they’re rated 2.8 out of 5 on Facebook. I dialed their main contact number to ask about which banks they work with and what sorts of mortgages they can handle, but it just rang for a good minute so I hung up. Looking pretty great guys!

How about the credit card? It’s a Visa issued by Celtic bank and carries no-annual fee. The earning structure:

  • 3x on HOA fees, contractors, homeowners insurance, property taxes, home decor, and other “home-related” charges
  • 2x on gas, groceries, EV charging, and utilities
  • 1x on a linked mortgage, but only on up to $100,000 in mortgage payments annually
  • 0x on other spend, as far as I can tell
  • Free Sam’s Club membership

Like with Bilt and rent, you don’t need to put your mortgage payment on a card to earn points on mortgage payments.

Burning

There are two options for redeeming Mesa points: booking travel through their portal, and gift cards. The cash value of each, based on my sampled searching:

  • Travel: 1.0 cents per point, but also a fixed 400 point extra surcharge per flight
  • Gift cards: 0.7 cents per point

Everything Else

Here’s how I’d look at this card, considering that if you’re booking travel through a portal you’re not going to use Mesa because Chase and AmEx have much better value propositions:

Gift card options include popular bulk brands like BestBuy and Apple, and assuming a resale rate of 93%, that means you can cash-out your points through gift cards at 0.65 cents per point 🤏. So:

  • You earn 0.65-0.70% back on mortgage payments just by holding the card
  • You get a 0.65-0.70% rebate on new mortgages, but those are probably baked into the fees of the one member of the TMMML
  • You’ll do better for other spend, manufactured or real, with other credit cards.

Finally, I extracted the full terms and conditions of the rewards program from the mobile app in case you’re curious, and it’s just this webpage.

tl;dr: It’s ok I guess, but you can probably skip the dozens hundreds thousands of affiliate articles when they come out in (probably) the next couple of weeks.

Happy Wednesday!

Kick-off party for current members of TMMML.

Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase, Citi, and plenty of your favorite credit unions offer premium (or sometimes even fee-free) cards that offer annual credits tied to the calendar year. Most issuers also let you refund an annual fee up to 30 days after it posts too. Combined, that means December is often the best time of the year to get a card because:

  1. Your first statement is usually issued 30 days after getting a card
  2. Your annual fee posts on the 12th statement around 360+30 days after opening
  3. Most issuers give you an annual fee refund if requested within 30 days of posting pushing that to 360+30+30 days
  4. 12 statements will straddle three calendar years: 2024, 2025, and 2026

Let’s take the American Express Business Platinum. Annually, you’ll earn (amongst other things, like I dunno, prolly a $1.50 monthly credit to Dollar Tree):

  • $200 airline incidental credit
  • $400 Dell credit ($200 in the first half and again in the second)
  • $199 Clear credit

So if you apply for a card in late November or December, your 12th statement won’t generate until between mid-December 2025 and mid-January 2026. Once that happens, you’ve still got another 30 days for games and an annual fee refund. You’ll get:

  • $600 in airline incidental credits (2024, 2025, and 2026)
  • $800 in Dell credits (2H2024, 1H2025, 2H2025, 1H2026)
  • $450 in Adobe credits (2024, 2025, and 2026)
  • $597 in Clear credits (2024, 2025, and 2026)
    (though you should discount those Adobe and Clear credits significantly)

There are a few gotchas to watch for: Bank of America’s annual fee refund after it posts isn’t guaranteed; Capital One’s is guaranteed, but the guarantee is that they definitely don’t offer fee refunds; or how the stupid Dell credits may be going away from the American Express Business Platinum in July, 2025.

Happy Tuesday!

Next time: The Halloween triple dip?

  1. Cardless’s Avianca Elite American Express card has an increased tiered sign-up bonus worth 120,000 LifeMiles in aggregate:

    – 80,000 LifeMiles after $4,500 spend in 90 days
    – 40,000 LifeMiles after $25,000 spend in 365 days

    Cardless has a one card per person lifetime limit, so consider whether cards like the Qatar Privilege Club may better fit your style. The Avianca card’s best features are that: it’s a third party American Express, and that it includes a Lifemiles+ lite membership which gives award redemption rebates and a cheap upgrade to Lifemiles+ basic membership for free award cancellations.
  2. American Express Offers has card-linked offers for either a statement credit, co-brand points, or Membership Rewards after spending $2,000-$7,000 depending on the offer. The rebates’ average values quite good at around 10% of spend. (Thanks to DoC)
  3. Giant, Giant Foods, Martins, and Stop & Shop stores have 3x points on Visa gift card purchases through Thursday, limit $2,000 spend per account.
  4. Giftcards.com has a bonus $10 giftcards.com gift card with the purchase of a $100 Virtual Visa gift card through Wednesday using promo code GOBBLE, limit one per transaction. The great irony sadness is that giftcards.com gift cards can’t be used to purchase Visas or Mastercards.
  5. Do this now: Check your email inbox for a targeted $50 Marriott Bonvoy bonus gift card, but also note that it expires on December 21. A good search query is probably: “in:anywhere subject:Enjoy a gift from Marriott Bonvoy to celebrate your upcoming stay”.

Happy Monday!

Once per lifetime Cardless credit card unboxing photo, presumably.

The Stunt

Sometimes travel hackers get stuck with a ticket that’s got a cancellation fee (I’m looking at you and your stupid $75 award ticket redeposit fee FlyingBlue) or a ticket that simply isn’t cancellable for any fee even if you’re Steve Buscemi (actually, especially if you’re Steve Buscemi). You’ve got two choices if your plans change and you’re not going to take one of those flights:

  • Pay the fee to cancel if you can, or just eat the ticket cost if you can’t
  • Play the odds and hope that you don’t need to do either of the above

Playing the odds means waiting for the airline to offer free changes or refunds due to one of:

When one of those things happens you won’t be taking off for Lubbock, but instead you’re headed to refund-town (but you’ve probably got to request the refund from the airline, and in some cases before departure). The odds aren’t great though; at best the chances of this working are somewhere between 1/6 and 1/10, unless you own a pregnant turtle.

The Gotchas

There are a few ways this can malfunction:

  • You forget to cancel before the cancellation window expires after the game didn’t work, which matters especially with programs like Virgin Atlantic that require you to cancel before the check-in window opens
  • You don’t request a refund in a timely manner from the airline
  • The airline disagrees about what a significant delay is (but 2+ hours is usually sufficient)

Personally I put a reminder in my phone for an hour before the flight or cancellation window, whichever comes first, to figure out whether the stunt is going to work and to pay the cancellation fee if I can and it didn’t.

Good luck!

AA’s new Flagship First catering meal concept: “playing chicken with an airline”. They’ll end up cutting the ketchup at launch for cost savings though.

  1. Do this now: Register for 20% back in World of Hyatt points at Homes & Hideaways properties worldwide EDIT: No need to register, you’ll automatically get 20% back for award bookings through March 9, 2025.
  2. H-E-B stores have a promotion for a $20 H-E-B gift card with $100 or more in several gift card brands including bulk friendly like Airbnb, Lowes, and Home Depot through November 28. Scale with multiple H-E-B accounts. (Thanks to DoC)
  3. Kroger.com has 5% off of $100 Visa e-gift cards using promo code TURKEY2024 through Tuesday. The purchase won’t code as grocery but will earn fuel points. (Thanks to GCA)
  4. In case you needed further proof that Southwest hates cheapskates, they’ve launched a paid and award ticket sale for crappy flights:

    – Departing before 8AM
    – Departing after 7PM

    You have to book by tonight, but for travel at least 21 days out so that you’ve got plenty of time to anticipate your upcoming crappy flight, unless your airport is SNA; they continue to exclude it from sales because reasons.
  5. Alaska has a sale for flights to Sydney or Auckland that (in theory) connect in Honolulu, Hi for travel through September 30, 2025. The paid fare sale isn’t amazing, but on the award side I’m seeing:

    – Prices about 17% cheaper than the low level Alaska redemption price
    – The discount applying on non-stop, direct flights too

    There’s decent availability in down-under Summer time.

Happy Thursday! (It’s Thursday right?)

My office calendar explains everything.

  1. American Express Offers has a card linked offer for 20,000 Membership Rewards or $200 after $1,000 spend with AirFrance or KLM through December 31.
  2. The three Chase co-branded Avios credit cards have an increased sign-up bonus of 100,000 Avios after $7,500 spend in six months, and each has a $95 annual fee.

    – AerLingus Avios
    – British Airways Avios
    – Iberia Avios

    It is possible to hold multiple Avios cards, but unfortunately they’re still personal cards. (Thanks to makhav)
  3. VanillaGift.com has 100% off of purchase fees of orders of at least $250 with promo code VGTHANKS24 through November 28.

    These are Incomm gift cards, and they won’t earn credit card points when purchased with American Express.
  4. Rakuten has “unlimited” $40 or 4,000 Membership Rewards points referral bonuses for both the referrer and the referred, provided the referred makes $40 of purchases through the portal within 90 days.

    What could possibly go wrong with unlimited referrals?

Happy Tuesday!

Post-bot, pre-shutdown Rakuten dashboard view.