Year: 2024

Since we missed major news items over the last two and a half weeks, it’s time to play ketchup catchup:

  1. Do this now: Register for 5x bonus categories for rotating bonus category cards:

    – Chase Freedom and Freedom Flex: 5x at groceries, gyms, and spas, $1,500 max per quarter
    – Discover IT: 5x at restaurants and drug stores, $1,500 max per quarter
    – Citi Dividend: 5x at Amazon and streaming, $6,000 max per year
    – US Bank Cash+: I choose utilities and electronics retailers, $1,500 max per quarter

    The Cash+ currently has a measly $200 sign-up bonus, the Freedom is only available via product change, the Freedom Flex has a $200 sign-up bonus and 5x at grocery on up to $12,000 in spend, and the Dividend isn’t generally available any more.

    Gaming most of these should be easy with gift card purchases at grocery stores, CVS, and Amazon. For the Cash+, look in to how your local utilities deal with card payments, especially when the payment doesn’t match the bill.
  2. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card, which incidentally hasn’t been mentioned on this blog in the entirety of 2024, has a few new targeted offers that stack with other spend offers:

    – 15,000 ThankYou Points per month on $1,500+ in spend at grocery, gas, or restaurant
    – $150 statement credit per month on $1,500+ in spend at grocery, gas, or restaurant

    The Citi SYWR card isn’t just interesting for spend bonuses, especially in the face unregulated debit cards. (Thanks to Brooke)
  3. Staples has fee-free $200 Mastercard gift cards through Saturday, limit eight per transaction. I’d say Staples is trying to make 2024 look like 2023 with this sale, except technically the promotion started in 2023 so I’m legally prevented from saying so by the Staples and Uber Eats cabal. The cabal also prevents buying these cards via Uber Eats as far as I can tell.

    These are Metabank Pathward gift cards, so have a liquidation plan in place.
  4. American Express Offers has a few interesting new promotions:

    – $125 back on $600 or more in spend with Delta
    – 25,000 Membership Rewards after $1,000 or more in spend with ANA
    – 15% to 20% back on up to $100 in spend at Martin and Giant grocery stores
  5. Do this now: Register for a 10% bonus from Cathay Pacific’s Asia Miles, paid when transferring points in from credit card programs.
  6. PayUSATax has lowered the cost of tax payments with a credit card to 1.82%. Games people play:

    – Lower W-2 federal tax withholdings and make up for it with quarterly estimated tax payments
    – Overpay taxes with a credit card and wait for a refund

    Don’t attempt either unless you’ve got the discipline to ride it out if you run into any issues, like the IRS delaying refunds for months or years. Remember what the 33rd president of the United States and former head of the IRS, Spiderman, said: with great power comes great responsibility. (Thanks to GodLovesFrags)

When Texas cities play ketchup, Lubbock misses the point.

Welcome back friends, and special thanks to all of the guests that covered the last two week’s worth of content while I took my first annual vacation from blogging. The feedback I got from the guest posts was unanimously positive, and best summed up by community kingpin Garth who said to me “Based on the content over the last few days, please take more vacations”. He’s not wrong.

Introduction

Now let’s get to the annual MEAB New Year tradition before we slide in to the regular short-form blog posts that litter the rest of the year like a gym floor after a red solo cup convention: A recap of travel hacking and manufactured spend in the last year with the most sophisticated, Shakespearean, high-brow form of story telling known to the modern world: Animated GIFs.

Previous versions of the New Years special:

Just the GIFs Ma’am

Let’s go!

Chase told us in 2022 that pay yourself back with Aeroplan points was coming soon, and we um, patiently react when January 1, 2023 hits and we still haven’t seen it.

Chase Aeroplan Pay Yourself Back did finally drop on January 13, and gamers realized that Aeroplan miles can originate from other sources, like I don’t know, American Express Membership Rewards. The theories abound.

While the gamers game, a Chase executive reacts to excessive Pay Yourself Back on Aeroplan miles not earned through the Chase ecosystem.

The heavy hitters who cashed out millions of American Express Membership Rewards via the Chase Aeroplan backdoor don’t finish the way they envisioned.

The Chase Executive Office finally relents after repeated prodding, and heavy hitters shutdown by Chase for Aeroplan Pay Yourself Back rewards abuse come back for another fight.

MEAB pretends to be an economist by formulating The Time Value of Points.

The Ness credit card shuts down abruptly, its CEO says points redemptions will be online for a few weeks post shutdown, and then speeds away to never be seen again. Spoiler alert: Redemptions weren’t online for a few weeks.

Bank account bonuses feel lonely after the Fed raised interest rates repeatedly, making them nonsensical.

The feeling when that 11th (or 83rd) AmEx charge card application sails through and is approved.

The community’s reacts to American Express bringing back bonus spend offers for up to 99 employees per business card.

When a news article featuring a FinTech that just raised a $33 Million Series-A drops, we play it cool.

American Express released a +3x referral offer for Q4. We were really excited, but then discovered that gamers didn’t get the promo and were instead slapped in the face by losing the ability to refer on personal cards all together.

AirFrance and KLM’s FlyingBlue program had a day-long mistake award pricing glitch, with long-haul business class flights pricing between 1,500 miles and 13,500 miles. Almost nobody expected them to honor these fares, but they did for FlyingBlue elites that redeemed at the 13,500 mile level.

MEAB gives in after several dozen award searches for first class space on a flight to New Orleans and ends up booking a Southwest ticket when it’s the only direct flight.

January started out looking bleak for most airlines because of a pilot, airframe, and slot shortage, but JetBlue thought it was going to be the breakaway winner because it was getting all of Spirit’s pilots, airframes, and slots based on a merger agreement inked in late 2022 so the shortages wouldn’t be a major concern.

In March, the DoJ sues to block the JetBlue and Spirit merger as anticompetitive, especially because JetBlue and AA have the Northeast Alliance.

Then in May, a Judge ruled that the Northeast Alliance between JetBlue and AA is anticompetitive, tells the two to cut it out (and they do).

A majority of the DoJ’s antitrust case against the JetBlue and Spirit merger relied on the Northeast Alliance, so JetBlue’s executive staff celebrates is the most awkward businessy way possible.

The DoJ decided to continue with its case despite the failed Northeast Alliance, and JetBlue’s attorneys respond.

Meanwhile, Delta’s VP of Skymiles prepared for a massive Elite Status Program devaluation while it was pretty sure no one was looking.

It turns out everyone was looking though, and Delta walked back its elite devaluation slightly to console its frequent fliers (but only temporarily).

AA Elites watched the Delta disaster from afar, thankful that for once it’s not them.

American Express’s systems got progressively slower through the year, and now we know why from an interview with an American Express programmer.

Southwest CEO Bob Jordan declares that Southwest will never, ever have another holiday meltdown in the entire history of forever.

Every holiday season brings us the AmEx Triple Dip where we practice counting up to three, ideally a bunch of times.

John at the Risk of Ruin podcast masterfully transforms incoherent ramblings about credit card churning and manufactured spend into something coherent and compelling.

The Dutch government planned to reduce Amsterdam Schiphol airport slots by 12% and prevent JetBlue from starting new service to the country, angry that the DoJ was the only one having all the fun.

Then the Dutch government realized that cutting service wouldn’t hurt anyone but the Dutch, so they said “JK JK guys, my bad“.

After preparing for battle with American Express customer service, we instead got a call from the Citi fraud team.

AirFrance / KLM’s FlyingBlue frequent flyer program decreased the cost of some award tickets, reminding us that they’re still kinda cool.

American Express’s Rewards Abuse Team (RAT) started clawing back points from deliberate, obvious types of manufactured spend.

We got exclusive footage of Breeze Airways’ operations center. Who could have guessed that an airline with routes such as:

  • Cincinnati to Providence
  • Akron to Norfolk
  • Hartford to Bradenton
  • San Bernadino to Hartford

… could possibly loose money?

Three short years ago we were really excited by 120,000 Membership Rewards sign-up bonuses.

Now we struggle to get excited by a 150,000 Membership Rewards bonus, but we pretend to be excited to make sure American Express keeps ’em coming.

MEAB was discretely filmed during the inaugural annual blogging holiday.

In Closing

Happy new year friends, and we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow!