At face value, the no-annual fee Discover IT card gives 5% cash back on up to $1,500 spend in rotating categories every quarter, which works out to $75 cash back up to four times a year. It’s a boring card, and believe me I understand that sometimes it’s hard to get excited about pure cash-back plays.
That said, you’ve been able to do better than 5% cash back since July 2019 with the IT card. How? Discover gives you a 25% uplift when redeeming for Nike gift cards, and small (< $100) Nike gift cards have a high resale value at approximately 91% of face value. The math:
5% * 125% * 91% = 5.687%
America loves math, right? Don’t stress it too hard, but remember that the Discover IT card is really a ~5.7% cash back card in rotating categories with the Nike uplift. (Thanks to GC Galore’s post for reminding me to do a writeup like this)
EDITOR’S NOTE: Since around Autumn 2024, sometimes applying for more than three cards leads to approvals that are subsequently converted into duplicate apps. The haphazard nature of recent data-points suggests that it’s probably only happening when an underwriting rep manually reviews something, so some luck is involved if you’re applying for a bunch of the same type of card.
On Thursday I posted about a Bank of America trick or two. The post generated more questions than I thought, so let’s talk about how Bank of America credit card applications work (maybe not officially, but this is how it works in practice):
Bank of America will only make one hard credit pull a day regardless of the number of applications made
Personal cards will show up on your credit report once opened, business cards will not
You can be approved for multiple versions of the same Business card on the same day, just use multiple businesses with multiple EINs
Some business cards have a Visa and a Mastercard variant, and each is a separate product
Having $5,000+ in a personal Bank of America checking account will help make business applications sail through the automated approval system
As long as the credit line on a newly approved business card is greater than $5,000, you’ll likely be approved for another business card so just keep going
Existing business credit cards don’t affect your ability to earn bonuses or to be approved for a new application with the same card
Last week’s post also laid out a quick plan for maximizing BoA credit card applications and I followed it over the weekend. Here’s what I applied for
Spoiler alert, I was approved for every one of them.
Despite playing the game for over 10 years, I’ve somehow never had a personal Alaska Visa. If I had, I’d make sure it’d been a few years since I applied or perhaps picked a different personal card. At the time of applying, I had one Business Cash Mastercard and one business Alaska Visa open, and I had closed a second business Alaska Visa the day before to up my chances for the shenani-go-round. (Why yes, I did just make that word up, why do you ask?)
What’s the takeaway? Go big with Bank of America credit card applications.
Bank of America may be the tricycle of big-banks, but it’ll take you places.
It’s shaping up to be a great weekend for getting out there and ginning-up some spend. Alternatively, if you’re like me you’ve burnt out on manufactured spend after a week and a half of Kroger’s 4x Fuel Points promotion it’s a good weekend for chillin’. You decide:
1. Staples is selling fee free Visa Gift Cards again starting on Sunday and running through a week from Saturday, limit 5 per customer (or per transaction in most cases). Just make sure you have a liquidation method before you load up on these.
2.Simon Mall online is having a flash sale for 50% off of Visa gift card fees using promo code FSAUG50 through this evening. These are an interesting way to meet minimum spend for second tier banks (definitely not for American Express, you won’t earn points and the spend won’t count toward a sign up bonus). If by some miracle you have one of the card numbers for yesterday’s Bank of America shenanigans handy this could be a great way to run up a balance for payment shenanigans on those cards.
In case you’re not aware, you can get $1,000 face value Visa gift cards with your name printed on the front online at Simon. Frequent Miler has a good writeup here with the basics. As with the Staples, make sure you’ve got a path toward liquidation of these gift cards before going big.
3. Is your Brex cash card sitting idle? I’d understand if so, mine certainly was for quite a while. That’s changed though — I wanted to drop a reminder for those who might have ride-share like expenses, real or otherwise: Brex has been faithfully awarding 8x on ride-sharing services for me.
Brex has a new sign-up bonus of 80,000 miles (or $800 if you’d rather cash out) with $9,000 spend within a short 30 days. It has no credit check but does require a real business. Note that this link randomly seems to offer 7x on ride-sharing services. (Thanks to Rapid Travel Chai for the link)
4. M1 Finance has released their upcoming credit card’s rewards structure, and there are a few doozies for manufactured spend in there. You can see the full list here.
Bank of America is a strange bank, and the Alaska Airlines card is even stranger. Often, you can find about twelve variations of the sign-up bonus for the personal card by looking in different places, like in-flight, at the gate, at the check-in counter, online, or by calling and asking. There’s a new variation which as far as I can tell is the best offer they’ve come up with that’s publicly available over the internet (you’ll currently find it by searching Google for “alaska airlines visa” and clicking the sponsored link, which probably costs BoA about $4 per click)Update: Thanks to Gary from VFTW who wrote in to share a better public offer than the google search method. Links and text below have been updated to include the better offer.
As usual, I’m not here to push credit cards on you but I am here to help you maximize them if and when you apply. To that end, here’s the current offer from the above Google search:
67,000 miles after $8,000 spend within 180 days. The annual fee is $75, and is not waived for the first year.
Note that BoA personal cards have anti-churning language that’s not present on the business cards, and the personal cards have the 2/3/4 rule, which basically boils down to you can only get two BoA personal cards every two months, three personal cards every 12 months, and four personal cards every 24 months.
By itself, the card is mildly interesting, but because it’s BoA and it pairs well with BoA business cards, it can become intriguing:
BoA is a great target for CheckFreePay, and historically they’ve been extremely liberal on getting payments from the service
BoA will only make one hard pull of your credit a day regardless of the number of applications
BoA will let you open “a few” business cards back-to-back, even following a personal card application
So if you want Alaska miles (like to use 70,000 miles to Japan in JAL First or 60,000 miles to Japan in JAL Business class), I’d suggest the following steps:
Repeat steps (2) and/or (3) while you’re still getting decent sized credit lines
In the end, you’ll have one hard pull, one new account on your credit report (the personal card), hopefully a handful of new business cards, and a few great targets for CheckFreePay and other shenanigans.
Yes, this image is a repeat but I’m too proud of it to not bring it back for this article. Thanks again to Danny for the inspiration for the picture.
In a move straight out of American Express’s playbook, Chase stole the show in the last 24 hours:
1. The travel hacking blogosphere blew up yesterday with article heads like:
“ZOMG!!!! Aeroplan Transfers have come to Chase and they’re launching a MIND-BLOWING Aeroplan credit card soon too!!!1!!“.
It’s true, you can now transfer your Chase points to Aeroplan which is mildly useful and somewhat complimentary to Star Alliance awards with Chase’s transfers to United, especially when 1) used for domestic United flights and for 2) flights with a stop-over. Just make sure you run the numbers on both United and Aeroplan before deciding where to transfer your miles for an award. You’d never transfer miles without a particular award booking in-mind, right?
It’s also true that an Aeroplan credit card is coming to Chase, and at some point it may be something you want to include in your portfolio for the sign-up bonus. Toward that end, register here for a bonus 10,000 points on top of the normal sign-up offer at launch, in case you end up going for it. Just promise me you won’t buy into the hype, ok?
3.Check your Chase Southwest cards for a spending bonus of 1,000 Rapid Rewards points for spending $1,000 at restaurants, home improvement stores, and drug stores before October 31. (Thanks to DoC, though the link in his article doesn’t seem to be correct as of this writing.)
There are a few things to keep on your radar today:
1. Delta is having a flash sale to quite a few international destinations from the US, starting at 10,000 miles round trip. Check Dan’s Deals’ comments section for known routes, or just use the flexible date search with cities like AUA, PTY, SJU, EZE, PLS, CUN, UIO, MIA, and similar from your home airport.
2. Emirates Skywards has an interesting type of promotion that I haven’t seen before: Earn one mile for every minute you spend in Dubai between October 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022, up to 5,000 miles. Register here if you’re traveling to Dubai and note that you’ll have to book a paid ticket on Emirates ticket stock, which means tickets issued by Emirates that start with 176, to be eligible. (Thanks to planesurf on reddit)
3. This isn’t strictly related to manufactured spend or travel hacking, but I know a lot of you went in on the iPhone SE Xfinity deal last year so I’m going to let it slide into the blog for now (believe me I don’t want this blog to turn into a blog that posts about coupons for free bread or about deals on 12-packs of diapers):
Apparently Xfinity has a rewards program and your rewards are based on subscribed services and length of time with Xfinity. I’ve been told that having a Xfinity Mobile plan unlocks better rewards and it certainly did for me. I signed in here, clicked ‘Join’, then had a bunch of awards available to me including a $100 Visa Gift Card (physical). I picked that one and passed on the others which were honestly pretty lame. Hopefully you’ve got something worthwhile too.
And a final, bonus news item to keep track of: TravelBloggerBuzz notes that American Express is starting a new financial advising arm. Anytime new technology and big money come together, you’re likely to find bonuses and manufactured spend opportunities. So keep an eye on this one.
Pictured: The slippery slope of a travel blog posting about non travel hacking related topics.
Lots of targeted offers came in this weekend, I have no idea what makes the last weekend in July special but apparently it’s big. Check your accounts for all of the following:
1. Discover sent me an email offering $10 off of $50 at HomeDepot.com. Watch for an email with the subject: “Don’t miss out on $10 back”
2. Dean let me know that Discover is emailing another offer for $25 back for adding an Authorized User and making a single purchase (any size). The subject on this one is “This $25 cash back could be yours”
3. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards Mastercard (a future MilesEarnAndBurn Unsung Hero card) has been sending out spend offers for 15x bonus ThankYou Points or 10% cash back on utilities purchases, up to $50 total cash back. I didn’t get this one, but my Shop Your Way Rewards boosts seem to come near middle of the month (thanks to Sam at Milenomics for pointing that there are different bonus schedules for this card.)
Apropos of nothing, Plastiq is a good way to pay utilities with a credit card, especially if you sign up for a new account with a fee-free promotional credit.
4. Co-branded Chase Business cards are seeing new targeted spend offers for 5x at Home Improvement stores or for Shipping charges, up to $10,000 in spend. This deal was seen on the Ink cards in early July, but the new round seems to be targeting all business co-branded cards, like the Southwest Business card or the United Business card. Check for eligibility at: https://chase.com/mybonus.
5.Bitmo had quite the run of targeted offers for gift cards this weekend and hopefully carrying into today. Check your activity feed for the offers, or check this tag at GC Galore to preview what we’ve been seeing. Bitmo is a great platform for gift card resellers because it uses PayPal for credit card processing, and there’s almost always a card that’s giving 5x or statement credits at PayPal (like the Discover IT card in Q3).
If you’re new to Bitmo and want to sign up for an account, use a referral because the referral bonus is usually bigger than the regular bonus (4,500 points). As always, try and find a friend to refer you, but if you can’t find one you can use my link, which I’m adding only because it’s almost certainly a bigger offer for you if you use it but please double check during signup that you’re getting at least 4,500 points: *
6. My PenFed PathFinder Rewards Visa has a targeted offer for 5x at Bed, Bath, and Beyond for the month of August. This one is actually exciting because there’s “no limit” to the number of points I can earn (hah, we’ll see) and last I checked BB&B sold Visa Gift Cards, though maybe that changed in the last year. Look for an email with the subject: “Earn 5x Points at Bed Bath & Beyond!”
Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to see one of these show up from American Express today.
I’m going off-brand with today’s post, but stick with it, it’ll be worth it I promise.
Introduction
I use ITA Matrix essentially every single time I’m looking at airfares and often for reference when I’m searching for award travel. Not only that, but it’s quite possibly the most powerful tool that exists for an advanced travel hacker when dealing with airline tickets: It’s great for hidden city ticketing, fuel dumps, free one-ways, forced fare buckets, aircraft selection, forced routing through a particular hub, and avoiding married segments to name a few. There’s so much to this tool, and I’m going to make this post the first in a series about ITA Matrix for travel hacking, starting with Delta companion tickets.
There are two types of Delta companion tickets: 1) The domestic Main Cabin variant that you get with the Delta Platinum card, and 2) the domestic Main Cabin, Comfort+, or First Class variant that you get with the Delta Reserve. There’s a lot of nuance to where you can use these tickets, but for the most part just assume that you can use them on any round-trip Delta route within the continental US’s lower 48 states.
Fare Codes
When you purchase airfare or redeem miles, you’re booking into a specific fare class which is potentially different for each and every leg. Delta companion tickets require specific fare bucket availability for your itinerary:
Platinum: L, U, T, X, and V
Reserve: I, Z, W, S, L, U, T, X, and V (and W & S have further restrictions that in practice don’t really matter)
So, to look for Delta Companion ticket availability, you need to be able to look for specific fare buckets. This is child’s play with ITA Matrix. It also gives you better results than Delta’s booking engine will, and often lets you find cheaper tickets that qualify for the companion fare than you’ll find on Delta.com or by talking to an agent and having them search for you.
Make sure “advanced controls” are enabled (the link to enable them is right under the destination city)
Enter your “Departing From” and “Destination” airport codes (e.x.: LAX and ORD)
Enter DL+ in both the “Outbound routing codes” and “Return routing codes”, which forces the engine to return only Delta flights (bonus tip: enter DL without the ‘+‘ if you want only direct flights)
Enter the fare buckets for a companion certificate in both the “Outbound extension codes” and “Return extension codes”. This one is rather obtuse, so cut and paste the following:
Platinum variant: f bc=L|bc=U|bc=T|bc=X|bc=V
Reserve variant: f bc=I|bc=Z|bc=W|bc=S|bc=L|bc=U|bc=T|bc=X|bc=V
Enter your dates
Choose 2 adults
Click “Search”
I’m going to break my “one picture per post” rule in this series because I know some of you are visual learners. My search box for a Reserve companion ticket will look like this:
Sample search for Delta Reserve companion ticket
Booking
Normally I use bookwithmatrix.com for booking anything from ITA Matrix because you just cut and paste the booking results table into that website and it’ll forward you to Delta (or another OTA if you choose) with the exact flights and fare buckets already pre-filled. With companion tickets though, Delta doesn’t let you do that; instead, you’ll have to start your booking at delta.com/redeem and go from there.
If you can’t replicate the results ITA Matrix produces with Delta’s booking engine, first try setting up your airfare using a multi-city search. If that doesn’t work, you can call and give the agent each of the exact flight dates, flight numbers, and fare codes and they can manually book it for you. I’ve only had to do that a single time though, so it’s likely a rare occurrence.
Fin
I use all of my Delta companion certificates every single year, and they’re really valuable.
A final travel hacking tip: Delta says you need to use your co-branded Delta American Express card to pay for airfare when using a companion ticket. Don’t trust them, they lie. Any American Express will do, like the Personal Platinum which awards 5x on airfare.
