Author: matt

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s burnt toast comes the following:

If there’s a chance you want the AmEx Personal Gold card in 2021, apply for it now because the airline benefit goes away for new cards tomorrow (but remember AmEx’s one charge card every 90 days rule). Assuming you do sign up for it, in 2021 you’ll get:

  • Sign-up bonus (60k Membership Rewards or more)
  • Referral bonus (15k-30k, make sure to refer from a P2 or friend account)
  • $110 in Uber Eats credits for 2021 and beyond
  • $100 in Airline Fee credits for 2021 only (goes away tomorrow)
  • $110 in GrubHub/Shake Shack dining for 2021 and beyond
  • 4x at grocery stores, up to $25,000 spend per year

I have two of these cards and I also have a charge card approved in the last 90 days (the Unicorn Platinum), so I’m skipping this one even though I would definitely get more. (For me, the $25,000 4x at grocery store is easy to knock out with BBY or Visa Gift Cards, so even that is worth the annual fee, the rest is gravy.) The annual fee of this card is $250, so it’s easy to recoup that fee and then some. If you can go for it, now is the time!

Two pieces of burnt toast.
Follow up one burnt piece of toast with another, as the saying goes. That’s a saying, right?

1. Honestly, I really hate to cover this deal because it’s been overplayed everywhere else; that said, it’s a good enough deal that you need to do it. So, make sure you check your AmEx Delta, Hilton, or Marriott personal cards for offers on dining statement credits through 12/31/2021. For the business Delta, Hilton, or Marriott cards, check for offers on wireless services, and check your higher annual fee cards first because they have better options. You can find more details at this AmEx press release. Now, can we all agree to stop making this news? Kthxbai.

2. Ditto for #2, everyone is writing about Brex and there’s a good chance you’ve seen it all over the place already. It’s also worth it though, so if you have an LLC you can get get 90,000 points through Brex by signing up and spending $3,000. With more hoops, you can get 110,000 points. After you do it you can transfer the point to several foreign carriers’ frequent flyer programs and then you can close the thing and be done. I personally would use it for FlyingBlue or Cathay Pacific as my transfer targets. If you want a more glorified write-up, see the Frequent Miler. Bad news: I cannot find an affiliate free link for signing up for this promo.

The AmEx deal is as overdone as this toast.

Two quickies for today:

1. Do this now: Register for 5,000 bonus points with your World of Hyatt Credit card. To get the 5,000 points, you have to make 50 transactions of $1.00 or more this month. For me, this took exactly 4 minutes to knock out. In those four minutes, I added my Hyatt card to Amazon and Xfinity, and updated my Debbit configuration. With 50 $1 transactions, this is 100x earning, too bad it maxes out quickly. Have you configured Debbit yet?

2. Check for an AmEx offer for 10% off at Lowes (the store, not the hotel), up to either $50 or $100. Buy an Amazon gift card and sell at a +3% spread, or maybe you’re lucky and your Lowes sells Best Buy gift cards which will command a larger spread.

H/T: Garth Grawburg

An image of a Loews hotel backdrop with a palm tree peeking in to the corner.
I said Lowes, not Loews.

1. Do this now: Add your American Express Personal Gold cards to your Uber wallet. You’ve probably heard elsewhere that American Express is getting rid of the Personal Gold card’s $100 airline fee credit in 2022, and to make up for it they’re adding a monthly $10 Uber/UberEats credit in 2021 and beyond; its arrival is imminent and it’ll show up automatically as long as those cards are in your Uber wallet.

Don’t forget that if you have Uber Cash from a gift card or from simply loading it on your own in your wallet, you should probably spin up a burner account for holding your AmEx Uber credits. See AmEx Uber Credit Woes for more info.

2. It’s time to check for any credit cards that have had annual fees post and call them for a retention offer. I suggest saying something like: “I’m thinking of closing this card given its high annual fee, but before I decide what to do I was wondering if there are any retention offers or spend bonuses.”

3. If you’re a Delta Platinum or Diamond Medallion, make sure you’ve chosen your Choice Benefits for the 2020 Medallion year by January 31, otherwise you lose them. To be as clear as mud: You earn your 2020 Medallion status in 2019, and it expires at the end of February 2021, but you choose the benefits by the end of January 2021. Easy, right?

4. Expedia is devaluing its VIP rewards at the end of the week (points will no longer be worth double on VIP hotels starting 02/01/2021). If you have any points, see if you can sneak a booking in before they’re worth a lot less.

Twirling toward freedom cleanliness.

1. There’s a widely targeted American Express offer for $99 off of a $99 subscription at the Motley Fool. I guess now I can learn all about $GME and $AMC, but the play here isn’t the subscription. Instead, the play is that the Chase UR portal is offering 7,500 Ultimate Rewards for a $99 1 year sub at the Motley Fool. Check other portal rates here (AA is high too). Set a reminder in your to cancel the subscription in 11 months so they don’t auto-renew and auto-bill for another year.

2. If you’re not tuned in to the GC resale market, here’s another reason to jump in: You can currently buy Home Depot gift cards at Bitmo using the promo code HDBONUSJAN and resell them for a few dollars profit. Yes, I hear you — a few bucks isn’t interesting. Except that it is: Bitmo lets you pay with PayPal, so you get credit card spend, you get a small profit, and you can turn that AmEx Personal Platinum monthly $30 PayPal credit directly into cash.

Note: Am I a broken record yet? Bitmo has a referral program and accounts are based on phone numbers. You have burner SIMs by now, yeah?

A picture of a broken record. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Broken_Record.jpg
Me

The accidental Southwest Airlines change trick is back for March through late April. If you’re planning on traveling for Spring Break, now is the best time to lock in the lowest fare. A primer:

  • Use the lowest fare calendar on the city pairs you want to travel between (e.g., LAX-DEN)
  • Find the lowest fare two weeks before or two weeks after your desired travel date
  • Book the lowest fare
  • Log out and log back into your Southwest account
  • Under ‘My Trips’, choose ‘Change’
  • Switch your flight to the desired routing, date, and time with no up-charge

In case this booking window closes, make sure you do the above within 24 hours because you’re entitled to a full refund for the initial booking in that period.

These free changes are a weird conglomeration of Southwest’s antiquated reservation system, the 737MAX, and COVID travel waivers. It’s been around for a couple of years and I’ll be sad when the trick vanishes.

A breakfast consisting of: A partially eaten yellow pepper, yogurt with currents, and a bagel with cheddar cheese and a hot sauce 'S' on one side, and a hot sauce 'O' on the other.
Pictured, the start of a really, really weird breakfast that spells out Southwest.

There are a few easy manufactured spend deals kicking around this week. The first, an old familiar, is that you can still get fee free physical Visa Gift Cards at vanillagift.com using promo code FLASH2020. You’ll pay $8.95 for shipping, even if you order $10,000 worth of cards. These cards don’t work well at Walmart but they work well most everywhere else.

The second is that Staples is offering fee free $100 MasterCard Gift Cards, limit 2. These are sold by Staples directly, so use a Chase Ink card or an American Express Business Platinum with the +4x office supplies offer. Fun side note and a random hint: Staples shut me down in 2014 because they didn’t like me buying a couple hundred hard drives a week for two months. Fortunately for me and for people like me (you), you can always get yourself back online with address, phone, and/or name variations. Different checkout methods work too. Don’t be afraid to experiment.

Third, you can still get two Ting SIM cards for $0.99 each at Best Buy. I’ve been able to get an order in every few days. You can still parlay each of these into ~$100 at Visible.

And finally there’s a bit of bad news: apparently Walmart Money Order fees are going up from $0.88 to $1.00 today. Boo.

Actual photo of the Staples representative who shut me down for buying too many of their clearance hard drives.

1. Check for a personalized United MilePlay offer at this link. I got 3,700 miles for booking a ticket of $125 or more and flying by the end of March. Nice try United, but I don’t really want to tour the country on a GoJet CRJ-700, which seems to be approximately 82% of their domestic fleet, or on a Mesa CRJ-200 which is the remaining 29% of their domestic fleet according to my measurements.

2. You got a couple of Ting Mobile SIM cards for $0.99 a few weeks ago, right? Here’s how to turn that spent $0.99 into about a hundred bucks, with inspiration from this Reddit post:

  1. Sign up for Visible by shopping through the Rakuten portal for $20-$40 cash back or 2,000-4,000 membership rewards
  2. Choose the “$100 Prepaid Mastercard Virtual Account” Bring Your Own Device plan
  3. Use the promo code SAVE2021 at checkout
  4. Keep the service for two payments $20 and $40 + taxes
  5. If you have the offer, pay with a credit card that has $25 cash back, found on Chase and Bank of America cards

Out of pocket, you’ll pay approximately $60. You’ll earn between $120 and $165 depending on how you do it and what offers you have available. If you do this with two burner numbers, you can set up a “Visible Pay Party” and save $10 on the two monthly payments. Also, don’t forget to refer yourself to Uber, Fluz, DoorDash, CashApp, etc with the new burner phone number. That’s gotta be worth a few bucks more, right?

What’s the tale? A little bit of leg work usually means a much bigger win. Don’t be afraid to dig in a little!

My empirical measurements of 111% of United’s domestic fleet.