Author: matt

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.

A couple to take you into the weekend:

1. Use promo code GOTENJAN or GO15JAN for $10 off of $20 or $15 off of $25 at UberEats, respectively. Have you scaled up on burners yet?

2. I wrote a guest post at Milenomics on the major US carriers’ travel banks and their rules. MS Hint: It’s a good resource for what to do with the results of cashing out premium card travel credits.

Have a great weekend hackers!

A young adult woman wearing a pink sun hat and a sundress slumped over a chair holding (presumably) a beer.
Not pictured: Grand weekend plans. Pictured: Actual weekend.

Are you participating in reselling or in buyer’s groups? I could write a book on the former after years of playing and scaling that game; but first I’d have to recover from my mental battle damage and figure out how to restate some of my feelings in a less hostile way, because it actually can be a very good gig.

In case you are, Amazon is sending out offers for $100 off of $300 for creating an Amazon Business account. To get one:

  • Create a new personal account — I used the same information as my normal personal account, other than the email address.
  • Get identified by Amazon’s algorithms as a business buyer — Buy a few things over a few months that are clearly for resale (high value electronics, not normal household items)
  • Watch for en email with the subject “Get $100 off your first Amazon Business purchase”

I already had another personal and business account, so I believe you can churn this. It’s not an instant money maker, but after a couple of months you’ll probably be able to get $100 in your pocket for buyer’s group or resale activities. Just watch for falling fireball-laden mind bombs.

A wooden crate on fire
3D rendering of my memories of reselling.

1. Watch for mailers from American Express for Delta SkyMiles cards with a big bonus and small spend (e.x., 70,000 points for $2,000 spend). Reportedly some of these have no lifetime language attached to them, so you can get the bonus even if you’ve already gotten it in the past.

2. Do you have a P2 or a close friend with an AmEx card? Have them refer you for a Business Platinum card. The referrer gets up to 30,000 membership rewards and the referred offer could be as high as 110,000 membership rewards. If the offer isn’t showing as 110,000 points, try incognito, a mobile device, FireFox, Edge, Safari, standing on your head, and/or a VPN. It is around for most with some effort. Note that there is a high $15,000 over 3 month spend to earn the bonus on the cardholder side, the referrer gets the bonus on card approval.

A random spinning wheel with an arrow and 50 potential values.
Just spin a 3.1415 to win a 110,000 membership rewards sign-up bonus.

There have been theories floating around the community for a couple of years regarding how many American Express credit cards (not to be confused with charge cards like the Gold, Platinum, and Green) a single person can have. Depending on who you ask or where you look, you’ll find some consensus at a limit of either four or five.

New evidence is emerging on Reddit and in private channels that suggest a limit of below five cards is caused by holding one or more charge cards with Pay-Over-Time enabled. So, I’d like to again suggest that you un-enroll from Pay-Over-Time at this link to free up more slots for AmEx credit cards, especially if you’re close to or right at the five-ish card limit. AmEx also sends gifts for charge cards not enrolled in Pay-Over-Time, so double win.

A wallet that is comically stuffed full of cards and papers.
Do you really want to fit a charge card in one of those slots?

Martin Luther King holiday is a strange holiday in the western US; as far as I can tell it’s not treated with the same deference here as compared to the east, and especially the southeast. I bring this up because I wanted to offer wishes for a nice holiday weekend — but for some, especially in the west, it’s not a holiday at many employers, so “gee, sorry your mom blew up, Ricky” I guess.

1. Merrill will pay you from $100 to $1,000 to move your assets, even in a retirement account, over to them and hold it there for 6 months. Unless all of your wealth is in a 401k held at your current employer, you can probably move it to Merrill easily without changing your holdings or positions. It’s also a lower total asset move than normal bonuses of this size.

2. Chase will pay you $2,000 to upgrade your account to a Chase Private Client account, which gives you a debit card that says “Chase Private Client” as the main perk (BlueCat mentions that the Arts & Culture program is a big benefit too). This one has a minimum balance of $250,000 held for 90 days though, so the barrier to entry is higher than the Merrill deal. As with that deal, you can move retirement accounts, investment accounts, or other banking system assets. This doesn’t have to be a checking account transfer.

A picture of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 cast in the theater watching a backdrop of a quarter with the words "Money Talks!" overlaid.
MLK3K $3K, err, wait what?