Category: Credit Cards

  1. Even though it started a few weeks ago, I think I only realized yesterday that we’ve apparently all agreed that there’s a new, fifth season of the year (“no-feepril”) in which office supply chains across the US take turns offering fee-free or below cost Visa or Mastercards every week throughout the season.

    Office Depot / OfficeMax drew the short straw this week and has a sale for $15 off of $300 or more in Visa gift cards through Saturday. To maximize the deal:

    – Link your cards to Dosh
    – Look for a Chase offer for 10% back at Office Depot / OfficeMax
    – Try for multiple transactions, back to back
    – Buy the grocery, fuel, or dining everywhere varieties for lower fees

    These are Pathward gift cards but there are still plenty of ways to liquidate them both online and in person. If you don’t have a few ways it’s time to get out there and look.
  2. A public link for the Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card with a bonus of five free night certificates worth up to 50,000 points per night after $5,000 in spend in three months has surfaced. The card has an annual fee of $95, and is probably the best deal you’re going to find with Marriott. A few notes:

    – You’re still going to pay for parking and resort fees with these, because Marriott
    – If a property costs more than 50,000 points per night, you can use up to 15k award points too
    – The certificates expire after one year

    I’m famously a Marriott Bonvoy super-critic, but even I’d go for this offer if I was below 5/24.
  3. Finally, let me offer some unsolicited American Express advice for those of you with with big negative balances because reasons:

    Always keep your balances as close to $0 as possible at the end of every banking day to avoid financial reviews or problems with the risk department. This applies as equally to negative balances as it does to positive balances.

Good luck and happy Monday!

Obscure fact: Sometimes Bonvoy and Office Depot/OfficeMax team up. This is the result.

  1. Two more airlines have joined the shopping portal bonus bandwagon for Easter(ish):

    – Alaska MileagePlan: Spend $100 by April 17 and earn 500 miles
    – United MileagePlus: Spend $100 by April 16 and earn 500 miles

    Still no giftcards.com, so Saks or Dell may be your best option for a quick mileage grab.
  2. The American Express Platinum card has an increased referral bonus for the referred:

    – 150,000 Membership Rewards after spending $6,000 in six months
    – $200 statement credit after spending at least $200 in the first three months

    Of course, the referrer should ideally refer from a personal Gold or similar for a bonus +5x at grocery on $25,000 in spend in addition to the referral bonus of 15,000-35,000 Membership Rewards.
  3. Now that ZIRP is a fading memory, earning reasonable interest rates on cash is much easier than it used to be and now largely available to any sized balance. There are now two banks that offer 5.02% savings rates nationwide and may be worth moving to as hub banks for manufactured spend (but not necessarily for money order deposits):

    – UFB Direct
    – CFG Bank

    Making one of these banks your hub could easily net you a few grand if you’ve got six figures on average flying around out there. Happy hunting! (Thanks to DDG)
  4. Office Depot / OfficeMax has $15 off of $300 or more in Mastercard gift cards through Saturday. Good things have been known happen if you scale this one in the right way, and always remember:

    – Try for multiple transactions back-to-back
    – Link each of your cards to Dosh

    These are Pathward gift cards so have a liquidation plan in place.

Commemorative mug not included, but at 5.02% you can get yourself one.

  1. Chase began shutting down entire account portfolios for big users of the Aeroplan Pay Yourself Back feature late last week. It seems like the common trigger wasn’t necessarily cashing out third party miles, but instead going well into six figures of miles cashed out or beyond. Chase previously communicated that cash-outs were unlimited in 2023 and would be limited to 50,000 points a year in 2024, but clearly unlimited doesn’t actually mean unlimited.

    I’d suggest pushing hard on this one if you’re caught up in a shutdown, but what do I know?
  2. Meijer (pronounced “major”, duh) has one of its best specials running in stores through Saturday: $10 off of $150 or more in Mastercard gift cards (pronounced “free money”, duh). This one is a digital coupon. Sometimes you can reclip the coupon after using it once on the same MPerks account, and sometimes you’ve got to scale with multiple accounts. (Thanks to GCG)
  3. Meijer also has a promotion for $7.50 in points with the purchase of $50 or more in Happy, Choice, or One4All gift cards. The best manufactured spend option here is to convert to Home Depot gift cards and resell for around 89%, or you can convert to Southwest for your own travel if that’s what you’re in to. This one definitely has to be scaled with multiple MPerks accounts (pronounced “possibly too much effort to scale”).
  4. Citi has updated its standard language along with a new 75,000 point sign-up bonus on the Premier card. The new language: “Bonus ThankYou® Points are not available if you have received a new account bonus for a Citi Premier account in the past 48 months.” So watch out if this one’s on your radar, and also don’t forget about the Citi Double Dip with these bonuses after 48 months. (Thanks to FM)

AT&T after telling their customers that unlimited doesn’t actually mean unlimited. Next up, Chase?

  1. United has a new iteration of the MileagePlay quarterly promotion, registration required and offers vary.

    My promotion was book and fly at least three $175 trips in the next 60 days for 8,700 MileagePlus miles. That’s a solid 2 out of 10 in my scoring book which is on par for United.
  2. Do this now: Register for Radisson Rewards Q2 promo for 5,000 bonus points per stay through June 30.
  3. Spirit Airlines has a status match promotion that costs $99 for the privilege of matching. The status is good for 12 months, and will get you a free carry-on and free checked bag, a free change once per itinerary, better seating, and a snack and drink on each flight.

    At least you won’t be flying Southwest? (Ok, I’m mostly kidding, but I’d take a Spirit Big Front Seat over a Southwest flight, which isn’t complimentary in the match.)
  4. There’s a $600 personal checking sign-up bonus with US Bank for accounts opened by April 11 using promo code 2023MAR. To qualify, you need $10,000 in direct deposits or “direct deposits” spread out over 90 days.

    Everyone’s going to tell you that you also need to be in US Bank’s footprint to qualify, but that’s a half truth at best. If you’re not in their footprint, open a brokerage account, wait a couple of days, then apply for the checking account to bypass the footprint requirement. (Thanks to FM)
  5. The Citi AA Platinum Select credit card has a really good sign-up bonus through :

    – 75,000 AA miles after $3,500 in purchases in four months
    – No annual fee for the first year, $99 after

    If you were banned by Toby you can probably still get back in and get this bonus, just use a new address, a slight name variation, and a new phone number. Also, get a PreCheck number and use that if you had Global Entry when shutdown, or vice-versa.
  6. AA’s eshopping portal has a bonus 500 miles with $200 or more in cumulative spend through April 10. I just checked and there’s breaking news: giftcards.com is still absent from the portal.

United’s demonstrating it’s consistent 2 out of 10: The lowrider hydraulic Boeing.

  1. The American Express Business Gold card’s sign-up bonus is now readily available with 130,000 Membership Rewards after $10,000 in spend in three months, both direct and via referral. And by readily available, I mean:

    – You may need to go incognito
    – You may need to try mobile and desktop
    – You may need to sacrifice a drained Metabank Pathward gebit
    – You may need to try Firefox, Brave, QikFox, or some other browser

    As always, maybe try for a second application right after the first. If one is great, two is better right? (Thanks to FM)
  2. Etihad Guest has a transfer bonus from Capital One through the end of April. It’s needlessly stair-cased with 15% bonus on up to 10,000 miles, 25% bonus on up to 50,000 miles, or a 30% bonus above. Sweet spots:

    – Business class to Europe on AA or Brussels metal
    – SFO or LAX to Japan in business on ANA metal
    – The US East Coast to Casablanca in business on Royal Air Maroc

    The program can be finicky with redemptions, so double check award space before transferring miles in.
  3. Albertson’s, Safeway, and Vons stores have a promotion for a $10 off of groceries coupon valid for seven days with the purchase of several gift cards, though the only really interesting option for gift card resellers is Apple. The promotion runs for two weeks and starts either yesterday or tomorrow depending on your region.
  4. Amazon has a new widely targeted bonus for 30-40% off of a purchase sold by Amazon or ACI gift cards when using one Membership Reward point during checkout through June 1.

The inspiration for the stair-cased Etihad Guest transfer bonuses.

Milenomics host Robert Dwyer often mentions that in his Massachusetts, his home state, credit card issuers are obligated by law to prorate annual fees when a card is closed. For the rest of the country though, what happens if we miss the window for an annual fee refund? Well, if you just close the card outright then you’ll lose the annual fee so that sucks.

If however the card is part of a family with a downgrade path like the Personal Platinum or Personal Gold AmEx card, you’ve got options for similar behavior:

  • Downgrade the card to another variant, the one with the lowest annual fee or no-fee
  • Wait a couple of days for the prorated annual fee credit to post
  • Close the card

As long as you didn’t upgrade the card for a bonus or open the card in the last year, this trick won’t get you into the AmEx penalty box. The trick works with Chase and other issuers too, so always explore your options.

Good luck!

The trick doesn’t always work, sorry discount airlines.

  1. Chase has a 25% bonus when transferring Ultimate Rewards to AirFrance and KLM’s FlyingBlue program. I have a few viewpoints with this program that aren’t necessarily widely agreed upon in the bloggersphere:

    – There are quite a few low priced business class awards and decent availability too
    – The currency is rather valuable for travel from the US to Europe and Northern Africa
    – KLM’s 787 hard and soft product are both underrated
    – AirFrance’s angled lie-flat business product isn’t nearly as bad as people say, it’s 90% as good as a regular lie-flat seat (but still avoid it if there’s another option)
  2. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card is mentioned here almost as often as office supply store gift card deals, but there’s a good reason: It’s ludicrously lucrative and all of the targeted offers stack with one another.

    For April, there are targeted spend bonuses for 10% back in statement credits in restaurants, gas, and groceries once per month in April, May, and June. My particular offer requires spend of at least $700 to qualify and caps out at $800 in spend for the statement credit, but ymmv.
  3. American Express has a 30% transfer bonus for Membership Rewards to the Hilton Honors program, so the bonused rate is now 1 MR to 2.6 HHonors points. This is a great deal for certain properties and a horrible deal for others, so just run the math before transferring. As a concrete example, I’m writing this from a Hilton property that’s 90,000 points or $799 a night. With the transfer bonus, I’d need approximately 35,000 Membership Rewards, and I’d get about 2.3 cents of value for each Membership Reward point.

    Reader homework: Prove mathematically that this transfer bonus is a bad value for any Hilton property in Lubbock, TX.

Trying to prove value at Hilton properties in Lubbock, TX.

  1. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards Mastercard, an original MEAB Unsung Hero, now allows for points redemption to Visa e-gift cards at the same redemption rate as other gift cards, making this the new best points cash-out option and making the card even more valuable.
  2. Lowe’s has an in-store promotion for a $15 Lowe’s gift card with the purchase of a $200 Mastercard gift card. The Mastercards are Pathward and have an activation fee of $5.95 to $7.95 depending on the variety, and the resale rates on the Lowe’s card are between 82% and 84% making this a profitable deal without considering credit card rewards.

    There’s a limit of two per $15 Lowe’s cards per email address, but someone told me it’s possible to get more than one email address. I know, sounds weird right?
  3. Fake Points Travel Blogger notes that the Bilt credit card company (Bilt Technologies, Inc) is suing another company also named Bilt (technically BILT, Inc) over trademark infringement for a mobile app that’s existed longer than credit card company, and that lawsuit spawned a counter-suit. Also revealed in court filings is that since its inception, the credit card Bilt has made a total of $41.4 million in revenue through January of this year.

    The action item on this one? Start thinking up new names for the Bilt rewards program and share them around your circles. I can’t wait to hear what you come up with.
  4. Reader Kevin was the first to let me know that there’s good (?) news to go along with yesterday’s bad news that Walmart has $3.74 load fees BlueBird cards: You can now load BlueBird cards at Family Dollar fee-free, just like with Serve cards.
  5. You’d better sit down for this, because I think you’re going to be blown away, err, wait. The opposite actually:

    Staples will be selling fee free $200 Visa gift cards in-store starting Sunday and running through the following Saturday, limit eight per transaction. As usual, try for multiple transactions back-to-back to minimize the time spent in a 12,000 square foot store manned by two employees, one of whom is in the back room watching TikTok.
  6. American Express’s Delta co-brand cards have increased sign up bonuses:

    – Personal Gold: 75,000 SkyMiles after $2,000 spend in six months
    – Personal Platinum: 75,000 SkyMiles and 10,000 MQM after $5,000 spend in six months
    – Personal Reserve: 100,000 SkyMiles and 10,000 MQM after $5,000 spend in six months

    AmEx used their random number generator with these offers so if you don’t see them, switch browsers, go incognito, connect to a VPN, try mobile, yell at Richard Kerr between lawsuits, or something similar until you do see them. (Thanks to rep-swe)

Have a nice weekend!

The real surprise isn’t Staples, it’s what’s at the bottom of the slide.