1. There’s a coupon for $10 cash-back off of a $25 purchase at Walgreens in Google Pay. Clip it, link your credit cards to Google Pay in the mobile app, then go to Walgreens and use your linked card. Technically you can buy anything $25 or more to trigger the deal, but the provably correct choices are: (a) $25 worth of Peanut M&Ms, or (b) a $25 Steam gift card for resale. (thanks to DoC)
2. Reportedly, American Express is sending postal mailers for Business Platinum cards in the mail with a sign-up bonus of 190,000 Membership Rewards points. I haven’t heard of anyone receiving these mailers first-hand yet, but I have to assume that one of you has one or will get one shortly. Keep your eyes out!
3. The Citi Custom Cash card has had an in-branch $300 bonus after spending $1,000 for several months, but you can now get that online at Credit Karma of all places. This card is a souped up Chase Freedom or DiscoverIT card, you get 5x on up to $500 spend per month in whichever category you spend those most money on rather than worrying about rotating categories.
I have a Custom Cash card that I converted from an AT&T Access (less) card with a huge credit line. Too bad I can’t reallocate that credit line to another Citi card that I want to spend more than $500 / month on. It’s pure, unadulterated, wasted Citi credit capacity today.
4.Alaska Airlines has a buy-one-get-one (BOGO) plus taxes and fees (PTAF) sale running for bookings made today on travel between January 5th and March 9th using promo code STARBUCKS. It almost didn’t make the cut for this post because:
It ends right before Spring Break
It excludes travel on:
Mondays, Fridays, and Sundays on some routes
Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays on some routes
Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays on the other routes
Sundays through Saturdays on dates between February 18 and February 28
Confused? I think they’re trying to make the BOGO-PTAF deal a BOGO-PTAF-PITA deal.
The “L” in “L Walker” stood for “less” in my case.
Hopefully you got in on the Target 10% back on gift cards over the weekend. So far spot rates on Target cards have held surprisingly well during this iteration. I didn’t want to spend a bunch of time at a Target so I maxed out my Discover 5% cash back and left — I probably should have tried harder. Anyway, here are a few things to look at for Monday:
1. US Bank sent me a mailer for a $500 sign-up bonus after spending $4,500 in 150 days on their Triple Cash Rewards no-annual fee business credit card, and it turns out the offer is publicly available without a mailer code (affiliate-free link as always). It’s a great sign-up bonus for a card that won’t show up on your credit report and won’t charge an annual-fee, and the card earns 3% at office supply stores and gas stations (limit $200 per transaction on gas); if you’re locked out of Chase Ink cads or past your office supply 5x capacity it could be a nice card to keep in your wallet, otherwise it’s basically a sock drawer card after the sign-up bonus. A few things to note:
US Bank combines hard pulls in a single day, so apply for multiple cards at once
Historically you can get multiple business cards in the same day with multiple EINs
US Bank Visa cards work in many unexpected places where other credit cards don’t, always probe with them
I would have tested getting multiple cards in the same day with different EINs, but on my first attempt the application went pending, so I didn’t think that applying for more was going to help anything. I currently have three US Bank credit cards with ridiculously large credit lines in my portfolio so maybe I should have done something about that first.
2.Meijer is running a promotion for a $10 Meijer gift card free with every $100 Apple gift card purchase, but you do have to clip the coupon on each of your Meijer accounts first. Assuming you were going to buy groceries anyway, this is a profitable deal with current Apple $100 gift card resale rates hovering at around 91%.
Thanks to everyone for your questions and comments over the week, it seems like you’ve had a ton of recent successes and I’m always glad to hear about them (and of course I appreciate hearing about the “less optimal” situations too).
There are a few deals to ride into the weekend:
1. It turns out that in addition to the existing methods for extending the expiration of FlyingBlue miles there’s a new way: Have miles that expire in the middle of a pandemic and then wait. FlyingBlue announced yesterday that any miles expiring before December 31, 2022 are now extended through that date.
2. In August, Chase had a preregistration open for the Aeroplan credit card and offered 10,000 if you joined the pre-registration list. Now, Chase is sending links for signing-up for the new credit card and claiming those 10,000 points. Check your inbox (mine hadn’t arrived as of this writing or I’d see if there was a link I could share).
MEAB mini-review of the Aeroplan card? The sign-up bonus will be hard to use effectively, but 3x uncapped at grocery is great. That said, my Citi Premier also gives uncapped 3x at grocery and lets me transfer to Avianca Lifemiles or Turkish Airlines for the same general award availability as Aeroplan with competitive or better flight prices. So, hard pass. I’d rather just churn a few Inks.
3. Now that the “4-for-us” promotion has ended, American Express has refreshed its referral bonus offers and there are reports of seeing referral bonuses of up to 50,000 Membership Rewards points.
4. Remember the Rakuten in-store card-linked program? Well, Staples is ready to make that one exciting: They’re having another fee-free $200 Mastercard gift card sale (limit 5) which should stack nicely with 2.5% cash back. If you’re going to scale this deal, I’d throw in a few pens and a bag of candy or something to try and avoid drawing Rakuten’s anger.
5. The BestBuy gift card market has been steadily improving since Cyber Monday, I’m seeing spot prices at or above 97% again, and bulk card inventories at aggregators and buyers are slowly shrinking.
6. Lowe’s has its promotion for a free $10 Lowe’s gift card when purchasing a $200 Visa gift card running through Wednesday, December 8. This can be rather lucrative if you have a good liquidation channel for the Visas, and the $10 gift card should sell for $8.00 – $8.50. Hint: Buy the “Everywhere” variety of cards for lower fees and better liquidation options. I’ll be out running this one. (Thanks to DoC)
Update: Reader Avi reminded me to mention that your cards should all be linked to JetBlue’s TrueBlue Shopping to earn 3x at Lowes, and this does work when buying gift cards.
7.Target is back with 10% off of gift cards, up to $500 per card for Saturday and Sunday. It took until February for the market to recover from this sale last year, but I think it’ll recover more quickly this round. To scale the deal go in-store with multiple Target circle accounts, but keep it to no more than $1,500 total per credit card. Spot prices are currently at 90-92%.
1. American Express’s 10 charge card limit and 5 credit card limit both seem to have changed. Justin O shared that he was approved for a 6th charge card late Tuesday night, and after his data-point manyothersfollowed confirming that the limits aren’t currently being enforced or have changed. I lobbed in an application for the Blue Business Plus credit card using a referral link from P2’s account and was instantly approved which puts me at 11 charge cards and 6 credit cards.
2. PenFed is sending holiday spending bonus offers via email. My offer was for $50 back on $500 spend on my PenFed card. Other offers include $15 back on three contactless purchases, a $15 streaming credit, and $20 back on $20 or more in wireless spend.
3. Hertz is letting current President’s Circle members gift President’s Circle status to anyone else before December 15, with the status valid through June 30, 2022. You can gift status at this link.
It was a strange Black Friday weekend in 2021– we saw shakeups in the BestBuy resale market, Kroger shopping rewards market, and a lack of major deals from big-box retailers; hopefully everything clears up for Cyber Monday, but I’m not holding my breath. I’ll recap everything in a day or two after all the dust settles, but in the mean time here are a few things to look at:
2. There’s a new no-lifetime language (NLL) offer for the American Business Express Gold card. The sign-up bonus is 90,000 points after spending $10,000 in three months. Unfortunately the offer isn’t available for me, but that’s unsurprising since I currently have eleven American Express charge cards and the limit is typically ten. I also have five American Express credit cards and haven’t been able to bust through that limit. (Thanks to tehflip449, and thanks to BlueCat for pointing out that this one is a Business Gold card)
Side note: I’ve been debating internally about whether the Personal Gold is another candidate for an Unsung Hero card. It’s certainly my favorite American Express charge card and I’d keep 15 of them if I could, but isn’t exactly unsung. Story developing
3.The Point debit card has a new variation on its Streak offers, and it’s even more annoying than it’s been in the past. This one requires $200 in total spend and that you use the card at least once a day for seven days before December 24, after which you’ll get $30 back. Still worth it? Yes, provided that you’ve got automation. I bought a $200 gift card for resale at Whole Foods to take advantage of the 10x bonus and then I set up debbit to make a $1.xx charge at Amazon for the next six days. There’s a debbit sample configuration for another Point Streak deal here.
As usual, make sure you use a referral if you sign up for Point because the referral bonus of $100 is better than the publicly available offer. Reader Mark was the first to let me know that the referrer’s bonus is now also $100 and no longer one fifth of a crappy suitcase.
5. Meijer has $10 off in $150 or more of Mastercard gift cards with a limit of one per MPerks account. This is a decent deal if you’re already near a Meijer, but I wouldn’t go out of my way for this (unlike their Homerun deal).
6. You can cash out your Citi ThankYou Points at 1.125 cents per point today only by buying Apple gift cards at a 20% discount with ThankYou points and selling at 90% (or more) of face value. (Thanks to nutella)
1. Apparently several Chase credit cards are being approved regardless of 5/24 status (all links are affiliate-free). Reported cards that are currently ignoring 5/24:
I’m currently on a half-hearted mission to drop below 5/24 (which is a year away best case), but man I’m tempted to make that drop below 5/24 even longer with a Southwest Premier card and its 100,000 Rapid Rewards points bonus. Story developing. (DPs: 1, 2, 3, DoC)
2. The Point debit card is giving 10x at Whole Foods and 10x at Costco through Sunday, up to $500 spend each. Obviously both stores sell gift cards, so there’s that. As usual with this super-weird debit card, use a referral if you sign-up because the referral bonus of $100 is bigger than the regular, publicly available bonus.
3. United has targeted more people with this round of MilePlay, and this time I actually got an offer. Check yours at this link. Mine was “book two trips of at least $300 each and get a bonus 2,700 miles” — strong pass, I like flying on CRJ-200s a whole lot less than I like 2,700 miles, and I’d honestly pay $300 to not fly on a United CRJ-200. Hopefully your offer is quite a bit better.
4. There’s a great $500 bonus offer at the Tastyworks online brokerage after transferring $10,000 in and ostensibly waiting 90 days. Earlyreports suggested that the bonus posts in one to three days, and I can confirm the same for me (two business days, surprise!) If ten minutes of time is worth $500 for you, I’d suggest you jump on it while it’s still around.
5. Stockpile’s Thanksgiving surprise is that they’re allowing gift card purchases with a credit card, fee-free. If you run into limits, I bet you can find more email addresses and/or IP addresses, right? I knew you could.
It’s too bad this isn’t like black Friday from two years ago, when you could buy $10,000 per day in gift cards fee free, and the maximum value was $5,000 and not $500.
American Express launches us into the weekend with some great Friday news:
1. If you were shutdown by American Express for the Adam debacle, you’ve got a good shot at getting your cards reinstated by calling the number on the back of your card and asking for reinstatement. A few details:
Accounts reinstated on or after November 1st have all remained open as far as I can tell (versus those reinstated before that date which were quickly closed)
American Express will charge you $25 per card reinstated
Offers remain attached to your reinstated accounts
YMMV on whether your points and cash-back are auto-reinstated
Not everyone is eligible for reinstatement
If I were shutdown and wanted to reopen cards with American Express, I’d be very selective about which cards to reopen. I may not want to reopen a card that was sitting in a sock-drawer and only open because of a sign-up bonus or retention offer, for example.
2. There are a few links for adding employee cards to your small business Green, Gold, or Platinum card, and while the offers vary, generally it looks something like 20,000 Membership Rewards for adding a new employee card and spending $4,000 in six months. You can do this with up to five employees for a total of 100,000 Membership Rewards points. You can check your offer here:
You may be able to earn 100,000 points for each business card in your portfolio, just split them off into their own login
Sometimes it’s helpful to have employees with names like yours, right junior?
You don’t actually have to provide a SSN or date of birth for an employee card, and they arrive in the mail pre-activated, in the same way that Spirit’s seats are pre-reclined
Always choose the no-annual fee green employee card, the offer will still work
Watch for Spirit’s newest two innovations in a post-“pre-reclined” world. First: punishment class (the middle rows), and second: lie-flatish small-business class.
I finally got a kick in the pants to write this post after Rocky emailed and asked why I keep talking about the Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card but haven’t ever posted any real information about it. Why haven’t I posted anything when I clearly love the card? Well, I guarantee you don’t want to know what’s going on inside my head at any given moment, so let’s skip the why and jump into the what. The what:
This no-annual fee card will pay you $700 or more a year, seemingly in perpetuity.
I think it’s obvious to about everyone in the known universe that if you could choose to earn ThankYou Points or Shop Your Way Rewards, you’d choose ThankYou Points. Unfortunately, the only way to get the ThankYou Point version of the card is to call in and ask to convert your Shop Your Way Rewards earning to a ThankYou Point earning version, but I haven’t heard of anyone having any success doing that since 2020. So, if you’re like me, you’re probably going to be stuck with the Shop Your Way Rewards version.
What do you do with Shop Your Way Rewards? You can redeem ten of them for a penny toward merchandise like toilet paper, iPads, or neoprene dumbbells at shopyourway.com, or you can cash them out for a gift card to resell. I definitely do the latter.
Value
Here’s why this card is really valuable: After you’ve had the card for two to three months and it’s been sock-drawered, you’ll start getting spending offers in your email inbox and those offers stack. And unlike everything else about Citi and Sears IT, they post automatically every-time. For example, I have the following spend offers all running concurrently and all from within the last 30 days:
$70 statement credit after spending $2,000 anywhere
10x points at Best Buy (lol) and home improvement stores up to $1,250 in spend
10% back in statement credits on utilities every month through January 2022 (min spend $400, max earn $50 per month)
All of these offers obviously pair really well together. For simplicity, I’ll buy 3x$500 BestBuy gift cards at BestBuy for resale and send a $500 “utility payment”. After those two transactions I’ll earn $120 in statement credits plus another $125 worth of Shop Your Way Rewards points, all from a no-annual fee card.
And while not all months have offers stack as nicely as this month, it happens a lot. A lot.
MS Hint: This card is like other Citi Mastercards in many ways, but it does a few things better than other Citi cards too so don’t forget to probe.
ZOMG Wha??
Circling back to the introduction: this no-annual fee card will pay you $700 or more a year through targeted spend offers. Why? The rumor I’ve heard is that the Sears Shop Your Way Rewards card is one of the most valuable cards in Citi’s portfolio because it’s typically held by older generations that grew up with Sears, and those cardholders typically carry a monthly balance which earns Citi plenty in interest and fees so they want to encourage more spending and bigger balances. The story sounds truthy, but I have no independent confirmation so let’s just call it a likely possibility.
How come you haven’t heard of this card before? Well I’m sure the main reason is Sears, though I don’t think it pays a commission to affiliates so there’s not a financial incentive to write about it. Finally, the Shop Your Way Rewards program isn’t exactly on-par with AAdvantage or Hyatt, so there’s that.
(Special thanks to Garth for introducing the card to me.)
What’s going on in my mind at any given moment: trying to get one of these stupid wheels to turn.
