Category: Credit Cards

Do this now: Register for Hilton’s Q1 Promotion for 2,500 bonus points per stay from January 1 through May 1.

1. The PenFed Pathfinder Visa credit card has a new targeted offer for a $150 statement credit for adding an authorized user by December 31.

What’s that? You haven’t heard of this card before? Well, I’m not terribly surprised. The card hasn’t exactly achieved Unsung Hero status, but still probably worth your attention because:

  • The card has effectively a $425 sign-up bonus (50,000 points at 0.85 cents each)
  • The card gives a $100 airline incidental credit every year
  • The card has effectively no-annual fee (the $95 annual-fee is waived every year as long as you have a free PenFed Access America checking account)
  • The card has offered multiple spending bonuses this year (like $50 back after spending $500)
  • The card is churnable
  • You can hold multiple Pathfinder cards simultaneously

Everyone can join PenFed for $5, and PenFed is an excellent target for shenanigans.

2. The HMBradley 3.0% APR bank account is going to require that you hold the HMBradley credit card to continue to qualify for 3.0% APR on up to $100,000 starting on February 1, 2022. (Thanks to chooseyourusername17)

As an alternative high-yield option, you may want to consider a Series I Savings Bond, which will pay at minimum of about 3.56% APR, and probably quite a bit more. Free-quent Flyer has posted an excellent in-depth article with more information.

3. Check your Marriott Bonvoy account for new targeted promotions. There have been multiple reports of earning opportunities for free-night certificates, like this one.

4. Get ready to plan your summer travel because the next Southwest Airlines schedule extension is expected today and it will cover most summer travel, with an extension through September 5. There are two reasons this is interesting:

  • On many routes, the cheapest fares sell-out quickly, so booking early will typically get the best price
  • Southwest will probably tweak their schedule for far-away flights and let you change to any other flight on the same route ± two weeks for no-additional charge; so book the cheapest flight you can find in that window and wait for a likely schedule change to switch to the flight you want

Good luck out there.

Sample path available to PathFinder Visa cardholders (and non-PathFinder Visa cardholders too, but they have less fun.)

Do this now: Register for Hyatt’s Q1 2022 Bonus Promotion (2,022 bonus points per night for everyone and another 1,000 per stay if you’re a credit card holder and stay in certain cities for stays between January 15 and April 20).

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s jump into todays points:

1. American Express sent me a link for 7,500 SkyMiles for adding an authorized user to personal Delta Platinum card and spending $500 on the user’s card in six months. If you have a Delta Platinum card, try your luck here.

2. Reader Pavel let me know that Turkish airlines is holding a 30% off sale on both business class and economy tickets booked by the end of the year for travel from now through May 15, 2022. This is a great deal, but there are a few gotchas:

  • Turkish awards can be difficult to book, especially for the first time on a frequent flyer account
  • The award sale is only valid on Turkish metal, so no United or other Star Alliance flights can be tacked on
  • Mixed cabin awards mostly aren’t allowed

Booking tips can be found in Frequent Miler’s Turkish guide.

3. Reader Pavish shared that his local Sam’s Club is now selling $50-$500 variable Vanilla Visa and Mastercard gift cards. There are reports of the same thing in other locations too, so it could be worth checking your local club. The activation fee on these is low at $4.88, and unlike Metabanks, Vanilla cards work well in almost all liquidation channels. My first question is: Can I use a Walmart or Sam’s Club gift card to purchase these? I honestly don’t know the answer, but it’s worth exploring.

Good luck out there.

Thursday Triple, if Thursday was a water polo player.

We’re going rapid-fire today:

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
  • Freeze your SageStream and ARS reports before applying for better approval odds
  • 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%.

3. Friday’s Lowe’s deal for $10 back as a Lowes gift card on $200 in Visa gift cards needs two follow-up items:

Good luck out there dodging holiday shoppers during your MS escapades.

Me (player) dodging holiday shoppers (volleyball) at Target.

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%.

Happy weekend!

An example of a “less optimal” situation.

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 many others followed 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.

Maybe American Express was trying to copy Chase’s loosening of its 5/24 rules? Either way I’m happy.

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.

4. American Express has new transfer bonuses for December:

  • 30% to Virgin Atlantic FlyingClub
    • Use for ANA round-trip business class (90,000 miles) or first class (110,000 miles) awards to Japan
    • Use for Delta one-way Business class non-stop awards to or from Europe (50,000 – 65,000 miles)
  • 20% to Singapore KrisFlyer
    • Use for economy Alaska flights to or from Hawaii (12,000 – 17,500 miles)
    • Use for business class Star Alliance flights to the middle east (76,500 miles)

5. Vinh has some great advice and it’s worth repeating his conclusion: “The lesson learned is if you see a new VGC on the rack, go test it out.”

Happy Thursday!

Leaked image of American Express’s new card approval standards.

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:

1. If you have an American Express Hilton card, check here for a targeted free night certificate after $8,000 in spend by February 28, 2022. I even got this offer on my fee-free Hilton card.

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.

4. Check this link for 30% back on up to $50 at Amazon for using at least one Membership Rewards point during checkout. Thanks to reader Dean for the link.

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)

Happy Monday!

Everything on sale for Black Friday at BestBuy.

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. Early reports 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.

Thanksgiving Surprise from Nana. Yummy, I guess?