Category: Points

  1. Meijer stores have a coupon for $10 off of $150+ in Mastercard gift cards through Saturday, and this seems to be the type of MPerks coupon that can be reclipped immediately after redemption.

    I’m not here to tell you what to do, but it doesn’t take a ton of action to make this a profitable trip to Meijerland if you’re not already in it. Meijer sells both Pathward and Sunrise gift cards.
  2. Staples online has fee-free $200 Visa gift cards online through Saturday, limit five in theory or four in practice, and in an unlikely twist these do actually code as office supply purchases.

    These are Pathward gift cards. (Thanks to Dave 37 for the MC → Visa correction)
  3. DoC shares a helpful note: Use any $200 American Express Platinum Fine Hotels and Resorts credits remaining before September 18, because the credit changes to $300 and resets after that date.

    You don’t need to stay by September 18 for the credit, you just need to book by September 18.
  4. Staples in-store has fee-free $200 Visa gift cards through Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  5. The Barclays GM Business card has an increased sign-up bonus of 100,000 points after $5,000 spend in three months, and is a 3x everywhere earner. The points are, for the most part, only useful for new car purchases or paying for GM parts or service.

    There was a time where several churners churned their way to a new GM car, but that was in the before-Barclays times and the before-GM points crackdown times. In current times, you can find cards that earn 3%+ cash back everywhere with games, and you don’t have to spend that cash back on a GM car.
  6. Chase has a transfer partner updates:

    – 100% transfer bonus to IHG through September 4 (meh)
    – Ending relationship with Emirates Skywards on October 16 (meh)

    Ultimate Rewards are valuable for plenty of things, but both of these options aren’t on the high end of the spectrum.

Happy Monday friends!

The punk-churner Ultimate Rewards value chart illustrated.

  1. AirCanada has a targeted offer for Chase Sapphire Reserve card holders for a 5,000 point Aeroplan Rewards Certificate, which reduces the cost of a flight award by 5,000 points. You’ve got until August 18 to register, and the certificate is good for a year.

    This works on both business and personal Sapphire Reserves, but not everyone is targeted. (Thanks to IronDukey)
  2. The Barclays JetBlue Business Mastercard has an increased sign-up bonus of 80,000 TrueBlue points after $2,000 spend and paying the $99 annual fee within 90 days.

    Side note: How many people paid everything but the $99 fee and let the bill default, causing this rule?
  3. Citi Shop Day offers 20x rewards when shopping through the Citi Shop browser extension to several online retailers, including buyer’s club favorites like BestBuy and Kohls. Watch for exclusions though, they’re real and they’re not spectacular.
  4. US Bank is sending bonuses for spend in August and September, registration required. Check for email from [email protected]:

    – $50 statement credit after 10 transactions
    – $100 statement credit after 20 transactions
    – $150 statement credit after 30 transactions

    To qualify, each transaction must be $75+, making this a bonus 6.67% cash back in addition to regular rewards for maximizers. (Thanks to Jonathan)
  5. Alaska is adding flights ton London, England and Reykjavik, Iceland from Seattle in Spring 2026 on 787-900 and a 737-MAX8 aircraft respectively, and these will likely be easy awards for the first couple of weeks that they’re bookable.

    I wouldn’t want to fly the Iceland route for eight hours on a domestically configured narrow body aircraft, but you do you, dear traveler.
  6. Safeway, Albertsons, Vons, and other Just4U stores have a coupon 10x points on Zift Zillions through Saturday, as reported a couple of days ago. Starting today, there’s an additional $10 grocery certificate with $50+ purchased on various gift cards, including Zift Zillions cards, limit one per transaction.

    Obviously if you thought 10x was good on its own, 10x + $10 in a slightly annoying to use grocery certificate is slightly better. (Thanks to SideShowBob233)
  7. Southwest has a paid and award sale for 40% off of base fares booked by tomorrow night with promo code LUVFALL, a promo code obviously created to celebrate their fall from grace.

    The concept of “base fares” didn’t used to matter much with Southwest, but now that we’re in the “Southwest-is-basically-Ryanair” era of travel, I’d like to share a reminder that anything not included in the fare itself won’t be discounted, like seat selection fees and checked bag fees. Sometimes booking a bundle that’s 40% off that includes seats and checked bags in the fare is cheaper than booking basic and paying for add-ons, but only sometimes.

Happy Wednesday!

LUV’s fall from grace, illustrated.

  1. Do this now (for Marriott Bonvoy Ambassadors and Titaniums): Register for United and Marriott’s reciprocal earning:

    – 1,500 Bonvoy points and 1,000 United MileagePlus miles for a stay after August 31
    – 500 United MileagePlus miles per stay at Marriott properties
    – 750 Bonvoy points per United flight

    Afterward for masochists, consider how many United flights you’d have to take to earn a free night at a Marriott Courtyard.
  2. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards Mastercard, the Paris train system of credit cards, has new beginning of the month spend offers:

    – $125 statement credit with $750+ spend or $200 statement credit with $1,500+ spend monthly in gas, grocery, or restaurants through December
    – $100 statement credit with $500+ spend or $150 statement credit with $1,000+ spend in monthly in gas, grocery, or restaurants through December

    Those who didn’t have that type of offer seem to already have a prior monthly version. (Thanks to Peter, bktran, TeddyH, and K).
  3. The Chase Sapphire Reserve personal card has updated its Pay Yourself Back categories for Q3. Grocery, gas, home improvement, and annual fees will be reimbursed at 1.25 cents per point, and select charities at 1.5 cents per point.

    The Sapphire Reserve business card only has charities as an option, and only at 1.25 cents per point. At least you still can buy a $50 Lululemon gift card for free twice a year I guess, which works out approximately 0.63 pants per year.
  4. American Express offers has a new offer for 20,000 Membership Rewards or a $200 statement credit after $1,000+ spend with AirFrance / KLM.

    Yes, it’s not hard to hit this offer with a family traveling to Europe. But also, it’s possible to hit it in less obvious ways.
  5. The American Express Delta Business cards have no-lifetime language (NLL) links that match their recent normal link heightened sign-up bonus:

    – Business Gold: 90,000 SkyMiles after $6,000 spend in six months, waived annual fee
    – Business Platinum: 100,000 SkyMiles after $8,000 spend in six months
    – Business Reserve : 110,000 SkyMiles after $12,000 spend in six months

    The personal cards still have regular lifetime language in their offer terms.
  6. American Express Membership Rewards will reduce the transfer ratio to Emirates Skywards on September 18 from 5:5 to 5:4. Or if you prefer, from 225:255 to 225:180, because math is fun (or at least it’s “fun”, idk).
  7. AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue has released its July promo rewards for travel through December 31. US cities in this month’s promotion are: Portland OR, Austin TX, Atlanta GA, and Dallas TX.

    Economy flights are 18,750 miles and business class are 60,000 miles each way.

Happy Wednesday!

Math is just as “fun” for computers as it is for us.

  1. Staples has fee-free $200 Visa gift cards through Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  2. Meijer stores have a promotion for 10,000 MPerks points with the purchase of $100+ in Choice or One4All gift cards. Both of these have variants that convert to Home Depot and post-Pepper rates for Home Depot are currently north of 90%.

    This one is limited to one per MPerks account, but, uhhh, you know.
  3. Blit Rewards will have a tiered transfer bonus of between 50% and 200% to Accor ALL on Sunday June 1, which brings the effective value per Blit point above 4.5 cents for top tier members with the boosted 1:2 ratio and combined with the current value of the dollar which is trash compared to the euro. You’ve got the week to earn points to prepare. For a refresher on Accor’s reward program, check the mini-guide here.

    I’m 100.000001% sure (aka fluz sure) that my travel patterns are different than yours, but I love the Accor program for Europe and I’ll be transferring in quite a lot as part of this promotion. (Thanks to VFTW)
  4. The no-annual fee Mesa Visa home owners credit card has a sign-up bonus of 50,000 points after $5,000 spend in 90 days with promo code BONUS50. The new iteration of the card pays rewards on a mortgage of up to $100,000 per year whether or not you finance through Mesa’s lenders, unlike their prior version of the card. To be eligible for mortgage point earning though, you have to spend a sum of $1,000+ monthly on the card.

    Word on the street is that mortgage validation is an incomplete process, and so is reporting to credit agencies. I expect both of those things to tighten up in the future. They’ve added transfer partners for points earning too, with Finnair and Accor ALL being the most interesting.

Have a nice Monday friends!

View of the Mesa mortgage validation team’s workbench.

Endorphins hit differently when you get a big sign-up bonus, make a great redemption, or get a great deal. Each of these can be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars, and everyone likes to see a hockey-stick chart on their points balance right?

Sometimes though, you can “find churning money or points” by dealing with the sludge of churning. In just the last couple of months, I’ve had to:

  • Figure out how to get my Flexperks points back after an airline cancelled booking
  • Get refunded for stolen in shipping items for reselling
  • Find every hidden unsubscribe from the Motley Fool (after kicking myself for going for the portal bonus again)
  • Work with giftcards.com for e-gift cards that showed the CVV as “Error retrieving CVV”
  • Bug Alaska for missing travel credits

None of those things are fun, none of them give me the same endorphin hit of an initial churn. They’re all worth real, sizable money though. And if I didn’t do them, I’d negate plenty of the endorphin-laden kind of churning. So, the lesson:

Earning $1,000 from housekeeping is as good as $1,000 from a bank bonus. Also taxes something something.

– MEAB

Have a nice weekend friends!

Sometimes the hockey stick goes in the wrong direction.

  1. The Rakuten shopping portal is offering $150-$300 or 15,000-30,000 Membership Rewards for credit card approvals with some Chase cards, and you’ll get it automatically with the Rakuten shopping extension installed in your browser:

    – Sapphire Preferred ($300)
    – Freedom Unlimited ($150)
    – Ink Unlimited ($300)

    This absolutely beats any two player mode referral bonus as is and also makes the Sapphire Preferred slightly more attractive than an Ink. If they drop back to their apparently regular bonuses of $50, then you can do better with a referral from P1 to P2 or buy selling a referral click on a marketplace.
  2. Register for Hilton’s Q2 promotion for 1,000 bonus points per stay between June 1 and August 15. Normally I’d take the time to click and register for a promotion at any hotel that I may end up at, but this one is almost not worth the clicks unless you’re staying at multiple Hilton properties over that timeframe.
  3. Qatar Avios has an incoming transfer bonus of 30% from Citi ThankYou points through May 31. In theory they have until the end of June to post the bonus points, but in practice they’re arriving instantly.

    You can transfer Qatar Avios to other Avios programs, so this is effectively a transfer bonus to all of those too.

Chase’s real-world testing for self-affiliate links.

  1. United has new personalized and targeted MilePlay offers for travel through June 18, registration required.

    My offer was 3,000 bonus miles after booking and flying a trip with a fare of at least $100. I looked at rebooking my one existing paid flight on United, but the fare difference was approximately $200; fortunately for me I’m not bad at math (or at least I’m conceited enough to think that I’m not bad at math).
  2. Citi ThankYou Points has a 30% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic through May 17.
  3. American Express Offers has an offer for $250 off of $1,800+ at Virgin Atlantic, which pairs well with family travel and the previous item.
  4. Office Depot/OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300 in Visa gift cards through Saturday. For best results:

    – Buy in even multiples of $300 for a bigger percentage discount
    – Don’t forget American Express $20 monthly credits on Business Gold cards
    – Look for the Everywhere variety of cards which have different liquidation profiles
    – Try for multiple transactions back-to-back

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  5. Chase has a targeted offer for 5x (or 7x with IHG) in gas, grocery, or dining through June 30 on at least its Marriott, United, Ritz Carlton, and IHG cards for up to $1,000 spend.

Happy Monday friends!

Visualizing MEAB math.

  1. Southwest has a fare sale for paid and award travel between April 22 and August 27 with promo code TAKE30. There are some blackout dates, and the blackout dates seem more city specific than the terms and conditions suggest.

    Tickets booked before May 28 still get free checked bags and no change fees, and a small bright spot is that the variable Rapid Rewards redemption rates are more favorable on the flights eligible for the promo code too. For some bad analysis redemption values, compare the pre-sale cash price to the post-sale award price and marvel at how your math approaches TPG valuations.
  2. Chase’s Q2 2025 Pay Yourself Back categories for Sapphire cards are: gas, grocery (but not Walmart or Target, and probably not Han’s Deli either), pet supply and vets, charities, and annual membership fees. Charities pay a +25% bigger boost, and redemptions continue to be uncapped.

    They have co-brand card Pay Yourself Back on Marriott Bold, United, Southwest, and Aeroplan with relatively small limits, but the cashout typically only makes sense on Marriott Bold or Aeroplan.
  3. AirCanada Aeroplan has opened registration for a promotion for 3,000 bonus points on a one-way booking, or 6,000 bonus points on a round-trip booking made by April 13 for travel through December 15.

    News outlets have been parroting a 75% drop in bookings between the US and Canada since the trade war started which is likely extremely exaggerated due to flawed study methodology and sample bias. The real number may be closer to 10-20%, but either way it’s bad. I expect this promotion will be copied in spirit by US Airlines relatively soon.
  4. JetBlue and Icelandair have a new partnership, so I guess you can choose between poor redemption values from TrueBlue and poor (future) redemption values from Southwest Rapid Rewards.
  5. American Express Membership Rewards has a 20% transfer bonus to Etihad Guest and a 20% transfer bonus to AeroMexico ClubPremier. The former is a great backdoor way into short-haul AA travel.
  6. Chase Ultimate Rewards has an 80% transfer bonus to IHG through April 30, making it a 1,000:1,800 transfer ratio. In general you can do better by other booking games, but there are use cases where IHG points bookings have outsized value.

Deriving TPG point valuations.