Category: Quick Hits

Apparently a bunch of marketing teams got together and colluded to make Wednesday, August 25 the official promotion day for travel hacking. Here are the results:

1. Simon has a promotion running for 40% off of gift cards with code FS40AUG21. Don’t buy with an American Express, but other cards are fair game. For the best bang for your buck, go with $1,000 Visa gift cards.

Tip: If you haven’t yet been approved for a volume account with Simon and you want to unlock the $1,000 Visa gift cards, I’d recommend putting “Manufactured Spend” on the application as the reason for applying. Yes, I’m serious, and yes, it works.

2. Register here for Hilton HHonors double points for non-AmEx Hilton credit card holders, or triple points if you do hold a HHonors credit card. The promotion runs through September 7 and December 31.

3. Alaska Airlines has a flash sale running today for travel between September 7 and December 15. Because the dates cover some holiday travel, I’d suggest taking a peek if you’re still waiting to book travel for the holiday season.

4. Register here for 1,000 bonus AA miles for every “qualifying” stay between September 3 and December 21, which as far as I can tell means every points earning eligible stay in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, or Asia (cash, or cash+points).

5. The Point debit card has a 10x boost for Target, up to $500 in spend. This amounts to $50 cash back. Can you guess my play? If you said buy a gift card for resale, you’ve won our grand prize!

If you want the Point card, use a referral because the sign up bonus is bigger that way.

A checklist with the options "Loser", "Winner", and "Other" Winner is selected.
Your quiz scorecard.

1. Register here for a $50 promo code off of any AA flight booking when booking with a Mastercard for travel before March 15, 2022. There’s a catch though, the code comes six to eight weeks after your first booking for a second booking. So, it’s really a buy-one, get-one for $50 off offer. I bet you can game it with a refundable fare, but at this point no one has been able to try.

2. Check here for a targeted offer for 135,000 points for upgrading from an American Express Gold or Green card to a Platinum card. Yes, this may even work with the NLL Business Gold card that you may have opened on Thursday. (Thanks to DDG)

3. An interesting promotion has come from Avis, which has happened in the past (checks notes) approximately zero times. Register at that link, then rent an intermediate car from Avis twice for at least two days and you’ll earn a free rental day. Also, don’t forget to register for Avis Preferred status if you have an American Express Platinum card. It’s an even stronger flex if your Platinum card was from item 2.

William Banks Jr doing the Tuesday Triple (jump).

1. The Citi ThankYou Points (TYP) 25% transfer bonus to Avianca LifeMiles has been extended through August 27. LifeMiles have a few sweetspots that involve strange definitions of regions, and other good deals like Central or Eastern US to Europe in economy. If I’m headed to Europe or Asia I’m going to do it in a lie flat bed like a diva though. So allow me to illustrate how I think about this bonus:

  • 60,000 TYP = 75,000 LifeMiles = One way business class between Europe and North America
  • 64,800 TYP = 81,000 LifeMiles = One way business class between Asia and North America

Those rates aren’t bad, especially given Avianca’s Star Alliance partner availability. Just avoid those old United Business class 2-2-2 configs.

2. Clip this coupon in all of your Meijer MPerks accounts for a $10 Meijer GiftCard with $50 in Happy Gift Cards. I’d buy a Happy Treats card and use it online or in-store at GameStop to buy a Steam gift card for resale. I wrote a quick Happy gift card guide a few weeks ago that may be helpful if they’re new to you. (Thanks to GC Galore)

3. Check your Kroger digital coupons for 300 fuel points when buying a Visa or Mastercard gift card. These coupons often work multiple times, just make sure you clip it before buying the first one. (Thanks to co_trout_slayer)

Pictured: United’s old 2-2-2 business class configuration.

A few of items to watch for this weekend:

1. Ready for another week of treadmill running with $200 Mastercard Gift Cards? Staples has your back with another fee free offer, limit five per transaction. I like it, but I don’t like it as much as the Office Depot/OfficeMax version which ends tomorrow because that one starts out as negative cost and gets even better with Dosh. The Staples one is “just” at-cost spend.

Related side note: Another card linked program, Ibotta, has worked with Staples online purchases in the past but seems to have died for anything useful (thanks to SideshowBob233).

2. The Citi Shop Your Way Mastercard has sent new targeted offers for the second half of August. I got one for $50 off of $750 in spend with the subject “Matthew, open now to unlock your special limited time offer! 🌟“, and there are reports of other offers for 15x on utility payments, which are honestly among the easiest categories of payments for manufacturing spend. Never heard of this card? That’s probably because as far as I know it doesn’t pay anyone a commission so you won’t find much written in the usual places.

Incidentally, the Citi Shop Your Way Mastercard is one of the next Miles Earn and Burn Unsung Hero cards thanks to its gameablity, monthly spending bonus offers that stack, and no-annual fee. This card is smoking hot.

Sam from Milenomics reminded me that the best sign-up bonus for this card is in-store at Sears and includes a free two-liter bottle of soda 🤣 in addition to the regular $40 bonus.

3. You might be pleasantly surprised to find that your Hyatt status was extended to Feb, 2023. Here’s to hoping it sticks for those of you that got it!

The smoke you’ll be dealing with today, probably a coming from the smoking hot Citi Shop Your Way Rewards card.

1. Check here for an American Express Business Platinum offer for 160,000 Membership Rewards points. You get 150,000 for spending $15,000 in three months, and another 10,000 for adding an employee card and spending $1,000 on that card. As of this writing, the offer is currently a “no-lifetime language (NLL)” card, meaning that having other Business Platinum cards in the past or present shouldn’t disqualify you from this offer. Tips: Employee cards come pre-activated for 60 days even without providing an SSN. Also, American Express is happy to give you employee cards as Your Name I, Your Name II, Your Name III, etc.

I’m still at my charge card limit with American Express so I can’t currently go for this, but I would if I could in a heartbeat.

2. Check here for an American Express Business Gold offer for 90,000 Membership Rewards points after spending $10,000 in three months. This one is also a NLL card.

I’d also go for this if I could just like the one above, especially because Business Gold cards often get a targeted upgrade offer to a Business Platinum for up to 85,000 additional Membership Rewards points.

3. Finally, there’s an offer for $30 back from Turo after spending $150 on many American Express cards. (Turo is like airbnb, but for cars.)

I’ve rented a Turo car before when regular car rental prices were sky-high and it turned out ok. I had to wait in the airport parking lot for 15 minutes for the owner to arrive, I got a different car than I booked (though materially similar), the guy renting to me was slightly sketchy, and the radio would play a strange female voice whenever a notification came in on my phone, but I saved $300 or so and in the end it was fine. Based on that singular experience I’d rather rent with a real, non-Fox rental car company but with the current carpocalpyse Turo may still be the best option.

My Turo rental car. Flames weren’t in the listing, but were provided to me at no additional charge.

The frequency of US Mint coin deals has been turned up to an eleven recently as you’ve probably seen on a dozen other sites. I want to call out a few things that you probably won’t see everywhere else in anticipation of today’s deal at 12PM Eastern, which will be a nice manufactured spend and money making opportunity:

  • American Express has been awarding points on US Mint purchases despite scares about that wouldn’t after new language was added to the Terms and Conditions of personal cards
  • Using a Citi personal credit card will often trigger a fraud alert, and by the time you get that cleared up the coins will probably be sold out, so just don’t do it
  • You have a better shot of getting in on the deal if you’re logged in and ready 10 minutes before the deal goes live
  • Most of these deals will take about 15 minutes of your time to buy and you’ll earn $100 or more and some manufactured spend for the trouble, so do look into participating if it’s right for you
  • You can scale this deal with other trustworthy addresses, like perhaps those of your immediate family or your own PO Box, just use a separate US Mint account for each
  • If you’re even slightly techie, you can pre-construct the URLs for adding the coins to your cart and then load them right when the clock turns: Take the link for an existing product’s “Add to Bag”, then change the product id and quantity to match the new deal (todays product id: 21EMN)
  • Vinh at Miles Per Day consistently has the best offers I’ve seen. I consider him trustworthy, but do your own diligence and homework and then make your own decision

Before committing to any seller, shop around at Miles Per Day, PointsMaker, PFS Buyers Club, TheCardBay, and The Deal Buyer for the best deal, and make sure you choose a buyer that you trust.

An image of a mint/chocolate flavored treat.
Pictured: Mint coin.

1. Still waiting on your American Express Platinum Clear $179 credit? Or maybe, you’ve got way to many of them like me? Well, there’s a slightly better membership deal that surfaced on reddit: Sign up at clearme.com with promo code AUG129GIFT and you’ll get a $50 discount and a $15 Amazon gift card, which is slightly better than what you’ll get by using a United or Delta general member discount. (Thanks to deakmania)

2. Point.app has a new streak going: Get 3,000 points or $30 back after using your card once a day for five days before August 20, though the sum of the purchases have to be greater than $200 for the streak, a 15% return on spend. (Last round it was $100 in total purchases, and earlier this year it was $5, so the trajectory is going super-lame.)

I’ll play this by setting up debbit to do an Amazon reload randomly between $40.00 and $41.00, once a day for 5 days. To help push some of you over the hump for debbit, here’s my config.txt for this one (obviously, you’ll have to put your own username, password, and Point card number in place of the ones in my stanza. Then, set a reminder on your phone to kill debbit in 5 days and remove this configuration block so it doesn’t keep spending.

point_debit_card:
  amazon_gift_card_reload:
    total_purchases: 20
    amount_min: 4000
    amount_max: 4100
    usr: [email protected]
    psw: SUPER-SECRET-PASSWORD-MEAB-RULES
    card: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
    min_day: 2
    max_day: 20
    burst_count: 1
    spread:
        min_gap: 86400
        time_variance: 180

If you’re new to Point.app, make sure you sign up with a referral, which will pay you and the referrer $100 after spending $1,000 (I don’t know of a better referral at this time, though referrals of up to $250 have existed in the past).

3. The Daily Churn podcast did an interesting, detailed episode on an Interactive Brokers sign up bonus. The podcast’s main argument for why this is a great bonus is because the payout is prorated based on how much money or stock you transfer in, rather than having fixed bonus thresholds. Your best bonus under a single player scenario will be $1,000, and under a two player scenario it’d be $2,200. This could be a nice way to move your 401(k)s or IRAs to a low-fee broker and get a bonus for doing it.

The Point.app streak bonus payoff curve as a function of time, trending toward a super-lame asymptote.

At face value, the no-annual fee Discover IT card gives 5% cash back on up to $1,500 spend in rotating categories every quarter, which works out to $75 cash back up to four times a year. It’s a boring card, and believe me I understand that sometimes it’s hard to get excited about pure cash-back plays.

That said, you’ve been able to do better than 5% cash back since July 2019 with the IT card. How? Discover gives you a 25% uplift when redeeming for Nike gift cards, and small (< $100) Nike gift cards have a high resale value at approximately 91% of face value. The math:

5% * 125% * 91% = 5.687%

America loves math, right? Don’t stress it too hard, but remember that the Discover IT card is really a ~5.7% cash back card in rotating categories with the Nike uplift. (Thanks to GC Galore’s post for reminding me to do a writeup like this)

A picture of a dog with about 8 helium balloons attached to its body.
Real-life reenactment of a the Nike 5.687% boost.