1. Register here for Hyatt Bonus Journeys. You’ll earn 3x Hyatt points on stays of at least two nights when you checkout between July 20 and September 15. Don’t procrastinate just because you think you may not be traveling. Register anyway in case something happens.
2. The new AmEx Platinum changes are being probed and a nice hack has already surfaced: United and Delta frequent flyer members get discounted Clear membership of $119 even with no status, and you can add a Player 2 for an extra $60 which happens to exactly equal the $179 credit. So, your one Platinum credit is good for at least two people with almost no work.
Side note: It’s against the T&Cs to sell the Clear credit (I assume it is anyway), but you can almost certainly cash them out with a quick post on your Facebook page saying something like “I’m selling one year Clear membership for two people for $125.”
2. Google Pay has an offer for 20% back at Walgreens, up to $25 maximum cash back. If you happen to be at a Walgreens, buy a $125 gift card to max this one out; BestBuy, Steam, or Home Depot (in that order) are likely your best options. Of course, put a card that bonuses at drug stores like the Chase Freedom Flex behind Google Pay if you have one.
3. Check any Chase co-brand card for a new spend offer at chase.com/mybonus. Try all of your co-brand cards (Hyatt, BA, Southwest, United, AARP, etc), but realize that if you got an offer in the last round that’s still going, that same offer is what you’ll see this time.
4. This weekend you were able to get up to three $250 Visa Gift Cards at 10% off at GiftCards.com, and it worked across multiple orders even though it wasn’t supposed to. I didn’t write about it since the Terms & Conditions said it would expire before yesterday’s post, but amazingly it’s still working (although the code has changed slightly, now it’s INDEPENDENCE10). It may be actually dead by the time you read this, but maybe not. If it does work, be sure to go through a portal for extra miles or cash back.
Remember, FLASH2020 at VanillaGift.com lasted about five months past its expiry so don’t be afraid to lob a few tries at GiftCards.com. Also, remember “Trust but verify” when it comes to the T&Cs, this is another great case study.
5. Ling let me know that Cash.app has a boost for 5% back at Sam’s Club Online this week. When the portal bonus for Sam’s is elevated, this can be a great deal, especially if you have a Membership Rewards earning Rakuten account.
A new set of bonus offers for American Express Personal and Business Platinum cards started floating around on June 16, via email and regular mail. The best versions of these offers are for 20,000 Membership Rewards points for adding an authorized user or employee card and spending $2,000 with the authorized user’s card. For both the personal and business platinum, there are no-fee versions of the extra cards, so don’t think you need to pay $175 to get an employee Platinum card or something. This weekend, there were some new developments that are worth mentioning:
It’s been reported on Reddit and confirmed by several people (including me) that you can call in and probably get the Business Platinum version of the offer even if you didn’t get email or snail mail about it. If you call, just be nice and say something like: “I’m wondering if there are any bonus offers for adding employee cards to my business charge cards.” Remember, employee cards at American Express are special — you can activate them without a social security number and they’ll stay open for 60 days.
If you go for either of these deals (I would and did). Perhaps ask yourself “How can I scale this?“
You get a free Platinum authorized user card, which gives the AU access to lounges and Priority Pass just like the primary card holder gets (other American Express Platinums charge $175)
It’s a different product than other American Express Platinum cards, so you can get it regardless of what other flavors of the Platinum you have or have had, so it’s potentially a new sign-up bonus
It typically offers 50,000 Membership Rewards as a retention bonus after the annual fee hits
You can get a $550 annual fee offset credit from Morgan Stanley with a bit of legwork, making the card effectively fee free even before retention bonuses
To get the card, you need to be a Morgan Stanley client, which normally requires quite a bit of capital, but a few years ago Windbag Miles discovered that a $5,000 Morgan Stanley Access account is enough to be eligible. Agile.Travel’s discovery is that some of what’s documented about getting the $550 annual fee credit is wrong (in some places you’ll read that you can only get the credit once, and in other places you’ll read that you have to jump through some of the hoops before opening the card, both of which are incorrect.)
You can get the annual fee waiver every year, and you don’t have to do it before getting the Morgan Stanley Platinum. To get the waiver:
Open a Morgan Stanley Cash Plus Platinum account
Hold $25,000 in the Cash Plus account
“Direct Deposit” $5,000 a month into the account (more likely, set up a monthly recurring ACH transfer of $5,000 from another account, then a day later back out to an external account)
The annual fee credit of $550 is effectively a 2.2% APR on $25,000. Assuming you maximize the Platinum credits, lounge access, and get a retention bonus, you’ve got a compelling argument to hold on to the card long-term which honestly is really rare for a Platinum. Note also that the card will cash out Membership Rewards at 1 cent each, but if cashing out is your game look for the Schwab Platinum which will get you 1.25 cents per point.
Wow, talk about brevity challenged today, eh? I guess that means I’m witless.
1. The Point debit card has a new offer for 10x at Amazon, up to $500 in spend. Last time they ran this deal my +9x posted three days after the purchase, then another +2x posted to my account the day after that, probably because they always give 3x at Amazon and their system wasn’t coded to not do that with the 10x offer. Hopefully it happens again. Thanks to SideshowBob233 for the heads up.
If you don’t have Point already, find a referral for $250 or $100 because the non-referral sign-up bonus is a measly $10. I’d rather you get a referral from a friend because I’m not here to monetize you, but you can reach out to me if you can’t find someone that has it because I am here to help you. (My link is the $250 variety).
2. Prime Day, which really should be called “operation kersplode the entire internet with posts about trinkets for 2% off at Amazon Day”, has made a bunch of other retailers go into full-blown sale mode, which has pushed up BestBuy gift card demand like it was Q4. Yesterday I saw rates get as high as 96% with essentially an unlimited capacity, and I expect that today will be the same. If your gift card buyer isn’t within 1% of that number or so, I’d say it’s time to find a new gift card buyer.
I’ve had a few of you ask me how a 96% resale rate is worth your time, and the answer is: 1) grocery store rewards, 2), grocery store reward shenanigans, and 3) grocery store credit card bonuses. When you put the first two items together, that 96% can turn into 100-103%, and the third item should be at least 4x Membership Rewards or 5x Ultimate Rewards, but of course there are better spend bonuses beyond that like 10x with the American Express Platinum card. Also, another answer is sometimes the rate is 97-99%.
Yeah yeah, it’s Prime day, hooray and stuff. But seriously, if you’re going to buy something, use one of these codes for a discount, or just buy a Best Buy gift card and resell for a quick profit:
With all of these deals, make sure you’re only using a single point, otherwise the redemption value is bad. Let me offer two pieces of Simpons’ wisdom for your shopping: “Buy more and save!” and “Extended warranty? How could I lose??”
Amazon choose its boxes and carriers carefully when sending me Best Buy gift cards.
So, I started out with a Weekend Wisdom post but then got excited by item #1 when I found it on FlyerTalk, then I got excited that I found a useful piece of info on FlyerTalk for the first time in years, and then finally I felt like I had to throw a few other things along with it to fill out your weekend. Here’s my disconnected result:
1. Did you pound the Discover Q2 5% bonus at Warehouse Clubs? Yeah, neither did I. But, there’s a reason to step foot in a Sam’s Club again: $500 Vanilla Visa and Mastercard gift cards are coming back to Sam’s brick and mortar stores. The fee on these is $4.95, so an all around good deal. In case you’re not a Sam’s Club member, you can join for $45 and get a $45 Sam’s Club gift card either online or in store. If you do it online, go through a shopping portal — it may work.
2. Now let’s talk about easy minimum spend from home for a moment, especially given all this week’s American Express offers. Good options are: Plastiq, Bravo, and Fluz. With Bravo, you can do some archeology on older APK files and find a way to get the fee down to 2%, but it’s not for the feint of heart. With the right options on Fluz, you can approach 0%. On Plastiq, you’ll pay 2.85%, but you can be really creative with your targets to get your money right back in your pockets. There are other payment processors too; if/when you find one, try small charges on Visa, Mastercard, and American Express because often you’ll get different results with each.
Of course these aren’t the only at-home options. There are others that you’re no doubt passingly familiar with like gift card reselling, buyer’s clubs, Kiva, and online arbitrage (that last one is a ton of work though, but you can do really well if you’ve got the stomach for it).
3.Starter Bros locations in California are offering $10 off when you buy a $50 gift card and $10 in groceries. This might seem like a sleeper but you can scale it. Side note: Until very recently I just assumed Starter Bros was like AutoZone, O’Reilly Auto, or Pep Boys. Spoiler alert: it’s not.
There are a couple of easily American Express authorized user bonuses that surfaced this week. These are a piece of cake to knock out, so it’s worth seeing if the links work for you. They both worked for me:
2. There’s also a targeted 7,500 SkyMiles offer on the Delta Platinum card for adding an authorized user and spending $500 within six months. See the above note about personal card authorized users.
In case you need something light for Thursday, see this thread at Reddit for the answers (and hidden questions) seen on Jeopardy! this week in a “Credit Card” category. My performance was actually not great, so there’s that. I guess that means there’s still a lot for me to learn about credit cards.
Computer simulation of my performance on the Jeopardy! “Credit Card” category.
