Category: Quick Hits

1. Do this now: Register for Hyatt Bonus Journeys Q2, 2021. There’s lots of meaningless fluff content out there about this one, but just register for it and be done. Don’t let it sway your hotel stay patterns because it’s not that valuable, but it runs through June 15th so you’ve got time to hit it if you were already staying in Hyatts:

  • 2,000 points per two nights, or 2,500 for World of Hyatt card holders
  • Category 1-4 certificate after staying ten nights

2. Southwest’s book the cheapest fare and change to any other flights at no charge between the same city-pairs is back for, let’s say “smarch” through “Mapril”. The exact dates aren’t known, but it looks like the current iteration doesn’t have the usual ±30 day restrictions. So a cheap flight booked in late Smarch can be switched to an early fall flight this time around. For a bit more on the procedure, see Spring Break, Southwest Style. April 21 is a known working date, by the way.

3.Watch for fee-free Staples Visa gift cards Sunday February 28 – Saturday March 6. Use an ink for 5x, and have a backup liquidation other than Walmart in store money orders. Hint: There are still a few ways to liquidate these with Walmart.

An image of the continental US with a temperature gradient ranging in temperatures from -10 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Also, it sucks to spell fahrenheit.
Lousy Smarch weather.

1. Check your AmEx offers for $100 off of $500 at Dell. You can earn spend, portal cash back, Dell rewards, and a few percent profit by buying XBox Gift Cards for resale and selling them on a reputable exchange. With XBox, the lower denominations sell more quickly.

2. Check here to see if you’re targeted for 1,000 free miles from Star Alliance member Aegean Airlines. You’ll have to click the present icon to redeem once you’ve logged in.

Michael Jordan sitting in an empty stadium pointing his index and middle finger at his eyes, staring at something with a determined look.
One deal for each eye.

T-Mobile has been offering a high interest checking account for a while, but to most people it became a lot less valuable last week after they announced that you’ll have to make 10 debit card transactions a month to earn 4.00% APR starting in April 2021. (Before, there was a $200 / month direct deposit requirements to earn the high rate but that’s going away.)

In my opinion this is a great change because people like you and me can automate 10 monthly debit card transactions in about 45 seconds with debbit, but most people won’t know how or won’t care to do so. When there are fewer people taking advantage of a deal like this, it tends to stick around for much longer and also tends to increase in benefits and payout over time, which means our 45 second investment will probably pay-off for at least a few years. (If you haven’t set debbit up yet, it might be more like 20 minutes on this round.)

Vitals:

  • Be a T-Mobile customer (this can be a hard pill for some of you, but I travel-hacked my way into 3 unlimited everything lines at Sprint for $10 per month each about a year ago via a now defunct deal, and then T-Mobile bought Sprint and kept my rate).
  • Enroll your T-Mobile bank account in T-Mobile rewards
  • Earn 4.00% on balances of up to $3,000 per month
  • Earn 1.00% after that

I’m going to deposit $3,100 and configure debbit to pay XFinity between $0.01 and $0.10 randomly per month, 10 times. That will earn $90.00+ per year and I’ll never have to think about it.

My philosophy: When a deal becomes more onerous, it’s much more likely to be rewarding and to stick around long-term. You can often automate away the onerous requirements too, so don’t be afraid to spend a little time getting your automation in order. For further reading on high interest bank accounts and other methods of automating, see one of my favorite travel hacking posts by the Free-quent Flyer.

An image of the T-Mobile CEO with a pink "T" tee shirt and a sport jacket wearing a clown nose.
T-Mobile CEO John Legere is literally asking us to treat his company like a clown. This picture is not doctored and is very real.

There are some really strange bank offers floating around out there, and at least two of them are probably worth your time (I’ll let you guess which ones):

1. Update: Katie points out that S&T requires that you have an address in OH, PA, or an Armed Forces address to open the initial account if you don’t already have a relationship with S&T. S&T Bank is offering a $300 rebate on $500 spend, as long as you have $50 in your account for six months. The play: Open a Simple Checking Solution no-fee account, fund the account with $550, then make a single $500 purchase (like a $500 money order including fees with an actual bank account debit card), disable bill-pay to avoid any fees, and set a reminder in your phone to cancel the account in 6 months and one day.

Hint: The last step should be treated as optional and possibly even discouraged. I like having lots of bank accounts open, especially at banks I’ve never heard of and that I wouldn’t lose sleep over if I were shutdown. You might be surprised at all the different ways you can make “deposits” appear via MS into random bank accounts like this one.

2. Check here to see if you’re eligible for 10,000 Membership Rewards points for enrolling in Pay-Over-Time. (Afterword, unenroll to potentially get this in the future, but I’d suggest you wait until your next annual fee posts before you turn Pay-Over-Time off as a safety measure. That may also be overly cautious though.)

3. Did you know that Chase has a dining portal at dining.chase.com for Freedom, Sapphire, and Ink card members? Apparently Chase thinks the first thing we’ll think of when we’re hungry is: “Gee, I wonder how my bank’s website can help me get food!” The cities are limited and the restaurant selection is also limited, but you’ll earn 10x ultimate rewards you order through Chase dining, up to $500 total spend through June 30, 2021.

A picture of a kitten with big, droopy eyes and a sagging mouth that makes it look sad.
“Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is sad that you didn’t think of his bank when you were ordering takeout yesterday” as a cat.

1. Remember how we discussed that you should turn off American Express’s Pay-Over-Time feature, because reportedly having it on can use up one of your five total credit card slots with AmEx, and you won’t get bonuses for enabling it if it’s already on? There’s a new rub:

The American Express Green card seems to be counted as a charge card according to multiple threads in private forums and this thread at Reddit. So, if you want five AmEx credit cards, either ditch that Green or upgrade it to a Gold which isn’t counted as a credit card, but rather a charge card. I personally wouldn’t mind having another 3-4 Gold cards, they’re no-brainer value cards for me.

2. It’s time to liquidate your AmEx Business Platinum Dell credits, just make sure you’ve enrolled for the benefit at the American Express website’s “Benefits” tab before you buy. The vitals:

  • Dell Home is 10x at Rakuten as of this writing, though Rakuten punked me twice on Monday, so who knows how long it’ll stick around
  • You can use the code GAME10 for 10% off of Xbox gift cards (the smaller the denomination, the faster it sells if you’re selling yourself, or liquidate with trusted gift card outlet immediately for 80-82%)
  • You’ll earn 3% in Dell rewards on this purchase to use in the second half of the year for liquidating more AmEx credits
  • American Express is really good at quick statement credits from Dell, and Business Platinum cards earn $100 Jan-Jun, and another $100 Jul-Dec each year

From my internal monologue: How did this week turn into an American Express / Rakuten week?

A picture of a comic brain with a thought bubble that contains "..." on a pink background.
Internal monologue loading.

American Express has a few “no lifetime language” (NLL) card offers kicking around. The great news is that if you got the Unicorn Platinum card around when it came out in November, your 90 days is up and you’re eligible for another American Express charge card. As a reminder, if you apply for an NLL card and American Express doesn’t give you a popup saying you’re ineligible to receive a bonus, you should get it after meeting the spend requirements.

The best wisdom out there is to avoid obvious manufactured spend on American Express welcome bonus spending, though you can ignore that advice and probably be fine if you can’t gin up spend in any other way (just like you can drive without a seatbelt and probably be fine, but you may also die.)

Bonus tip: Check here to see if you’re eligible for 40% off up to $40 back, when you pay for an item sold buy Amazon and use at least 1 Membership Rewards point.

A Gold American Express card with the text "Click It or Ticket" overlayed on top.
American Express’s failed joint safety campaign with the US DOT.

Update: I was severely punked: Both of these deals died between when I scheduled this post and when it was published a few hours later. Sorry. In the mean time, Saks Fifth Avenue is now 10x at the Rakuten portal, so now is a good time to cash out your $50 American Express Personal Platinum credits and earn 500 Membership Rewards points in the process.

A couple of deals that I wrote about in the past weeks are still around and are bigger than before thanks to Presidents’ Day promotions. (Thanks for making me look like a small-deal-pushing-tool, Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Washington.) If you want to take advantage again with a P2, or if you missed it the first time, go for each of these bigger bonuses:

1. The Visible Wireless deal, available with your burner phone SIMs (or your main SIM I guess), is even better now with $60 or 6,000 Membership Rewards back from Rakuten thanks to today’s promotion. You also get a $100 Mastercard after two months. Update: it’s down to $25 or 2,500 points. Boo.

2. Depositing $1 in a new account Betterment now earns you either $127.50 or 12,750 Membership Rewards points when you open the account through the Rakuten portal. This is worth doing for P2, P3, P4, and any other players at your disposal. Skip P7 though, that guy’s a jerk. Update: the presidents got me again. It’s now back down to $75 it 7,500 points.

The Merriam-Webster definition of the word embiggen: "to make bigger or more expansive".
See English professor? I told you it was a real word.

Valentine’s Day shopping portal bonuses have arrived just in time for, err, Valentine’s Day. The bonuses are actually at high multiples for this time of the year, but they’re also low total payout so overall bang for the buck doesn’t quite reach the “11” setting.

  • Southwest, 1,000 miles for spending $300, or 500 miles for spending $100
  • AA, 500 miles for spending $150
  • United, 500 miles for spending $150
  • Alaska, 500 miles for spending $150

I would definitely hit the Southwest version of this first, or if you’re only going to do one, make it that one — you can buy a single Visa or Mastercard gift card at Giftcards.com for $100 and get effectively 5.5x plus the credit card spend, and the virtual Mastercard variety works really well in lots of “from home” techniques.

A dial with the label "VOLUME I" and settings between 0 and 11. The dial is pointed at 11.
Pictured: Better deals than this one.