Category: Quick Hits

There are a few easy manufactured spend deals kicking around this week. The first, an old familiar, is that you can still get fee free physical Visa Gift Cards at vanillagift.com using promo code FLASH2020. You’ll pay $8.95 for shipping, even if you order $10,000 worth of cards. These cards don’t work well at Walmart but they work well most everywhere else.

The second is that Staples is offering fee free $100 MasterCard Gift Cards, limit 2. These are sold by Staples directly, so use a Chase Ink card or an American Express Business Platinum with the +4x office supplies offer. Fun side note and a random hint: Staples shut me down in 2014 because they didn’t like me buying a couple hundred hard drives a week for two months. Fortunately for me and for people like me (you), you can always get yourself back online with address, phone, and/or name variations. Different checkout methods work too. Don’t be afraid to experiment.

Third, you can still get two Ting SIM cards for $0.99 each at Best Buy. I’ve been able to get an order in every few days. You can still parlay each of these into ~$100 at Visible.

And finally there’s a bit of bad news: apparently Walmart Money Order fees are going up from $0.88 to $1.00 today. Boo.

Actual photo of the Staples representative who shut me down for buying too many of their clearance hard drives.

1. Check for a personalized United MilePlay offer at this link. I got 3,700 miles for booking a ticket of $125 or more and flying by the end of March. Nice try United, but I don’t really want to tour the country on a GoJet CRJ-700, which seems to be approximately 82% of their domestic fleet, or on a Mesa CRJ-200 which is the remaining 29% of their domestic fleet according to my measurements.

2. You got a couple of Ting Mobile SIM cards for $0.99 a few weeks ago, right? Here’s how to turn that spent $0.99 into about a hundred bucks, with inspiration from this Reddit post:

  1. Sign up for Visible by shopping through the Rakuten portal for $20-$40 cash back or 2,000-4,000 membership rewards
  2. Choose the “$100 Prepaid Mastercard Virtual Account” Bring Your Own Device plan
  3. Use the promo code SAVE2021 at checkout
  4. Keep the service for two payments $20 and $40 + taxes
  5. If you have the offer, pay with a credit card that has $25 cash back, found on Chase and Bank of America cards

Out of pocket, you’ll pay approximately $60. You’ll earn between $120 and $165 depending on how you do it and what offers you have available. If you do this with two burner numbers, you can set up a “Visible Pay Party” and save $10 on the two monthly payments. Also, don’t forget to refer yourself to Uber, Fluz, DoorDash, CashApp, etc with the new burner phone number. That’s gotta be worth a few bucks more, right?

What’s the tale? A little bit of leg work usually means a much bigger win. Don’t be afraid to dig in a little!

My empirical measurements of 111% of United’s domestic fleet.

A couple to take you into the weekend:

1. Use promo code GOTENJAN or GO15JAN for $10 off of $20 or $15 off of $25 at UberEats, respectively. Have you scaled up on burners yet?

2. I wrote a guest post at Milenomics on the major US carriers’ travel banks and their rules. MS Hint: It’s a good resource for what to do with the results of cashing out premium card travel credits.

Have a great weekend hackers!

A young adult woman wearing a pink sun hat and a sundress slumped over a chair holding (presumably) a beer.
Not pictured: Grand weekend plans. Pictured: Actual weekend.

1. Watch for mailers from American Express for Delta SkyMiles cards with a big bonus and small spend (e.x., 70,000 points for $2,000 spend). Reportedly some of these have no lifetime language attached to them, so you can get the bonus even if you’ve already gotten it in the past.

2. Do you have a P2 or a close friend with an AmEx card? Have them refer you for a Business Platinum card. The referrer gets up to 30,000 membership rewards and the referred offer could be as high as 110,000 membership rewards. If the offer isn’t showing as 110,000 points, try incognito, a mobile device, FireFox, Edge, Safari, standing on your head, and/or a VPN. It is around for most with some effort. Note that there is a high $15,000 over 3 month spend to earn the bonus on the cardholder side, the referrer gets the bonus on card approval.

A random spinning wheel with an arrow and 50 potential values.
Just spin a 3.1415 to win a 110,000 membership rewards sign-up bonus.

Martin Luther King holiday is a strange holiday in the western US; as far as I can tell it’s not treated with the same deference here as compared to the east, and especially the southeast. I bring this up because I wanted to offer wishes for a nice holiday weekend — but for some, especially in the west, it’s not a holiday at many employers, so “gee, sorry your mom blew up, Ricky” I guess.

1. Merrill will pay you from $100 to $1,000 to move your assets, even in a retirement account, over to them and hold it there for 6 months. Unless all of your wealth is in a 401k held at your current employer, you can probably move it to Merrill easily without changing your holdings or positions. It’s also a lower total asset move than normal bonuses of this size.

2. Chase will pay you $2,000 to upgrade your account to a Chase Private Client account, which gives you a debit card that says “Chase Private Client” as the main perk (BlueCat mentions that the Arts & Culture program is a big benefit too). This one has a minimum balance of $250,000 held for 90 days though, so the barrier to entry is higher than the Merrill deal. As with that deal, you can move retirement accounts, investment accounts, or other banking system assets. This doesn’t have to be a checking account transfer.

A picture of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 cast in the theater watching a backdrop of a quarter with the words "Money Talks!" overlaid.
MLK3K $3K, err, wait what?

F’up 1: The Staples fee free $200 Visa gift card Zombie deal came back from the dead again, because it’s a Zombie and that’s what Zombie’s do. It’s still limit 5, and you should still buy with a Chase Ink Cash or similar 5x office supply card (some AmEx Business Platinums should work for 5x too, if you’ve added the offer.)

F’up 2: Alaska Airlines decided it wanted to be part of the fun we had in Wednesday’s Triple, but it decided too late. You can earn $1,000 Alaska miles by spending $300 through their shopping portal. As with before, this bonus isn’t amazing so just keep it in mind for buying you’re already doing.

A white coffee mug with the slogan: 'The "F" stands for "Friendly"
That means F’up = Friendly-up

1. The AA and UA shopping portals are running bonus mile promotions through January 19:

Usually I’d buy Visa or MasterCard Gift Cards from GiftCards.com to hit these bonuses, but they’re kinda small right now so just keep the bonuses in mind for everything else you’re doing. For example, if you’re using buyer’s groups, these could work for Dell or BestBuy. Hint: There is a play at Sam’s club that should work for these too.

2. Discover is offering a $10 statement credit for paying your phone bill 3 times, (I paid $1.00, $1.01, and $1.02, all back to back). It may be targeted, check for an email with the subject “Earn a $10 statement credit for paying your phone bill” or “Don’t forget your $10 statement credit offer”.

3. If you have any international travel coming up in the next couple of months, call a clinic or hospital in the foreign country you’ll be in and get a COVID-19 test scheduled now. As of January 26, the US will require that you have a negative test within 72 hours to reenter the country, citizens included and if you don’t book soon, you may not be able to get an appointment.

A football player in a red uniform counting to 3.
I think we got 3 today, right? Honestly, #3 felt over-covered in the blogosphere, but it’s important enough that it bears mentioning here so you don’t get trapped while trying to get home.

SoFi is offering $25 in round-ups for January. For me, this took about 12 seconds to take advantage of, which really consisted of re-enabling my SoFi debit card for Amazon and Xfinity tiny payments in debbit, a free program that you run on your own computer. If you haven’t sent up debbit yet, it might be a good time. I realize $25 isn’t that exciting, but you set debbit up once and keep taking advantage of deals like this and the cash adds up to something substantial.

Yeah, $25 is small potatoes, but $25 buys a lot of small potatoes.