Category: Quick Hits

1. Do this now: Register your Chase Freedom and Freedom Flex cards for 5x earning at gas stations, up to $150 each. I’m still working out on the criteria for whether or not a deal is worth posting, and even though haven’t completely solidified that I can tell you that I’m sure this just barely squeaked under the door like Indiana Jones’s hat in Raiders of the Lost Ark. This one is worth 150 * 5x * 1.5 cpp when paired with a Sapphire Reserve, or $11.25; so don’t go out of your way to max out this deal, just let it happen if it will.

2. SoFi is offering between $25 and $2,500 for transferring assets into their brokerage. Hopefully your AMC and GME stock (but never SLV, amirite?) at RobinHood can get you a few tiers up the ladder. I’ll be moving some Fidelity assets over for 6 months, then I’ll move them back to Fidelity for another sign up bonus there (or another brokerage if it makes sense.) Remember, they can transfer any stocks or retirement account holdings directly. There’s no need to sell anything and your portfolio won’t change during the move.

Note that you could bring over $0.01 and earn $25.00. That’s 2,500x! …he says in jest. Better yet: sign up for a RobinHood account with a friend’s link, get your free stock, then transfer that over to SoFi and collect your $25. That’s (divide by zero)x!

A dog dressed in a red and blue jester costume.
What words said in jest look like, if they were a dog.

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s burnt toast comes the following:

If there’s a chance you want the AmEx Personal Gold card in 2021, apply for it now because the airline benefit goes away for new cards tomorrow (but remember AmEx’s one charge card every 90 days rule). Assuming you do sign up for it, in 2021 you’ll get:

  • Sign-up bonus (60k Membership Rewards or more)
  • Referral bonus (15k-30k, make sure to refer from a P2 or friend account)
  • $110 in Uber Eats credits for 2021 and beyond
  • $100 in Airline Fee credits for 2021 only (goes away tomorrow)
  • $110 in GrubHub/Shake Shack dining for 2021 and beyond
  • 4x at grocery stores, up to $25,000 spend per year

I have two of these cards and I also have a charge card approved in the last 90 days (the Unicorn Platinum), so I’m skipping this one even though I would definitely get more. (For me, the $25,000 4x at grocery store is easy to knock out with BBY or Visa Gift Cards, so even that is worth the annual fee, the rest is gravy.) The annual fee of this card is $250, so it’s easy to recoup that fee and then some. If you can go for it, now is the time!

Two pieces of burnt toast.
Follow up one burnt piece of toast with another, as the saying goes. That’s a saying, right?

Two quickies for today:

1. Do this now: Register for 5,000 bonus points with your World of Hyatt Credit card. To get the 5,000 points, you have to make 50 transactions of $1.00 or more this month. For me, this took exactly 4 minutes to knock out. In those four minutes, I added my Hyatt card to Amazon and Xfinity, and updated my Debbit configuration. With 50 $1 transactions, this is 100x earning, too bad it maxes out quickly. Have you configured Debbit yet?

2. Check for an AmEx offer for 10% off at Lowes (the store, not the hotel), up to either $50 or $100. Buy an Amazon gift card and sell at a +3% spread, or maybe you’re lucky and your Lowes sells Best Buy gift cards which will command a larger spread.

H/T: Garth Grawburg

An image of a Loews hotel backdrop with a palm tree peeking in to the corner.
I said Lowes, not Loews.

1. There’s a widely targeted American Express offer for $99 off of a $99 subscription at the Motley Fool. I guess now I can learn all about $GME and $AMC, but the play here isn’t the subscription. Instead, the play is that the Chase UR portal is offering 7,500 Ultimate Rewards for a $99 1 year sub at the Motley Fool. Check other portal rates here (AA is high too). Set a reminder in your to cancel the subscription in 11 months so they don’t auto-renew and auto-bill for another year.

2. If you’re not tuned in to the GC resale market, here’s another reason to jump in: You can currently buy Home Depot gift cards at Bitmo using the promo code HDBONUSJAN and resell them for a few dollars profit. Yes, I hear you — a few bucks isn’t interesting. Except that it is: Bitmo lets you pay with PayPal, so you get credit card spend, you get a small profit, and you can turn that AmEx Personal Platinum monthly $30 PayPal credit directly into cash.

Note: Am I a broken record yet? Bitmo has a referral program and accounts are based on phone numbers. You have burner SIMs by now, yeah?

A picture of a broken record. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Broken_Record.jpg
Me

The accidental Southwest Airlines change trick is back for March through late April. If you’re planning on traveling for Spring Break, now is the best time to lock in the lowest fare. A primer:

  • Use the lowest fare calendar on the city pairs you want to travel between (e.g., LAX-DEN)
  • Find the lowest fare two weeks before or two weeks after your desired travel date
  • Book the lowest fare
  • Log out and log back into your Southwest account
  • Under ‘My Trips’, choose ‘Change’
  • Switch your flight to the desired routing, date, and time with no up-charge

In case this booking window closes, make sure you do the above within 24 hours because you’re entitled to a full refund for the initial booking in that period.

These free changes are a weird conglomeration of Southwest’s antiquated reservation system, the 737MAX, and COVID travel waivers. It’s been around for a couple of years and I’ll be sad when the trick vanishes.

A breakfast consisting of: A partially eaten yellow pepper, yogurt with currents, and a bagel with cheddar cheese and a hot sauce 'S' on one side, and a hot sauce 'O' on the other.
Pictured, the start of a really, really weird breakfast that spells out Southwest.

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.