1. Meijer MPerks has a new gift card offer, $10 off of $150 or more in Visa Gift Cards through Saturday. Meijer stores carry either or both of Sunrise and Metabank gift cards. The former are easier to deal with in person but there are options for liquidation of both. How many MPerks accounts do you have?

2. Southwest has a double tier points promotion available to everyone, register here before November 30, and book your travel before then too. This will fast track you to status on Southwest, which can be valuable. The downside though? You have to fly Southwest to get the status and unfortunately you’ll never get a first class upgrade, it turns out those seats are always sold out.

3. Chase wasn’t satisfied to let AmEx have all the fun, so they’ve added a 30% bonus for transferring Ultimate Rewards to British Airways and Iberia Avios. The Lazy Traveler has an interesting tip: Iberia is currently pricing as off-peak for the whole year of 2022, so take advantage. (And remember that the AmEx transfer bonus is 40%.)

4. It’s been circulating in several private groups that Kroger has another 4x fuel points promotion for buying gift cards running between Wednesday and the following Tuesday, September 21. No link yet, but watch for the ad in your mailbox this week. The longer running promotions like this are better than the short weekend ones (They’re not better just because they last longer, get out and try some things!)

On a semi-related note, the March American Express Platinum upgrade 10x at gas and grocery has started posting for everyone I know and for me too. You’ve still got a few days left to max out the $15,000 spend from that deal if you haven’t already.

The old school Southwest first class upgrade. IYKYK.

Keep the following on your radar for the holiday weekend, but make sure you take some time to relax too (don’t forget that we’re starting busy season for reselling, gift cards or otherwise so save some energy for the points treadmill):

1. On Wednesday I wrote about how the Point.app debit card was a nice vector from Venture Capitalist investment funds to your wallet. Well, it looks like that’s going to be going on for a long time: They just raised $46.5 Million dollars from two major venture capital funds.

On a likely related note, Point has a new streak going for $30 back after making a purchase a day for five days in a row, provided those purchases add up to $200 or more. This is easily combined with the Target 10x or Nike 15x offer running at Point right now, so if you procrastinated on those you’re in luck! Max them out with a gift card for resale to bump you well over $200 in spend, then set up Debbit to make four more transactions of $1.00 at Amazon for the following four days.

If you don’t have Point.app, use a referral link because the normal sign-up bonus is $10, but with a referral it’s $100. There’s no credit check since it’s a debit card. If you need a referral ask a friend and make their day, but if you don’t know anyone with Point reach out to me and I’ll share mine.

2. TravelBloggerBuzz’s post for yesterday had two more hotel promotions in addition to Wednesday’s Marriott promotion. So, do the following now in case you end up staying at one of these hotels:

If you do end up at a Best Western, my condolences. At least you’re not at a Marriott Courtyard.

3. When will the madness end? Starting Sunday, Staples will have fee-free $200 Visa Gift Cards, limit 5 per transaction. I may sit this one out, I’m very much running out of bonused office supply spend capacity and there isn’t a Staples near me. (thanks to kawnipi)

4. Kroger’s 4x fuel points when purchasing gift cards promotion starts today and runs through Monday evening. Rates on everything related to this promotion have crept up from the last round, so it’s a great time to knock out some grocery store spend and potentially earn money doing it.

An old, green, monochrome air traffic control radar screen centered on an airport
Radar screen showing my local Kroger parking lot and gift card rack.

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.

It’s shaping up to be a great weekend for getting out there and ginning-up some spend. Alternatively, if you’re like me you’ve burnt out on manufactured spend after a week and a half of Kroger’s 4x Fuel Points promotion it’s a good weekend for chillin’. You decide:

1. Staples is selling fee free Visa Gift Cards again starting on Sunday and running through a week from Saturday, limit 5 per customer (or per transaction in most cases). Just make sure you have a liquidation method before you load up on these.

2. Simon Mall online is having a flash sale for 50% off of Visa gift card fees using promo code FSAUG50 through this evening. These are an interesting way to meet minimum spend for second tier banks (definitely not for American Express, you won’t earn points and the spend won’t count toward a sign up bonus). If by some miracle you have one of the card numbers for yesterday’s Bank of America shenanigans handy this could be a great way to run up a balance for payment shenanigans on those cards.

In case you’re not aware, you can get $1,000 face value Visa gift cards with your name printed on the front online at Simon. Frequent Miler has a good writeup here with the basics. As with the Staples, make sure you’ve got a path toward liquidation of these gift cards before going big.

3. Is your Brex cash card sitting idle? I’d understand if so, mine certainly was for quite a while. That’s changed though — I wanted to drop a reminder for those who might have ride-share like expenses, real or otherwise: Brex has been faithfully awarding 8x on ride-sharing services for me.

Brex has a new sign-up bonus of 80,000 miles (or $800 if you’d rather cash out) with $9,000 spend within a short 30 days. It has no credit check but does require a real business. Note that this link randomly seems to offer 7x on ride-sharing services. (Thanks to Rapid Travel Chai for the link)

4. M1 Finance has released their upcoming credit card’s rewards structure, and there are a few doozies for manufactured spend in there. You can see the full list here.

How I’ll be rolling this weekend.

Happy Thursday.

Simon

Simon has a promotional code for 48% off of all fees when ordering Visa and Mastercard gift cards online, use code FS48JUL. Don’t use an American Express to buy these; sure, it’ll work but you won’t get any points or meet any spend thresholds.

I usually prefer to MS just about everything on my American Express cards so I in turn tend to ignore Simon, but now I have a need to run up a bigger balance on my Citi card portfolio and some of my normal methods aren’t currently cutting it. And no, this isn’t because of the AA mileage transfer partnership.

Southwest

2. Southwest is having a decent fare sale that ends today. Yes, they have those a lot, but this one is interesting because it encompasses the Thanksgiving holiday season and it’s likely that the free change window will pass over Thanksgiving in the next several days. So, let’s get hacking!

For a quick primer on the Southwest free change window, see Spring Break, Southwest Style.

Kroger

3. Kroger 4x Fuel Points on gift cards is back, and yesterday I saw Best Buy gift card rates jump as high as 97% for about 12 hours. Let me tell you, I dropped what I was doing and made a run to several Krogers in my area. If your gift card buyers weren’t offering at least 96% yesterday, consider whether you should seek another buyer?

Just don’t forget to add the coupon to your Kroger account and make sure you use the right Alt-ID. I don’t know why I was off of my game yesterday but I managed to do each of those once. 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

Bonus

Bonus content: Delta seems to have devalued domestic SkyMiles award prices yesterday. Hopefully it’s a glitch, but if not, you can always get at least once cent per mile with Delta’s Pay with Miles as long as you have at a co-branded Delta American Express card, so always do the math!

Maxwell’s Equations can be used to figure out SkyMiles redemption values. Don’t see it? You’ll have to trust me on that one, or just assume they’re worth a penny in the worst case.

Two roundups in a row? What can I say, it’s that kind of weak I guess. Don’t shoot me, I’m just the messenger, or something.

1. AirFrance/KLM Flying Blue has a widely targeted 30% transfer bonus from American Express Membership Rewards. This, combined with the Flying Blue promo rewards can really turn into some great business class redemptions to Europe. Look for an email with the subject “Convert your American Express Membership Rewards® points now to earn 30% more Miles!” The one in my inbox had a link, but the link just takes you to the American Express page to transfer Membership Rewards to Flying Blue so I won’t post it here.

I’ve gotten great value out of the program in the past, and I will be taking advantage of this offer to a small extent, especially because transferred miles will now extend mileage expiration for other transferred miles.

2. This week’s fee free $200 Visa Gift Card sale expires at Staples tomorrow night, but don’t worry, another one starts on Sunday, but this time with fee free $200 Mastercard Gift Cards, limit 5 per customer or per transaction, depending on how your store rolls. I’m going to pass on this one because the stack of gift cards on my desk is growing uncomfortably large right now, especially considering that the closest Staples translates into 25 minutes in the car each way for me.

Side note that you didn’t ask about and don’t really care about either: I miss the OfficeDepot/Office Max sales quite a bit because there’s one of those about 5 minutes away on foot from my house.

3. American Express has another round of 20,000 Membership Rewards Authorized User bonuses going out for the Personal Platinum card. Use this link to see if you’re targeted. (thanks to Fryes)

4. Kroger has another 4x Fuel Points promotion running today through Sunday, and the BestBuy market is hot with the release of pre-orders for the Nintendo Switch OLED version. It’s going to be a productive weekend, especially if Kroger’s IT starts awarding 6x again.

Have a great weekend, and if you have ideas on cashing out some stupid Equinox credits, hit me up!

Frankly, I just don’t see the appeal of the Nintendo Switch, but when BestBuy gift card demand soars, roll with it.

Historically the time around the fourth of July is a great time for manufactured spend, and this July has been no different. There are quite a few manufactured spend deals to keep you busy this week:

1. Meijer’s MPerks has $10 off of $150 or more in Mastercard gift cards. I’m nowhere near a Meijer so I don’t have direct experience with these, but Larry let me know that they carry gift cards issued by either Metabank or Sunrise; both are easy enough to unload, but do avoid Kroger and Walmart with the Metabanks.

Apropos of nothing, how many email addresses do you have?

2. Chase Ink cards have a targeted offer for 5x on up to $10,000 spend on shipping and home improvement stores. Check the following links which were easily reverse engineered based on the simple URL pattern:

Also apropos of nothing, did you know that Lowe’s sells Visa and Mastercard gift cards?

3. Kroger finally fixed their fuel points issue on Friday and they didn’t take back any of the extra fuel points that were awarded. How is this related to manufactured spend though? Easy. The 4x fuel points on gift cards is still running through tomorrow.

4. Staples has fee free Visa Gift Cards going again through Saturday. It’s limit of 5 per customer, but usually that really means 5 per transaction. If you’re going to go to Staples and take the time to run-in, you might as well try for two transactions to minimize your time out and about — the worst that happens is they tell you no.

Pictured: Kroger’s fuel points transaction server, which has been patched and is no longer awarding an extra 2x.

After a heavy week of posts, it’s time for a return to normalcy. (Yes I mean the pre-COVID kind. No, I don’t actually have a way to get us there, but thanks for believing in me.) So, let’s jump in with a quadruple:

1. Check your inbox for a targeted free $100 from Delta to use by August 31. To search for it, I’d use the query: “in:anywhere from:delta subject:100“. I didn’t get it, but maybe they’ll like you more than they like me.

2. Kroger has a digital coupon for 4x fuel points on gift cards starting yesterday and running through July 13. Expect to see a lot of Marshall’s, Nike, Best Buy, and Home Depot demand from gift card resellers over the next two weeks. The two put together can easily make this a money maker deal before the credit card rewards, and a gonzo deal after them.

3. For your manufactured spending needs (except American Express), Simon has a code for 44% off of fees for purchasing Visa and Mastercard gift cards with the code: FS44JUN

4. Apparently this has been around for a while but it’s new to me: Create a dummy award booking with Delta and during the checkout process you may find an offer for a Delta Personal Gold card with 70k bonus miles, a 20k miles rebate, and no annual fee in the first year. I’d take that offer if I could. Just close it after when the annual fee hits after 12 months, or better yet get an upgrade or retention offer on the card for a juicier win.

A picture of a human leg muscle group, with arrows pointing at the quadriceps muscles. The muscles are labeled as: Delta $100, Kroger 4x, Simon 44%, and Delta Gold 90k.
Presented without additional commentary.