Agile.Travel, a strong contributor to the travel hacking community, has done quite a bit of legwork on the rarely discussed Morgan Stanley American Express Platinum. This card is interesting because:

  • 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.

A cartoon drawing of William Shakespeare's head with the quote "Brevity is the soul of wit."
Shakespeare I’m not.

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%.

A tee shirt on a purple background that says: PRIME DAY SHIRT NOW ONLY $29.79!! was: $29.99
Amazon Prime day official company swag.

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.

This post posing as an electrical circuit.

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:

1. There’s a widely targeted 20,000 Membership Rewards offer on the personal American Express Platinum card for adding an authorized user and spending $2,000 within six months. Note that with American Express personal cards, authorized users will show the account on their credit report.

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.

Wolf Blitzer on Jeopardy! with a score of -$4,600
Computer simulation of my performance on the Jeopardy! “Credit Card” category.

Did you know that American Express cards with lifetime language aren’t always really lifetime language cards, and vice-versa? As of the last several months, true. Let’s enter the crazy world of American Express together: it’s not the card terms and conditions that seem to dictate whether or not you get a bonus in 2021, but rather if you get a popup window telling you that you won’t get the bonus during the application process then you won’t, and if you don’t get the popup you will. Of course, you won’t have a great case for getting the sign-up bonus if it doesn’t post and you were relying on this trick, so caveat emptor, which I’m pretty sure is Latin for “American Express can be played, but sometimes the player becomes the played”.

Given the above, and given some crazy offers around right now, if you have any capacity for another American Express charge card (supposedly the limit is ten, but I have eleven) then perhaps consider both of these:

  • Business Platinum card: 150,000 Membership Rewards sign-up bonus + 10,000 Membership Rewards bonus for adding an employee card. There is a $15,000 minimum spend in three months requirement for the bonus.
  • Business Gold card: 90,000 Membership Rewards sign-up bonus + 10,000 Membership Rewards bonus for adding an employee card. This one has a $10,000 minimum spend in three months for the bonus. (Thanks to dannydealguru on Reddit for this link)

The Business Platinum card in particular pairs well with a new American Express offer for 10% back on purchases at Dell, up to $150 total cash back for up to $1,500 in spend before December 15. With that offer, you can combine a periodic Xbox Gift Card promo code with your $100 twice-annual credit, and for any amount you go over earn 10% back. If you don’t have a Business Platinum though, check for the offer on your other American Express cards, it’s just not as exciting.

One final hint, employee cards are different than authorized user cards with American Express, they’re much easier to get and the bar is much lower.

Pictured: How high you have to jump to cross the employee card bar with American Express.

A few interesting notes:

1. Danny from the Milenomics Alchemy Podcast sent me a link for viewing all of your past American Express card applications, both successful and denied. It’s definitely worth squirreling away for when you’re trying to figure out which cards you’ve applied for. Note that while it looks like a web page designed in the era of Windows 95, it is a real American Express site and it does work:

https://onilne.americanexpress.com/eoal/welcome.do

2. Amazon has an offer for 50% back on up to $30 spend when using one or more Chase Ultimate Rewards points at checkout. I didn’t buy a Best Buy gift card on this one, instead I bought an Amazon lightning deal for a $50 Adidas gift card that resold immediately at the lightning deal price.

3. If you signed up for the Brex 100,000 points PayPal integration, you should hopefully be getting the bonus in your Brex account shortly. There’s been a lot of sausage making shared from behind the PayPal and Brex scene in various places, but the summary is basically “integrating technology between two companies is hard”. An update shared by Travel With a Point yesterday from Brex support makes it look like we’re nearing the finish line:

We just got confirmation from our team that we are waiting for an update from PayPal in regards to the customers who signed up correctly for that points bonus. Unfortunately, there has been some miscommunication from PayPal in regards to this. Our team will post those points to your account shortly.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, and will certainly provide you any additional information as PayPal gets that to us.

As always, feel free to let us know if you have any additional questions.

So I guess that means stay tuned from Brex. Like American Express, their Windows 95 computers need some help.

4. Southwest seems to be having a fare sale for 50% off of all points bookings today. As of this writing not much is known, but do take a look today at existing bookings to see if you can get them cheaper, or for any new holiday bookings you’ve got tentatively planned. Remember the Southwest free change window hasn’t hit late fall or winter travel yet, so consider booking the cheapest flight within two weeks of your actual desired travel in anticipation of the change window. Use code SAVE50 at checkout, book by Thursday for travel between September 15 and November 3.

American Express advertisement from 1996 (deep cut).

1. If you sign up for a free Target RedCard debit card (no credit pull) by July 17, you’ll earn a $40 coupon off of a $40 purchase at Target. Is this deal churnable? I’m not sure yet. This pairs well with the NBA basketball cards that some of you are slinging. I haven’t touched the card resale market yet, but I know some are making five-figures before being banned by Target and spinning up a new account to start all over.

2. News has been trickling in about the Citi Custom Cash card for about a week. The latest developments are that you’ll soon be able to product change to this card from another card (for me, the AT&T Access card that I can’t convert to an AT&T Access More card no matter how hard I try), and now that Citi will give a $300 bonus after $1,000 spend through Thursday for opening the card in branch. The card is probably going to turn into a Miles Earn and Burn “Unsung Heroes” card in the future but we’ll need some real-life experience with it first. In theory it’s an easy-ish $300 cash back every year card with no-annual fee. Stay tuned.

3. Try this link or this link for a no-lifetime language American Express Business Platinum card with a 150,000 Membership Rewards sign up bonus after spending $15,000. Keep in mind that there are credible rumors that the annual fee on this card will jump to to $695 in July, so plan accordingly if the card is interesting to you. I would go for this card other than I’m already over the supposed American Express ten charge card limit with my eleven charge cards and I don’t want to push it any further because frankly American Express is just too valuable. I’ll be able to close some of them starting next month. Thanks to yt-nthr-rddtr for the links.

4. Cash.app is back with a 5% off offer for each online purchase at Sam’s Club from now until Thursday, limit $400 spend per day. I like these for getting Visa and Mastercard gift cards, just make sure you shop through a portal. Portals don’t always track gift card orders at Sam’s, but often they do. When the portals track, it makes this nice two-pointer layup deal more like a three-pointer deal. See how I can sportsball metaphor with the best of them?

My new shirt in Cash.app green, because reasons.