If you want to travel in May or June instead (or, in April if the fares are still too high), hurry and book the cheapest fare between roughly May 10 and May 31, then move it ± 30 days while the current free change window is open, just keep the city pairs the same. When this window is open all changes can be made online, no need to call. It will probably be gone tomorrow.
It is of course a shame that the dates for the above two offers don’t overlap.
How the lack of overlap in the above two date windows makes me feel.
There are a few grocery store deals that are very conducive to manufactured spend going on this week, though they’re not quite as valuable as last week’s J4U craziness:
1.Meijer is offering $10 off of a purchase of $150 or more in Visa Gift cards through Saturday, which is really just free money as long as you have a way liquidate them — just add the coupon to your mPerks profiles. You do have multiple profiles, right? I don’t, but I don’t live in Meijer land so I guess the joke’s on me? Purchase with a Unicorn Platinum AmEx for 10x, or with an AmEx that you upgraded last week that also earns 10x at grocery.
2.Kroger is offering 4x Fuel Points on non Visa/Mastercard gift card purchases starting tomorrow and running through April 6, just don’t forget to add the coupon to your Kroger account. Trust me when I say that this deal is really, really lucrative. Might I suggest you research ways to maximize Kroger Fuel Points? Hello and good-bye to my 10x grocery spend $15k limit from last week’s AmEx Personal Platinum card upgrade.
Hello 10x grocery spend up to $15k. Also, goodbye 10x grocery spend up to $15k.
1.Office Depot OfficeMax is offering 25% back in rewards on Happy Gift Cards, limit $25 back per account. In case you’re a Happy GC newb like I used to be, these cards are basically Visa debit cards that work only at certain stores, and there are multiple varieties that work at a different set of places. An example: Buy a $100 “Happy Treats” gift card which can be at GameStop and at a few other places, then go to GameStop and buy two $50 Steam cards with the Happy card. The Steam cards resell at 90-93%, so you can really come out ahead if you can make good use of OD/OM rewards and have more than one account. Often you can liquidate the Happy cards online too, no need to make an in-person trip in many cases.
If you don’t yet have a liquidation channel for manufactured spend gift cards, several good options include SCO GC and TheCardBay. Shane at SCO GC announced this weekend that they’re onboarding more gift card resellers focused on MS, so email him at [email protected] with the subject “JOIN” to sign up if you need another outlet.
2. Danny points out that there’s a really, really great $1,500 sign-up bonus for the no-annual fee “AmaZing Business” Visa Card, provided you live in Colorado or in California. Too bad the scope is so limited on this one. Side note: what name is worse than Office Depot OfficeMax? The answer is clearly AmaZing Business. Why the capital Z in the middle friends? WHY?
3. I had a request from reader Jeff for email subscriptions to daily blog posts, because for some reason it seems that a few of you think it’s a good idea to give me a direct line into your inbox. In case that description resembles you, you can sign up on the Email Subscriptions page.
This abomination is apparently the Sponge Bob embodiment of a triple. I can’t say I understand, but I can say definitively that it’s scary.
In the last couple of years American Express has punished people that used their own referral link in various ways, like clawing back points, removing the ability to generate referral links for bonuses, or in the worst cases with a shutdown. They’ve widened the net in the past few days too. (To be clear, this isn’t for you referring your partner and vice-versa, it’s for you applying for a new card using your own referral link.) This isn’t just a problem with American Express either: AA has done it, Chase has done it, Stripe and Paypal will ban you for running your own credit card, etc.
My bit of weekend wisdom: Never charge your own cards directly, never refer yourself directly, never send money to yourself directly; always use a P2 as a firewall (such as a spouse, sibling, parent, or similar). Most of the time you can get away with it for a few months or possibly even years, but the axe almost always comes down.
Weekend hint: There are ways to send money directly to yourself with online payment processors, and a prominent, very old processor will let you send money directly to your self with a credit card. Say it with me though: “If you’re gonna do it, use a P2.”
Have a great weekend!
Twice the players is twice the fun, but also a way to avoid shutdowns.
If you have an American Express Personal Gold or Green card that’s been around since at least last year, you’re likely to see an upgrade offer to the Personal Platinum worth either 25,000 Membership Rewards or 75,000 Membership Rewards after spending $2,000 after logging in to your account and scrolling down to the offers section. On the face of it, “meh 25,000 points for a high annual fee card, so what?” Here’s what: This upgraded card inherits the Unicorn AmEx Platinum Card’s 10x up to $15,000 spend in the first 6 months at Gas and Grocery after upgrade. I was able to see it on one of my AmEx Golds, even though I already have a few Personal Platinum cards.
While the American Express Personal Gold card is my favorite AmEx card, I couldn’t turn down this upgrade from one of my Gold cards. I’ll spend through the 10x to earn 150,000 MR, earn the $200 airline credit and the $30 / month PayPal credit through June, earn the upgrade bonus, then I’ll downgrade it back to a Gold card. No harm, no foul.
With this AmEx upgrade/downgrade, I’m calling “no harm, no foul”.
There’s a lot going on with grocery store rewards this week. A few examples:
At Kroger, you can buy $100 Visa and Mastercard gift cards for $100.95. Combine with Fuel Points for a nice win. Coincidentally, Kroger is usually a good target for liquidating cards like this.
At Meijer stores (pronounced “major” in case you’re a Meijer newb like me), you can get $50 in Meijer rewards for buying certain $500 gift cards. Check the exclusions, but as of this writing BestBuy isn’t excluded. Combine with a 4x or 10x grocery card for a huge win.
At Safeway / Albertsons / J4U stores, let’s just say it’s rewards bananas right now. Add online offers to your account and try buying a few things. You’ll probably be really surprised at what you see.
Via Reddit, there’s currently a 40% transfer bonus from Membership Rewards points to Marriott Bonvoy points. My initial reaction was basically “Bonvoy’s gonna #Bonvoy, this stinks”, but Robert at Milenomics pointed out a hidden point of value in Marriott program: 2,400 Bonvoy points converts to 1,000 JAL Mileage Bank points. Why is this interesting?
JAL Business Class awards from North America to Japan are 50,000 miles each way on non-peak days
You can book seats further out with JAL Mileage Bank then you can with partners
JAL often gives better award availability to its own mileage program than it gives to partners
The JAL #Bonvoy backdoor costs approximately 85,000 Membership Rewards and has very low surcharges and increased availability
The most inexpensive way to get to JAL award tickets are with AA and Alaska, neither of which are AmEx transfer partners; BA is an option but will usually end up costing more in terms of miles and surcharges. Cathay’s Asia Miles are decent for AmEx partners too, but availability is less and booking windows are shorter
All of these cards are no-annual fee cards. If you have a premium card from Chase, Bank of America, Discover, or US Bank, consider converting it to one of these cards. You don’t have to wait until the annual fee posts either, most banks will pro-rate the annual fee right when you downgrade.
General reminder on no-annual fee BoA cards: Lots of things count as 3x “Online Spend” or “Business Services” with the Cash Rewards family of cards. Also, even within the BoA Cash Rewards family, Visa is not the same as Mastercard. Go punch drunk on this one.
