Do this now: Unenroll your American Express charge cards from pay over time.

American Express quietly auto-enrolled cardmembers in pay over time during Q4 of 2020 and you could be forgiven for missing it, it wasn’t well publicized. Click the above link and deactivate pay over time for each charge card you’ve got (Green, Gold, Platinum, Centurion, Unobtainium, etc) because:

  • American Express periodically sends offers of at least 10,000 Membership Rewards points for (re-)enrolling in pay over time. We’ve seen re-enrollment offers just this week. I’m going to classify them as the strangest gift I’ve gotten this holiday season.
  • Paying interest from carrying credit card balances is bad-news-bears: The rewards aren’t worth the fees you’re paying. Don’t play this game until you’re not paying interest. Unenrolling from pay over time removes that possibility from these cards.

Once you’re unenrolled watch for offers for bonus points from American Express and take the bonus when it comes (then unenroll again after the bonus posts).

Billy-Bob Thornton telling you to unenroll your charge cards from pay over time, or else.

Use this link for 6 months of free Clear for you and your family. (Clear is an ultra-fast way to get through airport security at major US airports, except RDU for some reason.) Make sure you set a reminder in your phone to cancel 5 months and 20 days from now, otherwise they’ll bill you for a year’s service at the end of your trial. Don’t be that sucker!

True story: My partner doesn’t have Clear and I do. We always race to get through security, and guess who almost always wins? Does that count as an endorsement? Do I ever answer questions or just ask them?

A “clear sucker”

You never know quite what’s inside the PenFed enigma of a bank, but they can be an manufactured spender’s dream. If that weren’t enough, now they have a rather compelling credit card offer for $425 worth of points and $100 in travel credits, which can be double-dipped in 2020 and 2021 if you hurry (so, $625 total). There’s no annual fee for this card if you have an “Access America” checking account, which anyone can sign up for by paying $5 to join.

If you know someone who has a PenFed account of any type already, they can refer you to this credit card and earn $50. This works really well with a player two. If you don’t have a P2 with a PenFed account, find a friend who has one and ask them for a referral. They’ll appreciate the referral bonus I’m sure.

News headline with a pictured bottle of chocolate milk and headline: "Man goes to hospital after drinking unknown liquid from McDonald's chocolate milk container"
Just like with McDonald’s, you never know what’s inside with PenFed.

Now through 12/25/2020, you can get $500 Vanilla Visa eGift cards with no purchase fees using promo code EGIFT2020, limit of 10 per transaction. If you have a hard time getting orders approved, use guest checkout and PayPal Key. Also, remember PayPal Key is great for something like this for other reasons too (hint: coding).

Since these are eGift Cards, you’ll need to liquidate them online unless you’ve got an electronic credit card, or another way of getting the prepaid card info onto a physical card. There are a online few methods out there that work easily for eGift cards like this, do some research.

Vanilla “liquidation”, courtesy of Vanilla Ice

This isn’t exactly a secret, but it’s not well socialized either. Thanks initially to the 737-MAX grounding and now due to COVID waivers, periodically Southwest Airlines lets you change to any flight ± 30 days when you book within certain windows. (I’m not sure they want to do this, but they run an archaic computer system and it’s what they can do without breaking it.)

The play is to find the cheapest award or cash booking on a ticket you want to fly, book it, then change to the actual itinerary you want within 30 days for no additional points or cash. (Book SLC-SAN at 4:30 AM on a Saturday for 4,008 points, then change it to Monday at 5:00 PM.) You can do this online, no need to talk to an agent.

Currently, the booking window for free ± 30 days changes is February 11 through March 5, 2021, so you can fly cheap between January 11 and April 7. Yes, Southwest flies to Florida too, sorry.

Vintage NEC computer from the 1960s with relays, knobs, a printer, and tape spools.
Southwest Airlines’ Amadeus Computer Reservation System (circa 2020).

American Express periodically gives you discounts on Amazon for using Membership Rewards points and now they’ve expanded the ongoing Christmas offer, so check here to see if you’re eligible even if you weren’t before.

Discover jumped on the bandwagon too with more people targeted for a rebate for using at least $0.01 in your cash back balance. Check here to see if you’re eligible. This one was only $10 back for me, so I’ll still do it, but I’ll be frustrated the whole time that it’s only $10.

My recommendation? Buy a $125 BestBuy gift card and resell it at 98% of face, and get $50 off during your purchase by using one Membership Reward point. (Or if you got a lower offer than $50, do what’s right for you.) Scale down as appropriate for Discover.

blurry picture of an everyday young couple on a pile of money.
Actual picture of FlyerTalker ‘AmazonBestBuyCashPileATL’

Do this now:

  1. Register your Discover IT cards for Q1 bonuses
  2. Register your Chase Freedom cards for Q1 bonuses
  3. Register your US Bank Cash+ cards for Q1 bonuses

Spend strategies:

  • Discover
    • Grocery Stores
      • Buy US Bank Visas and convert to a money order
      • Buy BestBuy gift cards and resell
      • Buy groceries, I guess?
    • CVS/Wallgreens
      • Buy 3rd party gift cards during periodic sales and resell
  • Chase Freedom
    • Wholesale Clubs
      • Buy MetaBank gift cards at Sam’s club if you can liquidate
      • Buy 3rd party gift cards during periodic sales and resell
    • Internet, Cable, and Phone
      • Pay (and pre-pay) your bills
    • Streaming services:
      • Load your Apple Wallet balance
      • Pay (and pre-pay) streaming (Netflix / Disney+ / etc)
  • US Bank Cash+
    • Electronic Stores
      • Buy BestBuy gift cards and resell
    • TV, Internet, and Streaming
      • Load your Apple Wallet balance
      • Pay (and pre-pay) streaming (Netflix / Disney+ / etc)
    • Cell phone providers
      • Pre-pay your bill

This was a long post, sorry — I made it as short as I felt reasonable. As a bonus hint for those who made it this far: You’ll be surprised at all the things that count as 3x “Online Spend” or “Business Services” with the BoA Cash Rewards family of cards. It’s really easy to knock those out too.

This caption is not TL;DR