1. Have an American Express card? Sign up for National Executive Elite through February 2023. The status game is basically a hamster wheel, but National EE status is usually worthwhile at major airports for getting a car other than a gold Toyota Camry with 98,000 miles. Don’t book with National just because you have this status though, only use it when National has the best price (or the second best price if the best price is with FOX Rent-a-Car).
2. Blah blah blah, I know. Southwest has a fare sale about every 4 days, but this time it’s actually worth looking at. Fares start at $29 per one-way, and you’ll have to book by tomorrow (January 7, 2021).
Southwest can fly you to see this cow for only $29.
1. Hot on the heels of yesterday’s AmEx Master Value Injection for Personal Platinum cards, there’s an MVI for Business Platinums as well. The injection comes in the form of +4 points, up to 80,000 miles for certain categories as AmEx Offers. Check for them in gas, office supply, advertising, telecom/internet, and shipping. (Incidentally, there are good new offers on the Personal Platinum too, check for $50 off of $50 at BestBuy, $50 off of $100 at Home Depot, etc.)
2. Get Alaska Airlines gift cards for 10% off at Costco. These will be good for years, or for the lifetime of Alaska Airlines depending on your state’s gift card laws. This is a nice way to save on upcoming paid travel in 2021 or 2022. But, I wouldn’t hold them longer than that, a low cost index fund is a much better investment than a fledgling airline’s gift card. I’m not aware of card exchanges that will buy these quickly, so the easy gift card resale angle probably isn’t there on this one.
3. I’m sure you’ve already heard: Virgin Atlantic kersploded its award chart for Delta redemptions. You probably haven’t heard: ANA awards with Virgin Atlantic miles can’t be far behind; I’d book any fledgling miles on ANA flights for late 2021 or early 2022 as soon as practical, otherwise you may find yourself sitting on a pile of worthless miles; yes, worth less than even SkyMiles.
Kerbal Space Program demonstrates the Virgin Atlantic award chart kersplosion.
The American Express Master Value Injection (MVI) is back for 2021 for Personal Platinum cards at least. They now give up to $30 per month in PayPal statement credits, which I guess is a barely passable replacement for PayPal Key no longer working with AmEx. Call it the Master Value Injection 2.0. This is good from January 1 through June 30, giving you 6 months * $30/month or $180 in total credits per Personal Platinum.
I personally would buy discounted gift cards for resale from anywhere but PayPal Digital Gifts when a deal comes up, or use Fluz with PayPal checkout to liquidate these credits. I suppose you could also be basic and liquidate via real purchases. Fluz has a pyramid scheme built into it, so find a friend for a referral if you haven’t used it before, or contact me for one if you don’t know anyone else.
There’s some bad news too though. American Express is again charging the excise tax for transferring miles to US based travel partners (Delta, Hawaiian, JetBlue). Call it the Master Value De-Injection. Ok, so this resumption was due to the CARES act suspending the taxes until 12/31/2020, not AmEx directly; but whatever, I still blame AmEx for charging it in the first place.
American Express (left) injects “Master Value” into you as a Platinum card holder (right). Since businesses don’t have arms, this doesn’t work on the Business Platinum.
These offers are per month, Jan, Feb, and Mar 2021. As per usual, Visa, Mastercard, or BestBuy gift cards are your best options for liquidation at Grocery and BestBuy at Amazon, if you don’t have the organic spend already happening.
Hyatt card:
5x at Amazon
3x at Grocery
Max $1,500 per month combined (hit Amazon first)
United card:
5x at Gas, Grocery, and Drug Stores
Max $1,500 per month combined
IHG card:
5x at Gas, Grocery, and Drug Stores
Max $1,500 per month combined
All three Avios cards:
15,000 bonus Avios after $5,000 spend
One time spread over all 3 months
Marriott cards:
5x at Gas, Grocery, and Drug Stores
Max $1,500 per month combined
The Chase “bonus matrix”, presented with my apologies for being that kind of nerd.
In another part of my online life that’s not travel hacking related, the community has a tradition of summarizing the year in GIFs. It’s glorious my friends, trust me. Here’s my attempt for the us. Maybe this will be a New Years Eve tradition? Without further ado, here is travel hacking in 2020 in GIF form:
AA Shuts Down Mailer Churners
The AA Playbook:
Suspend your account, but don’t tell you (whack)
Error when you try and book a ticket, with no reason given (whack)
Corporate didn’t tell CS agents what’s up, so they couldn’t help you (whack)
Finally, they kill your account right before you’re scheduled to fly (big whack)
PayPal Key
PPK runs as a debit card pretty much everywhere, works with AmEx backed card, and worked with Plastiq, Melio, and tax payments.
Rakuten Pays out 15x on GiftCards.com
The 15x deal that lasted for a few hours was clearly not intentional, but Rakuten paid at the end of Q1 2020.
US Mint WWII Gold Coins Resells for over $1,000 Profit
… and $1,000 is on the low end of the spectrum. The flip side of the coin (hah!) is you probably couldn’t buy them because their website was running on a Raspberry Pi 3 which was spec’d to handle approximately 12 requests per minute.
I was late to the game on this podcast for no good reason, but I’m still sad none-the-less. At least there are the archives.
BestBuy Gift Cards Reselling Magic, until Black Friday
You could sell BestBuy gift cards for most of the year at 98% or more of face value. That is, until the Black Friday hiccup smacked us in the face. The market was performing so perfectly until…
… at least now it’s going again, but we’ve all got a black eye and a bruised ego.
Cancelling a Dozen Trips due to COVID
Shoot ’em down, one right after the other.
Road Trips are the new Black
Corona meant more time on the road with the family, in makeshift RVs (or real RVs if you’re bougie).
I get my First PingBack to a Blog Post
Sorry, you’ll have to find it yourself. I guess if someone links to you on the internet it means you’ve arrived though, right?
Yo dawg, I heard you like AmEx, so I let you pay your AmEx with an Amex, so you could earn points while you get shutdown. Bad news though, the Rewards Abuse Team (RAT) didn’t like it.
I have to summarize 2020 travel hacking in about a dozen GIFs.
I didn’t plan on this until last minute, and I had no notes about what happened in 2020.
I’m sure I missed plenty of significant 2020 events, but hey, this was a last minute post that ended up taking a few hours to put together, so hard cheese if I missed your favorite. Next year I’ll take notes though.
1.Register for the Asia Miles Citi TYP Bonus. The transfer bonus is either 10% or 15% for transferred miles that post before Jan 31, 2021. After you receive the confirmation email, you can transfer Citi ThankYou Points and get the bonus. If you were shutdown by AA, the Asia Miles program is a good backup option for US to Asia flights, and the transfer bonus makes it better.
2.Register for Hilton’s Q1 2021 Promotion. If you happen to stay in a Hilton property, you’ll get 2,000 bonus points per stay between Jan 1, 2021 and May 2, 2021. Register now in case that happens. You’ll also get an extra 5,000 points for each 5 nights in aggregate.
Don’t go out of your way to book a Hilton property though, especially because of this promotion — most hotel rates are too low right now for it to make sense to target a single program, and this bonus is too small to change what you’d already do. Just let it happen naturally, and be happy if you get bonus points for something you’d have done anyway.
This is the Hilton Q1 2021 promotion if it were a food.
Bank of America is offering $500 or $750 for opening a business checking account at this link. You need to keep either $20,000 or $50,000 on deposit for 60 days and make 5 purchases or payments to get the bonus. I’ll be using debbit for 5 purchases, but not just because I’m a one-trick pony.
The bonus is even better when paired with a BoA Business Cash Rewards card, which you should consider because there’s no annual fee, the 3x categories are bananas, and your 3x actually becomes 3.75x with this checking account. Side note: By holding assets (401k, IRA, brokerage, cash, etc) with BoA, you can work that 3x up to 5.25x. Bloggers don’t talk about it much because it doesn’t pay them any commission, but it’s a gem for MS.
1.Staples has fee free $200 Visa Gift Cards, in-store from December 27, 2020 through January 2, 2021, limit 5 per transaction. Call this the deal that just keeps coming back from the dead, probably because it was bit repeatedly by another deal which turned it into a zombie, repeatedly. Use a card that bonuses at office supply stores to goose the deal. (For me, Chase Ink Cash.)
If your normal play is money orders at Walmart, skip the Staples deal unless you have another liquidation strategy.
2. Safeway’s Just4U program (also for Albertson’s, Randall’s, Von’s, Tom Thumb, Acme, and other affiliated grocery stores) is offering $10 off of $100 or more in Visa Gift Cards. Hint: Some variants of the Visa cards sold here are easier to liquidate than others. Make sure to add the offer to your Just4U accounts. You do have more than one, right?
