Search Results for: brex

Introduction

In October I signed an LLC up for Brex using their TravelBank partner landing page (no, I don’t have a TravelBank account). The sign-up bonus through that link is 75,000 points for spending $1,000 in 30 days, which I knocked out within 24 hours of funding. Side note: You can get another 20,000 points easily by linking PayPal to Brex as your “payroll provider”, which I also did.

On Monday of this week I was looking at the “Bank Bonuses” section of my manufactured spend tracking Google Sheet and saw that 60 days had passed since signing up for the account and meeting the terms of the bonus, so I logged on to the account to make sure that the 75,000 points had posted. Spoiler alert: They hadn’t.

I double checked the landing page’s sign-up bonus terms and also that I had spent $1,000 in the first 30 days, then chatted with Brex using their live chat. It took about 10 minutes, but the support representative confirmed that I met the terms of the offer and said the points would post in 24 hours. Several hours later, I got an email notifying me that the points were in my account. There isn’t more to the story: the points were indeed in my account. Brex’s support had the meatball.

Tracking

If I didn’t have at least a tiny sliver of tracking, I probably would have forgotten that the bonus should have posted because between then and now I’ve done a dozen other sign-up or spend bonuses and it’s easy to let one slip through the cracks. It would have cost me 75,000 Brex points, which is worth at least $750 and potentially quite a bit more with mileage transfer partners.

Tracking might sound daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Here’s what I tracked on my “Bank Bonuses” tab of the spreadsheet:

  • Account open date (October something, 2021)
  • Target (Brex)
  • Sign-up bonus terms (75,000 points after $1,000 spend in 30 days)
  • Bonus received? (No)

What’s your point, MEAB?

Make sure you’ve got at least basic tracking in some form for sign-up bonuses so you’re not letting money slip through the cracks. It’s surprisingly easy in this game to have a $500 gift card sitting on your desk that you forgot about, a spend bonus that didn’t post, a BestBuy gift card sitting in a stack that was never entered into anything, a gift card email that you marked as read and never saw again, or some other mishap. Please do at least the minimum necessary to make sure that doesn’t happen to you.

If you’re not sure where to start, The Daily Churn Podcast recently posted an episode on credit card tracking along with their Google Sheets template. If you don’t have something like that, perhaps make a copy and start your own? It could mean an extra $750 to spend on your favorite stock, or I guess you could buy 750 Arby’s Roast Beef Sandwiches if they’re running a 5 for $5 special, but that might also be your last weekend on Earth after your massive heart attack, so, ymmv.

Have a great weekend!

You don’t have to track 750 of these “beauties” to know what you’re getting.

The existing articles about what resets the expiration of miles in AirFrance/KLM’s FlyingBlue mileage program are all over the board, and they conflict with one another at the surface level. There’s only one thing that’s been certain to this point: crediting an actual SkyTeam revenue flight to your FlyingBlue account will reset expiration and kick the can down the road for another two years.

What about points transferred from partners and from the FlyingBlue shopping portal? You’ll find different information in different articles and they’re all correct at some level. It’s taken several months of experimentation and now with the help of Gary and Connor, I now have a proper test and validation set to explain what’s going on:

  • Some partners reset expiration of transferred miles, and some don’t.
  • No partners reset the expiration of miles earned through flying
  • Miles earned through a FlyingBlue credit card reset the expiration of all miles

Ok, but most of us don’t have a FlyingBlue credit card and don’t want to credit a flight to the FlyingBlue program, so we rely on transferred miles to reset the clock (and transferred miles is probably how we got them in the first place). Here’s the scoop:

Partner Resets Transferred Mileage Expiration
Brex Yes
Capital One Yes
Chase Yes
Citi Yes
FlyingBlue shopping portal Yes
American Express No

See the stick in the mud there? Our best friend and aspirational colleague American Express is different than the rest. When you transfer miles from American Express to FlyingBlue, it doesn’t reset the expiration on other transferred miles, and that’s why we’ve had mixed data-points about this topic for years.

Now that we’ve tested and validated this, can we collectively move on to something else?

Happy Tuesday!

The “something else” that we’ve apparently moved to collectively. Why did we catalog this, exactly? Perhaps there’s some golden ratio of crust to nugget meat that I don’t understand.

There’s a lot of opportunity kicking off the week, let’s hope it continues through Labor Day weekend (which, by the way, will likely be a great weekend for gift card reselling). Let’s dive in:

1. Office Depot/OfficeMax is back with my favorite promo: $15 off of $300 or more in Visa Gift Cards, now through Saturday. This is a $1.10 money maker when buying two regular $200 Visa Gift Cards. If you try slightly harder, say with the Everywhere variety of Visa Gift Cards and by linking your card to Dosh it becomes a $15.10 money maker without considering credit card rewards. If you go for the Everywhere cards note that they’re locked to specific merchants, but some of them are broad enough to make liquidation a breeze.

Do you have any burner cell phone numbers? Perhaps at least one for each credit card you have that bonuses at Office Supply stores? Create a Dosh account for each of them so you can scale the daily Dosh $10 max.

2. Dean let me know that Brex is back with a 110,000 points bonus through a partnership with Peyd. These points cash out directly via Brex at a penny a piece, or you can transfer them 1:1 to eight different airlines, some of which are actually useful (FlyingBlue, Asia Miles, and LifeMiles all have a unique sweet spots).

I signed up for Brex when it was first available and my biggest surprise with it is that the account is actually useful on an ongoing basis, not just for the sign up bonus. I’ve been happy with it for payroll hacking and for MS in certain categories.

Reportedly Brex will also let you sign up with Sole Proprietorship businesses now, but they may ask to see a tax return with a Schedule C.

3. Stop & Shop and Giant stores have 3x GO Rewards on Mastercard purchases, and 10x on Apple gift card purchases this week. I really like the Apple angle with resale rates hovering at about 93%, especially when combined with a credit card that bonuses at grocery stores.

Waiting for the light to turn plaid to drive into the OfficeMax parking lot.

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.

Let’s boost a few things today:

1. Check here for 40% off at Amazon, up to $40 back when using at least one Membership Rewards point at checkout. Third party gift cards with a face value of $100 are a great way to take advantage of this one to boost your wallet.

2. According to an email in my inbox this morning, Brex has apparently been running a 20% transfer bonus to all partner airlines since July 12, and the promotion runs through August 8. News to me!

To make it easy to decide if it’s worthwhile to you, here are their partners and the normal saver Business Class cost to Europe:

  • Aéromexico: 95,000 miles each way
  • Air France/KLM: 53,000 miles each way
  • Avianca LifeMiles: 75,000 miles each way
  • Asia Miles: 70,000 miles each way
  • Singapore Airlines: 95,000 miles each way

When you factor in promotional awards or award chart and region loopholes, those numbers can come down even further. There are also particular sweet spots for Asia Miles to Asia (shocking), and for Avianca to Europe or the South Pacific. I will be taking advantage of this one.

Even this turtle is getting a boost.

What a weekend eh? There was a lot that happened on the underground MS scene that honestly made me feel like I was watching a train-wreck happening in slow motion. I don’t have any direct information to share from that, but the action item for you is to remember that blogs are always going to be a good source of semi-public information and hints for bigger bonanzas, but the best information will be found in small, private groups. I’d suggest looking for a few of them to up your game if you’re craving more.

On that happy note, let’s follow up on a few items and talk about the Schwab devaluation, and maybe offer a bonanza hint along the way:

1. A lot of you had your Brex 100,000 points offer post on Friday or Saturday. Personally, I had the bonus post on one company’s account but not the other. In case yours didn’t post either, give it a few more days. If that doesn’t work, forward the emails that the PayPal sales rep you spoke with to [email protected] from your email address on file with Brex. It may be a (small) battle, but it’s one you’ll almost certainly win.

2. In case you haven’t read my affiliate link free post on cashing Membership Rewards yet (spoiler alert, none of you have because it’s still being written, slowly, over the course of the last several months), the Schwab Platinum card is the easiest reliable high-value Membership Rewards conversion to cash that currently exists. The redemption value is 1.25 cents per point which is great, but it’s even better because it’s a tax-free way to generate income, or in theory a way to increase your Roth IRA contributions beyond the normal limit without paying taxes or penalties. (I’m not a financial advisor, never take my advice, maybe about anything.)

We’re in a good news/bad news situation with the card now: As of September 1, the cash-out will drop from 1.25 cents per point to 1.1 cents per point; but the good news is: 1) if you have the card you’ve got time to cash out, and 2) if you don’t, it’s another sign-up bonus for you (60,000 Membership Rewards). When I first signed up for the card I cashed out 1 million Membership Rewards points the day it arrived in the mail, so there’s no real waiting period to speak of. To be eligible to open it, you have to be a Schwab customer but all that takes is a free brokerage account and $10 so the bar is quite low, almost as low as AA closing accounts and canceling tickets on the day of travel for churners.

FYI – there are other loopholes for cash-out that will pay at a higher rate with the Business Platinum card, but they’re either slightly sketch or not completely reliable.

3. Staples has fee free $200 Mastercards between now and Saturday evening, limit 5 per person (or, probably limit 5 per transaction.) There are absolutely still ways to liquidate these Metabank Mastercards for a low cost, but they are slowly being zapped like mosquitos in front of a bug zapper (sorry, it’s Monday, my metaphors are weak and you can see them coming from a mile away, like my alma mater calling me to “see how it’s going” which really means “give us a donation”.)

Nah, this image isn’t the Bonanza hint.

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).

This week is bound to be a little slow after the Memorial Day frenzy, but there are still deals coming, keep your heads up:

1. Brex has a 25% transfer bonus for Avianca LifeMiles running through July 2, 2021. The LifeMiles award chart has some sweet spots, and it’s a currency that’s been extremely hackable and currently still is mostly hackable. The current award chart has relatively decent prices to Europe at 63,000 miles for Business class or 87,000 miles in International First class, with lots of availability through Star Alliance partners. AwardWallet has a nice tabular LifeMiles Partner Award Chart, and region definition to help you strategize.

Hint: A lot of the value in LifeMiles comes from their definition of a region.

2. AA has a portal shopping bonus of 1,000 miles for installing their browser extension toolbar and spending $25 at a supported merchant between now and Friday. I’d do this in a separate browser and disable the extension instead of uninstalling it so they don’t get notification that it was removed. (Alternatively, you can disconnect from the internet and uninstall for the same effect.)

If you have normal shopping, do that. Otherwise, I’d just buy an ebay $25 gift card at GiftCards.com and sell at 90%, which will earn you 1,000 AA miles for a cost of $2.50. At that rate I’d buy a million AA miles, seriously.

A picture of four basketball players all looking up.
Keeping our heads up for deals falling from the sky.