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.

Update: I was severely punked: Both of these deals died between when I scheduled this post and when it was published a few hours later. Sorry. In the mean time, Saks Fifth Avenue is now 10x at the Rakuten portal, so now is a good time to cash out your $50 American Express Personal Platinum credits and earn 500 Membership Rewards points in the process.


A couple of deals that I wrote about in the past weeks are still around and are bigger than before thanks to Presidents’ Day promotions. (Thanks for making me look like a small-deal-pushing-tool, Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Washington.) If you want to take advantage again with a P2, or if you missed it the first time, go for each of these bigger bonuses:

1. The Visible Wireless deal, available with your burner phone SIMs (or your main SIM I guess), is even better now with $60 or 6,000 Membership Rewards back from Rakuten thanks to today’s promotion. You also get a $100 Mastercard after two months. Update: it’s down to $25 or 2,500 points. Boo.

2. Depositing $1 in a new account Betterment now earns you either $127.50 or 12,750 Membership Rewards points when you open the account through the Rakuten portal. This is worth doing for P2, P3, P4, and any other players at your disposal. Skip P7 though, that guy’s a jerk. Update: the presidents got me again. It’s now back down to $75 it 7,500 points.

The Merriam-Webster definition of the word embiggen: "to make bigger or more expansive".
See English professor? I told you it was a real word.

Happy Wednesday! There are a couple of items worthy of your attention today:

1. You can score 7,500 American Express Membership Rewards points with the Rakuten portal by opening a Betterment Checking or Cash Reserve account and funding it with $1.00 or $10.00, respectively. In the grand scheme of things, this is a great offer for just transferring a buck and not worrying about it ever again. Or you can hang on to the account and use it for it’s world-wide ATM fee reimbursements.

If you don’t have a Rakuten account, use a friend’s referral link so they get a bonus, or use George’s at TravelBloggerBuzz. Also, make sure you’ve converted your Rakuten account to a membership rewards earning account.

2. Do you want a Southwest Companion pass with a single credit card? The 100,000 point Southwest Performance Business card is still kicking around, and that sign up bonus by itself will earn you a companion pass. Now that Southwest flies to Hawaii, Mexico, Costa Rica, and all over the Caribbean, I’m actually interested in it even though I don’t like flying Southwest (call me old fashioned because I like seat assignments and potential first class upgrades. I also like when we used to wear an onion around our belts, which was the style at the time). Combine this with yesterday’s green or black star Chase offers to bypass 5/24 if needed.

A photo of a person wearing an onion tied around their belt.
Illustrated: Why I don’t like flying Southwest very much.

There are some great and easy shopping portal bonuses for you and everyone in your household with a frequent flyer account:

  • Alaska: Spend $500, earn 1,500 bonus miles
  • American: Spend $1,000, earn 4,000 bonus miles
  • Southwest: Spend $1,000, earn 3,500 bonus miles
  • United: They suck badly, don’t bother. But, spend $1,000, earn 5,000 bonus miles

Here’s the thing though — giftcards.com awards portal bonuses on virtual Visa and MasterCards, and those can be used with several from-home MS techniques easily. You maybe surprised to find that the merchant coding gives bonus categories on certain credit cards when you buy the virtual gift cards (trust me on that one).

United Airlines Gate Agent after asking to switch seats