Q4 Wrap Up

You’ve got a short two weeks or so left to finish up 5x spend on existing rotating category cards. As a reminder, Q4 looked like this:

  • Chase: PayPal and Walmart
  • Discover: Amazon and Digital Wallets
  • US Bank: You chose these, for me it was utilities
  • Citi Dividend: Restaurants and most travel

Q1 2023 Preparations

Now that you’ve knocked out, it’s time to get ready for 2022.

Chase

Do this now: Register for Q1 5x bonus categories on Freedom and Freedom Flex cards. The categories:

  • Grocery stores that don’t rhyme with Saulmart
  • Gyms and Fitness clubs, or certain Sweat stores
  • Target

Manufactured spend recommendations:

  • Visa and Mastercard gift cards with liquidation via money order, BravoPay, or similar
  • The Sweat store
  • Bulk third party gift cards for resale (Best Buy, Apple, Home Depot, etc) during periodic promotions

Discover

Do this now: Register for Q1 5x bonus categories on the Discover IT card. Categories:

  • Grocery stores, even those that rhyme with Saulmart NM
  • Drug Stores
  • Select Streaming Services

Manufactured spend recommendations:

  • Visa and Mastercard gift cards with liquidation via money order, BravoPay, or similar
  • Bulk third party gift cards for resale (Best Buy, Apple, Home Depot, etc) during periodic promotions

US Bank

Do this now: Choose your Q1 5x bonus categories on the Cash+. Best options in my opinion:

  • Utilities
  • Electronics stores
  • Ground transportation

Manufactured spend recommendations:

  • Look for the Sweat company’s rideshare option
  • Prepay your utility bill, or maybe take that further

Citi

Do this whenever Citi feels like getting their Q1 act together: Register for your Q1 5x bonus categories. What could these be? No one outside of Citi knows yet, so let’s make some wild guesses:

  • Emu farms
  • Custom marble jewlery
  • Select specialty coaster stores

Manufactured spend recommendations:

  • Invest in SideShowBob233’s emu farm at sideshowbob233.com
  • Consider that maybe Citi is better on the demand side rather than the supply side and spend on whatever

SideShowBob233’s non-stock image emu farm, open for investments.

  1. Simon has a few new Simon discounted purchase-fee codes available:

    – DEC22FLASH35 for 35% off of Visas and Mastercards through December 14
    – DEC22FESTIVE50 for 50% off of Abstract Red or Abstract Emerald Visa gift cards through December 25
    – WRAP22UP for 50% off of Holiday Design Visa gift cards through December 31

    Different Simon codes (obviously) work on different types of gift cards, and for an added level of complexity, some work only on business volume accounts, and some work only on consumer volume accounts.

  2. Best Western has a promotion for a $50 bonus gift card with each $200 gift card purchased, limit five. The $50 bonus card expires on May 31, so it’s only useful for travel in the near future, at least to the extent that Best Western is useful for travel in general. (Thanks to DoC)
  3. Kroger.com has 5% off of the total cost of Visa and Mastercard gift cards through Friday with promo code HOLIDAYS22. These are fulfilled by Metabank, but are actually issued by US Bank. You’ll earn fuel points on the purchase too. (Thanks to Alex Z for making sure I got this right)
  4. Southwest open their booking window tomorrow for travel through August 14, 2023, which makes this one of your best opportunities to book placeholder summer air travel that may involve Southwest, especially if you check for price drops during future fare sales or in the weeks leading up to travel.
  5. A follow-ups from yesterday’s post: The Office Depot/Office Max $15 back on $300 or more in Mastercard gift cards deal still works as advertised, but the extra trick that worked on recent promotions for Visa gift cards isn’t working on this one.
  6. Meijer has a digital coupon for a $15 Meijer gift card with $100 or more in Happy, Choice, or One4All gift card purchases. Some of these can be converted to Home Depot and Best Buy gift cards for a nice profit. Be sure to scale with multiple Meijer accounts.

Pictured: Where the Office Depot/OfficeMax extra trick seems to have gone.

  1. Giftcards.com continues to award 5% off of virtual Visa gift cards with the promo code CYBERSAVE. It’s supposed to end today but often these keep going well beyond their stated expiration (and just as often they expire well before their stated expiration, because reasons). Make sure you bounce through a shopping portal first, and you may be luckier than you realize if your order is canceled.
  2. The Aegean Airlines free miles game has been kicking around since Friday, but it’s become quite a bit more interesting in the last 24 hours: many new accounts are seeing high mileage awards in the 20,000 miles or above range. Why is this useful? Two reasons:

    – 25,000 miles is enough for a roundtrip economy flight on United Airlines or Air Canada between any two North American cities
    – 90,000 miles is enough for a roundtrip business class flight on United Airlines or Air Canada between North America and Europe

  3. Reader H wrote in to let me know that American Express gift cards are fee-free using promo code HOLIDAY2022 (including gift cards well into the 5 figure range). There are two uses for this that I see:

    – Shift minimum spend
    – In conjunction with AmEx offers at amexgiftcards.com

  4. A new Kroger 4x fuel points promotion starts today (in theory), and presumably includes online gift card purchases too. They’re also selling several travel gift cards at a net discount, and you’ll earn at least 2x and possibly 4x fuel rewards on these purchases:

    – Uber: Buy a $200 gift card and get a bonus $25 Kroger gift card
    – Delta: Buy a $100 gift card and get a bonus $10 Kroger gift card
    – Airbnb: Buy a $200 gift card and get a bonus $25 Kroger gift card

    If you buy all three of these and use approximately 15 gallons when you fill your car, the fuel points are worth about $30. (Thanks to GC Galore)

  5. According to Doctor of Credit, Office Depot/OfficeMax stores have a promotion for $15 off of $300 or more in Mastercard gift cards. If this promotion is like other recent variants you may even be able to do better than $15.

A manufactured spender readies for the holiday grind on a United flight to Lubbock, TX booked with Aegean miles.

One of the famous American Express mass-shutdown events was caused when gamers paid AmEx with an AmEx through the now defunct PayPal Key and a becoming defunct bill pay service. Similar shutdowns happened at Citi when a credit card bill was paid with a Citi card, and those definitely aren’t isolated events, they’re just prominent.

I intuitively understand how people get themselves into this loop, because when a technique is simple and easy, your mental load is lower and it’s easier to push a big volume with just one or two moving pieces; The flip side is that it’s also much easier for a bank to figure out what’s going on and directly tie your activity to shenanigans.

So, avoid the death loop and always use an intermediary when playing games with a bank’s rewards earning card. To stay alive, never pay a [bank] with a [bank’s card].

“What about this one?” you say, trying to catch me in an edge case. Look, it’s simple. Never pay AmEx with AmEx, sorry.

  1. Do this now: Register for Hilton’s Q1 promo for 1,000 bonus points per stay and double points on all spend associated with a folio including room fees for stays through April 30, 2023.
  2. Staples has a fee free $200 Visa gift card promotion running Sunday through the following Saturday, limit eight per transaction. These are Metabanks so have a liquidation plan before you load up; there are plays out there, both online and in person.
  3. Apparently Turkish Airline’s promotion for 30% off of economy and business class awards for travel through May 2023 excluding U.S. Cities isn’t actually excluding U.S. Cities because programming is hard, so book quickly if you have any United or other Star Alliance travel planned before it’s fixed. UPDATE: DDG provides an example of SEA-FCO pricing at 30% off, but CitizenKane notes via MEAB slack that there’s a separate promo for SEA and maybe there’s no actual bug here. (Thanks to DDG)
  4. Reader Mark wrote in to let me know that Bitmo, which is continuing it’s slow death spiral via rocket launch into the ocean, is issuing gift cards for redeemed points if you email support and wait for a few weeks for them to come through. I’d still stay away from their new company HungryFriend (in this instance I think they’re the hungry friend).
  5. American Express has a 30% transfer bonus from Membership Rewards to Virgin Atlantic miles through December 29. Award sweet spots:

    – Business class on Delta to Europe
    – Business class and first class to Japan on ANA

    Unfortunately there’s no current transfer bonus to Virgin Galactic, but if there were maybe Bitmo would have had a better shot.

Have a nice weekend!

The rocket Bitmo used to launch its company to the moon; spoiler alert, it missed.

  1. There’s a short window to book Emirates economy and business class awards with Aeroplan miles at a lower than normal rate and with no fuel surcharges. In a few weeks they’ll be publishing an Emirates specific award chart with higher cost, and some unspecified time after that the cost will get even higher, so now is a decent time to lock in any awards. (Thanks to VFTW)
  2. JetBlue is revamping its frequent flyer plan for 2023 and adding new status tiers. There’s a lot of “blah blah blah” in here, but there’s also a nugget for gamers: top tier status will include six Mint upgrade certificates and four Blade helicopter airport transfers in New York, and you can earn top tier status completely with manufactured spend on a co-branded JetBlue card, much like with AA and with Delta. To compare:

    – Delta Diamond: $250,000 co-branded credit card spend and earning 125,000 MQM (gaming is possible with AmEx shanigans)
    – AA Executive Platinum: $200,000 co-branded credit card spend (gaming is very possible with portals and SimplyMiles)
    – JetBlue Mosaic 4: $250,000 co-branded credit card spend

  3. British Airways has added a way to pay more Avios and less cash for surcharges with the poorly named “Reward Flight Saver” tier for award redemptions. Travel hackers should note that this is probably a bad deal on flights leaving the UK, but may be a decent deal on flights to the UK which have higher surcharges.

Yesterday’s JetBlue press release.

  1. MyGiftCardsPlus has 10% back on Delta Gift cards for up to $1,000 in spend. (Thanks to GCG)
  2. American Express has heightened referral bonuses of 30,000 Membership Rewards or $300 for the referrer when the referred is approved for a new card. I’m seeing increased offers on about 1/4 of my cards. (Thanks to DoC)
  3. Southwest has a holiday sale for 25% off of travel on December 24, 25, and 31, and January 1 using promo code HOLIDAY25 booked by this evening. The code worked for one of my bookings but fares had gone up, so 25% off of a much bigger number was still a bigger number than my original cost.
  4. Do this now: Register for Best Western’s stupid promotion for ni * 2,000 bonus points for each stay for ni ∈ {1, 2, 3, 4}. The promotions is good for stays through February 25.

    If you have the unfortunate pleasure of four Best Western stays in the next couple of months:

    – I’m sorry, at least you don’t have bedbugs right?
    – You’ll get an invitation for promotion for double points for the rest of 2023
    – For real, you don’t have bedbugs, right?

Happy Wednesday!

Alec Baldwin helps us with Best Western math, but still doesn’t have a solution for bed bugs.

  1. BravoPay, now maybe known as Famigo depending on where you look, has increased fees for accounts created after September of this year to 10% + merchant processing fees, or about 13% all in. The good news is that using the app instead of the website currently works for the lower fee structure even on new accounts. (Thanks to Ben via MEAB slack)
  2. The major airline portals including Scrooge McDuck Delta have bonuses for downloading their browser extension and making a $25 purchase by December 11, and of course you can repeat this with P2, P3, … P(N-1) (for math inclined readers, N-1 isn’t a typo; Sorry, I don’t make the rules). These offers used to contain language requiring you to keep the extension installed for 30 days, but that’s now absent. Links:

    – Alaska: 1,000 bonus miles
    – AA: 1,000 bonus miles
    – Delta McDuck: 1,000 bonus miles
    – Southwest: 1,500 bonus miles
    – United: 1,000 bonus miles

    If you don’t have any actual purchases, happy cards at giftcards.com have a good resale rate.

  3. Reader Dean was the first to let me know that the Discover debit card is now behaving like a BlueBird or Serve card at Walmart in that it allows for fee-free “cash” loads at registers (who remembers action code 70?). The limits are $1,000 per rolling 24 hours and $20,000 per calendar month. Unfortunately Discover checking isn’t currently accepting new applications, so as Bill reminds us, reread yesterday’s post.
  4. The Barclays AA Aviator Red Mastercard is currently available with 60,000 AA miles after a single purchase and the annual fee is waived for the first year. Of course, spending $67,000 on this card for some Hyatt elites could mean nearly two years of AA Executive Platinum status too. (Thanks to DoC)

Delta’s newest airplane and captain pose for an upcoming SkyMiles devaluation poster.