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AMEX Delta SkyMiles Sign Up Bonus Missing from Statement, But Appear Next Day in Account

Good afternoon everyone, I hope you had a great weekend.  2 months ago, I applied for the American Express Gold Delta SkyMiles Business Credit Card.  At the time, the sign up bonus was for 60,000 Delta SkyMiles after spending $3,000 in 3 months.  In the first month, I spent $1,580 and in the second month, I spent $1,425, for a total of $3,005.  I expected to get the sign up bonus after the second credit card statement closed, but to my surprise, the sign up bonus was not shown on the credit card statement.  I did some digging and found out that the sign up bonus did post to my Delta account, but it was not shown on my credit card statement.  I thought that was really strange, so I wanted to share that in a blog post.  Here is the order of events…

On November 16, my first credit card statement closed and I received 1,580 Delta SkyMiles after spending $1,580 on my credit card.

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My Best Practices for New Credit Cards and Sign Up Bonuses

Good afternoon everyone, I hope your week is going well.  I recently completed the minimum spending requirement for 4 different credit cards (My October 2020 Credit Card App-O-Rama Results) and wanted to share my best practices for new credit cards and sign up bonuses.  I currently have 32 credit and charge cards open and have had 90 other cards since I started travel hacking in 2011.  To the best of my knowledge, I have never missed a credit card sign up bonus by not completing the minimum spending requirement.  Feel free to use all, some, or none of my best practices with your next credit card.  For this post, I am going to use a fictitious credit card as an example to illustrate some of the pitfalls to avoid.

ABC Credit Card has a sign up bonus of 50,000 points after spending $3,000 in 3 months with a $95 annual fee.  You apply for the credit card on January 1 and your application is pending.  Your application gets approved on January 5 and your new credit card arrives on January 15.  You activate your new credit card on January 18.

Credit Card Tidying and Organization

When your new credit card arrives, I recommend activating it immediately.  Then set up online access to view and track your purchases.  If you get paid monthly, you may want to change the bill due date to a date that is more convenient for you (unfortunately, this may not be possible until after the first statement closes).  For simplicity, I like to have all my credit card statements close around the same date, so that I do not need to remember several different credit card due dates or statement closing dates.

If you are concerned about accidentally making a cash advance purchase, call the credit card company and ask to lower your cash advance limit to $0.  If you were approved with a small credit limit and have other credit cards from the same credit card company, ask if they can transfer some of your credit limit over to your new credit card.  If you want to receive your statements electronically, sign up for electronic statements (I will explain why below). Continue reading

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Many Small Wins with Cash App Debit Card (Up to 20% Off Select Stores)

Good evening everyone, I hope you all had a great weekend.  I had a great time on Saturday morning attending the first FTU Virtual Seminar and look forward to the next FTU Virtual Seminar in February 2021.  A few weeks ago, Nick at Frequent Miler wrote Stop Sleeping on the Cash App.  I have had a Cash App account for several years (opened when Cash was only a money sending and receiving app similar to Venmo), but I was sleeping on the Cash App debit card and the boosted deals where you can get up to 20% off select stores (and sometimes even higher than that).

In today’s post, I will show you how the Cash App works and go through some of my recent “small wins” with a few different boosted deals.  If you are not a Cash App member, please use my referral link to sign up for a free account and get a $10 bonus (I will also get a $10 bonus when you join).  One of the cool features of the Cash App debit card is that you can design the debit card with various colors, various emoji’s (I selected the Money Eyes emoji with the tongue being the chip) and you can scribble a design or signature on the front.  Here is the front and back of my Cash App debit card:

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Last Chance: 49% Off ExpressVPN + 3 Free Months (Expires December 13)

Good evening everyone, I hope your week is going well.  ExpressVPN (the VPN service I have been using for years) is currently running their extended Black Friday & Cyber Monday deal where you can get 49% off a 12 month subscription + 3 free months.  ExpressVPN works across many devices (desktop, laptop, browsers, tablet, phone, video game consoles, and more) and many different operating systems (Apple, Windows, Linux, Android, Chromebooks, and more).  Plus, a single ExpressVPN subscription can be used simultaneously across 5 different devices, so the whole family can be protected online.  Click here to review their plans and start protecting your online information.

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Last Call for Discounted FTU Online Membership & Reminder to Register for FTU Virtual Seminar (December 12)

Good afternoon everyone, I hope your week is going well.  If you do not have any plans this weekend, I highly recommend attending the FTU Virtual Seminar this Saturday, December 12 from 11am to 3pm ET (8am to 12pm PT for those on the West Coast).  Here is the full schedule of speakers and presentations.  You can either watch the FTU Virtual Seminars live on Saturday or watch the recording later, but you need to register before the event begins.  Tickets to the FTU Virtual Seminar are free if you have a FTU Online Annual Membership or $25 for non-members.  I highly recommend signing up for the FTU Online Annual Membership (read Buy a $49 Frequent Traveler University (FTU) Online Annual Membership & Attend First Virtual Seminar December 12).  The FTU Online Annual Membership is currently $49 but will go up to $129 on December 12.

Assuming I persuaded you to attend the FTU Virtual Seminar or better yet, purchase a FTU Online Annual Membership, the next thing you need to do is register for the FTU Virtual Seminar before December 12.  I assumed (incorrectly) that I was automatically registered for the FTU Virtual Seminar when I purchased my FTU Online Annual Membership, but that is not true.  You still need to register for the FTU Virtual Seminar if you want to live stream or watch the recording.  In this post, I will walk you through the steps to register for the FTU Virtual Seminar.

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