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10 Things I’m Thankful for in 2020

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Good morning everyone, Merry Christmas Eve!  As 2020 winds to a close, I wanted to share 10 things I am thankful for this year.  I hope you can relate to some of these things and have other things you are thankful for as well.  If you want, please share what you are thankful for in the comments.  Without further ado, here is what I am thankful for in 2020:

Laura

It goes without saying, but I am very thankful for my wife, Laura.  She has been my constant stay at home companion and has made this year special.  I don’t know what I would do without her.  I’ve enjoyed watching TV shows, Hallmark movies, BBQing and making dinner, baking cookies, going for walks around our neighborhood, helping me with puzzles, and much more.  I am also very proud that she finished her Masters Degree this year.  She is incredible and I love her so much. Continue reading →

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Need a Last Minute Gift? Earn Rewards for Buying Virtual Gift Cards from Slide, Fluz & MileagePlusX

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Good afternoon everyone.  The holiday season is upon us and we are now in the home stretch.  If you still have a few more gifts to give this year, there is still time to send your friends, family members, neighbors and teammates a gift card.  Of course you can run out to your local grocery store, restaurant, pharmacy, or office supply store to pick up a physical gift card, but if you don’t want to leave your house, you can buy a virtual gift card from the convenience of your phone (and earn rewards).  Whenever I need to buy a gift card for myself or for someone else, there are 3 apps that I use: Slide, Fluz, and MileagePlusX.

I will go into more detail on how to use each app, but there are 3 important things to know about these apps: your virtual gift card is ready to use right away; you can usually purchase the virtual gift card in an exact dollar amount; and you earn rewards in the form of cash back or United Airlines Miles.  Without further ado, let’s go through these 3 apps.

Slide (Apple App Store / Google Play Store)

Slide offers 4% cash back on all virtual gift card purchases (which may be higher or lower than the other 2 apps, depending on the store).  If you are a new member, please use my Slide referral link and you will get a $5 credit towards your first 4 purchases ($20 off total).  For comparison purposes, I bought Panera Bread virtual gift cards from all 3 apps to compare the process and show the various rewards.  After you create your Slide account, type the store name into the search box.  If the store is offered on Slide, you will see it in the search results.  Click on the store name to purchase a virtual gift card.

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

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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

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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)

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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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