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How to Purchase & Print USPS Shipping Labels Online (AMEX Business Platinum Card $20 Monthly Benefit)

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Updated 10:20am PT on 5/14: Purchasing shipping labels through PayPal does not trigger the $20 credit (according to Doctor of Credit)

Updated 12:00pm PT on 5/2: Unfortunately, it looks like USPS First Class Mail is not available for packages under 1 pound (16 ounces).  Only USPS Priority Mail and USPS Priority Mail Express are available on the USPS website.  If you need to print USPS First Class Mail or USPS Media Mail, you can do that through the PayPal shipping center (read this post).

Good afternoon everyone, what a busy May 1 is.  American Express announced today that several of their credit and charge cards will have limited time benefits to offset the travel benefits that are not being used due to the coronavirus pandemic.  Doctor of Credit has a great summary of all the new card benefits, but for this post, I’m going to focus on the $20 monthly statement credit for shipping purchases (USPS, UPS and FedEx) on the American Express Business Platinum Charge Card (valid from May 1, 2020 through December 31, 2020).

As luck would have it, I sold an item on Amazon earlier today and needed to print a shipping label for the package.  Normally, I would print the shipping label through the Amazon Seller Central platform, but I decided to purchase the shipping label from the USPS website to show you the steps (and so I could test out the $20 monthly statement credit for shipping).  The steps are exactly the same whether you are using the AMEX Business Platinum Card or any other payment method.  To get started, go to the USPS website.

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PSA: Don’t Cancel Airline Reservations through Citi ThankYou Portal; Cancel Directly with the Airline

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Good morning everyone, happy Friday!  A few months ago, I used Citi ThankYou Points to book an Alaska Airlines flight from San Francisco (SFO) to Orange County (SNA) for Mother’s Day Weekend.  Fast forward to Tuesday April 28 when I received this email regarding my airline reservation.  Due to the coronavirus pandemic, there was a schedule change to my Alaska Airlines flight.  I knew for the last several weeks that I was not going to fly down to Orange County, but I was hoping Alaska Airlines would cancel the flights and provide a full refund.  In this post, I will show what would happen if I cancelled the airline reservation through the Alaska Airlines website vs. cancelling through the Citi ThankYou Portal (which is what I did) and explain why you SHOULD NOT cancel through the Citi ThankYou Portal.

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Work from Home Diary 10: Jigsaw Puzzles Make Me Happy

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Updated at 4:40pm PT on 5/3: I finished the last puzzle (1,000 piece Bird Village) and posted the photo at the bottom of the post.

Good afternoon everyone, long time no blog.  I hope you had a great weekend and your week is off to a great start.  I started sharing my thoughts regarding working from home in a series of Work from Home Diary posts.  Feel free to share your work from home feelings in the comments section below.  For today’s update, I wanted to share my obsession with jigsaw puzzles.  When you spend most of the day / week / month inside, there is only so much TV you can watch.

Laura and I received 4 puzzles as Easter gifts so I decided to spend a few hours over the last 2 weeks working on the puzzles.  The first 2 puzzles had 300 pieces and took about 2 hours to finish.  The third puzzle had 500 pieces and took about 3 hours to finish.  I just started the last puzzle which has 1,000 pieces and it should take me 7-10 hours to finish.  I started with the easy 300 piece puzzles and liked the flowers, birds, and butterflies in this puzzle.

a puzzle with a garden scene

Ravensburger Puzzle Spring Awakening 300 Pieces – https://www.ravensburger.us/products/jigsaw-puzzles/adult-puzzles/spring-awakening-13584/index.html

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Work from Home Diary 9: My Judgmental Exercise Bike

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Good morning everyone, I hope your weekend is going well.  I started sharing my thoughts regarding working from home in a series of Work from Home Diary posts.  Feel free to share your work from home feelings in the comments section below.  For today’s update, I wanted to talk about my judgemental exercise bike.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about the strange things I recently purchased on Amazon.  Since we knew we would be staying at home more during the next few weeks, we decided to purchase an exercise bike.  My wife was interested in a Peloton exercise bike, but I talked her down from $2,000 to $200.  After doing some research, we decided to purchase a Stamina Wonder Exercise Bike from Amazon (the price has actually dropped from $200 down to $180).  The Stamina exercise bike did not have all the bells and whistles of top of the line Peloton bikes, but it had pretty good reviews, could be folded and moved easily, and the price was right.  We also purchased a floor mat from Amazon to protect the floor underneath the exercise bike.

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Save 20% on Trim Cable / TV / Internet / Phone Bill Negotiations (Use Code trimsave20 – Promo Expires April 25)

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Good afternoon everyone, happy Friday.  I just received an email from Trim regarding a promo that they are running through April 25 where you can get 20% off your next bill negotiation.  If you are not familiar with Trim, Trim will reach out to your cable / TV / internet / phone company on your behalf and negotiate a lower monthly cost or get you a 1 time courtesy credit (like the $15 credit I received from Xfinity in February).  In exchange for negotiating a lower rate, Trim takes a cut of the savings.  For more info, please check out this post from 2 months ago: Trim Saved Me Another $15 on my Comcast Xfinity Cable Bill.  Every few months, Trim will contact Comcast Xfinity on my behalf and negotiate a lower monthly bill or find a promo I am eligible for.  I do not have to do anything other than sit back and wait for the savings.

In this post, I will show you how to create a new bill for Trim to track and how to apply the promo code.

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