Tag Archives: Amazon

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TWG 10 Year Anniversary Amazon Gift Card Winners + 2 Bonus Winners

Good afternoon everyone, happy Friday, and happy Cinco De Mayo!  I am very touched by all the compliments and nice words that you all shared in my 10 year anniversary post (Travel with Grant Turns 10 Years Old + 10 x $10 Amazon Gift Card Giveaway). I had such a hard time selecting just 10 winners, so I decided to add 2 bonus winners to the list.  Here are the 12 winners sorted by posting time.  By the time you read this post, you should have received your $10 Amazon Gift Card via email.

Thanks again to everyone who left a comment and for all the love and support over the last 10 years.  Here’s to many more years to come!

Name Time Comment
Rick 2023/05/02 at 3:47 pm Your posts on Carlson/Radison were extremely useful. I’m spending the last of these points now for a free week in London!
Adam H. 2023/05/02 at 3:52 pm I started reading your stuff about 9 years ago and got into the CC points game pretty hard then. You helped me and my wife make many trips thanks to the old gift card to bluebird checking account routine. In the course of time as things changed, all those CC’s helped me have really good credit! So a big thank you for all the content over the years.
Danny 2023/05/02 at 3:58 pm Congratulations Grant on 10 years. That’s a great accomplishment. I really appreciated your blog post about the Citi Access More card and the info about doing a Product Change for it since it wasn’t publicly available any more. I’ve had that card for many years and I’m grateful for you passing that knowledge on.
Kalboz 2023/05/02 at 4:06 pm Congratulations and wishing many more productive years in the blogosphere helping the traveling community. As of late, your buy points/miles articles are informative and great reminder of ongoing good offers. Thank you!
Meg 2023/05/02 at 4:56 pm Congrats! I have been reading for a while and look forward to your credit card app-o-rama. It inspires me! I also learn quickly which credit cards to apply to, and most importantly WHY. I also like reading about your weekends away – nothing too glamorous or aspirational but doable.
ipod 2023/05/02 at 5:16 pm Really appreciate your yearly annual fee articles. I like that you thoroughly explain your rationales for which cards you think are worth keeping and which you downgrade or cancel.
Mike L. 2023/05/02 at 5:23 pm Your best post is your last post, because, like all your posts, it consistently demonstrates that you just want to spread your experiences and thoughts, rather than being a salesman for Chase.
Bill 2023/05/02 at 5:29 pm Thanks Grant & congrats!!! Ive been following you for a long while & have really appreciated the articles on using various point sources for using fewer points for flying. You’ve really helped make our points go farther! Looking forward to more of the same
Brian 2023/05/02 at 8:34 pm Congratulations! Thank you for so many useful and detailed articles you’ve written over the past decade. I’ve particularly enjoyed the coverage of using miles and points for stays in places with more space – Vacasa via Wyndham and HICV properties with IHG, for example.
Todd S. 2023/05/03 at 8:54 am You turned me on to the InKind App deal. Much appreciated!!
Mike S. 2023/05/03 at 11:23 am I really enjoyed your blog on the Vacasa and Wyndham bookings. I haven’t yet done it but I always like when bloggers go out of the ordinary topics. I have been following your blog for many years and it was great meeting you in person at the Seattle FTU seminar many years ago.
Gregory A J. 2023/05/03 at 12:54 pm I really enjoyed your article on reallocating credit limits with Bank Of America after your recent app-o-rama. Good advice to readers to reallocate credit limits. I have done this with Chase Business Unlimited card recently to meet a 6000.00 spend requirement! Worked like a charm!! Happy 10th anniversary!
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How to Purchase & Print USPS Shipping Labels Online (AMEX Business Platinum Card $20 Monthly Benefit)

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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Work from Home Diary 9: My Judgmental Exercise Bike

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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PSA: Check Amazon Gift Card Balance for Missed Allowance Reloads

Good afternoon everyone, I hope your week is going well.  Since I have several credit cards and only use a few on a daily basis, I put small recurring charges on some of my cards so that the credit card statements are generated every month.  I do this for a 3 main reasons:

  1. If you do not use no annual fee credit cards for several months, the bank may decide that you do not need that credit card and may close it automatically for you.
  2. I have 2 Bank of America Better Balance Rewards Credit Cards (no longer available) where I get a quarterly bonus of $30 per card (I have a linked BofA checking account) for making a purchase and paying my bill on time.  I don’t want to manually make a purchase or risk forgetting to make a monthly purchase on those cards.  It’s an easy $30 bonus x 4 quarters x 2 cards = $240 cash.
  3. I have credit card referral links on my blog and if a reader signs up for the card using my referral link, I get a referral bonus (airline miles or hotel points).  The bonus points do not automatically transfer to the airline or hotel account if a credit card statement is not generated.

For those reasons, I use Amazon Allowance to automatically charge $5 to several cards every month.  The funds are automatically added to my Amazon gift card balance and I usually receive several of the below emails on the 15th of the month.  But unfortunately, for some reason, I only received 2 emails, instead of the usual 8.  I did some digging and it looks like only 2 of my Amazon Allowances processed correctly and the 8 other allowances were skipped.  If you have allowances set up, I recommend checking your Amazon account to see if they processed correctly.

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Work from Home Diary 8: My First Quarantine Haircut

Good morning everyone, I hope you all had a great Easter weekend.  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 experience getting a (quarantine) haircut at home.  I included many photos below.

This is the start of week 6 of working from home for me and week 5 for Laura.  We have converted our dining room table into a (sometimes messy) coworking space and I am proudly drinking from my favorite mug.  If you can’t see what it says, it say “I don’t need Google, my wife knows everything.”  I haven’t decided if it is ironic or accurate, but it is a great mug (and was on sale).  When we are not working from home, we like to go on a short walk around the neighborhood to stretch our legs, get some fresh air, and maybe see a few birds by the lake.

If you want to see my before and after haircut pics, please keep reading.

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