Tag Archives: Amazon

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Why Do We Keep 16 No Annual Fee Credit Cards?

Good afternoon everyone, I hope your weekend is off to a great start.  A few days ago, I wrote a post titled I Paid $4,588 in Credit Card Annual Fees in 2019 – Was it Worth it?  In that post, I shared the 21 credit cards that I plan on keeping and how I justify paying the annual fees on those credit cards.  I felt bad for the 16 no annual fee cards that Laura and I have and decided to write a post about them too.  Roughly half of the no annual fee credit cards were downgraded / converted from a credit card with an annual fee.  Besides the rewards that some of the no annual fee credit cards provide, keeping no annual fee credit cards open long term is good for your credit score.  It improves the length of credit history (average age of accounts), which represents 15% of your total credit score.  It also helps with the amounts owed (your credit utilization ratio), which represents 30% of your total credit score.  Lastly, it helps with payment history (paying your credit card bills on time), which represents 35% of your total credit score.  For more info, check out this Doctor of Credit page.

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Image source: https://www.kiplinger.com/article/credit/T017-C000-S002-how-your-credit-score-is-calculated.html

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Drop App Devaluation: Changes to Gift Card Redemptions (Must Shop through App)

Updated at 2:10pm PT on 11/14: After I made a $1 Groupon purchase through Drop, I earned Drop Points and unlocked the gift card redemptions.  Scroll to the bottom of the post for more info.


Good morning everyone.  I checked my Drop account yesterday and noticed a change to the Redeem Rewards screen.  Listed at the top of the screen is a message regarding $5-$25 gift cards.  I clicked on the message and learned that rewards between $2 and $25 are locked unless you make a purchase with the Drop app.  I currently only earn Drop points when I make purchases with my linked credit cards.  This is bad news for users who do not use the Drop app for shopping, but only for card linked purchases.

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How to Redeem City National Bank CNB Visa Infinite Points for Cash Back, Gift Cards & Merchandise

Good morning everyone.  After yesterday’s massive devaluation of the City National Bank CNB Crystal Visa Infinite Credit Card (Doctor of Credit and Frequent Miler), I started planning to close this credit card since my $400 annual fee is scheduled to be billed later this month.  But first, I had a few orphaned CNB Points that I wanted to redeem.  If you only have a few thousand CNB Points, there are not many good redemption offers, but I will show you what I saw and what I learned during this process.  To get started, sign into your CNB Rewards account or create an account.

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My Failed Experiment to Cut the Comcast Xfinity Cable Cord

Good morning everyone.  My wife and I have Comcast Xfinity internet and cable TV at home and I was considering cutting the cord to save money on our cable TV subscription.  I don’t really watch live TV (news or sports), but I do love watching recorded TV shows from our DVR (mostly reality TV and sitcoms).  I have the Comcast Xfinity Stream app on my iPhone and love that I can download any show from our DVR onto the app (also works great on our iPad).  I can watch TV shows on my commute to work (on the train and ferry) and when I travel on a plane.  Having the shows pre-downloaded vs. streaming to my iPhone is really important to me since I do not have unlimited 4G/5G data, WiFi on my commute and on planes is slow, and some spots have no cell or WiFi signal at all.

In my experiment, I tried to replace Comcast Xfinity cable TV with Sling TV, Hulu, and CBS All Access.  My experiment did not go as smoothly as I had hoped, but I will show you what I learned from these 3 streaming services and apps (and their shortcomings, from my perspective).

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My Oversold Delta Flight: $700 AMEX Gift Card, Hotel Voucher & Morning Flight

Good morning everyone.  Last week, I was flying back from Salt Lake City (SLC) to Oakland (OAK) on Delta.  The flight was oversold, so the gate agent was looking for a few volunteers to take a later flight (depart SLC at 10:30pm, land in OAK at 11:30pm) in exchange for a $700 gift card.  Since I didn’t need to get back to OAK right away, I asked the gate agent if I could take a morning flight into OAK (depart SLC at 8:30am, land in OAK at 9:30am – I would then take BART into SF for work) and I also asked for a hotel voucher for the night.  The gate agent said that was possible, so he added me to the volunteer list, and I waited near the gate for all passengers to board.  After all passengers boarded the flight, the gate agent called me up, changed my flight to the new morning flight, printed out a hotel voucher, and showed me the list of gift cards that I was eligible to claim.  I didn’t take a photo of the laminated sheet on the counter, but I believe these were the same gift cards that were offered.  I decided to go with an American Express gift card since that was basically cash to me.

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