Tag Archives: Cash Back

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My First Trip to Europe Using Miles & Points (Denver, Houston, Manchester, Dublin, Paris & Frankfurt)

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I started this post while I was in Dublin on a ten day trip around Europe, but I never found the time to finish it. Probably due to the fact that I was walking 7-10 miles a day checking out the sites! I primarily used miles/points to book the majority of the travel and lodging, which is detailed below.

My first flight was from DEN (Denver) – HOU (William P. Hobby/Houston) on SW (Southwest) as a positioning flight, which I paid 7.6k miles for, and $5.60. The retail price was $127, so I averaged 1.6 Cents Per Point (CPP), which is pretty average for SW. I Uber’d to IAH (George Bush Intercontinental/Houston) for around $40.

Southwest Plane

Southwest flight from Denver (DEN) to Houston (HOU)

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My Recent Citi Forward & Premier Credit Card Retention / Targeted Spending Offers

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Good morning everyone, I hope you had a festive Drinko Cinco de Mayo yesterday.  A few weeks ago, I called Citi to convert my Citi Prestige Credit Card into a Citi Dividend Credit Card.  During that call, I asked the rep if it were possible to convert my Citi Forward Credit Card to another Citi Dividend Credit Card.  She checked the card’s offers and told me that no product change / conversion offers were available.  Undeterred, I asked if she saw any other offers on the credit card and she read off a few retention / targeted spending offers.  After going through all available offers, I accepted an offer for 3,000 bonus Citi Thank You Points after spending $300 in the next 30-90 days (I don’t remember the exact number of days, since I was planning on completing the spending requirement the following day).

To complete the spending requirement, I loaded / reloaded my Amazon gift card balance with $301 using my Citi Forward Credit Card.  A long time ago, the Citi Forward Credit Card used to offer 5x Citi Thank You Points at restaurants and bookstores (including Amazon).  But unfortunately, on June 4, 2016, Citi changed the earning rate of the Citi Forward Credit Card from 5x to 2x at restaurants and bookstores, thereby reducing my spending on the card from a lot to $0.

Fun fact: The rep mentioned that as long as there is a purchase once every 25 statement cycles (~2 years), Citi will not close the credit card for inactivity.

Reload Amazon Gift Card Balance

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Are your AMEX Offer Statement Credits Posting Slower than Usual?

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(Hat tip to Miles per Day post and Tom’s comments in that post)

Good morning everyone, happy Star Wars Days (“May the Force be with you” = May the Fourth = May 4th) – that was painful to explain.  Anyway, I was reading Miles per Day and there were a few comments on that blog post AMEX Offer statement credits posting very slowly that stuck out to me.  Commenter Tom said the following:

Are your AMEX offer credits even posting lately? Within the past 2 or 3 weeks, I’ve used about 12 offers or so and only 2 of the credits actually posted (the boxed offer, but the same offer also DIDN’T post on 2 of my other cards)…. I’m starting to get a bit worried…

Later, Tom said:

No, I only received the email on the 2 credits that actually did post, the others received nothing (although I’m 100% certain that I met the terms and conditions of the offer). There are also quite a few datapoints coming in on the AMEX offers thread on Flyertalk, but I’m shocked that none of the bloggers have picked up on this issue yet, something is definitely going on with AMEX…. ordinarily I would just dismiss it and wait a while, but considering all of the other recent negative changes, especially the recently announced delay with the Biz Plat 50% rebate, I’m really starting to worry about AMEX offers… I hope they don’t make us wait 90 days until after the offer ends…

I have noticed the same with my AMEX Offers – the statement credits seem to be posting erratically and slower than usual.  As part of my manufactured spending routine, I buy and sell gift cards and a big portion of the gifts cards that I buy are with AMEX Offers.  I keep pretty detailed records of when I buy the gift cards, when they arrive (via email or mail), and when the AMEX Offer statement credits post to my American Express cards.  Here are my AMEX Offer statement credit findings from mid January through early May:

AMEX Old Blue Cash (OBC); Blue Cash Everyday (BCE); Everyday (ED GT); Everyday authorized user card from my dad (ED ST); Business Platinum (Plat); Business Platinum employee card for me (Plat GT); SPG Business (SPG B); SPG Business employee card for me (SPG GT)

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Reminder: San Diego Travel Meetup at Park & Rec (Saturday, April 29 @ 12pm)

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Good afternoon everyone, happy almost weekend!  I just wanted to remind those of you in the San Diego area that I will be in San Diego this weekend and partnering with the San Diego Churning Meetup group.  I spoke with Eddy, the organizer of the meetup, and we are very excited to do a joint meetup on Saturday afternoon.  The meetup is at Park & Rec, a cool bar in University Heights.  They only serve drinks there, but there are a few restaurants nearby (Bahn Thai, Soltan Banoo Restaurant & Plumeria Vegetarian) that we can order food and bring back to Park & Rec.

  • Where: Park & Rec, 4612 Park Blvd, San Diego, CA 92116 (Google Maps)
  • When: Saturday, April 29 @ 12-2PM

San Diego Meetup Park Rec Google Map

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AMEX Offer Best Practices for Adding Offers to Multiple Cards & My Offer Tracking Spreadsheet

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Good morning everyone, happy Friday.  I am heading down to San Diego this weekend, but before I go, I wanted to talk about AMEX Offers and how I handle them.  For starters, I have 4 personal American Express credit cards in one account and 4 business American Express credit/charge cards in another account.  For the business cards, I have a primary business card and an employee card (both the business and employee cards are in my name).  All in all, I can add AMEX Offers to 8 cards: Old Blue Cash, Blue Cash Everyday, AMEX Everyday, AMEX Everyday (Dad’s card – I am an authorized user), Platinum Business, Green Business (no annual fee employee card for Platinum Business), SPG Business, and SPG Business (employee card).

AMEX Offers are great, but they become even better if you can leverage/multiply that great deal across all your American Express cards.  In this post, I will show you how I add the same AMEX Offer to multiple American Express cards and how I track all the AMEX Offers in my AMEX Offer Tracking Spreadsheet (download link included below).  If you follow this guide, you will be an AMEX Offer expert in no time.

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