Tag Archives: Cash Back

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New AMEX Business Platinum Shipping & Wireless Phone Service Credits Post Fast

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Good morning everyone.  A few days ago, American Express unveiled several new benefits for several of their personal and business cards.  Doctor of Credit has all the details regarding the card benefits, but for today’s post, I am going to talk about the monthly $20 Shipping and $20 Wireless Phone Service credits for the American Express Business Platinum Card.

These benefits were announced and went live on May 1, so I waited no time testing out the credits.  On May 1, I wrote How to Purchase & Print USPS Shipping Labels Online (AMEX Business Platinum Card $20 Monthly Benefit).  I purchased a $10.90 shipping label through the USPS website to ship an item I sold on Amazon.  Later that day, I made a one time $20 payment to my AT&T wireless phone bill.  Both purchases posted on May 1 and the subsequent statement credits posted on May 4.  That is a really fast turnaround time for the statement credits to post.

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Work from Home Diary 11: My Thoughts on TWG Turning 7 Years Old Today

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Good morning everyone, I hope you had a great 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 let you know that Travel with Grant (the blog) turned 7 years old today!  Wow, I can’t believe it’s been 7 years since I started blogging in May 2013.  Back then, I talked about Award Wallet, ITA Matrix, Credit Karma / Credit Sesame, using BA Avios to fly to Hawaii, converting Hawaiian Airlines miles to Hilton points, $500 Visa Gift Cards at Office Depot, and much more.

I thought about sharing my 7 favorite blog posts or top 7 most read blog posts, but thought I would share my thoughts on blogging and my continued goals as a blogger.  Back when I started my blog, I was a ferocious reader of Frequent Miler (still am), Million Miles Secrets, The Points Guy, Frugal Travel Guy, Mile Value, and Travel Blogger Buzz (love you George).  These were blogs that I looked up to and admired for their content and entertainment.  I’m not a full time blogger (and never have been), but the dream of working on a secluded beach with a laptop on my lap and big floppy hat on my head always made me smile. Continue reading →

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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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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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PSA: Check Amazon Gift Card Balance for Missed Allowance Reloads

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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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