Weekend thoughts from around the web

No great insights in today's post, but I wanted to mention a few of the biggest things I've been thinking about as they crossed my plate this week. 

• According to Frequent Miler's correspondent, new Citi Forward card accounts do not offer 5 ThankYou points for "entertainment" and restaurant spending. While American Express Campus Edition cards weren't hugely scalable (limited to $6k in loads per rolling 12 month period), they were a nice, cheap deal. See the comments to this post for details on that hack. Fortunately, a similar (better?) version is still available with the US Bank Cash+ card, which allows cash redemptions, unlike ThankYou points which require a little finesse to monetize at their full value (for example, student loan and mortgage rebate checks).
• Chase Sapphire Preferred's new real-time breakdown of points earning is completely addictive.  Instead of having to reverse engineer your earned points when your statement closes, you can now view your bonus points in real time in your online account's "recent activity." I use my Sapphire Preferred as my default card so it doesn't affect my everyday usage pattern much, but I was surprised to see that a local cafe where I get an occasional cup of coffee was not posting "restaurant" bonus points. Of course, the Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard posts your earned points throughout your statement cycle, so you don't need to wait for your statement to close to make a redemption.
• Speaking of the Sapphire Preferred, Friday November 1, 2013 is the first Friday in November: earn 3 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar on restaurant purchases made today.
• Finally, this is ridiculous . Are you really willing to commit to putting $3,000 on this card 12 months from now? Do you know where you'll be 12 months from now? Try harder, Citi.

What's next: Chase card applications

This is the second entry in my occasional series about what changes I see coming to my strategy for (nearly) free travel. In the first entry I discussed product changes, meaning my plans to change either from annual-fee to no-annual-fee versions (like the Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard), or to more lucrative versions (Citi Dividend Platinum Select), of the cards I currently carry – while keeping my credit limits and age of accounts intact.

Going forward I'll be sharing my thoughts on my next round of new card applications, starting today with Chase.

Airlines vs. Hotels

Since I already have a US Bank FlexPerks Travel Rewards Visa Signature that gives me up to 4 cents per dollar in value on purchases at gas stations when I redeem my Flexpoints for paid airline tickets, I'm not too worried about paying for any upcoming flights.

Hotels on the other hand can get expensive very quickly, especially if I have to cancel or downgrade my Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard in April, when my first annual fee is due (I'll ask to have the annual fee waived before I downgrade the card). I like to use that card to book my hotel stays since I earn hotel points and elite qualifying nights by booking directly through the hotel chain, and can then redeem my Arrival miles for travel purchases at an equivalent of 1.11 cents each, with partial redemptions allowed in increments of $25.

That's why my priority during this application cycle is to get a few cards that I can use to consistently manufacture large numbers of hotel points – hopefully also with a lucrative signup bonus.

Chase Ink Bold

I'll sign up for the Ink Bold with the standard signup bonus of 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points after spending $5,000 within 3 months, with a waived annual fee the first year.

Since my local gas stations haven't posed a problem lately, my plan is to split my $8,000 in monthly PayPal My Cash purchases between my US Bank Flexperks card and the new Ink Bold. Both cards earn 2 points per dollar spent at "gas stations."

The flexible Ultimate Rewards points earned by the Ink Bold can be transferred to Hyatt, where the standard room award chart tops out at just 22,000 points, or Marriott, which is not quite as good a value but can be worth doing under the right circumstances (for example to top up a 7-night Hotel + Air Package).

That leaves the question of what to do with my Chase Sapphire Preferred, which also has a $95 annual fee that is coming due in January. As I explained in this post, ideally you'll carry just 1 of the 3 "flexible" Ultimate Rewards cards, since each of them costs $95 annually. To justify paying $95 for another year of the Sapphire Preferred, I'd need to earn bonus points worth $95.

Valuing flexible Ultimate Rewards points at 2 cents each I'd need to spend $4,500 in the Sapphire Preferred's bonus categories, which isn't something I'm willing to commit to. After all, my no-annual-fee Hilton HHonors American Express and US Bank Cash+ cards also bonus restaurant spend (5 HHonors points per dollar in the former case or 5% cash back in the latter, capped at $2,000 quarterly). I'd be paying $95 to displace spend from (slightly less) lucrative, free cards. Besides restaurants, the Sapphire Preferred also bonuses "travel" purchases. Since the Ink Bold bonuses hotel spend, that mostly leaves things like cab fares, train tickets, and similar "miscellaneous" travel expenses, which are unlikely to add up to $4,500 during the year.

The two free options to downgrade my Sapphire Preferred are to a no-annual-fee Chase Sapphire card, or a second Chase Freedom account. The Sapphire account is tempting for the sake of preserving my restaurant bonus category, but ultimately I think I'll change to a second Freedom card. This year I was able to earn 7,500 Ultimate Rewards points in both the 1st and 3rd quarter bonus categories, and if even 1 of those lucrative categories comes back in 2014, I'll already be way ahead of where I'd be with a $95 Sapphire Preferred.

Chase Hyatt Credit Card

Since it's possible to apply for both a business and personal card from Chase on the same day, that raises the question of whether I should double down on Hyatt and also apply for the personal Hyatt Visa. It comes with a generous signup bonus of 2 free nights at any Hyatt in the world. Unfortunately, I'm no longer able to trigger the $100 statement credit that used to be offered when you reach the payment page on a new Hyatt reservation. On the other hand the standard offer now has no annual fee for the first year.

An additional benefit of the Hyatt card is an annual free night at a Category 1-4 hotel when you pay your annual fee each year – worth up to 15,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points.  A lot of bloggers will tell you that that annual free night makes the card worth its $75 annual fee.

I'll tell why I think that's baloney: manufacturing 15,000 Gold Passport points isn't that hard, since Hyatt is a transfer partner of Ultimate Rewards.  If you're manufacturing points at 1 point per dollar, sure, it'll cost you $118.50 in Vanilla Reload Network reload cards, plus whatever your cost is to liquidate them (although this cost can be lowered using one of my favorite techniques). If you're manufacturing 2 points per dollar spent (for example using the Ink Bold, above), then your cost is just $59.25, for example buying PayPal My Cash cards at 7-11. An intermediate case is if you're earning 5 points per dollar buying $200 gift cards at a cost of $6.95 each, for example at Staples, then the 15,000 Gold Passport points will cost around $100.

However, the advantage of all three of those methods over paying a $75 annual fee is that you actually end up with the points . That means there's no risk of "overspending" your annual free night certificate at a Category 1-3 property, or being "locked out" of using your certificate at a Category 5 or 6 property in your city of choice: just transfer slightly more or fewer flexible Ultimate Rewards points!

Don't get me wrong: in the real world, $75 for a hotel room – any hotel room – is a pretty good deal. For a room at a mid-range Hyatt, it's potentially a great deal. But the fact is, we can do better.

What would you do?

Every once in a while I muster up the strength to visit Million Mile Secrets, who is rightly famous for his circles and arrows , which cause great angst and hilarity in the travel hacking community.

He also has a completely undeserved reputation for ripping off my blog posts, and I won't hear anyone say differently.

I was skimming his 11-part travel reports and exhortations to book Southwest tickets (thanks but no thanks) when I came across this post advertising a $49 guide to travel hacking (only $37, for a limited time only!).

Now, I don't want anyone to accuse me of restraint of trade, so instead of telling you to instead buy my ebook, available through Amazon.com for just $2.99, I thought I'd share my thoughts on what I'd do with the $34.01 I'd thereby save, using techniques that are included in my book and described right here on the blog.

• Load your Nationwide or US Bank Visa Buxx cards with $500 17 or 13 times, respectively. Ultimate Rewards points generated at 1 point per dollar: 8,534 or 6,532;
• Buy 8 Vanilla Reload Network reload cards. 2% cash back: $80.63;
• Buy 11 Vanilla Reload Network reload cards with your PayPal Business Debit MasterCard at 1% cash back, after loading your PayPal account with 11 PayPal My Cash cards bought at a "gas station." Ultimate Rewards points or Flexpoints generated at 2 points per dollar: 11,086.
• Buy 5 PIN-enabled Visa gift cards at a local supermarket. Membership Rewards points generated at 2 points per dollar: 5,060.

How many points would you manufacture on a $34.01 budget? Leave your suggestions in the comments, but Square Cash, Venmo, and Amazon Payments don't count – otherwise Nomadic Matt might get the impression that we were making fun of him.

Update on MasterCard rePower network

At the beginning of the month I suggested that since the latest Vanilla Reload Network redesign included MasterCard rePower on the front of the card, it might be possible to load MasterCard prepaid debit cards using Vanilla Reload Network reload cards.

The Experiment

To test this theory, I picked what looked like two of the most promising cards: the H&R Block Emerald prepaid MasterCard and the Mango alternative checking account. The Emerald card doesn't have any monthly fees, and the Mango card has a $5 monthly fee that's waived when you load $500 or more during your statement period.

The Result

Unfortunately, neither card is currently loadable using Vanilla Reload Network reload cards.

However, in the course of my experimenting I did discover that Mango allows outgoing ACH transactions . That means that if you are able to load the account (for example, using Green Dot Moneypaks, available in some areas and at some merchants for purchase by credit card), then you can easily liquidate your balance by entering your Mango routing and account numbers in your credit card issuer's bill pay function.

In Other News

It isn't really the focus of this blog or my book, but I should also point out that Mango offers a 6% APR savings account alongside its checking account product. This is more than you'll earn leaving your money in virtually any other FDIC-insured instrument. You'll earn 6% APY on the first $5,000 in your savings account when you "enroll" in their direct deposit service. According to the site, you "enroll" by making 2 payroll deposits totaling $50 or more within 90 days. If you max out the $5,000 cap, and then deposit and bill pay out $500 each month in order to avoid the monthly fee, then you'll earn $300 per year in interest (actually slightly less since it's 6% APY, not APR, and you won't earn true compound interest above the $5,000 level). You won't get rich using this technique, but there's also no reason not to do it, since if you're manufacturing spend then you probably have a fair amount of month-to-month liquidity. You're allowed up to 5 transfers between your Mango checking and savings accounts each month.

One other note: while Mango suggests linking your bank account or PayPal account as a funding source, I was unable to use my Mango routing and account numbers to add the account to either Bank of America's "transfers outside the bank" function or PayPal's "withdraw" function. However, I was able to add Mango as a "linked checking account" to Bluebird. Your Miles May Vary.

More bonus Flexpoints

I know a lot of my readers have the US Bank Flexperks Travel Rewards Signature Visa, which gives 2 Flexpoints per dollar spent in whichever of gas stations, grocery stores, or airline ticket you spend most in each statement cycle, and 3 Flexpoints per dollar spent on purchases coded as "charity."

If you're one of them, check your e-mail for a message from US Bank offering bonus points for spending a certain amount of money on your card between November 1 and December 31. The version of the offer I received gives 2,500 bonus Flexpoints after spending $2,000 with the card, but these offers sometimes vary depending on your spend pattern and relationship with US Bank, since they're typically trying to motivate additional spend above your usual pattern.

If you spend all $2,000 in a double Flexpoint bonus category, you'll earn 3.25 Flexpoints per dollar, worth up to 6.5 cents in paid, mileage-earning airfare.

The offer does require registration through the Flexperks promotions center or the link in your e-mail. 

Did anyone get a different version of this offer? 

A quick update on affiliate links & how to support the site

Back in June I wrote a post about being approved for affiliate links through one of the many credit card marketing companies out there. They had a terrible selection of credit cards and signup offers, but their links for the Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard and Discover it cards were as good as the best available offers, so I went ahead and changed my links on this site to those affiliate links.

Long story short, I never made any money, and then they fired me.

I bring this up now because they recently got back in touch with me and told me to remove the links that I had put on various pages and blog posts. Weirdly, it turns out that a large number of the different credit card affiliate marketers on the internet are all owned by the same people, Bankrate.com.

So I removed all those links too.  If you happen to notice any changes to where my links direct you, it's because they should all now point to the applications hosted by the credit card companies themselves (unless there's a better offer available elsewhere).

The affiliate link thing was an interesting experiment, but it was pretty much doomed to fail since there was no way I was ever going to change my website or style in order to secure more signups or meet their requirements for affiliates.

How can you support the site?

This leaves the question of what you can do to support the site, if you're so inclined, and I'll be floating some ideas and asking for feedback as I approach my 1-year anniversary, when I need to decide whether to renew this project for another year.

If you haven't already then you can first and foremost buy or borrow my Kindle ebook, The Free-quent Flyer's Manifesto. If you really can't come up with $2.99 to buy the book, but have an Amazon Prime account, don't worry, I also get a small royalty when the book is borrowed, and it doesn't cost you anything!

If you've already bought or borrowed the ebook, please consider leaving a review. I absolutely love hearing from readers by e-mail and in the comment threads, and it would be terrific if you can share what you think with even more people by leaving a review on Amazon.

Finally, there are a few signup links scattered around the website:

• If you're going to sign up for Plink (you should), you can use my referral link;
• Venmo also offers a small referral credit if you use my link;

Some of the most popular cash back portals offer referral credit as well:

• TopCashBack
• Fat Wallet
• Big Crumbs

Thanks again to everyone who has supported the site. I adore my readers, and hope that together we can keep this project going for a long time to come!

Real talk about MyVanilla Debit cards

In the travel hacking blogosphere, I try to strike what I think is the right balance between risk and reward for myself and for my readers. That's why I'm always asking my readers to take each technique slowly and start with small amounts that you can afford to be without for a little while or – heaven forbid! – even lose. 

Every technique that we use requires you to find your own comfort level. Loading Vanilla Reload Network reload cards to Bluebird, for example, is a technique that many travel hackers use and have become comfortable with because there have been virtually no reports of adverse action against people using Bluebird in that manner.

Other techniques have more complicated track records. For example, here on the blog I broke the story of Gobank, which is an incredibly lucrative opportunity to liquidate PIN-enabled gift cards and reloadable prepaid cards.  However, the behavior that travel hackers consider most lucrative (rapidly loading and unloading) has invariably led to shutdowns and the loss of the opportunity.

What I want to talk about today are MyVanilla Debit cards. These PIN-enabled debit cards are reloadable using Vanilla Reload Network reload cards. They have incredibly high limits (but don't even think about loading your balance above $10,000). You can unload them using PIN-based methods (like Walmart money orders and bill pay ). Moreover, you can withdraw money using "cash advances" at (virtually?) every bank in the United States.

Some time ago, a series of shutdown reports started to pour into Flyertalk  from users who said their accounts had been closed after various forms of the above activities. Like a lot of users, I pulled back on my usage, and avoided shutdown on my three MyVanilla Debit accounts.

Since then the shutdown reports slowed down, and other opportunities opened up, so I decided to start using my MyVanilla Debit cards more aggressively. 

And my accounts are still alive and well. 

For each of my 3 active MyVanilla Debit card accounts, I've adopted the following pattern: 4 $500 Vanilla Reloads per week; 1 $1,000 bank cash advance; 1 $1,000 Walmart bill pay.

This allows me to manufacture about $24,000 per month using Vanilla Reloads loaded to MyVanilla Debit cards at a cost of roughly 1 cent per dollar of manufactured spend. Since between my Fidelity 2% cash back card, Barclaycard 2.22% Arrival World MasterCard, and 5% Citi ThankYou Preferred card I'm averaging 3.07 cents per dollar of manufactured spend, this is a no brainer for me.

What I'm not saying is that every one of my readers should start emulating my (very aggressive) usage of these cards. To be even more emphatic, if you start doing $9,500 cash advances every week you will certainly be shut down.

What I am saying is that these cards have a reputation that, unlike Gobank, they don't fully deserve. MyVanilla Debit cards are still a very viable option for manufacturing relatively large amounts of spend each month. And if you've been shying away from them because of the shutdown reports, it might be time to start – carefully! – dipping your toes back in the water.

Do this now: double redeemable miles with United

 [update 10/22/13: I failed to mention that the promotion is only valid in the following fare classes: A, J, C, D, Z, P, Y, B, M, E, U, H, Q, V, W and S. If you're planning to take advantage of this promotion, be sure your fare qualifies before booking.]

I don't typically write about airline promotions since they tend to be either targeted to certain customers or valid only on certain routes. However, there's currently a United Airlines promotion that doesn't appear to be targeted and that everyone should register for immediately.

Under this promotion, you'll earn double redeemable (not Elite Qualification) Mileage Plus miles on all flights operated by United or United Express within the continental United States between October 21 and November 21, 2013. Unfortunately, you'll only earn the bonus miles on flights you book during the promotional period, not existing reservations.

If you're flying United in the next month this is an incredible promotion, and if you're planning to mileage run for status before the end of the year, it's definitely worth scheduling your run during the promotional period. Register now, before you forget.

Maximizing Chase Freedom's 4th quarter bonus

My apologies in advance that this post is a bit derivative (for way more info check out Frequent Miler's post on the same subject), but I received a request from a reader who has a couple Chase Freedom cards and wants to maximize his 4th quarter earnings. As a reminder, in the 4th quarter of 2013 you can earn up to 7,500 non-flexible Ultimate Rewards points by spending up to $1,500 at Amazon.com or "select department stores."

Amazon.com

Since Amazon.com in general doesn't participate in any shopping portals (although select categories do earn cashback through some portals), this is an opportunity to earn 5 valuable Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent on your normal Amazon.com shopping.

This is much more valuable than Discover's 5% cash back category of "online shopping" this quarter, since Discover cash back is frustrating to redeem, while non-flexible Freedom Ultimate Rewards points can be transferred to a flexible Ultimate Rewards account for transfer to Chase's valuable partners or for redemption for paid travel at 1.25 cents each.

Sears Gift Cards

This technique's a bit trickier, but Frequent Miler has done the Lord's work figuring the ins and outs of it. Basically, if you're buying gift cards online, you need to know that physical Sears gift cards are sold not by Sears, but by Kmart, and Kmart isn't a "select department store" for the purposes of this quarter's Chase Freedom bonus. If you buy eGift cards online, on the other hand, they'll be charged to your credit card by Sears, and earn you 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar.

Of course, if you have a nearby Sears store location (I don't), you can simply go to that store and buy gift cards there.  If you decide to go that route, then you can either buy Sears gift cards or you can look for what Frequent Miler calls the "secret gift card rack," where you can potentially find other, more useful gift cards.

Either way, before you make any Sears purchases you'll want to sign up for Plink, add Sears to your Plink Wallet, and make the Freedom card that you'll be using your active card.

Why should you care about Sears gift cards? Here's the fun part: on Friday Frequent Miler ALSO reported that it's possible to pay for travel using Sears gift cards, by going through Sears Vacation.

Apparently you have to make your reservation over the phone in order to use Sears gift cards, which is admittedly pretty annoying, and their prices are $10 more than you'll pay elsewhere. On the other hand, the ability to earn 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar, worth at least 6.25 cents when used for paid travel with a flexible Ultimate Rewards account, means that for flights over $267 you're strictly better off using a Sears gift card purchased with your Chase Freedom than a Chase Sapphire Preferred which earns just 2 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar, worth at least 2.5 cents in paid travel (since you're netting 3.75 cents per dollar, at which rate $267 is the break-even point for the $10 booking fee).

Of course many people value flexible Ultimate Rewards points even higher than that, which lowers the break-even point further. 

Conclusions

Those are my thoughts so far on the Chase Freedom quarterly bonus categories. As for my own plans, I was "fortunate" enough to need to buy a new Apple computer this quarter, so that was an easy way for me to use up the $1,500 cap on my Discover card. For the rest of the quarter I'll be doing my Amazon shopping with my Chase Freedom card, and then I'll spend the rest of my $1,500 Chase Freedom cap on Sears eGift Cards, which I'll use the next time I need to book a paid flight. I'm all booked up for the rest of this year, but there's no doubt I'll be buying flights again soon, hopefully at 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar.

More thoughts on Square Cash

This is a followup to yesterday's post on Square Cash, the new e-mail based online peer-to-peer payment service by the people who brought you those little white smartphone dongles. I've been experimenting with it some more, and I want to give a rundown of some of the most lucrative options that have occurred to me so far.

Rewards-earning debit cards

This one's a no-brainer: use your rewards-earning debit card to transfer up to $10,000 a month. My first transfer, from my Bank of America Alaska Airlines debit card, has already posted to my account, and appears as a normal debit card purchase (the merchant category is 7299, "Miscellaneous Personal Services (Not Elsewhere Classified)."

This makes me VERY confident that I'll earn rewards for that transaction. 

Turn your PayPal accounts into Bluebird accounts

While it doesn't apply to everyone, if you live in a region with CVS store locations that sell Vanilla Reload Network reload cards, you're probably already loading your Bluebird account with them and paying off your credit cards, or transferring the money out to your bank account.

Those same store locations will also typically sell PayPal My Cash cards, which likewise have a $3.95 activation fee for cards with up to $500 in value. If you have a PayPal Debit MasterCard linked to your personal PayPal account (it's completely free), then you can use that card to send money from your PayPal account using Square Cash.

Better yet, if you have a Business or Premier PayPal account, your Debit MasterCard also earns 1% cash back. As in the case of the Bank of America card, I'm fairly confident you'll earn rewards on these free Square Cash transactions. Consequently, you can manufacture $4,032 in spend each month at a negative cost: you'll make $40 in cash back, which more than covers the $31.60 you'll spend for PayPal Cash cards!

This option appears to be rapidly vanishing, but if you have access to PayPal My Cash cards at 7-11 store locations coded as "gas stations," you can also earn tons of points taking advantage of that common bonus category.

Experiments with other prepaid cards

Unfortunately, Square Cash doesn't accept cards that it identifies as "prepaid" cards. However, their method of identifying prepaid cards is not entirely accurate. Most gift cards have been reported as not working, while a small minority appear to work.

My Nationwide Visa Buxx card was correctly identified as prepaid cards and wasn't accepted.  My US Bank Buxx card isn't in my name, so I didn't want to risk adding it to my account.

In the course of my research on the MasterCard rePower network, I applied for the H&R Block emerald card, which is loadable using Green Dot Moneypaks and hopefully soon with Vanilla Reloads. I was able to add my emerald card to Square Cash successfully.

Conclusion

I truly believe this is a game changing development, at least for as long as it lasts, and I encourage you to start experimenting, since no one knows how long that's going to be!