You could do worse than Zeugma Rewards accounts

As my regular readers know, this is not a personal finance blog. In fact, I find the personal finance industry distasteful in the extreme. My opinions on personal finance are simple and wouldn't make for a very good (or long) read:

• Invest in Vanguard Target Retirement Date mutual funds;
• Don't pay interest (unless it makes sense).

But when you keep your eyes out for opportunities the way the travel hacking game trains you to, you'll inevitably spot some that aren't strictly speaking "travel" hacks.

There are 6% APY saving accounts

I've written before about Mango prepaid cards and savings accounts. Mango pays 6% APY on up to $5,000 held in the savings account linked to their prepaid cards, as long as you meet their direct deposit requirements. Those requirements are a bit fuzzy, but are certainly satisfied by depositing $50 per month, whether from your paycheck or from another bank account that allows ACH "pushes" to external accounts.

Mango has started charging $3 per month for the required prepaid account, but the savings account still allows you to earn around $264 in interest on a $5,000 savings account balance, or 5.28% annually (actually a bit less since the 6% is calculated APY, not APR). It's quite liquid (since Mango allows ACH pulls from the linked prepaid card), and beats any other federally-insured, liquid account I know of.

Likewise, the PayPal Prepaid Debit MasterCard and Netspend prepaid cards have 5% APY savings accounts, again on up to $5,000 in savings, and have their own fees and requirements to waive them.

Zeugma Rewards savings accounts earn 2.05% APY

Last weekend, I returned to New England for a long weekend catching up with a friend who lives out there, and for the thousandth time I walked by the Leader Bank branch in Cambridge. The same sign caught my eye as always: "Earn 2.05% APY on your Zeugma Rewards Savings Balance up to $50,000."

Let me attempt my best droll understatement and point out that 2.05% APY is much higher than current market interest rates on federally-insured savings accounts.

Activating Zeugma Rewards

What, you ask, is a Zeugma Rewards savings account? Similar to Santander's "extra20" accounts, you need both a Zeugma Rewards checking and savings account to participate, and in order to earn the full 2.05% APY on your Zeugma Rewards savings account, you'll need to meet three conditions with your Zeugma Rewards checking account:

• Elect to receive statements electronically;
• Direct deposit $500 or more each month;
• Make 8 or more debit card transactions.

Obviously these requirements aren't too heavy a lift for my readers, but you'll need to make sure you meet them all or you'll earn a tiny fraction of the 2.05% interest you were hoping for.

It gets better

Maybe you're interested in a 2.05% APY savings account and maybe you aren't. But I'll bet you're very interested in a 1% cash back debit card.

Remarkably, Zeugma Rewards checking account debit cards earn 1% cash back on all signature transactions, specifically "signature purchase transactions only where the customer selects 'credit' as the transaction type." On the one hand, that's less generous than the (no-longer-available) Suntrust Delta Skymiles debit card. On the other hand, it's comparable to the PayPal Business Debit MasterCard, but backed by a real bank that may value their relationship with customers more than PayPal appears to.

Now I'm getting into the realm of speculation, but it's my blog and I feel like speculating. There are a number of "signature" debit card transactions that PayPal does not award cash back on. For example, Evolve Money transactions funded with a PayPal Business Debit MasterCard appear in your account history as signature transactions, but don't earn cash back at the end of the month. It seems possible to me that a smaller regional bank like Leader Bank may not have PayPal's level of awareness with respect to these transactions, and may end up awarding 1% cash back on transactions that would not qualify for rewards when funded with the debit cards of other, larger banks.

That's not a promise; it's an invitation. If you experiment you may find some kinds of transactions end up being more profitable than you're otherwise able to achieve. Will online debit Bluebird and Serve loads earn 1% cash back? Almost certainly. Will Evolve Money bill payments earn 1% cash back? Probably. Will Square Cash transfers earn 1% cash back? Maybe.

Free online debit card services are increasingly popular because of the low, fixed processing fees now-enshrined in law, while rewards-earning debit cards are increasingly rare.

Conclusion

Personal finance is one of the many areas of life that is made more profitable by the habits of mind we develop while travel hacking. Zeugma Rewards may or may not turn out to fit into your own financial life, but I think for some of my readers it's probably an opportunity worth exploring.

Has the Chase Sapphire been quietly retired?

For years, Chase has offered 3 Ultimate Rewards-earning personal (not small business) credit cards: the Chase Freedom, Chase Sapphire, and Chase Sapphire Preferred.

The Freedom is Chase's entry into the crowded field of rotating 5% cash back category cards, while the Chase Sapphire Preferred is a premium, flexible-Ultimate-Rewards earning credit card that, while paying affiliate bloggers handsome commissions, is essentially useless for the serious travel hacker due to its low earning rate and $95 annual fee which is generally not waived, even for those who spend above-average amounts on the card.

The Sapphire has meanwhile always been the odd card out: it earns 2 non-flexible Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent at restaurants but not on travel purchases, and has no annual fee. Meanwhile, for the last three years the Chase Freedom has offered 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar at restaurants during the second quarter, making the Sapphire redundant for 25% of the calendar year.

The Sapphire has vanished from Chase's website and affiliate channels

Today I mentioned on Twitter that I had been able to request a product change from Sapphire Preferred to a second Freedom, and I was asked whether it would make more sense to change to Sapphire, instead.

A quick search revealed that the Sapphire has completely disappeared from Chase.com, while Credit Karma's review page does not have an active application link for the card. CreditCards.com is hopelessly annoying to navigate but I couldn't find an application link there, either.

Do yourself and Chase a favor: product change to Freedom

It appears that Chase is now more deliberately juxtaposing the no-annual-fee Freedom card with the premium, $95-annual-fee Sapphire Preferred. I think this actually does a huge service to their customers, who might have previously confused the Sapphire with a card worth carrying, which it is not and has never been.

If you happen to be a current Chase Sapphire cardholder, this is as good an occasion as any to call in and request a product change to the Freedom, since you'll get your new card in time to take advantage of 2015's first quarter bonus category of grocery stores (excluding Walmart and Target stores).

Do this now: IHG Rewards Set Your Sights promotion

IHG Rewards has announced and opened registration for their upcoming promotion, called "Set Your Sights." Between January 1 and April 30, 2015, members can earn at least 50,000 IHG Rewards points for completing a series of tasks, which will vary depending on their history with the program. The rule seems to be that the more loyal you are to IHG Rewards, the more difficult your assigned tasks will be. Seems like a screwy approach to rewarding loyalty, but what do I know?

My Offer

I received what appears to be the baseline offer, which also happens to be almost identical to the offer I was targeted with for the current "Into the Nights" promotion. Here's my offer:

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If I complete all five of my tasks, I'll earn an additional 25,000 points, for a total haul of 50,500 IHG Rewards points.

I was able to complete my tasks for "Into the Nights" by booking 2 stays and 3 nights, and I should be able to do the same during this promotion, as long as both stays are at Holiday Inn properties. The principle difference between this offer and my Into the Nights offer is that I had to book 2 Saturday nights to complete the "Weekender" task, while under this promotion I need a single weekend stay — though it has to be two or more nights. 

Is it worth it?

To fulfill my tasks for Into the Nights, I spent a total of $643, earning 10,500 IHG Rewards points and 2 free night certificates, worth up to 100,000 total additional points (if both are redeemed at Category 9 properties), paying roughly 0.58 cents per point (plus 4 nights of needed accommodation).

For the current Set Your Sights promotion, I could book two weekend nights of an upcoming trip to New Orleans at the "French Quarter-Chateau Lemoyne," which apparently is a Holiday Inn, for $483 and an additional night at another Holiday Inn sometime during the promotional period. Assuming that extra night cost $150, I'd be paying 1.25 cents per point — over twice as much as I paid for Into the Nights!

At that price I'll probably stay on the sidelines for this one, unless additional trips come up that offer cheaper Holiday Inn stays or an unforeseen redemption opportunity makes that higher cost per point worth paying.

Guest post: Funding bank accounts with credit cards

[Editor's note: this post was a guest submission by Will from Doctor of Credit. Will previously wrote for the site on the subject of depositing money orders remotely using smartphone apps, which I found to be an immensely helpful resource. I often mention Will as a great resource on his own website and perpetually helpful on Twitter @Drofcredit.]

Introduction: funding bank accounts with credit cards

You can view my favorite bank bonuses here, or a full listing of current bank bonuses here. Awhile ago I posted another guest post on Chasing the Points, with a list of bank accounts that could be funded with a credit card and also included whether opening a bank account with that bank account resulted in a hard pull and if that bank was offering a bonus at the time. That post is now a bit outdated, so I decided it was time to freshen it up. You can view it below, but first a few warnings:

• Before doing this, make sure you set your cash advance limit to $0. A lot of card issuers will try to charge cash advance fees when funding a bank account, by setting your cash advance limit to $0 you'll avoid this risk. Don't even bother trying to use a Citi card as they almost always code as a cash advance.
• You're better off focusing on the bank bonus, rather than the credit card funding aspect. Bank bonuses can be extremely lucrative and earn you an easy $200 per bonus, if you were using a 2% cash back card you'd need to find one that allows $10,000 in credit card funding to get $200 in cash back.

Last time I posted this I was criticized, but if you look back you'll see that almost none of these banks have changed how much can be funded with a credit card. This is because this is a relatively cheap way of acquiring customers for a bank and it's a cost they are well aware of and willing to pay for. Assuming a bank pays 3% in credit card processing fees (which is extremely high) allowing funding of $2,000 would only cost them $60 which is significantly lower than bank bonuses that they offer consumers on a regular basis. We've purposefully left out banks that allow funding for a large amount, as in the past this had lead to abuse.

Understanding the list

Use the following key to understand each bank's entry:

• ^ next to the bank's name indicates this bank is currently offering a bonus for opening an account
• * next to the bank's name indicates this bank does a hard credit pull to open an account

You can click the links to be taken directly to the page specifying the bonus that bank is offering, for banks not offering a bonus it'll take you to the home page.

Nationwide Banks

• BMO Harris^ up to $1,000
• Chase^ up to $500, Chase credit cards not eligible
• Chartway Federal Credit Union up to $1,500
• First Niagara bank up to $1,000, Visa or Mastercard only
• Lake Michigan Credit Union* up to $5,000. No bonus, but they do offer a 3% reward checking account
• Oceanside Christopher Catholic Union up to $100
• PNC^ up to $2,000, Visa or MasterCard only
• Santander^ up to $500
• SunTrust^ up to $1,000. Be wary, lots of cash advance and funds being put on hold reports
• Wells Fargo up to $500
• U.S Bank up to $500

State Specific Banks

• America's Credit Union^ up to $10,000 (not actually state specific, but extremely limited membership)
• Arizona State Credit Union [AZ only]
• BB&T [AL, DC, FL, GA, IN, KY, MD, NC, SC, TN, TX, VA, WV Only]
• BBVA Compass up to $300 [AL, AZ, CA, CO, FL, NM & TX]
• Bank of Maine^ [ME, MA & NH] up to $500
• Citizens Bank [Enter zip to find out] up to $1,000
• First Citizens* [AZ, CA, CO, DC, FL, GA, KS, MD, MS, NM, NC, OK, OR, SC, TN, TX, VA, VA, WA, WV] bank up to $1,000
• First Mark^ [TX only], possibly up to $10,000 and place two week hold on transactions above $100. Only accept Visa & Mastercard
• GTE Federal* [FL only] up to $5,000 per account. Also possible to open six month CDs
• KeyBank^ [AK, CO, ID, IN, ME, MI, NY, OH, OR, UT, VT, or WA] up to $100
• NorthWest Savings Bank^  [PA, NY, MD, OH] up to $100
• Regions Bank [AL, AR, FL, GA, IL, IN, IA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, & TX] only up to $1,000 for both the checking and savings account

Conclusion

For more like this, don't forget to visit Will at Doctor of Credit and follow him on Twitter.

Easy and free ways to liquidate prepaid gift cards from Office Max

By now many of my readers will have seen information about the current Office Max promotion, running through December 27, 2014, for $20 off $300 or more in Visa or MasterCard gift cards purchased in-store.

Since $200 Visa and MasterCard gift cards come with a $6.95 activation fee, buying two will net you $6.10 in value even before accounting for any credit card rewards earned on the purchase, while buying one $200 and one $100 gift card would net you $7.10, again before accounting for credit card rewards.

While it's possible to simply integrate these cards into your existing workflow of manufactured spending, this deal is so good I think folks who, for reasons of geography, time, or inclination, don't typically manufacture spend with prepaid debit cards should still consider going for it.

For their sake, here are several ways to capture the value of Office Max gift cards without studying up on all the ins and outs of manufactured spend.

Give them as gifts

Ok, this one's a bit of a joke, but some people actually give Visa and MasterCard gift cards as gifts! If you can get $200 in credit with your loved ones for $196.60, that's still a win!

Prepay your bills

You might be accustomed to paying your cell phone bills each month with a Chase Ink card to earn 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent. Using a Visa or MasterCard gift card bought at Office Max during this promotion captures the same 5-Ultimate-Rewards-point earning opportunity, but includes a nice discount off face value. If you're the kind of guy who frets over taxes, you can probably even get away with deducting the entire amount of your cell phone payment (though as I'm fond of saying, not only am I not an accountant, I'm definitely not your accountant!).

In addition to cell phones, there are many telecommunications companies, among others, that happily accept prepayments made with debit cards online. Check yours.

Use Evolve Money

This is a more flexible version of the above. Evolve Money accepts prepaid debit cards for bill payments to many merchants that don't themselves accept debit cards directly. You can use prepaid debit cards to make payments to your mortgage, car loan, student loans, municipal utility companies and tax authorities, and thousands of other merchants. If you use a Visa or MasterCard debit card bought at Office Max during this promotion, you'll do so at a nice discount.

As I've reported extensively elsewhere, you can even use prepaid debit cards to fund your own or your children's education through one of the many 529 College Savings plans that accept contributions through Evolve Money (I use the Utah Educational Savings Plan because of its flexibility and low-cost Vanguard mutual funds). If you decide to go this route, please read my entire series on Evolve Money.

Buy gift credit at merchants where you'll use it

While a classic example is at a merchant like Amazon.com, where you can buy gift credit in almost any denomination and have it simply wait for you to redeem it against future purchases, there are other choices you might consider: if you frequently ride Uber, buy yourself some gift credit and it will be automatically used up as you take rides.

Conclusion

Offers like this Office Max deal are as close to free money as you're likely to find without a deep dive into the world of manufactured spend. You may think it's not worth lugging around gift cards for everyday purchases, but hopefully the examples above show you that's totally unnecessary: these cards are almost as easy to liquidate as they are to buy.

Do this now: Register for Chase Freedom cash back

It's that time of the quarter, when registration opens for Chase Freedom bonus categories. In the first quarter of 2015, Chase Freedom cards will earn 5 non-flexible Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent at grocery stores excluding Walmart and Target stores, at movie theaters, and at Starbucks stores, up to $1,500 spent cumulatively across all the bonus categories.

Along with gas stations and drug stores, grocery stores are among the easiest bonus categories in which to reach $1,500 in quarterly spend. Even if you don't have local grocery stores that sell PIN-enabled prepaid debit cards, if you do any domestic travel at all next quarter you're likely to visit a city that does. Just keep your eyes open and the 7,500 Ultimate Rewards points are sure to be yours.

While Chase will retroactively credit you for purchases made before registering, that's no excuse for delay: register now, before you forget.

IHG Rewards Into the Chaos: Points or Nights?

As you know, IHG Rewards' 4th quarter promotion is called Into the Nights, and gives you the option of earning up to 50,000 bonus points or 2 free nights at any IHG property, or a combination of points and nights.

As you may or may not know, depending on how many promotional thresholds you've met so far, the implementation of the promotion has been a fiasco, which has earned it the affectionate moniker "Into the Chaos." For months, stays weren't tracking or posting properly, and it was unclear how long it would take for IHG Rewards to resolve the situation.

I met the last of my promotional thresholds back on November 23, and recently noticed that my bonus points for each threshold finally posted on December 9:

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I met my first threshold (booking through the IHG app) on November 2, and those points posted on November 17, which gives roughly the same delay (15-16 days).

You've earned them: Nights or Points?

The above points were automatically earned for meeting each threshold. Now I have to decide whether to select nights or points as my reward for meeting all 5 of my challenges:

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I've been turning the problem over in my mind for a few days, because it has a number of angles worth considering.

• First, IHG has their periodic PointsBreaks List, which allows you to book rooms at any of the properties on the list during the current PointsBreaks period (currently November 2014 to February 2015) for just 5,000 IHG Rewards points. These stays are extremely popular, and if you plan on using your IHG Rewards points for a PointsBreaks stay, you should obviously select points as your Into the Nights rewards: 25,000 points translates into a 5-night PointsBreaks stay!
• Second, a mere look at IHG's hotel categories suggests that, on the contrary, free nights are the obvious choice. Just 3 of IHG's categories cost less than 25,000 points, so for stays at Category 4 and higher properties you'll want to redeem free nights, instead.
• Ultimately, the right choice will depend on your actual travel plans. I have two trips planned in the first half of 2015, to Austin and New Orleans, and the downtown IHG properties where I would consider staying in those cities are all Category 4 or higher. I don't know whether I'll end up staying at IHG properties on those trips, but those are the most likely candidates and would require free night certificates, not points.

Conclusion

As my readers know, the least valuable reward is always the one you don't redeem. That goes double for IHG's Into the Nights free night certificates, which must be redeemed by December 31, 2015. If you can't commit to redeeming your free night certificates at properties Category 4 or higher in 2015, or you plan on redeeming points for PointsBreaks stays, you may well be best off selecting points. But if you have a general idea of your 2015 travel plans, check the cities you plan to visit and see if you won't be better off redeeming free night certificates, instead.

Cash back at Amazon.com

First of all, check out my spiffy new disclosure policy which should now be found at the top of each blog post when you visit my website. It reads:

"Disclosure: to the best of my knowledge, I receive no third-party affiliate revenue for any of the content on this site. I do occasionally include my own personal referral links for products and services, many of which you can find on my Support the Site! page. I am also theoretically paid for clicks through the Google Adsense ad found in the righthand sidebar (theoretically since I haven't actually hit a payment threshold yet) and for purchases made through my Amazon Associates referral link."

I don't know if there's anything else anyone has any questions about, but obviously it's a work in progress so do let me know if there's any ambiguity or anything like that.

HawaiianMiles for shopping at Amazon.com

All the way back in the day, Hawaiian Airlines was the only shopping portal that awarded miles for shopping at Amazon.com through their HawaiianMiles shopping portal (the "online eMarket"). I earned a whole 982 HawaiianMiles which, I noticed while researching this post, expired back in July:

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This is obviously fairly embarrassing, since I could have redeemed them for something exciting like a subscription to All You magazine.

After HawaiianMiles cut Amazon.com from their shopping portal, I pretty much gave up on cash back while shopping there, and focused other ways to maximize my purchases, like rotating credit card categories with Chase Freedom or Discover it, or the "bookstore" 5% bonus category with the US Bank Cash+ card.

It's worth using cashback portals to shop at Amazon.com

For some reason I was recently clicking around TopCashBack and discovered that the "limited" departments TopCashBack pays out on are actually the very categories I do most of my Amazon.com shopping in!

TopCashBack pays 8% cash back for purchases in the following departments:

• Home & Kitchen;
• Women's Fashion;
• Men's Fashion;
• Kid's & Baby Fashion.

That's an incredibly generous range, and includes virtually everything I buy from Amazon.com. If you're combining it with a card that pays 5% cash back (or gift cards purchases at a bonused merchant), you'll increase your savings even more.

Conclusion

My Amazon Associates referral link pays me much less than 8% for purchases made by my readers, so if you're shopping in one of the 8% cash back categories you have my blessing to collect portal cash back instead!

Quick hit: Orbitz $100 off $100+ promo is back (2 nights required)

Via Miles To Memories, run, don't walk over to Orbitz.com and start booking pairs of nights for $100 off using promo code "VISACHECKOUT" and paying through, you guessed it, Visa Checkout.

Your total stay cost must exceed $100 before the discount is applied, your stay must be two or more nights, and not all properties are eligible. According to Miles To Memories, the code is good for travel between December 10 and June 30, 2015.

If you don't have an Orbitz Rewards account yet, feel free to sign up using my referral link. If you do, we'll each earn $25 in Orbucks. And don't forget to click through a shopping portal for additional cash back: TopCashBack is currently paying 7% on Orbitz reservations, although only 2% on reservations made with a coupon code.

Update: selling Marriott gift cards to Cardpool

Last month I wrote about a nice opportunity to score Marriott stays on the cheap or make a quick buck buying Marriott gift cards for 25% off and then reselling them at 92% of their face value.

First the good news: as expected, Marriott gift card purchases of $200 or more made at Marriott properties (not their multitude of other brands) counted towards the American Express Sync offer, and I received $50 statement credits on all my cards within a day or two.

However, you may remember that my plan was to resell those gift cards, since I so rarely pay for hotel stays that it would take me years to spend $800 at Marriott properties. Consequently, last week I went to sell a single Marriott gift card to Cardpool, and immediately ran into a problem: when submitting a card's details, Cardpool requires a 15-digit gift card number. But the cards I bought have 20-digit gift card number, plus 4-digit PIN's! Fearing the worst, I wrote to Cardpool asking if they only purchased 15-digit gift cards, and whether there was a workaround.

There was. This afternoon, Cardpool wrote me back, explaining:

"Simple [sic] enter the 15 digits for the gift card number and input the remaining number + the PIN number as PIN number or CID."

So there you have it: if you're reselling a 20-digit Marriott gift card to Card Pool, enter the first 15 exposed digits as the card number, and the remaining digits plus the PIN in the second required field.

Oh, and if you're reselling to Cardpool, be sure to click through TopCashBack in order to earn an additional 4% of the card's face value in cash back.