One weird old trick to get American Express business gift card orders approved

Until today, I had never had an American Express business gift card order approved. In the good old days, this wasn't a big deal: business and consumer gift cards both typically paid out at the same high rates, and I didn't (and still don't) have enough credit lines worth manufacturing spend on outside of bonus categories to justify buying more than $20,000 in American Express gift cards per month (the limit on consumer gift card orders).

Since cash back payouts on American Express gift cards dropped from the 4% that used to be typical to the roughly 1.5% they seem stuck at these days, my inability to get business gift card orders approved started to rankle, since payouts on business, but not consumer, gift cards would occasionally be increased 50% to 2.25%, where they sit today on TopCashBack. But even though I have an IRS-issued EIN, and an American Express small business credit card issued under it, my streak of failures continued unbroken.

Declined gift card orders wouldn't have bothered me so much, except that each failed order would tie up valuable credit lines for 7-10 days, effectively shutting down my manufactured spend on some of my most lucrative credit cards for weeks at a time.

Use your last name and Social Security number to get business gift card orders approved

A few weeks back I read in the comments on Frequent Miler's blog that he had success being approved for business gift cards using his last name and Social Security number, rather than the name of his business and EIN.

With payouts on business gift cards up to 2.25% again today, and having just freed up a fair-sized chunk of credit on my Barclaycard Arrival+ MasterCard, I decided I had nothing to lose, and placed an order for two $2000 business gift cards, using my last name and Social Security number. Then I went about my day.

Less than 3 hours later, American Express notified me that my order had been approved — my very first business gift card approval ever.

Why I won't chase Hyatt Diamond status

[Update 6/22/15 8:17 pm: This post originally said the Hyatt Diamond status challenge requires 12 qualifying stays. It requires 12 qualifying nights.]

The travel hacking blogosphere seems to be in a tizzy lately over the return earlier this month of the Hyatt Diamond status challenge. The challenge awards Diamond elite status after 12 qualifying (i.e. not award) nights within 60 days, and the status is good through February of 2017 — a pretty long time!

People who like Hyatt Diamond status seem to value it most for the 4 confirmed suite upgrades and lounge access (or full breakfast at properties without a lounge).

Let me start by saying that no one doubts that it's possible to design a vacation schedule for the next 20 months that maximizes the value of those benefits and makes it well worth arranging to credit 12 paid stays to Hyatt in 60 days in order to earn them.

But personally, I won't be participating. Here's why.

Hyatt is a terrific transfer partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards

Hyatt is almost the only Ultimate Rewards transfer partner I take advantage of, since I don't fly United or Southwest. I transfer points to Amtrak once or twice a year for long-haul sleeper-car redemptions, but that's a rounding error with respect to my earning rate. On the other hand, where Hyatt properties are available, they frequently have extremely affordable points redemptions, like the Hyatt Place New York/Midtown-South, which costs 20,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points per night.

Since Hilton properties in New York start at 60,000 HHonors points (a $222 imputed redemption value) and Club Carlson's Radisson Martinique on Broadway costs 70,000 Gold Points (a $310 imputed redemption value), paying $200 in Ultimate Rewards points offers a relatively good value.

Hyatt has a small footprint — but that's not the problem

It's frequently noted that Hyatt has vastly fewer properties than Hilton or Marriott: just 587 hotels. But I don't actually treat this as much of a drawback. Since I only transfer points to Hyatt when I plan on making a reservation, it's not like I have an ever-growing supply of Hyatt Gold Passport points that I can never redeem. When there's a Hyatt property that's a good value, I stay there, and when there isn't, I stay at a Hilton HHonors (or, until recently, Club Carlson) property instead.

Furthermore, as I pointed out above, you can just plan a vacation around one or more Hyatt stays! Sure, people will look at you strangely when you explain that you're visiting Ekaterinburg in order to stay at the Hyatt Regency, but if we cared what people thought of our hobby we wouldn't talk about it all the time.

The problem is that Hyatt's footprint is a subset of Hilton's

Some light Googling allowed me to compile a list of some of the Hyatt properties travel hackers (and affiliate bloggers promoting the overrated Chase Hyatt Visa card) believe are the best Hyatt properties in the world. My value-added here is adding the closest equivalent Hilton property and points required:

• Park Hyatt Beaver Creek (no close equivalent);
• Park Hyatt New York (New York Hilton Midtown, 60,000-80,000);
• Park Hyatt Sydney (Hilton Sydney Hotel, 60,000-70,000);
• Park Hyatt Tokyo (Hilton Tokyo, 50,000-60,000);
• Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa (Conrad Maldives Rangali Island, 95,000);
• Park Hyatt Paris (Concorde Opéra Paris, 80,000)
• Park Hyatt Milan (Hilton Milan Hotel, 50,000-70,000)
• Park Hyatt Zurich (no close equivalent)
• Grand Hyatt Kauai Resort and Spa (no close equivalent)
• Hyatt Regency Hakone Resort and Spa (Hilton Odawara Resort & Spa, 70,000-95,000)
• Ararat Park Hyatt Moscow (Hilton Moscow Leningradskaya, 40,000-60,000)

As you can see, with a few exceptions luxury hotels get built because there's a demand for them. And if there's enough demand for a luxury Hyatt property, there's likely to be sufficient demand to justify building a nearby Hilton hotel, as well.

Earning Hilton HHonors points (and Diamond status) is easy and fun

The point of this exercise is that unless you are planning a trip to Beaver Creek, Zurich, or Kauai — and tens of thousands of people do indeed visit those cities each year — the Hyatt property is not your only option: there's also a convenient nearby Hilton that will be happy to serve your award redemption needs.

But unlike Hyatt Diamond status, which requires paying at least some surcharge on top of the stays you'd otherwise book, Hilton Diamond status can be earned strictly as a by-product of manufacturing $40,000 in spend on their co-branded Surpass card offered by American Express, and I find it worth my while to manufacture that much (and indeed, more) spend with the Surpass card each year purely for the value of the HHonors points I earn. Diamond status is a nice bonus, but doesn't have any effect on my decision-making.

How to think about directing paid stays to Hyatt

I don't draw a neat distinction between paid and award stays; my imputed redemption value calculations are designed to make booking stays a seamless process of comparing hotel options, whether a given stay is paid for with cash or with points earned at the sacrifice of cash back.

In other words, if you have a Barclaycard Arrival+ MasterCard, every stay is an award stay: the only question is whether to pay for it with a hotel chain's own currency or Arrival+ miles.

This means that when you book a paid stay in order to secure Hyatt Diamond status under the challenge, you don't need to consider the entire cost of your paid stay as "payment" for Diamond status. The only payment you're making for (one twelfth of) Diamond status is the difference between the price you pay to stay with Hyatt and the price of the hotel you would have stayed at instead – the "surcharge" I mentioned above.

Who should take the Hyatt Diamond challenge?

So that's where I stand: I earn enough Hilton HHonors points to cover my mid-range and luxury hotel needs, and redeem my Ultimate Rewards points only for the Hyatt stays they make incredibly cheap, where breakfast is often included anyway.

But you're not me! So here's who should at least consider taking the Hyatt Diamond challenge:

• You have 12 paid Hyatt stays in the next 60 days. This may go without saying, but that's what I'm here for.
• You're planning a luxury vacation. At the very top end, Hyatt award stays are actually cheaper than the imputed redemption value of Hilton stays: $300 in Ultimate Rewards points versus $352 in Hilton HHonors points. If you're deciding between such properties (for example, in the Maldives or in Hakone, above) Hyatt Diamond status can add additional value by giving up to 4 people per room the benefit of lounge access or a full breakfast.
• You really need a suite. If there's some reason you actually need a suite upgrade on a paid stay, and especially if you actually need 4, week-long suite upgrades, then paying a small upfront surcharge for Hyatt Diamond status can get you those suites at a vast discount. I've enjoyed every suite I've been upgraded to, but personally wouldn't assign any actual value to it. If you're traveling with a family, or need to host meetings in your hotel room, then you may assign a concrete dollar value to having a guaranteed-at-booking suite upgrade.

I want to stress that the second two categories are, while not mutually exclusive, also not complementary in any way: the suite upgrades in the third category cannot be applied to the award bookings in the second category, and at such expensive properties the idea of booking a paid, instead of award, stay merely to secure a suite upgrade is not rational behavior.

I don't fall into any of the above categories. But if one or more of them applies to you, you have my blessing to consider taking advantage of the Hyatt Diamond status challenge!

Galveston, TX, is a weird place to take a vacation

Last weekend my partner and I took a 3-night vacation to Galveston, Texas, to visit some friends of hers who decided, for reasons I cannot begin to fathom, to spend a week in Galveston.

We had fun, but I'll readily confess it was in spite of Galveston, rather than because of it. Here are some of the highlights.

Transportation to and from Galveston is an expensive disaster

Let me start by saying that if the Galveston Express shuttle has service that's convenient for you, it's an absolute no-brainer to take it in either or both directions. It costs $20 per person for transportation to or from Galveston and Houston's Hobby airport ($35 roundtrip) and $25 per person to or from George Bush Intercontinental ($45 roundtrip).

Unfortunately, the Galveston Express is designed to serve the cruise industry which operates a massive port in Galveston, so it only runs on days the ships are loading and unloading passengers. If you're not, in fact, arriving or departing Galveston on a cruise ship, it's just luck of the draw whether the shuttle will be operating. Check in advance using their straightforward online booking engine.

With that said, if you're traveling with several people, Uber is a fantastic choice for getting to Galveston. We paid $36.48 to get from George Bush Intercontinental to downtown Houston to meet up with my partner's friends, then $66.05 to get all the way to Galveston, with a stop for gas along the way. In other words, if we'd all arrived in Houston at the same time we could have ridden all the way to Galveston for well under $25 per person (and you can buy Uber credit in redeemable chunks).

Getting back from Galveston isn't so simple. Uber isn't allowed to depart from Galveston, and taxi rides to the Houston airports will cost multiple hundreds of dollars. If you can't take the Galveston Express shuttle, the next best option is Amtrak thruway bus cabotage, using Henry's trick in the comments to pay as little as $25 per person. But that only works if you're departing on a day the Amtrak thruway bus operates.

Finally, all the Galveston beach hotels offer airport shuttle services, at a range of prices. The Country Inn & Suites shuttle was the cheapest we found, at $135 for two people. Since we were staying there anyway, that's the route we ultimately took.

An honorary mention goes to simply renting a car. The only "sights" worth seeing in Galveston are quite far from the beach hotels, so if you're not a big walker you may find it convenient to have a vehicle, plus you can stash gear there while you're on the beach, an extremely popular choice among locals and visitors alike.

Drinking in Galveston is fun and legal

Since we were hanging out with Russians, it was imperative to find out when and where they could drink as quickly as possible. Turns out, the answer is Galveston is "virtually everywhere."

The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission hosts a delightful webpage regarding the public consumption of alcohol. I'm not a lawyer (and I'm definitely not your lawyer), but as far as I can tell it's legal to drink everywhere in Galveston, including on the public beaches, with the exception of Galveston Island State Park.

The Galveston boardwalk is a commercial dead zone

Between the Country Inn & Suites where we stayed and the Red Roof Inn where our friends stayed are 2.3 miles of beach, and virtually nothing else.

The one exception is a Kroger store across the street from the Red Roof Inn; we did a lot of shopping there over the course of our trip.

At the Country Inn & Suites front desk there's an adorable cartoon map showing all the businesses along the beachfront. But as I joked, and the front desk employee agreed, in between all the adorable, oversized cartoon bubbles is, in reality, miles of empty, sun-baked sidewalk.

"Downtown Galveston" shows some promise

On our second day, we decided to strike out towards "downtown Galveston." This is an area that's difficult to describe because it's identical in every way to every other part of Galveston we explored. But it showed some signs of life.

Geographically, it's something like the area North of Avenue J and East of 25th Street. We ended up having lunch at a cafe called Board Game Island, which was absolutely delightful. The new owner explained that their pizza was so good Trip Advisor sent them a sticker to put in the window. It was certainly the best meal we had in Galveston.

But downtown Galveston is a long way from the beach.

What Galveston needs is a lot of ambitious Yankees

I don't believe I've ever visited a place with so many obvious commercial opportunities that are, by law or custom, not being taken advantage of. And the reason for that, I presume, is that I haven't spent much time in the South.

There's nothing to eat in Galveston. There's nothing to do in Galveston. The people of Galveston are clearly desperate for opportunities. This is a situation that in a multiplicity of northern cities has resulted in food trucks, bowling alleys, farmer's markets, yoga studios, bike taxis, etc.

But in Galveston, there's nothing. Nothing but poverty and beaches. This is a solvable problem. But it's not being solved by the current residents of Galveston. So if you're an ambitious Yankee with a love of the ocean and a high tolerance for Southern bureaucracy, Galveston is as good a place as any to make your first fortune.

Chase Sapphire Preferred is terrible, get Slate instead

I'm going to do my readers a favor and assume that by the time they've graduated to blogs like mine from the training-wheels affiliate bloggers, they're perfectly aware of my objections to the Chase Sapphire Preferred, so I won't relitigate that case today. Suffice it to say, the only person who should even entertain the notion of paying a $95 annual fee for the card is a business traveler who's reimbursed for their travel expenses and is allowed to pay for their own hotels and meals while on the road. Even then, I'd be skeptical.

But whenever I rail against the Sapphire Preferred, someone inevitably comes back with their supposed trump card: "Sure," they say, "you'd have to be crazy to keep the Sapphire Preferred, but a 40,000 Ultimate Rewards-point signup bonus makes it worth applying whenever you're eligible for a new bonus."

That's wrong too. Here's why.

Both Sapphire Preferred and Slate can be product-changed to Freedom

While Sapphire Preferred is an Ultimate Rewards-earning card and Slate isn't, both products are "own brand" Chase credit cards, and cardholders can call in to request a product change to the best no-annual-fee Ultimate Rewards-earning credit card: Chase Freedom.

That means the end game is the same with both cards: a product change to Freedom. The only comparison worth making is the advantages of signing up for each card in the first place. So which card offers bigger rewards for signing up?

What are 40,000 more Ultimate Rewards points worth to you?

A lot of bloggers will try to tell you what 40,000 Ultimate Rewards points are worth. A night at the Park Hyatt Vendôme costs 672 Euro, so 40,000 Ultimate Rewards points must be worth $810!

But I don't really care what 40,000 Ultimate Rewards points are worth in the abstract. I care what 40,000 more Ultimate Rewards points are worth.

And the answer is that if you're not going to redeem them, they're worth $400.

Now, maybe you are going to redeem them. Maybe you keep your Ultimate Rewards balance as low as possible by continually redeeming them for premium cabin international trips and luxury hotels. But even if so, don't value 40,000 more Ultimate Rewards points at the highest value you get from the program; value them at the average value you get across all your travel redemptions.

What is a $30,000 negative-interest-rate loan worth to you?

I wouldn't have thought it was possible, but last week I understated the value of the Chase Slate introductory balance transfer offer of no balance transfer fee for transfers within the first 60 days, and a 0% interest rate on balance transfer for 15 months.

I wrote, "for the first 60 days of a Slate account membership, you can transfer up to $15,000 in balances with no balance transfer fee."

But that's not exactly right. You can transfer up to $15,000 from non-Chase-issued credit cards in the process of opening a new account, but that actually has nothing to do with the $0 balance transfer fee and 0% balance transfer APR: it's a restriction Chase places on all balance transfers.

In fact, Chase's rule is that only $15,000 can be transferred in each rolling 30-day period. Since the $0 balance transfer fee lasts for the first 60 days of card membership, you're actually able to transfer up to $30,000 under the no-fee, 0% APR offer.

Of course, that would require having a sufficiently high credit limit, but Chase does allow you to transfer available credit from other credit cards, so you can always scrounge up as large a credit line as possible from your worthless Marriott, British Airways, Hyatt, and Southwest credit cards, for example.

Before I dig any deeper, let's be clear on the math here: your $30,000, 15-month loan has a negative interest rate because you've transferred the balance from other, rewards-earning credit cards. Using conservative assumptions of a 2% cash back credit card with 1% in purchase and liquidation fees, your $30,000 loan is worth a minimum of $300 — before you even get around to using the money!

So, how should you use the money?

Money is fun. Lots of money is even more fun

So now you've got $30,000 in cash lying around, and you only need to make minimum payments on your new Slate card for 15 months. What do you do with the cash?

• Max out high-interest savings accounts. Maybe you're like me and you drip a steady amount into your high-interest savings accounts each month. That's no longer necessary: max them out and reap 5% or higher APY on your savings.
• Pay down your mortgage. While your home is hopefully financed at an extremely low interest rate, you may still be paying private mortgage insurance if you haven't yet built up enough equity. By bringing your equity up to 20% of your home's value, you may be able to save hundreds of dollars a month in mortgage insurance payments (I'm not your banker or insurance agent; check with them first).
• Pay down your student loans. I have a small Perkins student loan that's accruing interest at a rate of 5.6% APR. I'm going to pay it off, saving a few hundred dollars in interest payments over the life of the loan.
• Make retirement contributions. If you qualify for the retirement savings contribution credit, up to 50% of your contributions to qualifying retirement plans can be rebated when you file your taxes. I recently wrote a walkthrough of the retirement savings contribution credit over at the Saverocity Forum; there's a lot more information available there.
• Invest it. Of course traditional investment vehicles aren't paying much at the moment, but we're travel hackers: there are alternatives. You can fund Kiva loans with a 5%- or up-to-6%-earning credit card. If you belong to a bank or credit union that allows it, you can fund certificates of deposit with a rewards-earning credit card. A 6-month CD funded with a 2.22% cash back credit card suddenly adds 4.44% to your annualized return. 3-month CD's will double that again.
• Buy something. Of course this isn't strictly speaking a way of maximizing the yield on your loan, but if the alternative is to finance a car or appliance at a high interest rate, being able to make the purchase with cash may save you hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Conclusion

The options I listed above are just the first few that sprang to mind; you no doubt have your own ideas about what you'd do with a $30,000 negative-interest-rate loan. So do the math, and in almost all cases I suspect you'll find the loan is more valuable than the additional Ultimate Rewards points.

After all, Ultimate Rewards points are easy to earn — a lot easier than finding negative-interest-rate loans!

Personal finance digression: some high-interest savings accounts may not be long for this world

I've long been a shameless advocate of high-interest savings accounts. By replacing low-yield bonds at a one-to-one ratio in your portfolio with FDIC-insured savings accounts yielding 5%-6% APR, you can replicate or exceed the returns of those bonds in your portfolio while reducing your exposure to volatility in the bond market. That's just about as close to a free lunch as you can get in this world.

Mango appears to no longer be available to new customers

One of my favorite high-interest savings accounts is the one linked to Mango prepaid debit cards. Mango savings accounts pay 6% APY on up to $5,000 in deposits per savings account. After that, they pay a mere 0.10% APY, but customers can have up to 3 Mango savings accounts, with a distinct $5,000 limit on each.

To save my readers a headache, this works out to $24.84 in interest per month on a "maxed out" $5,000 savings account balance, less a $3 monthly fee, for a net APR of roughly 5.24%.

Via Saverocity Forum user and friend of the blog ed1chandler, I learned this morning that Mango has, at least for now, closed their site from registering new accounts. This change has not affected currently existing accounts, and indeed we can hope it's a temporary change, but in the meantime this cuts off one of the best high-interest savings account opportunities that has been widely available in the US.

Mango's parent company also administers the Union Plus prepaid card

Mango is the own-brand product of Rêv North America, which is supposedly a white-label prepaid card company. I say "supposedly" because I have no reason to believe the company actually exists. Look at their website and decide for yourself.

However, in addition to the Mango prepaid card and linked savings account, Rêv North America administers an almost identical product called the Union Plus prepaid card, which also has a linked high-interest savings account. The savings account pays just 5.1% APY on up to $5,000, but the prepaid card's $2 monthly fee is waived in months where you load over $500 to the card, making the two products much closer to a wash.

Most importantly, the Union Plus prepaid card appears to still be available for new applicants.

The Union Plus application is finicky

The first time I submitted a Union Plus prepaid application yesterday, the site returned an error. After refreshing the page, my application was submitted successfully and I was able to immediately access my new Union Plus prepaid account.

So if at first you don't succeed, I'd suggest clearing your browser cookies, using a different browser, and rinsing and repeating until your application is successfully submitted and you have access to your new account.

Consumers Credit Union offers yet another option

Based in Illinois, Consumers Credit Union offers up to 5.09% APY on up to $20,000 in balances in their rewards checking account, although it's necessary to meet a variety of hurdles each month. Still, for those of us with the resources to meet those hurdles, it offers an extremely competitive interest rate on a much higher maximum balance than either Mango or Union Plus.

Conclusion

High-interest savings accounts offer the best of all worlds: easy access to your money through ACH pulls and interest rates that exceed those of "safe" assets like US Treasury bonds. I consider them an indispensable part of a well-balanced portfolio, and hope they'll be here to stay.

But this week's developments are not an especially promising sign.

Amtrak thruway bus cabotage

I just got back from a long weekend in Galveston, Texas, which had a surprising effect on me. I don't enjoy reading, let alone writing, trip reports, but I had enough interesting impressions while there that I plan to write up a few key lessons I learned during the trip. So look forward to more Galveston-related content soon; in the meantime, here's a quick tip on Amtrak thruway bus cabotage.

Amtrak is prohibited from providing intercity bus transportation

Cabotage, strictly speaking, is the act of carrying goods or passengers by a carrier registered in one country between two points in another country, and is prohibited except at the discretion of the second country.

But a similar principle is at work in the delivery of passenger bus and rail transportation in the United States. In my primitive understanding, Amtrak, the American passenger rail service, is allowed to provide bus transportation from cities that are not served by passenger rail to its passenger rail stations, but only on the condition that passengers have an onward passenger rail connection.

This is basically a shameless sop to passenger bus companies, who don't want to compete against a loss-making quasi-governmental train company. Interestingly, most of these so-called "thruway" bus routes are in fact operated by private passenger bus companies, from whom Amtrak contracts to provide transportation to their passenger rail stations. 

Amtrak tickets are quite cheap (and they have a rewards program)

While considering our various options to travel back from Galveston to Houston (I'll cover travel to Galveston in a future post), I stumbled across the interesting fact that the only passenger bus service from Galveston to Houston is operated by Lone Star Coaches, as a thruway bus service connecting to Amtrak's Sunset Limited service between Louisiana and California.

Of course, Amtrak is prohibited from selling thruway bus tickets between Galveston and Houston.

But they aren't prohibited from selling tickets from Galveston to San Antonio (one stop West of Houston). And those tickets are not very expensive.

Here's a ticket from Galveston to San Antonio (available Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday):

View fullsize

That's the second-cheapest price I could find for transportation from Galveston to Houston (spoiler alert: the cheapest is Galveston Express, but they seem to operate only when the cruise ships are in port).

Conclusion

I began looking into this option as a way to save money on our return from Galveston, but the same principle operates in markets all across the country: even if you can't find passenger bus service between two points, Amtrak may run a thruway bus between them, which only requires a train ticket to the next station down the line.

A personal finance application cycle

Last night I applied for two new credit cards which have nothing to do with miles and points. It was a strictly personal finance application cycle.

Citi Double Cash

When the Citi Double Cash was first launched, I explained why I wanted to sign up for the card: with its 2% cash back earning rate and 15-month introductory 0% APR on purchases, Citi is extending a fairly long-term negative-interest-rate loan. In life, when people offer you negative-interest-rate loans, you take them (present European finance ministries notwithstanding).

Before applying, I took the advice of my Twitter followers and lowered the only substantial credit line I had with Citi, a $13,700 credit limit on my Dividend Platinum Select card, to $3,000.

My online application for the Double Cash was immediately approved with a $5,200 credit limit.

Chase Slate

The Chase Slate and Citi Double Cash cards are two great tastes that taste great together: for the first 60 days of a Slate account membership, you can transfer up to $15,000 in balances with no balance transfer fee. Those balances are then interest-free for 15 months.

What this means is that I should be able to turn my $5,200 Citi Double Cash credit limit into a $20,200, 15-month negative-interest-rate loan by repeatedly manufacturing $5,200 in spend and then requesting balance transfers (in the first 60 days) from my Citi Double Cash to my Chase Slate.

Since I have over $25,000 in combined Chase credit lines, I didn't bother adjusting them before applying, knowing that if necessary I could reallocate my credit lines in order to have my Slate application approved.

That wasn't ultimately necessary. My online application was not immediately approved, and I was given an application reference number and phone number to call (877-260-0087). When I called last night, I was told Chase's "systems were not available." But when I called back this morning, after providing some information, I was told my application was approved, with a $500 credit limit.

Once the card arrives I'll call and have $15,000 of my existing Chase Freedom credit lines reallocated to my Slate card.

Conclusion

Of course, as great as long-term negative-interest-rate loans are, what's almost as great is being able to request a product change from my Slate card to a third Chase Freedom in 16 months!

My super-boring Sam's Club Amex offer strategy

I've now finished off the last of my American Express "Offers for You" at Sam's Club, and it was nothing special: I bought a bunch of Sam's Club gift cards, which I'll use to buy cheap stuff (realistically, beer) at Walmart at a hefty discount.

This was my strategy.

Round 1: $20 Sam's Club gift card for $2

When the Offer for You first launched, risk-averse as I am I purchased a $20 Sam's Club gift card to see how they would be coded. I paid $22 (including the 10% non-member surcharge), and a few weeks later when the charge finally cleared, I received a $20 statement credit.

Unfortunately, by that time Sam's Club had implemented two changes: they started charging shipping fees on their own gift cards, and had eliminated $20 gift cards as a purchase option.

They finally relented on the first change, but $50 gift cards currently remain the lowest denomination available for purchase online.

Rounds 2 through 4: $50 Sam's Club gift cards for $15

Fortunately, thanks to Doctor of Credit I knew how to split online Sam's Club purchases between two enrolled American Express cards. So I placed 4 orders for $50 Sam's Club gift cards, putting $20 on one enrolled card and $35 on the other (including the $5 non-member penalty). I received immediate "Congrats!" confirmation e-mails for each of the four orders.

Ultimately, I'll get $200 in Walmart store credit for $60 — a 70% discount on stuff I'm going to buy anyway. My theory is that I spend a lot of time at Walmart already, and they have competitive prices on a few things I purchase regularly. This is the part of our hobby that is closer to extreme couponing than travel hacking, but the price is right.

Conclusion

In many circumstances travel hacking favors the brave: due to my risk-aversion I ended up getting a mere 70% discount on my gift cards, when I could have received a 90% discount if I'd gone all-in while $20 Sam's Club gift cards were still available.

Over the course of a career in this hobby, those differences can add up to tens of thousands of dollars, if not more. On the other hand, sometimes those big, all-in plays backfire: Frequent Miler's scheme to stock up on fruit and nut baskets springs to mind.

Ultimately, I don't have the financial resources to hit every deal as hard as possible the day it launches. So I'll just keep reporting on the slow, steady, and safe methods that make up the bulk of my miles, points, and cash back strategy.

Do this now: Discover it double cash promotion

Via Doctor of Credit, Discover is currently offering a potentially lucrative promotion: for the 12 complete billing cycles after registering, they will double all the cash back you earn with your Discover it card. The cash back will be deposited in the 13th billing cycle after registration.

There are a few nuances here: if you're an existing cardholder, you have to call to register for the promotion — registration isn't available online. However, by all accounts Discover's phone representatives are happy to register anyone who calls; my phone call took about 4 minutes, beginning to end.

Additionally, registration doesn't take effect immediately: since the promotion is based on 12 complete billing cycles, you only start earning double cash back on the first day of your next billing cycle after registration. In my case, that's June 3, but if you have a statement closing date later in the month you might not be able to maximize the rest of this quarter's "Restaurants and Movies" rotating 5% cash back category (Doctor of Credit helpfully suggests asking Discover to change your statement closing date in this case).

Doubled cash back earning — 10% cash back in bonus categories — might make a few otherwise-boring deals worth pursuing. In the third quarter of 2015, for instance, department stores are a bonus category. 5% cash back on $200 Visa gift cards from Sears is a good deal, but 10% cash back on Visa gift cards is a great deal (netting $13.75 per card). You can also do whatever it is people do with Sears gift cards.

If gas stations return in the first quarter of 2016, PIN-enabled Visa prepaid cards will be a great option, and hopefully the always-popular restaurant bonus category will return next year as well.

One thing that's unclear is whether cash back earned through Discover's lucrative shopping portal will also be doubled. I believe it likely will be, but regardless of what Discover's phone representatives say, there's no way to know for sure until 13 months from now!

PSA: If you structure transactions, the government will ruin your life. Don't do it

I've shared a couple news articles on Twitter recently about people being charged by the federal government with structuring transactions.

• In the first case, after being warned by the IRS not to continue, a businessman regularly deposited just less than $10,000 in order to "avoid some hassle for the bank tellers and everyone else involved."
• In the second case, former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert was arrested for withdrawing just less than $10,000 in order to conceal alleged criminal activity.

Structuring is about reporting requirements

It's a federal crime to structure your transactions in any way with the intent to evade reporting requirements. It's not a crime to interact with the banking system in any (legal) way you want with any other intent.

Criminals structure transactions

For reasons I cannot begin to fathom, the first case I cited is being cast by the news media as a sob story about an undereducated ("10th-grade education") business owner being the victim of federal overreach.

But as the second story makes clear, criminals structure transactions and bank reporting requirements are a key way federal authorities are made aware of potential criminal activity. When people who are not committing any other crime structure their transactions to avoid federal reporting requirements, they detract scarce federal resources from investigations into criminal wrongdoing, like former House Speakers allegedly receiving bribes and paying off blackmailers.

Do whatever you want, just don't structure transactions to evade reporting requirements

If you're worried your bank or credit union will close your account if you repeatedly deposit or withdraw more than $10,000 at once, the solution is not to break up your deposits into smaller amounts in order to evade reporting requirements. That's structuring, it's a crime, and it exposes you to criminal prosecution and civil forfeiture.

The solution is to find a better bank or credit union, one that won't mind filing the Currency Transaction Reports required for transactions exceeding $10,000.

If you think that's too much of a hassle, consider the alternative.

Conclusion

We live in a society governed by laws. As long as you don't break any of those laws, the federal government will leave you alone the overwhelming majority of the time (state and local governments pose additional problems).

Structuring transactions to avoid reporting requirements is a federal crime. If you don't do it, you won't be charged by federal authorities with doing it.