Do this now: activate Chase Freedom and Citi Dividend 4th quarter bonus categories

Registration is now open for the Chase Freedom 4th quarter bonus categories. It's also supposed to be open for the Citi Dividend, but as of this writing I have not yet been able to activate my bonus cash back on that card.

Chase Freedom

Registration is now open for the Chase Freedom 4th quarter, 2015, bonus categories of "amazon.com, Zappos.com, audible.com and diapers.com." I think these are pretty weak bonus categories, depending on how much you plan to spend at Amazon.com. Personally, I don't spend enough money at Amazon to justify stocking up on gift credit, and in any case I can earn 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar year-round by buying Amazon.com gift cards at office supply stores with my Chase Ink Plus.

In any case, register each one of your Chase Freedom cards now, before you forget.

Citi Dividend

Registration is supposed to be open for the Citi Dividend 4th quarter, 2015, bonus categories of "Best Buy and department stores." The most straightforward play here is to buy $6,000 in $200 Visa gift cards from Sears to earn $300 in cash back, minus $201.55 in activation fees, for a profit of about $92.45, but that's not a very good deal since liquidating 29 $200 Visa gift cards is both annoying and uses up liquidation bandwidth that could be more profitably deployed elsewhere.

Alternatively, you could click through a portal like TopCashBack and earn another 1.25% cash back or the American AAdvantage shopping portal for 1 additional AAdvantage mile per dollar spent online at Best Buy.

Hopefully registration will actually be open by the time you read this!