May 19, 2015

Positive Update on the 30,000 American Airlines Miles Offer for Opening a Citigold Account

I have some good news to share in regards to the 30,000 American Airlines miles promotion that Citibank offered earlier this year for opening a Citigold account. As I’ve mentioned previously, my plan was to wait until the 30,000 AA miles posted and then immediately downgrade my account to a Basic checking account to avoid any fees. In order to waive the $30 monthly fee for a Citigold account, you need to hold $50,000 in the account and that wasn’t an option for me.

The first bit of good news is my 30,000 miles have finally posted to my AA account on 5/14 (though they were backdated to 5/11 as I have been checking daily). I funded the account on 2/11 so it took a little over 3 months for the miles to post.

Since my goal was to get the miles as quickly as possible (again to avoid any fees), I completed the requirements which were $750 in debit card purchases and two months of bill pay pretty quickly. To do this, I loaded $750 to my RedBird card at Target (you can still do this with RedBird) and paid my wife’s car loan for two months. Below is my whole account activity for the 3 months the account has been open. As you can see, I did the bare minimum to meet the requirement for the bonus and I never was charged a monthly service fee. Citibank does automatically waive the fee for the first two months but I have no idea why I wasn’t charged for April.

The other good bit of news I have to share is that I was able to easily downgrade my account to a Basic checking account just days after my miles posted. In fact, I was able to do it in 7 minutes over secure chat with Citibank! I’ve copied my whole conservation (except for the 3 long statements the rep sent me) to show you just how easy it was.

My account is now a Basic account and as long as I keep $1,500 in the account, I will not be charged any monthly fees. Interestingly when I called in with a question on my Prestige card, I was still recognized as a Citigold account holder (which is expected for now per the rep’s comments). From what others have said, reps still see the account as a Citigold account even after this transition period lapses and I hope this remains the case. I’m curious to see what will happen next year when my Prestige is due for renewal as I would love the $100 discount on the annual fee again for being a Citigold account holder.

I’m very happy I took advantage of this deal as for just the tiniest bit of work I was able to score 30,000 AA miles plus another 2,000 Barclay Arrival points for funding this account with a credit card when I opened it. All of this came without any out of pocket costs so these were truly free miles. I plan on taking advantage of the 30k AA offer for my wife when she gets her next AA card (per Doctor of Credit both the 30k AA and 40k TYP offers are currently available so I could go for the 40k TYP now but I’d rather have the AA miles) and I will be much more aggressive in funding the account with a credit card (i.e more than just $1,000).

Have others seen their miles post and downgrade their account successfully?

May 16, 2015

PSA: Don’t Listen to Certain Bloggers & Signup for a Chase Bank Account with a $250 Bonus

Programming Note: These PSA posts will become a weekly post effective immediately as I have lots of little tidbits that I think are worth reminding others about so they don’t do something dumb. My past PSA posts have been pretty popular so I’ll see how the response is to a weekly post.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again – it really annoys me when big, prominent bloggers push inferior offers to their readers and do not share the best offer on a particular product because it doesn’t offer them a commission. The latest and greatest example of this is The Points Guy posting (after discussing with others I took away my link to his post but I’m sure you can find it) about earning a $250 bonus for opening a Chase checking ($150) and savings account ($100). I’m sure at face to the uneducated reader that seems like a great offer but you can do much better – in fact I can show you how to get a bonus of $300 on just the checking account alone.

So what’s the trick to getting these better offers?

1. Know the landscape of all current offers – Similar to credit cards, you want to get an idea of if a particular bonus is high or low relative to the historical bonus offered on that product. I think the best resource to follow bank bonuses is Doctor of Credit who covers bank bonuses pretty in-depth including both nationwide banks and smaller state specific banks. In this case, I see a wide range of offers topping out at $600! for both a checking and savings account at Chase. Yes, the deposit requirements might be different but its worth checking them all until you find one that works for you.

2. eBay is your friend – I’m surprised more people don’t know about this but on eBay you can buy Chase checking and savings account coupons. A quick eBay search shows several coupons available for $2-$15 dollars for offers up to $500 from Chase. Some of the most prevalent ones:

Chase Checking ($300) and Chase Savings ($200) – This requires direct deposit (checking account) and deposit of $15,000 (savings account). The checking account bonus alone is higher than The Points Guy offer even if you choose not to do the savings account offer!
Chase Checking ($200) and Chase Savings ($100) – This requires direct deposit (checking) and deposit of $10,000 (savings). Same as requirements as The Points Guy offer but $50 better to you!
Chase Checking ($200) and Chase Savings ($50) – This requires direct deposit (checking) and deposit of $5,000 (savings). Same bonus from The Points Guy offer but deposit requirement are not as high.

3. Google can also be your friend – A quick Google search for “Chase checking account bonuses” returned many hits (obviously) but one of the top ones was a link to Hustler Money Blog who is giving away $300 checking account bonus & a $200 savings account bonus to all his readers with no cost involved. There were also other sites either giving them away or giving readers instructions on how to get a higher bonus. I think the 5 minutes of Googling to pocket a possible extra $50-$350 dollars is worth it.

4. If all else fails, wait – Let’s say you checked all the resources above and either didn’t find an offer you were comfortable with or didn’t want to pay a trivial amount of money for a code off eBay. That’s fine so I would recommend to sit back and wait for a targeted offer (if you have a Chase credit card you will eventually get an offer at some point) or for the public offer to increase. Again, this is just like credit cards. If the bonus on the Chase Sapphire Preferred was cut to 20,000 points tomorrow, you would wait to apply until the bonus was 40,000 points again right? Take the same approach here with bank accounts.

Conclusion:

The Points Guy is obviously too busy playing with his Apple Watch (seriously how many posts has he had on it?!?) as this is yet another example of his inability to post about the best offers on a particular product. Would you want to do business with a financial advisor who pushes substandard investments because it paid him a fancy commission? Of course not. But that’s why I have these PSA posts to help others avoid this mistake. Sure, my readership is about 1/10000 of The Points Guy but if I helped one person get a few hundred more dollars in their pocket, then this PSA post has done its job.

May 14, 2015

150,000 Point Signup Bonus on American Express Business Platinum Card – Expires Tomorrow

Update: Dead

This deal has been around in mostly underground channels for a while now but now that it has been publicly outed on mainstream forums and blogs, I wanted to share it in case my readers could benefit. Additionally, the offer expires tomorrow so I don’t believe there is much harm in sharing this offer on my small blog at this point.
The signup bonus is for 150,000 points on the American Express Business Platinum if you spend $20,000 in 3 months. The annual fee of $450 is not waived and this offer expires tomorrow (5/15/15).This is by far the largest signup bonus ever on this card.

There is no online application for this offer – you must call American Express at 877-628-6737 and provide the offer code of L081-994-816-5743.

The obvious drawback is the $20k spend requirement in 3 months – this will deter most people. I fully expect the majority of my readers will not be able to benefit from this offer. However if you have legitimate business spending in that ballpark or can manufacture spend near this amount, I would jump on this offer right away. I picked up this card when you could call in for a 100k offer so I am not eligibile to get this card (otherwise I would). If this spend requirement is too high, the 100k offer I received I believe is still available with a $10k spend requirement. Read my post (linked above) for more details.

May 13, 2015

The Alaska Airlines Visa with $100 Statement Credit is Now Easier to Get with a Direct Link

A real quick post but I broke the news Sunday that it was once again possible to get a $100 statement credit when applying for the Bank of America Alaska Airlines credit card. In order to get the offer with the $100 credit attached, you had to pretend to book a flight and click a link to the offer on the final payments page as I couldn’t find a working link to the offer. However, I’m happy to say Maximizing Money did me one better and has found a direct working link to the offer!

Click here for the link to apply.

My advice from my previous post on this offer remains the same – you can (or rather should) pick up multiple Alaska cards in one day and it will result in just one pull. Don’t be discouraged by the small signup bonus of 25,000 miles – Alaska miles are valuable as they can be used on Delta or American but more interestingly can be used to fly Emirates and other premium carriers like Cathay Pacific. In fact, if you acquired four of these bad boys Bank of America would be paying you $100 to fly to the Middle East/Maldives/India/Asia in first class with an onboard shower on some routes. That my friends is a pretty good deal and why you should care about this card.

May 11, 2015

New Link for 5,000 Point ($50) Signup Bonus on Fidelity American Express Credit Card

Back in September, I wrote about how there was a 5,000 point (or $50) signup bonus on the Fidelity American Express Credit Card but now the link from that post seems to have died. While doing research for my next round of credit card applications, I was able to find a new working link for the 5,000 point signup bonus if you spend $500 within 60 days of account approval. The offer is valid through July 29, 2015 and the offer code for this bonus is VACD37.

Click here for the link to apply.

For those questioning why I am posting about a measly $50 signup bonus offer, it is rare to see a no annual fee card that earns 2% cash back on ALL spending, with no caps or category restrictions, to have a signup bonus. In fact, the only other time I know of a publicly available signup bonus on a 2% cashback card was the same offer on the Fidelity card back in September. The main competitor to the Fidelity American Express is the Citi Double Cash which does not have a signup bonus nor has ever publicly offered one.

If I were to chose one 2% cash back no annual fee card, I would chose the Fidelity American Express since there is an actual signup bonus on the card. The signup bonus is the equivalent of spending $2,500 on the Citi Double Cash. What would you rather do – spend $500 on the Fidelity American Express for $60 cash back ($500 x 2% + $50 bonus) or $3,000 on the Citi Double Cash ($3,000 x 2%) for the same $60?

The main arguments for the Citi Double Cash are greater acceptance (due to being a MasterCard) and not needing a Fidelity brokerage account. While slightly annoying to create a Fidelity account first, I don’t consider that a deal-breaker especially since the cashback, which gets deposited into your Fidelity account, can be swept to your normal bank account easily online. I think the whole lack of Amex acceptance is overblown and unless you only shop at small mom & pop shops out in the countryside, I think it is very rare you will run into a problem with a vendor not accepting American Express in the United States (don’t think of using this card or the Citi Double Cash overseas due to the foreign transaction fees).

Lastly, there are some benefits to having an American Express card that is not issued by American Express but that’s for another time and place.

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Points & Miles Travel Consulting