A while back I had a post about the 3500 bonus points you could get if you were targeted by US Bank for this spend promotion. Mommy Points had a post about spending $50 at Neiman Marcus if you were targeted for that and it ends on the 19th. She suggested starting at some shopping portal to get bonus points. That may work or it may not track unless you START at the US BANK link so up to you if you want to try for extra bonus points or just get the 3500 US BANK Flex Perks points worth $70 toward air travel.

Anyway, there are not a bunch of things you can buy for around $50 at Neiman Marcus but one thing we can all use as a frequent flyer is a TUMI luggage scale (see photo above & here is the link but do please start at the US BANK link first). The other item that could be good is the passport cover also for $50. I do not see any harm in using the free S&H code: MAYFS

Anyway, speaking about FlexPerks I also have a test on the way this week with my mileage run. US BANK FlexPerks, both the personal and the business, when you redeem points for a ticket like I did for my positioning flight to PHX, will allow you $25 credit after spend for “incidentals”. I am going to buy a Delta e-Gift card online the day I fly and see if that will work for credit. It should and I should get a $50 cert for just $25 net!

BTW the TUMI luggage scale is very nice, comes in a nice gift box. I have no need for it and just wanted to test this for the 3500 points and to help get my spend for the month for the other targeted bonus. So how about a “targeted” giveaway today to match the targeted deal. If you want my brand new TUMI scale, you must comment below on the blog that you are following me on twitter, and then ALSO retweet my tweet about this post  (ya gotta do both if you want to win)! Have fun and I will use Random.org late tonight for the winner – René

▲Delta▲ SkyMiles® Credit Card
RESERVE/PLATINUM/GOLD
from American Express®
Click here for more information

Success! 80,000 Priority Club points (not my link btw) have posted to a new and shiny Platinum Account! I was not sure from Lisa’s last churn if she would get these points but it has been YEARS since Lisa was a Priority Club card holder (canceled back in 2009) and for the most part, if you have had a Chase card of “that” type, you will NOT be able to get a new card bonus again. The exception is when Chase comes out with a “NEW” type of that same card, then, most time, you can go for that again and get the points. Also, most times, if there is both a VISA & MC of the same card you can often get the bonus for each flavor if you have not had both (I have seen best results when closing the old one before attempting this).

Is there, say like the 365+ day you have to wait with AMEX cards or the 6-18 month range from Citi that you must wait with Chase? I do not know and would love reader feedback to find out some more real world experience.

As an additional update, we are still waiting to hear back in the mail for the reconsideration letter for the Barclaycard Arrival World Mastercard. I have high hopes that rather than a letter the card will just show up (thus approved) in the mail. It now makes running to the mailbox each day a little more fun anyway!

Another bit of warning and a GRRRRRRRRRRRR moment for me. Until last month I held 2 Alaska cards and got the bonus for each. When the fee came for card #1  I called to have the credit line from the old card moved to the new card and close the old one (why pay the fee). I was ASSURED that there would be NO hard credit pull for this credit line move. And then, BANG, I see a hard credit pull on my report. I could fight this one and it will push my next churn off by a few weeks or more but for now I have so much spending to do on other cards that I will just learn from this and let it go. I will have to rethink doing this again with any Bank of America cards (has this ever happen to you from these guys)? – René

▲Delta▲ SkyMiles® Credit Card
RESERVE/PLATINUM/GOLD
from American Express®
Click here for more information

This offer is no longer available so post removed.

Congratulations to all who got in on the deal! – Rene

▲Delta▲ SkyMiles® Credit Card
RESERVE/PLATINUM/GOLD
from American Express®
Click here for more information

For all the talk of big point deals being gone in 2013 just look at the outstanding deals that are currently live and available. If you have a churn on the way you need to take a look at this list!

50,000 Chase INK BOLD and the 50,000 Chase INK PLUS cards. This is truly one of the best deals going and I am so pleased it is still live. Here is the thing, you can HOLD both of these cards at once. If you have the BOLD there is no reason for you not to, right now, go for the PLUS or vice versa. Perhaps you want the BOLD for the stability a charge card offers you as a business person or maybe the PLUS for the flexibility a credit card can bring to you. Either way, to get this many points with so much travel value is not to be missed. Remember sole proprietors can get these cards!

50,000 AMEX Business Rewards Gold card. Another amazing card with so many features, not the least of which is 3x points on airfare! This again is a business card. Membership rewards have the value of being able to be transferred 1 to 1 to Delta should you need a few more points to meet your point total for a redemption!

50,000 Lufthansa Premier Miles & More World MasterCard®. Many choices with this one, not the least of which is that many points can get you 2 domestic continental tickets on United. For the cost of the annual fee this is a great value.

50,000 Marriott Rewards Premier Credit Card. Despite all the changes to all the hotel programs this year, this is a very good value. I enjoyed using my Marriott points for my ski trip to Salt Lake this year. Not only the points, but you even get a free night cert cat 1-4 hotel! I used mine in Stockholm Sweden.

50,000 British Airways Visa Card. Avios points are an incredibly valuable redemption option to use on American Air in the USA. I have used them many times for flying my family around from here to there and just love them for use that way.

Just look at the tremendous value in the above list. You can go for just a single one (look at the INK cards) and enjoy what it brings or pick up several in a churn and just clean up! Many of these have rather high spend requirements to get the points, so please be sure to review Lisa’s Rookie post HERE to help you out! I just hope for me, since I have had or HOLD most of the above, that the Lufthansa deal is still going when it is time for my next churn. – René

▲Delta▲ SkyMiles® Credit Card
RESERVE/PLATINUM/GOLD
from American Express®
Click here for more information

I am with a number of companies that provide bloggers with card links. One of them abruptly sent me and email stating that the Barclaycard Reward MasterCard is no longer available effective immediately! What may be next is the Barclaycard Arrival™ World MasterCard® as once one card goes most of the time the others follow suit.

I have this card and we are still waiting to hear back about Lisa’s reconsideration letter to see if she can get her’s too! Bottom line is that if you have been waiting to get in on this one (ie current offer) it may not be around for very much longer and now at least you know what I know – René

EDIT: I got an update from Barclaycard and was told: “Please know, that while the 40,000 mile bonus offer is a limited time offer, it has not expired” so clearly there is still time to get this GREAT offer but for how much longer they will not say!

▲Delta▲ SkyMiles® Credit Card
RESERVE/PLATINUM/GOLD
from American Express®
Click here for more information

First of all, you might want to know why you would want to go through what I am about to show you! With an American Express Bluebird account funded with Vanilla Reload cards, you can pay bills with funds charged to a credit card that you would otherwise either write a check for or have to pay a fee in order to pay with a credit card. Confused? Don’t be. This is a way to meet your minimum spend when you are churning credit cards. First let me walk you through the steps.

Signing up for a Bluebird account is where to begin, and it’s pretty simple and is free and there is no credit pull for the card. Once you complete all of the information for an account they will send you a card with your account number on it. It takes about 14 days for the card to arrive in the mail. Please be sure to remember your logon name and password you created.

When you receive the card in the mail you have to go back to the website to activate the account with information from the actual card. Now your account is ready for use, but you have to fund it to have a balance to pay bills from. This is where the credit card spend comes in because you can fund your Bluebird account with Vanilla Reload cards which you can purchase with a points credit card of your choice.

To fund your Bluebird account with a Vanilla Reload card that you get from say your local CVS store, that you purchased using your point credit card (2x$500 per transaction max allowed) and looks like the photo above, you have to go to the Vanilla Reload site, and the address is also on the card. There you enter your Bluebird card number (be very careful to enter the right number) and then the pin code from the back of the Vanilla reload card you have purchased, and your funds are now transferred to your Bluebird account. You can verify the transfer by logging in to your Bluebird account and checking the balance. You can load a max of $1000 per day to your Bluebird account this way.

If you do not have a reliable source for this little gems, please take the time to review our fellow BoardingArea.com blogger Greg, The Frequent Milers post HERE about buying gift cards with PIN option to use them to load your Bluebird at a Walmart.

Now you’re ready to use your Bluebird account to pay bills and you have a couple of options on how you can do that. You can use the bill payment feature to send electronic payments to registered payees, or if your payee is not registered then a check will be mailed and it will just take a few more days for the payment to get to your payee. The date the payment will arrive is shown so you can see just how long each payment will take to arrive.

You can also order checks from Bluebird, right now they’ll send you the first 100 checks for free if you order by May 21, 2013  (click on the “My Account” and order checks is the last menu item).

These checks work a little differently than the checks you get with a regular checking account. These checks must be pre-authorized before you can actually use them, but it’s a really simple process. Once you receive your checks, you just log on to your Bluebird account and click on “Pre-Authorize a Check”

On the next screen you fill in the check number and amount. The next screen will give you a pre-authorization code, which you write on the check in the space provided for it. Then you just fill out the rest of the check normally and sign it and send it to whoever you are paying with it. The funds are withdrawn from your balance immediately when you pre-authorize the check, and then your account is updated when the check is paid.

There are some limitations with a Bluebird account you should know about as you jump in! You are only allowed to pay out a maximum of $5000 out of your Bluebird account each month to unregistered payees. The entire list of fees and limits is available on the site under FAQs.

This really is a great way to say pay your mortgage, car loan, insurance or whatever bill does not take a credit card. It makes spending the large amount to get say your $30,000 spend done on your Delta AMEX Reserve card a whole lot simpler and faster! – Lisa

▲Delta▲ SkyMiles® Credit Card
RESERVE/PLATINUM/GOLD
from American Express®
Click here for more information

Talk about perfect timing, I am in need of 5000 more FlexPerks points to be able to pick up a ticket to spend some time in Mexico with my golfing buddies this winter.

The promotion says:

Earning 3,500 FlexPoints is as easy as using your FlexPerks Travel
Rewards Visa Signature® card for $500 in purchases from May 1–June 30,
2013. It’s a great way to increase your FlexPoints balance and reach
rewards even faster.

If you have not checked them out there is both a personal and business card that, after spend, will net you $400 in credit to buy a ticket on any airline including our Delta! – René

▲Delta▲ SkyMiles® Credit Card
RESERVE/PLATINUM/GOLD
from American Express®
Click here for more information

If you want to see why I cut up my Sapphire card, you will have to peek HERE. But what I really want to draw your attention to is not that post, but THIS post when I found out from a Chase employee that there is in the branches, for some, a targeted 70,000 point offer.

I found this out while doing a post about a survey that Chase was thinking about doing serveral things, like offer 3x points for restaurants on some Fridays. Now, according to their Facebook page (& HT to both ViewFromTheWing and MommyPoints), they are doing just that.

Clearly, the Chase Freedom offer for the next three months of  5x on dining is a much better deal that this one if you have that card.

But, it does confirm some of what Chase was exploring with the survey site. Could a Chase Sapphire reduction from 40,000 bonus points to 30,000 for new cards also be on the way next? It has not happened yet but I would not be surprised at all.

Also, any readers who do surveys and see some interesting questions regarding point cards from ANY banks, please let me know via email! – René
 

▲Delta▲ SkyMiles® Credit Card
RESERVE/PLATINUM/GOLD
from American Express®
Click here for more information

It has been more than 91+ days since Lisa’s last churn in the end of December. Points have posted and spend done so on to the next round. What did we go for and what happened and what was her credit score pre-churn? Let’s take a look.

First what happened. Results were mixed. None of the 3 cards came with instant approvals and one is currently still in the NO column but we are not ready to give up on it just yet.

So what did we go for and why? We needed more cards with low spend due to the bulk of our spend, including vanilla, being pushed to my Delta AMEX to get my bonus MQM’s. We also are in need of more hotel points and want to top off our AA points as well as more “travel cash” for next year’s ski trip.

• So card number one was the AA CitiBank business 30,000 point card. With a low spend level for 30k points it was a perfect fit. There was no instant approval but very quickly the card arrived with a nice size credit line.

• The next one was the 40,000 point Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard. Again no instant approval. Time for the reconsideration call. Lisa has two US Air cards, like I had before I went for my Barclays and I had to move some credit from my old one to get the OK. We attempted the same for Lisa but the rep would just not budge. Lisa has too short a time with Barclays and enough credit already. Time to write a letter asking to have the account looked at one more time. I am confident we can get this done with some more work.

• The last one was the Chase 80k PC card (not my link). Again this took a call and we moved her entire United card credit line from that card to the new PC card and it was approved. Lisa, a very long time ago, had a PC Visa so it will be fun to see if we do get the points or not (the rep confirmed 80k with $1000 spend but we will see). Even with NO points, this card will be a long term keep so I am fine either way due to all the perks it gives.

That wraps up this round of cards. Even if Barclays ends up in a final no after a reconsideration letter I am pleased. I am only a few weeks away from another big dump of MQM’s from my personal Delta AMEX Reserve card and then can shift, after Lisa’s cards, to my last $30,000 spending on my business Reserve card. – René

▲Delta▲ SkyMiles® Credit Card
RESERVE/PLATINUM/GOLD
from American Express®
Click here for more information

As you can see from the schedule for the year, right now we are in the Q2 categories for 5x rewards from Chase Freedom VISA and/or MasterCard.

You will need to make sure that either via your smart phone or via the link HERE on the Chase web site that you activate your card(s) for the promotion.

So what is my grand plan? I like one stop shopping and last quarter Vanilla was my friend at my local drug store. But now it is not as simple. I like that Lowes has a huge rack of gift cards and the $200 SW Air cards are a simple choice if you fly them. I do not. But $100 Marriott cards are a very nice possible option.

I do put gas in my tank. I wish there were $100 or $200 cards but $50 at a time works too. So, I am sure I will get about 10-15 of them or more and prepay my gas for a little while.

I also eat (too much)! Some of the restaurant choices are not all that thrilling, but many of them I do frequent in my local area so picking up $500 worth would set me up for a while.

I also may just get some Lowes cards as well as from paint to fertilizer to you name it, it will be needed and rather than having the Freedom card remaining in my wallet I can just get it all done in one visit (plus I can just hand the Lowes gift card to Lisa when she goes to buy plants or whatever for her garden).

After spending ¼ million points again just recently my Ultimate rewards balance is looking pitifully low, but that is a good thing. It is the height of frequent flyer stupidity to hold millions upon millions of points as they will more than likely go DOWN in value moving forward so earn & burn is the best way to go. I am down to around 1.5 million [all types of points] and hope to push that total down under 1 million soon, but new points keep coming in fast. I guess a good #FirstWorldProblem problem to have!

So what are your plans for Q2 with Freedom? Comment below (on the blog) what your plans are and late tonight I will use Random.org to give away another  NEW  TUMI business class kit I have from my last trip to Sweden!

▲Delta▲ SkyMiles® Credit Card
RESERVE/PLATINUM/GOLD
from American Express®
Click here for more information