Membership Rewards Archives - Your Mileage May Vary

Beware the Amazon Trap Designed To Drain Membership Rewards And Citi ThankYou Points Accounts

Amazon.com has “enhanced” their website making it easier for you to pay for your Amazon purchases with the flexible points from your credit cards. If you’re not careful, the points you were saving for a trip to Hawaii might end up paying for that 18 foot inflatable Frosty the Snowman you’ve been wanting to buy. I mean, it’s awesome but not a great use of your Membership Rewards points.

Flexible Points

Flexible Point currencies like American Express Membership Rewards and Citi ThankYou Points are useful because of the various ways you can redeem your points. Some redemptions are great values, like when you’re able to transfer points to travel partners and make once in a lifetime trips. Other redemptions are average, such as using the points to book travel through the designated booking portal where you’re typically get 1 to 1.5 cents of value per point. These bookings are good when you need a reservation where transferring points is undesirable or unavailable, Still other redemptions are terrible, like redeeming for merchandise, magazines or even TSA Precheck memberships. You’ll often get less than 1 cent of value per point (and the merchandise is also overpriced to begin with).

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Save 20% Or Earn 20 Points Per Dollar On Airfare With This AMEX Offer

The AMEX Offers program by American Express provides targeted discounts or bonus point earning opportunities to cardholders when they’re logged into their account. These offers are great because the savings you earn offset the annual fees that American Express charges for many of their points earning credit cards. While looking at my account this month, I found a new AMEX offer that’s really appealing. We received this offer on several different cards and the offer was different depending on the card it was offered on. Since you can only attach an AMEX Offer to a single card (once you select it for one card, it disappears on all your other cards), it’s important to check all of your card accounts before selecting your offer.

Here’s the offers we received for charges from JetBlue:

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Citi Double Cash Offers $150 Sign Up Bonus and 2% Back On Everything

UPDATE : The $150 sign up bonus offer has ended. You can apply for the card without the sign up bonus at this link.

I love to use the Citi Double Cash card as a standard to compare all other credit cards against. For no annual fee, it earns 2% cash back on all purchases. If you’re not getting this much value from another card, you’d be better off using the Double Cash Card.

Citi has now increased the sign up bonus on the Double Cash card to $150 so if this is a good card for you to get, there’s no time like the present.

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What Is Stacking And Why Should You Be Doing It?

When I’m talking about stacking, I’m not talking about stacking cups, although that is an impressive, yet useless skill.

I’m also not speaking of the catchy Anna Kendrick song Cups from Pitch Perfect, where she never actually stacks anything.

When I’m talking about stacking, I’m referring to the combining of multiple deals to maximize the returns on purchases.

I regard myself as a entry level player to this area who occasionally gets lucky with a decent reward. I’m almost always helped by a post or two that points me in the right direction. My goal today is to show you how these work and that it’s not difficult to make them work for you.

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Dear Amazon.com, Thanks For The $200

When it comes to the way I earn miles and points, I’ve always considered myself as “Neutral Good.” For those of you who didn’t grow up playing Dungeons and Dragons, you can fall into nine different categories. Here’s a summary of a “Neutral Good”

A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do.

Now while I’d think myself more of a Hermione, when push comes to shove, I’m a Harry (Note from Sharon: I’m Sirius. 100%, LOLOL!).

harry-potter-custom — https://rantingsoftheninjarobot.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/harry-potter-alignment-chart/

So what does this mean when it comes to points, miles and travels? Mainly, I’ll stretch the limits a bit I’m eventually going to follow the rules. You know, I’m still an Eagle Scout and all.

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