Deals come and go frequently that you must stay on your toes. It’s almost like the hi-tech industry. If you don’t keep up, your skills become ancient and you become obsolete.
Big Habitat and Personal Finance Digest comb sites like Fat Wallet and Slick Deals to find time sensitive deals that could end at any given time for reselling or personal use.
Sometimes, there’s that one big deal that you’re not sure where it crosses on the moral compass. I find that to be toughest decision because do you take the high road or do you exploit the deal for personal gain.
I bring this up because there have been a few “back to school” deals from the various online malls that I would love to participate in, but have not found any deals worthwhile to pursue. In the past, I was able to buy gift cards to meet the spend threshold for the bonus miles. Today, I can’t do that because the deals died.
For a little history, I used to purchase gift cards from Staples.com when they paid the portals for such purchases. (The introduction of the $200 Visa gift card online killed this deal quickly)
Deals like the Mint died as did the Vanilla Reloads at CVS, but we soldier on because we’re resilient and continue to challenge the norm and practice with stewardship ways to beat the system.
For the “back to school” deals – there’s still a couple of vendors that allow points to process with a gift card purchase. I will no longer resell the gift card that is purchased, but will use the gift card and buy things I need. I do not look at it that “darn it, we killed the deal” but more of a “let’s move on and find another one.”
It is difficult to see your favorite deal meeting its demise, there’s no way to hide it. I hated the letter I just received from TD Bank telling me the TD Go card will see a reduction in load limits as well as loading requires a TD credit card.
Yeah, it’s tough to see the TD Card go. Its demise (the contents of the letter you received) were on the Visa Buxx chat on FT for a while. The posters on FT blamed themselves, and their compatriots who suddenly had 5-6 “teens.” I added funds August 1st and 2nd so that they’ll clear on Sept 1st and 2nd.
What a strange graphic. “Adultry?” Why is “honor” listed with the sins? Why is doing what’s right not aligned with doing good? So many questions.
Thanks, for the heads up – haven’t been on FT in a bit.
Lol I just took the graphic for ethics
We only really soldier on because the option is adapt or quit. Deals die whether it be self inflicted by the community or not but there arent really a lot of other choices than to find another or to stop being in this hobby. I hope we arent like a pack of locust going from one to the next destroying everything in our path as the swarm gets hungrier and larger.
I like the analogy about the locusts, agreed we do have to adapt to the changing landscape.
Deals die, and, because the vast majority of MSers are doing it for the perks, not to pay the house payment, we can deal with the temporary setbacks and other inconveniences that are caused by those deaths.
My daughter and I were joking about where pedicures fall on Maslows Hierarchy of Needs, yesterday. For the bulk of us, I’m pretty sure that they fall about the same place as free flights and free rooms in 5 star hotels.
They are nice to have, make live a lot nicer, but, ultimately, we can live quite well without them, if necessary. Perspective is a good thing, yes?