Tagging Miles

Get up to $50 cashback with Discover Android Pay

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Discover was pretty awesome 2 years ago with Apple Pay, now, you we have the chance to get up to $50 cashback with Discover Android Pay

Discover Android Pay

The promotion is pretty simple, use your Discover Card with Android Pay for 10 transactions and get $5 per transaction, for a total of $50 cashback with Discover Android Pay.

Maximizing Discover Android Pay

How can you get that $50? Well, there are a number of retailers that accept android pay. One of the easier ones is staples, it could be as simple as 10 packs of gum across 10 transactions. 

Will you use Discover Android Pay more because of the $5 per transaction enticement?

Welcome to April! Q2 5x Opportunities

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We’re into April, which means that we have new Q2 5x Opportunities, courtesy of Chase, Discover and Citi.  So consider this a reminder to get out there and maximize your points and cashback.

Q2 5x Opportunities – Chase Freedom

Chase Freedom’s Second Quarter 5x is for Grocery and Drug Stores! Only a few years ago, this would elicit giggles of glee! But fear not.  There have been some amazing deals lately. Just look at this deal that Doctor of Credit shared, in which FQF decreed that you must use “Washtubs, not teaspoons.” While this deal has ended, history suggests that similar deals will come in the future.

Q2 5x Opportunities

Q2 5x Opportunities – Discover

Wholesale Clubs and Home Improvement. Spring is here! For homeowners, this is a great opportunity. For folks who frequent Sam’s Club and BJ’s Wholesale club, this is for you! For resellers; remember that Sams Club and BJ’s both sell a variety of gift cards, so if you can’t find products for resale, you could at least maximize your 5x by getting gift cards for stores that you can find products for resale. 

Maximize your Q1 5x

 

Q2 5x Opportunities – Citi Dividend

Citi Dividend gives us similar pleasure as Chase Freedom gives us, with drugstores. I’m not really sure how fitness clubs fit into the mix. Logically, that seems more like a first quarter thing, but maybe Citi is trying to remind us that we only have a couple months before we’ll want to look good in a swimsuit. As I think about it, maybe I do need to get to the gym a bit more…. All that aside, drugstores are great for gift cards. So, if your gym doesn’t give you $1500 worth of spend–and I hope it doesn’t!–then the drugstore is your option. Hopefully you don’t have some crazy, never ending cold, and instead can leverage some Vanilla Visa’s!

Maximize your Q1 5x

 

Conclusion

As we enter a new quarter, it avails us the opportunity to make a plan to maximize rotating category bonus rewards. Historically, second quarter is a pretty good quarter for maximizing, though I see a whole lot less of home improvement stores than in past years. 

What is your plan to maximize all of your 5x? How do you plan to do it, manufactured spending? Reselling? Organic Spend?

End of Year Reminder: Don’t forget to maximize Quarterly Offers!

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This year we had a number of great quarterly bonuses for credit card spend.

Discover Quarterly Department Store, Amazon, or Clothing stores, and Apply Pay

For starters, we had the Discover Apple Pay promotion, where you get a 10% bonus when you pay with your Discover via Apple Pay. This can be even better if you have the Discover Double Cashback promotion. Note, the 10% bonus is only up to $10,000 spend between early September and the end of the year, per Discover card. Despite all of my spending this year, I’m probably just about $5k short of maximizing for my wife and myself. I did get the chance to double dip some though for the 5% quarterly bonus up to $1500.

Chase Freedom Special Nov 24 to 31 December – Amazon, Zappos, Audible, and Diapers.com

This was a special enticement from Chase, having previously stated that the “normal” Forth Quarter would be 5x Ultimate Rewards (UR) points up to $1,500 spend. Well, then they said, make that spend by 23 November, adding that from 24 November to 31 December, you can get 10x UR points up to $1,500 spend. Wow. That’s pretty big. I know I’m still working off my 3 Freedoms, at this point, I’m buying lots of gift cards. Lots and lots of gift cards. shameless plus, if you don’t have an amazon link, please consider using mine, you can find it at Support Tagging Miles, we sincerely appreciate the consideration.

Citi Dividend Quarterly Best Buy and Department Stores

If you haven’t made your $300 cashback for the year yet, well, you could finish that. If you already have, you could try what the Devil’s advocate recommends, as far as leveraging Best Buy and Department stores to maximize your 2016 cashback.

Wrapping Up

I’m sure there are more out there. I know I’ve been trying to get smart on the Bank of America cards for example. But the fact remains, it never hurts to maximize, if you have the flexibility to, especially when you can get as many as 15,000 Ultimate Rewards Points per Chase Freedom, $300 per Citi Dividend, and a bunch with the combined Discover bonuses.

One last thing, if you happened to get the targeted Barclay Aviator spend $500 in October, November, and December, and have gotten October and November, then don’t forget to make the $500 in spend in December!

 

Saverocity Observation Deck 2015 Award Nominees – Part 2

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Last week, Joe from As the Joe Flies, Joe Cortez, and I convened to award the Saverocity Observation Deck 2015 End of Year Awards. Of course, this was a light hearted, and eggnog filled event. The actual podcast will be published in the near future, however we wanted to share the nominees ahead of time.

This post dovetailes with As the Joe Flies’ post on the Saverocity Observation Deck 2015 Award Nominees – Part 1, so definitely take a read there too.

Saverocity Observation Deck 2015 Award Nominees: Category 4 – The Deal of the Year

Discover’s 10x for Apple Pay

This is perhaps one of the most talked about promotions of the year. In fact, I even bought an iPhone to take advantage of it. The deal is this, you load your Discover card (which you hopefully have double cash back on, which makes it even better) into Apple Pay, then you go into your favorite stores, like Staples, Office Depot, Walgreens, and others, and pay via Apple Pay, and you get at least 10% cashback.

American Airlines’ $400 Mistake Business Class Fare to China

Earlier in the year, American Airlines had a mistake business class fare to China. Many took advantage of it, including Greg the Frequent Miler, who this year seems to be frequently flying. It was an absolutely awesome deal, because you could still upgrade to First, as many did. Of course, for those who just held their reservation, many found that American unilaterally cancelled it, although some were able to social engineer their way to a confirmed seat. Overall though, $400 for a business class trip to China is a huge deal.

American Express (AMEX) Offers

I think everyone would agree, this year was yet another great year of AMEX Offers. We also saw some of 2014’s innovations, including Offersbot, and SyncAssist get throttled by twitter. Regardless, there were some great offers, including $200 off a $1000 Virgin Atlantic purchase, $25 off a $200 Newegg purchase, as well as offers for Best Buy, Staples, and so many more.

Target Prepaid RedBird

I think many would agree, the Target RedBird was an amazing twist of fate. Here we were coming off of losses of Vanilla Reloads, and American Express and Target partner for this wonderful new pre-paid card, that for the first few months even allows credit card loads. Forget Visa Gift Cards! Go straight to Target, collect your points! Unfortunately, in the course of less than a year, the Target RedBird moved from the best thing since sliced bread, to requiring pin-based debit reloading (a la Visa Gift Cards), then going to cash only. RedBird’s death hurt many, new and old, but, it helped so many more.

Saverocity Observation Deck 2015 Award Nominees: Category 5 – Worst Move by a Loyalty Program

Hyatt Offering Easy Diamond Status to the World

This doesn’t take much explanation. Earlier this month, on the heels of the news that Marriott was buying Starwood, Hyatt saw the opportunity to get some of the high value, ultra loyal elites from Starwood Preferred Guest. Who could blame them? Well, it turns out, many current Hyatt Diamonds. Some current Diamonds reached out, requesting the match or some level of understanding, since they weren’t quite requalified, only to get a cold no in response.

Delta Award Charts Disappearing

Generally transparency is good, lack of transparency is bad. Well, Delta Airlines decided to side toward being less transparent. Earlier this year, they removed their award charts, leaving mile and point enthusiasts to guess whether they are getting saver space or not. We think there are 5 levels, last I heard, but, I’m not sure if anyone has anything more definitive than what Wandering Aramean has.

American Airlines’ AAdvantage Program going Revenue Based

Many dreaded this move, but the fact is that they made the move, following everyone United and Delta, and to a lesser extent Southwest, and probably others. The result wasn’t as bad as many feared, but it was still pretty bad. Some of the impacts include significant award chart changes–hitting premium cabins most–and the eventual revenue based earning sometime in 2016. If you want to fly to Southeast Asia in First Class, you may be needing 3 credit card sign-up bonuses, for example.

Marriott buying Starwood

We mentioned this earlier with the Hyatt nominee, but, Marriott has announced that it will buy Starwood Hotels, and with it, the Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) loyalty program. Many SPG loyalists are up in arms. Even non-SPG elites are up in arms. SPG points are some of the most–if not the most–valuable transferrable points in the community. Marriott buying up the program doesn’t bode well for the amazing value of SPG points.

British Airways removing 4,500 Avios point redemption in North America

I have to be candid here. I initially wrote that this was not the end of the world. A few readers (to their credit), made it pretty clear that I may very well have had my head where the sun does not normally shine. They weren’t wrong. Many people leveraged the 4,500 Avios point redemption for short award flights (such as DC to New York, for example). It was a fantastic deal. Certainly a sweet spot in British Airways distance based award chart. This was a pretty big hit to many folks.

So what do you think? Please leave your votes for each of the categories and comment if you think we missed anything.

FT4RL, American’s Beijing Mistake Fare, Reselling, and @frequentmiler experiements with Discover

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Greetings from Down Under! This week, and next week’s roundups may be a bit lighter than usual, as my wife and I are celebrating our anniversary on a round the world trip to Australia. Cheers!

The Weekly News Roundup is a collection of headlines from around the internet that caught the attention of the Tagging Miles team. Content on these blogs do not necessarily reflect the positions of Tagging Miles, and should not be considered endorsements. Have a great story we should read? Contact us now and let us know!

Travel:

  • Daniel on Friendly Skies reports the response he got from American Airlines regarding to a DoT complaint resulting from a cancelled “held” ticket, way back during that great deal for Beijing business class fares. There are some interesting nuggets in this one!
  • Family Travel for Real Life (FT4RL):

Miles and Points:

Reselling:

Tagging Miles Posts of the Week:

Deal of the Year becomes more interesting with Delta Airlines!

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Note: As a few folks have stated, the terms of the Discover Deal of the Year promo, state that in app purchases won’t count. That said, in practice it may be hard to enforce such terms, so as they say, Your Miles May Vary (YMMV). I for one will have my fingers crossed. Via comment section, Eddy states that Discover is grayed out in Apple Pay.

Courtesy of @Turnbullben

It looks like Apple Pay is no available for those of you Delta Flyers. In fact, the article states:

Starting today, Delta Air Lines (DAL) customers can now book and pay for flights via Apple Pay, the easy and private way to pay, using the latest version of the Fly Delta app.

Now, I can’t say whether this will definitively get you your Deal of the Year 10% Discover Cash Back, but I have to believe that it will.

All that said, if you actually fly Delta in your normal travels, the risk is minimal. If you don’t normally fly Delta Airlines, well, maybe you can find a way to game the system.

Either way, Delta Airlines is now, yet another merchant that accepts Apple Pay.

Opportunity cost decisions among Shopping Portals

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Game Changer

Back in June, Doctor of Credit (and many others), wrote about a great feature of the Discover IT card, at first for any card holder, then later for only new cardholders. That is the Discover Double Cash Back (receiving that second half of cashback 13 months later). This has been absolutely huge in my opinion, because it really changes the math, especially for resellers.

Cut to today, and I happen to see a FrequentMiler QuickDeal that United is offering 10x at Sears today. At first I’m looking at this and saying to myself “Wow, I could totally leverage this to get myself another Lufthansa First Class flight.” But then I start thinking to myself, if I were to do go ahead and go through the United MileagePlus Shopping Mall, what would I be giving up?

Let’s look at the math:

Since Sears lets you buy gift cards and get miles, you should do that, so we start out at 10x.

Lets assume you get giftcards for exactly the same amount as the product you’re going to buy, now you’re 10x.

If you do as FrequentMiler advises, and use your DiscoverIT (if you haven’t already burned through your $1,500 of 5x w/ another 5x in 13 months), that kicks yourself up more. Yeah, United has a Back to School bonus, but, for me that’s kind’ve in the weeds.

So, here I have it. I could have 20x United miles or I could have 40% cashback, with the second half of that cashback coming in 13 months. Let’s leave the whole Time/Value of Money consideration out of here, and ignore all risk of Discover somehow shutting down or not paying that second half. That roughly equates to valuing a United mile at 2 cents. United themselves value their miles when they sell them on special, like their flash sale earlier this week for 2.3 cents per mile.

Wrapping Up

Thinking all that through, I have to say, I’m sticking with Discover Cashback. I feel like its a no brainer for me. Maybe before United’s devaluation that nearly doubled most of the premium cabin awards, I would’ve felt differently, but having just burned 130k miles per person to fly Thai and Lufthansa First from Bali, I’m feeling like United has effectively cut the value of their miles by roughly half. For me, regardless of what the “market cost” of the award is, I feel like United miles are worth less than a penny. Not that I bother with outlining point valuations.

As FICO Credit Scores Become More Available, Do FAKO Sites Matter?

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With FICO scores getting easier to access, does it make sense to watch the FAKO scores anymore?There was a time not too long ago where you had to pay for your credit profile and current credit scores. Then came the rise of free credit monitoring sites Credit Sesame and Credit Karma. Much like Mint.com did for budgeting, these sites gave users a complete view of their credit profile. In addition, users were also given a set of “credit scores” based on their overall credit health. While it wasn’t a real credit score, these sites gave users a close view to see where their credit score was, within a certain variance (+/- 20 to 50 points).

For quite a while, Credit Sesame and Credit Karma stood alone. Personally speaking, I found immense value in both sites, because they allowed me to have an overall view of my credit health. But, as all online services go, it was only a matter of time before something else would come forward as a parallel – and in someways, competing – service.

The “challengers” came in the form of three already established players: Barclays and Discover, and Capital One. (Correction: As Doctor of Credit pointed out in the comments, Capital One is a FAKO score – not a FICO score.) Over the last year, these credit card companies started offering users access to their actual TransUnion FICO credit score, instead of the “FAKO” scores that Credit Karma & Credit Sesame allowed you to see.

So now that consumers holding a Barclays or Discover card can see their actual credit score, does it no longer make sense to hold an account on the “FAKO” credit sites? Both have their core advantages and disadvantages – lets explore each one in a little more detail.

The FAKO Sites – Penny Wise, Credit Score Foolish

Credit Sesame and Credit Karma both use an alternate version of your credit score offered by two of the three credit bureaus. Credit Sesame utilizes the Experian National Equivalency Score, while Credit Karma utilizes the TransUnion New Account Score. While both scores are available to lenders, most will not base their decisions on these scores. Instead, lenders will make decisions based on the FICO score calculated by each of the three credit bureaus.

While you don’t get a real FICO score, both sites do offer a complete look at your current credit situation: how much debt you’re carrying, how much credit is available, and how much you are spending monthly repaying that debt. For those who tend to carry a balance or simply want an overall picture of their credit health, these sites can be great for seeing how your personal finance situation measures up. Plus, these sites give tips on how to improve your credit health, and offer simulators, which allow you to see how a change in your credit would potentially affect you.

The FICO Sites – Missing the Forest for the Trees

When Barclaycard announced that customers would be able to access their FICO credit score online as of October 30, 2013, it marked a major turn in consumer credit accessibility. Gone were the days where customers had to pay for access to their credit scores (though I will miss the FreeCreditReport.com band). Instead, by logging into their credit card accounts, customers can see their exact score, and get updates on one of the key factors that lenders base decisions around.

While this is a great turn of events, there’s a lot that isn’t taken into account through credit card provider access. A downfall of these portals is that they only show your credit score, with a bullet-pointed explanation of the factors taken into account. In addition, these scores are updated on a schedule, and not necessarily on demand – meaning you could be dealing with out of date information. Finally, all three products only show your credit score from TransUnion. And though you may have a good TransUnion score, your Experian and Equifax scores could be different.

So Which Credit Score Product Is Best?

Tracking your actual FICO credit score – the same credit score that lenders use – is the best approach for making credit decisions. That being said, basing your decisions off one score could be dangerous, and can lead to potential disappointments in your applications. And for those who choose to carry debt on their cards, not seeing the entire implications of your debt could create some potentially bad situations.

If you are a customer of Barclays or Discover you should absolutely utilize the free access to your TransUnion FICO score. This is the best way to get an accurate statement on your credit. However, I also recommend keeping – and regularly checking – at least one of the two credit monitoring programs as well. If you were to only pick one, I would recommend Credit Sesame. Credit Sesame gives you an idea of your Experian credit score, and allows you to have a view of your overall credit from two of the three credit bureaus.

Do the credit monitoring sites hold as much value now that FICO scores are more available? Does a FAKO score mean anything to you at all? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Ed. Note: In the spirit of full disclosure, the authors may receive incentives for links placed in this blog to products or services mentioned. The author neither endorses or guarantees any product, service, or brand mentioned in this article, unless otherwise stated.

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