A strong offer from Marriott here. Through the end of August, get 80,000 points with a Personal or Business card. Not the greatest hotel points in the world, but it’s definitely an offer worth looking at.
The Actual End Of The Week
Uh, yeah…I brainfarted. Gives you an idea of how long my week has been. Ok, on to the real end-of-week deals…
- $15 from TopCashBack for new members. If you don’t use portals for online shopping…wait, why wouldn’t you? They’re a big part of what we do. Most of you know, but I’ve got the other big ones listed in the sidebar. Not sure if you need to make a purchase for this 15 bucks or not.
- Thanks Charles for sharing this. One of the (very) few bloggers I like is giving you miles for playing golf.
- Another 15 bucks for linking your Membership Rewards account to Amazon.com. I think I might have talked about this before but…yeah, the long week thing again. Steps are:
- Click here.
- Shop on Amazon for $50 or more (must be sold by Amazon).
- On the checkout page, select Membership Rewards and use 1 point.
- Enter promo code SWP07AXP15.
- Many of you will see $15 off. Some won’t.
End Of Week Deals
Catching up with deals to end the week…
- The American Airlines card from Citibank is up to 75,000 miles. Man, it seems like just yesterday when people were getting handfuls of these at 100,000 miles each.
- A new 20% bonus on transfers from Starwood to American. Not a bad value, but I’ll keep my Starwood points right where they are for hotel bookings.
- Up to 50% bonus for buying Southwest points. As usual, I won’t be buying.
- 5,000 miles for booking your first Rocketmiles stay by tomorrow. One day, I’ll finally book one of these.
- It’s the start of a new quarter. Make sure you activate your 5% quarterly bonuses if you have a Chase Freedom or Discover It card.
Have a great weekend…enjoy the fireworks, nerds!
What About Manufactured Spending?
I get that question a lot. The answer is pretty simple…
Manufactured spending deals, more than any others, get shut down. In my opinion, the number of blog-related deal deaths last year was in the dozens. It’s a tricky situation for me. This blog is here to help people. Unlike most, this one is about being an honest voice…someone who always looks after the best interest of the readers. That fact is pretty obvious to you guys. But accelerating the death of a deal isn’t in your best interest or anyone else’s. That’s the challenge. There are times when following my instinct would definitely do more harm than good.
So in the world of MS, I’m very careful. Sure, some stuff is safe. Last year, for example, it was almost impossible to read this blog and not earn 250,000 Ultimate Rewards points (between Staples and Ink). For the newbies, let’s take a step back and start with a definition. For those who don’t do much manufactured spending, it’s basically a fancy way of saying “fake spending.” This is a very profitable thing. You can meet minimum spends and rack up points by using your credit card in out-of-the-ordinary ways. Essentially, you’re moving money around and collecting points.
If you play in this universe, there are a few risks. One of them is ignorance. Many big, fake spenders don’t know the laws. Structuring, ridiculous as it can seem, is a legitimate crime. How many of you are well-versed on what exactly it is? Maybe you intentionally avoid deposits of certain amounts? Are you splitting these up between different banks? Are you lying to store/bank employees about what you’re doing? My point is, you might actually be committing a crime and you don’t even know it. Saying “I’m not doing anything illegal” is true for many of you. For others, that’s just not true.
There are many other risks. Fraud is a huge one right now. But, again, I’m always careful about what MS stuff I post here. That being said, it’s important to know the basics. This has been my worst credit card year in a while, so MS has been an increasingly big part of what I do. What I’d like for the newbies is a basic intro. I’d like to write something clear to point you in the right direction…but still vague enough to keep things safe. To give you an idea of how I feel about this topic…I try to avoid even posting the name of that certain huge discount store we all know. So, let’s do this…
If you have something specific in mind…something you want the answer to…something you’re confused about…something you’d like to learn…let me know. I’ll put it all together and write a helpful intro to MS. Without being a deal assassin, of course. Sound good?
