Staples Mastercard Gift Card Deal

Staples is offering $100 Mastercard Gift Card for $101.95 which is a $5 discount.  Limit of 3 per account.

Link to Deal

This is a solid deal that will help offset the cost of the gift card and earn you 5x on the Chase Ink Business Cash 5%.  I have also heard that you can use the 10% Staples Amex Offer in conjunction which would be an even bigger earnings

The key here is being able to liquidate these cards.  Personally I liquidate them by loading them in Paypal and flipping gift cards, others may be able to use Walmart to buy money orders.

Why becoming a Raise.com Gift Card Bulk Seller is a MUST!!

Being a bulk seller on Raise.com is a MUST when flipping gift cards.  Bulk seller rates start at 10% commission for all cards.  This is compared to 12%-15% for regular sellers.  Margins can be slim to begin with when flipping gift cards so the bulk seller rate savings can be substantial.

In order to qualify for Bulk Seller status you must sell $2,500 every three months on Raise.  In my opinion its worth my while to flip gift cards if I am able to get the same price back that I paid for the card so I can get my credit card points or cashback without taking a loss.  At a 10% bulk seller rate this usually means I have to find cards with at least a 9.50% difference in pricing (for example buying a Starbucks card on one site for 15% off and selling on Raise for 5.50% off).  These arbitrage opportunities are very easy to find and there is plenty of cushion for even more profit.  At the regular seller rate on Raise it might be tough to find these opportunities.

eSaving – one of the best lesser known discount gift card websites

eSaving – while not one of the most popular or well known, this discount gift card websites offers a modest supply of cards at excellent values.  They are also very reliable as I have never bought a defective card.

Some of their best deals are below:

28.80% off Spotify
29.60% off AMC Theatres
16.60% off Xbox

I have in the past bought and flipped the AMC cards for a nice profit – usually about 10% return.

https://www.esaving.com

Office Depot Visa Gift Card Promo: Save $10 with $300+ Purchase (In Store)

This is a nice moneymaker when using the Chase Ink Business Cash to earn 5x points (7.50% toward travel) in office supply stores.  The deal is $10 off $300+ purchase on Visa Gift Cards (1 per customer) which more than offsets the $6.95 purchasing fee and will nab you some quick Ultimate Rewards Points.

If you’re like me and live in an area where its difficult to liquidate visa gift cards (There are no Walmarts near me).  Another alternative is to load these cards into paypal and use that to purchase and flip gift cards.  CardCash.com is a great website to execute this and selling on Raise.com.

Amazing Amazon Gift Card Deal + an extra 3x Using Chase Ink Preferred

Saveya.com currently has many $25 Amazon gift cards listed at 4.36% discount!!  I just bought one and did not have any issues redeeming to my Amazon Account.

In addition, in the past when I have used my Chase Ink Business Preferred card on Saveya.com it has been coding at 3x – which is 4.50% towards travel!  So all in you’re getting almost 9% on these Amazon cards.

For some of you, you may already be earning 5% on Amazon using either the Chase Amazon card of the Synchrony Amazon card but you’re getting a bigger return with this deal.  Not sure how long it will last, check it out below:

https://www.saveya.com/buy/amazon-com-gift-cards

Why buying the cheapest and most discounted gift card you can find might be a good idea

I was searching around CardCash.com the other day and stumbled upon a DEEP discount on a gift card.  “Charming Charlie” cards were selling at a whopping 50% off.  Have I ever been to a Charming Charlie? Nope.  Did I even know what they sold? Nope.

I did a quick google search on the company and they more are less are a store that sells chotskies, fine with me.  I did see some of these cards listed on Ebay selling for about 20% off.

So I bought a $300 card for $150 on CardCash and listed on Ebay at $260.  It took a couple weeks and I eventually lowered my sell price to $230 but after Ebay fees and shipping I made about $53.00 or a 36% return!

As always the key on Ebay is to ship something physical and not email or message out the gift card info.  So I got myself a Charming Charlie logo, stuck it on a piece of paper with the gift card code, and sent it out.  While some of these heavily discounted gift cards may not be as liquid, the deep discount allows you a lot of wiggle room on price and being able to make a profit.

Why I applied for the Capital One Venture Card

For the Sign up bonus primarily! But there are other perks as well:

• 50,000 point sign up bonus after $3,000 spend in 3 months
  • These points when used towards travel are worth $500 and the great thing about Capital One is that you can redeem these in any increment (no minimum of $100 like we usually see)
  • Another benefit is that these points can be used towards ANY travel purchase and you are not limited to a specific travel portal like Chase Ultimate Rewards
• 2x travel points on all purchases so I am really redeeming 56,000 points once I get my sign up bonus
• 10x travel points for all purchases at Hotels.com
  • This isnt great because you can usually buy discount Hotels.com giftcards on sites like Amazon and Ebay for 10% off or more and then use a cash back portal in addition but its definetly not bad
• $100 TSA/Global entry reimbursement.  I have tons of these by now so not very useful
• Waived $95 fee for the first year – this is big for me
• No Foreign Transaction Fees

Overall will I keep this card after a year when the fee kicks in?  Definitely not, I will look to downgrade it as I have much higher earning cards on both everyday spend and specialty categories.  Also the card has no travel partners so you can’t even transfer the points to an airline or hotel for a better redemption.  I would advise all to only get this card for the sign up bonus.

Staples: $100 Lowe’s Giftcard For $90 + 5x using Chase Ink (Limit Of 3)

New offer on Staples.com for 10% off Lowe’s eGift cards (Limit of 3).  Expires 7/28/2018.

Direct Link to Offer

I would use your Chase Ink Cash here to earn 5x points and then transfer to the Sapphire Reserve for 7.5% total toward travel.  If you shop at Lowes good for you, if not you can unload these on Raise.com for about 3.8% discount and when adding in Raise’s 10% bulk seller fee your return is about 3.5% – 4.0% or a quick $10 if you buy 3 of these.

Lowe’s sells quickly on Raise so shouldn’t be too much work here.

Grand Hyatt Baha Mar – An Excellent Reward Option for Chase and Hyatt Cardholders

This past January, I stayed 4 nights at the Grand Hyatt Baha Mar in Nassau, Bahamas using points.  Firstly Delta flies direct from JFK so I used my Delta Points to book and was able to get a free checked bag with my American Express Gold Business Delta Card.

Right now as an example Jan 10th – 14th rates for a Fountain View King Room is $232/night.  BUT the catch is that along with this rate you will pay $381.00 in additional fees and taxes! Woof.  This Hyatt property is considered category 5 which cost 20,000 Hyatt points per night.  Keep in mind when booking through Hyatt this 20,000 rate includes EVERYTHING including taxes and those annoying resort fees.

When I visited I went for another option – the Club Access rate for 27,000 point per night.  This includes a better room (Usually Fountain or Ocean View), and access to the Club on the ground floor which was excellent.  The Club offers free breakfast with a wide array of hot and cold options, coffee, and cold drinks. Then starting at 5pm they start serving dinner food and free alcoholic drinks (premium brands too)!

Club access is well worth the extra 7,000 per day because you can literally save hundreds of dollars on food and drink which are quite expensive at Baha Mar.  The Club is also spacious, not very crowded, and right on the fountain with outdoor and indoor seating options.

Some might argue that booking through Chase is still valuable because of the 1.5x multiple (booking through Hyatt is a 1:1 transfer so you would be losing out on this) but with Chase you still need to pay those resort fees and Club Access will be much more expensive.

For another good review of the property see The Points Guys’ post below:

https://thepointsguy.com/reviews/grand-hyatt-baha-mar/

Chase Sapphire Reserve Review – Best Credit Card on the Market

I LOVE THIS CARD!

Apply Below:

https://www.referyourchasecard.com/19/OV1ZRVFKIW

Ok with that out of the way lets talk about why.

• This card earns a whopping 3x ultimate reward points on Dining and Travel.  The travel categories are broad with taxis, ubers, parking lots, car rentals all included in 3x.
• On the back end this card offers a 1.5x multiple when using points toward travel in the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal
• The portal is excellent and offers almost the entire universe of hotels and flights
• You can also link your frequent flyer numbers to your Chase account to earn points with the airline as well!
• When factoring in the 1.5x on the back end you are really earning 4.5% on Dining and Travel and 1.5% on everything else when redeeming toward travel using the Ultimate Rewards Portal
• Comprehensive primary rental car insurance – if your an urbanite who does not own a car this is very useful
• Priority Pass Lounge Network access.  This is an excellent perk allowing access to hundreds of airport lounges across the world.  This can save you hundreds of dollars in food and drink when travelling and also offers a more comfortable experience than traditional waiting areas plus there is usually free WiFi!
• No foreign transaction fees
• $100 credit for Global Entry/TSA precheck to speed thru security
• Access to the the Luxury Hotel & Resort Collection – these usually 5 star hotels include deals that include a dining credit, breakfast, room upgrade, and late checkout
• Excellent travel transfer partners including Southwest, Flying Blue, United, Marriott, and Hyatt (my personal favorite of these)
• Keep in mind these points offer such good value that it’s really not necessary to transfer to other partners!

Some other great perks not mentioned in the Chase writeups is the ability to transfer points from any other Chase Ultimate Rewards earning card to the Reserve which allows you to use that lucrative 1.5x multiple on your points.

• An example of this is the Chase Freedom Unlimited which earns 1.5x points everywhere.  After transferring these points to the Reserve you can multiply 1.5 x 1.5 giving you a 2.25% return when redeemed for Travel!

The card has a $450 annual fee BUT there is a $300 yearly travel credit which includes the broad range of travel categories I mentioned above so I look at this fee as $150 per year.  

https://www.referyourchasecard.com/19/OV1ZRVFKIW