Author Archives: Gomanson

Half an Update

My apologies for the lack of updates, folks. It’s the busy season at work and I’ve been running from one fire to the next (some days literally!). Since I had to skip the last weekly review, consider this a preview of the upcoming bi-weekly catch-up review.

Menards has it’s 11% sale again this week, so there are no free-after-rebate items. On Tuesday I used the big gas coupon, for $1.00 off per gallon on 25 gallons. In the past week and a half, I’ve used free gas tactics to get 31.18 in free gas!

For the first time in my life, I owed money back on income taxes. How better to turn a bad situation into a good one than to earn some miles or points by paying the man! Part of the intent for my last round of card apps was to utilize this guaranteed spend. Expect to see a full post on this in the coming days.

That’s all for now; my 5 minutes of peace are over. Back to the grindstone…

Weekly Review (April 7, 2015)

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It’s been a busy week- with value tactics and at work. This weekly review is a day late. What are they gonna do, take away my birthday?

I used the free gas tactic to get $6.52 worth of free gas this week. At Menards this week I made off with $179.51 in free stuff! For a complete list of items I got with free-after-rebate deals, check out my recent post.

New Posts this Week
– Menards Haul This week I featured some unadvertised free-after-rebate items, including a couple no quantity limit items. I also explain how I got an instant rebate check for expired sale items.
– My Last Round of Credit Card Applications – Overview outlines my latest mini app-party and briefly gets into the reasons I only got two cards this time. This post also has links to the most up to date info on the card offers I took advantage of.

Credit Card News
In addition to the two new cards I added to my wallet, we had some other card maintenance to do last week. Nicoleen’s annual fee was due for her American Express Delta Gold card, so she called to cancel. I’ll do a full post on her phone call within the next few days, but here’s a preview: She’s going to pay the annual fee and keep the card open (gasp!) 🙂

Now you’re updated. Go employ some Value Tactics!

My Last Round of Credit Card Applications – Overview

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The last weekly update mentioned I was going to do a mini app-o-rama. I applied online for 2 cards that night: the CitiBusiness Platinum Select American Airlines AAdvantage World MasterCard (what a mouthful!), and the Chase IHG Rewards Club card. I’ll post full reviews of each card later, but for now I’ll just mention each card’s bonus offer.

CitiBusiness American Airlines AAdvantage card: 50k miles after $3k in 3 months spend
Chase IHG card: 70k IHG points after $1k in 3 months spend

Here’s how my online applications fared:

Boooo… No one likes to get the “Application Pending” message. It’s so anticlimactic compared to the “Congratulations! You’re awesome enough to get our great rewards card! Great job, sport!” message you get when you’re instantly approved. Alas, I got two ‘pendings’ so I called both reconsideration lines the next day.

I got through to a live person with Chase after 1 ring. After I asked about the application he quickly put me on hold so he could find someone to review my app. When he came back after 3 minutes and told me to hold again I asked him if my total credit limit with Chase was the reason my application was pending. He said it was over the limit he’s authorized to approve, but he had recommended a credit increase (meaning I would get the new card) based on my credit report. Before he could get me on hold again I asked him if he could just transfer some credit limit for the new card from one of my existing Chase cards. He quickly told me that it would work, he asked which card I wanted the credit limit transferred from and how much, and put me on hold to finalize it.

When he came back after another 3-4 minutes the application was approved, pending identity confirmation. He added Rachel to the call (same person I talked to last time I needed to verify my ID) and after a few questions she verified that it was really me. Everything went quickly, smoothly, and most importantly, the way I wanted it. I’ll chalk this call up to another example of Chase’s excellent customer service.

The next call was to Citi’s application status hotline. After hearing that my app was still in process, I followed the prompts to speak to customer service. This may have been a mistake since I already had a direct phone number to the CitiBusiness recon line. I think all I got for my laziness was an extra 20 minutes on hold. When I finally got a real person on the line, it went very smoothly. He checked on my application and verified my income and identity. After 2-3 minutes on hold he informed me I was approved and would get the card in the mail within 5-7 business days. It arrived a week later (today). Overall the Citi customer service was good, but the hold time was annoying.

Why only 2 card applications, bro?
Good question. A friend of mine questioned my choice and number of cards for this latest round, and I don’t blame him. Conventional wisdom says “App 3 cards; make each app-o-rama count, son!” While I usually agree with that wisdom, there are several reasons for my decision to only get 2 cards this time around.

We may be applying for a mortgage or mortgage pre-approval within the next few months. While my high 700s credit score probably won’t suffer enough to make a difference on a loan application, I don’t want to push it. My logic may be a bit off, but it makes me feel better to tone it down a bit for the time being.
There are no *spectacular* offers out there at the moment. All the standard “good” offers that are available right now are already in my wallet or in my safe. And the really good cards I still have yet to get (Chase Hyatt, Southwest Rapid Rewards to name a few) don’t fit into my timing strategy at this point.

Overall, this nice little app round gets me 50k AAdvantage miles (currently my favorite airline miles) and [at least] 70k IHG points, which fills a weak point in my overall points and miles portfolio. Stay tuned for more details on the offers, as well as full reviews on my new cards!

In the meantime, here are the links to the flyertalk wikis for the cards in this post. The wikis contain links to the card offers; and the most recent forum posts contain data and reports on people’s recent applications and bonus offers.
Flyertalk IHG Card wiki
Citi American Airlines cards/offers

Menards Haul (with unadvertised rebate items!)

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Over the last two weeks I picked up $179.51 in free stuff from Menards! And more importantly, I found out what happens when you buy a rebate item from a sale that has expired, but that still has the sign up in the store.

On Wednesday evening I went into the store to buy the current week’s free-after-rebate items. Since it was so late in the week, I missed out on 4x Loctite Repair Putty (they were sold out in all nearby stores). But I maxed my quantities on all the other items from the flyers:

4 pop-up cotton towels 8-pack
1 36″ stainless steel yardstick*
10 electronics wipes 20-pack
2 jar/bottle opener
1 stain brush
5 paint brushes

* Limit was 2 but I was out of rebate checks and didn’t want to invest any more real money into this tactic.

Then I started spotting free-after-rebate items that I hadn’t seen on any advertisements. There may have been even more of these items, but I didn’t take the time to check every corner of the store. Here are the additional items I picked up for free:

4 rug grippers
10 colorful Loom Bandz bracelet kits (no quantity limit!)
6 [low quality / outdated] Nintendo DS and Wii games (no quantity limit!)

I also found rolls of wallpaper and wallpaper borders free-after-rebate with no quantity limit, but I decided they weren’t worth my trouble (or storage space).

When I put the 6 video games in my cart, I considered looking up their current prices online and returning to the store the next day if they were worth anything. I’m glad I decided to just pick up 6 of them that night, because when I was getting my rebate forms before leaving the store, I realized the register hadn’t printed a rebate receipt for the games. When I asked about it at the service counter, they discovered that the sign had been accidentally left up, and the sale had ended the day before (March 31st). I asked if I would have to return them, but the associate told me they have a way of working around their computer system when trying to print rebate receipts for expired sale items. So instead of getting a rebate receipt, they printed me a rebate check on the spot!

The new flyer starts tomorrow. The only free-after-rebate items I saw is the ever popular SealBest Elastomeric Blacktop Crack Filler (limit 6) and a 10-pack of dust masks (limit 1).

Stay up to date on current deals at Menards by checking their ad flyers page.

Weekly Review (March 30, 2015)

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Lots to report this week…

I used the free gas tactic to get $9.82 worth of free gas this week. That brings my 2015 total to $149.66, which means that 17.6% of my work commute this year has been FREE!

Menards had their 11% sale last week but this week’s ad flyer has 4 free items.

Look for a Menards haul post later this week.

New Posts this Week
– My Favorite Blogs is a list of websites that I used to get my start. I still visit them frequently to make sure I don’t miss any big news. In the post I give a brief review of each site and lay out what I use them for. You’ll find some great resources there.

Credit Card News
Nicoleen has three cards to cancel or downgrade in the next couple weeks. Check the site daily or subscribe to my RSS feed to get the reports of how it goes and whether she manages to get any retention bonuses or avoid annual fees.

I will be doing a mini-app party as soon as I’m done writing this post. Stay tuned to read what cards I’m applying for!

Points & Miles News
The biggest news of the week is that as of today, all U.S. Airways Dividend Miles accounts and American Airlines AAdvantage miles accounts are now officially merged. Check out Milevalue’s report here.

Now you’re updated. Go employ some Value Tactics!

My Favorite Blogs

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ValueTactics.com could never be complete if I didn’t write a post about my favorite sources. Anyone blogging about credit cards, points, miles, etc. is truly standing on the shoulders of giants. I figured it might help my readers to learn where I get much of my info.

If you’ve been in this game for any amount of time, these websites will be familiar to you. In our little corner of the blogosphere these are the heavy hitters, and without their influence, I would not have had the motivation to start my own website. So, without further introduction:

www.thepointsguy.com
Probably the best well-known blog of its type out there. Brian Kelly, the site’s founder, definitely has the charisma and marketing knack to keep the site at the top of most google searches. He and his team keep the site up-to-the-minute with new cards offers, airline and hotel news, and points strategies.

The Points Guy isn’t my favorite blog, but oddly enough it tends to be the first one I check when I need to get myself updated after a few days off. I guess that’s a testament to google’s influence, and the site’s branding itself. The blog just got a major styling overhaul, making it much more device-friendly, although the full version got a bit slower and resource-heavy. Although The Points Guy is a good source for up-to-date offers and news, the frequency of more general interest travel posts often buries the headline blog posts. Recently I’ve been doing more skimming than reading on The Points Guy.

www.millionmilesecrets.com
Another giant in the points blogging world, Million Mile Secrets is run by Daraius Dubash and his wife Emily. Like The Points Guy, this blog is a sure bet to find breaking points and miles news, and with about the same amount of filler posts.

I have always found the site’s visual style to be disruptive, but the content is quite good. I especially appreciate that the primary author usually travels with his wife. Their flight reviews are especially helpful to me, since I usually travel with Nicoleen. Like The Points Guy, Million Mile Secrets is heavily focused on funneling readers to commission-earning credit card application pages. But, to both sites’ credit, they provide ample disclaimers that they do earn profit off your card applications; and both sites will usually inform you if there’s a better offer than their affiliate-linked one for a particular card.

www.milevalue.com
Milevalue is my go-to site for anything related to the airline miles side of things. The author, Scott Grimmer is an expert at finding available award seats, planning itineraries, and generally maximizing airline miles. I especially like how deep his analyses are. Milevalue gets more into detail on the best current flights and how to get on them for free. I appreciate that it’s a bit more focused than other sites. These isn’t nearly as much post filler as the aforementioned blogs. As much as I enjoy and utilize the content, the recent revamp of the sites theme grinds on me and I find it much harder than the old site to navigate and to read articles.

Oh, and did I mention Scott Grimmer lives in Hawaii? Yeah, he’s pretty much on vacation all the time; that’s borderline cheating 🙂

www.frugaltravelguy.com
This is another great site to stay up-to-date on every little policy change, point devaluation, and card offer out there. Founded by Rick Ingersoll, the site has a small team of writers, with Howie Rappaport the most conspicuous.

Frugal Travel Guy has by far the best looking and clutter free site design of the group. (I’m quite envious actually.) What I especially love about this website are the posts that are more reflective and mature than the average points and miles blog post. There are many posts and articles here that are useful long after a particular deal is expired, because they offer a lot of good tips on overall strategy and decision-making. For in-depth, non-time specific reading, Frugal Travel Guy is my favorite.

There are many other websites that offer different approaches and tips on points, miles, cards, etc. Some of the honorable mentions are: Deals We Like (I recently studied up on the Chase IHG card here), Mommy Points, and Travel Summary.

All of the above blogs (and of course ValueTactics.com!) are great resources on saving money, getting free money, and traveling in style for free. However, the undisputed champion of detailed info on card offers and miles programs is not a blog at all. It’s a forum: Flyertalk.
Flyertalk is basically the raw data whence the bloggers derive their content.

I use Flyertalk (I’m a major lurker) to find data regarding people’s most recent experiences with whatever I’m trying to do. In the forum you can usually find daily reports of results from people trying to do whatever tactical moves you are interested in; be it applying for a card, fishing for a retention bonus, having offers matched, etc. Whenever I find something I want to pursue in a blog post, I usually go to Flyertalk for further details.

Many of the sites I discussed in this post contain links to card applications and other services that earn the site’s authors commission. After you’ve confirmed the link goes to the best available offer, consider using these affiliate links for your purchases and card applications. Bloggers are people too, and need financial support to do what we do! Although I don’t have much for advertising, I would appreciate it if you check out my current promoted card links, found in the left column (located beneath the posts on smaller devices) and using these links to apply to your card. In any case, give your clicks to those referring websites which you think added some value to your endeavor!

Weekly Review (March 23, 2015)

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I redeemed 8,750 My SA Rewards points for the 0.50/gallon gas coupon and used it on double coupon Tuesday this week. I pumped $26.50 in free gas on that purchase. That brings my total free gas (for work commute miles only) to $139.84 since January 1st! Learn how I did it at my free gas tactical page.

I did my monthly spreadsheet update for my wife’s and my credit card accounts. In the past month we:

redeemed no points or miles
earned 1,895 airline miles
earned 8,443 hotel points
earned 1,193 Ultimate Rewards/other points
avoided $99.47 in interest charges

New Posts this Week
– Are you too disorganized for this stuff? NO! is a response to those who have told me they just couldn’t keep due dates, card info, bonus requirements, etc. straight; and therefore can’t get into the credit card game. I explain how you may not have to be as organized as you think. And when you stop and think about the costs and benefits of making yourself do the minimum amount of organization to make this work, it’s well worth your effort.

Website Update
The to-do list of modifications I need to make to the site layout and design code keeps growing, but I have had no time to devote to it. Running a website as a one-man show is hard!

Those of you following ValueTactics on Facebook will need to update your bookmarks and “like” the new page here. The combination of my ignorance and Facebook’s complete lack of customer service* has resulted in the need for a reborn page.

Now you’re updated. Go employ some Value Tactics!

* I originally made a Facebook account for ValueTactics using the name “Value Tactics” and created the first ValueTactics Facebook page with that account. It turns out Facebook doesn’t allow “fake” accounts with an alias. I tried to move the page to my personal account, but over the years Facebook has literally removed all methods of contacting a person. All avenues of help end up making their way to the help forum, which doesn’t seem to be monitored by Facebook staff. After about 2 hours of frustration I decided to cut my losses and just create a new page with my personal account (like I should have done in the first place).

Are you too disorganized for this stuff? NO!

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“I’m too disorganized to do this stuff.” No you are not!

Friends and relatives often tell me they wouldn’t be able to manage having multiple credit cards at once because they are simply not an organized person. As I pointed out in this post, the majority of my tracking and recording isn’t necessary to get the full benefit of the tactics presented on this site. That being said, there are a few vital things you need to keep track of:

If you’re playing the credit card game there are two absolutely required things to keep on top of: on-time payments and bonus spends. Making a late payment is devastating to your success with the credit card game. Likewise, if you miscalculate something fail to make the required bonus spend, your card has just lost its most valuable benefit: the sign-up bonus. In other tactics presented on this site mistakes tend to be less costly, but there are a few you’ll want to avoid, such as missing the post-marked deadline for mail-in rebates.

Aside from avoiding these few vital errors, your level of organization and detailed tracking is up to you. Some people track every cent spent on vacations; some only redeem airline miles when they can max out their value; some coordinate app parties with their spouse to maximize card benefit duration. Others, like my parents, are very hands off. They get the few cards I recommend to them, set up automatic payments, and never look back (until they want to redeem their points!) My personal preference is to focus on recording and tracking progress, and to avoid long-term strategizing. Your level of organization is, to a large extent, a matter of personal preference.

If you still think you are too disorganized or forgetful to “get in the game” you might be interested to know that I myself am by nature extremely disorganized, prone to being late, forgetful of appointments, and generally irresponsible. This has come back to bite me on several occasions, but I try to learn from my mistakes. The only reason I manage to keep it all together most of the time is because I force myself to be organized . . . if only in this one aspect of my life. The way I see it, making a few entries in a spreadsheet or calendar (painful as it may be) is potentially worth hundreds or thousands of dollars in value. In my opinion, that’s a trade-off that is worth fighting against my nature for a few minutes a day.

I may eventually post a blank version of the spreadsheet I use to keep track of credit card payments, miles expiration, annual fee dates, etc. Until then, feel free to send me any tips or examples of your record keeping.

Read my response to the similar nay-sayers’ comment, “Value tactics are not worth the time when you consider all your tracking and recording,” in this post.

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