Top 5 Portals To Use For Your Holiday Shopping

One of the best ways to earn airline miles or cash back is with shopping portals. And now as we head into the holiday season, the portals are offering bonus miles so it's easy to earn free plane tickets and hotel rooms. 

Here are my top 5 shopping portals:

1. American Airlines shopping portal - right now, you can earn up to 4,000 bonus miles if you spend $1200 by November 19th. 

2. United Airlines shopping portal - right now you can earn up to 5,000 bonus miles if you spend $1500 by November 19th. 

3. Southwest Airlines shopping portal - right now, you can earn up to 3,000 bonus miles if you spend $1,000 by November 20th. 

4. Dining reward programs where you link your credit card to the dining program offered by an airline like United or Southwest. Any time you dine at a particular restaurant that is in the program, you earn bonus points. 

5. Ebates.com for cash back on purchases. When we went returned home from Europe, ebates.com sent me a check for $54. Nice. 

Remember, always set your credit cards on autopay and pay them off each and every month in full. That's how we do almost FREE family travel. 

Starbucks: Load $20, Get 300 FREE Stars

Through our friends at Doctor of Credit,  we discovered Starbucks is offering 300 FREE stars if you load $20 onto your card through the Starbucks app and pay with Chase Pay.
Chase Pay is similar to Visa Checkout and other type services. You will need to link a credit card to use it.

Offer is valid November 15-21.

Here's the fine print:

Promotional Offer Terms: Offer valid 11/15/17 – 11/21/17. Starbucks Rewards™ Members load your Starbucks Card/App using Chase Pay® and collect three hundred (300) Bonus Stars. Bonus Stars will be automatically loaded to this Starbucks Rewards™ account within 24 hours. These Bonus Stars cannot be combined with other offers, promotions or discounts. Bonus Stars do not apply towards Star Dashes. This offer is exclusively for Starbucks Rewards™ Members. Limit one per person. Offer good in the U.S. only.

Promotion Period: The Promotion Period runs from 12:01 AM PST on 11/15/17 and ends at 11:59 PM PST on 11/21/17.

Eligibility: This offer is open to residents of the 50 United States and D.C. who have a valid Chase Pay® account.

This offer is not from Chase. Chase is not responsible for the provision of or failure to provide the stated benefits and services.

*Bonus stars will be loaded onto your account within 24 hours of purchase

Buy An Easy 1,000 United Miles For $1

Buy an easy 1,000 United miles for just $1 and get a digital subscription to the Wall Street Journal. Offer ends November 16th. And be sure to make the cancellation by date on your calendar so you don't get charged $36.99 per month for the subscription after the trial ends.
This is a good way to top off an account or to reset an expiration date. You can only get this offer once in a lifetime.
That's how we do almost FREE family travel.

Why You Might Want To Shop At Walmart This Holiday Season

One of top reasons to have a Chase Freedom credit card are the rotating bonus categories each quarter. This Q4 2017, the bonus categories include 5% cash back at Walmart.com. So if you are doing some holiday shopping at Walmart.com, you should put those purchases on your Chase Freedom card. The bonus caps at $1500 cash back. 

There are two Chase Freedom cards to pick from: Chase Freedom and Chase Freedom Unlimited. Both have bonus categories. Both have no annual fees. Both come with a 15,000 point bonus for making a minimum of $500 spend in the first 3 months. The Unlimited earns an additional 1.5% cash back on purchases. 

The drawback to this card is that you cannot transfer points to airlines or hotels. It is strictly a cash back card. If you have the Chase Sapphire Preferred or Ink card, then you can transfer points to travel partners. 

Win A Volunteer Travel Trip From Jet Blue #checkinforgood

Jet Blue is offering all expenses paid weekend volunteer trips to Montego Bay, Jamaica, Houston, Texas and Nassau, Bahamas. It's part of the airlines month long humanitarian mission called Jet Blue For Good
To be considered, you need to fill out a short questionaire and write a short essay. 22 winners and their guests will be chosen.
The humanitarian trip is scheduled for 11/27-11/29/2017 and the fine print indicates you are responsible for transportation to and from JFK in New York City. Jet Blue will also give participants a $250 gift card for any items not covered.
Good luck! Let us know if you win.

New Rules Make It Harder For Americans To Visit Cuba

Starting tomorrow, it's going to be harder for Americans to travel to Cuba. President Trump once again issues tighter restrictions on travel and business with Cuba. US tourists and companies will no longer be able to do business with a long list of hotels, shops, rum producers and real estate firms who allegedly do business with the government. 

US tourists will also no longer be able to visit the island nation on people to people exchange programs. They must now travel with a sponsored program or American University or group. 

Any contracts signed before tomorrow will be allowed to proceed. The new travel restrictions do no apply to anyone who booked people to people trips before Trump's speech back in June or educational or humanitarian travel before Nov. 9th

If you have a trip planned for Cuba, be sure to keep your paperwork handy just in case you face an issue.  

Wow.....120,000 Marriott Point Offer Goes Public

If you have some big purchases coming up and you are not over Chase 5/24 rule, this might be a good option for you. This offer was targetted, but was released this week to the public. 

Here's how it works:

For every $1 you spend, you get 10 Marriott points. You can charge up to $12,000 on the card in the first year which would translate to 120,000 Marriott points. The $85 fee is waived the first year. You can add an authorized user for another 7,500 Marriott points. 

As always be sure to check the fine print especially on this offer since the points vary depending on what you are purchasing. 

What can you do with 120,000 Marriott points? You can use them for Marriott brand hotels, of course. Or you can transfer them to Starwood at 3:1 and then transfer them to dozens of airlines and get the 5,000 bonus for each 20,000 you transfer. So you could be looking at 50,000 airline miles. 

It's a high spend to get the full 120,000, however, you could spend less and still take part of the bonus. If you spend $1,000, you earn 10,000 Marriott points and so on. 

That's how we do almost FREE family travel.