How You Can Score A FREE Flight To Santorini, Greece

 

One of the most amazing trips I ever took was to the Greek Islands including the island of Santorini pictured above. I spent one month traveling from island to island enjoying the sun, ruins, blue-roofed homes and yummy food. This has to be on everyone's bucket list. 

Now Aegean Airlines is offering 5,000 award miles just for signing up for their program. The miles never expire so this is really a no-brainer. Aegean Airlines is a Greek airline and a Star Alliance partner. A quick check shows 5,000 reward miles are valued at approximately $72 and can get you a FREE flight from Athens to any Greek island. Pretty sweet!

Or you could use it for short flights to neighboring countries. A quick search of other flights shows that a flight from Athens to neighboring countries like Italy, Turkey, and Croatia cost about 7,000 reward miles and hop over to London or anywhere in Europe for 11,000 reward miles. 

Aegean Airlines has a shopping portal and reward mile earning deals with Booking.com and other booking sites for hotels and cars. So you could run this up pretty quickly and save hundreds on flights. Plus Aegean Airlines is a partner with Star Alliance so you could use the reward miles to book on United and other airlines. Aegean Airlines typically charges less miles for the same flights as United. 

Just use this link to register and open a new account. Once the promotion ends, you will see 5,000 award miles deposited into your account. You will also get 1,000 miles that count towards Elite status if that's important to you. 

Big Bonuses Offered To Small Business

 

Two great new offers from Chase for small businesses. Both cards carry no annual fee and a $750 bonus for a $7,500 minimum spend. That's the highest offer Chase has ever offered on these two cards. Remember many businesses and side gigs can qualify as a small business. 

So which one to choose? 

• Ink Unlimited offers 1.5% cashback on all purchases. It's the ultimate in simplicity. 
• Ink Business Cash offers 5x points on internet, cable, office supply stores and phone, 2x on gas stations and restaurants, and 1x on everything else. 

Remember both of these cards actually earn Chase Ultimate Reward points which you can use at dozens of hotels, airlines, in the travel portal, cashback or to erase certain purchases. And if you have a Sapphire Preferred or Reserve card, you can transfer your points to those cards increasing their value even more. Check it out here. 

Huge Bonus From The #1 Shopping Portal

 

If you follow me at all, you know how much I love shopping portals. Portals are FREE money and I love that! They are essentially a marketplace of retailers that offer cashback, miles, or points in exchange for being listed on the marketplace. What does this mean for you? I call it leveraged spending, it sounds like a very financial term, but it really just means getting more value out of each purchase. 

Picture this, you need to buy a new toilet from Home Depot. You can buy it straight from homedepot.com, you can walk into the store and buy it OR you can click on a shopping portal to reach homedepot.com and buy it there and get 3%-10% cashback. Woohoo! 

Most of the airlines and Chase offer shopping portals plus there are a few cashback portals including my favorite Rakuten used to be Ebates. 

Stores come and go and the cashback rates change all the time. I use cashbackmonitor.com to check the percentages for retailers. The best part is when you get the email from Rakuten saying you have a big fat check on the way. If you are not a Rakuten member yet, use this link to open your account and you will get $40 when you spend $40. Cha-ching! 

How You Can Score Another FREE National Park Pass

 

Do you have a fifth grader? If so, you now qualify for a FREE National Park Pass. Before today, the FREE pass was awarded only to 4th grade students, but now it has been expanded to include fifth graders too. 

So if you took advantage of the FREE pass last year when you had a 4th grader, well, now I'm assuming your child is in fifth grade and qualifies you again. 

Nice! 

There are 421 National Parks in the US including Yellowstone National Park pictured above and entry fees vary from just a few dollars to $35 per day. So the pass is a huge savings and it's good for the car not just for the people inside. 

Last year, we visited three National Parks in one trip, Glacier National Park, Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Tetons, the pass saved us hundreds of dollars. 

To get the pass for your 4th grader, you need to click on the official site, but for your 5th grader, you can just print the voucher and place it on the dashboard of your car. 

If you don't have a 4th or 5th grader, the pass sells for just $80 per year and is good for 12 months (the month you buy it in and the entire year). There are several days a year that are fee-free days too like Veteran's Day. 

Incredible Chase Sapphire Preferred 80,000 Bonus Offer Ends Sunday

 

Probably the highest ever bonus offer we have ever seen for the Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card, 80,000 points ends Sunday. Wow! 80,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points can be worth up to $1,000 in travel or right now, $925 in FREE groceries. 

So who is eligible for this card? According to Chase, if you have never held a Sapphire credit card before, you are eligible OR if it's been at least 48 months since you have held a Sapphire credit card, you are eligible. 

The fine details include a $95 annual fee which is not waived for the first year and $4,000 minimum spend in the first three months. 

The Sapphire Preferred is one of my favorite travel cards because Ultimate Rewards points are so flexible. You can transfer them to dozens of airlines plus several hotel chains. You can also use them in the Chase travel portal with a 25% bonus. Through the end of the month, you can also pay yourself back by using the points at a 25% bonus to erase grocery purchases. 

How You Can Earn Bonus Miles On Your Holiday Purchases

 

If you follow my blog, you know how much I love shopping portals! It's FREE money. And now, the airlines are offering bonus points on your purchases when you click through the portals. So how does it work?

Think of a shopping portal like Target or Costco, it's a collection of stores on the shelf. Except the difference is that you get a bonus every time you choose to buy a product. The retailers agree to offer cash back or points or miles bonuses in exchange for being displayed on the store shelf. 

Most of the airlines American, United, Southwest, Jet Blue, Spirit, British Airways, Delta, Alaska, Virgin Atlantic have portals. Hotels like Choice and Wyndham have portals. Amtrak has a portal too. And then Chase Ultimate Rewards, Wells Fargo, and Barclays have portals and then there are the cashback ones like Rakuten. I use cashbackmonitor.com to find the best percentage normally when I make a purchase OR I'll use the portal to top off an account. 

However, during the holidays, the airline portals launch bonus promotions that are great to take advantage of. 

The bonus right now can earn you up to 5,000 bonus miles!  

United - spend $100, get 500 bonus miles 

             spend $500, get 2,500 bonus miles 

             spend $1,000, get 5000 bonus miles 

Southwest - spend $100, get 500 bonus miles 

                   spend $500, get 1000 bonus miles 

                   spend $1000, get 3,500 bonus miles 

Plus United is giving up to a 1,000-mile bonus if you are a new shopper. So next time, you go to make an online purchase, check those portals first, and watch the miles/points/cash back add up.

If you use my link for Rakuten, a cashback portal, you get a $30 bonus when you make your first purchase! 

Activate Your Lyft Pink Membership by Oct. 31

 

One of the many benefits of the Chase Sapphire Reserve card is a one year FREE membership to Lyft Pink. Now Chase has extended the membership another five months. Lyft Pink membership includes preferred pricing, priority airport pickups, exclusive offers with one year of complimentary Lyft Pink, a minimum value of $199, when you or your authorized user activates with a Reserve card by March 31, 2022. Lyft Pink will be registered in the name of the cardmember who first activates the benefit. To receive the Lyft Pink benefits, the enrolled cardmember must use their Reserve card to pay for Lyft rides.

 If you activated your membership already then you do not need to do anything. If you did not activate it yet, you need to do that before October 31, 2020 by logging into your Chase account and clicking on the Ultimate Rewards dashboard. 

The Sapphire Reserve comes with the following benefits:

• Flexibility with Ultimate Reward Points 
• 1.5 value in the travel portal 
• $300 travel credit 
• $100 global entry credit 
• Priority Pass Lounge membership 
• FREE Lyft Pink membership
• FREE Doordash Pass 

I value Lyft Pink membership at $199.  You already get 10x points through March 2022 when you use your Chase Sapphire Reserve to pay when you ride Lyft

If you feel like the Sapphire Reserve's $550 annual fee is out of your comfort level, then opt for the Sapphire Preferred credit card. Right now, it is offering 80,000 Ultimate Reward points for a $4,000 spend with just a $95 annual fee. This card offers the most flexibility since you can transfer points to hotels and airlines plus cash them in for cashback.