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    • FAQ - Money & Cashback
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Mastercard World and World Elite Benefits including Lyft, Postmates..

8/11/2019

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Mastercard updated some of the benefits available to all U.S. Based consumer card holders of World and World Elite Mastercard back in April of 2019. The most common cards which are "World Elite" are Citi Premier, Citi Prestige and Barclay Arrival+. Below are few of the benefits added which are useful in today's world of ride shares, food delivery and cell phone services. ​

$10 of Lyft credit every month:
Lyft ride sharing service has tied up with mastercard to provide "World Elite" cardholders $10 in credit each month in which you take 5 rides. The credit expires 30 days after it has been added to your lyft account. Simply add "World Elite" qualified mastercard to your lyft account and activate it in "promos" tab in the lyft App (You might need to update the lyft app to its latest). More details about this can be found here.

$5 off Postmates order of $25+:
Postmates food delivery service will give you $5 discount on every order of $25+ (before taxes and fees) when you pay using your "World" and "World Elite" mastercard. This is a useful and repeatable benefit for folks who are regular users of Postmates delivery service. More details about this can be found here. 

Up to $1,000 in Cell Phone Protection:
"World Elite" mastercard holders who pay monthly cell phone bill with their card can claim up to $1,000 per year ($800 max per claim, 2 times a year) for any damage/repair to their phones or if their phone is stolen. The benefit is directly provided by mastercard but is secondary to any coverage already available. 

Apart from above there are other benefits such as 5% back in rewards with Boxed, identity theft protection, other travel benefits. Details about all the benefits available can be found here.

​Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.

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REVISITING - MEETING MINIMUM SPEND REQUIREMENT

4/26/2013

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I wrote before on how easy it is to meet the minimum spend requirement using MoneyPak and AMEX Serve Card. Now of-course with the onset and availability of Pin based Visa/Mastercard we have new ways on meeting the minimum spend to get that new credit card sign-up bonus. Below are few possible ways on meeting your spend requirement with minimal cost to you.

Method 1: Using BlueBird AMEX Card: 

Using BlueBird Debit is by far the best way to run-up the spend meet of up to $5k/month easily. The method involves buying Visa Gift Card at stores which allow you to buy using a credit card. You can also use credit cards which bonuses specific category of purchase like grocery (Blue Cash Preferred with 6x), grocery+drug store+gas (ThankYou Preferred for 1st year with 5x) or Office Stores (Ink Bold or Ink Plus with 5x), that would increase your earning potential tremendously . The method involves setting up the pin on your Visa gift card, going to your nearest Walmart and loading the BlueBird Debit Card with the Visa gift card at any of the Money-Center Kiosk or customer service counter. You can load $1k/day upto $5/month on the card. You cannot have more than one BlueBird Card, but of-course if you have spouse you can have a card on her name as well and thus increase the amount of available loading to $10k/month.

Method 2: Buying Money Orders at Walmart and other stores which accept Visa Gift Cards:
You can use Visa Gift Cards to buy Money Orders at lot of places including Walmart. Since most places which has this service requires a pin-based debit card you should be good to purchase Money Orders using Visa Gift Cards. You can make these money orders on your spouse name which can be deposited in his/her account or if you are renting a house you can make money order on your land-lord's name as well for your rental payment.

Method 3: Buying Green Dot MoneyPak:
You can still find MoneyPak with $0 fee at many pharmacy stores which will allow you to make the purchase using a Visa Gift Card with pin. This is of-course is YMMV but can help to liquidate the Visa Gift Card by eventually using MoneyPak to load to variety of prepaid cards including MyGreenDot which allows free MoneyPass ATM withdrawal's and a great way of meeting minimum spend. Of-course the incentive of using Visa Gift Card for buying MoneyPak is that Visa Gift Cards are available in wide variety of stores and thus you can use a credit card which bonuses your purchase of Visa Gift Card and thus multiply your points/cash-back earned.

P.S. You can of-course meet your minimum spend requirement with $0 cost or make even a profit by purchasing Visa Gift Card online from giftcardmall through cash back portals like BigCrumbs and TopCashBack. FrequentMiler has a wonderful article on this which would be of your interest.

Disclosure: I do not earn any commission on above credit card links but I do earn a referral bonus if you use my BigCrumbs or TopCashBack links. 

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MAXIMIZING gift card BUYING VALUE ON EBAY

1/23/2013

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We all want to maximize the % of cash back on our day to day shopping, specially at stores for which the gift cards are easily available. Assuming you can get one of the Cash Back Card which gives quarterly rotating category bonus of 5% such as Discover IT credit card or Chase Freedom credit card or American Express Blue Cash Preferred credit card which gives 6% cash-back on stand-alone super markets or grocery stores (limited to max $6k/year) you can easily get atleast 5% or 6% off of your gift card purchase from the stores included in above categories. The interesting twist here is if you can find a store which falls in 5% or 6% cash-back category and sells the Ebay/MasterCard/Visa gift card you can further stretch your dollars to easily get a total discount of anywhere from 7% to 20% on the final merchant gift card which you can eventually use for your actual purchase. Below are couple of ways on how to get this to work!

Buying merchant gift cards using Ebay gift cards: 
Note: You will need to have a PayPal account or create one for this to work.
  • If you are US resident, register for Ebay bucks program which gives 2% Ebay bucks for almost all the purchases on Ebay. This Ebay bucks are 1:1 dollar value and can be used for any of your future purchases on Ebay.
  • Buy Ebay gift card at one of the grocery stores which provides either 5% or 6% cash-back on your purchase. 
  • Go through Ebay and purchase the merchant gift card for the store you plan to shop in the future. You can only purchase "Buy It Now" listed gift cards immediately without bidding. Even if you purchase the merchant gift card listed at face value (e.g. $50 card listed for sale at $50), the 2% Ebay bucks rebate will make your cash-back amount atleast 7% (5%+2%) or 8% (6%+2%).
  • If you are willing to spend some time and try your hand at bidding you can more often than not get the gift card at 5% off from the face value, thus taking your total discount to 12% (5%+2%+5%). Some gift card sell at high discounts and you could be able to even score about 20% as total discount.
  • Once you "buy" the item you will see "Pay Now" button. After clicking on it you will see a field called "Redeem a Gift Card, Certificate or Coupon". You can enter your Ebay gift card number in this field to pay for your purchase. 
  • You will be taken to PayPal to complete your transaction and once you receive your merchant gift card in the mail/e-mail you can use that to make your "actual" purchase online or in-store.

Purchase using MasterCard/Visa Prepaid card:
If Ebay seems to be too limited in scope or lot of hassle you have another option below.
  • Go through the store (supermarket, grocery store or drugstore) which earns you bonus of 5% or 6% on your purchases and buy a prepaid MasterCard or Visa. Since this card have associated fees you are better off buying a high value card. A $500 MasterCard/Visa generally comes with purchase fee of $5.95, thus reducing your cash-back to 3.81% 4.81%. 
  • Use this prepaid gift card to purchase discounted merchant store gift cards from CardPool or PlasticJungle. These stores sell merchant store gift card (e-gift card and physical gift card) at a discount of 2% to 30%. You can compare the "buy" value at GiftCardGranny.com. 
  • As a bonus, buying gift card at CardPool or PlasticJungle through Cash back portal like TopCashBack.com gives you 2% to 4% discount on the buying cost of the gift card.
  • If you add it all up, you would easily save anywhere from ~7% to ~35% on the merchant store gift card purchase.

Put above techniques to use to get great discount even before you hit your store, but before you go make sure you already have 5% or 6% cash-back credit card at your disposal.

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    I love traveling / backpacking. This blog focuses on below 3 aspects of travel:
    1. Maximizing your travel experience .
    2. Sharing how to travel with miles in premium class or at discount in economy class.
    3. Great cash-back deals in travel.

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