Nearly complete guide to Frequent Miler resources, and more

In January, I welcomed Shawn Coomer to the Frequent Miler team.  Since then, he has helped tremendously by writing Quick Deal posts, Saturday “week in review” posts, Sunday “It’s not too late – deal’s still alive” posts, and revising and enhancing my weekly email subscription posts.  In addition to all of that, Shawn has been creating and updating many of the resources found on this site.  In this post, I’ll show you where to find these resources and, more importantly, tell you why you should care.

Finding guides:

Most of the resources described below happen to be found under the Gift Cards menu on every page of this site:

Other helpful resources can be found under other menu items: Credit Cards, Flights, Resources, Start Here.

The complete guide to Amex Offers

American Express gives statement credits (or extra points) for purchases at various merchants through their program called Amex Offers. In many cases, these offers can be quite lucrative, especially if you have a large number of qualifying Amex cards.  This guide details which Amex cards are eligible, how to get more cards (for example: Bluebird/Serve subaccounts), the best ways to register for these Amex promotions, etc.  For those new to Amex Offers, the guide should come in very handy, especially with the latest offer of Spend $50, Get $10 back at Lowe’s.  That may not sound exciting to those who rarely shop at Lowe’s, but Lowe’s does have a very healthy gift card rack and so this deal makes it possible to get 20% off Amazon.com gift cards, Disney gift cards, gas gift cards, Southwest Airlines gift cards, and much more.

The complete guide to Sears gift cards

Sears often offers great online portal promotions.  It’s often possible to earn 8 or 9 miles per dollar through various portals, and we’ve seen them go as high as 16 miles per dollar in the past.  There are a few special things about Sears that are worth knowing (and are detailed in this complete guide).  For example:

• Sears allows portal points to be earned both when buying gift cards and when spending them.  This makes it possible to double portal rewards when buying Sears’ merchandise.
• Sears sells non-Sears gift cards in-store and sometimes allows paying with Sears gift cards.
• Sears sometimes sells things that are resale worthy (if you’re interested in that path, I highly recommend subscribing to the blog Big Habitat. He’s always buying and selling stuff from Sears and Staples).

How relevant is this guide?  Yesterday I published a Quick Deal showing that the United MileagePlus portal was offering 8 miles per dollar at Sears.  In addition to offering examples of ways to buy Sears gift cards at a discount or to earn miles (as with this deal), the guide offers a number of suggestions of how to use the gift cards.  I recommend reading the guide first before deciding whether or not to buy.

The complete guide to Staples Visa & MasterCard deals

Staples sells Visa gift cards online and sells both Visa & MasterCard gift cards in-store.  This is significant because several credit cards offer great bonuses at office supply stores, plus Staples often offers rebates for in-store Visa or MasterCard gift cards.  In fact, a rebate offer is happening right now:

The complete guide to loading Bluebird or Serve at a Walmart MoneyCenter Express Kiosk

While its common for Walmart’s kiosks to be broken, working kiosks do exist.  If you’re new to reloading Bluebird or Serve with Visa/MasterCard gift cards, this guide should prove helpful.  For Serve owners, it may be especially relevant now that Serve will no longer allow Visa/MasterCard/Discover online credit card loads.

Other recently updated guides include:

• Best options for buying Visa and MasterCard gift cards
• Best options for buying merchant gift cards
• The complete guide to Amex gift cards

More Frequent Miler Resources

• Frequent Miler Laboratory: When buying and using gift cards, what works and what doesn’t?
• Quick Deals: Keep up to date with the latest deals.
• Portal Alerts: Daily feed showing which merchants have increased or decreased their best portal payouts. Tip: click the merchant name for full details of that merchant’s current portal payouts.
• Credit cards: best signup offers: This page is updated almost daily with links to the best known public credit card offers. Most links are not affiliate links. If I know of a better offer than one I have available through affiliate channels, I’ll always show that one instead (or, in addition to, if they have different pros and cons).
• Credit cards: best category bonuses: If you’re wondering which credit cards offer the best bonuses at grocery stores, hotels, charities, whatever, this is the place to go.
• Gift cards: The complete guide to Bluebird, REDcard, Serve, and SoftServe: Each person can have just one. Which is best?
• Gift cards: The complete guide to REDbird: The Target Prepaid REDcard: All of your questions about this great new product are answered in one place.
• Flights: Transfer Partner Master List: An interactive spreadsheet showing all of the transfer partners (airlines, hotels, and train) of each transferable points program: Amex Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards, Citi ThankYou Rewards, Diner’s Club, and SPG.

And even more…

There are many more resources listed in the menus at the top of each page. Please take some time to click around.  Admittedly, some are a bit out of date, but we are working hard on correcting that!  If there are particular resources that you would like to see added or updated, please let us know by commenting below.

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