{"id":5173,"date":"2013-12-02T07:14:57","date_gmt":"2013-12-02T14:14:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldwanderlusting.com\/?p=5173"},"modified":"2013-12-01T19:01:31","modified_gmt":"2013-12-02T02:01:31","slug":"just-free-travel-210-free-spending-american-express","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldwanderlusting.com\/?p=5173","title":{"rendered":"More Than Just Free Travel, $210 in Free Spending from American Express"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am not a shopper. \u00a0I am especially not a Black Friday shopper. \u00a0A few years ago I waited in line at Best Buy at 4am in zero degree weather to get a deal on a projector only to find that they were all sold out. \u00a0That was the last time I’ve Black-Friday shopped in earnest. \u00a0I later found a comparable projector online for a better price. \u00a0In fact, more often than not, I find buying online infinitely easier and cost effective.<\/p>\n

I have, however, anxiously participated in the American Express Small Business Saturday promotion, where American Express kindly offers reimbursements for purchases at local businesses. \u00a0In years past, when you registered a card and then spend at least $25, they made a one-time $25 reimbursement to your account. \u00a0This year it shrank to $10, but considering that I have six (6) American Express cards, it made for $60 in free spending on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Because I’m such a cheap bugger, I have a hard time spending money impromptu, so my strategy is generally to get giftcards that I can use later, so on Saturday I got $30 in ten-dollar giftcards at a local bookstore, $20 to a restaurant, and $10 to a bakery.<\/p>\n

Being aware of the offers that are out there gave me the exhilarating experience of shopping with someone else’s money… but wait, it gets even better.<\/p>\n

Now, I’ve registered my 6 American Express cards with this Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" promotion to get $25 back on a $75 purchase.<\/a>\u00a0 Then I went and bought 6 $75 giftcards – one with each card. In the end I have $450 in Amazon.com Giftcards that I paid $300 for. \u00a0Amazon giftcards are as good as cash for me, considering how much I prefer to buy online.<\/p>\n

Overall, I’ve hauled in $210 on two little promotions, expanding my free-travel addiction to include benefits that will help me feel less-guilty about making some selfish purchases.<\/p>\n

Bottom line here is that there are peripheral benefits to being a consummate gatherer of free travel credit cards. \u00a0Even so, the $210 pales in comparison to the value of frequent flyer miles and hotel loyalty points. \u00a0I’ve calculated the value of some of my travel redemptions to be more than $2100\/card. \u00a0It’s a very rough calculation, but if I add up all the benefits we’ve gathered between my wife and I applying for 34 credit cards in the past 3 years, I’d estimate that we’ve accumulated more than $22,000 in travel benefits. \u00a0Kind of makes the $210 seem small.<\/p>\n

Take a look at our Best Travel Credit Cards page<\/a> to see our compilation of the best offers out there at the moment.<\/p>\n

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\"Enhanced<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am not a shopper. \u00a0I am especially not a Black Friday shopper. \u00a0A few years ago I waited in line at Best Buy at 4am in zero degree weather to get a deal on a projector only to find … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[5],"tags":[1472,33,1471,128,380],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1DhXV-1lr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldwanderlusting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5173"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldwanderlusting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldwanderlusting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldwanderlusting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldwanderlusting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worldwanderlusting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldwanderlusting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldwanderlusting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldwanderlusting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}