Recap Week ending 6/21/26

Wow, what a crazy week. I (we) successfully (pretty much due to my now wife) pulled off a wedding party and now I’m a married man! I was unplugged the last few days partying it up, plus struggling to connect to internet from a remote venue.

Anyways, I was hoping to keep it short and prewrote most of my initial newsletter, but then all this crazy stuff decided to come out including new Chase offers, some cool sweepstakes I linked at the end of the newsletter, Qatar pissing everyone off with their new award booking policy, and me missing the best part of the Paze Craze while unplugged during my wedding week.

Rakuten and other shopping portals also have elevated cash back offers this week as they front run and compete with Amazon Prime Day. The elevated offers for some stores might end tonight so I would hop on it if you can, particularly Dell.

So where should I start for the crazy week?

I’ll start by reminding you again to use your expiring coupons. Use them or lose them. You essentially prepaid for these coupon credits with your $895 annual fee…

I shared this nearly-identical breakdown a few weeks ago. There’s also some coupon trackers that range from uploading your data manually into a spreadsheet to linking your financial accounts as well that I linked below. Buying gift cards works for many of these coupons by the way.

Free coupon trackers
Thrifty Traveler (link your data)
Frequent Miler (manually enter on Google Sheets)

Amex
-Amex Gold: $50 semi-annual Resy credit
-Amex Platinum & Biz Platinum: $300 FHR/Hotel Collection Credit
-Amex Biz Platinum: $50 Hilton statement credit (Starbucks dead??)
-Amex Platinum: $100 quarterly Resy credit
-Amex Platinum: $75 quarterly Lululemon credit
-Amex Platinum: $50 semi-annual Saks credit. Last time to use it!
-Amex Hilton Aspire: $200 semi-annual resort credit
-Amex Hilton Aspire: $50 quarterly flight credit
-Amex Hilton Surpass and Hilton Business: $60 quarterly Hilton credit

Chase
-Sapphire Reserve and Biz Reserve: $250 semi-annual The Edit hotel credit for prepaid stays
-Sapphire Reserve: $150 semi-annual Stubhub/Viagogo credit
-Sapphire Reserve: $150 semi-annual Sapphire Reserve Exclusive Tables credit
-Biz Reserve: $200 semi-annual ZipRecruiter credit
-Biz Reserve: $50 semi-annual credit from giftcards.com/reservebusiness
-IHG cards: $25 United Travel Bank credit on select cards that shows up in your UA account automatically when you link your card

Citi
-Strata Elite: $100 semi-annual Blacklane credit

Last week I mentioned how unless you have a Chase Reserve card, Hyatt transfers won’t be 1:1 starting October 1. I must have blacked out from all the bloggers writing about it combined with wedding planning, and mistakenly said the transfer rate would lower to 5:4 from 1:1. It’s actually worse and is 4:3. Nobody emailed me about my mistake. Shame on me for making it and shame on you for not yelling at me for it!!

Anyways, June 15 rolls around and another big update. Chase Sapphire Preferred now has a 100k sign up bonus (from 75k). Bloggers going crazy again. Anyways, it’s a great sign up bonus if you are somehow still eligible for it (Chase removed the ability to churn this every 48 months last year).

The card is pretty solid unless you only use with Hyatt, then the breakup is rough 😭. But with the $95 annual fee and $100 Chase hotel credit annually, you are net $5 before any sign up bonus. I shouldn’t mention this but you can book a prepaid but refundable hotel, get credited, and cancel the hotel -and you should generally keep the credit.

Chase Ink Cash and Chase Ink Unlimited business cards are also elevated 100k offers. These are much harder to get if you have multiple Chase business cards, and these cards now have lifetime language for the SUB.

Use your family or friend’s referrals if you haven’t gotten the cards and are interested. If you already have a Chase business relationship, then forget about the referral.

TIP: If you recently opened a Chase card that now has an elevated offer like a Chase Ink Cash, Chase Ink Unlimited, or Chase Sapphire Preferred, call or send a message to Chase to see if they will match the elevated sign up bonus. Usually they will match the offer if it was within 1-2 weeks of you opening the card vs. the elevated offer and after you met the minimum spend for the SUB.

Qatar just added restrictions for booking award flights for others. Not only can you no longer book a flight for someone else, you can’t even book a flight for yourself and another for the same flight…unless they are a designated on your family & friends list (allows miles pooling) or on My List (list of people you can book flights for without miles pooling).

Just add someone to your list right?? Well, there are a few roadblocks that will probably impact 95% of us. First, you can’t add people unless you earned Qatar Avios by flying or using a Qatar co-branded credit card.

How to get around this? I bet that Qatar rolls back or changes these restrictions in some way. In the mean time, you may want to

1) Credit a cash flight to Qatar, it can be pretty much any oneworld flight like AA.

2) Get a Qatar co-branded credit card, although they are serviced by Cardless (who also services Bilt) and has a reputation for poor customer service.

3) Potentially book an award through partners like British Airways. However, British Airways calendar only goes out 355 days to book vs. Qatar at 360 days. Second is you can’t book certain routes on British Airways. For example, you can’t book US-DOH-Africa through BA or US-DOH-most of Asia. But you can still book US-DOH-India, or US-DOH-Maldives

4) Book in separate bookings where 1 person books their flight with their points and the other person books with their own points (or you can move points around Avios programs if already stuck in an Avios program and pay a €10 fee through Finnair). Details on Finnair site here.

5) Just wait and see if they change some or all of the policy.

First, what is Paze? It’s an online wallet and online payment platform that lets you make online purchases without sharing your credit card information directly with the merchant. Paze has been offering various promos recently to encourage use of the payment method.

Sorry if you missed the boat but there was essentially free money to be had for 2 days earlier in the week. Still ways to game it but not at the level we saw. The fever started when Chase offered (still ongoing btw) 10x points on select Chase cards (Sapphire + Freedom) when using Paze to checkout.

Then Paze said, every eligible card (not just Chase cards but other big banks too) you can get $10 in statement credit for every $10+ transaction, up to 10 transactions per card. So if you have 10 credit cards x 10 transactions for $10 gift cards, you would have essentially $1,000 in free stuff. This was obviously gamed, and this promo had guardrails set after just 2 days and will probably die completely before the original September expiration date. As of publishing, it is potentially possible to essentially get a $10 discount when ordering from a restaurant on Clover. Details here on Award Helper.

Too much to explain but check out Doctor of Credit post here for some timelines and info. There are still ways to take advantage of various promos, but not as easy to cash out as buying GCs from Newegg.

How to not miss the next weird churning/points & miles-related deal?
The big blogs won’t talk about the really cool or obscure stuff.

1) Check out the Doctor of Credit site throughout the week
2) Follow more churning-focused people on social media
3) Join FB groups where people openly talk about these tips & tricks
4) Meet people in your area and join local points & miles groups
5) Reddit

Does Amazon Prime Day actually bring deals? I’m not 100% certain but I do know that it gets people to spend. Retailers have been trying to front-run the timeframe with their own deals and this has led to elevated cash back or points earning rates across various shopping portals including Rakuten and airline shopping portals.

What is Rakuten? I have to guess 95% of my readers know and use Rakuten already…but for the small group that doesn’t, it is a shopping rewards site where you can earn cash back or points (in the form of Amex or Bilt points) whenever you shop online. More details can be found on my blog here, or directly on Rakuten (not an affiliate link) here.

From my experience tracking Rakuten cash back levels for work, this is one of the few times we see meaningfully (10%+ cash back) elevated cash back offering. You can even view history of cash back levels and reward rates across different shopping portals on this site called Cashback Monitor. It’s free and no account needed. Savewise is another site I use, although you need to create a free account.

As of 6/22, I see Dell is 10% cash back, which I usually only see during Black Friday week. Good time to use Amex Biz Plat credits…

Tip to earn easy $50 cash back: If you don’t have Rakuten, you can sign up with my affiliate link here and we both can earn $50 in cash back (or 5k Amex or potentially Bilt points) if you spend $50. Note: If you have Bilt Silver or higher status, your cash back is paid out 1:1 (so $50 = 5k Bilt points). No Bilt status? Get paid out 2:1 ($50 = 2.5k Bilt points). Amex is still 1:1.

The Waldorf Astoria New York City has a lot of saver availability in early to mid-2027. You can book a night that costs $1,000+ for 150k Hilton points. Not the best deal, but if you have any Hilton card that provides you a free night certificate (FNC), you can use that to book your stay. These awards are for standard rooms, but they are still large by NYC standards (450+ sq. feet). Data points indicate if you have Hilton status, you are likely to get a complimentary upgrade to a junior suite or even better. But obviously not guaranteed. I got upgraded to a junior suite pre-arrival last year.

Dates with saver availability
Weekend dates (Friday or Saturday night) are in bold.

October: 19
November: 2-5, 9-12, 16-19, 30
December: 21, 29
January 2027: 3-7, 8, 10-14, 15, 17, 18, 22-23, 24-28, 29-30, 31
February: Wide open 1-28. Weekend dates are 5-6, 12-13, 19-20, 26-27
March: Wide open 1-31. Weekend dates are also 5-6, 12-13, 19-20, 26-27
April: Wide open. Weekend dates are 2-3, 9-10, 16-17, 23-24
May: 1-10. Weekend dates are 1, 7-8

How to book
Book directly through Hilton using Hilton points.
Amex transfers 1:2, so 75k Amex points → 150k Hilton points.
Potentially buy Hilton points at 0.5 cents per point, so 150k Hilton points = $750.

Don’t forget, you get a fifth night free when using points (not FNC), so 600k Hilton points for 5 nights.

Need help finding deals? (affiliate link)
Check out seats.aero, a search engine for all things award travel. View award availability for flights for the next 60 days for free. Subscribing unlocks a full year of availability and helps you get the edge over others. You can also set alerts, get access to an invite-only Discord community, and find hotel award availability.

Help support my free newsletter through my affiliate links.

💸 Earn extra cashback or Amex or Bilt points when you shop online at your favorite stores using the Rakuten shopping portal. It’s free to join, and new members get $50 (or 5k points) after spending $50. To learn more about Rakuten, check out my post here

✈️ Join Rove Miles, a new travel loyalty program where you earn points shopping online or by booking travel through their portal. Free to join and using my affiliate gets you 1.5k points to start (vs. public offer of 500 points). Rove has some unique transfer partners like Lufthansa, JAL, SAS, and more. Details on my blog post here

🐸 Automatically add credit card offers in seconds with Cardpointers+. The extension ensures you don’t miss any important credit card offers and saves you time as well! Save 30% on your subscription with my affiliate link

About Find Flights for Me.

I started the idea of Find Flights for Me back in 2023 to help educate and inspire people to use their credit card points more effectively, with a focus on using points to fly business and first class flights.

When I’m not working on Wall Street or searching for flight deals, you can find me enjoying local restaurants, helping my parents book their next trip, traveling internationally, or visiting friends/family in NYC, Philadelphia, or DC.