I love hearing how people make credit cards work for them.
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Wait til BJs wholesale club has 8% off Disney Giftcard promotions. Last december, that coincided with the chase freedom 5% cashback at wholesale clubs netting me 13% off!
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Get. Out.
Have to look into that!
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It’s true. It comes around every so often. The cards are always at some discount hovering around 4% and sometimes jumps to 8%. The slight caveat is that you need at least the $10 online membership. But the saving usually outweigh the cost.
Plus those 5% chase freedom points are worth even more if you have a sapphire reserve to transfer the points, where each point is 1.5 cents. So that 5% turns into 7.5 cents of value per dollar. I always use my ultimate rewards points to book our flights!
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I think i still have an active sapphire…
But how do you find when BJs has the stackable incentive?
Well, it’s kind of a scenario where all the stars have to align. The 8% comes and goes. I just check the website every so often. Of course, it’s just pure luck if one of the 5% rotating category cards like the discover IT card or the chase freedom bonus categories happen to be at wholesale clubs for the quarter.
Either way, an 8% discount by itself is good enough for me to bite.
YUP. I have a high yield savings account that I call my vacay account
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I rarely remember to see who my “special” retailers are in all the cards i have open. But I will start adding BJs to my “stop and peek at” sites. Thank you.
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We also nailed the 13% last year. It was after we had paid everything, but we could get the money refunded to the cc and pay with gift cards over the phone. I still have the $8k in empty gift cards because they’re fun to play with. You can check BJ’s discount rate by signing up for an online membership and then just not checking out (it goes in your cart). Backside of Magic had a link to BJ’s 8% off a few weeks ago but you had to buy $5k to get it.
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Is the online membership separate from physical membership?
Yes. The $10 online membership is for use online only. Sometimes they have promotional free in-store memberships if you have a brick-and-mortar BJs nearby. The discounts that you find online were also available at our local BJs. I feel safer going to the store so I don’t have $1000s worth of gift cards in the hands of USPS, but I have ordered online too.
They say “limit 3” but I’ve walked out with 10-15 in hand before.
This is probably not for everyone, because it does complicate things if you need to refund your trip and it requires putting in lots of gift cards or combining them onto one card to pay through MDE. Often times the 8% discounted denomination card is the $50 one for example. I had to buy about 50 x $50 cards (in the 3x$50 packs).
In addition to what others have said, I also use Shopkick. I was able to earn a $50 gift card for My upcoming trip.
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I like the Disney gift cards for eating while on property. It makes it feel like the food was free and I try more expensive venues that way.
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That is what I like to do. Similar to the dining plan (feels free), but more freedom (at least in my opinion), as I don’t have to order the most expensive thing or use up all my credits to feel like I got my value’s worth.
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#1) We purchased Disney gift cards from a sams club for a discount. Paid $135 for $150. Our credit card offered 3% back on purchases from whole sale places,a o we got back about $4 for every $150 we bought. So $3000 worth of gift cards cost us about $2600. We did the same thing for our flight. They offer South West airline gift cards at a discount as well (however read the south west gift card rules before trying it).
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Kroger grocery store gas points and 5% Chase reward for this summer. We always buy our gift cards doing the 4X reward period at Kroger. During the summer we also have to mow our land so we fill up the gas cans. Up to 32 gallons of fuel is allowed with 1000 points.
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When I go grocery shopping I usually buy a $25 Disney gift card and stick it in my “Disney drawer” and forget about it. I realize it’s not as financially responsible as putting money in a bank account, but it works for me.
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Yeah, the Southwest gift card rules are pretty heinous. You can only put in 3 methods of payment when you purchase a ticket and there’s no way to combine gift cards. So basically, your real method of payment and 2 gift cards per purchase. I don’t know what happens if you split up a large family into individual customers, but it sounds like a lot of work and God forbid if the flight sells out in the middle of buying.
I didn’t know you could do it on MDE, but we did it on disneygiftcard.com. It took about 2 hours to scratch and enter $8k of gift cards in $50’s and $100’s. The max a gift card can hold is $1K so we ended up with 8 gift cards, 7 of which we applied to our vacation over the phone and one of which we brought to the parks. That website is also good if you’re worried about losing your physical gift card. As long as you have the info entered (I also take a picture of the number and PIN just in case) on the website, you can transfer the balance to another gift card if you lose it.
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We are flying 5 (well 5 are paying we have an infant with us). You are allowed to use 3 per customer, but how they apply them is all wonky, because if you have a little left over after paying for the first person, then the little that is left on that card counts as 1 of the 3 for the next person. I did mine over the phone, and applied 2 full gift cards to each person, then used the smaller balances to pay down the rest. Only had to put about $10 on my card and only had about $3 left on one of the gift cards.
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