Veteran’s Day Stacking Deals
Happy Veteran’s Day everyone. After the ninjas came back yesterday from a hiatus to show you how to get a 65″ tv for $200ish dollars, they are back again today with a look at various promotions that can save you money and more importantly earn you thousands and thousands of miles. Let’s take a look.
Veteran’s Day Portal Payout Rates
Via Frequent Miler’s portal alerts, several mileage portals (specifically Alaska, United and American) have increased payout rates today. Payouts are as high as 12X. Among the increased rates are:
- Backcountry: 15X United or Alaska, 10X American AAdvantage
- JCPenney: 12X United
- Finish Line: 10X Alaska
- Macy’s: 12X United
- Saks 5th Avenue: 12X United
- JCrew: 8X American AAdvantage
- Living Social: 8X American AAdvantage, 6X United
- Kohl’s: 6X Alaska
These are some great rates, especially at stores like Backcountry, JCPenney and Macy’s, but that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Mileage Portal Holiday Promotions
As I covered previously, the United, Alaska and American portals all have holiday promotions. With United and American you can earn up to 5,000 bonus miles while Alaska gives you the opportunity to earn up 3,000. The spending thresholds are cumulative which means all purchases during the promotional period add up to trigger the bonus.
In-Store Promotions & Amex Offers
Many stores run their own discount coupons. For example, JCPenney is offering 30% off orders of $100+ for Veteran’s Day plus they have an Amex Offer, Macy’s is offering 20% and Kohl’s is giving Kohl’s Cash, 30% off for Kohl’s cardholders and even more. This can be a way to really juice up your savings.
Real World Example Kohl’s
First off, if you don’t have a Kohl’s Card then you probably should have one. It is the rare exception to the “all store branded cards are terrible” rule. This example will assume you have one since you need it to get 30% off.
Since Alaska is paying 6X at Kohl’s that will be the portal we will choose. I am assuming you aren’t going to spend thousands of dollars today so let’s say you want to hit the first tier of their promo. Spend $150 and get 500 miles. That is a nice number since Kohl’s is giving $10 in Kohl’s Cash with every $50 spent.
Kohl’s also has the following coupons:
- 30% off your total (most items) TURKEY30
- $10 of $25 THANKYOU10
- Free shipping NOV4FREE
So let’s say we find $225 worth of items to purchase. It will look something like this:
- Price: $225
- $10 of $25: -$10
- New Total: $215
- 30% Off: -$64.50
- Final Cost: $150.50
Now on the surface that looks good. $225 worth of merchandise for $150. Not bad right? Not bad if you get the right items, but you are actually doing so much better. You also earn:
- $30 in Kohl’s Cash to use later
- $7.50 in Yes2You Rewards
- 903 Alaska miles for your normal purchase
- 500 bonus Alaska miles
I personally value Kohl’s Cash and Yes2You Rewards at 70% of face value since percentage off coupons don’t stack with them. I also value Alaska miles at $.02 each because of their strong partner redemptions. Thus, for me the value of these extras would be $54.31 giving me a “final cost” of $96.91.
Juice It Up More
In order to keep your life from getting complicated, I left these scenarios out but you could actually save more by:
- Paying a portion of your final bill with a gift card purchased at a discount. To get the 30% off you need to pay a portion of the bill with a Kohl’s Charge card, so make sure the gift card used has a value of slightly less than your total!
- Placing multiple small orders. The $10 off $25 and other codes can be used multiple times. Obviously getting that discount multiple times on smaller orders will increase your savings percentage significantly.
JCPenney
I won’t go into as much depth with this one, but JCPenney is offering 12X miles with United. Like I mentioned before, they also have:
- Free shipping
- 30% off
- $10 off $50 Amex Offer
Put those together and you can save a lot!
Conclusion
Just as I mentioned yesterday with the television deal, perhaps these stores aren’t the ones you are interested in, but it still pays to learn how to think in this way. Deals like these represent a great value and if you are willing to be a ninja you can do very very well.
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Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
I one disqualified myself from gathering portal points because I used a coupon code. Be cautious. Read the fine print