Welcome Back!

Hope everyone is doing well 😊

After a 17-year delay, REAL ID finally went into effect, so now you’ll either have to have a REAL ID compliant license or document, or be subject to additional screening at the airport.

17 years! Think about how long that was delayed for a second. Just wow 🤯

Anyway, this has ramifications for domestic travel, of course. But not if you either are okay traveling with your passport, or your Global Entry card, as both documents are already REAL ID compliant!

What does additional screening mean? Not sure yet, but ideally you won’t need to find out! Just a heads up for anyone with domestic travel coming up.

In today’s edition:

• 🔵 Chase Spending Offers 🔵 

• 🏦 Transfer Bonuses ✈️

• 💸 Using Rakuten Yet? 💸 

• 📰 Other Stories & Deals 💰️

• 💳️ Best Card Signup Bonuses 💳️ 

🔵 Chase Spending Offers 🔵 

Yeah, the CSP has that 100k signup bonus I keep talking about, but they’ve got a few different spending offers too, that could be worth a look!

So as usual, Chase Offers are a good way to get additional cash back or points for spend at specific merchants. But reports are coming in that a lot of the Chase cobranded cards are eligible for either 5x or 7x points on groceries, gas and restaurant spend!

So if you have any of the Chase cobranded cards (Hyatt, Marriott, IHG, United, Southwest, Aeroplan, Disney, Amazon, IAG airline cards), find your corresponding card here and see if your card is eligible! Also, after listing them out in the parentheses, I realized that Chase has A LOT of cobranded partners 👍️

On top of that, it looks like the DoorDash credit card specifically is eligible for 5% back on grocery stores, gas stations, and travel purchases, while the Instacart card is eligible for 9% back on Chase Travel and 5% on other travel purchases (including gas). Not too bad!

But then there’s some more targeted spend offers going around via email to certain users:

• Some users got an offer to earn 1000 UR points for $100 spend within the month of May - great deal!

• Some Chase IHG cardholders got an offer to earn 20k bonus points for $20k spend on the IHG card - this is just okay…

So yeah, quite the bonus earnings going around at Chase! Do double dip with Chase Offers/Rakuten/etc. when you can!

Happy earning 💰️ 

🏦➡️✈️ Transfer Bonuses

A chart of transfer partners by bank, along with other information, can be found here!

¹ New transfer bonuses that were not present the week before are in bold.

💸 Using Rakuten Yet? 💸 

I’ve discussed Rakuten a few times in this newsletter, but for anyone that does any online shopping at all, it truly is a no-brainer. And again for a limited time, there’s a $40 incentive to start using it!

Just incase you aren’t familiar: Rakuten is an online shopping portal partnered with hundreds of retailers. It offers you cash back or Amex points for purchases made at their partner retailers! 💰️ 

Every cent in cash back earned through Rakuten can be converted to one Amex point, so $1 = 100 points, and so on. If you value an Amex MR point at more than 1 cent each (I definitely do), then I’d recommend earning MR points, for sure. You can still earn cash back, and the money is sent to you via check or PayPal every quarter!

The current deal for signing up is that you’ll get $40 back after spending $40. Yes, you read that right: When you spend $40, you will get $40 back! So you can just get $40 off on something you planned on buying anyway, or you can just effectively make a $40 purchase for free 💸 

So to get the $40:

1. Be based in the US and Canada 🇺🇸 🇨🇦 

2. Sign-up for a Rakuten account here (and get the web extension too, as it is quite convenient) 📝 

3. Make a purchase of $40 or greater through one of Rakuten’s partner retailers in within the first 90 days of signing up 🛒

   1.  🚨 Make sure that you either have the web extension and activate the cash back, or you go to the retailer’s site via Rakuten rather than going to the retailer directly if you don’t have the web extension! 🚨

4. That’s it! Just wait for the purchase and the credit to post to your account 👍️ 

Do note that these rewards would be on top of any cash back/rewards you’d already receive on the card you used to pay for the purchase, and any additional offers (Chase Offers, BofA Offers, Amex Offers, Citi Offers, etc.) can also be applied!! We call this “triple-dipping” - imagine earning rewards in like 3 or more different places at once for a purchase 🤑 

So please, take advantage and get $40 back for spending $40 through Rakuten while this deal is live! 💰️ 

📰 Other Stories & Deals 💰️

• 🌴 You can now use Flying Blue miles to fly Air Tahiti! Useful for Polynesian flights, potentially?

• 🏨 Hyatt has added The Standard and other new properties into its portfolio as part of the Standard International acquisition!

• ✈️ Newark Airport has significant delays and cancellations due to staff shortages, among other big operational issues - watch out if you have a flight coming up that involves EWR!

💳️ Best Card Signup Bonuses 💳️ 

Again, the usual solid cards:

• Chase Sapphire Preferred^® / Reserve®

• Chase Freedom Unlimited^®/Flex^®

• Amex Gold & Plat

• Capital One Venture X

Do search for public links for the above cards to compare signup bonuses to make sure you get the highest one (incognito mode, Resy, etc.).

For cards with elevated signup bonuses (targeted bonuses are not included), I’ve got:

📤️ Spread the Word! 📤️

Thanks for subscribing! This newsletter is committed to helping you maximize your points and rewards, at no direct cost to you! (appreciate you using any of my referral links, though!)

If you do find this newsletter informative, helpful, or entertaining, I’d greatly appreciate you spreading the word about it! If not, please do give me feedback on how I can improve your Sense per Point experience.

Also, if my newsletter helps you to book travel using points, let me know! It’ll make me so happy 😄 

Hope that all makes sense! That’s all for this week’s edition of Sense per Point.

Wishing everyone a wonderful rest of your day and week 😊 

- Sean Kim

PS: If you want to make sure Sense per Point doesn’t get caught in your spam, you can move this email to your primary inbox, or Reply “Hello!” directly to this email by clicking the link and hitting send 📩