Amex Offers + Chase Offers | Credit Card Rewards, Best Deals, & How to Get Targeted Offers | Military Money Manual Podcast Episode 68

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American Express and Chase offers can be an easy way to get even more value out of your premium travel rewards credit cards.

Outline of Episode:

  • Basics of Amex offers and Chase offers
  • Where you can find thet offers on the website and app 
  • How you can add them or redeem them to your card

Military Money Manual Podcast Episode 68 Transcript

[00:00:00] Jamie: These unique and often targeted offers on your credit card add incredible value to your spending, especially when it's a store you already shop at. You may get $20 off your groceries or $60 off your hotel stay, so it's definitely worth getting into Amex and Chase offers sections and see what applies to you. I've earned hundreds of dollars with these offers in the last few years. 

Hello podcast listeners. I'm Jamie, and I'm here with Spencer Reese, the founder of militarymoneymanual.com and author of the book Military Money Manual, A Practical Guide to Financial Freedom. Thanks for joining us today as we're going to be talking about offers on Amex and Chase credit cards to help you save even more money.

Today we're going to cover the basics of Amex and Chase offers, where to find them on the website and the app, and how to add and redeem them. 

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[00:01:20] Spencer: Thanks for the introduction, Jamie, and welcome listeners to the Military Money Manual podcast as Jamie said. So, Jamie, Amex and Chase offers. I want to be honest, I don't use these very often, so what are the offers?

[00:01:34] Jamie: You can think of it like a coupon, but it's a little higher value than a traditional save 25 cents on a box of Cheerios like we may have grown up with.

But it varies from card to card, and sometimes it's targeted to a specific card and a specific user. So not everyone's going to get them, but it might be 2% back at a certain store, or it might be $300 back on Amex travel purchases, several hundred dollars back on a hotel. $10 back on a cell phone bill for three months or anything like that.

So it's just a variety of coupon-like offers that you have to manually add your credit card to make them applicable.

[00:02:08] Spencer: What are some of the unique ones you've seen?

[00:02:09] Jamie: So some weird ones I've seen, or I guess more unique ones. They recently had one that was, spend a hundred dollars on LinkedIn ads and get a hundred dollars.

Probably not going to use that one. And it really is just marketing, so understand that you don't go out and spend too much more than you would anyway. But it encouraged me to try something new. Sometimes there are ones that the Four Seasons, Spencer, I know you've used one like that before.

[00:02:31] Spencer: Yeah, so this one was, it was spend $750 and get $150 back, which sounds like a lot of money.

Is a lot of money. But we were at the Four Seasons for four days. We put all of our room charges and all of our restaurant charges on the room. And then when we went to go check out, we actually had $600 on our bill, $150 short. So what we did is my wife and I said, hang on a second. We're not going to pay that bill just yet.

We walked over to the bar that was right there, ordered $60 worth of food for our lunch, and then we left a hundred dollars tip. So then the total bill was $755 or whatever it was, and we were able to get the $150 credit. So basically we have a hundred dollars tip for free and we got free lunch thanks to Amex offers.

So what are some of the best offers that you've seen, Jamie? For me to spend $750 at Four Seasons, and get $150 back was pretty good. Any other ones?

[00:03:22] Jamie: Yeah. I really love hotel offers. I've had ones where it's spend $300 at a Marriott hotel and get $75 back. It's free money if you're going to a hotel anyway.

I obviously wouldn't go find a Marriott Hotel to check into just to save $75 by spending $300, but I've had ones where it's spend a hundred dollars at Verizon and get $20 back, and I think that one was like a six-month recurring offer. So I was able to get money off my cell phone plan several months in a row.

They've also had a spend $99 on any cell phone provider and get $20. And then one of the best ones I've had, which I was able to use during a family trip in Hawaii was $200 off of a DoubleTree Hotel, which is a Hilton brand when you spend $600. So spend $600, and get $200 off a hotel stay. That's pretty good.

[00:04:07] Spencer: Yeah, that's super good, especially if you're able to combine these with a PCS or a TDY where you're able to personally procure your travel or pay out of pocket. That's basically just cash back into your pocket if you think about it that way. I remember during Covid, and maybe this was just a non-standard Covid Amex offers where they were just trying to pump up the US economy, but there was one where it would spend a hundred dollars at Home Depot, get a hundred dollars back, and you could use it up to two times.

And I think, yeah, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it even worked on the same purchase. So you were basically able to spend $200 and get $200 back, and I remember I was able to buy a $160 home gas fire pit, and I got the entire thing reimbursed. And we use that thing every morning and every night when we lived in Hawaii.

It was fantastic. That's just one example of the power of the Amex offers.

[00:04:56] Jamie: Yeah I got that fire pit first, remember? And then you copied me. So that's how I, that's right. I used that Home Depot credit as well. 

And it can be a great combination offer because if you have another card like the Hilton Aspire card, that gives you a $250 resort credit, for example if you have this offer on your Amex Hilton Aspire card, you can get the $250 resort credit, plus the offer if it applies, plus the, the Hilton Honors points or whatever brand you're on. So you can stack up two or three offers or more. Sometimes there's even, at the same time, there'll be a, get $50 back at a hotel plus earn five extra membership reward points, and so you can combine those on the same card and double dip as well.

[00:05:39] Spencer: Are there any other important notes for this, Jamie? I know sometimes people run into issues with they add too many offers to their accounts.

[00:05:45] Jamie: One important note is that, as I mentioned already, it is targeted. Not everyone's going to get the same one. So if you see a note on, doctor of Credit or a popular blog like that, that they post a lot about them, you might not get something that your friend gets.

So keep that in mind. It does vary by location, your spending habits, and things like that. And they also come and go. So if you don't add it to your card, it might be gone. They may have, only 10,000 offers to give. So once 10,000 people add it to their card, then it could disappear. You definitely want to pay attention to the terms and conditions as well.

Sometimes it's online only. Sometimes it's in-store only. Sometimes there's a special link. They like to do wine offers like wine.com/amex, and you can't get it if you just go to wine.com and make a generic order, so just pay attention to those. You can also only get it one per card member, so even if it shows up as eligible on multiple cards, they will likely only let you add it to one card, and if for some reason you're able to add it to multiple cards, you'll probably only get reimbursed on one card. 

Now, for Amex, you'll usually see it in about two or three business days, despite most of the terms and conditions saying it'll take a few weeks.

But if it doesn't show up, you can always chat with the Amex reps online or in the app and ask them if it looks like it's going to trigger. And they can usually see that earlier. They'll tell you, Hey, it looks like it's going to come. If it's not there in six weeks, then text us again. And then that's in your records.

And then for Chase, I get an immediate notification that the offer's been used and then the credit usually comes within a few days. So Chase is actually a little bit better about notifying you that the offer's been redeemed.

[00:07:18] Spencer: Okay, so you mentioned Chase and Amex. Any other big differences between the two big card issuers?

[00:07:25] Jamie: So right now Amex is on a kick of it seeming like a coupon like 2% back at h and m and 6% back at whatever. So they each have their different strategy. But one of the big ones I like, like I mentioned just a minute ago, is Chase gives you a notification or an email when you've used an offer.

And so it just gives you that kind of peace of mind that it's going to hit your account. I mentioned also that Amex generally has only one per social, whereas Chase does not restrict that and you can do each card on its own. So sometimes I'll get, 10% off at Chipotle. I'm sorry, not 10% off. It's not an off coupon, it's always money back.

It's a statement credit. So you might get 10% back at Chipotle, and then I'll have it on all three of my Chase cards. So if you really wanted to maximize it, I could check out with one card. My wife could check out with one card, and then I could put my kids on another card and we each get, $1.50 or $2 back.

Chase generally has lower maximum earnings, so it might be something like 10% back at Home Depot, but only a max reward of $8 earning or 5% back at Starbucks, we get a lot of Starbucks offers. I don't know if that's targeted based on my wife's spending or not, but it's usually 5% back up to a max of $1.50, and so I almost continuously have one like that at Starbucks.

Another weird trick about Amex is they only show a hundred offers. So in order to maximize what with Amex, you need to add all of them that are available if you really want to max perform here. And then once you've added them, it'll allow more to show the next time you log in or the next day. So add them all to your card, even if you don't care about it or think you'll never use it, but that way you'll get a fresh round of offers that you might care about.

[00:09:03] Spencer: Gotcha. So now that we know about all the benefits of the offers, what they are, where to find them, or actually, sorry, where do we find them? That's the next question.

[00:09:11] Jamie: Okay. So I'm going to start with Amex. And with Amex, you can use both the desktop website or the mobile app to find the offer. So first of all, from Amex on the desktop browser, once you're logged in, you're going to go to your account page.

And then at the bottom, there's going to be a link for “Amex offers and benefits” section. If you hit the “view all”, you'll get the full list of Amex offers and benefits. There you can see the number of offers that are available, the number you've added, as well as the savings that you've had in the past for this card.

And then on this page, if you're going to be adding several offers at once, a little pro tip is to start at the bottom and work your way up. As you click the button next to each offer, it just slews the page up half of a line. And then you'll be able to click on the next one and then just keep rolling up the list like that.

You can also switch to your other card offers from this page up in the top right corner where there'll be the card logo and the last five digits are there. You can click on that and it'll show all your Amex cards to get to a different card straight from that view. So remember, each card has its own list of offers available.

So you have to be selective about which one you add it to. So for example, if you have an Amex travel offer and you want to maximize your redemption for your platinum card versus your gold card, make sure you add it first to the one that makes the most sense, and it's going to give you the most redemption value.

If it's too much work, just take the beginner approach and pay attention to the offers, and that's okay. Another example would be if you get a grocery store offer, then you would want to add it to your gold card, not your platinum card. And like I said, for airfare, you'd want to add it to your platinum, not your Bonvoy card.

So that's how you do it on the website, on the desktop browser. In the mobile app for Amex, once you're logged in, there's an “offers” tab right on the bottom of the app, and there it's going to show the card and any available offers, and you can simply click the plus sign next to the offer and it'll add it to the card from the app.

To switch between cards, you just have to go back to the home, select a different card, and then go back to the “offers” tab again. So it's not quite as, So that's the Amex, both mobile and desktop. 

Let's go to Chase now, and I'll start with Chase. You can also do it on both a desktop browser and a mobile app. And I'll start with the desktop again.

So for Chase, you go to the Chase offers box on the right side of your account homepage, and you'll select the “See All Offers” link. You can click on them to add them to your card and see the details of the offer. You can also see your history from that page as well, where it'll show you how much you've redeemed in the.

Chase is a little bit better again, and I'm giving Chase two bonus points compared to Amex. In this podcast episode, which we don't do very much, but with Chase, you can easily switch between cards on the Choose account dropdown menu right there on the offers page, and you can also update your alert preferences right on this screen.

And then from the mobile app for Chase, you just scroll down on the main page to Chase offers at the bottom. From there, you can see the offers. Click on them again for details, and then hit the plus button to add them to your card. And here again, you can easily switch between your Chase cards under the dropdown right there at the top.

You never have to leave the screen. So point number two for Chase. Both ways for Chase, you can select the card and they make it a little bit easier than Amex.

[00:12:21] Spencer: So once you've added all the offers to your account, you've used it successfully. One thing I'll mention here too is this is in addition to all your other benefits on the card too.

Yeah. So like right now on the Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant, just changed from a $300 annual hotel credit. They changed to a $25 per month restaurant credit, which still works out to $300 per year. It's just a little bit harder to use because you get $25 a month. I think it's global restaurants for that one.

But let's say you go to Chick-fil-A or Chipotle, you buy lunch two days in a row, you get your $25 credit, and you're good to go. But if you'd added a Chick-fil-A or Chipotle offer to your Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant card, you would get that offer in addition to the $25 bonus. So it might be, Get 10% back on all Chipotle purchases, but you're going to get that back as well.

In addition to the $25 restaurant credit, like Jamie was saying earlier, you can really stack these benefits, and let's say you've added the offer to your card. How are you going to track it and how are you going to track how much you've saved?

[00:13:20] Jamie: So tracking the offers can be a little bit complex. I've recently downloaded an app called Max Rewards, and I'm still a little new to it to fully endorse it or give it a full review, but so far it's pretty neat because it synchronizes with your Amex and Chase accounts and will actually handle your offers as well.

And it'll tell you offers that are expiring soon and you can go in and favor them or search by a vendor and see what's on there. That's pretty cool. 

What I used in the past was just a simple spreadsheet. Or you can also just screenshot, which I've done before. So I'd always do the offers from my phone or my wife's phone.

So I would have a series of screenshots in there, and then I can filter in my phone's photo album by screenshots and scroll through all the offers pretty easily if you want to. Those are some ideas, and then if you want to see what you've used in the past from the Amex app, it's right where you go on the “offers” tab and then from a desktop, Amex offers page tells you per card when you hit the view all offers, as we mentioned before, there's a tab right there called savings for me on my main Amex Platinum. 

I've had it since 2016, so that's about six years. And according to the website, I've saved $865.41 cents as of this recording. And on a Hilton Aspire, which I had a lot of hotel offers on, I've had since 2018 I saved $310 in comparison. 

On my Chase Sapphire Reserve, I've had since 2018, and have only saved about $240. So you can get a glimpse there of which offers have been the most valuable to me. But you can also see on that a full history of all the offers you've redeemed from the desktop.

Only It'll tell you a list of every single offer you've ever redeemed and what its value was.

[00:14:56] Spencer: Yeah, that's really cool that you can keep track of that. And it puts it into context too, because you're not like super into the Amex offers game, but you've definitely paid attention to it. And over the years it's saved you over, $1,500.

That's a couple hundred dollars a year, so it's not going to max out your Roth IRA. But I know some people who do pay attention to these Amex offers and they're able to add a couple hundred, a couple thousand dollars to their bottom line of savings every year. And if you are smart and then you turn around and you invest those savings, then that can multiply, over a lifetime of investing. 

Does Citi offer anything similar to this program?

[00:15:31] Jamie: Citi does have something that's similar. It's newer though, so it's still in development. It's called the Citi Merchant Offers, and what they've been doing recently is emailing me a list. I'm sure they do it to our all cardholders, but I get an email.

It's, here are your new merchant offers. You can click right on the link in the email, and that's the easiest way to get it. It's a little bit hard to find, so I'll just give you a quick rundown of where to find it from your Citi website for those that do have a Citi account. 

So from the website, once you're logged in, select your card, and then hit “see your offers”.

This is also where it'll have things like, open a checking account and we'll pay you $150 bucks, or things like that. From there, you can click on the link, I'm sorry. You can also click on the link in the email and you can also change between cards pretty easily. And then from the app, you have to go down to “services” at the bottom, which doesn't really make sense.

Then you go to “rewards and benefits”, and then on the bottom of that page, you click “see offers for you” and then it'll show up. So Citi does have merchant offers. I've used a handful of them. There's a restaurant in town here called Pies and Pints, and when one of our buddies was in town, I took them out there and we got 6% back on my Citi Prestige.

It was like six bucks or something like that. So Citi Merchant Offers, if you have Citi cards, look out for those as well.

[00:16:43] Spencer: Nice. Sounds a lot more convoluted than what Amex and Chase are doing, but I'm sure they'll catch up one day and I bet Capital One is also going to be doing something similar.

They've really, I'm sure, jumped into the reward space with their Venture X card. I think they'll definitely get into the offers game. 

Okay. We hope today's discussion will encourage you on your journey to financial independence while you serve in the military, and we hope today's episode will help you maximize your military benefits.

A lot of the cards we talked about waive annual fees for the military. And if you're interested in learning more about that, I've got a 100% free course on my website, and I walk you through it in just five days, basically teaching you how to go from a complete credit card beginner to I would say pretty advanced beginner, maybe intermediate, after you get through the course. 

To review today's main lessons to take away today. We talked about the basics of Amex offers and Chase offers. These are basically coupons or special deals and offers that you can add to your different Chase and Amex cards. We talked about where you can find them on the website and app and then how you can add them or redeem them to your card.

As always, if you have any questions or feedback, you can message us on Instagram @MilitaryMoneyManual. Or via email. We've got a new email specifically for podcasts. The old email will still work, but go ahead and shoot us an email at podcast@militarymoneymanual.com. We love the messages, we love the questions we're getting.

We're doing a lot of Q&A episodes, so keep the questions coming and we might use your question as the kernel, the seed for a future episode, but we'll keep your privacy. Don't worry. If you want us to use your first name, we will. Otherwise, we'll just refer to you anonymously. We like keeping our privacy as well.We appreciate you joining us today. We're grateful for all of you. Keep sharing the podcast with your friends, family, and coworkers. It means a lot to us when you guys do that, and as always, we enjoy the reviews on Spotify and Apple. Until next time!

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