Harlan Vaughn's Blog, page 35

House Hacking Through… Airbnb? My 1st Month Numbers!

Also see:

Airbnb Hosting by the Numbers: 2017 Update
So You Wanna Be an Airbnb Host? Part 1: Finding the Right Place

I’ve written extensively about my adventures hosting on Airbnb. I’ve always leased apartments, then listed them on Airbnb. That formula worked in New York and continues to work in Dallas.

The Airbnb service is intended to rent space in your primary residence. I’d never done that because I didn’t want strangers in my actual home. But last month, I took a weekend and converted my spare bedroom and bathroom into a private guest room and listed it on Airbnb.

My guest bedroom

And so far… wow! The response is incredible. Guests are loving it. And something that surprised me… so am I!

A nice benefit is I’m earning more than if I had a roommate. And I’m even thinking it could get to the point where it could cover my entire mortgage payment – I could live in my own place for basically nothing!

Airbnb house hacking… for real?

I intended for my second bedroom to be an art studio. In practice, it became an overflow/storage/bric-a-brac room. I hardly ever opened the door. It essentially just sat there. One day, I decided to buy a queen memory foam bed, desk, sheets, night stands, and everything else I’d need to make it a proper and comfortable guest room.

I got a picture hanging kit and added hardware to my paintings. Some extension cords and night lights. And a new doorknob so I could lock my valuables in my own room.

I took some pictures of my creation with my phone and uploaded the listing to Airbnb. (Here’s my series about how to host on Airbnb.)

Guest bathroom

I started the listing for $45 per night. I figured it would net a few hundred extra bucks per month. Even at $300 a month, that’s still an extra $3,600 per year. Not bad for a room that was just sitting there. That’s a few extra mortgage payments!

I made $500+ in September in 2 weeks!

In my first 2 weeks, I made ~$527. It’s not hard to see how I could earn $1,000+ per month at that rate.

And October looks to be on track for exactly that!

That made me think… listing my guest bedroom on Airbnb could seriously cover my entire mortgage payment. Or at least a huge chunk of it. In essence, Airbnb could pay my mortgage for me.

And a step further, $1,000 per month is much more than I could get from a roommate. In that regard, it’s even better than “traditional” house hacking.

Pros & cons of roommates vs. Airbnb guests

I much prefer having Airbnb guests in my space. The way I see it, roommates (interchangeable with tenants in this case) are fraught with potential problems. Too much potential for interpersonal conflict. Not to mention:

Long-term leases
Rent collection
Possible evictions
Having someone around every day

Of course, there are positives:

Stable, predictable income
You might genuinely enjoy your roommate(s)
You might know them personally
They might take better care of your property

There’s potential for bad experiences with Airbnb guests, too. But from a monetary perspective, and for the purpose of house hacking, I’m seeing I can make a lot more with Airbnb than with a roommate. A few hundred bucks when you throw it into a mortgage is HUGE. Plus I still get a few days all to myself – although my guests so far are hardly here anyway.

Thinking beyond a room

For real estate, I wonder how else this could work. Many peeps have finished attics or basements – even with private entrances. There are mother-in-law houses, cottages, and guesthouses. It could maybe even work for a duplex or triplex.

To price my room, I ran a quick search for private rooms in my area to see what the typical price was like. I assume 20 days of occupancy per month – you can lower this number if you want.

The average around me is $50 per night. So $50 X 20 = $1,000. And based on my performance this month, that’s exactly right. If your mortgage is $1,000, you’d be completely covered. But every market is so, so different. I’d run some quick numbers and compare them with the expected cost of a mortgage and see what comes up.

All that to say, I’m impressed with the results of my one guest room so far. And it’s interesting to think how it could scale up. Or tremendously offset the cost of a mortgage.

The real reason I like it

Yes, the extra income is nice. But I could’ve easily gone out and set up another Airbnb project off-site and collected similar profits. And I do miss interacting with people. I love having travelers from all over. When I’m not traveling myself, I feel like I can live vicariously. It’s awesome to be part of someone’s travel story. “I met this cool guy in Dallas…” I just love that!

Apart from the human/social connection, I realized there was another lesson embedded: to always look at what’s around you and think about how you can make it even better. I took my empty room and made a fun project out of it. I wonder what else is around me that I can give life to? From that perspective too, it’s been incredibly inspiring.

Bottom line

I’m basically living rent-free because of this new project. And I’m kind of blown away at the first month numbers and how quickly it took off: $500+ in my first 2 weeks after listing my guest room on Airbnb. And based on future bookings, I expect to clear $1,000 per month – which I will use to throw into my mortgage to pay it off faster.

House hacking with Airbnb could even cover your whole mortgage payment, or take a huge chunk out of it, depending on your numbers, market, and demand for a room.

Will this work everywhere? Definitely not. But places with higher mortgages also tend to have more demand for tourism… so it’s really just an issue of making the numbers work.

It’s also more lucrative and (in my opinion) less stressy than traditional roommates or tenants. I’m making more than if I had a roommate and get more time to myself. Plus there’s no worry of arguments, missed rent, or having to evict someone.

So far… I’m loving it. And I love that I’m still having new experiences with Airbnb after being a host for nearly 5 years by now!

OUT AND OUT - Investing. Positivity. Oh, and travel.

Should You Dump Your Car If You Have Premium Card Travel Credits?

It occurred to me I only drive for a handful of reasons:

To go to the gym
To drop the dog off before I travel
Costco runs every ~6 weeks
To visit nearby places, like Fort Worth

Most of the time I walk or use Uber/Lyft. Because if I intend to drink, I don’t want to deal with parking (and possibly having to pay for it) or of course driving back unsafely. And I live so close to many of the places I frequent that I can walk.

I realized, surprisingly, there are lots of peeps in Dallas who don’t have cars. And I I was shocked by how extremely walkable certain parts of the city really are.

Lookit all my Lyft credits

I’ve also been using the $325 travel credit from my US Bank Altitude Reserve card for Lyft rides lately (I prefer Lyft for many reasons). Then it hit me that I could subsidize $825 in Uber and Lyft rides thanks to travel credits of 3 of my premium cards. It got me thinking – are those credits enough to consider getting rid of my car?

$825 in Uber and Lyft rides from 3 cards

Three of my premium cards come with a travel credit:

$200 in Uber rides with Amex Platinum Card ($550 annual fee)
$300 in travel credits from Chase Sapphire Reserve ($450 annual fee)
$325 in travel credits from US Bank Altitude Reserve ($400 annual fee)

That’s $825 in reimbursed rides each year.

Granted, these cards all come with steep annual fees. But if you use the other perks, you can consider the travel credits as basically free. For example, I:

Visit the Centurion Lounge at DFW a lot and get $200 to spend on an airline of my choice each year with Amex Platinum Card (I choose you, Alaska!)
Use the Chase Sapphire Reserve for 3X on travel and dining and primary rental car coverage (upcoming story about the rental car thing!)
Get 12 Gogo Passes from the US Bank Altitude Reserve which I value for at least $240 on their own

I love making the most of all my card perks.

How much I REALLY use rideshare services

Could $825 toward Uber and Lyft rides really be a reason to stop having a vehicle? After all, if I can do it in Dallas, surely it must be worth a ponder for peeps in other cities.

I checked my Mint.com account to get all my rideshare transactions from the last 12 months. That includes:

Drunken rides
Times I didn’t want to deal with parking
Airport rides
Jaunts in other cities (including Honolulu and Prague)
Every other time I used the service

The brutal truth

At first I was shocked: I spent ~$1,538 on Lyft and Uber rides in the last 12 months. But then I figured that’s ~$128 per month. If I used all of my $825 in travel credits, that would bring my spend down to ~$713 for the year, or ~$59 per month – less than my monthly car insurance is now!

How much does my car REALLY cost me?

Here are the real, raw numbers.

A lot goes into keeping a vehicle. Expenses for the past 12 months include:

Gas – $407
Tolls- ~$54
Insurance payments (mine are ~$76 per month) – ~$816
Oil changes – ~$172
Yearly inspection fees – ~$26
Repairs – $400 (my estimate based on this year – see below)

My car is paid off, so I do NOT have a car note. That would obviously be another huge consideration if you have one.

$407 on gas

~$43 for oil change and maintenance every 3 months – $172 per year

~$140 for a new battery

~$816 for insurance

~$54 on tolls

~$208 muffler repair

My car costs me ~$1,875 each year. Again, this number would be a lot higher if I had a monthly car payment.

Over the past 12 months, I spent ~$156 each month to have a car. That’s more overall that I currently spend on rideshare services. But I feel like I use my car a lot less overall.

Lifestyle and location are huge factors

If I didn’t have a car, I’d pay more to visit the gym in a Lyft to and from. And I’d likely pay for Zipcars every 6 weeks for a Costco run (~$25 bucks a pop).

I’d also pay a lot more to visit nearby cities (or spend more time getting around). Whereas now I can just hop in my car. So I’d increase or replace rideshare expenses. But would save on gas, tolls, insurance, and repairs.

However, I don’t have a daily commute because I work from home. And I can walk many places.

Average daily commutes are getting longer all over the country. So taking an Uber to and from work every day simply isn’t an option for lots of peeps. And, others need to drive for various other reasons. My friend Jasmin used to drive from Buffalo to Toronto every other weekend for work. It wouldn’t be feasible or affordable to rent a car every time. She needed a personal vehicle to make those trips.

Or maybe you need to travel to see your significant other or kids.

There are many reasons why people need cars. It’s almost a requirement if you have frequent long trips in town (commuting) or drive out-of-town often (commuting, personal reasons).

Peeps in cities could make the switch

However, if you live in a dense urban center or only have short trips around town, it would be extremely easy to use Uber and Lyft instead of owning a car – even if you had to commute to work. Because these places also tend to come with lots of extra costs like parking, tolls, higher insurance bills, more expensive gas, and more repairs because of touch-and-go traffic.

You could also supplement with biking – which has little upkeep and a one-time upfront cost. It’s something I’ve considered doing.

If you work from home, you could also do well and save money by dumping your car. You also relieve yourself of several recurring costs, like insurance payments, oil changes, tolls, state inspections, and filling up at the pump – which are also huge stressors (for me, personally).

Ah yes… that time I had to buy a new $900 alternator

Also if you ever have repairs… those can cost anywhere from a couple hundred to astronomical.

Consider public transportation

The bus system in Dallas (and many cities) is… uh, lacking. But, there’s a commuter train and DART trains that connect many parts of the metro area. If I did want to spend a day in Fort Worth, I could be there in 56 minutes via train.

Pretty much the same as driving, TBH

It takes anywhere from 35 minutes to forever by driving, depending on traffic. And then I could Uber around to wherever I wanted to go.

I might take me longer to get there and back. But when I think of all the time I’d save dealing with my car (oil changes are easily an hour-long project, etc.), it seems the minor inconveniences are net-net but the costs are way lower overall.

Bottom line

Just some food for thought. If my car were to break down, I think I’d try to get around with Uber and Lyft for as long as I could before immediately buying another one. Since I have $825 in travel credits to use each year, I’d save quite a bit of cash on rideshare services – which I use anyway, even with a car.

If anything, it’s illuminating to look at the raw numbers and see how much rideshare services vs. having a car really costs. When you factor in all the “little things” over the course of a year, it’s pretty staggering.

The thought of never having to deal with parking, pumping gas, repairs, and oil changes is also extremely tempting. Although I’d increase or replace certain expenses with gym visits, Costco trips, and dropping off the critter when I travel. I’ll mark this as “cross that bridge when I get there.” But knowing I have this option makes me feel a lot better – to the point where it might actually be the best choice anyway.

Of course it’s not feasible for everyone. But could you dump your car and use rideshare services subsidized with travel credits from premium cards?

OUT AND OUT - Investing. Positivity. Oh, and travel.

Lower Plastiq Fees With Drop + 5,000 Drop Points for Out and Out Readers!

Spencer from Straight to the Points is back to talk about a new Plastiq promotion… and an exclusive offer for Out and Out readers to earn 5,000 points with Drop! 

Update 9/25/17: The Plastiq offer from Drop may possibly be targeted. We are checking to see what we can do. If anything, you still get $5 just for downloading the Drop app with promotion code “outandout“!

Save on Plastiq Fees (Plus a Special Offer from Drop for Out and Out Readers)

A few months ago, Drop launched in the US to much fanfare in the miles and points world as the hot new shopping portal. You just needed to attach your credit or debit card (or cards) and shop as usual.

You can easily earn and redeem Drop points at lots of merchants

Redeem the points you earn for merchant gift cards like Hotels.com, Amazon, American Airlines, and Starbucks to help offset future expenses.

The launch was rough.  But Drop is starting to get a handle on the US market. Shortly after launching, they limited the number of points you could earn with their ongoing offers to 5,000 points per week. That definitely put the brakes on some people, but there are still one-time offers to help boost your rebates!

That brings us to today.

A New Drop Plastiq Promotion!

Link: Sign up for Plastiq

Drop just added an awesome ongoing offer with Plastiq that runs through December 31st, 2017. You can already earn points paying your rent, mortgage, utilities, etc. with Plastiq – and now you can get a small rebate thanks to Drop.

Harlan has written extensively about how to use Plastiq to earn maximum points on your bills, so I won’t rehash it all here.  But let’s take a quick look at some of the key points to remember:

Plastiq cuts a check on your behalf (although electronic payments are available for several payees)


2.5% processing fee (unless there is a promo)


Schedule payments early so your check arrives on time


Make sure the points you earn will outweigh the processing fee


Often best for hitting minimum spends

Remember: If you sign up for Plastiq with a referral , you’ll receive 500 fee-free dollars after you spend $500 via Plastiq.

Now, what does this Drop promo have to offer?!

Harlan almost has enough for a $10 reward with literally zero effort beyond downloading the app and adding his banks

For every $100 you spend through Plastiq, you will earn 200 Drop points. This means that, if you spend $1,000 on your rent or mortgage (or other bills) each month, you will earn 2,000 Drop points.  2,000 Drop points are worth $2.  So this isn’t an earth-shattering deal. But it’s an insanely easy way to get a few bucks back through the end of the year – and helps offset some of Plastiq’s processing fees.

The Plastiq offer is listed as an ongoing offer so I expect that they will cap the points you can earn at 5,000 per week. For people like Harlan, who have Airbnb properties, that might restrict the potential, but it’s still an easy way to earn a small rebate!

Special Drop Offer for Out and Out Readers: 5,000-Point Sign-Up Bonus!

Link: Download Drop for iOS
Link: Download Drop for Android

Through the end of September (that’s 8 days!), Drop has increased the sign up bonus for Out and Out readers from 1,000 to 5,000 Drop points. That’s enough to redeem for a $5 Starbucks gift card!

Get $5 for downloading an app – and no waitlist for you!

To sign up, just download the app on your Android or Apple device. You will earn the 5,000 bonus points by using the referral code “outandout” once you link one of your accounts to Drop.

Once you’ve set up your account, choose your 5 ongoing offers from retailers including Starbucks, Uber, Walmart, Chipotle, Whole Foods, Shell, and more. At this time, you can NOT change your ongoing offer choices once a selection has been made, so choose wisely!

Sign up ASAP to get the best earning rates!

Another reason for signing up now is that the rebate rates for some of the ongoing offers will be decreased for those who join after October 9th, 2017. If you sign up before October, you’ll be grandfathered in at the old (better) rates AND receive the increased sign-up bonus of 5,000 Drop points.

Combine Promos to Pay a Mortgage?

Drop says this offer won’t combine with other promos, but that won’t restrict you from using the current reduced fee promo that Plastiq is running for mortgage payments made with a MasterCard.  They’ll drop the processing fee to as little as 1.5% after a rebate if you schedule 3 mortgage payments and pay with a MasterCard. This promotion also runs through the end of the year.

Plastiq has lower fees when you schedule mortgage payments with a MasterCard right now

When this promo and the Drop promo combine, you can take your ability to earn points to the next level.

With the Citi Access More card continuing to earn 3X points per dollar on rent and mortgage payments, this is a great opportunity to earn Citi ThankYou Points. When paired with the Citi Prestige or Citi ThankYou Premier card, these points can be transferred to any of Citi’s 15 airline transfer partners to book some fun flights.

Or, you can earn 2X Membership Rewards with the Blue Business Plus from American Express.

Finally, if you’re working on a minimum spend to earn a sign-up bonus, this could be huge for you. Harlan has big plans for his new Chase British Airways Visa and Plastiq is going to help him earn that 100,000 Avios points sign-up bonus. That comes out to 6X Avios per dollar!

Maximizing Your Drop Points

This is all great but what can Drop points actually do for you? Well, this is my favorite part.

For the coffee addicts out there, you can redeem 5,000 Drop points for a $5 Starbucks gift card. If you earn a ton of Drop points – 100,000 points to be exact – you can redeem them for a $100 American Airlines gift card.

If you’d like to book a paid hotel stay, you can redeem 50,000 Drop points on a $50 Hotels.com gift card.

However, my favorite way to use Drop points for travel has to be redeeming them for Amazon gift cards. You might be wondering how exactly Amazon gift cards can help you offset some travel costs. Well, stick with me, this gets better…

Here’s how it works:

Redeem 10,000 Drop points for $10 Amazon gift cards


Do this 5 times and you’ll have $50 Amazon credit to load to your account


Visit JetBlue’s Amazon Shop and Earn page so you can earn 3X True Blue points per dollar on your Amazon purchases


Sign into your TrueBlue account


Click “Shop and Earn” to be redirected to Amazon


Purchase a Southwest Airlines $50 gift card (or any other gift card!)

You can buy tons of gift cards on Amazon… and earn JetBlue points for it, too!

By stacking Drop rewards and the JetBlue Amazon shopping portal option, you can take your 50,000 Drop points and turn them into $50 of credit to Southwest Airlines for your next domestic trip (or positioning flight before a fun international journey) and get 150 True Blue points toward your next JetBlue redemption.

If you aren’t already earning 3X True Blue points when shopping at Amazon, start doing so now! This can get you tons of points and is especially useful if you have one of the three co-branded JetBlue credit cards issued by Barclaycard. If you live near an airport served by JetBlue, these True Blue points could be especially useful. 

Bottom line

Link: Sign up for Plastiq (you’ll receive 500 fee-free dollars after you spend $500 via Plastiq)

Earning points so you can take fantastic trips across the country and around the world is fun. What makes it even more fun is when we can lower the cost of earning those points.

Is the Drop promo going to be the craziest deal of the year? No, of course not – and that’s OK. It’s still a fun way to offset your Plastiq fees and help you earn a few JetBlue True Blue points and chip away at the cost of a Southwest flight or two… or three.

Get 5,000 Drop points (worth $5) when you download the app for Android or Apple and use promotion code “outandout” through September 30th, 2017!

Let us know in the comments if you take advantage of this deal. We’d love to hear everyone’s experience combining the current MasterCard promotion with the Drop offer!

About Spencer

Spencer Howard is the founder of Straight to the Points where he cuts through the noise to help busy professionals travel the world on miles and points.

OUT AND OUT - Investing. Positivity. Oh, and travel.

Lower Plastiq Fees With Drop + 5,000 Drop Points for Out and Out Readers!

Spencer from Straight to the Points is back to talk about a new Plastiq promotion… and an exclusive offer for Out and Out readers to earn 5,000 points with Drop! 

Update 9/25/17: The Plastiq offer from Drop may possibly be targeted. We are checking to see what we can do. If anything, you still get $5 just for downloading the Drop app with promotion code “outandout“!

Save on Plastiq Fees (Plus a Special Offer from Drop for Out and Out Readers)

A few months ago, Drop launched in the US to much fanfare in the miles and points world as the hot new shopping portal. You just needed to attach your credit or debit card (or cards) and shop as usual.

You can easily earn and redeem Drop points at lots of merchants

Redeem the points you earn for merchant gift cards like Hotels.com, Amazon, American Airlines, and Starbucks to help offset future expenses.

The launch was rough.  But Drop is starting to get a handle on the US market. Shortly after launching, they limited the number of points you could earn with their ongoing offers to 5,000 points per week. That definitely put the brakes on some people, but there are still one-time offers to help boost your rebates!

That brings us to today.

A New Drop Plastiq Promotion!

Link: Sign up for Plastiq

Drop just added an awesome ongoing offer with Plastiq that runs through December 31st, 2017. You can already earn points paying your rent, mortgage, utilities, etc. with Plastiq – and now you can get a small rebate thanks to Drop.

Harlan has written extensively about how to use Plastiq to earn maximum points on your bills, so I won’t rehash it all here.  But let’s take a quick look at some of the key points to remember:

Plastiq cuts a check on your behalf (although electronic payments are available for several payees)


2.5% processing fee (unless there is a promo)


Schedule payments early so your check arrives on time


Make sure the points you earn will outweigh the processing fee


Often best for hitting minimum spends

Remember: If you sign up for Plastiq with a referral , you’ll receive 500 fee-free dollars after you spend $500 via Plastiq.

Now, what does this Drop promo have to offer?!

Harlan almost has enough for a $10 reward with literally zero effort beyond downloading the app and adding his banks

For every $100 you spend through Plastiq, you will earn 200 Drop points. This means that, if you spend $1,000 on your rent or mortgage (or other bills) each month, you will earn 2,000 Drop points.  2,000 Drop points are worth $2.  So this isn’t an earth-shattering deal. But it’s an insanely easy way to get a few bucks back through the end of the year – and helps offset some of Plastiq’s processing fees.

The Plastiq offer is listed as an ongoing offer so I expect that they will cap the points you can earn at 5,000 per week. For people like Harlan, who have Airbnb properties, that might restrict the potential, but it’s still an easy way to earn a small rebate!

Special Drop Offer for Out and Out Readers: 5,000-Point Sign-Up Bonus!

Link: Download Drop for iOS
Link: Download Drop for Android

Through the end of September (that’s 8 days!), Drop has increased the sign up bonus for Out and Out readers from 1,000 to 5,000 Drop points. That’s enough to redeem for a $5 Starbucks gift card!

Get $5 for downloading an app – and no waitlist for you!

To sign up, just download the app on your Android or Apple device. You will earn the 5,000 bonus points by using the referral code “outandout” once you link one of your accounts to Drop.

Once you’ve set up your account, choose your 5 ongoing offers from retailers including Starbucks, Uber, Walmart, Chipotle, Whole Foods, Shell, and more. At this time, you can NOT change your ongoing offer choices once a selection has been made, so choose wisely!

Sign up ASAP to get the best earning rates!

Another reason for signing up now is that the rebate rates for some of the ongoing offers will be decreased for those who join after October 9th, 2017. If you sign up before October, you’ll be grandfathered in at the old (better) rates AND receive the increased sign-up bonus of 5,000 Drop points.

Combine Promos to Pay a Mortgage?

Drop says this offer won’t combine with other promos, but that won’t restrict you from using the current reduced fee promo that Plastiq is running for mortgage payments made with a MasterCard.  They’ll drop the processing fee to as little as 1.5% after a rebate if you schedule 3 mortgage payments and pay with a MasterCard. This promotion also runs through the end of the year.

Plastiq has lower fees when you schedule mortgage payments with a MasterCard right now

When this promo and the Drop promo combine, you can take your ability to earn points to the next level.

With the Citi Access More card continuing to earn 3X points per dollar on rent and mortgage payments, this is a great opportunity to earn Citi ThankYou Points. When paired with the Citi Prestige or Citi ThankYou Premier card, these points can be transferred to any of Citi’s 15 airline transfer partners to book some fun flights.

Or, you can earn 2X Membership Rewards with the Blue Business Plus from American Express.

Finally, if you’re working on a minimum spend to earn a sign-up bonus, this could be huge for you. Harlan has big plans for his new Chase British Airways Visa and Plastiq is going to help him earn that 100,000 Avios points sign-up bonus. That comes out to 6X Avios per dollar!

Maximizing Your Drop Points

This is all great but what can Drop points actually do for you? Well, this is my favorite part.

For the coffee addicts out there, you can redeem 5,000 Drop points for a $5 Starbucks gift card. If you earn a ton of Drop points – 100,000 points to be exact – you can redeem them for a $100 American Airlines gift card.

If you’d like to book a paid hotel stay, you can redeem 50,000 Drop points on a $50 Hotels.com gift card.

However, my favorite way to use Drop points for travel has to be redeeming them for Amazon gift cards. You might be wondering how exactly Amazon gift cards can help you offset some travel costs. Well, stick with me, this gets better…

Here’s how it works:

Redeem 10,000 Drop points for $10 Amazon gift cards


Do this 5 times and you’ll have $50 Amazon credit to load to your account


Visit JetBlue’s Amazon Shop and Earn page so you can earn 3X True Blue points per dollar on your Amazon purchases


Sign into your TrueBlue account


Click “Shop and Earn” to be redirected to Amazon


Purchase a Southwest Airlines $50 gift card (or any other gift card!)

You can buy tons of gift cards on Amazon… and earn JetBlue points for it, too!

By stacking Drop rewards and the JetBlue Amazon shopping portal option, you can take your 50,000 Drop points and turn them into $50 of credit to Southwest Airlines for your next domestic trip (or positioning flight before a fun international journey) and get 150 True Blue points toward your next JetBlue redemption.

If you aren’t already earning 3X True Blue points when shopping at Amazon, start doing so now! This can get you tons of points and is especially useful if you have one of the three co-branded JetBlue credit cards issued by Barclaycard. If you live near an airport served by JetBlue, these True Blue points could be especially useful. 

Bottom line

Link: Sign up for Plastiq (you’ll receive 500 fee-free dollars after you spend $500 via Plastiq)

Earning points so you can take fantastic trips across the country and around the world is fun. What makes it even more fun is when we can lower the cost of earning those points.

Is the Drop promo going to be the craziest deal of the year? No, of course not – and that’s OK. It’s still a fun way to offset your Plastiq fees and help you earn a few JetBlue True Blue points and chip away at the cost of a Southwest flight or two… or three.

Get 5,000 Drop points (worth $5) when you download the app for Android or Apple and use promotion code “outandout” through September 30th, 2017!

Let us know in the comments if you take advantage of this deal. We’d love to hear everyone’s experience combining the current MasterCard promotion with the Drop offer!

About Spencer

Spencer Howard is the founder of Straight to the Points where he cuts through the noise to help busy professionals travel the world on miles and points.

OUT AND OUT - Investing. Positivity. Oh, and travel.

Lower Plastiq Fees With Drop + 5,000 Drop Points for Out and Out Readers!

Spencer from Straight to the Points is back to talk about a new Plastiq promotion… and an exclusive offer for Out and Out readers to earn 5,000 points with Drop! 

Update 9/25/17: The Plastiq offer from Drop may possibly be targeted. We are checking to see what we can do. If anything, you still get $5 just for downloading the Drop app with promotion code “outandout“!

Save on Plastiq Fees (Plus a Special Offer from Drop for Out and Out Readers)

A few months ago, Drop launched in the US to much fanfare in the miles and points world as the hot new shopping portal. You just needed to attach your credit or debit card (or cards) and shop as usual.

You can easily earn and redeem Drop points at lots of merchants

Redeem the points you earn for merchant gift cards like Hotels.com, Amazon, American Airlines, and Starbucks to help offset future expenses.

The launch was rough.  But Drop is starting to get a handle on the US market. Shortly after launching, they limited the number of points you could earn with their ongoing offers to 5,000 points per week. That definitely put the brakes on some people, but there are still one-time offers to help boost your rebates!

That brings us to today.

A New Drop Plastiq Promotion!

Link: Sign up for Plastiq

Drop just added an awesome ongoing offer with Plastiq that runs through December 31st, 2017. You can already earn points paying your rent, mortgage, utilities, etc. with Plastiq – and now you can get a small rebate thanks to Drop.

Harlan has written extensively about how to use Plastiq to earn maximum points on your bills, so I won’t rehash it all here.  But let’s take a quick look at some of the key points to remember:

Plastiq cuts a check on your behalf (although electronic payments are available for several payees)


2.5% processing fee (unless there is a promo)


Schedule payments early so your check arrives on time


Make sure the points you earn will outweigh the processing fee


Often best for hitting minimum spends

Remember: If you sign up for Plastiq with a referral , you’ll receive 500 fee-free dollars after you spend $500 via Plastiq.

Now, what does this Drop promo have to offer?!

Harlan almost has enough for a $10 reward with literally zero effort beyond downloading the app and adding his banks

For every $100 you spend through Plastiq, you will earn 200 Drop points. This means that, if you spend $1,000 on your rent or mortgage (or other bills) each month, you will earn 2,000 Drop points.  2,000 Drop points are worth $2.  So this isn’t an earth-shattering deal. But it’s an insanely easy way to get a few bucks back through the end of the year – and helps offset some of Plastiq’s processing fees.

The Plastiq offer is listed as an ongoing offer so I expect that they will cap the points you can earn at 5,000 per week. For people like Harlan, who have Airbnb properties, that might restrict the potential, but it’s still an easy way to earn a small rebate!

Special Drop Offer for Out and Out Readers: 5,000-Point Sign-Up Bonus!

Link: Download Drop for iOS
Link: Download Drop for Android

Through the end of September (that’s 8 days!), Drop has increased the sign up bonus for Out and Out readers from 1,000 to 5,000 Drop points. That’s enough to redeem for a $5 Starbucks gift card!

Get $5 for downloading an app – and no waitlist for you!

To sign up, just download the app on your Android or Apple device. You will earn the 5,000 bonus points by using the referral code “outandout” once you link one of your accounts to Drop.

Once you’ve set up your account, choose your 5 ongoing offers from retailers including Starbucks, Uber, Walmart, Chipotle, Whole Foods, Shell, and more. At this time, you can NOT change your ongoing offer choices once a selection has been made, so choose wisely!

Sign up ASAP to get the best earning rates!

Another reason for signing up now is that the rebate rates for some of the ongoing offers will be decreased for those who join after October 9th, 2017. If you sign up before October, you’ll be grandfathered in at the old (better) rates AND receive the increased sign-up bonus of 5,000 Drop points.

Combine Promos to Pay a Mortgage?

Drop says this offer won’t combine with other promos, but that won’t restrict you from using the current reduced fee promo that Plastiq is running for mortgage payments made with a MasterCard.  They’ll drop the processing fee to as little as 1.5% after a rebate if you schedule 3 mortgage payments and pay with a MasterCard. This promotion also runs through the end of the year.

Plastiq has lower fees when you schedule mortgage payments with a MasterCard right now

When this promo and the Drop promo combine, you can take your ability to earn points to the next level.

With the Citi Access More card continuing to earn 3X points per dollar on rent and mortgage payments, this is a great opportunity to earn Citi ThankYou Points. When paired with the Citi Prestige or Citi ThankYou Premier card, these points can be transferred to any of Citi’s 15 airline transfer partners to book some fun flights.

Or, you can earn 2X Membership Rewards with the Blue Business Plus from American Express.

Finally, if you’re working on a minimum spend to earn a sign-up bonus, this could be huge for you. Harlan has big plans for his new Chase British Airways Visa and Plastiq is going to help him earn that 100,000 Avios points sign-up bonus. That comes out to 6X Avios per dollar!

Maximizing Your Drop Points

This is all great but what can Drop points actually do for you? Well, this is my favorite part.

For the coffee addicts out there, you can redeem 5,000 Drop points for a $5 Starbucks gift card. If you earn a ton of Drop points – 100,000 points to be exact – you can redeem them for a $100 American Airlines gift card.

If you’d like to book a paid hotel stay, you can redeem 50,000 Drop points on a $50 Hotels.com gift card.

However, my favorite way to use Drop points for travel has to be redeeming them for Amazon gift cards. You might be wondering how exactly Amazon gift cards can help you offset some travel costs. Well, stick with me, this gets better…

Here’s how it works:

Redeem 10,000 Drop points for $10 Amazon gift cards


Do this 5 times and you’ll have $50 Amazon credit to load to your account


Visit JetBlue’s Amazon Shop and Earn page so you can earn 3X True Blue points per dollar on your Amazon purchases


Sign into your TrueBlue account


Click “Shop and Earn” to be redirected to Amazon


Purchase a Southwest Airlines $50 gift card (or any other gift card!)

You can buy tons of gift cards on Amazon… and earn JetBlue points for it, too!

By stacking Drop rewards and the JetBlue Amazon shopping portal option, you can take your 50,000 Drop points and turn them into $50 of credit to Southwest Airlines for your next domestic trip (or positioning flight before a fun international journey) and get 150 True Blue points toward your next JetBlue redemption.

If you aren’t already earning 3X True Blue points when shopping at Amazon, start doing so now! This can get you tons of points and is especially useful if you have one of the three co-branded JetBlue credit cards issued by Barclaycard. If you live near an airport served by JetBlue, these True Blue points could be especially useful. 

Bottom line

Link: Sign up for Plastiq (you’ll receive 500 fee-free dollars after you spend $500 via Plastiq)

Earning points so you can take fantastic trips across the country and around the world is fun. What makes it even more fun is when we can lower the cost of earning those points.

Is the Drop promo going to be the craziest deal of the year? No, of course not – and that’s OK. It’s still a fun way to offset your Plastiq fees and help you earn a few JetBlue True Blue points and chip away at the cost of a Southwest flight or two… or three.

Get 5,000 Drop points (worth $5) when you download the app for Android or Apple and use promotion code “outandout” through September 30th, 2017!

Let us know in the comments if you take advantage of this deal. We’d love to hear everyone’s experience combining the current MasterCard promotion with the Drop offer!

About Spencer

Spencer Howard is the founder of Straight to the Points where he cuts through the noise to help busy professionals travel the world on miles and points.

OUT AND OUT - Investing. Positivity. Oh, and travel.

Lower Plastiq Fees With Drop + 5,000 Drop Points for Out and Out Readers!

Spencer from Straight to the Points is back to talk about a new Plastiq promotion… and an exclusive offer for Out and Out readers to earn 5,000 points with Drop! 

Update 9/25/17: The Plastiq offer from Drop may possibly be targeted. We are checking to see what we can do. If anything, you still get $5 just for downloading the Drop app with promotion code “outandout“!

Save on Plastiq Fees (Plus a Special Offer from Drop for Out and Out Readers)

A few months ago, Drop launched in the US to much fanfare in the miles and points world as the hot new shopping portal. You just needed to attach your credit or debit card (or cards) and shop as usual.

You can easily earn and redeem Drop points at lots of merchants

Redeem the points you earn for merchant gift cards like Hotels.com, Amazon, American Airlines, and Starbucks to help offset future expenses.

The launch was rough.  But Drop is starting to get a handle on the US market. Shortly after launching, they limited the number of points you could earn with their ongoing offers to 5,000 points per week. That definitely put the brakes on some people, but there are still one-time offers to help boost your rebates!

That brings us to today.

A New Drop Plastiq Promotion!

Link: Sign up for Plastiq

Drop just added an awesome ongoing offer with Plastiq that runs through December 31st, 2017. You can already earn points paying your rent, mortgage, utilities, etc. with Plastiq – and now you can get a small rebate thanks to Drop.

Harlan has written extensively about how to use Plastiq to earn maximum points on your bills, so I won’t rehash it all here.  But let’s take a quick look at some of the key points to remember:

Plastiq cuts a check on your behalf (although electronic payments are available for several payees)


2.5% processing fee (unless there is a promo)


Schedule payments early so your check arrives on time


Make sure the points you earn will outweigh the processing fee


Often best for hitting minimum spends

Remember: If you sign up for Plastiq with a referral , you’ll receive 500 fee-free dollars after you spend $500 via Plastiq.

Now, what does this Drop promo have to offer?!

Harlan almost has enough for a $10 reward with literally zero effort beyond downloading the app and adding his banks

For every $100 you spend through Plastiq, you will earn 200 Drop points. This means that, if you spend $1,000 on your rent or mortgage (or other bills) each month, you will earn 2,000 Drop points.  2,000 Drop points are worth $2.  So this isn’t an earth-shattering deal. But it’s an insanely easy way to get a few bucks back through the end of the year – and helps offset some of Plastiq’s processing fees.

The Plastiq offer is listed as an ongoing offer so I expect that they will cap the points you can earn at 5,000 per week. For people like Harlan, who have Airbnb properties, that might restrict the potential, but it’s still an easy way to earn a small rebate!

Special Drop Offer for Out and Out Readers: 5,000-Point Sign-Up Bonus!

Link: Download Drop for iOS
Link: Download Drop for Android

Through the end of September (that’s 8 days!), Drop has increased the sign up bonus for Out and Out readers from 1,000 to 5,000 Drop points. That’s enough to redeem for a $5 Starbucks gift card!

Get $5 for downloading an app – and no waitlist for you!

To sign up, just download the app on your Android or Apple device. You will earn the 5,000 bonus points by using the referral code “outandout” once you link one of your accounts to Drop.

Once you’ve set up your account, choose your 5 ongoing offers from retailers including Starbucks, Uber, Walmart, Chipotle, Whole Foods, Shell, and more. At this time, you can NOT change your ongoing offer choices once a selection has been made, so choose wisely!

Sign up ASAP to get the best earning rates!

Another reason for signing up now is that the rebate rates for some of the ongoing offers will be decreased for those who join after October 9th, 2017. If you sign up before October, you’ll be grandfathered in at the old (better) rates AND receive the increased sign-up bonus of 5,000 Drop points.

Combine Promos to Pay a Mortgage?

Drop says this offer won’t combine with other promos, but that won’t restrict you from using the current reduced fee promo that Plastiq is running for mortgage payments made with a MasterCard.  They’ll drop the processing fee to as little as 1.5% after a rebate if you schedule 3 mortgage payments and pay with a MasterCard. This promotion also runs through the end of the year.

Plastiq has lower fees when you schedule mortgage payments with a MasterCard right now

When this promo and the Drop promo combine, you can take your ability to earn points to the next level.

With the Citi Access More card continuing to earn 3X points per dollar on rent and mortgage payments, this is a great opportunity to earn Citi ThankYou Points. When paired with the Citi Prestige or Citi ThankYou Premier card, these points can be transferred to any of Citi’s 15 airline transfer partners to book some fun flights.

Or, you can earn 2X Membership Rewards with the Blue Business Plus from American Express.

Finally, if you’re working on a minimum spend to earn a sign-up bonus, this could be huge for you. Harlan has big plans for his new Chase British Airways Visa and Plastiq is going to help him earn that 100,000 Avios points sign-up bonus. That comes out to 6X Avios per dollar!

Maximizing Your Drop Points

This is all great but what can Drop points actually do for you? Well, this is my favorite part.

For the coffee addicts out there, you can redeem 5,000 Drop points for a $5 Starbucks gift card. If you earn a ton of Drop points – 100,000 points to be exact – you can redeem them for a $100 American Airlines gift card.

If you’d like to book a paid hotel stay, you can redeem 50,000 Drop points on a $50 Hotels.com gift card.

However, my favorite way to use Drop points for travel has to be redeeming them for Amazon gift cards. You might be wondering how exactly Amazon gift cards can help you offset some travel costs. Well, stick with me, this gets better…

Here’s how it works:

Redeem 10,000 Drop points for $10 Amazon gift cards


Do this 5 times and you’ll have $50 Amazon credit to load to your account


Visit JetBlue’s Amazon Shop and Earn page so you can earn 3X True Blue points per dollar on your Amazon purchases


Sign into your TrueBlue account


Click “Shop and Earn” to be redirected to Amazon


Purchase a Southwest Airlines $50 gift card (or any other gift card!)

You can buy tons of gift cards on Amazon… and earn JetBlue points for it, too!

By stacking Drop rewards and the JetBlue Amazon shopping portal option, you can take your 50,000 Drop points and turn them into $50 of credit to Southwest Airlines for your next domestic trip (or positioning flight before a fun international journey) and get 150 True Blue points toward your next JetBlue redemption.

If you aren’t already earning 3X True Blue points when shopping at Amazon, start doing so now! This can get you tons of points and is especially useful if you have one of the three co-branded JetBlue credit cards issued by Barclaycard. If you live near an airport served by JetBlue, these True Blue points could be especially useful. 

Bottom line

Link: Sign up for Plastiq (you’ll receive 500 fee-free dollars after you spend $500 via Plastiq)

Earning points so you can take fantastic trips across the country and around the world is fun. What makes it even more fun is when we can lower the cost of earning those points.

Is the Drop promo going to be the craziest deal of the year? No, of course not – and that’s OK. It’s still a fun way to offset your Plastiq fees and help you earn a few JetBlue True Blue points and chip away at the cost of a Southwest flight or two… or three.

Get 5,000 Drop points (worth $5) when you download the app for Android or Apple and use promotion code “outandout” through September 30th, 2017!

Let us know in the comments if you take advantage of this deal. We’d love to hear everyone’s experience combining the current MasterCard promotion with the Drop offer!

About Spencer

Spencer Howard is the founder of Straight to the Points where he cuts through the noise to help busy professionals travel the world on miles and points.

OUT AND OUT - Investing. Positivity. Oh, and travel.

Lower Plastiq Fees With Drop + 5,000 Drop Points for Out and Out Readers!

Spencer from Straight to the Points is back to talk about a new Plastiq promotion… and an exclusive offer for Out and Out readers to earn 5,000 points with Drop! 

Update 9/25/17: The Plastiq offer from Drop may possibly be targeted. We are checking to see what we can do. If anything, you still get $5 just for downloading the Drop app with promotion code “outandout“!

Save on Plastiq Fees (Plus a Special Offer from Drop for Out and Out Readers)

A few months ago, Drop launched in the US to much fanfare in the miles and points world as the hot new shopping portal. You just needed to attach your credit or debit card (or cards) and shop as usual.

You can easily earn and redeem Drop points at lots of merchants

Redeem the points you earn for merchant gift cards like Hotels.com, Amazon, American Airlines, and Starbucks to help offset future expenses.

The launch was rough.  But Drop is starting to get a handle on the US market. Shortly after launching, they limited the number of points you could earn with their ongoing offers to 5,000 points per week. That definitely put the brakes on some people, but there are still one-time offers to help boost your rebates!

That brings us to today.

A New Drop Plastiq Promotion!

Link: Sign up for Plastiq

Drop just added an awesome ongoing offer with Plastiq that runs through December 31st, 2017. You can already earn points paying your rent, mortgage, utilities, etc. with Plastiq – and now you can get a small rebate thanks to Drop.

Harlan has written extensively about how to use Plastiq to earn maximum points on your bills, so I won’t rehash it all here.  But let’s take a quick look at some of the key points to remember:

Plastiq cuts a check on your behalf (although electronic payments are available for several payees)


2.5% processing fee (unless there is a promo)


Schedule payments early so your check arrives on time


Make sure the points you earn will outweigh the processing fee


Often best for hitting minimum spends

Remember: If you sign up for Plastiq with a referral , you’ll receive 500 fee-free dollars after you spend $500 via Plastiq.

Now, what does this Drop promo have to offer?!

Harlan almost has enough for a $10 reward with literally zero effort beyond downloading the app and adding his banks

For every $100 you spend through Plastiq, you will earn 200 Drop points. This means that, if you spend $1,000 on your rent or mortgage (or other bills) each month, you will earn 2,000 Drop points.  2,000 Drop points are worth $2.  So this isn’t an earth-shattering deal. But it’s an insanely easy way to get a few bucks back through the end of the year – and helps offset some of Plastiq’s processing fees.

The Plastiq offer is listed as an ongoing offer so I expect that they will cap the points you can earn at 5,000 per week. For people like Harlan, who have Airbnb properties, that might restrict the potential, but it’s still an easy way to earn a small rebate!

Special Drop Offer for Out and Out Readers: 5,000-Point Sign-Up Bonus!

Link: Download Drop for iOS
Link: Download Drop for Android

Through the end of September (that’s 8 days!), Drop has increased the sign up bonus for Out and Out readers from 1,000 to 5,000 Drop points. That’s enough to redeem for a $5 Starbucks gift card!

Get $5 for downloading an app – and no waitlist for you!

To sign up, just download the app on your Android or Apple device. You will earn the 5,000 bonus points by using the referral code “outandout” once you link one of your accounts to Drop.

Once you’ve set up your account, choose your 5 ongoing offers from retailers including Starbucks, Uber, Walmart, Chipotle, Whole Foods, Shell, and more. At this time, you can NOT change your ongoing offer choices once a selection has been made, so choose wisely!

Sign up ASAP to get the best earning rates!

Another reason for signing up now is that the rebate rates for some of the ongoing offers will be decreased for those who join after October 9th, 2017. If you sign up before October, you’ll be grandfathered in at the old (better) rates AND receive the increased sign-up bonus of 5,000 Drop points.

Combine Promos to Pay a Mortgage?

Drop says this offer won’t combine with other promos, but that won’t restrict you from using the current reduced fee promo that Plastiq is running for mortgage payments made with a MasterCard.  They’ll drop the processing fee to as little as 1.5% after a rebate if you schedule 3 mortgage payments and pay with a MasterCard. This promotion also runs through the end of the year.

Plastiq has lower fees when you schedule mortgage payments with a MasterCard right now

When this promo and the Drop promo combine, you can take your ability to earn points to the next level.

With the Citi Access More card continuing to earn 3X points per dollar on rent and mortgage payments, this is a great opportunity to earn Citi ThankYou Points. When paired with the Citi Prestige or Citi ThankYou Premier card, these points can be transferred to any of Citi’s 15 airline transfer partners to book some fun flights.

Or, you can earn 2X Membership Rewards with the Blue Business Plus from American Express.

Finally, if you’re working on a minimum spend to earn a sign-up bonus, this could be huge for you. Harlan has big plans for his new Chase British Airways Visa and Plastiq is going to help him earn that 100,000 Avios points sign-up bonus. That comes out to 6X Avios per dollar!

Maximizing Your Drop Points

This is all great but what can Drop points actually do for you? Well, this is my favorite part.

For the coffee addicts out there, you can redeem 5,000 Drop points for a $5 Starbucks gift card. If you earn a ton of Drop points – 100,000 points to be exact – you can redeem them for a $100 American Airlines gift card.

If you’d like to book a paid hotel stay, you can redeem 50,000 Drop points on a $50 Hotels.com gift card.

However, my favorite way to use Drop points for travel has to be redeeming them for Amazon gift cards. You might be wondering how exactly Amazon gift cards can help you offset some travel costs. Well, stick with me, this gets better…

Here’s how it works:

Redeem 10,000 Drop points for $10 Amazon gift cards


Do this 5 times and you’ll have $50 Amazon credit to load to your account


Visit JetBlue’s Amazon Shop and Earn page so you can earn 3X True Blue points per dollar on your Amazon purchases


Sign into your TrueBlue account


Click “Shop and Earn” to be redirected to Amazon


Purchase a Southwest Airlines $50 gift card (or any other gift card!)

You can buy tons of gift cards on Amazon… and earn JetBlue points for it, too!

By stacking Drop rewards and the JetBlue Amazon shopping portal option, you can take your 50,000 Drop points and turn them into $50 of credit to Southwest Airlines for your next domestic trip (or positioning flight before a fun international journey) and get 150 True Blue points toward your next JetBlue redemption.

If you aren’t already earning 3X True Blue points when shopping at Amazon, start doing so now! This can get you tons of points and is especially useful if you have one of the three co-branded JetBlue credit cards issued by Barclaycard. If you live near an airport served by JetBlue, these True Blue points could be especially useful. 

Bottom line

Link: Sign up for Plastiq (you’ll receive 500 fee-free dollars after you spend $500 via Plastiq)

Earning points so you can take fantastic trips across the country and around the world is fun. What makes it even more fun is when we can lower the cost of earning those points.

Is the Drop promo going to be the craziest deal of the year? No, of course not – and that’s OK. It’s still a fun way to offset your Plastiq fees and help you earn a few JetBlue True Blue points and chip away at the cost of a Southwest flight or two… or three.

Get 5,000 Drop points (worth $5) when you download the app for Android or Apple and use promotion code “outandout” through September 30th, 2017!

Let us know in the comments if you take advantage of this deal. We’d love to hear everyone’s experience combining the current MasterCard promotion with the Drop offer!

About Spencer

Spencer Howard is the founder of Straight to the Points where he cuts through the noise to help busy professionals travel the world on miles and points.

OUT AND OUT - Investing. Positivity. Oh, and travel.

Lower Plastiq Fees With Drop + 5,000 Drop Points for Out and Out Readers!

Spencer from Straight to the Points is back to talk about a new Plastiq promotion… and an exclusive offer for Out and Out readers to earn 5,000 points with Drop! 

Update 9/25/17: The Plastiq offer from Drop may possibly be targeted. We are checking to see what we can do. If anything, you still get $5 just for downloading the Drop app with promotion code “outandout“!

Save on Plastiq Fees (Plus a Special Offer from Drop for Out and Out Readers)

A few months ago, Drop launched in the US to much fanfare in the miles and points world as the hot new shopping portal. You just needed to attach your credit or debit card (or cards) and shop as usual.

You can easily earn and redeem Drop points at lots of merchants

Redeem the points you earn for merchant gift cards like Hotels.com, Amazon, American Airlines, and Starbucks to help offset future expenses.

The launch was rough.  But Drop is starting to get a handle on the US market. Shortly after launching, they limited the number of points you could earn with their ongoing offers to 5,000 points per week. That definitely put the brakes on some people, but there are still one-time offers to help boost your rebates!

That brings us to today.

A New Drop Plastiq Promotion!

Link: Sign up for Plastiq

Drop just added an awesome ongoing offer with Plastiq that runs through December 31st, 2017. You can already earn points paying your rent, mortgage, utilities, etc. with Plastiq – and now you can get a small rebate thanks to Drop.

Harlan has written extensively about how to use Plastiq to earn maximum points on your bills, so I won’t rehash it all here.  But let’s take a quick look at some of the key points to remember:

Plastiq cuts a check on your behalf (although electronic payments are available for several payees)


2.5% processing fee (unless there is a promo)


Schedule payments early so your check arrives on time


Make sure the points you earn will outweigh the processing fee


Often best for hitting minimum spends

Remember: If you sign up for Plastiq with a referral , you’ll receive 500 fee-free dollars after you spend $500 via Plastiq.

Now, what does this Drop promo have to offer?!

Harlan almost has enough for a $10 reward with literally zero effort beyond downloading the app and adding his banks

For every $100 you spend through Plastiq, you will earn 200 Drop points. This means that, if you spend $1,000 on your rent or mortgage (or other bills) each month, you will earn 2,000 Drop points.  2,000 Drop points are worth $2.  So this isn’t an earth-shattering deal. But it’s an insanely easy way to get a few bucks back through the end of the year – and helps offset some of Plastiq’s processing fees.

The Plastiq offer is listed as an ongoing offer so I expect that they will cap the points you can earn at 5,000 per week. For people like Harlan, who have Airbnb properties, that might restrict the potential, but it’s still an easy way to earn a small rebate!

Special Drop Offer for Out and Out Readers: 5,000-Point Sign-Up Bonus!

Link: Download Drop for iOS
Link: Download Drop for Android

Through the end of September (that’s 8 days!), Drop has increased the sign up bonus for Out and Out readers from 1,000 to 5,000 Drop points. That’s enough to redeem for a $5 Starbucks gift card!

Get $5 for downloading an app – and no waitlist for you!

To sign up, just download the app on your Android or Apple device. You will earn the 5,000 bonus points by using the referral code “outandout” once you link one of your accounts to Drop.

Once you’ve set up your account, choose your 5 ongoing offers from retailers including Starbucks, Uber, Walmart, Chipotle, Whole Foods, Shell, and more. At this time, you can NOT change your ongoing offer choices once a selection has been made, so choose wisely!

Sign up ASAP to get the best earning rates!

Another reason for signing up now is that the rebate rates for some of the ongoing offers will be decreased for those who join after October 9th, 2017. If you sign up before October, you’ll be grandfathered in at the old (better) rates AND receive the increased sign-up bonus of 5,000 Drop points.

Combine Promos to Pay a Mortgage?

Drop says this offer won’t combine with other promos, but that won’t restrict you from using the current reduced fee promo that Plastiq is running for mortgage payments made with a MasterCard.  They’ll drop the processing fee to as little as 1.5% after a rebate if you schedule 3 mortgage payments and pay with a MasterCard. This promotion also runs through the end of the year.

Plastiq has lower fees when you schedule mortgage payments with a MasterCard right now

When this promo and the Drop promo combine, you can take your ability to earn points to the next level.

With the Citi Access More card continuing to earn 3X points per dollar on rent and mortgage payments, this is a great opportunity to earn Citi ThankYou Points. When paired with the Citi Prestige or Citi ThankYou Premier card, these points can be transferred to any of Citi’s 15 airline transfer partners to book some fun flights.

Or, you can earn 2X Membership Rewards with the Blue Business Plus from American Express.

Finally, if you’re working on a minimum spend to earn a sign-up bonus, this could be huge for you. Harlan has big plans for his new Chase British Airways Visa and Plastiq is going to help him earn that 100,000 Avios points sign-up bonus. That comes out to 6X Avios per dollar!

Maximizing Your Drop Points

This is all great but what can Drop points actually do for you? Well, this is my favorite part.

For the coffee addicts out there, you can redeem 5,000 Drop points for a $5 Starbucks gift card. If you earn a ton of Drop points – 100,000 points to be exact – you can redeem them for a $100 American Airlines gift card.

If you’d like to book a paid hotel stay, you can redeem 50,000 Drop points on a $50 Hotels.com gift card.

However, my favorite way to use Drop points for travel has to be redeeming them for Amazon gift cards. You might be wondering how exactly Amazon gift cards can help you offset some travel costs. Well, stick with me, this gets better…

Here’s how it works:

Redeem 10,000 Drop points for $10 Amazon gift cards


Do this 5 times and you’ll have $50 Amazon credit to load to your account


Visit JetBlue’s Amazon Shop and Earn page so you can earn 3X True Blue points per dollar on your Amazon purchases


Sign into your TrueBlue account


Click “Shop and Earn” to be redirected to Amazon


Purchase a Southwest Airlines $50 gift card (or any other gift card!)

You can buy tons of gift cards on Amazon… and earn JetBlue points for it, too!

By stacking Drop rewards and the JetBlue Amazon shopping portal option, you can take your 50,000 Drop points and turn them into $50 of credit to Southwest Airlines for your next domestic trip (or positioning flight before a fun international journey) and get 150 True Blue points toward your next JetBlue redemption.

If you aren’t already earning 3X True Blue points when shopping at Amazon, start doing so now! This can get you tons of points and is especially useful if you have one of the three co-branded JetBlue credit cards issued by Barclaycard. If you live near an airport served by JetBlue, these True Blue points could be especially useful. 

Bottom line

Link: Sign up for Plastiq (you’ll receive 500 fee-free dollars after you spend $500 via Plastiq)

Earning points so you can take fantastic trips across the country and around the world is fun. What makes it even more fun is when we can lower the cost of earning those points.

Is the Drop promo going to be the craziest deal of the year? No, of course not – and that’s OK. It’s still a fun way to offset your Plastiq fees and help you earn a few JetBlue True Blue points and chip away at the cost of a Southwest flight or two… or three.

Get 5,000 Drop points (worth $5) when you download the app for Android or Apple and use promotion code “outandout” through September 30th, 2017!

Let us know in the comments if you take advantage of this deal. We’d love to hear everyone’s experience combining the current MasterCard promotion with the Drop offer!

About Spencer

Spencer Howard is the founder of Straight to the Points where he cuts through the noise to help busy professionals travel the world on miles and points.

OUT AND OUT - Investing. Positivity. Oh, and travel.

Lower Plastiq Fees With Drop + 5,000 Drop Points for Out and Out Readers!

Spencer from Straight to the Points is back to talk about a new Plastiq promotion… and an exclusive offer for Out and Out readers to earn 5,000 points with Drop! 

Update 9/25/17: The Plastiq offer from Drop may possibly be targeted. We are checking to see what we can do. If anything, you still get $5 just for downloading the Drop app with promotion code “outandout“!

Save on Plastiq Fees (Plus a Special Offer from Drop for Out and Out Readers)

A few months ago, Drop launched in the US to much fanfare in the miles and points world as the hot new shopping portal. You just needed to attach your credit or debit card (or cards) and shop as usual.

You can easily earn and redeem Drop points at lots of merchants

Redeem the points you earn for merchant gift cards like Hotels.com, Amazon, American Airlines, and Starbucks to help offset future expenses.

The launch was rough.  But Drop is starting to get a handle on the US market. Shortly after launching, they limited the number of points you could earn with their ongoing offers to 5,000 points per week. That definitely put the brakes on some people, but there are still one-time offers to help boost your rebates!

That brings us to today.

A New Drop Plastiq Promotion!

Link: Sign up for Plastiq

Drop just added an awesome ongoing offer with Plastiq that runs through December 31st, 2017. You can already earn points paying your rent, mortgage, utilities, etc. with Plastiq – and now you can get a small rebate thanks to Drop.

Harlan has written extensively about how to use Plastiq to earn maximum points on your bills, so I won’t rehash it all here.  But let’s take a quick look at some of the key points to remember:

Plastiq cuts a check on your behalf (although electronic payments are available for several payees)


2.5% processing fee (unless there is a promo)


Schedule payments early so your check arrives on time


Make sure the points you earn will outweigh the processing fee


Often best for hitting minimum spends

Remember: If you sign up for Plastiq with a referral , you’ll receive 500 fee-free dollars after you spend $500 via Plastiq.

Now, what does this Drop promo have to offer?!

Harlan almost has enough for a $10 reward with literally zero effort beyond downloading the app and adding his banks

For every $100 you spend through Plastiq, you will earn 200 Drop points. This means that, if you spend $1,000 on your rent or mortgage (or other bills) each month, you will earn 2,000 Drop points.  2,000 Drop points are worth $2.  So this isn’t an earth-shattering deal. But it’s an insanely easy way to get a few bucks back through the end of the year – and helps offset some of Plastiq’s processing fees.

The Plastiq offer is listed as an ongoing offer so I expect that they will cap the points you can earn at 5,000 per week. For people like Harlan, who have Airbnb properties, that might restrict the potential, but it’s still an easy way to earn a small rebate!

Special Drop Offer for Out and Out Readers: 5,000-Point Sign-Up Bonus!

Link: Download Drop for iOS
Link: Download Drop for Android

Through the end of September (that’s 8 days!), Drop has increased the sign up bonus for Out and Out readers from 1,000 to 5,000 Drop points. That’s enough to redeem for a $5 Starbucks gift card!

Get $5 for downloading an app – and no waitlist for you!

To sign up, just download the app on your Android or Apple device. You will earn the 5,000 bonus points by using the referral code “outandout” once you link one of your accounts to Drop.

Once you’ve set up your account, choose your 5 ongoing offers from retailers including Starbucks, Uber, Walmart, Chipotle, Whole Foods, Shell, and more. At this time, you can NOT change your ongoing offer choices once a selection has been made, so choose wisely!

Sign up ASAP to get the best earning rates!

Another reason for signing up now is that the rebate rates for some of the ongoing offers will be decreased for those who join after October 9th, 2017. If you sign up before October, you’ll be grandfathered in at the old (better) rates AND receive the increased sign-up bonus of 5,000 Drop points.

Combine Promos to Pay a Mortgage?

Drop says this offer won’t combine with other promos, but that won’t restrict you from using the current reduced fee promo that Plastiq is running for mortgage payments made with a MasterCard.  They’ll drop the processing fee to as little as 1.5% after a rebate if you schedule 3 mortgage payments and pay with a MasterCard. This promotion also runs through the end of the year.

Plastiq has lower fees when you schedule mortgage payments with a MasterCard right now

When this promo and the Drop promo combine, you can take your ability to earn points to the next level.

With the Citi Access More card continuing to earn 3X points per dollar on rent and mortgage payments, this is a great opportunity to earn Citi ThankYou Points. When paired with the Citi Prestige or Citi ThankYou Premier card, these points can be transferred to any of Citi’s 15 airline transfer partners to book some fun flights.

Or, you can earn 2X Membership Rewards with the Blue Business Plus from American Express.

Finally, if you’re working on a minimum spend to earn a sign-up bonus, this could be huge for you. Harlan has big plans for his new Chase British Airways Visa and Plastiq is going to help him earn that 100,000 Avios points sign-up bonus. That comes out to 6X Avios per dollar!

Maximizing Your Drop Points

This is all great but what can Drop points actually do for you? Well, this is my favorite part.

For the coffee addicts out there, you can redeem 5,000 Drop points for a $5 Starbucks gift card. If you earn a ton of Drop points – 100,000 points to be exact – you can redeem them for a $100 American Airlines gift card.

If you’d like to book a paid hotel stay, you can redeem 50,000 Drop points on a $50 Hotels.com gift card.

However, my favorite way to use Drop points for travel has to be redeeming them for Amazon gift cards. You might be wondering how exactly Amazon gift cards can help you offset some travel costs. Well, stick with me, this gets better…

Here’s how it works:

Redeem 10,000 Drop points for $10 Amazon gift cards


Do this 5 times and you’ll have $50 Amazon credit to load to your account


Visit JetBlue’s Amazon Shop and Earn page so you can earn 3X True Blue points per dollar on your Amazon purchases


Sign into your TrueBlue account


Click “Shop and Earn” to be redirected to Amazon


Purchase a Southwest Airlines $50 gift card (or any other gift card!)

You can buy tons of gift cards on Amazon… and earn JetBlue points for it, too!

By stacking Drop rewards and the JetBlue Amazon shopping portal option, you can take your 50,000 Drop points and turn them into $50 of credit to Southwest Airlines for your next domestic trip (or positioning flight before a fun international journey) and get 150 True Blue points toward your next JetBlue redemption.

If you aren’t already earning 3X True Blue points when shopping at Amazon, start doing so now! This can get you tons of points and is especially useful if you have one of the three co-branded JetBlue credit cards issued by Barclaycard. If you live near an airport served by JetBlue, these True Blue points could be especially useful. 

Bottom line

Link: Sign up for Plastiq (you’ll receive 500 fee-free dollars after you spend $500 via Plastiq)

Earning points so you can take fantastic trips across the country and around the world is fun. What makes it even more fun is when we can lower the cost of earning those points.

Is the Drop promo going to be the craziest deal of the year? No, of course not – and that’s OK. It’s still a fun way to offset your Plastiq fees and help you earn a few JetBlue True Blue points and chip away at the cost of a Southwest flight or two… or three.

Get 5,000 Drop points (worth $5) when you download the app for Android or Apple and use promotion code “outandout” through September 30th, 2017!

Let us know in the comments if you take advantage of this deal. We’d love to hear everyone’s experience combining the current MasterCard promotion with the Drop offer!

About Spencer

Spencer Howard is the founder of Straight to the Points where he cuts through the noise to help busy professionals travel the world on miles and points.

OUT AND OUT - Investing. Positivity. Oh, and travel.

Lower Plastiq Fees With Drop + 5,000 Drop Points for Out and Out Readers!

Spencer from Straight to the Points is back to talk about a new Plastiq promotion… and an exclusive offer for Out and Out readers to earn 5,000 points with Drop! 

Save on Plastiq Fees (Plus a Special Offer from Drop for Out and Out Readers)

A few months ago, Drop launched in the US to much fanfare in the miles and points world as the hot new shopping portal. You just needed to attach your credit or debit card (or cards) and shop as usual.

You can easily earn and redeem Drop points at lots of merchants

Redeem the points you earn for merchant gift cards like Hotels.com, Amazon, American Airlines, and Starbucks to help offset future expenses.

The launch was rough.  But Drop is starting to get a handle on the US market. Shortly after launching, they limited the number of points you could earn with their ongoing offers to 5,000 points per week. That definitely put the brakes on some people, but there are still one-time offers to help boost your rebates!

That brings us to today.

A New Drop Plastiq Promotion!

Link: Sign up for Plastiq

Drop just added an awesome ongoing offer with Plastiq that runs through December 31st, 2017. You can already earn points paying your rent, mortgage, utilities, etc. with Plastiq – and now you can get a small rebate thanks to Drop.

Harlan has written extensively about how to use Plastiq to earn maximum points on your bills, so I won’t rehash it all here.  But let’s take a quick look at some of the key points to remember:

Plastiq cuts a check on your behalf (although electronic payments are available for several payees)


2.5% processing fee (unless there is a promo)


Schedule payments early so your check arrives on time


Make sure the points you earn will outweigh the processing fee


Often best for hitting minimum spends

Remember: If you sign up for Plastiq with a referral , you’ll receive 500 fee-free dollars after you spend $500 via Plastiq.

Now, what does this Drop promo have to offer?!

Harlan almost has enough for a $10 reward with literally zero effort beyond downloading the app and adding his banks

For every $100 you spend through Plastiq, you will earn 200 Drop points. This means that, if you spend $1,000 on your rent or mortgage (or other bills) each month, you will earn 2,000 Drop points.  2,000 Drop points are worth $2.  So this isn’t an earth-shattering deal. But it’s an insanely easy way to get a few bucks back through the end of the year – and helps offset some of Plastiq’s processing fees.

The Plastiq offer is listed as an ongoing offer so I expect that they will cap the points you can earn at 5,000 per week. For people like Harlan, who have Airbnb properties, that might restrict the potential, but it’s still an easy way to earn a small rebate!

Special Drop Offer for Out and Out Readers: 5,000-Point Sign-Up Bonus!

Link: Download Drop for iOS
Link: Download Drop for Android

Through the end of September (that’s 8 days!), Drop has increased the sign up bonus for Out and Out readers from 1,000 to 5,000 Drop points. That’s enough to redeem for a $5 Starbucks gift card!

Get $5 for downloading an app – and no waitlist for you!

To sign up, just download the app on your Android or Apple device. You will earn the 5,000 bonus points by using the referral code “outandout” once you link one of your accounts to Drop.

Once you’ve set up your account, choose your 5 ongoing offers from retailers including Starbucks, Uber, Walmart, Chipotle, Whole Foods, Shell, and more. At this time, you can NOT change your ongoing offer choices once a selection has been made, so choose wisely!

Sign up ASAP to get the best earning rates!

Another reason for signing up now is that the rebate rates for some of the ongoing offers will be decreased for those who join after October 9th, 2017. If you sign up before October, you’ll be grandfathered in at the old (better) rates AND receive the increased sign-up bonus of 5,000 Drop points.

Combine Promos to Pay a Mortgage?

Drop says this offer won’t combine with other promos, but that won’t restrict you from using the current reduced fee promo that Plastiq is running for mortgage payments made with a MasterCard.  They’ll drop the processing fee to as little as 1.5% after a rebate if you schedule 3 mortgage payments and pay with a MasterCard. This promotion also runs through the end of the year.

Plastiq has lower fees when you schedule mortgage payments with a MasterCard right now

When this promo and the Drop promo combine, you can take your ability to earn points to the next level.

With the Citi Access More card continuing to earn 3X points per dollar on rent and mortgage payments, this is a great opportunity to earn Citi ThankYou Points. When paired with the Citi Prestige or Citi ThankYou Premier card, these points can be transferred to any of Citi’s 15 airline transfer partners to book some fun flights.

Or, you can earn 2X Membership Rewards with the Blue Business Plus from American Express.

Finally, if you’re working on a minimum spend to earn a sign-up bonus, this could be huge for you. Harlan has big plans for his new Chase British Airways Visa and Plastiq is going to help him earn that 100,000 Avios points sign-up bonus. That comes out to 6X Avios per dollar!

Maximizing Your Drop Points

This is all great but what can Drop points actually do for you? Well, this is my favorite part.

For the coffee addicts out there, you can redeem 5,000 Drop points for a $5 Starbucks gift card. If you earn a ton of Drop points – 100,000 points to be exact – you can redeem them for a $100 American Airlines gift card.

If you’d like to book a paid hotel stay, you can redeem 50,000 Drop points on a $50 Hotels.com gift card.

However, my favorite way to use Drop points for travel has to be redeeming them for Amazon gift cards. You might be wondering how exactly Amazon gift cards can help you offset some travel costs. Well, stick with me, this gets better…

Here’s how it works:

Redeem 10,000 Drop points for $10 Amazon gift cards


Do this 5 times and you’ll have $50 Amazon credit to load to your account


Visit JetBlue’s Amazon Shop and Earn page so you can earn 3X True Blue points per dollar on your Amazon purchases


Sign into your TrueBlue account


Click “Shop and Earn” to be redirected to Amazon


Purchase a Southwest Airlines $50 gift card (or any other gift card!)

You can buy tons of gift cards on Amazon… and earn JetBlue points for it, too!

By stacking Drop rewards and the JetBlue Amazon shopping portal option, you can take your 50,000 Drop points and turn them into $50 of credit to Southwest Airlines for your next domestic trip (or positioning flight before a fun international journey) and get 150 True Blue points toward your next JetBlue redemption.

If you aren’t already earning 3X True Blue points when shopping at Amazon, start doing so now! This can get you tons of points and is especially useful if you have one of the three co-branded JetBlue credit cards issued by Barclaycard. If you live near an airport served by JetBlue, these True Blue points could be especially useful. 

Bottom line

Link: Sign up for Plastiq (you’ll receive 500 fee-free dollars after you spend $500 via Plastiq)

Earning points so you can take fantastic trips across the country and around the world is fun. What makes it even more fun is when we can lower the cost of earning those points.

Is the Drop promo going to be the craziest deal of the year? No, of course not – and that’s OK. It’s still a fun way to offset your Plastiq fees and help you earn a few JetBlue True Blue points and chip away at the cost of a Southwest flight or two… or three.

Get 5,000 Drop points (worth $5) when you download the app for Android or Apple and use promotion code “outandout” through September 30th, 2017!

Let us know in the comments if you take advantage of this deal. We’d love to hear everyone’s experience combining the current MasterCard promotion with the Drop offer!

About Spencer

Spencer Howard is the founder of Straight to the Points where he cuts through the noise to help busy professionals travel the world on miles and points.

OUT AND OUT - Investing. Positivity. Oh, and travel.