NEW: Book Vacation Homes With Chase Points! + EASY $200 Amazon Gift Card

In this video I want to talk about several things. We have an easy way that you can get a $200 Amazon gift card right now that you can use at any time including for your Black Friday shopping later this month. Then we have Chase adding 10,000 vacation homes to Chase travel and lastly the highest welcome bonus ever on a certain airline credit card. Hey, credit warriors, welcome to the show. My name is Ben Hedges, aka The Credit Shifu, and on this channel, we cover US credit cards, personal finance, and luxury travel. If you like the sound of that, please subscribe. Oh, and this video is brought to you by Silo, who've just launched their first ever transfer partner this month, but more on that later. So, it is November. Fall is almost over. The Halloween decorations have all come down, except for that one guy on my street who keeps his 12-foot skeleton on his lawn the whole year. Man, I hate that. He puts a turkey next to it or a Santa hat on it and thinks that it somehow counts as a decoration for other festivals too. Oh my goodness, Home Depot even sells a Santa outfit for the 12-foot skeleton. You guys are adding to the problem. Anyway, there's something else special about November. And that is that Black Friday is fast approaching. And you know what that means in our credit card and financial hackers community? Deals, cashback, and points. Now every year for Black Friday, Amazon does a very similar deal. Basically, if you sign up for the Amazon Prime Visa Signature Card, from Chase right now, you immediately get a $200 Amazon gift card upon approval. And you may even get an instant approval in as little as 15 seconds. Now you can use that gift card for anything on amazon.com right away, but it is better to wait a couple of weeks until the end of the month for Black Friday, which this year falls on November 27th, because then you will be able to use it for discounted items. If you're buying things that are... 25% off, then wow, you just got $250 in value instead of $200. And if you're buying things 50% off, well, you're getting $300 in value. There are actually already some holiday deals active. I see 40% off tech items when I sign in. But there is one step that you may need to take first to be eligible for this card. And that is that you need to be a Prime member. Now, for many people, that may be a non-issue since there are 203 million Prime members in the US. That's like almost two thirds of the population and it's 73% of all US shoppers. So it's almost three quarters. But if you are not a Prime member already, you do need to sign up for Prime to get this card. But the card has no annual fee. So you could think of the Prime membership fee as your annual fee, which is $14.99 per month. So Prime does give you a lot of benefits that vastly outweigh the annual fee to the point to the point where personally I wouldn't count the Prime fee as the annual fee on this card, all right? Because I'm getting so many other benefits from it. Anyway, if you want to sign up for this card, the offer apparently runs all the way until January 7th, 2027. So if you don't get it for Black Friday, you could still use it over the holiday period or maybe there'll be a New Year's Day sale or something like that. All right, let's move on to Chase adding 10,000 vacation homes to Chase Travel. But first, many of you may have heard of Silo. I've talked about it a few times. Silo, silo, silo, silo, silo, silo. It is basically what Bilt did for rent and mortgage payments But for investing, for those of you who aren't familiar, Silo is the first and only investing platform that gives you credit card style points, but on your brokerage account. Each month you get transferable points. Yes, they do have transfer partners now. More on that in a moment. But you get awarded transferable points based on your portfolio's value. The annual multiplier is 0.25 X points on stocks and ETFs and now up to three points per dollar on cash. So if you have a five hundred thousand dollar investing account with four hundred thousand in stocks and 100,000 in cash, you'd earn 0.25 on the 400,000 and three points per dollar on the 100,000 for a total of 400,000 points every single year. They basically turn the whole idea of points upside down. While credit card companies give you points when you spend money, Silo gives you points for saving and investing money. Which one feels healthier to you? But what can you do with these points? Well, here is the update. Silo's first transfer partner, Avianca, just came online. Avianca is part of Star Alliance, which means you can book 26 airlines, including U.S. carriers like United. And like many of our viewers know, if you want to fly business or first class, transferable points are the way to go for high value per point. Silo also has a travel portal where you can redeem points for up to 1.3 cents per point, depending on membership tier. Or you can just get good old fashioned cash back at one cent per point. Silo accounts are covered by $500,000 in SIPC insurance and $5 million in FDIC insurance. And they're running a limited time welcome bonus of 150,000 points for our viewers when you sign up before the end of the month and meet deposit requirements. So use my link silomarkets.com slash Ben, which is also down in the description below to learn more and sign up and start earning transferable credit card style points on your stock portfolio today. So Chase has just announced a huge expansion of of its luxury travel program, adding more than 10,000 vacation homes to the edit by Chase Travel. And the edit, by the way, is their hotel program that's only available to Chase Sapphire Reserve and Sapphire Reserve business card holders. And I guess this is Chase's answer to American Express recently adding Airbnb homes to Amex Travel. But there are some big differences between the two. So starting January 1st, 2027, Chase Sapphire Reserve card members We'll be able to book luxury vacation homes curated by Plum Guide through the edit. And importantly, you'll be able to use your Chase Ultimate Rewards points to book those properties. That's something Amex currently doesn't allow you to do with its new Airbnb partnership. You can earn membership rewards points on Airbnb bookings through Amex Travel at a rate of five points per dollar if you have the platinum and three points per dollar if you have the green. But you cannot yet redeem those points. Now, Chase Sapphire Reserve card holders can also use their $500 annual edit credit towards qualifying vacation home bookings. I think this is also something Chase copied from Amex, since the Amex hotel credit can now be used for Airbnb Luxe bookings as well. And with Chase, if you book a vacation rental and stay at least four nights, you'll also receive a $150 credit towards services like a private chef, massages or airport transfers. Plus early check-in and late checkout when available. The Sapphire Reserve business gets an even better benefit with $1,000 in annual edit credits starting in 2027 that will also be able to be used towards these vacation homes. But here's where Amex kind of fires back. So Amex has added more than 1 million Airbnb listings to Amex Travel compared with Chase's 10,000 curated vacation homes, which, you know, they're gonna be on the high end, probably very expensive. And like we said, Amex Platinum card holders can earn five membership rewards points per dollar on eligible Airbnb bookings. They can also use their $600 annual lodging credit towards Airbnb Lux stays of at least two nights. Plus, booking an eligible Airbnb Lux property unlocks an additional $250 annual Airbnb experience credit. So both banks have just done very similar things. Amex offers a much larger selection. And also the ability to earn five points per dollar on any Airbnb and potentially more statement credit value. While Chase offers the ability to actually redeem your points for vacation homes. And if you do choose to pay in cash, not redeeming points, then you'll earn eight points per dollar with the Sapphire Reserve. But these homes are likely very expensive properties. Just a reminder, Chase's vacation home bookings won't qualify for points boost and bookings paid entirely with points obviously won't trigger the edit statement credit. Personally, I think Chase has the edge for points redemptions because Amex doesn't allow you to redeem points, so it's not even a contest, while Amex offers more choice and more realistic usability for people on average incomes, since you can earn five points per dollar on basically all of Airbnb. But which would you choose? 10,000 luxury homes you can book with points or a million Airbnb listings that you can earn five points per dollar on and more statement credits. Let me know in the comments down below. All right, let's move on to the final story, an all-time high welcome bonus on a certain airline credit card. Okay, so we have a new limited time bonus on the City Advantage Business World Elite Mastercard. This one is 75,000 American Airlines miles for spending $5,000 in five months. Now, that is an unusual length of time for minimum spend. It's normally three months or sometimes six months with Amex, but this time it's five months. However, you can see what they've done here because it's exactly $5,000 that you have to spend. Which works out at $1,000 a month, which is totally doable for most people. Then what about the value of the bonus? Well, if we go with a point sky valuation of 1.45 cents per American Airlines mile, that gives us $1,087.50, which is actually pretty valuable. Points Guy valuations do skew towards economy too, since... That is what most people end up using their miles for. So if you book business or first, you could end up getting a lot better value. Now I would say that this is a pretty good bonus considering that the annual fee on this card is just $99. The card also gives you two points per dollar on American Airlines gas and telecommunications purchases and the usual perks with AA like free checked bags and preferred boarding, et cetera. Not sure when this one is ending, but anyway, it does say limited time offer, so get it while you can. All right, guys, that is the video for today. Don't forget to use my link silomarkets.com slash Ben below to learn more and sign up for Silo and start earning transferable credit card style points on your stock portfolio today. They're offering a special up to 150,000 points welcome bonus for credit warriors that sign up this month. Please subscribe to the channel if you're new. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye.