So my plans for a hassle free christmas are fully underway right now. I am intending on making this christmas as hassle free as possible with minimal fuss on the shopping, card and food front.
At the moment I have already sent off all my christmas cards that needed to go out for overseas destinations so that has been done and they are winging their way off to foriegn lands that should arrive well in time for christmas.
On top of that I have just about finished my christmas shopping. I have one present left to buy (For my dad and he is the hardest person known to man to shop for) and then thats all done! I have pretty much been trying this year to follow in with a new hobby of mine which is chasing points. I have earned quite a haul of frequent flyer points (mainly with qantas) this last 18 months and this christmas I have been trying to make sure that I maximise the points earned as much as possible.
The biggest one for me this year was ditching the Visa i have with NAB. Even though its linked to my Amex it only earns me 1 point for every $3 i spend. This is crap! as the Amex is pretty much 1:1 where as 1:3 is just no deal! So after churning a nice pretty new Woolworths Mastercard which earns Qantas points at 1:1, this is now my backup card. So any time i spend over the shopping period where I can’t use an Amex, I use the mastercard and i don’t lose out.
Secondly I am trying to buy online where I can. Velocity Points (the FF Program for Virgin Australia) has a deal going with the Westfield website at the moment (right in time for christmas shopping) with 4 points for every one dollar spent with them. So i can double dip my way to christmas presents. So if I spend $100 on something on the westfield site (they only accept mastercard or visa) i earn 100 Qantas Points for using my Credit card and then earn another 400 velocity points! HERRO BONUS!
In total so far this christmas I have managed to rack up 2000 points combined across all the programs just by shopping. Bonus for me!! That ticket in Qantas First is looking all that more closer!