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While travel gear can often focus on the best carry on or backpack, the one thing that makes the biggest difference to me is footwear. In many ways this blog was born out of a back surgery I had many years ago, and as a result, I pay special attention to getting comfortable footwear at a bargain. I’ve found a combination of Nike and New balance to best support me. In fact…here’s my setup traveling on Iberia Business Class over New Years. I even teamed them with my Bluffworks sportcoat.
Nike is running a sale on its sale items, and if you use TopCashBack, you can stack that sale on a sale with another 10% cashback through the portal. Let’s take a look at how I’m using it to get over 40% off shoes.
My bad back likes a Nike Free/RN + New Balance insert combo. It’s been my go to for a few years
The flex in the sole of the Nikes is great, and I usually insert New Balance Performance Orthotics into the shoes for extra support. The combo is great and its relieved a lot of back pain. I never travel without a least one pair of them as I walk a ton on trips. The combo can cost in excess of $170.
My strategy is I bulk up. Usually, Nike runs a sitewide sale around Black Friday and I buy several pairs of shoes. This means the normal $100 price gets knocked down quite a bit, and New Balance will host their own promotions, however the inserts are rarely on sale. Thus…I rely on getting the shoes at a discount.
Nike has a ton of shoes on sale right now.
My beloved Free ( RN ) is currently one of those models.
There is also a checkout code you can use via TopCashback for an additional 20% off.
And then TopCashBack has a separate 10% cash back offer running for 5 days.
This means the $100 shoe I like to wear is marked all the way down to $63.98 before tax.
If you create a free Nike.com account you’ll also enjoy free shipping. In 6-8 weeks my TopCashBack account will then reflect 10% off the $70, bringing the total back down to $63. If I’d purchased these at the full price of $100 + $10 in taxes and include a normal 3% cash back through the portal, I’d be looking at roughly $107. That’s $44 of savings, pretty amazing.
Don’t have a TopCashBack account? You can use our referral link
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Welcome Offer
Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel℠
- 3x on dining, including eligible delivery services for takeout & dining out
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- $50 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit via Chase Travel℠
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 2x on all other travel
- 10% Anniversary Bonus
- Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel℠ and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver ( primary ), purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 14 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in Chase Travel℠ for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver is my favorite
- Get complimentary access to DashPass which unlocks $0 delivery fees and lower service fees for a minimum of one year when you activate by December 31, 2027.
- $95 Annual Fee
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.
Main Cast:
Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.
Supporting Cast:
Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.
If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex® and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners
Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.
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