If you are an American Express cardholder, they have a promotion with BJ’s Wholesale Clubs that will essentially net you a free 1-year membership if you are a new BJ’s customer. The membership is discounted 50% down to $25, and then you also get a $25 gift card. Here are details taken from this PDF with promotion terms (backup copy).

Here’s how to redeem the new membership offer from BJ’s by September 30, 2016:

1. Show your American Express Card and photo identification at a BJ’s Club Member Services Desk and present this confirmation (or show the saved coupon on your phone).
2. Purchase a new 12-month BJ’s Inner Circle® or InnerCircle® Business Membership to get 50% off the regular price ($25 off the $50 membership fee, plus state and local taxes, where applicable or required by law) and receive a $25 BJ’s Gift Card.

Some customers have reported being able to use the $25 gift card itself to pay for the $25 membership, but either way it is essentially a free year membership.

Offer valid in-Club only; not valid on BJs.com. Market code AMEX25 expires 9/30/16. This offer may not be combined with other BJ’s membership offers, is not redeemable for cash and is good for new Members only. Market code AMEX25 may not be copied or transferred. Limit one offer per household. Photo identification required when applying for Membership.

Hertz has a Summer Bonus promotion with bonus points on your summer car rentals through 9/5/2016. Not much time left, but you can still get 25 free Hertz points just for registering with your Hertz Gold membership number.

Register to earn up to two Free Weekend Days on your summer rentals with Hertz Gold Plus Rewards® from August 9, 2016 through September 5, 2016. You can earn:

275 bonus points on your first qualifying rental
275 points on your second
550 points on your third
That’s 1,100 Gold Plus Rewards points—enough for two Free Weekend Days!

These points won’t extend your expiration date (you need rental activity every 24 months), but they may get you closer to that next free rental (starts at 550 points for a free weekend day).

The National Park Service turned 100 on August 25, 2016. From Thursday 8/25 to Sunday 8/28/16, there will be special events and free admission to all 412 national parks. Visit FindYourPark.com to find details about your nearest park.

The fee waiver includes entrance fees, commercial tour fees, and transportation entrance fees. Other fees such as reservation, camping, tours, concession and fees collected by third parties are not included unless stated otherwise.

If you can’t visit the parks in person (if even if you can), check out “The Hidden Worlds of the National Parks”. You’ll see select parks in 360-degree virtual reality thanks to a partnership between the NPS and Google. You can use Google Cardboard for the full experience, but it still very cool on a big screen with headphones. Here’s a one-minute preview video:

Finally, NASA is sharing what the US National Parks look like from the Space Station.

Finally, you may have noticed the Google Doodle of the day, which linked to a neat one-minute animated video below:

If you’re a parent of young children these days, you’re likely looking to make their screen time active and educational instead of passive. Unfortunately, free apps are often of low quality or severely restricted. Meanwhile, there are some excellent paid apps, but the cost starts adding up quickly at $2 to $10 a pop.

So it was welcome news when non-profit Khan Academy announced that they are partnering with developer Duck Duck Moose and making all of their apps completely free to download with all features. They have won 21 Parent’s Choice awards and 18 Editor’s Choice awards from Children’s Technology Review.

Here are links to all of their Android apps and all of their iPhone / iPad apps. More supposedly are in the works.

There are a lot to choose from, so here are the apps organized by awards won. Here are the Common Sense Media reviews of certain apps.

Best Buy has a sale offering 10% off prepaid phone cards. The “top-up” options include Verizon Prepaid, T-Mobile Prepaid, AT&T GoPhone, Cricket, Net 10, Virgin Mobile, Boost Mobile, TracPhone, Simple Mobile, Locus, and H20.

Cricket Wireless (uses AT&T network) offers a $40 a month plan ($35 net after $5 AutoPay credit) with unlimited talk, unlimited text, and 2.5 GB of LTE data. The data speeds are throttled to 8 Mbps for LTE and 4 Mbps for 4G HSPA+, which is still pretty fast to me but is a way that they save money. With this promo, you can buy a $40 topup card for $36, theoretically taking your net outlay down to $31 a month.

If you want to buy a lot of cards, you can stack this with the previously-available AmEx Offer for $25 off $250 at Best Buy. California residents should note that Best Buy will charge the MTS surcharge (basically sales tax) on prepaid card purchases.

Groupon is offering a free 3-month subscription of Pandora Premium music streaming service, which usually costs $9.99 per month. This upgrade includes access to 40 million songs on-demand, removal of all ads, unlimited skips, offline listening, and individualized playlists.

With Pandora Premium, enjoy personalized radio with on-demand listening. Users can search and play any song or album. Create playlists and use the power of Pandora to help complete them. Save data by downloading the music you want offline, and enjoy all of your favorites with no ads and unlimited skips and replays.

The plan will automatically renew to $9.99 a month unless canceled. Thankfully, you can choose to cancel now (or at any time) and your service will keep working until the end of the three months. Not valid for current customers. While supplies last, over 10,000 taken already.

Update: LoungeBuddy ended the offer really early. Sorry!

LoungeBuddy is a smartphone app that helps you navigate airport lounges around the world. Their new promotion offers a free airport lounge pass (up to $40 value) when you book with LoungeBuddy and pay with your Visa card. Valid until 10/31/2016 or until supplies last. One per customer.

Be sure to book online through LoungeBuddy.com/visa and not through their app. You will be limited to select airport lounge partners. For example, I only see one lounge for Los Angeles International (LAX):

Here are the full terms and conditions.

I keep the LoungeBuddy app on my smartphone, and have found it very handy if you participate any sort of lounge access program and want to optimize your usage.

Here’s another small but easy promotion. Get 75% off any movie rental on Google Play with code PAYPALCAUS. If you click on the link, it should already be applied. So a $4 rental will only cost you a $1. Redeem by 8/31/16 and rent by 10/31/16. Hey, it’s easier than dealing with Redbox.

Enjoy a discounted movie rental, compliments of Google Play and PayPal. Choose from thousands of titles in the Google Play Movies Catalog. Redeem your offer by August 31, 2016 and complete your movie rental purchase by October 31, 2016.

American Airlines (AA) has a new promotion on transferred Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) Starpoints, where they will add a 20% bonus on any transferred AA miles from 8/1 to 9/14/16.

Starpoints are already quite flexible and transferrable to multiple airlines on a 1:1 basis (which is why everyone likes their credit card). Even better, when you convert a minimum of 20,000 Starpoints to miles, you get a 5,000 mile bonus. (If you only convert 19,999 Starpoints, then no bonus.)

Therefore, combining the two gets you this:

• You ask to convert 20,000 Starpoints to 20,000 American Airlines miles.
• Starwood will add 5,000 miles, and the miles will arrive in your account in 3-4 days.
• American Airlines will add another 20% (5,000 miles) in 7 business days.
• 20,000 Starpoints is now 30,000 American Airlines miles.

From the terms and conditions:

To earn the 20% conversion bonus, member must convert points from the Starwood Preferred Guest program. This offer is non-transferable and non-reversible.

Bonus miles will be posted by American Airlines to the qualifying AAdvantage® member’s account within 7 business days after the initial conversion activity has been posted by Starwood Preferred Guest. Bonus miles earned in this promotion do not count toward elite status qualification.

American Airlines also recently updated their award redemption rules so that they are less valuable in many instances, so be sure to check first before transferring. Also, note that you are allowed to place a free 5-day hold on award redemptions. Therefore you can hold an award first and then transfer over Starpoints, although the 20% American bonus portion may not arrive in time.