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chunkles posted:Anyone using Alliant's Visa? I bank with them, would like to switch over my credit card from Citi, just wondering if the web interface is good, transactions show up quickly etc. Citi's is alright, the only thing that bugs me about it is that I can't pay much over the current balance and I'd like to be able to do that to cover pending stuff. Why not set up bill payment for your Citi card on Alliant's side? Then you can push whatever size payment you want.
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Jun 4, 2019 18:48
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Why would you pay more than you need on a credit card when the company is giving you a free loan?
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Jun 5, 2019 06:54
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I signed up for a Delta Skymiles Gold Amex a couple weeks ago when their sign up bonus was 30k miles. It's currently 60k so I called to see if they would switch my bonus to the higher amount and I was told no. Any chance if I call back and talk to someone else I would get a different answer?
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Jun 6, 2019 03:26
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Doc_Uzuki posted:I signed up for a Delta Skymiles Gold Amex a couple weeks ago when their sign up bonus was 30k miles. It's currently 60k so I called to see if they would switch my bonus to the higher amount and I was told no. You could ask for some courtesy points, but last I knew they didn't really match signup bonuses. Can always try again after you meet the spend too!
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Jun 6, 2019 05:10
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Cacafuego posted:As someone who has done this with a portion of mine already, there are several options that provide 0% APR and $0 balance transfer fee. Ideally, that’s what you want. Also, look for one that has the longest amount of 0%APR time. Obviously, you also want a large credit line, so use your combined income when applying and make yourself an authorized user. If they don’t give you a good credit line automatically, call in and ask for more. I assume you each have good credit. astral posted:Unless things have changed in the last while, another option is to buy "gift of college" gift cards with a high-earning and/or 0% interest credit card, then use those to pay off the student loan. Make sure to look into whether it's all supported before embarking, of course. Thanks for the advice. We found a card that has 0% APR on Balance Transfers for 21 months, which should be more than enough to knock out one of the two remaining loans, although we'll still have to eat the 3% transfer fee. But otherwise I think this will work out well for us, the amount that's left on the loan is something we can throw money at and pay off fairly quickly once the interest isn't an issue.
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Jun 7, 2019 17:19
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Mat Cauthon posted:Thanks for the advice. We found a card that has 0% APR on Balance Transfers for 21 months, which should be more than enough to knock out one of the two remaining loans, although we'll still have to eat the 3% transfer fee. But otherwise I think this will work out well for us, the amount that's left on the loan is something we can throw money at and pay off fairly quickly once the interest isn't an issue. OK so what you're doing is paying 3% now to save on interest for 21 months, which must be higher than the fee amount or it doesn't make sense right? But also locking yourself into a penalty of paying much higher interest if something happens to your source of income in the next two years and you can't continue higher payments. I don't have a few key variables like the amount and the interest rate, so I don't know how much you're saving. I would personally just pay more each month on the loans which still saves interest on the loan but if you need you can always stop or slow down on how much you overpay.
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Jun 7, 2019 18:49
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For funsies: 5000 loan with 5 years left, 6% int scheduled payment of 96.66. Extra payment of 170 pays it off in 21months at an interest cost of 263 total. Balance transfer is 3% so $150. Saves you $113, that's good. However if something happens halfway through and at payment 11 and you stop paying, after the promo wears off it's $37 per month in interest. I'm not saying which is right and wrong, but I'd take the lower risk since the savings isn't that great to me compared to the downside. It's less than a months payment. Just the acceleration paying the lender saves over $500 anyway. If you can afford an extra $375 per month this scenario it's paid off in one year at am interest cost of 150.32, with no added risk.
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Jun 7, 2019 19:08
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In my case, it was $22000 at 6% that we paid off at 0% APR with no balance xfer over 15 months at something like $1400-$1900 per month. So it saved us a big chunk of $$. You’re absolutely correct that you take a risk of something happening within that payoff time and you shouldn’t take that lightly. I’d also suggest that should you not be able to pay it within that period, you apply for another 0% APR balance xfer card and daisy chain it until you pay it off. It’s worth thinking about at least.
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Jun 7, 2019 21:15
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Cacafuego posted:In my case, it was $22000 at 6% that we paid off at 0% APR with no balance xfer over 15 months at something like $1400-$1900 per month. So it saved us a big chunk of $$. Great job! The more I thought about it there are certainly a lot of variables but the only one that makes it appealing to me is if the interest is higher. Like, 8% or more, or if there's no fee. Everything I've paid off sooner ran into a month where I couldn't make the extra payment. And that's on me and a personal experience, not a statement of fact for everyone. Either I'd get an unexpected expense that we could cover without hurting savings if we didn't pay extra, or fail to budget for something I should have known about.
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Jun 7, 2019 23:08
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Blue Cash Everday AMEX and Also, keep in mind when daisy chaining that you usually can't transfer balances within the same network (e.g. AMEX -> AMEX, Visa -> Visa, etc.). EDIT: I guess the Citi DC information was out of date. Girbot fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Jun 8, 2019 |
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Jun 8, 2019 23:40
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chunkles posted:Anyone using Alliant's Visa? I bank with them, would like to switch over my credit card from Citi, just wondering if the web interface is good, transactions show up quickly etc. Citi's is alright, the only thing that bugs me about it is that I can't pay much over the current balance and I'd like to be able to do that to cover pending stuff. asur posted:Why would you pay more than you need on a credit card when the company is giving you a free loan?
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Jun 10, 2019 08:28
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Unlikely the case here, but freeing up credit on a low limit card is a legitimate reason to pay early. For people who have trouble budgeting or employing self control with cash on hand and using credit cards as if they were debit cards, paying off bills when they have extra cash may be more beneficial than any extra growth on liquidity they could gain during the extra month or so they can hold onto it, if they consider only how much cash they have when making purchasing decisions without accounting for upcoming bills. Girbot fucked around with this message at 11:18 on Jun 10, 2019 |
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Jun 10, 2019 11:13
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StormDrain posted:OK so what you're doing is paying 3% now to save on interest for 21 months, which must be higher than the fee amount or it doesn't make sense right? But also locking yourself into a penalty of paying much higher interest if something happens to your source of income in the next two years and you can't continue higher payments. I don't have a few key variables like the amount and the interest rate, so I don't know how much you're saving. I would personally just pay more each month on the loans which still saves interest on the loan but if you need you can always stop or slow down on how much you overpay. My wife has two remaining student loans, one for ~15k and one for 17k, both at approximately 6% interest. Right now we pay about $1500 per month towards those, with the lion's share going to the 15k loan (something like a 1000/500 split, IIRC). So if we keep plugging at it that way, it would take another 16 months to pay it off, at which point we can start putting the entire payment towards the larger loan. Transferring the smaller balance to a 0% credit card would cost us $450 in transfer fees, and we'd try to pay it off within a year, which would mean applying at least $1250 a month to it while covering the interest on the larger loan. After that we would do the same thing with the remaining loan, with the goal to also pay it off in a year. Still have to crunch some numbers but just in typing that up I think you're right. We can definitely buckle down and just throw more money at both loans and have them paid off in the same amount of time (approximately two years from now) without the uncertainty of getting hit with a huge interest rate or running into trouble if our income situation changes.
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Jun 12, 2019 22:28
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There are cards that offer $0 balance transfer fees too, that way you’re not paying the $450 fee.
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Jun 12, 2019 22:48
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I've read about people freezing their credit if they're not planning on applying for credit cards/loans in the near future. This seems like a good idea in principle, but I'm wondering if anyone's done it and if they've found unexpected side effects in practice.
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Jun 14, 2019 15:51
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I’ve done it for all of my reports and it hasn’t been too much of a problem. If you apply for a credit card or something they’ll just send you a letter to tell you which one to unfreeze. Freezing and unfreezing is free now so all you have to do is go onto their websites and ask for it. I moved recently and ran into a couple other things: 1) had to unfreeze a report when applying for apartments so the landlord could do a credit check on me 2) had to unfreeze to apply for utilities, or else they were going to make me go into their physical office with ID to verify who I was
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Jun 14, 2019 16:06
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Ur Getting Fatter posted:I've read about people freezing their credit if they're not planning on applying for credit cards/loans in the near future. I've also frozen all of my accounts and I've had no problems. For all reporting agencies, you can unfreeze immediately online so if there's ever a situation where it's needed, you can unfreeze them in 5 minutes from your phone. Like, when I opened a credit union account a couple weeks ago, I just asked which report they check and unfroze it while I was waiting. Edit: Here's my previous quote on this: pseudorandom posted:Since Equifax for all intents and purposes leaked everyone's personal info, I highly recommend everyone put a security freeze on their accounts since there's really no reason not to.
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Jun 14, 2019 16:23
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Plus if you have an existing relationship with a lender, you can leave it frozen and they still get access. So you can still apply for regular credit line increases, new cards from that lender, and get those “free FICO score” updates that many credit cards and banks are now offering. There is almost no good reason to not freeze your credit, especially after that Equifax clusterfuck.
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Jun 14, 2019 16:27
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pseudorandom posted:I've also frozen all of my accounts and I've had no problems. For all reporting agencies, you can unfreeze immediately online so if there's ever a situation where it's needed, you can unfreeze them in 5 minutes from your phone. Like, when I opened a credit union account a couple weeks ago, I just asked which report they check and unfroze it while I was waiting. Thanks a bunch for this. Equifax and NCTUE are being dicks about online verification so I'll have to call them up at some point, but everything else was fairly painless.
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Jun 14, 2019 20:13
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Haven't floated this in a while, I got a few PMs about adding new cards the other day. If you want a card added, let me know and I'll throw it on there.Jerk McJerkface posted:Goon Credit Card random referral page:
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Jun 15, 2019 05:36
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Chase’s 5% reward things for Jul to Sep are gas stations and streaming services. Not the most exciting, but eh.
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Jun 18, 2019 12:45
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I dig it. Discover is gas stations for April - June, so that works out. I'll buy a few grocery store gift cards before that 5% window is closed.
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Jun 18, 2019 14:08
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I was wondering if that would count, I couldn't see any reason why they would be able to see an item breakdown but at the same time I know you're essentially buying cash and thought that could've been an issue. Think I might rack a few hundred bucks on Publix store cards too then!
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Jun 18, 2019 15:30
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It does work. At least it did at Stop and Shop. I shamefully maxed out my Chase $1,500 rewards a couple years ago with $100 gift cards. And that's after the card companies made it so that you can't buy loadable gift cards with credit. You could still buy fixed amount cards. Don't lose 'em! As of that year, they were not counted as cash advances. Just $100 purchases from the store.
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Jun 18, 2019 16:33
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Simpsons Reference posted:It does work. At least it did at Stop and Shop. I shamefully maxed out my Chase $1,500 rewards a couple years ago with $100 gift cards. And that's after the card companies made it so that you can't buy loadable gift cards with credit. You could still buy fixed amount cards. Don't lose 'em! Yeah, I did that. Chase had a deal where if you spend $400 at a grocery store you got like $100 in points, so I just bought $400 in GC, and I used them for the next couple months.
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Jun 18, 2019 19:54
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Gift cards are common tactic for maxing rewards for categories you don't have other means of getting 2%+ back on or maxing out rewards right before category cycles end. You can also watch for deals on Visa/Mastercard GCs where the activation fees are basically refunded as a means of manufactured spending. Kroger/Fred Meyer often give you 4x Gas Reward points on GCs, so stacking those with fuel reward cards are a good means of getting some cheap gas. My NRA 5% Gas/Sporting goods card is one of my favorites (can't get it anymore, but the Ducks Unlimited card is still available, same card basically without the signup bonus).
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Jun 18, 2019 22:49
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Anyone have an Amex Gold referral code? Due to a death in the family I've already spent enough on my new platinum for the 100k bonus, figure I can start on the gold now and claim my 40k and the rose card.
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Jun 26, 2019 14:03
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JohnCompany posted:Anyone have an Amex Gold referral code? Due to a death in the family I've already spent enough on my new platinum for the 100k bonus, figure I can start on the gold now and claim my 40k and the rose card. I have one but you should know that you can actually refer yourself and receive the bonus. Just generate the referral link on your Plat and apply in incognito mode. edit: it is frequent that the gold bonus goes to 50k so it may or may not be worth waiting for that, up to you
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Jun 26, 2019 14:35
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JohnCompany posted:Anyone have an Amex Gold referral code? Due to a death in the family I've already spent enough on my new platinum for the 100k bonus, figure I can start on the gold now and claim my 40k and the rose card. Apply for an American Express Card with this link. We can both get rewarded if you're approved! http://refer.amex.us/ORIEGr8gb?xl=cp01 edit: didn’t know about the self referral. Neat.
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Jun 26, 2019 14:37
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Anyone have a CSP referral code? Free 15,000 points for you and no benefit to me. I plan on going CSP for a year then PCing to CSR. I did a spreadsheet and this should come out $150-$200 ahead with my spending patterns, ignoring CSR benefits because I largely won't use them over CSP's. Also will probably refer my wife to CSP and have her downgrade to CFU after a year which is also a lot more points than having no referral with CSR. It sucks the new 60k offer doesn't waive the first year annual fee. I'd go for the CIP right now but I'd have to spend money I am not going to spend to hit the $5k which defeats the purpose. Hopefully that bonus is still around later, I missed out on the 100k CSR. I could figure out an MS for it I suppose or maybe my math didn't include groceries and a few other things (although these are clearly not business expenses, supposedly it doesn't matter). It'd likely make more sense to open it in 6-12 months, but there's no guarantee the bonus will be around then. Mostly looking toward chase cards because I am 2/24 (0/24 in a few months) and have 120k or so UR points laying around that I've avoided redeeming. Also going to be traveling quite a bit in 2020/2021 but not so much after. edit: vvv thanks. They don't have any special offers going right now, 60k for $4k is all there is, just wanted to hand someone free referral points. Khorne fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Jun 26, 2019 |
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Jun 26, 2019 15:38
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Khorne posted:Anyone have a CSP referral code? Free 15,000 points for you and no benefit to me. I plan on going CSP for a year then PCing to CSR. I did a spreadsheet and this should come out $150-$200 ahead with my spending patterns, ignoring CSR benefits because I largely won't use them over CSP's. Also will probably refer my wife to CSP and have her downgrade to CFU after a year which is also a lot more points than having no referral with CSR. It sucks the new 60k offer doesn't waive the first year annual fee. Here's one for 60k at 4k spend which I believe is the standard offer currently. Earn 60,000 bonus points with Chase Sapphire Preferred. I can be rewarded, learn more. https://www.referyourchasecard.com/6a/TWWOQXGSG7
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Jun 26, 2019 16:28
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asur posted:Here's one for 60k at 4k spend which I believe is the standard offer currently.
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Jun 26, 2019 17:58
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I can add whatever to the referral sheet if you let me know what you want.
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Jun 26, 2019 18:49
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Did not know about the self-referral, thanks! Will see if a 50k bonus pops up sooner rather than later.
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Jun 26, 2019 22:49
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I need credit card recommendations. I make low six figures and have a 780ish credit score. I only have one credit card, a chase sapphire preferred. I travel extensively for work, and book all of my biz on my personal card, and than the company cuts me a check. I will hit nearly any sign up bonus for any card. I generally fly American and generally stay on IHG properties. I've been advised I should consider downgrading my CSP to a Chase Ink i believe since it has no yearly fee, and re-upping with a CSR for the travel credit & Priority Pass. I've heard mixed reviews regarding priority pass. I also have a trip to the UAE coming up, where tickets, hotel and tickets to the event will proably run me close to 4000$ i'll put on it. I want good points on flights, hotels and general use as well as lounge access. I've heard super mixed reviews regarding priority pass. Guys in my company have recommended an AMEX Plat or a CSR Any other considerations? if the downgrade and new app to CSR is the best way to do it, how would i go about that? call to downgrade my CSP and than do a new online app to CSR?
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Jun 28, 2019 15:08
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Waroduce posted:I need credit card recommendations. I make low six figures and have a 780ish credit score. I only have one credit card, a chase sapphire preferred. If it's <48 months you can't open a CSR for bonus and could just product change your CSP to CSR. Or you can wait for the 48 months. I don't know how to effectively min-max this. Someone else here probably does or these bonus obsessed people do. The Chase Ink Business Preferred, CIP, has a juicy signup bonus (80,000 points for $5k spend in 3 months) and you should be able to get it. You can then transfer those points to your CSR/CSP. It does have a $95 yearly fee, but you can downgrade it when the second yearly fee becomes due. I don't know enough to help you with the other questions. That link above has a lot of discussion about bonuses and cards to open, but it's geared toward people who try to abuse the bonuses. There's still decent information to take away from it. Khorne fucked around with this message at 16:04 on Jun 28, 2019 |
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Jun 28, 2019 16:02
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I would go for the CSR if you are over 48 months since the bonus. And if not get a Chase Ink Preffered. Also, I am one of those bonus chasers on Reddit churning. It's not as bad as it's made out to be!
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Jun 28, 2019 17:36
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Is it even possible to be eligible for the CSR bonus again? Right as I became eligible after the 24 month wait they bumped it to 48.
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Jun 28, 2019 20:20
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I make $50k a year, but I'm about to buy a new mattress, frame, and sheets, which are probably going to run me about $2500, and probably paying for a trip in the next three months or so that'll run up another thousand or so; CC expenses are otherwise about a thousand a month. What's my best bet for a card to take advantage of a couple of months of high spending? CSR? I don't do a large amount of traveling, but in addition to the trip in the next three months, I'll be taking a trip to Japan next spring. Credit rating is 800ish, if that matters.
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Jun 28, 2019 22:00
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US Bank Cash+ has a Furniture Store 5% category you could choose, but you only get that rate on the first $2000 each quarter and the bonus is only $150 for $500 spend. Could look into AMEX Everyday. $200 bonus on $2000 spend, but also 0% APR for 15 months on purchases and balance transfers*, so you could float the balance you accrue into a high yield savings/checking account until you need to pay it off (obviously pay at least the minimum each month). *It's also possible to get an offer which includes a $0 balance transfer fee for 60 days so you could transfer your current balances on other cards and add it to your floating cash account gaining interest. Browse their site in incognito/private mode until the offer pops up, I just confirmed this works and had the offer pop up for me. 
Girbot fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Jun 29, 2019 |
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Jun 29, 2019 02:41
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