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CubicalSucrose posted:Sign-up bonus churning is the right answer. I've been doing some mortgage refi's that have had me pause, and during that time I just use my Amex Gold for food and my 2%-on-everything-no-AF card on everything else. Same, I mostly just use my PenFed 2%er whenever I'm in a lull. At this point, a lack of major bonuses worth churning is a bigger problem than any kind of score impact (only thing left on this year's menu is the Big Amex, and I'm torn on whether it's worth the hassle and up-front AF). But that's a good problem to have and not one anyone asking the question will be facing yet.
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Oct 20, 2021 21:57
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Yeah I'm finishing up the Gold bonus right now and idk if I want to go for the Platinum. The Citi Premier will probably be my next target early 2022. Then there's a couple US Bank cards I want. Semi related, Regions Bank sent me a thing in the mail offering me $500 to open a checking account with them and use the debit card 10 times. I couldn't find a direct deposit requirement or anything, just the debit card bit, so I figured hell yeah that's easy money. I went to their website and put in the code from the flyer and my email address and they were supposed to email me a link to open an account, but it's been a month and I haven't gotten anything. I'm not sure if fat fingered an incorrect email address or they didn't mean to offer me that much.
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Oct 21, 2021 01:50
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Oh right, I forgot about Citi Premier
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Oct 21, 2021 03:02
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I'm getting a balance transfer offer on a card that we're actively using (Citi Double Cash). I'm curious, if we take this offer, are we in a situation where we can't put any new charges on the card or else we'd have to pay the full balance or lose the 0% APR? Not sure if my question makes sense but when I've done balance transfers before it was burnt into my head not to use the card for anything else. So, if we wanted to do this, given that this is the card we use for miscellaneous subscriptions and poo poo, we'd probably need to cancel the card first and get a new number just to be sure we didn't charge anything. Would that work? For context ,not sure if I will actually do this, just trying to understand the potential pitfalls. My income has a seasonal plus highly random component and high probability to increase within 2-3 years. I've done balance transfers a few times before because I find the 3% is worth it to have extra peace of mind and liquidity even though I never actually needed it in the past (i.e. I wouldn't have missed any payments without the balance transfer -- but might have been too close for comfort). Being able to do it without opening a new card is appealing, although probably not worth losing the 2% cash back.
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Oct 21, 2021 17:51
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SurgicalOntologist posted:I'm getting a balance transfer offer on a card that we're actively using (Citi Double Cash). I'm curious, if we take this offer, are we in a situation where we can't put any new charges on the card or else we'd have to pay the full balance or lose the 0% APR? Not sure if my question makes sense but when I've done balance transfers before it was burnt into my head not to use the card for anything else. No, you can use the card just fine as long as you have available credit. Just make sure you're making the appropriate payments to cover everything.
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Oct 21, 2021 18:41
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 Changing the card number does not necessarily prevent recurring charges because the issuer will provide the merchants with your new card number, and canceling the card entirely would mean you could not make use of the promotion.
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Oct 21, 2021 18:49
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SurgicalOntologist posted:I'm getting a balance transfer offer on a card that we're actively using (Citi Double Cash). I'm curious, if we take this offer, are we in a situation where we can't put any new charges on the card or else we'd have to pay the full balance or lose the 0% APR? Yes, this is the case. If you already have a balance, even a 0% APR balance, there's no grace period for interest on future charges. The 3% pimp fee makes it a non-starter for me, but if you do take the offer, do not use the card for anything until the offer is completely paid off.
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Oct 21, 2021 18:55
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Medullah posted:No, you can use the card just fine as long as you have available credit. Just make sure you're making the appropriate payments to cover everything. Good to know, thanks. Seems like potentially tricky to get the correct autopay settings but I guess a monthly reminder to manually pay isn't so bad. Edit: are you sure? quote:Any use of this offer is a balance transfer. If you use this offer, interest will be charged on purchases made with your credit card in subsequent billing periods unless you pay the New Balance shown on your statement (including the amount of your balance transfer) in full by the payment due date each billing period, or those purchases have a 0% APR. Or is that saying you cannot carry any balance from purchases, but you still can from the transfer? astral posted:
Also good to know. I thought last time the card was replaced we had to re-enter it in a million places but maybe that was a fluke. SurgicalOntologist fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Oct 21, 2021 |
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Oct 21, 2021 18:57
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You could always make it moot by getting another 2% (or better) card.
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Oct 21, 2021 19:00
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SurgicalOntologist posted:Good to know, thanks. Seems like potentially tricky to get the correct autopay settings but I guess a monthly reminder to manually pay isn't so bad. If your limit is $5000, and you do a $3000 balance transfer you now have a $2000 limit. Any purchases that you do with that card are not part of the balance transfer, and you would need to pay them in full in order to avoid the interest charges. As always, check with your credit card to be sure. Edit - And yeah, if you really want to do a balance look around for a better option with a new card.
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Oct 21, 2021 19:02
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Maybe credit cards aren't the right solution here.
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Oct 21, 2021 19:12
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I'm enjoying the SoFi card. I put everything on it and redeem my points into stock at 2%. I've just been blindly plowing it into SPY which has like, drastically increased my investment rate. The website kinda sucks though and they don't have cool graphs on the investment portal. Lame.
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Oct 21, 2021 20:03
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CubicalSucrose posted:Maybe credit cards aren't the right solution here. Yeah. I was going to point out that opening a second 2% card wastes a 5/24 slot for something that doesn't give any big bonus in the short term or extra functionality in the long term, and is definitely not worth. But if you're carrying a balance you shouldn't be doing sign up bonuses or category juggling, you should be putting every transaction you can on debit/cash and retiring the credit cards until you've managed to pay it all off. I know that advice sounds condescending but it's a mantra for a reason. It doesn't matter how smart you are or how disciplined you are, your monkey brain handles resource-spending decisions in a fundamentally different way based on whether you have to pay for thing now or pay for thing at an undefined "later." None of us are immune to it. I had issues when I was younger and in my case, the bigger my debt was the paradoxically more likely I was to shrug at this, because what's one more drop? Number is still manageable, I'll handle it. But when your ability to pay monthly bills could be affected, you tend to look two or three times at everything before spending.
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Oct 21, 2021 21:03
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Thanks for the responses -- I'm not going to do it. And it really doesn't matter but to clarify, I don't carry a balance and never have. What I would do is transfer my monthly balance on my main card, ideally timing it to get roughly 2 months' spend and possibly doing a second transfer the next month. Then I set up equal auto payments over 12 or 18 months or whatever. So I effectively spread out 2-3 months expenses over 12-18 months. With unpredictable yet mostly cyclical expenses/income it gives some extra breathing room to make sure I never do have to carry a balance. I've done it three times in the last 5 or 6 years but only with 0% transfer fee offers (which I haven't seen for a while). I know it builds up risk but I find free (or very cheap) loans quite appealing. Anyways, I don't think I'll do it again unless another 0% fee 0% APR offer comes around.
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Oct 22, 2021 19:42
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Gotcha, sorry for assuming. That's a neat solution to uneven income and I don't think there's anything wrong with it. Some people even do the same thing and either invest or do bank account sign up bonuses with the cash they would otherwise have had to use to pay their balance, as an extra layer of churning income over the course of that 12-18 months. Too much risk and stress from keeping track of all the moving parts for me, but if it works for you more power to ya. Definitely agree that it's only worth it if you have an offer that's no-fee as well as 0% APR, though.
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Oct 22, 2021 20:05
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It looks like my year of 5% on groceries for my chase freedom unlimited is up so I am looking for another card preferably chase affiliated, since I have a Amazon card a bank account and a mortgage all ties to the same account, that has a good bump for grocieries since that and Uber eats and stuff is where a big chunk of my spending goes. I’ve heard chase sapphire is pretty good. Any thoughts?
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Oct 26, 2021 16:46
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Sapphire Preferred might be a good option, yeah. It gives 3% on groceries and dining (including delivery services for both) and has a very large bonus right now, worth $1000 in cash or $1250 in travel (and you can get the first annual fee waived if you apply in branch). Sapphire Reserve has half the bonus, a sad 2% on groceries, and a $550 (5.5 times higher) annual fee that can't be waived. I would go for the Preferred unless you have specific uses for the other perks on the Reserve that exceed the ~$1000 first-year difference between the two cards (and are things you would 100% be doing even if you did not have said card). And even then, it's tough to make it work out better than the Preferred in either the short or the long term. You'd have to be a high roller dropping a ton of organic travel spend (upwards of $20k) annually for the extra effective 2% (after the differing travel redemption bonuses between the two cards) in that category to be worth the annual fee, and at that point there are probably more targeted ways to cash in on that than a 3% return. I don't understand who the target market for the CSR even is anymore.
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Oct 26, 2021 17:12
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 Can someone help me here with a business card? I thought I understood the Pay Yourself Back option from Thoguh's posts but apparently don't. I have 214k UR points, it seems like cash is easy but obviously not the highest redemption. I thought I was comparing between cash and transferring UR to my personal card and redeeming for travel, but the Pay Yourself Back sounds like a good deal, I don't understand the "days" though. I don't understand the "days" or the selecting a specific transaction for this purpose.
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Oct 26, 2021 17:24
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That just means you have a limited time to use PYB on a given transaction. I have PYB on one of my cards but it's only ever available for certain transactions / merchants. It's basically the reverse version of the various discounts you can add before you go buy something with a credit card - you get a discount on redemption of points in exchange for only being able to do so for certain merchants.
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Oct 26, 2021 17:36
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SnatchRabbit posted:It looks like my year of 5% on groceries for my chase freedom unlimited is up so I am looking for another card preferably chase affiliated, since I have a Amazon card a bank account and a mortgage all ties to the same account, that has a good bump for grocieries since that and Uber eats and stuff is where a big chunk of my spending goes. I’ve heard chase sapphire is pretty good. Any thoughts? The Citi Custom Cash gives 5% on groceries, up to $500 spend a month, if it's your highest spending category on their list of eligible categories. That's the only 5% on groceries with no annual fee I know of right now. Another 3% on groceries card is the Amex Blue Cash which unlike the CSP has no annual fee, but the CSP signup bonuses Unsinkabear mentioned sound much better.
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Oct 26, 2021 18:25
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The Amex Blue Cash is 3% back on groceries with no annual fee. The Amex Blue Cash Preferred is 6% back on groceries up to $6000 per year, with a $95 annual fee. If you spend more than 3166 dollars a year (roughly 60 dollars a week) but less than $6000 a year (roughly 115 dollars per year) on groceries, and you don't buy these groceries at Walmart, Target, or a warehouse club like Costco or Sam's Club, then the BCP will end up yielding more money back to you.
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Oct 27, 2021 01:49
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Note that Amex is one of the few who will usually treat Walmart Neighborhood Market stores and, until recently, Walmart's online Grocery pickup/delivery service as groceries and actually give you the cash back on those. Now that Walmart revamped their website to have regular merchandise and groceries together, it does not appear to code as groceries any longer.
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Oct 27, 2021 02:11
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saintonan posted:The Amex Blue Cash is 3% back on groceries with no annual fee. The Amex Blue Cash Preferred is 6% back on groceries up to $6000 per year, with a $95 annual fee. If you spend more than 3166 dollars a year (roughly 60 dollars a week) but less than $6000 a year (roughly 115 dollars per year) on groceries, and you don't buy these groceries at Walmart, Target, or a warehouse club like Costco or Sam's Club, then the BCP will end up yielding more money back to you.
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Oct 27, 2021 17:16
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Speaking of extended warranties, I was looking into this recently and apparently Citi now has the best credit card extended warranty on paper (they offer 2 years while everyone else including Amex only offer 1 year), but I dunno how easy it is to actually get the money from a claim. Also they only offer it on some of their cards, which does not include the double cash. The BCP or some Chase cards might be the best extended warranty cards that also have other good rewards. https://thepointsguy.com/guide/best-cards-for-extended-warranty/
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Oct 27, 2021 17:28
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Josh Lyman posted:I have a Blue Cash Preferred. It also gives you 3% on gas and transit (Uber, Lyft). I don’t spend enough on groceries alone to make the card worth it but I put all my expensive electronics purchases on it since Amex’s extended warranty claims process is second to none. CSP currently gives 5x points on Lyft, which is the (kind of) ethically better and cheaper choice in most places it's available. That's only confirmed through April 2022 though, so if you do a ton of carsharing you may want to look elsewhere. For like 99% of people this shouldn't be a core category of consideration that tips you one way or the other, though. It's also worth noting that every Visa Signature or Infinite card comes with one year of extra protection, so I wouldn't weigh that very heavily either unless your alternative is a Citi card that gives two. I want to love the BCP, but the most you can possibly make on that grocery category per year is $265, and for me (and many others) some of that spending unfortunately does come from Target and Costco (and fast food, because goons) so it wouldn't actually count and the real return would be even less. Would that I could switch entirely to Aldi to min/max that category, but the reward per effort there just doesn't make sense Unsinkabear fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Oct 27, 2021 |
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Oct 27, 2021 17:47
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Anyone here have any experience with how easy filling a claim and getting the money is for any of the non-Amex extended warranties?
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Oct 27, 2021 17:49
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Shear Modulus posted:Anyone here have any experience with how easy filling a claim and getting the money is for any of the non-Amex extended warranties? Would love to hear this too. I've only used Amex and half the time I don't even have to provide anything, they just credit me.
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Oct 27, 2021 17:56
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Tbh I am the target sucker who always forgets it's an option I can actually exercise, but next time something breaks I'll make a point to test it and post a trip report. E: I assume that they're less chill than Amex in what they require but still work fine at the end of the day. If any companies particularly sucked and tried to give you the runaround I feel like that would be part of the general online conversation about the perk, and some of us would know about it (just like we know that Amex's is notoriously easy). Unsinkabear fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Oct 27, 2021 |
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Oct 27, 2021 17:59
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Shear Modulus posted:Speaking of extended warranties, I was looking into this recently and apparently Citi now has the best credit card extended warranty on paper (they offer 2 years while everyone else including Amex only offer 1 year), but I dunno how easy it is to actually get the money from a claim. Also they only offer it on some of their cards, which does not include the double cash. The BCP or some Chase cards might be the best extended warranty cards that also have other good rewards. Don't trust the points guy for their opinions, rankings, points values, etc. Only trust the points guy for facts that you can independently verify. For example, that article doesn't include any cards offering an extended warranty benefit that you can't sign up for through one of his affiliate links. To answer the question, a lot of the extended warranty servicers are pretty big on 'repair quote' which means you'll often have to get some sort of statement that the manufacturers do not have an authorized repair center or that they do not offer repairs, only replacements. This can understandably become less and less worth your time depending on how much the item cost and how easy it is to get that quote or statement.
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Oct 27, 2021 19:22
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Josh Lyman posted:I have a Blue Cash Preferred. It also gives you 3% on gas and transit (Uber, Lyft). I don’t spend enough on groceries alone to make the card worth it but I put all my expensive electronics purchases on it since Amex’s extended warranty claims process is second to none. Buy gift cards from the grocery store (like for other businesses, not Visa or Amex gift cards) to max it out.
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Oct 27, 2021 21:24
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Shroomie posted:Buy gift cards from the grocery store (like for other businesses, not Visa or Amex gift cards) to max it out. You still need to have enough spend at those other businesses instead. Reselling gift cards loses you a wider percentage than the credit card returns, so afaik that method is mostly for bonus churning. Also ask yourself if that level of effort is worth whatever the difference is between the maximum reward of $265/year and whatever they would have gotten without doing that.
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Oct 27, 2021 21:59
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Unsinkabear posted:You still need to have enough spend at those other businesses instead. Reselling gift cards loses you a wider percentage than the credit card returns, so afaik that method is mostly for bonus churning. Also ask yourself if that level of effort is worth whatever the difference is between the maximum reward of $265/year and whatever they would have gotten without doing that. I mean, it's not a ton of effort to just grab a gift card to Chipotle while you're standing in the checkout line and net yourself 6% cash back on your next 3 burritos vs the 2 or 3% you're going to get with whatever card you usually use there. I'm not saying go down to Publix and buy a $3000 mountain of gift cards to places you don't go.
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Oct 27, 2021 22:57
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I need a business credit card for my LLC. The primary goal here is just to have a convenient and safe way to make online purchases for the company, but of course rewards are always nice. What are good options these days?
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Oct 28, 2021 21:54
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Depends on where your LLC spends the most money. There are cards with 2% cash back (Amex, Capital One, probably others), cards with 5% non-rotating categories (Chase's Ink Business Cash), and even an Amex Amazon Business Prime Card with 5% back at Amazon. Note that some business cards will also be reported on your personal credit report (like Capital One), and others will not. Something to keep in mind if you don't want your personal credit influenced by your business spending.
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Oct 28, 2021 22:05
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The vast majority of my spending is going to contractors, so stuff like Paypal and TransferWise. I'm doing software development, so there's basically nothing in terms of physical goods. I don't think I have an issue with the card affecting my personal credit, since I don't plan to carry a balance on it. I have better options available if I need to go into debt.
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Oct 28, 2021 23:20
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I meant where the LLC would be spending the most money with the credit card; sorry if that wasn't very clear. The Ink Cash from Chase offers: quote:5% cash back If those categories would be a big part of the spending, I'd recommend that one; otherwise, one of the 2% offerings from Amex or Capital One would be pretty solid.
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Oct 29, 2021 00:40
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Shear Modulus posted:Anyone here have any experience with how easy filling a claim and getting the money is for any of the non-Amex extended warranties? Not exactly the same thing but I tried to use the cell phone damage claim process through a Wells Fargo card maybe 5 years ago. It was one of the main reasons I had the card. They didn't accept my documentation and after several go rounds of phone calls and submitting phone bills, it went nowhere and I cancelled the card.
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Oct 29, 2021 00:54
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Got an "invitation only" offer in the mail from FNBO for a "generous cash back rewards" card... oh poo poo finally hit the big leagues, let's take a look at the terms... 1% back?! gently caress outta here
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Oct 29, 2021 01:30
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astral posted:I meant where the LLC would be spending the most money with the credit card; sorry if that wasn't very clear. Thanks for the suggestions! Sounds like I should just get a 2% cash back card, then. I already have a personal Capital One account, so I'll check there.
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Oct 29, 2021 03:39
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I'm using my personal internet for both personal and work (so I'm not able to expense that) You may not able to expense it, but if it's used for work at all then you are able to put it on your work credit card. It's not a huge annual expense generating large returns, but do include it in your math. I believe my boss has an Amex that returns 5x/5% on our digital advertising, but I can't find that so it may be closed to new applicants. Best option I see is x4 points on the Amex business gold. May or may not beat a 2% card at the end of the day
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Oct 29, 2021 04:04
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