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Shear Modulus posted:so these travel portals, the ones that the travel-themed credit cards make you go through to get the points on travel purchases, what exactly does that entail? do you get the same flights and prices to choose from that you'd get on kayak or the airline's website? I've gotten better deals (comparatively) on Expedia vs. the Amex portal. Maybe I'm just bad at this, maybe Amex is a bad portal.
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Apr 21, 2023 08:13
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But for Amex at least, you get the same points buying from an airline directly. So find whatever price using whatever portal, or just Google flights, then go book it from the airline so you're not dealing with a middleman if there's any delays, changes, etc to deal with.
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Apr 21, 2023 09:07
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CubicalSucrose posted:I've gotten better deals (comparatively) on Expedia vs. the Amex portal. Maybe I'm just bad at this, maybe Amex is a bad portal. Same here. Personally, I am bit impressed with some of the options Expedia or Agoda has for boutique hotels especially outside the United States but I haven't noticed anything that good. Personally, I still more often than not just book directly with IHG or Hyatt. If I don't have a choice I'll go for Hilton or Marriott.
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Apr 21, 2023 10:34
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Email offer from Citi Custom Cash looks pretty ludicrous: If I'm reading that correctly, the CCC will temporarily become a 6% general cash back card, with 10% back on my highest spend category, do I have that right?
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Apr 21, 2023 19:58
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Space Fish posted:If I'm reading that correctly, the CCC will temporarily become a 6% general cash back card, with 10% back on my highest spend category, do I have that right? Up to $500 spend. Anything after that is just 1%. Also the bonus only lasts through the end of June. It's effectively a $25 bonus.
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Apr 21, 2023 20:13
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I got one for the double cash card, did certain people get both offers?
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Apr 21, 2023 20:58
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That custom cash seems like a super gimmicky card. If you min-max it, you can get pretty big %age cash back on some purchases, but make any mistakes with categories or spend too much and you are down to the lousy 1% rate. Might be useful as a gas-only card for people that drive a lot?
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Apr 21, 2023 22:08
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You pick one category (not even a formal thing on the website), only use the card for that category, and get 5% back. You don't use it for other things unless you need to for a signup spending bonus.
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Apr 21, 2023 23:13
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I have a custom cash that I use exclusively as my grocery card. I don't know of any other no-fee 5% grocery cards, except for the rotating categories cards for 3 months a year.Space Fish posted:Email offer from Citi Custom Cash looks pretty ludicrous: I got this offer as well and after reading the fine print I can't tell if it's just 10% back on the highest category, or if it also adds 6% on everything else. It says it's 5 bonus points on "qualifying" purchases but it never defines what qualifies a purchase. Either way it's not like I won't spend 500 bucks at grocery stores between now and July. Also, came to post that there's big limited-time sign up bonuses for a couple of $95 annual fee cards. The Chase Sapphire Preferred has 80k chase points for $4k spend, or, if you go into a bank branch to apply you get 90k points (80k points if you spend $4k in 3 months, then 10k points if you spend a total of $6k in 9 months). The Citi Premier also has a limited time offer of 75k citi points for $4k spend. Idk if either of these are worth paying the fee to keep after getting the sign up bonus but I went for the chase one already and might get the citi card if the offer is still around in a month or so. e: also the sapphire preferred has a 15k point referral bonus so if you and a partner really want to optimize it you could have one person go for the in branch 90k then have the other person use a referral link to get 185k points total instead of 180k Shear Modulus fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Apr 22, 2023 |
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Apr 22, 2023 01:10
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Strong Sauce posted:If you have an Amazon/Chase card you may be eligible to get double points.
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Apr 22, 2023 07:08
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literally this big posted:Is this just for the Amazon-Chase card, or is this for any Chase card? I put in all my Chase cards and it only worked on the Amazon one, FWIW.
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Apr 22, 2023 13:53
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I imagine a lot of people literally only use their Amazon card at Amazon and lock up the physical card, so makes sense they would have promos to get more usage.
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Apr 22, 2023 15:20
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smackfu posted:I imagine a lot of people literally only use their Amazon card at Amazon and lock up the physical card, so makes sense they would have promos to get more usage. This is me. The physical card has never actually left my house since I got it, it just sits in a card wallet in a drawer in my office.
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Apr 22, 2023 18:15
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Discover It protip: one of the quarterly 5% categories is warehouse clubs and although you can't use discover cards at costco, you can buy costco gift cards on the website and pay for those using discover.
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Apr 22, 2023 18:22
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That Citi Custom Cash card looks very interesting. Right now I have AMEX BCP, but the Citi card is potentially better after taking the BCP fee into account. The only thing is that AMEX BCP is more flexible since it's $6000 for the entire year, and my grocery spend can be lumpy sometimes. I'll have to think about that. Quick question. I just signed up for the 90K Chase Sapphire Preferred. Is topping up Amazon balances ok to meet the spend for the signup bonus or will Chase not credit you for that?
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Apr 23, 2023 12:51
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drainpipe posted:That Citi Custom Cash card looks very interesting. Right now I have AMEX BCP, but the Citi card is potentially better after taking the BCP fee into account. The only thing is that AMEX BCP is more flexible since it's $6000 for the entire year, and my grocery spend can be lumpy sometimes. I'll have to think about that. If you also have the Rewards+, it turns a 5% into about 5.55%. drainpipe posted:Quick question. I just signed up for the 90K Chase Sapphire Preferred. Is topping up Amazon balances ok to meet the spend for the signup bonus or will Chase not credit you for that? That is a valid purchase, yes.
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Apr 23, 2023 21:44
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drainpipe posted:Quick question. I just signed up for the 90K Chase Sapphire Preferred. Is topping up Amazon balances ok to meet the spend for the signup bonus or will Chase not credit you for that? Technically it may not be (if you did into the fine print), I would just make sure you aren't buying lots of even amounts, if you can at all add some kind of 1.79 purchase to your $250 gift card order or whatever. They really have no way of knowing what you bought but if it's a totally even number that could potentially get you flagged.
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Apr 24, 2023 01:27
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Unsinkabear posted:How dicey is it to leave points in Citi? Are they known for devaluing or instability at all? Cross-posting this in case any non-churners know the answer
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Apr 24, 2023 21:29
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Unsinkabear posted:Cross-posting this in case any non-churners know the answer Seconding this, currently making the spend requirements on premier and plan to get rewards + in a few months.
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Apr 24, 2023 22:04
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Unsinkabear posted:Cross-posting this in case any non-churners know the answer I think they've been pretty stable, however a lot of people think the shift to Thank You points is a presage to devaluing those points or their gain for certain cards at some point. Nobody can really predict to well, they have these big models and they run them, and then they update with the latest quarterly data. They're looking to maximize profit, so if they believe devaluing the points will help them, they will. The other reality is the more points banked the more likely they will rebalance, because essentially 1 million points worth 100k is a liability of 100k for them. So if that banked point number grows to 10 million, it's a 1 million liability, so a 20% devaluation goes from reducing a liability by 20k to 200k. To me it generally seems like the points most often devalued are straight hotel/miles points. Other point systems like Chase/Amex/Citi seem to get devalued less often, though some of their transfer partners may become less valuable. Personally I feel pretty safe with Citi points, they can be redeemed for cash at virtually any time, so your floor is that. I don't think any of the big cards have done instant devaluations, there's usually some warning. Generally you don't want a to bank a huge amount of points anywhere, and over time you probably want to build up access to a couple of points eco systems, it's the safest, especially if you're at all willing to chase the (sometimes 1x per lifetime or 4 years) big SUBs. If you're just a 1-2 solid credit cards person, I wouldn't bank a lot of points. I guess I'll put this in both threads lol.
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Apr 25, 2023 00:59
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pseudanonymous posted:If you're just a 1-2 solid credit cards person   Thanks for the answer as always. If they're stable-ish and unlikely to do an instant devaluation then I'll keep the points banked for now, but also keep an ear out for any news of incoming value cuts. Hopefully that kind of thing would show up in one (ideally both) of the threads.
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Apr 25, 2023 01:03
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After two years of mining points off my Chase Sapphire Preferred, it's been product changed into a basic Freedom. Confirmed with the Chase rep that there won't be any retroactive benefit/redemption charges as a result. The era of elite metal goes out with a whimper! Will come crawling back for another sweet sign-up bonus of 80k points or more after 48 months.
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May 4, 2023 03:22
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Any thoughts on the AAA Daily Advantage Visa and Travel Advantage Visa? They seem like a great cash back cards. Daily is 5% on grocery stores (10k max spend), 3% on gas/wholesale clubs/streaming/pharmacy. Travel is 5% on gas ($7k max spend), 3% on grocery/restaurants/travel. Both have no annual fee (other than AAA membership?) and no foreign transaction fee. Seems like the Daily could replace the Blue Cash Everyday in my wallet for Grocery/Gas and I'd just keep the AMEX for online shopping purchases. Getting both the Daily and Travel also is appealing (e: sounds like having both cards might not be allowed). Is there a catch I'm missing? From what I've read, the main downside is the card is issued by Comenity, but I'm not familiar with that bank so I'm not sure how big of a deal that is.
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May 4, 2023 20:41
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Splinter posted:Any thoughts on the AAA Daily Advantage Visa and Travel Advantage Visa? They seem like a great cash back cards. Daily is 5% on grocery stores (10k max spend), 3% on gas/wholesale clubs/streaming/pharmacy. Travel is 5% on gas ($7k max spend), 3% on grocery/restaurants/travel. Both have no annual fee (other than AAA membership?) and no foreign transaction fee. Seems like the Daily could replace the Blue Cash Everyday in my wallet for Grocery/Gas and I'd just keep the AMEX for online shopping purchases. Getting both the Daily and Travel also is appealing (e: sounds like having both cards might not be allowed). 5% on groceries up to with no AF sounds pretty good to me. The 3% categories are a nice to have if you dont have anything as good or better on another card. The only catch seems to be the high %age categories have a total cash back of $500/year, so if you spend a lot in the gas/wholesale clubs/streaming/pharmacy categories, you wont actually get 5% on groceries on $10k of spend. Its not clear to me AAA membership is actually required, but if so that is effectively an annual fee.
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May 4, 2023 21:02
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Is the general tip for folks looking for a card for airfare travel these days, to simply get the $95/yr Chase Sapphire Preferred card, as opposed to getting something that's typically really only for one particular airline's airline miles? Some that I've been looking at generally appear to offer free 1st bag check and/or varying degrees of additional travel protection (The latter I'm finding out is something that was nixed years ago with my AA Citi card  )Since I'm looking at Europe more frequently, and I'd prefer non-stop, really the choice seems to be United & affiliates. But I realize UA isn't exactly wonderful with some people. But I thought I'd ask. Traveling is 1-3 times a year, so I'm obviously not going for the >$100 annual fee cards, not often enough to justify it.
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May 9, 2023 07:54
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Killer_B posted:Is the general tip for folks looking for a card for airfare travel these days, to simply get the $95/yr Chase Sapphire Preferred card, as opposed to getting something that's typically really only for one particular airline's airline miles? Some that I've been looking at generally appear to offer free 1st bag check and/or varying degrees of additional travel protection (The latter I'm finding out is something that was nixed years ago with my AA Citi card I’ve used only CSR for years, not traveling for work right now and still biting the fee bullet since I get close to the break even point I think. Never seen any airline credit card come close to being competitive to being worth having another card on my credit report etc etc. I’m not like a hyper churner card wizard goon is what I’m trying to say, and CSR has been fine for all my needs. CSP would be pretty close and I may do a product change if the fee starts to annoy me enough. I don't do Euro stuff unfortunately much so I will defer to others if there is a good deal to be had for your situation. Separate thought -- for all the hullaballoo from the internet finance forums around needing to constantly add random cards for whatever purposes (even if you're not churning for $), I have a very average credit history, have not had more than 1-2 cards at a time, small handful lifetime total of credit cards, and had no problem obtaining reasonably good rate for auto and mortgage loans. Inner Light fucked around with this message at 00:34 on May 14, 2023 |
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May 14, 2023 00:26
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I like the airline branded cards for the perks only they can give. Southwest has Companion Pass and United gives a free bag. My airport has a bad selection of airlines so I only really need those two to get anywhere, badly lol.
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May 14, 2023 00:40
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If you're already trying to optimize your travel spending among different travel and airline cards and are planning out which ones to sign up for, you're already most of the way to just targeting the pretty good sign up bonuses a lot of the travel cards have and just churning through them. That way you don't even have to plot out which card to use where, you can just put everything on one card until you hit the spending target and then move onto the next card.
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May 14, 2023 04:49
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Shear Modulus posted:If you're already trying to optimize your travel spending among different travel and airline cards and are planning out which ones to sign up for, you're already most of the way to just targeting the pretty good sign up bonuses a lot of the travel cards have and just churning through them. That way you don't even have to plot out which card to use where, you can just put everything on one card until you hit the spending target and then move onto the next card. This is truly the way, so much less work for so much more of a reward. There's no wizardry to it at all
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May 15, 2023 00:50
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Did a search, couldn't find what I'm looking for- if this has been asked before I apologize! My wife and I are about to have our first kid in mid June. Mom flies up here a bunch, finally got an Alaska card and got the bonus for signing up onboard (72k miles I wanna say?) She just did the 3k spend and the website says 6-8 weeks to post. Is this legit or does it sometimes populate sooner? I fly Delta and IIRC about a week after I cleared the spend I got the 90k deposited in my account. We're trying to line up a number of one way flights to get her up here around the birth day and we'd prefer to use miles, if we can.
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May 15, 2023 07:35
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I don't know about Alaska specifically, but in the last few years almost all of the bonuses my partner or I have done posted at the end of the statement where we completed the bonus spend requirements, or sometimes even sooner like you mentioned with Delta. It used to be that you weren't getting it until the end of the bonus window (at the earliest) no matter how quickly you hit the threshold and paid it off, but for some reason things have changed. Unsinkabear fucked around with this message at 14:11 on May 15, 2023 |
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May 15, 2023 14:09
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I ended up getting the Sapphire Preferred, as the miles that could be gained on any of the United cards appear to have been devalued recently. (Not the miles earned through any of the cards per se, just banked United Milage/MilagePlus program itself) Probably going to look at downgrading my annual fee AA Platinum though, they're not my first/second/etc choice for travel to Europe, I seem to get held over in LHR overnight nearly every time I've had to connect through there...Though that's a different discussion. Little curious about which non-annual fee options would be available when making the call to downgrade, though. Thank you!
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May 19, 2023 00:16
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Killer_B posted:I ended up getting the Sapphire Preferred, as the miles that could be gained on any of the United cards appear to have been devalued recently. (Not the miles earned through any of the cards per se, just banked United Milage/MilagePlus program itself) Citi has a no annual fee AA card -- https://www.citi.com/credit-cards/aadvantage-mile-up-credit-card
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May 19, 2023 05:25
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Not credit card related but this is the thread with all the referral links. I'm thinking of trying out Empower, formerly known as Personal Capital, as a single place to sync all your accounts and see all your transactions, and I read that they have a referral program where the referrer and the referee both get $20. anyone want to share a referral link?
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May 19, 2023 07:12
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Shear Modulus posted:Not credit card related but this is the thread with all the referral links. I'm thinking of trying out Empower, formerly known as Personal Capital, as a single place to sync all your accounts and see all your transactions, and I read that they have a referral program where the referrer and the referee both get $20. anyone want to share a referral link? I just PM'd my link, since they include real names. Thanks. 
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May 19, 2023 08:55
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truavatar posted:This seems legit. I put my email in to get the coupon and all the links seem real. If I do it I might go to a branch just to make sure... Successfully got my $900... kinda shocked, honestly.
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May 19, 2023 21:21
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You can generally trust the validity of anything posted on DoctorOfCredit, for future reference. Congrats on your cash, my partner missed the application window by a literal day and she's still mad about it. As someone said previously, close the accounts as soon as you are able to (according to the fine print of the promo, there's usually a clawback period), so you can do another one of these in two years.
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May 19, 2023 21:46
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How much do I need to travel before I should look into getting a Amex Gold/Platinum or Chase Sapphire Preferred/Reserve? I've always thought cash back cards were better but apparently I've been doing the math wrong. My biggest spends are bars/restaurants (where I get 4%) and Costco (where I get 3%), and I have a Citi Double Cash for everything else. I live in Washington DC so both Delta, which is an Amex partner, and Southwest, which is a Chase partner, would work. For my Labor Day trip to Chicago, it's $228 in cash for either airline, which would require $5,700 in restaurant spend with my current CC. On Southwest, it's 13,866 points + $11.20, so with Chase Sapphire getting 3 pt/$ on dining, that ticket would require $4,633. On Delta, it's 15,000 points + $11.20, so with Amex Gold getting 4 pt/$ on dining, that ticket would require $3,761. Is my math right? I currently only fly 2 or 3 times per year but that may be going up slightly. But even with my cheapest trip, the difference would cover the annual fee. Hotels are a bit more tricky since I have access to a federal employee portal which gets me hotels at government rates. It's not always cheaper than something like Booking.com, especially in NYC, but for the Chicago trip I was able to get a 4 star hotel for 40% lower than booking through the hotel website. Josh Lyman fucked around with this message at 22:20 on May 19, 2023 |
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May 19, 2023 22:15
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Josh Lyman posted:How much do I need to travel before I should look into getting a Amex Gold/Platinum or Chase Sapphire Preferred/Reserve? I've always thought cash back cards were better but apparently I've been doing the math wrong. My biggest spends are bars/restaurants (where I get 4%) and Costco (where I get 3%), and I have a Citi Double Cash for everything else. I live in Washington DC so both Delta, which is an Amex partner, and Southwest, which is a Chase partner, would work. CSP has a 90,000 point offer right now (if you apply in branch). That's enough for a bunch of tickets, way more than the first years annual fee. And then you can figure out if it is worth it for you to continue holding it. I'm in the process of rotating through the products to get all the intro points, but I think I might end up with my wife holding a chase sapphire reserve for the long term.
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May 19, 2023 22:25
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Josh Lyman posted:How much do I need to travel before I should look into getting a Amex Gold/Platinum or Chase Sapphire Preferred/Reserve? I've always thought cash back cards were better but apparently I've been doing the math wrong. My biggest spends are bars/restaurants (where I get 4%) and Costco (where I get 3%), and I have a Citi Double Cash for everything else. I live in Washington DC so both Delta, which is an Amex partner, and Southwest, which is a Chase partner, would work. Platinum and Gold are entirely different cards. You have to travel a ton for the Platinum to be worth it as anything other than a "get the bonus and then cancel in a year" card (and even if you travel enough for the math to work out in your favor you should still do that, because you could be accomplishing sooo much more with that kind of spending power). Same goes for the Sapphire Reserve (and its bonus sucks now as well, so just don't). On the other hand, if you get food delivered at least twice a month, the Gold's perks pay for itself and it essentially costs $10/year (and that's assuming you use none of the other perks). It's great. The Sapphire Preferred is somewhere in the middle and until recently I would have endorsed it, but after the most recent benefit cuts, there's really no point. If you have average spending and travel habits you're going to come in just above the break-even point at the end of most years, and at that point I don't know why anyone bothers. Again, you could be getting a lot more out of that spending for the same (or less) work, by chasing bonuses and not worrying about categories. Imo the two Sapphires are at this point coasting entirely on reputation earned by how good they used to be, and people who already have them doing mental gymnastics to rationalize keeping them (no judgement if that applies to anyone here, nobody likes change). Tl;dr: your math is right and the Amex Gold is the only one of the three worth getting, if you're pot committed to only earning points through ongoing spend on the same couple of cards.
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May 19, 2023 22:36
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