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Generally speaking you don't want to close any card with no annual fee unless there's a specific reason to do so. That means there's no real reason to close the Chase Freedom card. Amex is going through a phase right now where they're real touchy about giving out SUBs to people who open and close their cards, so if Marriott is in your ecosystem, keep it. Hotel cards almost all suck for actual spending since hotel points (exc: Hyatt) are worth very little. Amex BCP is a very good card as long as you keep in mind that the 6% on grocery spend caps at $6k a year - difficult for singles to hit but not that difficult for families to hit. The Amex Gold cap is 25k/yr, so there's a breakpoint you can calculate. If you use food delivery services then Amex Gold will look a little better, but food delivery services are themselves not great value (convenience, yes; value, no) so it's up to your individual spend patterns. Also as a general rule, don't stockpile points. Programs often go through devaluations, and points you accumulate now are very likely to be worth less in the indeterminate future.
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Jul 18, 2023 14:15
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saintonan posted:
Is this the case for Delta cards? I've stockpiled quite a few points but don't have travel on the horizon
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Jul 18, 2023 14:30
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Snuff Melange posted:Okay thanks very much, I'm gonna call a credit union near me and see how this timeline would play out if I open a loan. My only concern is that they can't approve me for a loan soon enough (i.e. the car shop won't wait that long to see when and how I'll pay), but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. In case you're still reading, I just want to agree with everyone else here: Unsinkabear posted:There is functionally zero difference between putting that debt on a new credit card or putting it on your current credit card, except for two things: putting it on a new 0% card will improve your credit rating and cost you nothing to do so, while putting it on your current card will mean giving your bank $200 that you absolutely do not have to, in exchange for nothing. Please do not do this. runawayturtles posted:If you're worried about the timeline, a 0% credit card approval could very well happen more quickly. Plus, it's the cheaper option, as already mentioned. SamDabbers posted:https://www.alliantcreditunion.org/bank/visa-platinum-card Assuming you're a responsible user, and you do sound like you are, there is genuinely no downside and a lot of upside to putting this on a fresh 0% card. Make the big purchase, stick the card in your sock drawer, and pay down the balance before the intro rate wears off. Once that's done, you don't have to touch the card ever again if you don't want to, but I recommend keeping it open and setting up a tiny auto-purchase and auto-pay to keep it active. It's the best financial decision, it's best for your credit, and it gives you more leeway going forward.
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Jul 18, 2023 14:42
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Medullah posted:Is this the case for Delta cards? I've stockpiled quite a few points but don't have travel on the horizon It's true for everyone. Specifically to airlines, the latest devaluation was changing from a fixed point cost per leg to "dynamic pricing", where the cost changes as the underlying cash cost of the flight changes. As far as I'm aware all the major US airlines now use this dynamic pricing policy.
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Jul 18, 2023 15:50
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Medullah posted:Is this the case for Delta cards? I've stockpiled quite a few points but don't have travel on the horizon Devaluations are an inevitability. It's just the points and miles version of inflation. Don't run out and trade all your points for Applebee's gift cards or whatever, but idk maybe look into taking a vacation if you've got a stockpile. That's what they're there for.
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Jul 18, 2023 16:00
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Medullah posted:Is this the case for Delta cards? I've stockpiled quite a few points but don't have travel on the horizon A first class flight from Japan was 180,000 in 2019, it's like 400,000 today
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Jul 20, 2023 18:22
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ranbo das posted:A first class flight from Japan was 180,000 in 2019, it's like 400,000 today I just fly coach. 
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Jul 21, 2023 03:41
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ranbo das posted:A first class flight from Japan was 180,000 in 2019, it's like 400,000 today Also Delta doesn't have international first class anymore, just business.
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Jul 21, 2023 04:15
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Or for instance you might have a ton of SPG points which were valuable and then Starwood went away.
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Jul 21, 2023 13:45
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I've never paid any attention to sign up bonuses and have just quietly plunked away at my 1% / 2% / 5% rewards card for the last decade but this last week I've gone deep down the rabbit hole of churning and travel rewards. I live near O'hare and it sure looks like my spouse and I can easily churn 2 cards a year each with our existing spend and bank enough points to buy two round trip business class tickets to Europe annually. Toss some hotel reward cards in for good measure and we're talking a European vacation with free business class travel and free hotels every 1.5 years. Am I missing something here or do these bonuses just trick enough people into overspending and overextending to pay for the few that can spreadsheet it out and control their spending? It seems insane that I'd be able to get $9k vacations for free every 18 months into perpetuity though mild amounts of spreadsheeting and financial restraint.
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Jul 23, 2023 03:31
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Opening new credit cards at regular intervals will ding your credit score a bit for a few months each time, but yeah, if you can spreadsheet it out and control your spending, you can enjoy a small fortune in SUBs and rewards. Welcome to the unhealthy but arguably profitable habit!
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Jul 23, 2023 03:49
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Looking at Credit Karma I've got a 800+ credit score with 0% utilization, 100% on time, 0 derogatory marks, average credit age of 11 years, and 21 total accounts showing in history - I'm hoping that's unlikely to get tanked by 2 cards a year, especially if I downgrade at 12 months to no annual fee versions for a lot of these cards and let them sit in a drawer after getting the sign up bonus. Wife has similar numbers and actually has a real live business that's earned like $2k in annual profit with a schedule C for the last 5 years so it looks like we can play with business cards too. Some of these hotel cards look kinda neat too - $95 annual fee but an annual free night voucher that can be used for weekend trips that would normally cost $300 - $400 a night.
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Jul 23, 2023 04:00
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A GIANT PARSNIP posted:Looking at Credit Karma I've got a 800+ credit score with 0% utilization, 100% on time, 0 derogatory marks, average credit age of 11 years, and 21 total accounts showing in history - I'm hoping that's unlikely to get tanked by 2 cards a year, especially if I downgrade at 12 months to no annual fee versions for a lot of these cards and let them sit in a drawer after getting the sign up bonus. Wife has similar numbers and actually has a real live business that's earned like $2k in annual profit with a schedule C for the last 5 years so it looks like we can play with business cards too. You pretty much got the gist of it. My credit score actually increased from mid 700s to 800 over the course of getting around 14 new cards over the last year. Just make you follow the velocity guidelines and you’re set.
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Jul 23, 2023 11:13
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A GIANT PARSNIP posted:I've never paid any attention to sign up bonuses and have just quietly plunked away at my 1% / 2% / 5% rewards card for the last decade but this last week I've gone deep down the rabbit hole of churning and travel rewards. I live near O'hare and it sure looks like my spouse and I can easily churn 2 cards a year each with our existing spend and bank enough points to buy two round trip business class tickets to Europe annually. Toss some hotel reward cards in for good measure and we're talking a European vacation with free business class travel and free hotels every 1.5 years. Am I missing something here or do these bonuses just trick enough people into overspending and overextending to pay for the few that can spreadsheet it out and control their spending? Most of the better points/miles redemptions are found either ~330 days out or within 2 weeks of the date you are looking. Good bargains can still be found, but you usually have to be flexible on dates. I’d imagine though, that you could pull this off if you don’t mind tracking it. We typically do a big int’l vacation every other year with business class flights and luxury hotels paid for with miles/points thanks to sign-up bonuses/retention bonuses/points and miles accrued through my work travel.
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Jul 23, 2023 13:55
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mightygerm posted:You pretty much got the gist of it. My credit score actually increased from mid 700s to 800 over the course of getting around 14 new cards over the last year. Just make you follow the velocity guidelines and you’re set. 14 new cards in a year?? You’re gonna have to explain your thought process or churn game on that one
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Jul 23, 2023 14:17
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pmchem posted:14 new cards in a year?? You’re gonna have to explain your thought process or churn game on that one There’s a nice flowchart on the churning subreddit, but I basically got a chase card every 90 days, and a non chase card around every 30 days (split between Amex/Citi/Barclays). Mostly business cards to stay under 5/24 and hit the best SUBs available at the time. Even a mediocre welcome bonus is effectively 10% or so on spend not even counting the category bonus.
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Jul 23, 2023 14:50
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Cacafuego posted:Most of the better points/miles redemptions are found either ~330 days out or within 2 weeks of the date you are looking. Good bargains can still be found, but you usually have to be flexible on dates. I’d imagine though, that you could pull this off if you don’t mind tracking it. We typically do a big int’l vacation every other year with business class flights and luxury hotels paid for with miles/points thanks to sign-up bonuses/retention bonuses/points and miles accrued through my work travel. We can be flexible on both dates and destination - from O'hare there's close to 30 international destinations we'd be interested in flying to nonstop in business class. Booking far out is probably easiest for our work calendars but there may be times we can jump on a quick deal. I'm also ok with monitoring the middle for tickets people release. mightygerm posted:There’s a nice flowchart on the churning subreddit, but I basically got a chase card every 90 days, and a non chase card around every 30 days (split between Amex/Citi/Barclays). Mostly business cards to stay under 5/24 and hit the best SUBs available at the time. Even a mediocre welcome bonus is effectively 10% or so on spend not even counting the category bonus. Yeah I'm looking at more like 2 a year per person. Are you manufacturing spend to get 14 a year or do you just have a lot of work expenses or something?
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Jul 23, 2023 17:52
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A GIANT PARSNIP posted:We can be flexible on both dates and destination - from O'hare there's close to 30 international destinations we'd be interested in flying to nonstop in business class. Booking far out is probably easiest for our work calendars but there may be times we can jump on a quick deal. I'm also ok with monitoring the middle for tickets people release. Yeah, in addition to my main job I have a side gig I put expenses on.
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Jul 23, 2023 23:34
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That makes the business card acquisition easier too, I imagine. I've always been hesitant to push the sole prop thing too hard.
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Jul 24, 2023 08:37
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I received an offer in the mail for the US Bank Altitude Go card and it looks like a pretty decent option for anyone looking for a dedicated restaurant card: 4% cashback on restaurants with no annual fee, plus a $200 SUB for $1000 spent in the first 90 days. Also has some other perks like a $15 annual credit that can be applied to a year-long streaming subscription and 2% cashback in some other categories. Only downside that comes to mind is US Bank's $25 minimum to redeem your cashback, but that's not too terrible, just annoying. I was planning to pick up a second Citi card for a vacation this year and eventually convert it to a second Citi Custom Cash for restaurants, but those plans had to be put on hold so this'll be a nice option for the meantime.
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Jul 27, 2023 18:42
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Atahualpa posted:I received an offer in the mail for the US Bank Altitude Go card and it looks like a pretty decent option for anyone looking for a dedicated restaurant card: 4% cashback on restaurants with no annual fee, plus a $200 SUB for $1000 spent in the first 90 days. Also has some other perks like a $15 annual credit that can be applied to a year-long streaming subscription and 2% cashback in some other categories. Only downside that comes to mind is US Bank's $25 minimum to redeem your cashback, but that's not too terrible, just annoying.
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Jul 27, 2023 18:53
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How is the Citi Rewards+ 10% extra point value supposed to work? As far as I can tell I have 4 separate ThankYou Rewards accounts with 4 separate balances, and bonus is only applying to the Rewards+ one. There is a combine account button, but when in each account, I can only see the one I'm in. Am I missing something or is their website just borked?
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Jul 28, 2023 02:24
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Xenoborg posted:How is the Citi Rewards+ 10% extra point value supposed to work? As far as I can tell I have 4 separate ThankYou Rewards accounts with 4 separate balances, and bonus is only applying to the Rewards+ one. There is a combine account button, but when in each account, I can only see the one I'm in. Am I missing something or is their website just borked? Call them and say you want to link them all, then the rewards will start seeing them.
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Jul 28, 2023 02:39
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Just wanted to come back and give thanks to the goons who recommended general advice as well as the Alliant card. The car expenses ended up more than expected, certainly the most debt I've ever been in, and while the Alliant app wasn't done in time to put the charges on it, I was very pleased to find out that Alliant offered me the ability to transfer my existing CC debt to their card. All in all, I think I'll still get that year of 0% APR, which way beats my 28% Bank of America APR (and at worst, their 16% rate is almost half the BoA one if that promo doesn't apply). And, as everyone pointed out, this will be a great way to build more credit, diversify my financial accounts and so on. Really appreciative of all the help, thanks so much. This forum membership has officially paid for itself several times over in cost savings. <3
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Jul 28, 2023 15:20
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I've recently been getting a lot of emails from my credit card companies encouraging me to request credit limit increases. Is there any reason not to do this? I figure it'll be good for my credit by decreasing utilization, give a bit more flexibility in the event of vacations or large purchases, and I'm frugal and pay off all my cards before they accrue interest so I'm not worried about spending beyond my means or anything like that. I'm mostly just suspicious of the companies' motives in pushing it so much since I can't really see the incentive for them given my spending habits.
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Aug 4, 2023 18:45
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Holy poo poo, saw a billboard advertising a credit union card that offers a deal on the APR charged for travel. Not benefits, rewards, or points, just baldly acknowledging, "we know you can't afford that trip, just go ahead and let it ride, we'll give you a discount on the interest." Predatory.
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Aug 4, 2023 18:54
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Atahualpa posted:I've recently been getting a lot of emails from my credit card companies encouraging me to request credit limit increases. Is there any reason not to do this? I figure it'll be good for my credit by decreasing utilization, give a bit more flexibility in the event of vacations or large purchases, and I'm frugal and pay off all my cards before they accrue interest so I'm not worried about spending beyond my means or anything like that. I'm mostly just suspicious of the companies' motives in pushing it so much since I can't really see the incentive for them given my spending habits. They're doing it in hopes you'll see the higher limit as an incentive to spend more. The only reason you'd decline them is if you were planning on opening new cards with that company, since most of them have an aggregate limit across all the cards a customer has. Otherwise, go hog wild.
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Aug 4, 2023 18:59
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Requesting a credit limit increase usually but not always will have the credit card company do another credit pull, which does have a minor negative effect on your credit score. If you care about it, and you probably shouldn't, you can check which issuers do here. https://www.doctorofcredit.com/credit-cards/which-credit-card-companies-do-a-hard-pull-for-a-credit-limit-increase/ The main reason they offer it is exactly what saintonan said, they hope you will spend/use the card more.
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Aug 4, 2023 19:03
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Atahualpa posted:I've recently been getting a lot of emails from my credit card companies encouraging me to request credit limit increases. Is there any reason not to do this? I figure it'll be good for my credit by decreasing utilization, give a bit more flexibility in the event of vacations or large purchases, and I'm frugal and pay off all my cards before they accrue interest so I'm not worried about spending beyond my means or anything like that. I'm mostly just suspicious of the companies' motives in pushing it so much since I can't really see the incentive for them given my spending habits. Thats seems a bit odd. I have many, many times had my credit limit increased, but its always just something the issuing bank has done without my involvement. I've never requested an increase or been solicited to request an increase. Are your credit limits super low?
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Aug 4, 2023 19:19
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Depends on the bank/card as to whether it's a soft or hard pull.
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Aug 4, 2023 19:58
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I got a new card on my misguided quest for free international travel and the process kinda scared me. I spent maybe 90 seconds and bam here's a card with a $30k limit. No wonder people's finances get hosed up so easily.
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Aug 5, 2023 15:05
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drk posted:Thats seems a bit odd. I have many, many times had my credit limit increased, but its always just something the issuing bank has done without my involvement. I've never requested an increase or been solicited to request an increase. Are your credit limits super low? Maybe? The only time I've ever hit the limit on any of my cards before is when spending a lot on vacation, but they until recently they did seem to be on the low side from the times I've seen specific numbers come up in this thread. Some examples: Citi Custom Cash: was $3800; I just followed the link from the email they sent me and they increased it to to $5600. USBank Cash+: was $2000, now $4000. USAA Preferred Cash: was $1200, now $1800. (Cheapskates.) Bank of America Customized Cash: they did increase this one on their own as far as I can tell, I think it was ~$3200 until fairly recently but it says $9700 (!) now. Chase Prime: pretty sure this one was also silently increased within the past month or two, it's $8500 now and was closer to $4000 before. Etc. In fact, it looks like the only one that hasn't increased my limit on their own or solicited me for an increase within the past six months is the Wells Fargo Active Cash, which I just picked up a few months ago and already came with a way higher limit than any of my other cards. My income is fairly low compared to most of the people I see posting in BFC and definitely hasn't significantly increased in the last few years, and my credit rating is actually down a bit compared to a year ago for reasons the rest of this paragraph will make clear. One possible factor: I picked up some new cards around a year ago and have only been paying them off completely just before the 0% introductory APR expires, which is within the next 3-6 months for most of them. So I'm running a higher balance/utilization overall than I had prior to that when I used to just pay everything off each month. Maybe that's tripping some sort of "Hm, looks like you could use a higher limit" flag?
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Aug 5, 2023 16:14
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If the others see you carrying a balance they probably want to encourage you to carry one with them, if they can trap you in a cycle where most if your payment goes to interest it can be hard to escape. They don’t know you have a 0 apr deal.
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Aug 5, 2023 18:59
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pseudanonymous posted:If the others see you carrying a balance they probably want to encourage you to carry one with them, if they can trap you in a cycle where most if your payment goes to interest it can be hard to escape. They don’t know you have a 0 apr deal. Discover giving 22 year old me a $25,000 limit hosed me for 10+ years.
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Aug 5, 2023 19:02
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If I don’t travel much is the CSP even worth getting? Got an offer letter for a 80k sign up bonus. Is it possible to use it towards cash?
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Aug 10, 2023 23:29
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Chase points can be redeemed for cash at 1 cent per point. You will find higher redemption rates when redeeming points for certain statement credits and/or Chase travel and Chase's partners. No shame in chasing the sign up bonus and whatever point categories work for your overall card setup, then downgrading to a basic Freedom / Freedom Flex after the first year.
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Aug 11, 2023 00:29
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If I have a CSR right now that I've had for over four years can I cancel it and get a CSP immediately and get the sign up bonus or do I have to wait 48 months?
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Aug 11, 2023 19:39
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I've been using a "Bank Americard Rewards Visa Signature" for something like 20 years. I think it's just a 1% cash back card. I purchase everything that I buy on it, and I pay it off in full each month. I turn the points into account credits when they build up to 150-200 dollars worth, and I've done this for some years now. My credit score is 775-800ish, depending on which credit agency you ask. The only thing differentiating them is the number of accounts they are aware of, but my history is otherwise impeccable. I've been thinking I should probably get a better rewards card. I'm a homebody that likes to cook, and my wife is a homebody that likes to eat my cooking. I also drink a lot of expensive beer. We don't go out a ton, and I'm pretty sure my single largest expenditure aside from rent for each month is in groceries. I don't do a budget, but I'm kind of looking over the past few months right now and I think I probably spend 8-10 thousand a year in groceries for the two of us, which I realize is a pretty absurd number. Anyway, it seems like maybe the American Express Blue Cash Preferred Card might be ideal for my use case. Does that sound right?
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Aug 12, 2023 01:33
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litany of gulps posted:I've been using a "Bank Americard Rewards Visa Signature" for something like 20 years. I think it's just a 1% cash back card. I purchase everything that I buy on it, and I pay it off in full each month. I turn the points into account credits when they build up to 150-200 dollars worth, and I've done this for some years now. My credit score is 775-800ish, depending on which credit agency you ask. The only thing differentiating them is the number of accounts they are aware of, but my history is otherwise impeccable. BofA has some decent rewards if you've consolidated your assets with them. I have their premium rewards card, 2.625% everywhere and more on the bonus categories.
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Aug 12, 2023 01:48
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litany of gulps posted:Anyway, it seems like maybe the American Express Blue Cash Preferred Card might be ideal for my use case. Does that sound right? This is a great grocery card for food cookers like you and I. Just remember the 6% is only on up to $6k/year, and its 1% after that. Still strictly better than a flat 1% card though. edit: actually you and your wife may be able to get $6k each
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Aug 12, 2023 01:54
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