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I'm burning down my UR point hoard as fast as I can against groceries through the Chase "pay yourself back" feature that lets you reimburse grocery purchases at the travel portal rate (1.5 cpp on the CSR). I hope to travel again once this all settles down, but odds are I'm not going to be racking up points with work travel expenses any time soon, and who knows what will happen with loyalty program transfers and reimbursements as the airlines and hotel chains struggle. In the mean time, I'll take the cash.
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Aug 20, 2020 16:45
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 23:09 |
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Many car dealerships will let you put a few thousand dollars on a credit card to use towards a down payment. They will probably charge a 2-3% fee for this, because it costs them money to accept a credit card. If they don't, there's negotiating room in there somewhere. If you're taking out non-dealership financing, you'll probably have a very hard time using a credit card to cover the down payment. Dealerships are more willing to do it because it means they get to put you in a car, which is how they actually make their money. The most straightforward way to get a 0% APR is to just open a new card. Amex does have a "Plan It" feature that lets you split a large payment into smaller ones, but part of the deal is that it's a fixed fee - you pay for the privilege of borrowing money, and you don't even get to shave off interest by paying it down earlier. Generally, credit card companies are willing to cut you a deal when you're opening a card, because they're willing to invest money to get you as a customer. They're much less willing to give you benefits that cost them money (interest-free loans, point hauls) when you're already carrying their card. If you're worried about timing, get quotes to buy your old car from Carmax and Carvana. They will buy your car quickly - within an hour or so (Carmax, on-site) to a few days (Carvana, since they have to send somebody out to inspect it and pick it up). They won't pay as much as you could get in a private party sale, but the quotes can be better than you'd expect.
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Oct 10, 2020 19:33
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Zero VGS posted:I figure this is the closest thread to what I'm looking for. I don't want a credit card recommendation, but rather an online bank recommendation: You don’t need a bank; you need a bookkeeper. That might be you, but somebody should be doing the bookkeeping work for your business, and “the bank” is not an acceptable answer. Banks, large and small, screw things up surprisingly often - you’ve already experienced this. You need to keep your own records, both for your own sake and your tenants’. You should not depend on the bank holding a permanent record every transaction back to the beginning of time. You should be the one keeping those records, and you should be reconciling them against what the bank tells you. You should probably talk to a lawyer about the specific requirements for holding security deposits in your state (and maybe city/county). If you are required to hold each tenant’s deposit in a separate account, there will be a standard process, and banks and lawyers will be familiar with it. There are also other potential requirements around escrow, which vary widely by location, that you should at least look into.
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Oct 12, 2020 14:37
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GWBBQ posted:I'm asking because I honestly don't know whether it's better to leave them open and sitting there unused or close them. I got a big insurance check for a relatively minor accident in August and I decided to suck it up and just put that money toward the loan (paid off almost a quarter of it) and live with the dents and scratches. I'll treat myself to the body work and paint correction once the loan is paid off assuming it's within my budget. Sorry to hear about your mom. If the cards don't have annual fees, and you're willing to deal with the tiny hassle of keeping an eye on them for odd charges, then you might as well keep them open. But, with 20 years of good history on other cards, it's also not going to kill you to close anything with an annual fee or even just consolidate down to a couple of cards. Utilization typically doesn't have a history in credit score calculations, so if you find yourself planning to take out a car loan or mortgage a house, you can just aggressively pay down your cards and use debit for a couple of months to drive utilization super low. The banks don't mind this - by dropping your utilization on demand, you're actively showing that you can keep your debt under control and manipulate your credit card balances, which makes loaning you money a low-risk affair. I'd probably close any card you don't expect to ever use again, but either way, it's not going to be a big deal. Regularly traveling for free on points really only happens for people who can put a lot of money through their cards, or who have some other way to rack up loyalty points and miles (usually, regular work travel on an expense account, living that Mon-Thurs consultant/sales/traveling trainer life). Without pumping a bunch of other people's money through your accounts, travel points picked up though credit card spend might help pay for an economy flight every once in a while, or a few hotel nights, but they're not going to make you a fixture in your local airport first class lounge or at five-star hotel suites in exotic destinations. Given the state of the world and the tourism industry right now, I'd probably avoid trying to game travel loyalty programs right now, and just take cash back and budget separately for travel. Take it from somebody who's seen a bunch of Marriott suite night awards evaporate in 2020: travel benefits are nice, but cash is king.
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Oct 21, 2020 05:04
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GWBBQ posted:You're right about traveling now, I'm not planning on until things calm down and there's a COVID vaccine available. I'm just looking forward to it because my family has been broke and in loads of debt most of my life and I was never able to afford to travel. I'll just settle down and throw extra money at student loans and the car loan to get those out of the way faster. This isn't really about "travel vs. no-travel" - if you want to travel, you have the means, and you're willing to sacrifice other potential goals, then you should be able to make that work! It's just about the best way to go about actually saving up resources - points or cash - that you can use when you want to go somewhere. I'd argue that you should be dreaming about where you might want to go, looking at prices occasionally, and saving at least a token amount of cash every month in your travel dream fund. When you burn the loans to the ground, then use some of that newly freed cash flow to step up your contribution to your travel savings. But - points aren't going to get you there by themselves, unless you're either already traveling on other people's money and scooping the points off the top, or spending poo poo-tons of money elsewhere. Credit card companies, and the travel companies that sell them points for their cardholders, love to promote the idea that you, an ordinary person who just happens to use their card for everyday expenses, will be able to take fantastic luxury vacations at no cost to you. That's a lie. People love to chase the dream, but the real purpose of those programs is to reward big, frequent spenders - almost exclusively business travelers who are in the air or a hotel several times per month at minimum. As a non-big-spender, the biggest benefits you'll see from travel cards will be signup bonuses, followed by ancillary perks (status bumps, insurance coverage, Priority Pass in Asia, etc). You can get those a few months before you leave - and you won't be sitting around trying to figure out how to use your Marriott points when you really want to stay in a Hyatt property, wishing you could book flights on a SkyTeam airline with your OneWorld-friendly miles, or staring in horror at a point devaluation notice that wrecks your plans. And, if any financial emergency comes up between when you start saving and your departure date, you can always break into a cash piggy bank. Cashing out loyalty points usually ranges from a kind-of-bad deal (Chase) to effectively impossible (any hotel or airline). So: dream about travel, save up for travel, and work card perks and signup bonuses before you leave, because leisure travel is loving amazing - but use cash-back cards and save up cash to book your trip.
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Oct 21, 2020 16:26
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im on the net me boys posted:I use it and I say it is the best option. It's really not worth the hard pull for the credit version when the debit gives you all the benefits anyway. There's a big difference between debit and credit if you have to deal with fraudulent charges. Don't use debit at point of sale terminals, or really anywhere else, if you can help it. Hard pulls don't matter that much unless you're specifically chasing as many bonuses as possible (in which case you're probably more worried about 5/24 anyway) or you're going to apply for a major loan soon (in which case you just shouldn't be chasing credit cards at all). As far as the card itself goes, it's a store card with some benefits. It's worth it if you shop at Target all the time. If not, then most quarters you can find a rotating-category card that happens to have big box stores on its 5% list.
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Mar 21, 2021 16:44
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Cacafuego posted:So is chase, but they covered it anyway for some reason. Chase's rental car insurance on the CSP and CSR is explicitly called out as primary in their benefits book. It's one of the nicer benefits of the cards, although there are still some things it doesn't cover (the biggest one is tire damage, which some rental locations treat as a normal expense that they're willing to eat, and some are absolute jerks about). Amex offers primary insurance as well, but only as a "premium rental car protection" add-on. It's priced at $20-25 per rental (not per day) so it's a lot cheaper than the rental company option for anything over a single day. The nice thing is that it's available on pretty much all Amex cards, even the no-AF ones. If you really want primary rental coverage but only rent a car outside employer insurance a few times per year, it's a better deal than a high-AF card. Ur Getting Fatter posted:That just means that they will only cover it if you skipped the agency's insurance and/or if your regular car insurance doesn't also cover rentals, right? Skipping the rental company insurance/damage waiver option is pretty much always required, even with primary coverage through a CC. Secondary coverage will usually cover everything your primary policy doesn't (read the pamphlet etc etc, this is a general rule). So, if you smash up a rental car and do $10,000 worth of damage, and your regular collision policy has a $1,000 deductible, then your regular insurance pays $9,000 and your credit card coverage kicks in the other $1,000. Net cost to you is zero dollars, but your personal insurance is going to reflect that accident.
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May 25, 2021 15:18
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Cacafuego posted:I have the CSP and At the time of the accident I read the information I found online, including the official Chase benefits guide (https://www.chasebenefits.com/sapphire) which says: That link is for the “Chase Sapphire” card. The CSP is the “Chase Sapphire Preferred,” which is a different product with higher fees and more benefits. You can read the guide to benefits for your card here: https://www.chasebenefits.com/sapphirepreferred quote:Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver
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May 25, 2021 21:54
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astral posted:Cannot recommend the Citi Double Cash over any alternative 2% card these days. Most of them have better benefits. You've made this post a bunch of times but you don't ever really point out what you think is a better card. No AF and a flat 2% on everything is still pretty rare. As far as I know these are your options: - Citi Double Cash. It's pretty much the default in this space. Citi's customer support and IT are poo poo, and the benefits aren't super great, but it's pure cash back and it works OK - Alliant Platinum Rewards. It's 2%, credit unions are generally more trustworthy than banks, but the benefits make Citi look generous - Paypal Mastercard. It's tied to a Paypal account and rewards have to be deposited into that account. Lol, next - SoFi card. Rewards have to be deposited into their non-FDIC cash-management I Can't Believe It's Not A Savings Account (or investment account, or cryptocurrency account), or most of the value evaporates - Fidelity Rewards card. Fidelity's a lot less sketchy than SoFi or Paypal, but it has the same "must deposit rewards into a specific account" restriction - Wells Fargo Active Cash (not yet launched but they've announced it). Comes with a chance at secret extra bonus accounts from The Bank Americans Trust Least! Please get literally anything else on this list Also, when it comes to specific advice for Parrotine, none of them are very easy to get for someone who's just starting to build credit. The best option there is going to be whatever basic no-fee card they can get from an existing bank/CU relationship, or a Discover.
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Jun 14, 2021 01:48
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saintonan posted:Why is this an issue? The account that gets the rewards can be a cash management account that you can immediately ACH out of. I don't understand why this would be a dealbreaker. It's annoying friction, that's all. The only thing I'd consider a true dealbreaker on that list is "issued by Wells Fargo." The point isn't that the Double Cash is clearly superior - it's that there's actually only a handful of flat 2% cards, none of them offer fantastic benefits, and there are tradeoffs for all of them.
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Jun 14, 2021 05:12
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Thoguh posted:WF Propel is no fee and is 3% on gas, don't know if there are other no fee card that offer that but I assume there probably are. If you already have and plan to keep a Costco membership, the Costco Visa is 4% on gas, including at Costco (which usually doesn’t code as a gas station for rewards).
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Jul 23, 2021 22:11
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waloo posted:If I'm sitting on a bunch of chase rewards points that I accumulated then totally forgot about, and I'm mostly pretty lazy about rewards redemption in that I'd happily just use them to buy flight tickets through the Chase portal, does it make sense to sign up for a CSR instead of a CSP because of the bigger multiplier when redeeming this way? That is, in spite of the smaller signup bonus? Assuming this isn't for a redemption happening right away, why not just sign up for the CSP, get the bonus, and then ask Chase to product change to the CSR before you redeem?
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Aug 26, 2021 17:30
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