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My partner recently got a letter from A+ Federal Credit Union about the A+ Max Cash Preferred card, which offers 5% cashback on two categories including utilities, cell phone bills, and TV/Internet/streaming. The letter said it was an exclusive offer since she has an account with A+ but as far as I can tell, I can apply for the same card from a link on their site. I'm looking at either that or the US Bank Cash+ card, which is similar, and have a couple of questions: 1) Both cards mention in the fine print that the categories are subject to change; does anyone have experience with whether/how often they actually do? The idea would be to use it as a dedicated utilities/Internet card. 2) I picked up the Citi Custom Cash card earlier this month. Should I have any concerns about applying for another card so soon?
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Aug 21, 2022 03:58
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Shear Modulus posted:The issuers will sometimes change the categories that you can pick from. They did this with the USBank Cash+ at some point and got rid of some of the awesome categories (I think at some point they were giving 5% cash back on airfare or something) and replaced them with crappy categories. That was a year or two ago. I dunno how often they do this, for the Cash+ it was maybe a few years after the card was introduced and most likely they got rid of the best ones because they were too good, and they were giving out more money than they wanted to. It's not something you should really plan for in my opinion, just ride the best rewards offers until they stop being offered then move onto the next one. A very belated thanks for this, I ended up picking up a USBank Cash+ for utilities/Internet and a USAA Cashback Rewards Plus for gas in addition to the Custom Cash. Credit scores are down 20-30 points this month, but my utilization is probably also a factor there since I've been using the new cards a lot to hit the sign-up bonuses and am only making the minimum payments while the 0% APR offers are still in effect. pseudanonymous posted:Citi premier has an 80k points = 800$ cash back if you hit the spending requirement right now (4,000 on card) and it’s 3x points on travel (air + hotel) I'm planning a big vacation next year and was thinking of doing just this as a second Custom Cash would round things out nicely for me. For anyone who's done it, how easy is it to do the product change? Any chance of the customer service rep noticing that you already have a Custom Cash card and denying it? (And out of sheer ignorance, do you still end up having to pay the second annual fee for the Premier?)
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Oct 16, 2022 07:28
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pseudanonymous posted:As far as I know if a rep says that you say you changed your mind and call back until you get a yes. Again afaik right now all cc companies will refund the 2nd year AF if you call to pc or close within the first month after it posts. Appreciate it, thanks!
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Oct 18, 2022 03:10
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Maybe this is just me being a Luddite, but is there really no way to do direct deposit for cashback with Citi without giving my bank login information to some third party that was apparently successfully sued last year for accessing and selling users' transaction histories without informing them? Is there some reason they can't just use my routing and account numbers?
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Oct 23, 2022 02:33
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Super-NintendoUser posted:You talking about Plaid? Yeah, I don't know much about it but have seen it come up a few times recently. It seems to be common in the financial world, and I doubt Citi would be using it if it was some illegitimate company, but I'm very protective of my bank login info. If Citi's offering direct deposit anyway, then why not let me use the method I know and use in basically all similar transactions? IOwnCalculus posted:I'm assuming so, but there's a giant "Verify Manually" at the bottom of the popup that tries to take you to Plaid for "Instant Account Verification". Not that I'm seeing? 
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Oct 23, 2022 20:22
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ranbo das posted:Try typing in some small or nonexistent bank name. Once it runs out of options it'll usually give you a "can't find your bank, click here" option which will do the two small deposit verification. Tried this, no luck - it just gives me the option to exit, which dumps me back out at the rewards screen. But I called Citi and the person I spoke with said something about not being able to use direct deposit for rewards until you've paid at least two bills from your bank account. I'm skeptical given the difference between what I'm seeing and what others have described ITT, and it also seems weird and arbitrary when they're still offering the option to take cashback through other methods. But I'm about to pay my second bill in a week, so I guess I'll wait and see if anything changes after that.
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Oct 25, 2022 23:22
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Update on the continuing saga of my Citi cashback since I know you're all deeply, deeply invested: it's finally giving me the option to deposit the funds directly to my bank account! Apparently you need to pay three bills first, not two as the Citi rep told me.
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Dec 3, 2022 01:13
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The monthly eBill for my Bank of America card is sent to my Ally Bank account; if I set it up on Ally's website to pay the "account balance" on the due date under Bill Pay -> Recurring Payments would that effectively achieve the same thing as setting it to autopay the statement balance through BoA's site? Should I expect there to be any delays in it posting to my BoA account since I'm not paying directly through them?
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Dec 7, 2022 06:16
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saintonan posted:If you set the recurring payment a few days before the credit card due date, there won't be any issues, except for losing a very small amount of interest. The bonus for doing this from BofA's side is that many places will credit the payment a day or so ahead of when they actually pull the money, especially if payments fall over weekends. That means money stays in your account longer, with the same security of never having delays impact payment timing. The difference is pretty negligible though unless you're putting thousands in spend on the card every month. Thanks! Yeah, I'd prefer to do it through BoA themselves for that very reason + the certainty of knowing my bill will be paid on exactly the due date each month, but they seem to go out of their way to make it difficult. I just set up my other cards with autopay last week, and each one took about two minutes. With BoA, I'm two hours in with no progress whatsoever. Their site/UI sucks, their help system is useless, and every tutorial I've found about setting up autopay involves steps that aren't available to me. (E.g., links on the Bill Pay page that don't show up for me - I've seen exactly where they should be in screenshots/videos and they're just... not there.) I even tried calling customer service; they weren't able to help and forwarded me to a supervisor who promptly hung up. From what I've read, this is a pretty standard BoA customer service experience. I promise I'm not as technologically inept as my posts ITT make it sound BTW, for some reason this only comes up with regards to credit cards. And it isn't an issue of the account being too new this time either, I've had this card for around a decade.
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Dec 7, 2022 23:50
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I read that you can apply for business credit cards as a sole proprietor using your SSN in lieu of an EIN if you've got something you can claim as income (e.g., Ebay sales). How legitimate is that and would the IRS frown on it in any way? I'm eyeing that $900 SUB on the Chase Ink Business Cash card.
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Dec 29, 2022 09:21
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I picked up the USAA Cashback Rewards Plus card last year mainly for the 5% cashback on gas and recently received an offer for 0% APR through January 2024 that I would need to activate by next week. The thing is, I already have a 0% introductory APR on the card through April 2024. Should I be concerned about having received the offer when I should have 0% APR for the entire duration anyway (e.g., could it indicate that there's some sort of mixup with my account information?)?
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Jun 30, 2023 20:55
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Yeah, I will contact them about it later this weekend when I can - was more just wondering if anyone here had seen anything similar. One possibility I was considering is that whatever system they have for sending out 0% APR offers like that - I've received them before from other companies after my usage decreased - might just not have a built-in check for that sort of thing; some people here go through way more credit cards than I do, so I figured if that was the case then someone else has probably had the same thing happen. (I also wouldn't put it past companies to send out offers like that as some sort of scheme where buried in the fine print is that if you activate the offer you're giving up any claim to the remaining months of the introductory APR offer. Not likely IMO but again if it were the case, I expect someone here would probably know more about it.)
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Jun 30, 2023 23:58
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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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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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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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Shear Modulus posted:The Discover It and USBank Cash Plus are really the only other 5% no-fee cards. The Cash Plus has a couple more categories not covered by other cards like utilities and gym memberships. USAA Cashback Rewards Plus is 5% cashback for gas (and military base spending I think?) though I think it requires you to either already have a USAA account, be current/former military, or be the spouse/child of current/former military. I've been receiving offers for the PenFed Platinum Rewards which also includes 5% cashback for gas and doesn't have appear to have any similar restrictions.
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Aug 13, 2023 04:28
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My Experian credit score has dropped 50 points from 10/8 to 11/11, the most recent dates Chase displays for me on their site. What could possibly have caused that? It's way higher than any drop I've seen previously, even when I picked up several new credit cards last year. I haven't missed any payments, opened up any new lines of credit since August, or had any accounts closed. The only change I can think of is that might be relevant is that I paid off the statement balance on my Citi card this month instead of making the minimum payment since the 0% APR period is ending. (And if anything that seems like it should increase my score since my utilization would be lower.) TransUnion and Equifax scores have not budged, though the most recent data on is from 10/30 or earlier so I'm not sure if that's just because whatever this is hasn't hit them yet. I'm planning to request a copy of my Experian report next, just wondering if anyone else in the thread has seen anything similar.
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Nov 11, 2023 19:03
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astral posted:Your August card may not have reported right away. Often takes a statement or two, which could easily have landed after 10/8. Hm, I don't see any missed payments or signs of ID theft or anything like that on the report, so it seems like this must be it. But 50 points still seems a bit excessive given that my Experian score only dropped by 25 points last year when I picked up three new cards in the space of about a month.
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Nov 14, 2023 18:41
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I was thinking the same thing. I haven't picked up a second Custom Cash yet, but even a year or so ago when I was asking about it, people were advising that you might have to call a few times before you get someone who will let you do it without checking to see if you already had one.
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Nov 28, 2023 18:25
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Splinter posted:Yup, but I believe it's only up to $6k spend per year so it's something that, given the list of stores, many people will max out well before the end of the year. It took me a while to realize this after I started noticing Amazon purchases were no longer showing up as 3% in the transaction lists (at first I thought marketplace purchases were no longer triggering it). I believe that the Bank of America Customized Cash covers all the same types of stores listed in Shear Modulus's post (as well as some other stuff like meal kits) if you select Online Shopping as your 3% category. It's up to $2500 spend per quarter, so it might be worth looking into if you're hitting the limit on the BCE.
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Dec 31, 2023 01:10
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Does Rewards+ automatically apply to any points redeemed through Citi, or are there any hoops you have to jump through? I wouldn't mind getting an extra .555% on groceries but probably already spend more time than is healthy each month taking a bunch of tiny steps to optimize my budget.
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Jan 28, 2024 03:01
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LeeMajors posted:So after two years of Skymiles rewards we’ve found that getting ~1-2 free flights a year isn’t really worth it for the fee and we don’t have the stomach to really churn cards for rewards. One other thing I'd mention aside from what others have said is that it's worth considering that the annual fee effectively makes the BCP more like 4.42% back on groceries, assuming that you spend up to the full $6000 cap for the year. (6% of $6000 is $360, minus $95 is $265, which is 4.42% of $6000.) The further you are from hitting the cap, the lower your effective % back will be. For me, using a Citi Custom Cash for groceries instead made a lot more sense, especially since the 5% back can be applied to other common spend categories as well if you decide to change things up later on, and you can boost it to 5.55...% if you pick up a Citi Rewards Plus as well. But it also may depend on other factors like whether you'd be making use of the BCP's other benefits and how your grocery trips are spaced out. The Custom Cash is 5% back on up to $500 a month rather than on up to $6000 a year - which may sound like it amounts to the same thing, but not if you're spending like $600 on groceries in January, $400 in February, etc.
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Feb 6, 2024 01:41
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MockingQuantum posted:Honestly this would be useful, I came to the thread, saw the first page was from 2014, and assumed the OP was out of date. I just got lucky that this exact thing was being discussed on the most recent page, lol Yeah, I'm not really big on rotating category cards unless you get a good sign-up bonus or happen to have a big purchase coming up in the category for the quarter when you apply. There's something to be said for the (relative) simplicity of having dedicated cards for different spend categories, especially if you leave the ones that are only used for recurring expenses/online purchases in a drawer. I also label the ones I keep in my wallet so I don't ever have to go "Wait, which one gives me the best cashback for this kind of purchase again?" I know you weren't exactly asking, but you can get decent % cashback cards to cover a number of dedicated categories. For example, right now I use... -Citi Custom Cash for 5% back on groceries. Up to 5.55% if you also have the Citi Rewards Plus, depending on how you redeem it. -USBank Cash+ for 5% back on utilities/Internet and streaming services. Also has some useful categories you can select from quarterly if you know you have upcoming purchases, like electronics, furniture, and department stores. -USBank Altitude Go for 4% back on restaurants. Also has a $15 bonus if you subscribe to a streaming service for a full year, which can easily be 10+% cashback depending on the service you use it for. -Chase Amazon Prime for 5% back on Amazon purchases. -Bank of America Customized Cash for 3% back on all other online purchases. -USAA Cashback Plus for 5% back on gas. Think you need to be or have family that are current/former military or already have a USAA account for this one, but IIRC there are a number of other options for 3-5% cashback on gas. (One that sites like nerdwallet often overlook in their "best cards for X" articles is the PenFed Platinum Rewards, which also gives 5%.) Worth mentioning that the USBank, Bank of America, and USAA all have stupid restrictions on redeeming your cashback, and Bank of America doesn't seem to have any way to set up autopay unless you bank with them. Much happier with Citi and Chase for their cashback options, although Chase recently switched to requiring you to manually enter the routing/account number each time if redeeming cashback to a bank account, which is a bit annoying. Another popular option for groceries is the American Express Blue Cash Preferred, which is 6% back on groceries and streaming services. Keep in mind that it's also got a $95 annual fee after the first year, which effectively makes it more like 4.42% if you're using it as as a dedicated grocery card and spending exactly the max that qualifies for cashback on groceries each year, $6000. The lower or higher you go from $6000, the less the effective cashback is. The $250 sign-up bonus also should be taken into account, since it offsets 2-3 years of annual fees.
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Mar 22, 2024 16:55
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THF13 posted:I do have a BoA checking account, but my BoA autopay is setup to pull from my Alliant checking account, so it should be possible to setup autopay without banking with them. Rakeris posted:You can setup the BoA ones with auto pay..... It is just incredibly difficult to find and do. No idea why it's so difficult, I just assume they want you forgetting to pay it or something. All I know is that I spent way too long trying to set it up a while back, and when I wasn't able to find it on my own, the tutorials I found online referred to a link that didn't show up on the page it was supposed to be on. Switching browsers/turning off adblock didn't help. I'd had the card for years at that point, so I don't think that was the issue. I called BoA's customer service about it at the time, but they weren't able to help either. I'm wondering if they changed it at some point to make it impossible instead of just difficult, but people who already had it set up were able to keep it? But, of course, it could be that they moved the option somewhere else on the site, and the tutorials were just outdated. Girbot posted:This is my gas card, I was an NRA 5% cardholder and then PenFed attained us as clients when First National Bank of Omaha wanted to disassociate from the NRA. Thanks for the info, I didn't realize that! I don't have the card myself since I already had the USAA card.
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Mar 23, 2024 14:32
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Yeah, that's what I did when I couldn't find any way to set it up since it says to contact customer service on the bill pay screen (edit: for setting up eBills), and they told me they couldn't help, I had to do it through the site.  Maybe I just got someone who had no idea what they were talking about.
Atahualpa fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Mar 23, 2024 |
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Mar 23, 2024 17:13
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BadSamaritan posted:Hey thread! I was hoping for a recommendation for a credit card. We have a large emergency house expense (>$10k) that, while we can cover with cash, we’d rather use a card and pay over time. We have excellent credit, and have a BofA Travel, BofA category cash back, and Amazon card that we use regularly. NerdWallet has an article about cards with 18-month 0% APR offers here. But you also might consider looking into any cards with a good cashback % on some common spend category that you don't already have covered or a decent sign-up bonus to see if they have a 0% APR offer as well. I've picked up five new cards that did one or both of those things within the past two years, and all of them also gave me 0% APR for the first 12-15 months. I mentioned most of them in a post a couple of pages back. For example, if you don't have one already then the Citi Custom Cash is always a solid option. 0% APR for 15 months, $200 sign-up bonus for spending $1500 within the first 6 months, and 5% back on up to $500 in your highest spend category each month (so a lot of people use it as, e.g., a dedicated gas card). Also it might be a minor consideration, but out of all the credit card sites I've used, Citi's is the best overall in terms of the overall UI and ease of use. Edit: wasn't taking into account the $10k+ factor. Out of my cards the Wells Fargo Active Cash gave by far the highest starting limit despite having a similar salary and credit score when I applied for it compared to others. I have no idea what gets factored into determining the limit though, so YMMV. Atahualpa fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Apr 6, 2024 |
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Apr 5, 2024 23:46
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Nitrousoxide posted:I imagine I'd need to spread any new ones out to avoid frequent hard pulls on my credit, so only 2 (or 1, if I want to keep a spare hard pull in the hopper if I need it for 2 years). Double Cash would probably the best pick I'd think? Since that doubles my current cashback from Discover for "everything else". And Discover still usually does the whole "online sales fronts" 5% rate for the 4th quarter, which is when probably 50% of my Amazon purchases are anyway. Hard pulls typically have a pretty minimal effect on your credit score, and if you're not planning to apply for a loan/mortgage/etc. in the near future, you probably don't need to worry about them at all since they get removed from your credit report after two years. As an example, I applied for three cards in the space of two months 1.5 years ago, and my score dropped about 30 points on average across the three credit bureaus. It's remained mostly in that range since then even though I've applied for two additional cards and have been maintaining balances on any cards with 0% APR offers, and it appears on track to recover fully by this summer when I pay off the most recent cards.
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Apr 7, 2024 18:05
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| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 01:29 |
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Not sure where Forbes is getting that (maybe it's only if you opt to receive the cashback by mailed check?), but I deposit the rewards from my Citi Custom Cash each month via direct deposit and can confirm that it's always been 1:1 points-to-cents for me.
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Apr 8, 2024 20:01
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