January 22, 2014
Disclaimer: This is free money but it costs seed money to make money, and it can cost you big-time if you overspend what you can afford. One should never get into this intending to carry a balance. Seriously. Don’t do that.
This is a thing I’ve done a few times in the past (name courtesy of Fatwallet Forums) and had been considering another one, but what with all the traveling and planning, hadn’t quite the brain power to kickstart the process.
Then, last fall, PiC voiced the niggling little thought at the back of my mind: We should get new credit cards and juice the bonuses, right? With all these wedding expenses coming up …
Man after my heart. OF COURSE WE SHOULD.
I did some research and picked the following cards, getting overly ambitious along the way. My main requirement was that the annual fee had to be waived for the first year and after that it was just a matter of how high the bonuses could be:
1. American Express Business Gold
50,000 Membership Rewards points after you spend $5,000 in purchases in the first 3 months of Card membership.
2. Chase Sapphire Preferred
Earn 40,000 Bonus Points after you spend $3,000 in the first 3 months from account opening
3. Chase Ink Bold
50K Ultimate Rewards bonus points for $5,000 spend (3 months)
4. Citi Hilton Visa
40,000 Hilton HHonors Bonus Points after making $1,000 in eligible purchases within the first 4 months of opening your account.
5. Marriott Rewards Visa
60,000 bonus points* after you spend $1,000 in the first 3 months from account opening + 1 FREE night stay* (Category 1-4) after account approval
At this point, we have ‘managed to spend’ enough to hit all the Bonus limits on all the cards.
I probably should have been more discriminating in selecting cards for more specific bonuses. At the time, it didn’t matter so much because I didn’t have any plans for them, but now that I’m starting to plot and plan, well, it would have been nice 🙂
As we’re still working on cleaning up our combined finances and accounts, we’ve decided to cancel a few of our existing cards and are considering keeping one of the above as a replacement. They generally have decent rewards, I don’t like their annual fees, but I’m needing one card that doesn’t charge foreign transaction fees. Or at least the “emotional” side of me does. Before I make the call, I’ll have to do the math and see how much I have to save on transaction fees and other benefits – it might not actually be worth it!
My AmEx Starwood is the strong favorite card that I’m keeping as the hotel and hotel–> airfare transfers are great. Typically my rule of thumb is no annual fees, period, but since we redeem for at least a few hundred or more dollars’ worth of hotel stays every year, that offsets the $65 fee pretty handily.
:: What’s your favorite credit card? Why?
November 20, 2010
There’s an idea PiC and I have been floating, kicking around, actually, for the past several weeks.
A friend is going traipsing about across continents for several months and has been prodding us to jump in for a bit of that trip sometime in the spring. We’d previously half-promised to join a pair of PiC’s friends in Greece “sometime in spring” but that couple has already decided on a week on Greece and another in Italy and at a time that may not work so well for us.
Leaving aside the question of whether I can save enough vacation time, there’s still the actual cost to get there and back, and fill my ever-starving belly! A very rough estimate of an acceptable budget: $2000-3000.
It’s a pretty crazy thought.
But.
So Delicious.
I hit FlyerTalk and Fatwallet to confirm my suspicions and sure enough, there had been a fantastic promotion for the British Airways Signature Visa months ago – 50,000 bonus miles after a first purchase and a $2000 spend in three months, but the current promotion on offer was pretty anemic at only half that so I held off. It’s nothing like the one from last year offering twice that, for a total of 100K miles, though. *dramatic sigh*
Lo, when I tried to book my travel for work, Chase/BA ambushed me with the premium offer, only if I were to apply right then and there and pay for my travel with that very same card.
Pacing back and forth, assailing PiC with demands for his assessments of our usual spending that goes on credit cards for the next three months, I found myself, after two hours of obsessing, applying for the card. What I did not notice, shame on me, was that a waiver of the annual fee wasn’t part of the promotion. I’d taken that for granted as a normal business tactic for all the new cards. And they get you right up front, too! The charge hit my card two days after I got it in the mail.
As a bit of emotional solace, though it’s hardly a real offset against $75(!), I just found out that this card no longer charges a foreign transaction fee. So there’s that.
The 50,000 bonus miles will pay for one transatlantic flight, so that’s one of us taken care of. Perhaps it’s worth $75 for PiC to pick up his own card after I’ve completed my $2000 spend so we can combine costs on his card? I don’t want to be spending above need just for the sake of getting bonus miles, of course, that’s silly and wasteful. But I am planning to pay things like car registration earlier to get it into the three month cycle for this card. We can do that for a number of things like Costco gift cards (which are another story entirely).
I don’t know if, when or how this trip will happen yet. There are still a lot of issues (hi, family problems) to be settled between now and then so it might be completely unrealistic to try and go away for such a big trip. But I’ll just keep squirreling money and miles away. Just in case.
August 5, 2010
“They” always say not to save credit card or rewards points, and once again, “they” are right.
Somehow, I lost track of my various hotel loyalty programs and let one of the more valuable programs lapse.
It’s possible I wouldn’t have noticed it even today except I was browsing a lot of online sales and after fussing over a lot of clothes I’d like to order BUT didn’t want to pay shipping for, I came to my senses. If I’m going to spend on clothes, that can’t come out of my regular cash funds! They’re already stretched so it was time to go hunting for some point redemption for the next good sale.
That’s when the brilliant idea to cash in those long hoarded Starpoints flashed through my mind: Starpoints usually redeem at a 1:1 ratio and offer some premium stores like Nordstrom. Blissfully ignorant, I popped into the SPG website and tried to log in. After several failed attempts, I called the customer service number inquiring about my account.
Oh. It had been inactivated.
22,000 points, gone.
It’s been over 18 months since my last account activity and that meant it was fair game for deactivation. In fact, my Starpoints account had gone inactive back in April but I’ve been a little busy not staying in hotels or vacationing, sadly.
!!! I was really ticked at myself for letting that happen, so carefully asked about having the account reactivated which was surprisingly easy. The rep even volunteered the next happy bit of news: I haven’t permanently lost my points yet. They’ll reinstate those points in about 3-5 days.
My hoarding was with the best of intentions: I thought I’d find a way to earn a few more points to maximize my redemptions for up to $250 in gift certificates since I no longer travel and stay in Starwood hotels for work. Regardless of intentions, though, the result was that I almost lost a hefty redemption of $200 in gift certificates simply because I got greedy.
Don’t let your points get stale, redeem them if you’re not earning any more!
May 25, 2010
I’m not big on summer or high season travel but this year’s trips have suddenly piled up as a California highway is wont to do on any given day. Not having the itineraries settled was annoying me at odd times. Completely inappropriately like, say, during meetings my brain chose not to attend. In keeping with my neuroses, I’ve started a joint expenses tracking spreadsheet to total up this year’s travel spending now that Partner in Crime and I are in the same area at the same time.
So we sat down with pencil and paper (seriously!), computers and calendars to map out the summer months.
Airfare is no joke, folks.
I’ve been juicing the value of some Southwest credits (just over $600) to pay for my travel to attend a graduation, the Comic-Con expeditions, and had a little left over for a solo trip that PiC is taking. I have no interest in traveling 3 weekends out of 5 in a month, so he’s on his own for that one. They actually stretched to pay for 7 one-way trips so that’s a big fat sigh of relief, but it most certainly did not cover the wedding in LA.
Road trip! And over the holiday weekend, that last. Pray for me!
With only $100+ in the travel fund, covering my share of the rental car, food, comics, and any other gifts from Con will be an interesting challenge. Though, let’s be honest, if I do well enough on the current savings challenge, I will share some of that bounty with … myself.
I’m also hoarding a couple other travel credits (a free round trip and some other airline credits) in case my hypothesized short vacation to see a host of relatives and friends on the East Coast this fall proves true. But that’s a whole other story. For now, I plan to be a complete homebody in the months of August and September.
What does this summer hold in store for you?
October 3, 2009
First up, Quizno’s Coupons, exp 10/16/09:
1) Buy one sub and a regular fountain drink, get one sub free.
2) $1 off one sub, $2 off two subs, $3 off three subs.
I don’t like Quizno’s anymore, but I hope that any fans out there can use one of these deals.
Second, the silver lining to recent overspending mean that credit card rewards redemption time rolled around much more quickly than usual. My Chase Cash Plus check arrived in the mail: +$50
Third, slow and steady email clickthroughs have finally yielded a $25 gas gift card from MyPoints. That’ll defray a bit of the recent and upcoming driving.
Fourth, FINALLY redeemed Swagbucks for a reward. Would have gone for Amazon GCs except my savings accounts begged for a cash infusion. $5 is better than nothing. HOW is everyone accumulating ‘bucks so quickly? I feel like I’m the slowest earner ever.
Now that I’ve settled up the bill for Dad’s tickets, I’m on a mission to get lower auto insurance rates. Wish me luck!
August 30, 2009
I really like MoneyMonk’s question in this post:
What are my options to having access to emergency cash in midst of a crisis?
She lists the following “order of financial sources.”
1. Emergency Fund
2. Family/friends
3. HELOC
4. Credit card
5. 401k
Mine is a pretty short list, and doesn’t include credit cards because that’s just borrowing trouble that I might not be able to pay back:
1. Sell stuff, freelance work if poss
2. Cash
3. Roth IRA
4. 403(b)/401(a)
5. I have one relative I might be able to borrow money from, but I seriously doubt I’d ask her unless things were dire. She’s not exactly the best money manager, we’re just close enough to give each other money if necessary.
What does your list look like?
June 20, 2009
I really hate hearing Garmin pipe up when you make an executive decision that does not follow the GPS exactly. No matter where you go or what you do, it just won’t adjust to the new route. It forces you to wait while it recalculates and brings you around in a circle to follow the original directions.
But that has little to do with this post. It’s just that I keep hearing that faintly obnoxious voice when I realize that I’ve got to recalculate my savings plan.
My perusal of JD’s post on How to Handle a Windfall followed right on the heels of .. yes, recalculating. Earlier this week, I’d had a little meeting with my notepad and pen, wherein a divvying up of expected monies was set on lined paper. I wanted to make sure that every penny had its place and the best way I know how to stretch a windfall/irregular income’s impact on my financial life is to make a plan.
It’s just as simple as me, a pen, paper, and calculator. First, I sketched out my existing holdings using my handy dandy Snapshot as a starting point.
Next, a list of expected income. Normally, I treat each piece of income as an individual transaction which means that I take out a cut for regular expenses, savings, and another expense fund from each check. The problem with this method is that I have to pick my favorite child. Savings already got a lion’s share because that fund makes me happiest when it grows. After expenses and savings, who gets an infusion of cash?
That’s where things get a little haphazard. No budgeting by the Force for me, it’s budgeting by feel. Priorities, after the first two ironclads, tend to shift according to what was most recently raided. My instinct usually goes straight for the recently wounded, and tops that up first.This causes a bit of churn in higher-activity accounts, leaving less-frequently tapped accounts languishing. For example, I spend out of the insurance fund twice a year, while the travel and car maintenance funds give it up 3 or 4 times a year. Somewhere in there, I needed a great big chunk for taxes. By the time I was through, savings had 33% of the pot, expenses a paltry 10%, taxes another 33%, car maintenance and insurance split the 24% left over, while house and insurance funds were entirely out in the cold.
Not at all masterful. And I subconsciously knew this because each night, I’d take out the notepad and look it over again. And each time, it just didn’t look right. [Or feel right.]
Recalculating:
Projecting that there might be trouble with the timing of one check, I ran two new lists. One with three checks, and one with four checks.
From both columns, I took 25% off the top for taxes.
Then I took 40% of the net for savings.
The remaining 60% (of net) was divided equally between the travel, insurance and auto maintenance funds.
Once again, the house gets neglected but I have a good reason this time. Once money is in the House fund, it’s never coming back out until I buy a house. Right now, it’s more important for me to have available cash flow in the areas there will definitely be spending in the next six or so months. So you see? Logical, clean, simple. I can use these ratios in the future for any irregular income without having to agonize over which should get more.
Well worth hearing that aggravatingly measured voice in my head.
Disclaimer: This is free money but it costs seed money to make money, and it can cost you big-time if you overspend what you can afford. One should never get into this intending to carry a balance. Seriously. Don’t do that.