re: Credit Card Rewards and Points Discussion

Teddy, you lucky SOB.
Serve

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Teddy, you lucky SOB.
Serve

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I saw some rumblings that I may be able to do the switch.

Of course, I'm not really sure what my play should be, but I'm leaning towards not messing with it until I have to. I figure if/when Amex doesn't allow the switch, they will remove all non-Amex anyways. No need to take the risk now until I'm forced to is my thinking?

Hopefully the will let me use my old number until December. I'll do my Dec. loads if alive, activate new number and charge hotel, then cancel Arrival(Fee due January) and switch out the Serve load card.

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For airlines yes. You have to purchase the tickets and then get a fixed reimbursement with the Barclay's card. That's nice if you fly coach. If you want to fly first class it's a terrible value because you're playing face value for the tickets. I'm flying first class to and from Italy later this summer. Those tickets would be over a $20000 charge on the Barclay card. That's a lot of points. By using airline miles I got those two round trip tickets for less than 200000 miles total. That's a .10 valuation per mile spent which is almost 5 times the Barclay valuation if my math is correct.

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Sounds right, hadn't thought of it that way. Was thinking the Arrival since it was not airline dependent, and I could get reimbursed for my domestic airfare costs. I'm not likely to fly international, maybe once every 5 years. It certainly is a better value the cheaper the tickets, but as the tickets go up, the points it costs to redeem are a lot higher too.

Its about time for me to get some more freebies...

Considering Southwest Card and the 50k Pts or Amex Platinum w/ 40k points, $200 in airline credit, and free TSA pre check

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Wait for the big offer on the Platinum. It goes as high as 100k points.

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Yeah, I thought I remember it getting up to 100k at one point.

The fee is 450, so the 200 in airline credit and 90 for TSA pre offsets most of that.

Is the Chase sapphire still two years after sign-up bonus hits, then you can receive it again?

Hypothetical: Let's say I own and operate a small scale trucking company. I spend about 95k a year on fuel on my debit card/checking account. I would like to take my family of 5 on a nice surprise vacation next year, say a week long (could be longer).

What cards do I need to get?

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Is the Chase sapphire still two years after sign-up bonus hits, then you can receive it again?

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It is but Chase now has a rule that if you have 5 credit applications in the past two years they won't give you a Chase UR card. You can still get Chase cobrand cards though.

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if you have 5 credit applications in the past two years

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Geez, that is churning and burning right there.


I know its been answered before, but how many cards do you all have at one time?

I've got CSP (2yrs) Discover (10yrs) Amex (7yrs) Visa (15yrs)

I think all are staples that I will keep, being there are some years behind them and they are helping my Fico.

Was considering doing some churn/burn on the SW Card and then possibly Amex Platinum. Could I roll the Amex to the platinum, still getting the bonus and keeping my history? I'd hate to have 6cc's even though Id shut down the SW pretty damn quickly after cashing in the points.

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I would like to take my family of 5 on a nice surprise vacation next year, say a week long (could be longer).

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Depends on where you want to go. Domestic or international? Coach or Business? Do you want to try and pay for hotels with these points as well?

For the fuel rewards alone, the Amex Gold Biz card is 3x on fuel. The problem, IMO, is that the learning curve for understanding how to maximize Amex points can be fairly steep and utilizing them for domestic travel puts you on Delta(which is a crap shoot, but can provide good value if flexible) or AA using British Airways Avios(Which requires a little homework to understand the process).