re: Credit Card Rewards and Points Discussion

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Are you hitting this max?

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Yeah. I spread it out over the year just to play it cool with Chase. Otherwise 50K is a good month

I just only buy Visa GCs and call the 1% fee the cost of my travel. A lot of people use part of the earned points to cover the fees, but I just pay it. I have bought target GCs before. I have a costco membership and I don't do a lot of voluntary spend otherwise, so other GCs have no use to me.

Just replied.

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GenesChin

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Oh yeah. I was aware of that. In context, I didn't think dabigfella was looking to reduce prices etc. Besides, when it comes to re-selling, I have always felt that it is not worth it if your only "profit" is the credit card points.

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I can't pay my mortgage or car payment with CC. Some allow it, most don't. I do pay most of my other bills including my insurance with a CC.

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Yes you can. Use rad pad. As long as you can use checks to pay, you can pay a 1.75% fee to pay with CC and radpad will send them a check.

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A bit curious about this myself. So, get the Ink card, go to Staples and OD, buy a lot of Amex or Visa gift cards and collect the 5X, then what, go use the gift cards to make purchases at walmart, target, lowes?

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Precisely. Welcome to Pandora's box

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I can't pay my mortgage or car payment with CC. Some allow it, most don't. I do pay most of my other bills including my insurance with a CC.

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Thanks for the reply. I am assuming it is up to the bank that is giving the loan for the house/car? My car loan is 0% APR, I'm not sure if that would affect it or not.



ETA: Looked at radpad - seems the fee to process the payment would end up being more than I would make on cashback for the year. Unless I'm doing the math wrong.

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I don't know if you have Race Tracs around you but they sell gift cards too.

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Not out here they don't but thanks for the suggestion.

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Visa GCs and call the 1% fee the cost of my travel

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If it's $8.95 for a $300 gift card, where are you getting the 1%?

The payoff is still good ($1,500 for 250,000 UR points) but not 1%.

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It makes sense if you use it to meet min spends and have no other way to.

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Ah yes, I understand now. Man this stuff is interesting.

So, a $100 GC bought at Staples is 500 UR points. If it costs $3 to buy the card, 500 UR points used inside Chase is really 750, which equals $7.50 worth of travel? So, kind of a $4.50 gain? Am I doing this right? I'm driving, so it's kind of hard.

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if so WOW that turns 100 points into 750??? Damn man I need to get on this if thats the case

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I'm not sure that is accurate, it's why I'm asking. Might make the Ink worth it for me because i will gladly go load up on gift cards if the fees aren't too high, and use them at Walmart/Lowes/Sams/Costco etc instead of a CC.

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You have the gist of it but really it would be worth more than $7.50 when you look at award flights etc. $7.50 would be the absolute lowest you value those points at.

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Exactly. I had to book flights for my wife and daughter to Philly and for some unknown reason a direct flight from Dulles to Philadelphia is $500 a ticket. It only cost 10000 miles on United for the flight so I transferred 20k UR points to United (which happens in real time) and got each ticket. That's a .05 redemption per point which is fantastic.

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In context, I didn't think dabigfella was looking to reduce prices etc.

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Sounds like he is trying to get out, but if someone was interested in aggressively building their business in this sector, they could operate at a loss to be more competitive while still making money

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Now you get why I say Ink paired with CSR is a killer combo.

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Yeah, I see. Like I was saying I don't shop at those places for much of anything, but I could go in there and buy gift cards.

Did I read on some of these posts that you are limited in how many gift card and/or the $ value you can spend in a day or some specific time frame? Does Chase only allow those purchase once a week or day and only for so much $?

Edit: Will probably wait till closer to the end of the year for the Ink. In the last week I've gotten 2 CSR's I have to meet spend on, and the Ink is $5K in 3 months I think. I can do that with gift cards though, but want to spread it out a bit. My wife is freaking out on me right now.