re: Credit Card Rewards and Points Discussion

I've been doing some Evolve Money payments on my car loan to liquidate.

As long as you stay under the 4 payments per account per month you still have some options, which is great.

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I can be a little dense so walk me through it if you can. If I spend $1k on a Visa gift card at Office Depot and it costs 4.95. Ill get 5000 points but that's only worth 5 bucks. Doesn't seem like that's getting ahead?

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First rule of credit card points - one type of points (Chase) aren't worth the same as another type (Starpoints). Kind of like 100 rupees isn't the same as 100 dollars.

Also, 5,000 Chase points, for example, aren't always worth the same as other Chase points either, because you can transfer to different airlines, and their award charts determine the value.

I can transfer 15,000 Chase points to British Airways and then book an American Airlines flight from MSY to MIA for that many points plus $5. That would be over 2 cents a point.

If I tried to fly into Ft. Lauderdale from MSY, I might have to transfer 20 to 25,000 Chase points to Southwest, to essentially get to the same place. This would be less than 2 cents a point.

Chase points are routinely redeemed for .02 cents a piece, so 5,000 points would be $10, not 5. You are discounting your travel at least 20% to 30% with some of these methods. Those discounts get higher if you redeem for First or Business class seats, which is function of Ticket Price vs. Award Point price.

I don't heavily MS, in fact, for a while I use MS techniques only to pay legitimate bills, as I'm comfortable with that. The MS techniques just help me get to point totals faster on top of my regular spend.

I'm a low hanging fruit kind of guy, unless there is a real deal going on some where. I'm smart enough to figure it out.

ETA: I don't recommend people doing this that have a tight budget. I save a few thousand dollars a month in various retirement and savings goals and I never hold more in cash equivalents than that cushion affords me at any given time. If something "goes wrong" I just use that cushion until I can liquidate. If you can't float, don't do it. Someone somewhere right now is holding $5,000 in VGCs and can't liquidate them, and are probably screwed.

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Me neither. Aside from AP. I was legitimately using VRs to pay rent, student loans, entergy and some other stuff, which amounted to >1K a month.

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When VRs were going, I was doing the whole $5,000 a month, with about half going to legitimate bills I couldn't pay with a CC like rent and so forth.

Once we got knocked down to $200 VGCs with Bold/Ink Plus, I slowed my roll a bit due to hassle. Plus, sign up bonuses on new cards are still huge and plentiful all around.

I have around 110,000 Hilton honors points. Besides going stay at a hotel for a few nights, give me some other options. What else can I do with these points? TIA

I have a question. With these signup bonuses for new cards, what do you do with them after cashing in the first major reward? Are you calling the credit card company to get rid of the annual fee for future years, or just cancelling the card?

Never cancel a card unless your are told that they won't give you another card unless you cancel an old one. Always just reduce it to a fee-free version if you can.

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I have around 110,000 Hilton honors points. Besides going stay at a hotel for a few nights, give me some other options. What else can I do with these points? TIA

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Stay at a hotel.

For 110K, if you do it right, you could get anywhere from 5-6 nights in a decent hotel or 2-4 nights in one of Hilton's upper echelon properties.

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That isn't true. I cancel cards I didn't plan to keep because they had annual fees and I didn't want to down convert them. As long as it's not the 1st card you opened you'll be fine.

Then again my oldest card on my credit report is two years older than me

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It won't kill you, but there is no reason to cancel unless you have to.

not sure the best place to post this but apparently Sams has a new cash back reward card that may interest some folks

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New Personal and Business Sam's Club MasterCards

Earn 5% cash back on Gas Purchases (up to $6000, then 1% on purchases after)*
Earn 3% cash back on Dining and Travel*
Earn 1% cash back on Other Purchases*
No Annual Fee (Sam's Club membership required)
Online Account Management (SamsClub.com/credit)

Fine Print:
Rewards percentages depend on the type of purchase made (5% for gas purchases at U.S. and Puerto Rico Sam's Club and Walmart fuel stations, and at Gas Stations located in the U.S. and Puerto Rico (but excluding purchases at fuel stations at wholesale clubs (other than Sam's Club), certain supercenters, and supermarkets), for up to the first $6,000 in gas purchases each year and 1% thereafter; 3% for dining and travel purchases (excluding purchases at wholesale clubs other than Sam's Club) and 1% for all other Eligible Purchases).

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If you aren't seeing the benefits of the card you can downgrade to one of the Amex everyday cards that don't have an annual fee.

You may want to hurry tho, I think Amex typically gives you a 30 day window where you can downgrade the card and they will still reimburse the fee. After that 30 days tho they aren't going to refund that $175 most likely.

As far as capital one vs amex, I think it would depend on your spending habits. The gold PR amex has a pretty good deal on gas,groceries and travel, assuming you spend enough to eclipse the $175 annual fee. Amex has really good annual spend bonuses, if you aren't hitting those you may want to look elsewhere.