I love credit cards so much!

[nhgirl]

I feel stupid for asking this but when you use Plastiq to pay your mortgage using CIP and if you get it coded as 3x, does that amt (3x mtg pmt) get applied to your minimum spend or just the actual amount of your mortgage?

 

[peel]

I feel stupid for asking this but when you use Plastiq to pay your mortgage using CIP and if you get it coded as 3x, does that amt (3x mtg pmt) get applied to your minimum spend or just the actual amount of your mortgage?

The actual payment amount. Points don't factor into your minimum spend.

 

[nhgirl]

The actual payment amount. Points don't factor into your minimum spend.

Okay thank you.

 

[hsmamato2]

ok thanks! 6% cashback on all my grocery spend would be a good thing....

 

[peel]

Okay thank you.

I wish they did factor in...one mortgage payment would have taken care of my CIP!

 

[nhgirl]

I wish they did factor in...one mortgage payment would have taken care of my CIP!

That's what I was thinking. I got the CIP the same day as the Barclay Arrival Plus. I honestly didn't think I'd qualify for CIP. But I'll never make minimum spend on both.

 

[AmyAnne]

That's what I was thinking. I got the CIP the same day as the Barclay Arrival Plus. I honestly didn't think I'd qualify for CIP. But I'll never make minimum spend on both.

There are some discussions of this earlier in the thread. There are a number of ways to prepay for things to meet a minimum spend. When I got the CSR last year, I prepaid about a year on our electric and water bills.

 

[peel]

There are some discussions of this earlier in the thread. There are a number of ways to prepay for things to meet a minimum spend. When I got the CSR last year, I prepaid about a year on our electric and water bills.

You can also buy gift cards for later if need be. As long as you have the cash to pay up front for future expenses, of course. I've found coupling this hobby with using YNAB for budgeting has been vital to ensure I'm not spending more than I have in order to reach minimum spending requirements.

 

[Albort]

That's what I was thinking. I got the CIP the same day as the Barclay Arrival Plus. I honestly didn't think I'd qualify for CIP. But I'll never make minimum spend on both.

on top of the 2 other suggestion, the last suggestion is to open bank accounts. You do however need money to sit there for a few month(for good measures). PNC(only certain states have this bank) does a 2k max funding. i think thats only per account too, so u might be able to do 4k credit card funding for both savings and checkings. Ive done one with Consumer Credit Union, $1000.

 

[amalone1013]

using YNAB for budgeting

This has made it so easy for me too! I can easily pay ahead on something, or move money, or just see what our baseline spending is that could go towards a minimum.

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

This has made it so easy for me too! I can easily pay ahead on something, or move money, or just see what our baseline spending is that could go towards a minimum.

Same here. I love YNAB and it has made tracking minimum spend and card payments much easier.

 

[Ngwira]

Signup bonus > bonus spend.

20k ihg points is 1 night in a candlewood suite. I'll have to see what's better for me to do 1k or 2k minimum spend.

 

[peel]

Same here. I love YNAB and it has made tracking minimum spend and card payments much easier.

I honestly think I would have majorly screwed things up if I hadn't been using YNAB. I've been using it for around three years and it has completely changed our financial situation. I'm still on YNAB4, which they're going to have to pry out of my hands.

 

[King of Naboombu]

I used to dislike using credit cards, DW and I each only had 1 card (Chase Freedom), and I would dread the monthly statements. We used them only for things we could afford and would pay balance off each month mostly all of the time, but when extra things popped up it made it stressful to do the math on upcoming expenses and re-arrange finances to cover it.

YNAB helped me realize the issue was not with using credit cards but that we were overcomplicating how we planned our spending. Since starting on YNAB 5 months ago I have been able to get past the issues I had and start using the credit cards more to our benefit. In that time we added 2 more credit cards, Discover card and CSP. Using Discover card with cash back match for Disney gift cards we saved a ton towards our upcoming Aug WDW trip. Being a newb to all this the info on this thread and other budget board threads has been so helpful and eye opening. So, to all that share their knowledge on these threads-


The stress relief of having an easy way to manage our budget is huge but the extra payoff came today when I saw my 50K CSP sign up bonus points are now pending!! Something we've always wanted to do is a weekend trip during MVMCP, but never thought we can afford to do a quick weekend with costs of airfare and hotel. Now with those sign up points, combined with previous UR and SW points, we should be able to take that weekend MVMCP trip this year in November with air and hotel all covered by points!

 

[BklynGirl]

Can someone help me understand how the Marriott Vacation Packages https://www.marriott.com/rewards/usepoints/morepack.mi work? Unless I'm reading it wrong, it seems like you use your Marriott points to get a 7-day hotel certificate and as a bonus you will also receive a substantial number of airline miles (depending on the package you pick). Do you have to use the airline points for airfare when you use your hotel certificate or can you bank them for a later trip? If you buy the certificate for Marriott Category 1 -5 but later decide you want to stay at a higher category hotel can you pay the difference in cash or are you locked in to a Category 1 - 5? Is it better to join the Mileage Plus program first & get the extra United miles? We're in the early stages of planning a trip to Hawaii & we could use the hotel certificate there & have our hotel paid off - although the Hawaii hotels are all higher than Category 1 -5 so we'd either have to get a higher point package or pay some cash. We live in the NY/NJ/CT area so we have a lot of options for airports/airlines & we really want to try to fly Business Class at least since it's such a long flight. I do have a lot of SPG points that I can transfer to Marriott and I think I get 3 Marriott for each SPG? I also have some Amex Member Rewards points I can convert to SPG if I need more. But is it a good use of my SPG points to get this package or would I be better off converting them to an airline directly & getting our airfare taken care of? This is where I get a little lost in the trip planning part - I'm not sure where to even begin! Sorry for all the questions - any and all insight would be very much appreciated!!

 

[Lain]

I would have a hard time reaching the 30 transactions/month for the bonus on the AMEX Everyday cards.

Can't you just ring up single bananas in separate transactions at the grocery store (preferably self-checkout)? Or do reloads of an Amazon gift card balance at a minimum of $0.50 each time?

 

[hsmamato2]

20k ihg points is 1 night in a candlewood suite. I'll have to see what's better for me to do 1k or 2k minimum spend.

I agree....20k points is less than one night somewhere (I've never found a rate less than 20k for what I want) so I don't think that extra 1k spend is valuable for that amount.... even less with the extra 5k on an AU.... it's 15k extra. I may just take my spend elsewhere

 

[hsmamato2]

Same with me. Hitting the 2k spend won't be hard over 3 months, so I would rather take the extra 20k points, since I doubt I will be earning lots of IHG points later on.

it's 15k if you have an Au

 

[hsmamato2]

sorry- edited question b/x it made no sense

 

[peel]

I used to dislike using credit cards, DW and I each only had 1 card (Chase Freedom), and I would dread the monthly statements. We used them only for things we could afford and would pay balance off each month mostly all of the time, but when extra things popped up it made it stressful to do the math on upcoming expenses and re-arrange finances to cover it.

YNAB helped me realize the issue was not with using credit cards but that we were overcomplicating how we planned our spending. Since starting on YNAB 5 months ago I have been able to get past the issues I had and start using the credit cards more to our benefit. In that time we added 2 more credit cards, Discover card and CSP. Using Discover card with cash back match for Disney gift cards we saved a ton towards our upcoming Aug WDW trip. Being a newb to all this the info on this thread and other budget board threads has been so helpful and eye opening. So, to all that share their knowledge on these threads-


The stress relief of having an easy way to manage our budget is huge but the extra payoff came today when I saw my 50K CSP sign up bonus points are now pending!! Something we've always wanted to do is a weekend trip during MVMCP, but never thought we can afford to do a quick weekend with costs of airfare and hotel. Now with those sign up points, combined with previous UR and SW points, we should be able to take that weekend MVMCP trip this year in November with air and hotel all covered by points!

Not to derail the thread, but good for you! I started using YNAB long before I knew anything about credit card churning, but now that we got ourselves more financially stable by adopting the YNAB rules, we are in a position to utilize credit cards in a safe and systematic way. If I wasn't using YNAB, keeping track of everything would have been stress-inducing. But having all of my accounts listed with all of my transactions and categories, I'm able to easily keep up with the new cards, min spends, rotating categories, etc.

Also, thumbs up on your user name! That's one of my all time favorite movies.