I love credit cards so much! v2.0 (see first page for add'l details)

[PartyOfSe7en]

What are your goals for points? that greatly depends on what gets recommended. Also need more background info to recommend any cards

We are looking for sign on bonuses, cash back or travel rewards

 

[Haley R]

Just paid 3k when I have no card with required spend. So sad.

I’m sorry friend

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

We are looking for sign on bonuses, cash back or travel rewards

Well you've come to the right place! Check your PM for an invite to our DISchurners group.

Are you planning any trip in particular right now or just looking for general rewards to use at a later time?

Also - just to clarify, the activity of churning will have very little affect on your credit scores and for most people it can increase your score in the longterm. It's a common misconception that opening new cards has a large negative affect.

 

[1st*toright]

There are also people that think it's crazy to plan vacations out 12 months. My boss looks at me super weird when I start requesting time 12-18 months out. Sorry...but I like to plan ahead for these things!! Even my wife's family is frustrated when I want to lock in summer vaca dates before Thanksgiving of the prior year. It's only 6-9 months away people...let's go!!!

THIS!!!!! I've had our summer plans locked for months at this point - as soon as summer camp schedules come out, we figure out what the summer looks like. None of my siblings have figured out their schedules yet - makes me crazy. We live closest to my parents' summer place, where we all meet up - we can drive, most of my siblings have to fly, so there are certain people that want us to just adjust our dates to match whenever they will be showing up (on a few weeks notice). I've had to just say "well, this is when we will be there - hope we get to see you!"

Vacation planning is my favorite hobby (the churning is really just to facilitate the travel, although it does have charms of its own), so I want to enjoy the planning for as long as possible!

 

[WVMomof3]

Make sure you are listed as his companion. If so then you can call swa and add your companion flight if his is already booked. You mentioned its done through a govt site, is his ticket actually ticketed or is it a hold and hasn't been ticketed? DH gets a confirmation once its actually ticketed. govt gets the seat at the price when they book but until they actually pay its not ticketed. This happened to us before. Once the flights was actually ticketed I called and was able to pay the 5.60 fee to add my ticket.

Thank you. I bet you are right that they are not yet ticketed. Didn't even think about that since I can see them on his SW account. I am definitely there as his companion also. I will have DH call as soon as they are ticketed and hope that it works.

 

[miztressuz]

yes she will have her debit card with her and we can and will be just doing transfers to her through quick pay or venmo for stuff she needs while in college or on her trip. but i also want her to have a credit card with her on a trip preferably visa one. She will also have fx currency to use that i am getting here before she leaves. not much buch just enough to buy stuff here and there.

And since she is leaving to college I want her to have a credit card and get started on building her credit.

Im sure one or two of my cards already have no fx fees thats why have them. ill just have to checck which ones and try adding her.

I totally agree with your thoughts, and hope you don't think I was trying to point you somewhere else. I think the CF card is great and I hope she can get it, but just remind her not to use it on the trip since it will have the FTF. Will she be doing a lot of foreign travel? If not, I'd maybe place the no FTF criteria low on the list for your everyday card and just look for the best one she can qualify for (she can use one of yours as an AU for this trip). I hope it's the CF but I thought Chase liked to see some credit history before approving for that card so it's a toss up. They did have the CFU listed as a student card at one point and a few on the thread here had their student's approved for it. That's doing the 3% in the first year offer right now, so that's also not a bad card to try for, just straight 3% back on whatever she spends without having to worry about categories. She could either cash it out or hoard it until she could get approved for premium card later. I don't think you could go wrong with either.

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

We are looking for sign on bonuses, cash back or travel rewards

I read the sticky and am interested without screwing up my great credit. Spouse is open to 2 new cards and I am as well. Both cards are old. We shop costco a ton so will probably keep that one

How much do you put on credit cards each month? Do you pay them off in full each month also? Most of these offers require some level of spend (i.e. $2,000 or $5,000 in 3 months). We'd want to make sure our recommendations match your comfortable level of spend.

 

[elgerber]

Just paid 3k when I have no card with required spend. So sad.

I am about to do the same tonight, $2k.

 

[disneymagicgirl]

Getting Disney Giftcards at Best Buy with Swagbucks is dead? I need $3,000 in Disney Giftcards by Sep anyone have any suggestions?

you can do RMN for 10% back at shop disney. I wouldn't go $3k at once though. There is a limit of I think 3x per month per store.

 

[1st*toright]

So true! I don't even know what I want our big trip to be next... We (meaning, I) have been talking about Dubai. DH and I would also love to see all 50 states though. So maybe we'll take 2021 and do the Kentucky Derby (DH's recent request) and then travel out west somewhere too. I went to Yellowstone and Glacier National almost 10 years ago and would love to go again.

Dubai sounds interesting and weird and cool. I'll pass on the Derby (but I'm not horse crazed like some people). I think our next "big" trip will probably be another National Parks tour - we did Utah, which was amazing, so maybe we'll do another road trip out west - that's what DH wanted to do instead of Europe.

 

[wendow]

I think you're talking about matching to the higher offer - not whether support links were going to increase, right? @wendow was asking regarding support links.

Now, somebody could pull the risky move of using the 40k offer via support and then try to match to 60k with the add'l $1k spend...but if they say no then you end up short 20k points (really 10k if you factor in the support pts).

Right, I thought of taking the risk of having my dd use dh's support link and then trying to get a match but it's more risk than we want to take on. She's not looking for CP. Just wants to get a couple flights covered and 60k will be fine for that.

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

Right, I thought of taking the risk of having my dd use dh's support link and then trying to get a match but it's more risk than we want to take on. She's not looking for CP. Just wants to get a couple flights covered and 60k will be fine for that.

So the risk is obviously 10,000 points within your family. If denied the match you don't have to spend $2k but I'd guess the $1k vs $2k MSR means very little to you. Tough call for sure...it's a 10k points swing either way...could make one card worth 70k (awesome) or 50k (booo no match)...or you just take the 60k that's guaranteed....

 

[disneymagicgirl]

I wanted to quote you, bernina, since you specifically asked but I didn't have a lot to update. We spoke to my MIL and FIL today. A new doctor came in yesterday or today and gave them a lot of hope that my MIL will walk again. He went into great detail as to what actually happened to her spine and that he expects her to have a lot more improvement in 3-4 mos. That's super encouraging!

Unfortunately, her therapy has slowed because it appears she has torn some ligaments in her shoulders with all this trying to move herself She's having an MRI soon to assess the damage to her shoulders. She was not strong physically going into this so I can just imagine the stress on her body.

My FIL took her out of the facility by himself yesterday and they went to several retirement (55+) communities to look at houses. I think the sale of their home will not be enough to cover these types of places completely so they will have to take on a small mortgage. Not a good prospect when you are almost 70yo. They've talked of moving to FL for several years now and I honestly wish they would. I think with the large retirees there, they'd find better, and cheaper, housing options. My MIL is really attached to several of her doctors though and I think that is partially holding her back from wanting to make the change.

My parents live at del Webb and really like it. The monthly HOA is super high though, to cover all those activities.

I'm glad they got good medical news/hope!!

 

[WVMomof3]

I think it really speaks to the psychology behind what we do and typical vacation planners.

The biggest (saddest) problem is there's probably a whole group of people who want to go on vacation but have no idea how to afford it. They're primary concern is coordinating work schedules, school schedules and saving enough money to pay for it. By the time they figure it all out they're booking too late to take advantage of some deals. This is sad - but for some reason they can't understand how CC points could alleviate a lot of this stress.

There are also people that think it's crazy to plan vacations out 12 months. My boss looks at me super weird when I start requesting time 12-18 months out. Sorry...but I like to plan ahead for these things!! Even my wife's family is frustrated when I want to lock in summer vaca dates before Thanksgiving of the prior year. It's only 6-9 months away people...let's go!!!

For these people who can't plan a vacation more than 6 months out, there's no way they can fathom earning points. They don't even know where they want to go! I try to tell them to earn flexible points that also have a cash value - ummmm hello URs?? Then when they finally figure it out, the points will be there. But again, that seems to require way too much planning. Is it really this hard to hand people free bags of cash??? I guess so!

Oh well...there loss is my gain...but I guess not really. I don't gain anything by them losing anything and they don't lose anything by me gaining anything. So uhhh their loss is their loss?? HAHA! It does frustrate me though sometimes and I just have to bite my tongue and let them spend more.

It will get harder as your girls get older. Unless you don't mind pulling them from school. I was not OK pulling for more than 2 days in a row. My kids were top of the class students, so it is not like they would fall behind, but they just didn't want to have to make up work. And our High school policy is more than 3 days absent and they take finals, so they also didn't want to miss because of that. Add in that our school district refuses to put out our school calendar until the end of the school year, we just now got our next years schedule, super frustrating. Add in sports, mandatory practices, tournaments, mandatory band camp, and and and it was super hard to plan ahead! Our Yellowstone trip, that I already was way behind in planning for this July, was able to snag some in park rooms just last month is already in jeopardy of being cancelled. If DD does this Australia thing it totally messes up my plans. She would fly back home while we were in middle of trip. Grrrrrr I can't plan anything in advance. Trying to see if I can rearrange some things, fly into SLC instead of Denver, but it is super pricey. And I still think it may just be DH and I. Oldest DD won't be back, other DD will be working and DS is still waiting to hear from a summer job he applied for.

 

[disfanforlife]

Well you've come to the right place! Check your PM for an invite to our DISchurners group.

Are you planning any trip in particular right now or just looking for general rewards to use at a later time?

Also - just to clarify, the activity of churning will have very little affect on your credit scores and for most people it can increase your score in the longterm. It's a common misconception that opening new cards has a large negative affect.

I am looking for the same. Could I join the DISchurners group too?

 

[disneymagicgirl]

I don't know if it is the easiest way but they have a survey site - opinioncheckinDOTcom. Have him register and get DQ'd on one survey. They give 5 pts for each DQ so I believe as long as there are some points going in, he will keep his points.

The survey site stinks but I use it occasionally just to get a few DQ'd survey points going in to my IHG to keep my points active. And sometimes I actually complete a survey and get more points. Between opinioncheckin and erewards I accumulated 20,000 pts in my IHG account.

ETA: Just saw that @Judique as already answered this.

know if this works for SW too? My kids all have a handful of points expiring soon b/c we never actually pay for flights.

 

[wendow]

So the risk is obviously 10,000 points within your family. If denied the match you don't have to spend $2k but I'd guess the $1k vs $2k MSR means very little to you. Tough call for sure...it's a 10k points swing...could make one card worth 70k (awesome) or 50k (booo no match)...or you just take the 60k that's guaranteed....

I'm risk averse lol so 60k guaranteed is better, imo. She's meeting the MSR and the points are 100% hers so it's really her choice.

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

I am looking for the same. Could I join the DISchurners group too?

Absolutely - sent!!

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

know if this works for SW too? My kids all have a handful of points expiring soon b/c we never actually pay for flights.

SW has a shopping portal that I've used before

 

[brownhaired_girl]

Thanks for the thoughts So I'm potentially planning an extended fam trip for next spring to Universal- I'd like to help light a path to savings for a week onsite stay. For those of you who've done well with this, I'm trying to lay out what I can recall reading here-
UR for tix,and hotel,SWA or JB for flights
Pending what I see when I see their cc from past 24 mos. etc, I was going to recommend a 2P game for them, starting with either CSP or CIP? and b/c I think they're gonna need a SWA cp, can someone help me with order of importance, start with SWA or Chase apps? Each fam group going is going to need a chunk of UR to do this.(We can do biz apps too) I'm calculating about 300k UR for the largest family in our group+the SWA points.

I’m not sure if this would help or not.
https://dailygetaways.ustravel.org/Home/Offer/B0531
There are only 25 of these so you would need to set an alarm. You also might be able to use different names and email accounts.