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

[hsmamato2]

If I book a Marriott night using my free certificate, do i still have to pay resort fees? And how good are they with a cancelation?

 

[hsmamato2]

weird.... so I called Chase to merge my biz and personals.... later that day I got an email saying b/c I coudn't log in I needed to reset the entire thing and to click 'here' to get started.... b/c I'm not stupid of course I didn't- when I just checked my login today separately it's as I left it,just fine. What does this mean, should I be concerned about this level of spam? As it is, my current use of the website takes me to an old looking log in page,and my blocker software hates the Chase site and always wants to block it lately- should I be doing something here?

SO Im quoting myself here.... I don't know enough to know if I should be worried or not.... I cleared history with Chase thru my current browser- used another browser to log in(it was fine) and change the password - when I tried to go back in on main browser it glitched and wouldn't accept password,so I had to reset it again..... so it's reset,and I can now see the updated login page- I am concerned that I was getting the 'old' looking login page for a while and hadn't paid attention. I don't know if I should be concerned or what else I should be doing.

 

[Mopedmom1]

I found a link: https://www.discover.com/credit-cards/member-benefits/cash-over-purchases.html

"Your regular purchase APR applies to the cash you get and there are no hidden fees"
So if you pay off your bills monthly you aren't charged anything?

 

[cajunmommy]

Learned of a minor hiccup in our rewards earning plan today. Was hoping to use CIP on a tuition payment, but school only takes AMEX, MC, and Discover.
We don't need it to make MSR on the CIP, but I don't want to waste such a significantly valuable organic spend!
If I had to pay it today, I would use my Cap One Quicksilver (1.5%), but I'm wondering if there's a better option.
I'm currently 0/24; P2 1/24 (5/19 Cap One Savor)
Not really sure we want to enter the AMEX world of MRs just yet.

DH does have Marriott, SW, Hilton & Hyatt rewards points, but no co-branded cards.
Any suggestions?

 

[speedyfishy]

Learned of a minor hiccup in our rewards earning plan today. Was hoping to use CIP on a tuition payment, but school only takes AMEX, MC, and Discover.
We don't need it to make MSR on the CIP, but I don't want to waste such a significantly valuable organic spend!
If I had to pay it today, I would use my Cap One Quicksilver (1.5%), but I'm wondering if there's a better option.
I'm currently 0/24; P2 1/24 (5/19 Cap One Savor)
Not really sure we want to enter the AMEX world of MRs just yet.

DH does have Marriott, SW, Hilton & Hyatt rewards points, but no co-branded cards.
Any suggestions?

Why not get MRs? How much is tuition? The Biz Plat is 100k for 10k in spend. That’s $1250 cashed out.

 

[striker1064]

PSA: Amex airline fee credit reimbursement of Southwest gift cards reportedly still YMMV.

https://www.reddit.com/r/churning/comments/c5ohdf/_/es338c1

I'm going to be a DP on this I guess, I purchased a $200 GC yesterday on the Biz Plat.

 

[AmyAnne]

I was pondering your question today and I think for us:

We would never plan an entire trip just to stay at any particular hotel or resort, no matter how aspirational it may be.

But when we pick a destination, where we're going to stay is always high up the list on my mind.

The hotel or resort and the destination are part of the same experience, and I have a hard time separating the two.

Churning has allowed us to build big enough stashes of points that we can think about incorporating aspirational properties into our trips.

Take for example the Monterey/Carmel/Big Sur area of the California central coast that we're gushing over today. It's close to the Bay Area (about a 2.5 hour drive), and doesn't require too much planning (and the point is for it to be relaxing). Before the kiddo, my wife and I used to make a lot of weekend trips down there to experience the attractions in Monterey, visit the galleries and shops and dine at the many fine restaurants in Carmel-by-the-Sea, visit the wineries and farms in Carmel Valley, hike coastal trails in Big Sur, and just de-stress at some of the many nice and uncrowded beaches. So this is a destination we've been to, and don't mind going back to again and again. We've been back twice since the kiddo came along.

Before churning, we stayed at many of the B&Bs and motels in Carmel-by-the-Sea and Monterey, and I remember always looking for deals on OTAs, Groupon and Living Social. We've stayed in some really crummy places. I was aware of places like the Hyatt Carmel Highlands and the Ventana Inn, but they were just too expensive out-of-pocket to justify for a weekend and therefore aspirational if at all. I booked the Hyatt Carmel Highlands for an upcoming weekend to celebrate my wife's birthday (and hopefully relax a little). The award rate was 30k Hyatt points/night, which I transferred from UR. For comparison, I looked up a decent inn in Carmel-by-the-Sea that we've stayed at several times, and their average nightly rate for the same weekend is $372. For roughly the same cash value in UR, we're staying at a much nicer resort that I could never bring myself to pay for in cash. That's a win. And I'm really looking forward to a weekend of doing all of the things above and coming back to a nice resort to unwind.

I guess by contrast, is the new JW Marriott Maldives that I've posted about. I think 85k Marriott points/night for an overwater bungalow at a brand new resort is a really good deal, and with Marriott's 5th night free the redemption is even sweeter. My wife has staying in an overwater bungalow on her "wander list," and I could've totally obliged, but she's never had any desire to visit the Maldives, and wouldn't have any idea what to do there for five days. So that went nowhere.

I'm a little sad that the Ventana Inn is probably still out of reach for us. No grandparents nearby to babysit. It's right in the heart of Big Sur and a place we've passed by and put on, maybe not our wander list, but definitely our "it'd be nice to stay there" list. (Glamping could be fun! And now I can't stop thinking of Napster founder Sean Parker's $4 million Lord of the Rings-themed outdoor wedding at the Ventana.) I'll just keep telling myself that the Hyatt Carmel Highlands is more closely situated to Monterey and Carmel.

I'll add one last thing. My DD has become quite a hotel snob and remembers the trips we take her on as much for the hotels we stay at as the things we do.

Thanks for this. It's interesting to hear other people's decision process.

I get excited when people post about the fantastic hotels but then I realize a lot of them are beach resorts, which just wouldn't work for us. I need to learn more about California options because those seem like they have possibilities beyond the beach.

 

[disneymagicgirl]

If I book a Marriott night using my free certificate, do i still have to pay resort fees? And how good are they with a cancelation?

They charge resort fees for points bookings, so I'd bet they do for free night certs as well.

 

[disfanforlife]

My last car insurance renewal did mention the number of credit cards we had applied for and said rates MAY have gone up because of it even if our credit score had remained the same or gone up. It is hard to tell if it has increased or not as we have been adding kids to it so it is sky high anyway.

Well I understand that. We have 2 of our kids on our policy but we just renewed 2 weeks ago for a year. So I guess I’ll see what happens next year.

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

.

 

[havaneselover]

Not sure what sweet defeat but I've successfully replaced chocolate/sweets with a daily apple. Gets me the taste I want and I don't miss the rest. Though there's been a few days I would have loved a mini milky way but you can't get just 1 small one which is a shame.

It's a lozenge that stops cravings and makes sugar not taste good. So I have dessert (I live for dessert so I'm just not giving it up) then take one so I don't have another dessert. I know this is ridiculous but I love sugar.

 

[MrPTato]

"Your regular purchase APR applies to the cash you get and there are no hidden fees"
So if you pay off your bills monthly you aren't charged anything?

Correct!

 

[Haley R]

We were just at the DMV and holy cow they seriously do not care about your time. We made an appointment so got in right away but our lady was the slowest person ever. Dh is standing there with work clothes on so obviously he needs to get back to work. Now he has to stay late because she took so long. Every other employee there kept asking her millions of questions too.

And another thing: she told me she likes Disney better than animal kingdom.

 

[DisneyMandC]

I'm cursed! Checking my emails today I had one that said my discover account was overdrawn. I'm like ***? I logged in to find that someone had stolen $5k. Good thing I didn't have my $30k balance in there! I'm SICK of getting hacked! My hilton account twice, my IHG card, my Aspire card and now my discover savings. ***! So PSA of the day, check EVERYTHING! Now onto changing ALL of my account info and logins!

A friend of mine had 50k stolen from her Discover savings account two weeks ago!!

 

[striker1064]

Citi AA biz #2 for my wife - stmt closed today - 80.002 miles

This is oddly infuriating.

 

[wanderlust7]

Learned of a minor hiccup in our rewards earning plan today. Was hoping to use CIP on a tuition payment, but school only takes AMEX, MC, and Discover.
We don't need it to make MSR on the CIP, but I don't want to waste such a significantly valuable organic spend!
If I had to pay it today, I would use my Cap One Quicksilver (1.5%), but I'm wondering if there's a better option.
I'm currently 0/24; P2 1/24 (5/19 Cap One Savor)
Not really sure we want to enter the AMEX world of MRs just yet.

DH does have Marriott, SW, Hilton & Hyatt rewards points, but no co-branded cards.
Any suggestions?

How odd to take Amex but not Visa!

Do you have any Amex cards? If not, you might want to see if you can pull up the personal Plat 100k MR/$5000 spend offer. Even though you're not sure if you want to get into MRs, if you're going to start on Amex, you might as well start with that one since it's less likely to come up after you get other Amex cards. If you start with Amex, you'll want to keep up the relationship (put spend on the cards), so you don't get the pop-up down the road.

As long as the CIPpy cup is going, I wouldn't go for any other Chase cards, so that rules out Hyatt and SW (unless you want a CP).

If you don't want to get into Amex yet, maybe the grAAvy train?

ETA: The Chase Hyatt and SW cards are Visa cards anyways, so that was a moo point!

 

[vanjust14]

I love the electric water pageant!! The somewhat cheesy, but nostalgic, music brings me right back to being a kid. I love being at WDW after dark and before there were fireworks every night, there was the electric water pageant.

Of course, its a matter of taste, I just mentioned this to DH and he rolled his eyes...water pageant hater

The first time I saw the water pageant I was eating dinner at Narcoossee's. I had heard of it but had never seen it. I was so excited and ran out onto the verandah to watch. I was giddy like a little kid! I love it!

Alternate Day Fasting

Thanks for this, I need to lose about 30 pounds and might give this a shot. I recently tried Keto and didn't like it.

 

[Judique]

Does anyone have any advice on what to do with the old Marriott card? This is the one that had the get a night credit with every $3000 in spend and only a 25000 point cert. My DH's card is 2 years old and the AF was charged on 6/1. Are there upgrade offers still or should we just cancel? His only other Bonblah card at the moment is the SPG biz.

Last December I was able to get a 50K upgrade offer on that card. It had started out at 10K, which I ignored and eventually hit 50K, right before annual fee time. Why don't you call and see if you have any kind of offer on it? Fee goes from 85 to 95 and cert goes to 35K. I figured I got my value. Also, since I upgraded before they awarded the free night, my first free night came in at 35K and my annual fee was refunded. So a free year out of it also.

 

[wendow]

I haven’t been able to run for about 2 years now and it sucks. I absolutely love running and not being able to makes me sad. I have tendonitis and problems with my IT bands. I did physical therapy but saw no progress and it was very expensive so I quit.

I used to be a runner, all through middle and high school, college and into adulthood. Then I tore my ACL snowboarding. Even after lots PT, it's never been the same so I rarely run for more than 5 mins. If I do, my knee swells and it's hard for me to climb our stairs I hate aging!

 

[hsmamato2]

They charge resort fees for points bookings, so I'd bet they do for free night certs as well.

it figures. thanks