I love credit cards so much!

[thevalley]

What do you put in the box estimated monthly spend on a Amex biz and the annual biz revenue boxes? Also as industry type. Maybe retail trade??

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

What do you put in the box estimated monthly spend on a Amex biz and the annual biz revenue boxes?

Your best honest guess or “projection” if you think your biz may “grow”

 

[Albort]

Can anyone with the revolving 5% categories tell me if Sam’s club is included in the upcoming months? I know Discover starts in October but wondering if there will be any over the summer months. Thanks!

in a way, u can use chasepay @ walmart which would give u 5x, buy Walmart GC, then use that at Sams Club.

 

[thevalley]

Your best honest guess or “projection” if you think your biz may “grow”

Is amex as easy going as chase in regards to how things are purchased for my biz??

 

[calypso726]

Are there any downsides to getting a Disney Visa Card?

Yes, if you want to try and get most of your Japan trip for free You'd be using up one of your slots while you are under 5/24 for only $200. That won't really put much of a dent in your travel expenses to Japan. You can always get the card down the line after you and DH are past 5/24 and have earned $5900 towards your Japan trip.

Thanks. I have more UR than MR but need to see if I should focus accumulating one over the other.

I split the difference by focusing on spend earning with UR simply because it is easier to do for me based on our expenses categories and signing up for Chase UR cards isn't an option.

MR points I earn with credit cards sign up bonuses. I'd advise keeping at least one no fee full MR earning card so that you can keep your MR points protected as you cancel other MR earning cards that you may have gotten just for the bonus. I'd advise the Amex Blue for Business since it won't take up a 5/24 slot and it has no AF.

 

[Lain]

What do you put in the box estimated monthly spend on a Amex biz and the annual biz revenue boxes? Also as industry type. Maybe retail trade??

Amex’s field for revenue requires at least 4 digits, so the lowest you can put is $1000. If you have an eBay “biz” then you’d select retail trade, and you can estimate your revenue based on your actual sales, past sales, YTD sales, or projections. Lots of ways to estimate revenue.

 

[amalone1013]

But I also received 3000 Hyatt points on my award booking, which I wasn't expecting since this was my first award stay with them. Do you always earn points on award stays?

Maybe you signed up and stayed during their promo for earning points each night? We earned 1500, 500 per night, at the Hyatt House by DLR last month. Your trip sounds great!

 

[GPC0321]

Tonight I learned that the Bank of America Travel Rewards card considers "Tourist Attractions and Exhibits" and "Amusement Parks, Carnivals, Circuses, and Fortune Tellers" and "Aquariums, Dolphinariums, Zoos, and Seaquariums" and "Recreation Services - not elsewhere classified"....all as travel. Surely WDW fits in there, yes?

Does anyone have any experience with this card?

 

[CyndiLouWho]

Tonight I learned that the Bank of America Travel Rewards card considers "Tourist Attractions and Exhibits" and "Amusement Parks, Carnivals, Circuses, and Fortune Tellers" and "Aquariums, Dolphinariums, Zoos, and Seaquariums" and "Recreation Services - not elsewhere classified"....all as travel. Surely WDW fits in there, yes?

Does anyone have any experience with this card?

We have the card but have not used it for WDW tix.

 

[disneybirds]

The closest I get to Europe is EPCOT World Showcase. I fly Southwest when headed there.

Sorry, I can’t help you but at least I had a “thought” on it.

My DD keeps asking to go to Europe. I just need to tell her that we are going to Epcot this summer!!

 

[peel]

Thanks for the awesome report! I liked your formatting too, made it easy to read the numbers. Please do add a hotel review on that thread

Maybe you signed up and stayed during their promo for earning points each night? We earned 1500, 500 per night, at the Hyatt House by DLR last month. Your trip sounds great!

If I did I didn’t realize it. Did you stay on points or pay cash? It just seems weird that they’d ever dole out points on an award stay.

 

[calypso726]

Tonight I learned that the Bank of America Travel Rewards card considers "Tourist Attractions and Exhibits" and "Amusement Parks, Carnivals, Circuses, and Fortune Tellers" and "Aquariums, Dolphinariums, Zoos, and Seaquariums" and "Recreation Services - not elsewhere classified"....all as travel. Surely WDW fits in there, yes?

Does anyone have any experience with this card?

I used it to pay for dinner at Victoria & Albert's at WDW and it coded as restaurant. I was still able to wipe off $500 from the bill. I have a BoA checking account and I can redeem for a statement credit or as cash added to my account. DPs suggest that WDW codes as travel.

 

[amalone1013]

If I did I didn’t realize it. Did you stay on points or pay cash? It just seems weird that they’d ever dole out points on an award stay.

We stayed on points. The points per night depended on the hotel level. I was surprised too!

 

[amalone1013]

If I did I didn’t realize it. Did you stay on points or pay cash? It just seems weird that they’d ever dole out points on an award stay.

https://www.johnnyjet.com/world-hyatt-members-earn-25000-bonus-hyatt-points-spring/

 

[peel]

https://www.johnnyjet.com/world-hyatt-members-earn-25000-bonus-hyatt-points-spring/

Excellent! I really don’t remember signing up for anything, but maybe I did it at the same time as creating my WoH account. What a nice surprise. However, they’ve ultimately done themselves a favor because in order to take advantage of the bonus I have to stay at a Hyatt again.

 

[Lain]

Is amex as easy going as chase in regards to how things are purchased for my biz??

If you're asking if Amex cares whether you put "personal" spend on a "business" card, no. There's no way Amex can determine what is personal spend and what is business spend, because nearly every expense can find a reasonable business purpose.

However, Amex is active in going after "gaming," so in that sense Amex is much more strict than Chase about what spend qualifies for counting towards MSR, earning points and bonuses. Amex has a department called the Rewards Abuse Team (RAT) that is specifically tasked with going after churners, reviewing suspicious transactions and patterns, shutting down loopholes, etc.

You already know that Amex has more restricted categories of spend on Plastiq than Visa: no mortgages, student loans, or car loans/leases. Amex’s terms also restricts the purchase of cash equivalents, gift cards, p2p payments from counting towards MSR and even earning points/bonuses. In theory, Amex can determine in its sole discretion that a transaction or pattern of transactions constitutes gaming and deny you points, bonuses, and even claw back points you’ve supposedly earned. Amex has been known to put people into financial review for cycling their credit limits. In practice, the RAT’s reach has been rather limited.

You can’t buy VGCs from Simon Mall; they don’t count. I think there’s been some mixed DPs about GiftCardMall and GiftCards .com. Common sense will tell you not to buy VGCs from places that report Level 3 data to Amex like OD/OM/Staples, because Amex can see you’re buying cash equivalents, but inexplicably they still count. If you have to buy VGCs, buy them from a grocery store and mix it in with some organic spend. I’ve bought eGift cards from MPX, no problems with it counting towards MSR. You can’t fund bank accounts with BMO; that doesn’t count. I’m not sure about PNC, but Memory Bank works. P2p payments on PayPal and Venmo still count, but incur a ~3% fee. Plastiq is not p2p, but they’ve been pretty on top of implementing Amex’s restrictions.

 

[Lain]

Warning: Long Post Ahead
It took 4 days, but I'm caught up on this thread.

Today I had a decent churning win--I met the additional $1000 MSR to get my 80K IHG match. I SMed Chase to let them know and got an almost immediate response that they'd be depositing the extra 20K in my account in the next statement.

But now for the MAJOR CHURNING FAIL--I attempted to pay Mr. Cooper via Plastiq today and it's no longer a valid payee for either my CIP or DH's new SPG Biz. I'm soooooo bummed. I knew it wouldn't last forever, but I'm sure going to miss the 3x UR, and now it will be harder for me to meet the SPG MSR. @pillow I fear you'll be finding the same disappointment soon. If you set up automatic monthly payments there's a chance the outstanding payments will still process. I remember that's what originally happened when most mortgage payments stopped working. But I didn't set it up for future months because I knew I might be switching to a different card for a new MSR soon. Now that the Mr. Cooper loophole (Mr. Coophole?) is closed, I'm rethinking my next step, since I was planning on referring DH to the CIP next month when my AF hits, because I wanted to downgrade mine to the CIC--which after reading 60 pages I see might be in jeopardy?--but it would really be a stretch to meet two $5K MSRs back to back, or simultaneously really.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now onto our 4 day weekend in Cleveland. It's not exactly Japan or the Maldives. But we've both been wanting to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and we have the points and a CP burning holes in our pockets, so why not? This should probably go in the new thread, but I haven't even ventured over to it yet, so here it is.

We flew Southwest with the CP, stayed at a really cool Hyatt Regency in an amazing building that was originally the oldest indoor mall in America (as in glass-ceilinged atrium, not Payless). It was located downtown among restaurants and shops, and it was walking distance to the museum which was on the banks of Lake Erie. We were given a complimentary upgrade to a City View Room. I have to say that the majority of the time we were there, there was like NO ONE around and everything besides bars closed early. We actually had trouble finding somewhere to go the first night, so we ended up at the movies.

On Saturday, the first full day we were there, we got out of town because Trump decided to also visit Cleveland. We got a note under our door the night before that said if we wanted to get our car out from the valet and exit the area we needed to do it well before 11am because some of the surrounding streets were going to be closed down. We were planning on taking a road trip to Dover that day anyway, so we managed to escape the madness. We visited The Warther Museum, which was absolutely amazing and my personal favorite destination of the trip. Mooney Warther was a master carver who specialized in carving trains, mostly out of ivory, ebony, and walnut, some of the hardest substrates to carve. His trains are exactly to scale, and include every part even if you can't see them. The museum chronicles his life and includes his family's modest home, his teeny tiny workshop, and a beautiful building housing his collection and many displays. If you ever find yourself driving through Ohio, I highly recommend adding the museum to your itinerary. I thought the Hall of Fame museum was well worth the trip as well, since we're both huge music fans. It's huge, and we spent most of Sunday there. Lots of cool artifacts and presentations. We also visited the Wade Memorial Chapel in Lake View Cemetery, which was entirely designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany. The central stained glass window and floor to ceiling mosaic walls were absolutely stunning. It was a quick visit, but so awe inspiring. I'm a budding stained glass artist, so I was very excited to see a masterpiece like that in person. We did entirely too much record shopping, and I met someone in person for the first time that I've "known" for 15 years from a Wilco message board. The internet is amazing sometimes.

On our way home, we got to the Cleveland airport early and used my CSR Priority Pass to eat at Michael Symon's restaurant. Everything we ordered was delicious, but health food it was not. Can't beat free, though, right?

I was waiting for some charges to process before coming up with a final tally to determine our savings. When I got the bill at the Hyatt front desk, there were a bunch of numbers that didn't make much sense. I paid for the room with points. During our stay, I grabbed a soda from the lobby cooler and told them to charge it to the room, and DH drank a bottle of water from the mini fridge, which he didn't realize wasn't free , so I expected two incremental charges for the drinks and valet parking charges of $30 x 4 days (valet was the only parking option and after comparing garages downtown it was still the cheapest way to go). None of those were on the bill, just other random numbers. I asked about the breakdown, and the woman told me, "Yeah, don't pay any attention to those numbers. I don't like printing out the itemized list for people who redeemed points because it never comes out right. Just wait for the emailed receipt and it should be right." I outright asked about the parking fees, and she said they were covered. That sounded crazy to me because I just signed up for the Hyatt account a few weeks before the stay and I have no status or Hyatt credit card. When the email receipt came, it correctly showed that I used points, which I transferred from UR, and no other charges. I know I might still get a bill somewhere down the line, but for right now it seems I may have had some good luck and avoided $120 in parking fees. If so, I won't feel bad about it because I point blank asked about them at the time.

Here is the monetary breakdown. Sorry about the formatting, is there a better way to do this?

EXPENSE...........RETAIL COST....REDEMPTIONS...ACTUAL COST

BDL-CLE 1..........$138.60.............8306 RR..............$5.60
BDL-CLE 2..........$138.60.....................CP..............$5.60
CLE-BDL 1..........$138.60.............8306 RR..............$5.60
CLE-BDL 2..........$138.60.....................CP..............$5.60
EBCI....................$60.00.....................................$60.00

Hyatt Hotel.........$737.58.............24000 UR............$0.00

National Car........$145.14.............$150 BCP CB......-$4.86

R&R H of F..........$52.00...........Online Discount......$46.00
Warther..............$27.00.......................................$27.00

Dinner at CL........$54.00...............Priority Pass........$0.00
OOP Food..........$158.31.....................................$158.31

Airport Parking.....$42.54......................................$42.54

Gas for rental.......$27.41......................................$27.41

Total..............$1858.38...................................$378.80

In the end, what we did pay out of pocket went toward DH's SPG MSR, so I unfortunately wasn't able to get any bonus URs from the travel expenses or by picking up 5x gift cards ahead of time. But I also received 3000 Hyatt points on my award booking, which I wasn't expecting since this was my first award stay with them. Do you always earn points on award stays?


tl;dr I went to Cleveland and saved almost $1500 because of churning

Really debated liking this post. On the one hand, I loved reading your trip report and I’m so glad you had a wonderful time. On the other, I’m so sorry the Plastiq gravy train finally ran over Mr Cooper and came to a screeching halt for your mortgage.

 

[thevalley]

If you're asking if Amex cares whether you put "personal" spend on a "business" card, no. There's no way Amex can determine what is personal spend and what is business spend, because nearly every expense can find a reasonable business purpose.

However, Amex is active in going after "gaming," so in that sense Amex is much more strict than Chase about what spend qualifies for counting towards MSR, earning points and bonuses. Amex has a department called the Rewards Abuse Team (RAT) that is specifically tasked with going after churners, reviewing suspicious transactions and patterns, shutting down loopholes, etc.

You already know that Amex has more restricted categories of spend on Plastiq than Visa: no mortgages, student loans, or car loans/leases. Amex’s terms also restricts the purchase of cash equivalents, gift cards, p2p payments from counting towards MSR and even earning points/bonuses. In theory, Amex can determine in its sole discretion that a transaction or pattern of transactions constitutes gaming and deny you points, bonuses, and even claw back points you’ve supposedly earned. Amex has been known to put people into financial review for cycling their credit limits. In practice, the RAT’s reach has been rather limited.

You can’t buy VGCs from Simon Mall; they don’t count. I think there’s been some mixed DPs about GiftCardMall and GiftCards .com. Common sense will tell you not to buy VGCs from places that report Level 3 data to Amex like OD/OM/Staples, because Amex can see you’re buying cash equivalents, but inexplicably they still count. If you have to buy VGCs, buy them from a grocery store and mix it in with some organic spend. I’ve bought eGift cards from MPX, no problems with it counting towards MSR. You can’t fund bank accounts with BMO; that doesn’t count. I’m not sure about PNC, but Memory Bank works. P2p payments on PayPal and Venmo still count, but incur a ~3% fee. Plastiq is not p2p, but they’ve been pretty on top of implementing Amex’s restrictions.

Thank you for this knowledge. I really appreciate it.

 

[afan]

Excellent! I really don’t remember signing up for anything, but maybe I did it at the same time as creating my WoH account. What a nice surprise. However, they’ve ultimately done themselves a favor because in order to take advantage of the bonus I have to stay at a Hyatt again.

I was bummed on the dates, we're at a Hyatt the 24-27 next week. At one again over labor day weekend. Hoping they'll do something like this again because earning points on points stays would be nice.

 

[Haley R]

I’m taking these in parts again, because there’s no way I can type up all our knowledge for you in any reasonable amount of time. The best thing you can do is read, post and keep asking lots of questions. You’ll get great replies from probably the friendliest bunch on the DIS! You’re already on the right track!

Nannying/daycare and musical gigs are definitely businesses that would qualify you for a business card from Chase! The great news about that is these business cards have some of the most valuable signup bonuses in Chase’s product lineup and no fee or reasonable fees, and they won’t add a card to your “5/24” count (but you do have to be under 5/24 to qualify for them).

When applying for a business card from Chase, the best tip is to keep it simple. If you haven’t formalized your business as a legal entity, apply as a sole proprietor with the business name as your name (First Name Last Name) only. Don’t get fancy with the business name by calling it Haley R Daycare or something like that. When Chase checks your application, they’ll hold up your application or deny it because they can’t verify your business and you’ll need to send in documents if you want to get it reconsidered. As a sole proprietor operating in your own name, the business is you and there’s nothing more to verify. Sign up with your SSN as the EIN/Tax ID Number. Put in a plausible revenue (gross revenue, not profit) amount based on past years, YTD, or a projection and years in business. For reference, a lot of us with eBay reselling businesses might have revenue in the low four digits (@speedyfishy got approved for a CIP card with $5 revenue!, but you might not want to go that low). Also include your total household income in your application. Then select the business category that best describes your nannying and/or music business.

Out of curiosity, are either nannying or music business registered or have their own separate EIN? (I’m wondering to see if you can get two of the same card for the two different businesses.)

Others can chime in about Chase’s business cards, their bonuses, and bonus categories: the Chase Ink Preferred (“CIP”); the Chase Ink Cash (“CIC”); and the soon to be released Chase Ink Unlimited (“CIU”).

I’ll add more when I can!

Neither the nannying or the band are legal entities. They are just jobs we have on the side. I don't believe either of them have their own EIN. I think right now DH is interested in the Chase Ink Preferred card. When should we think about applying for this if we are going next May?