OK
@striker1064 your DVC on Amex setup is intriguing and also highly confusing. I've never done any sort of self referral with Amex so I am having a hard time figuring out which cards can refer to what. You would need all these cards in hand before the purchase so how soon do you start collecting these in prep for a purchase? Would you mind a little ELI5
?
Lets assume I wanted to make a 30k DVC purchase. My current Amex cards are BCE, Ameriprise Plat, and SPG. I also have a p2 with only a SPG.
Do you mean with Schwab? Ok, I can give you the outline of what I did. It's nothing special and most likely there aren't many people who would do the same thing, because although you can cash out MRs for 1.25cpp, you can probably get higher valuations with international air travel. But this is what we wanted to do, so it made sense for us.
The first thing you want to do is open a Schwab account.
Doctor of Credit has everything you need here. You can open a brokerage account only if you want (because that's all you need for a cash out), but getting the $100 bonus requires keeping $1,000 in the brokerage account. I didn't want to do that, so I opened both brokerage and checking. If you do that, you can leave literally $1 in each account and wait 30 days, and Schwab will post a $100 bonus to your account. That's it. It's really that easy.
Again, DoC with the details here.
Now, the thing is, I did the Amex MR Schwab thing and it was great. But since then, Amex has been getting more restrictive (the anti-churning denial-of-bonus popups, etc). So I'm really not sure if this is all still going to work or how far it will go. You likely can get at least a few cards, but Amex is undoubtedly going to slow you down with denials.
So, you've got your Schwab checking and brokerage account open, waiting for your $100 bonus. The next step is to open the
Schwab Amex Platinum card. This is the key for cashout. You cannot transfer MRs to Schwab without this card. From there, just start opening the highest offers you can find until you've knocked out your spend.
With a $30k purchase and the cards you already have, here's what I would do, in this order. I'll list the bonus, spend requirement, and annual fee (if applicable).
- Schwab Platinum - 60k MR, $5k spend, $550 AF
- Business Platinum 100k MR, $10k spend, $450 AF
- Business Gold Rewards - 50k MR, $5k spend, AF waived first year - SELF REFERRAL 20k
- Business Green Rewards - 5k MR after first purchase - SELF REFERRAL 20k
- Vanilla Platinum - 100k MR (if you can get it, otherwise 75k through incognito), $5k spend, $550 AF
- Premier Rewards Gold - 50k MR (available via incognito), $2k spend, AF waived first year
- Green Card - 25k MR (available via incognito), $1k spend, AF waived first year
- Ameriprise Gold Card 25k MR, $1k spend, AF waived first year
All of those cards get you to $29k total spend. If you need a 0% for 15 months on part of the purchase, you can substitute the Blue for Business Plus card (20k/$5k or $3k if you can get it, otherwise 10k/$3k via referral). I would start removing cards from the bottom until you get the amount you need to float - for example, if you need to put $10k of your purchase on a 0% card, remove the Ameriprise Gold, Green Card, PRG, and Vanilla Platinum.
The Business Platinum is another important card because you can now refer yourself for the Business Gold and Business Green cards, and get the referral bonus. The crazy thing is, you will get a 20k MR bonus for each as if you were opening another Business Platinum even though you aren't. Those are free points. So the way that works is, get your Business Platinum, add it to your online account, copy your referral link, open it incognito, and scroll to the bottom (below the APPLY button) to change the application to one of the other cards.
If you do all of that, you'll have 415k MR from sign-up bonuses, 40k MR from self-referring, and 29k MR from the spend required to get the sign-up bonuses, for a total of 484k MR. Through Schwab, that can be cashed out at 1.25cpp, for a total of $6,050. Net of annual fees ($550/$450/$550), you're at a total of $4,500. I know you're losing a lot of cash here in AFs, but it's also important to note the Platinum cards and the Premier Rewards Gold have additional ancillary benefits that help offset the fee (such as the airline credits).
$4,500 may not seem like a huge net amount after all that work, but it's essentially a 15% discount on $30k. I'd take 15% off DVC. Additionally, this is assuming you're buying
direct from Disney. This doesn't apply if you're going resale because I don't think any of the companies let you pay with a credit card. Disney does. You also do not need these cards all in hand at the time of purchase. Disney will let you put some amount down - probably 10-20% (so $3k-6k) - and pay the balance over 90 days.
Hope this helps!
