I love credit cards so much!

[belle1986]

@calypso726 that is so cool!!

 

[jujubiee4]

In case anyone was wondering I can confirm that the taxes and fees for flying from JFK-HKG in Singapore Suites is about $57 and change per person. What I am really trying to say is WE BOOKED THE SUITES Yes, I know that's a shameless brag but I can't help myself or contain the excitement and this is the only place I could share my exuberance where people would understand why I am so stoked!

So we were able to rectify my boneheaded mistake when originally transferring in points. They must come from your own credit card points to your Krisflyer account and can't come from another person's credit card. DH got his points sent back to his card and they verified that all the other points were transferred in correctly.

On the upside, we were allowed to hold the award booking until all was settled. I can't believe we get to do this!!! The ticket prices for our flights were $24,000 We are also flying less than direct flights just to have this experience. This morning the side by side suites seats were available to confirm. Before DH and I were on opposite sides of the plane. Now we get to do the whole double bed in the air thing. Would it be mad wishful thinking to hope they sprinkle rose petals on your bedding?

View attachment 249188

You are my hero. The way you make these points/miles deals makes us all proud

 

[jujubiee4]

Just a heads up for anyone amazon is having a $30 off $60 and up deal if you have an
American Express card linked. You have to use at least 1 point. I used one dollar of
points and paid the rest. YMMV but it worked for me and husband's separate accounts.
Here is the code AMEX17PRIME

http://www.doctorofcredit.com/amazon-get-30-off-60-using-1-membership-rewards-point-targeted-offer/

here is direct link...https://www.amazon.com/gp/shopwithp...c7-20&linkId=cbb4b38848f31c67d27917eb0d604828

 

[Lehuaann]

I need guidance...just received my SW cards and trying to reach the $4k needed fast. Is Plastiq my only option to make a mortgage payment? Or is buying pre-paid Visas at Kroger and making payment inside bank allowed/ok? Thank you!

 

[CyndiLouWho]

@calypso726 That is so awesome! I'm afraid I couldn't part with the points even if I had them, but I'm so jealous!


On another note, trying to book on AA for next June. June 2 just opened up. Checked this am & only awards available were first/business. Now there are some 20k Economy awards available. If I search for 1 ticket, there are 12.5k milesavers available for some dates but not 2nd. If I look for 2 or 3 tix, no milesavers show for any date. Is there really only 1 left at this level? And should I wait and see if any 12.5k awards become available or just jump on the 20k awards? So confused, I never book this early & usually just take what's left.

 

[Albort]

I need guidance...just received my SW cards and trying to reach the $4k needed fast. Is Plastiq my only option to make a mortgage payment? Or is buying pre-paid Visas at Kroger and making payment inside bank allowed/ok? Thank you!

overpay your utility bills. or find banks that lets you fund with a credit card. PNC($2000?), consumer credit union($1000).

 

[CyndiLouWho]

I need guidance...just received my SW cards and trying to reach the $4k needed fast. Is Plastiq my only option to make a mortgage payment? Or is buying pre-paid Visas at Kroger and making payment inside bank allowed/ok? Thank you!

Someone mentioned Tio a few pages back.

 

[Lain]

I need guidance...just received my SW cards and trying to reach the $4k needed fast. Is Plastiq my only option to make a mortgage payment? Or is buying pre-paid Visas at Kroger and making payment inside bank allowed/ok? Thank you!

1. About a month ago, Plastiq received new guidelines from Visa not to allow mortgage payments using Visa cards. Implementation of this ban has kind of been spotty, so YMMV. It seems Plastiq has blocked mortgage payments using Visa to a lot of the large banks, lenders, and servicers, but some of the smaller ones are still slipping through. Basically, you can try to submit or schedule a mortgage payment, and if you don't get an error screen or message about using another card, then it should go through.

2. You can use Tio .com to pay your mortgage with a credit card. @peel recently tried this service with success. AFAIK, Tio doesn't have any restrictions on using Visas to pay mortgages. However, Tio does have a higher fee than Plastiq: 3.1% vs 2.5% (iirc).

overpay your utility bills. or find banks that lets you fund with a credit card. PNC($2000?), consumer credit union($1000).

Like @Albort said, you can also:

1. Prepay bills.

2. Fund a bank account with your credit card.

You can also:

3. Manufacture spending by buying a Visa gift card and using that to buy a money order that you'll deposit into your bank account (preferrably not Chase). Chase doesn't seem to be too sensitive to you using their credit cards to buy Visa or Amex gift cards, but Chase is very sensitive to money order deposits and can shut down your accounts.

4. Buy gift cards for stores and restaurants you know you'll shop at eventually anyway.

 

[peel]

Someone mentioned Tio a few pages back.

That was me.
Visa is no longer letting people pay their mortgages using Plastiq, although some have found their payments are still going through if it's a smaller bank that may not look to Visa like an obvious mortgage payment. I have mine with CitiMortgage, so I was clearly paying my mortgage and it got shut down. YMMV.
Someone on Reddit mentioned Tio, which is a similar service that costs a bit more and only pays banks/companies they have an established relationship with. Thankfully, CitiMortgage is one of them and I was able to switch to Tio to meet my CIP minimum spend. An unexpected bonus is that the payments code in such a way that I'm getting 3X the UR points for each transaction. So while I was only planning on using Tio to reach my minimum spend, I think I'm going to continue paying my mortgage through them until Visa figures out they're giving out 3 times as many points as they should be. I don't know why that's happening, so I wouldn't assume the same would happen for you. I'm not going to ask any questions, just take my extra points and run!

 

[CyndiLouWho]

That was me.
Visa is no longer letting people pay their mortgages using Plastiq, although some have found their payments are still going through if it's a smaller bank that may not look to Visa like an obvious mortgage payment. I have mine with CitiMortgage, so I was clearly paying my mortgage and it got shut down. YMMV.
Someone on Reddit mentioned Tio, which is a similar service that costs a bit more and only pays banks/companies they have an established relationship with. Thankfully, CitiMortgage is one of them and I was able to switch to Tio to meet my CIP minimum spend. An unexpected bonus is that the payments code in such a way that I'm getting 3X the UR points for each transaction. So while I was only planning on using Tio to reach my minimum spend, I think I'm going to continue paying my mortgage through them until Visa figures out they're giving out 3 times as many points as they should be. I don't know why that's happening, so I wouldn't assume the same would happen for you. I'm not going to ask any questions, just take my extra points and run!

I actually paid my Chase mortgage with AMEX and with CSP at the end of June, so it's definitely YMMV right now. Only 1x points on CSP though.

 

[AmyAnne]

In case anyone was wondering I can confirm that the taxes and fees for flying from JFK-HKG in Singapore Suites is about $57 and change per person. What I am really trying to say is WE BOOKED THE SUITES Yes, I know that's a shameless brag but I can't help myself or contain the excitement and this is the only place I could share my exuberance where people would understand why I am so stoked!

So we were able to rectify my boneheaded mistake when originally transferring in points. They must come from your own credit card points to your Krisflyer account and can't come from another person's credit card. DH got his points sent back to his card and they verified that all the other points were transferred in correctly.

On the upside, we were allowed to hold the award booking until all was settled. I can't believe we get to do this!!! The ticket prices for our flights were $24,000 We are also flying less than direct flights just to have this experience. This morning the side by side suites seats were available to confirm. Before DH and I were on opposite sides of the plane. Now we get to do the whole double bed in the air thing. Would it be mad wishful thinking to hope they sprinkle rose petals on your bedding?

View attachment 249188

Wow. That's amazing. Congrats!

 

[calypso726]

Nice! This is what I really want to do with my points but no travel plans anytime soon take me near those routes :-/

We went for it since it was the right continent. I don't foresee any trips that way again anytime soon. If only we were planning to go to Abu Dhabi. I'd love to try out Etihad's Apartments on an award flight.

I stumbled upon this thread and it has been life changing! I've learned a lot from catching up on this thread over the past few weeks and have already applied for the southwest plus card, when it had the 60,000 signup and just finished meeting the minimum spend on that. I also went for the Marriott card and am waiting on that to ship for tuition payment and vacation spending coming up. I'm working on deciding what my next card should be since right now I have nothing for my everyday spending or household expenses that can be billed to credit cards. I am familiar with the Chase rule so I'm thinking the CSP. My travel goals are London in March, so thinking about getting the Barclaycard AA and the Citi AA card which I received an offer for a 60,000 bonus for, not sure if that is good or not? It expires on 7/31. I'm also interested in the Hilton card, the no fee. Also going to Disneyland in May but planning to use my southwest points for the flight and just pay for the rest as we are staying on property. After that looking at Niagara Falls,next August.I would be interested in the SPG Amex for points for that. Last trip being NYC next October which I will use the Marriott points for. Any help on which order to do this in would be greatly appreciated as I want to get the ball rolling but not be so quick and not think things through. Thanks

@purplelover88 - If you are still under 5/24 then yes, any Chase cards that fall under 5/24 would be first. Since you went for one of the SW cards, I'm assuming you can make good use of flying SW so I'd suggest going for the other SW card in order to get the companion pass. But since you have travel goals to London for March the SW card won't help you attain that goal. I'd suggest CSR and CSP which will get you 100K UR points that you can use to purchase flights through the travel portal or transfer directly to United and book an award flight to London. The United card would also come in handy to get you more points if you wind up flying United and card holders are able to see award availability that isn't open for non card holders. This is of course, assuming United is an airline that has a good selection of fligths from our airline.

The AA card offers from Citi and Barclay are both good ones. But you want to make sure you can make use of AA miles. Does your home airport have lots of choices for AA flights? If your home airport is a Delta or United hub, collecting AA miles would not make sense. Have you mapped out flights to London for March? Determine which airline has the most flights to get you there and back then you will be able to determine what miles you need to collect. Then, go on that airline's website and see what award availability looks like for March and how many miles you will need. If I were planning to book a flight to London in March, it would have already been booked by April. There may not be award availability by the time you have miles in your account. So, be prepared for that scenario. You may have seen an earlier post of mine today about an award flight I booked for a trip to Hong Kong. That flight is for next May 2018.

If I were starting out on this hobby all over again today, I would Get the CSR, CSP, CIP for the big UR bonuses. The points are variable so I can use them in a number of different ways and across the 3 air alliances. I'd product change the CSP to a Freedom after a year and keep the CSR. If your spending patterns in dining and travel aren't more than $3200/year then you PC the CSR to a Freedom. I'd PC the CIP to an Ink Cash. I'd pick up a Marriott card for the annual night and keep it. I'd also pick up a United card for the points and keep that for the extra award availability and lounge passes. There's the first 5 cards and PC to other keeper cards. Notice I wouldn't go for a SW card but that is because my focus is international first class flights. For those who do a lot of domestic travel, getting that CP deal is outstanding!

After passing 5/24 with no plans to ever be under 5/24 again, then I'd see about getting the airline card that would be most valuable to my flight goals. For me that is AA since I am in south FL and Miami is an AA hub. I have both the Barclay and Citi AA cards and keep both. One offers me as pending bonus every year that far outweighs the fee in value. The other, I've had too long to consider cancelling. I'd also pick up and keep an SPG card which is where I put most non bonus category spend. SPG points transfer to over 30 airlines. Plus, for every 20k points you transfer SPG gives you an additional 5k bonus points. That saved me over 50,000 points on the suites flights we just booked. SPG is in a merger with Marriott so we don't really know what will happen with the card next year. This a reason that I was ok with blowing huge amount of SPG points to get the Suite class flights.

I'd consider IHG for your hotel points since you get an annual night at any IHG property upon card anniversary. A night at the Intercontinental in Times Square plus another night using points is not bad for a $49 annual fee. This is another of my keeper cards. My main hotel go to card is Club Carlson for International stays. That card has brought us thousands of dollars in hotel stays for $75 annual fee.

I'd suggest waiting for a really great bonus to pick up any Amex MR earning cards due to their one per lifetime language. Hope this all helps.

@calypso726 That is so awesome! I'm afraid I couldn't part with the points even if I had them, but I'm so jealous!


On another note, trying to book on AA for next June. June 2 just opened up. Checked this am & only awards available were first/business. Now there are some 20k Economy awards available. If I search for 1 ticket, there are 12.5k milesavers available for some dates but not 2nd. If I look for 2 or 3 tix, no milesavers show for any date. Is there really only 1 left at this level? And should I wait and see if any 12.5k awards become available or just jump on the 20k awards? So confused, I never book this early & usually just take what's left.

Thanks! 500,000 points, but the SPG transfer bonus made it more palatable. I'd also consider the suites a once in a lifetime experience.

Yup. I'd grab it just in case. You can put it on a 5 day hold and see if more pop up but wouldn't hold my breath. You can also book the date with the ticket at mile saver availability and then if the date you really want, June 2nd has a mile saver open up you can change the date as long as your departure and arrival airports remain the same. Any tix booked at 20k will stay at 20k even if there are multiple 12.5k tix available. I'd start with a 5 day hold and then see what happens over the next couple of days.

 

[CyndiLouWho]

Thanks! 500,000 points, but the SPG transfer bonus made it more palatable. I'd also consider the suites a once in a lifetime experience.

Yup. I'd grab it just in case. You can put it on a 5 day hold and see if more pop up but wouldn't hold my breath. You can also book the date with the ticket at mile saver availability and then if the date you really want, June 2nd has a mile saver open up you can change the date as long as your departure and arrival airports remain the same. Any tix booked at 20k will stay at 20k even if there are multiple 12.5k tix available. I'd start with a 5 day hold and then see what happens over the next couple of days.

Once in a lifetime for sure!

How do you do a 5 day hold? By phone? Any explanation why only first class awards were the only thing showing early am & saver awards didn't show till afternoon? Are they usually released in waves, or is it random?

 

[Ngwira]

@calypso726 That is so awesome! I'm afraid I couldn't part with the points even if I had them, but I'm so jealous!


On another note, trying to book on AA for next June. June 2 just opened up. Checked this am & only awards available were first/business. Now there are some 20k Economy awards available. If I search for 1 ticket, there are 12.5k milesavers available for some dates but not 2nd. If I look for 2 or 3 tix, no milesavers show for any date. Is there really only 1 left at this level? And should I wait and see if any 12.5k awards become available or just jump on the 20k awards? So confused, I never book this early & usually just take what's left.

Can you book the one saver and keep checking everyday?

 

[Albort]

Thanks! 500,000 points, but the SPG transfer bonus made it more palatable. I'd also consider the suites a once in a lifetime experience.

holy moly, how many points did u have?
Ive barely reached 500k points in combined points altogether.

 

[gottalovepluto]

overpay your utility bills. or find banks that lets you fund with a credit card. PNC($2000?), consumer credit union($1000).

PNC totally failed when i tried to fund with my Chase Freedom Unl for anyone interested. CC funding pretty hit & miss there. Gonna have to check out that consumer credit union one...

Funny thing? I was just coming here to pop in with the following unhelpful comment "Minimum spends are the worst! So many great CC offers, but I just don't have that many (responsible, normal spend) bills to pay!"

 

[gottalovepluto]

... 3. Manufacture spending by buying a Visa gift card and using that to buy a money order that you'll deposit into your bank account (preferrably not Chase). Chase doesn't seem to be too sensitive to you using their credit cards to buy Visa or Amex gift cards, but Chase is very sensitive to money order deposits and can shut down your accounts.

4. Buy gift cards for stores and restaurants you know you'll shop at eventually anyway.

PSA: don't do those to meet an Amex minimum spend! People have gotten shut down & retroactively had MR points taken away (points they'd earned on other cards where they didn't MS!). And FOR SURE don't do this on the US Bank Altitude, multiple data points of people being shut down there.

 

[Albort]

PNC totally failed when i tried to fund with my Chase Freedom Unl for anyone interested. CC funding pretty hit & miss there. Gonna have to check out that consumer credit union one...

Funny thing? I was just coming here to pop in with the following unhelpful comment "Minimum spends are the worst! So many great CC offers, but I just don't have that many (responsible, normal spend) bills to pay!"

DoC seem to suggest Chase will flag it as fraud. Is that what happened?

 

[gottalovepluto]

@calypso726 OMG! #churninglifegoal right there! I hope you give us a detailed report on the experience after your trip!

 

[gottalovepluto]

DoC seem to suggest Chase will flag it as fraud. Is that what happened?

Yep. I cleared it and then it was flagged again. All other charges when I've cleared have been allowed to go through, first time that happened. After like the 3rd(?) denial I was locked out of credit card funding by PNC. I so regret I didn't stop using my Chase & try a different card.

Also, anyone considering funding a bank account with a CC remember to set your cash advance down as low as possible or it could go through as a cash advance.