Now wait, I'm going to challenge this idea since I think it's a good topic for discussion. Wouldn't minimizing your lost opportunity costs mean you should always be putting all of your spend on new cards and ignoring category bonuses?
It's great that Plastiq earns you 3x UR on your CIP. Let's say my rent is $2,000 per month. With Plastiq's fee, running the charge will cost me $2,050. I'll earn 6,150 URs, worth $61.50 in cash, or $92.25 redeemed through Chase's travel portal after transferring to the CSR.
However! One must consider the costs of doing this.
First, I need a CIP. That costs me $95/year. Next, I need a CSR. It's true that after year 1, you can be up $150 due to the double travel credit, but that's only if you cancel the card. If you keep the card year after year, you're in the hole $150 annually. You'll have to pay that $2k rent 3 times before you make up the fees on your card. If your rent or mortgage is lower, it takes longer to make that up, but in our hypothetical analysis this isn't important.
Or, instead of trying to do all that mental gymnastics for a few extra URs, what if you just signed up for new cards? Let's take Amex. It's notoriously difficult to MS on Amex cards, and it's only getting harder, so it makes sense to put large organic spend on Amex cards. Let's say you're interested in Schwab cashout. This is easiest because we can do a dollar-for-dollar comparison.
The Schwab Platinum requires a hefty $5k spend for 60k MR points and a $550 annual fee. Our MSR will be met on Plastiq alone after 3 months. This will net 66,150 MRs after the bonus posts. Schwab cashouts need to be made in 1k MR increments, so we can cash out those 66k MR at 1.25cpp and end up with $825. Less our $550 AF, we're up $275.
But the Schwab card was just the beginning. Now that we have the card we need, we can get the Schwab train rolling and get a new card every month. There are so many MR cards that either have the AF waived or no AF. You can use just Plastiq to meet the minimum spend on those cards and cash out literally thousands of dollars. Or you can earn $92.25 in travel. The Schwab example isn't even totally necessary. The 60k MR (or 75k or 100k from the Vanilla Platinum) is worth many times more than the 3x UR through Plastiq. And that's just the beginning.
In my eyes, the missed opportunity cost of trying to reign in category spending just for Chase is huge. I'm interested to hear other's thoughts about this. I realize I'm in an extreme minority, and most people talking about churning are actually more or less just talking about Chase churning. But once I started to think about how much further I could go, how many more trips I could take, how many more points I could amass, and how I could turn a lot of those points into pure cash, trying to do category spend became worthless. The points I would earn from category spending are a rounding error on the number of points I've amassed. That's not a brag either, by the way - it's just reality.
in your shoes it would not make any sense to go for the UR points over the 5% savings. $25 saved now is better than $30 or so stashed in UR later. Granted, I am likely an extreme outlier on purchasing Disney GCs as far as examples go. Bt I know there are a few here than can give me a run for my money on their Disney trip expenses
We will be purchasing a LOT of Disney GCs this year. Between the Japan Adventure By Disney trip and our DVC dues alone it will be $33,000 in Disney gift cards. With the Redcard I'd be able to save $1,650. 5x UR points on that will get me $2,475 in my CSR to use to travel purchases at the very least. We do use our UR points for either travel purchases or transfers to airline where I often get better value than 1.5 per point. Staying under 5/24 is not an option for us either. Maxing the UR bonus categories and piling up the UR points is what works best for us.
