I love credit cards so much!

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I hit the MSP on my CSP over the weekend. I can see all of the points pending...but I do not see the 50,000 for meeting the MSP. Do those normally post later? I also signed up for a CSR for my husband - no double dip. I'm not quite there mentally yet...if I keep following this thread though I'm sure to be kicking myself!
 
I only recently discovered this group and would appreciate some advice. I am new to discussion boards in general and this is my first post, so please be patient with me. I have historically charged everything possible in order to earn cash rewards, but after finding “The Points Guy” on Twitter I opened the CSR and Citi Premier cards. These have helped us to earn some nice hotel stays, rental cars, and an airfare or two, but after browsing this thread I am interested in taking a step up. My wife is on board, as she has enjoyed the freebies we have earned to date. We have a Disney/Universal trip planned for April 2019 for 4 of us (we have 2 kids, 9 and 11). Airfare has been booked, 5 nights at WBC booked through TripBound, and 3 nights booked at Royal Pacific (booked using UR.) We will use our remaining stash of about 100K UR for the Disney tickets soon. We will likely allocate the 80 K we receive from my wife’s recently opened CIP for the Universal tickets. So now it’s time to start squirreling away points for a trip in 2020.

Here is our situation:

Me:

05/18 AMEX Delta Gold

11/17 TD (merchant account)

09/16 Chase Sapphire Reserve

07/15 Citi AA Platinum ($95 AF posting early September)

05/15 Citi Premier

06/14 US Bank Cash+

04/12 BOA Cash Rewards

04/99 Discover


Wife:

08/18 Chase Ink Preferred

07/16 Citi AA MilesUp

-Authorized user on my Citi Premier, BOA Cash, AMEX, Discover, and US Bank

-Various (4-5) store sponsored cards (nothing recent)


Thank you in advance for any advice you folks could provide to help me develop a strategy.


Mike

Welcome....as you can see this is a friendly group....

Agreeing with other posters your wife referring you for the CIP will add 100,000 UR.....then in 3-4 months your wife could do the CSR and CSP double dip...and you have another 100,000 URs..
 
I hit the MSP on my CSP over the weekend. I can see all of the points pending...but I do not see the 50,000 for meeting the MSP. Do those normally post later? I also signed up for a CSR for my husband - no double dip. I'm not quite there mentally yet...if I keep following this thread though I'm sure to be kicking myself!

I think it took a day or two for the 80,000 bonus points to show when I met the spend on my CIP...so keep checking...
Your not the only one who didn’t double dip....Just applied for the CSR yesterday...was too afraid to risk getting shut down and losing my ability to churn the SW cards every two years for the CP
 
Nope, my last card was January of 2016. Total newbie! I had been tempted by the Amex platinum personal card early on, but did not think I would make the annual fee back as easily as other cards. The biz is $100 less, but does not offer Uber or Saks credit (this would probably be barely by me anyway). I particularly liked the gold status for my corporate travel since I do not stay at the major hotels enough throughout the year to maintain anything with decent benefits. I will have to look at all the Amex biz options.

Would there be any restrictions on how soon I could apply for an Amex biz card after 2 Chase personal cards? I think the only "downside" would be a second hard pull on my credit.

Agreed, definitely need it, but not as fun as say... DVC points to buy haha

I just wanted to say I know everyone says once Amex has a relationship with you they won’t do a hard pull but I don’t know if they ever do one. My SPG biz is my only AmEx and I don’t see any pull from it. I use both Credit Karma and the Chase Credit Journey to monitor.
 


2 Quick “Reminder FYIs”

1) Don’t forget to check DISchurners when signing up for a new card to see if you can support a fellow DISer :)
2) If you use a support link - remember whose you used AND send them a PM letting them know you used it. That way they can a) say thank you and b) maybe repay the favor to you on a future card.
 
Did you have any issues using fewer TS credits than people? My thinking is that most TS meals (only have one buffet planned), we will use 2 or 3 TS credits and pay OOP for the rest. Is that going to cause confusion? Since at least 3 people have suggested this to DisneyMandC in the past 10 minutes, I'm guessing it's a pretty common thing, but I would hate to have to deal with a lot of hassles about the bill.

How did you handle the character meals since those are so pricey OOP?

We had no problems with being creative with our dining plan credits - the waitstaff were great about charging the complete meals to credits and taking cash for the extras. If you have 2 rooms going, that is really the best way to use the dining plan. You can even pay for everyone on credits for the pricey meals (any character meals for sure). We did the deluxe plan, and there were several meals where we used 2 TS credits between the 4 of us and it was plenty of food. We often skipped dessert, or only got 1 dessert to share between all of us, but for the trip we did, we came out ahead on the meal plan, even skipping dessert a lot and using very few of our snacks. We like TS as a break in the parks, so it was good for us. We did a ton of character meals, and we had one person at the kid rate, so that helped it make $$ sense for our week long trip. We've not done it for any of the shorter trips we've done since - the numbers just don't add up. If we were in 2 rooms, it would make a lot of sense.
 


Ended up getting the Citi Double Cash $150/$500 offer. I do love those easy 30-40% cash back on spend deals. Recently had the TD Bank Cash $200/$500 and BoA Cash Biz $200/$500 as well. I know they're not the most exciting offers, but as I get deeper into it, such easy bonuses with only $500 return are really attractive.

I see BoA has a few personal $200/$500 offers, but I just did the Amtrak World not long ago, and I may want to keep my 2/3/4 slots open to churn those in the future. Decisions.
 
That is so awesome that you can pay for most of the trip, and your mom (inlaws too??) gets treated!! We don't buy the meal plan. My girls and I would NEVER eat enough food to justify the cost. If you don't have big eaters in your group, I wouldn't waste the money. We spend about half of what the meal plan would cost us (yes, I save every receipt and add it up each year just to check and make sure we are still saving by paying OOP) :)


You also might consider the dining plan for some of the people. That's my current plan for our Christmas trip -- 3 people (one room) with the deluxe dining plan and three people (a second room) without the dining plan. We do a lot of TS but no way do we need 6 appetizers or 6 desserts at every meal. Hopefully the waiters will be good about allocating full meals to the dining plan and charging the single entrees separately.

ETA @disneybirds beat me to it, if I had only kept reading before replying :)

@DisneyMandC doing it for some but not all rooms could work! I'm considering that for next summer, but it'll depend on what our trip turns out like with the ILs

Thanks all!! Yeah, that's another option we could do too. I just need to see how it's going to play out closer to. DH and I split a lot of counter service meals now, and I'm probably not going to be hitting any signature restaurants if we're not doing the dining plan for everyone, so I don't know if we would get the value back of the dining plan if we're just eating a typical meal at somewhere like 50s Primetime. The other thing is, will I come out ahead if I do the meal plan at the 1.5 redemption rate with the CSR. Then it might be a better option for us. Just going to have to get closer and see!

Now I want a milkshake...
 
You Like me...You REALLY LIKE ME!! :thanks:

I've topped 10,000 Likes and I have to imagine the VAST majority of them have come from this thread! Thanks @DisneyMandC for being my 10,000th like :D

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I hit the MSP on my CSP over the weekend. I can see all of the points pending...but I do not see the 50,000 for meeting the MSP. Do those normally post later? I also signed up for a CSR for my husband - no double dip. I'm not quite there mentally yet...if I keep following this thread though I'm sure to be kicking myself!
For me it was 3-4 business days after the last charge posted until I saw the bonus pending.

If I didn't have the out of ordinary spend to pull off the double dip, then my plan was to do the same as you to space out the apps. No regrets, the past is in the past :)

I just wanted to say I know everyone says once Amex has a relationship with you they won’t do a hard pull but I don’t know if they ever do one. My SPG biz is my only AmEx and I don’t see any pull from it. I use both Credit Karma and the Chase Credit Journey to monitor.

AFAIK neither of those services uses Experian, so it's possible that's what AmEx pulled. If it's not there either then it's possible they did soft pull instead out of reflex :)
 
Doing the VGC...looks like that site is more expensive for the VGC. I get swagbucks to track and the fee is $1 less. Any other suggestions?

Oh yeah oops giftcardmall is the cheaper one. I keep getting them confused this is the second time I have done that lol. Are they canceling your orders or is the website not working? I was trying ebates and getting mastercard giftcards but it wasn’t tracking for me.
 
Oh yeah oops giftcardmall is the cheaper one. I keep getting them confused this is the second time I have done that lol. Are they canceling your orders or is the website not working? I was trying ebates and getting mastercard giftcards but it wasn’t tracking for me.
I add one to my cart for $500 and it shows one in the cart but $1000 plus the fees on the right side. I wanted to get two anyway but then it jumps to three. I hit checkout and it doesn't leave the page, just scrolls back up to the top. When I emptied the cart, it still thinks I have $1000 in there. I am using Chrome and I tried to clear all history and cookies and still no go. I am going to try Safari in a little bit.
 
I add one to my cart for $500 and it shows one in the cart but $1000 plus the fees on the right side. I wanted to get two anyway but then it jumps to three. I hit checkout and it doesn't leave the page, just scrolls back up to the top. When I emptied the cart, it still thinks I have $1000 in there. I am using Chrome and I tried to clear all history and cookies and still no go. I am going to try Safari in a little bit.

I’m on my phone right now and it’s glitching for me too. I added two to my cart but at the top it says I have six things. And I proceed to check out and it’s saying due to the size of my order I need to have signature delivery, but regardless I can’t proceed away from that notification.
 
Did you have any issues using fewer TS credits than people? My thinking is that most TS meals (only have one buffet planned), we will use 2 or 3 TS credits and pay OOP for the rest. Is that going to cause confusion? Since at least 3 people have suggested this to DisneyMandC in the past 10 minutes, I'm guessing it's a pretty common thing, but I would hate to have to deal with a lot of hassles about the bill.

How did you handle the character meals since those are so pricey OOP?

I put my 2 Disney kids with my folks in one room and then was using the DDP credits for the 6 of us. At the restaurants my dad just had to be the one to scan his band and then say using 2 of the credits on us (since we weren’t showing on room). For snacks and QS it was super easy as I had their pin and just used one of the girls’s bands. It wasn’t a hassle as Disney has said ok with people using dining credits on others.

I just wanted to say I know everyone says once Amex has a relationship with you they won’t do a hard pull but I don’t know if they ever do one. My SPG biz is my only AmEx and I don’t see any pull from it. I use both Credit Karma and the Chase Credit Journey to monitor.

They never did a hard pull for my DH despite 2 personal Amex cards but when he got the Delta Platinum Biz last October they did. That’s the card we had a horrible time getting the bonus to post on. It bugs me because the hard pull does affect the credit rating.
 
Secondly. CSR...and CSP...this is your path to free tickets! I know I hastily dismissed the idea of earning enough points to pay for your room, but I really think you're going to want to lock that room in soon...and probably NOT wait until Nov/Dec. Once you earn your Delta Bonus, I recommend you do a CSR/CSP double dip (what that means is applying for both of the below cards on the same day). You need to apply on the same day due to a rule that says you can't apply for one while you hold the other. IF you decide to do this, we'll give you some more specific tips.
I may need to do this before the AMEX, I know I can cover the $8000.00 easy in the 1st month because we are expecting a large bill from our vendor that doesn't charge a fee for using credit cards and my refrigerator is dying. Do I apply back to back for these cards?

It looks like SW flights DTW-MCO are just over 6,000 RR points one way pretty much every day for the next many months. Maybe it would be worth it to look at SW cards.
We have a SW card. We used to use it to fly out of Flint but they closed that, leaving us with DTW only.

I'm noticing that the support links for the CSP don't include the AU bonus language. It's still out on the public offer, but if I use my support link it's gone from the infographics and the offer details. If you're doing it in-house, liks spouse to spouse, it still make sense to support each other since the 10k beats 5k; but it was nicer when you could get the 10k+5k
So do I need to apply elsewhere? I want to support you guys!

But if you booked the flight as an award ticket then it is only 12,500 miles. Looking at the flights as one ways may also help you choose dates that are likely to be less expensive if you are flexible.
Great information to keep in mind!
 
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