I love credit cards so much!

[1st*toright]

A little happy to be back at work today after running around like a crazy person for the holidays. Was really fun, but I need about a week off. My older daughter is taking today off - as in, she doesn't have to do anything at all and no grownups will nag her to do anything. Negotiated settlement - she was very helpful yesterday in cleaning up the holiday detritus and has been awesome about helping with her little sister leading up to the holiday. And she may practice piano and clean out her closet - but only if she feels like it and no one tells her she should

Thanks for the heads up about the staples offers - its on my United card, but not my CSR. Also have a Lowes offer on there - I wasn't switching between cards to check for chase offers on each. I'm a bonehead sometimes. So lunchtime staples/lowes run is in the offing. Because I really need to spend more money this week

I do have a trip coming up, so floating Dis cards makes perfect sense if I can't find anything else i want. And as far as I know, he Happy Guy cards are still working fine to get GCs at home depot, where they usually have grocery store cards.

BTW - my little one asked for a dis gift card for Christmas - she was ridiculously excited to find one in her stocking. I don't think she has any concept that there is a particular amount of money on the gift card, and doesn't seem to have any intention of actually spending it. But she was very happy to get it!

 

[Haley R]

I was surprised to see it on my CF and not my CSP or DH's CSR. 5 personal Chase cards and only got Staples on 1!

Wow that is surprising! I don’t think I checked ALL of our cards so I’ll have to go check again.

 

[1st*toright]

For anyone interested, On the Basis of Sex was a really good movie. I will say if you aren't intetested in the story or like that type of movie you'll get bored. The theater was full, I didn't see any kids which makes sense unless they are interested already but I would say at least 13 and not because of language or anything like that.

I imagine it'll be up for best pic along with First Man though that was a better movie. Felicity Jones should get some acknowlgement for the role because she did a great job.

Hope everyone had a great day!

Thanks for the review - I saw something about that, and it does look interesting. Good one for the "adults" in our family (which includes our teenager - excludes our little one). But we still haven't managed to get to Mary Poppins as a family, so I'm guessing On the Basis of Sex will go on our list of movies we are waiting for on Netflix!

 

[Haley R]

Do chase biz cards not get offers? When I look at our CIP and our Southwest biz on the app and scroll all the way down there isn’t a spot for offers

 

[Alexle2007]

OMG, the award for worst customer service goes to Walmart! I have been going round and round with them about getting my gift card funds restored from a fraudulent transaction in Sept when someone managed to hack my Walmart account where I had my egift cards loaded and attempted to purchase an iPhone. All of the agents (online chat, on the phone and via email) keep saying is they need to refer it to the gift card team and I should hear back in 24-48 hours but I haven’t heard a peep from them! I have just resent them all of the same information they said they needed months ago and have sent several times now. And in-store says they can do nothing to assist since they were purchased online. I just want my funds and then I quickly drain those GCs. This is why I am not using the CF and Chase Pay and using Gyft instead for my Walmart GC purchases. Using DH’s CIC, I earn just as many points.

 

[DisneyMandC]

@disneymagicgirl that picture of your daughter at BBB is PRECIOUS!! How cute!!!

 

[WVMomof3]

I wouldn't. I'm guessing it's downtown Bellevue which aside from the mall and lincoln center, both of which skew higher end, there won't be anything to do or possibly eat at aftet 5. People mostly go downtown for work or the mall. And the traffic any direction but east out of there in the am will be horrible and all directions in the evening. You'd have to drive or take a metro bus into Seattle, both of which would take awhile depending on the time of day\day of the week. Weekends are bad too but not as bad but tend to have some traffic all day vs only rush hour.

It gives you close access to snoqualmie falls and that area which has some hiking as well, but you're better off doing a split stay like @Albort did if you want to do more than just seattle. The traffic here just doesn't make it feasible to do it all from any one spot.

Now if you want to wait 5 years or however long until the lightrail is in place from Bellevue to seattle then it'd be ok to do, but I'm sure that's not a good plan either. Our traffic and public transit suck and they are, at great cost, trying to fix it
But I can still drive to seattle quicker than the lightrail gets me there.

Thanks. Back to the drawing board. I think we will have this issue with all cat 4s though, not a place we want to stay a week. Anyone find a good place? Ours will be used in July.

 

[wendow]

We don’t normally but I’d be there for 30% to use on gcs. Our staples isn’t very far away, maybe 20 minutes?

I was just curious if the staples offer was targeted to staples shoppers. From other’s responses, it seems that is not the case.

 

[hsmamato2]

Finally my BS in Applied Math is useful (actually very helpful in becoming an actuary). Take the limit ($19) and divide by the % off (.30) and you get the max to buy. It is actually 63.33333 but really hard to buy a gift card in that amount . Weird that they picked that limit. I just went to staples and they were out of the variable home depot cards. I was going to get 2 $60 cards. I did two $75 purchases - $50 Home Depot x2; $25 panera; $25 CVS.

thank you! my applied brainlessness in math is a powerful thing....

 

[afan]

Thanks. Back to the drawing board. I think we will have this issue with all cat 4s though, not a place we want to stay a week. Anyone find a good place? Ours will be used in July.

Is there anywhere near the airport you could use it? Not ideal eithet but you could use the lightrail to get downtown and rent a car only for the days going out to other stuff. If you go to mt rainier for a day it would be countet commute from the airport. Would be a problem if you wanted to go north. More doable but I'm not sure I'd spend that long in one spot here.

 

[wendow]

@disneymagicgirl im so sorry that the cruise wasn’t as amazing as it should have been. I’d be upset. Have you contacted Disney? I know they cannot control the weather but they should have better options for days when the weather is bad.

Your 3yo is just precious and looks like she had the time of her life! I’m can imagine your ds disappointment at not getting to go to CC for his bday.

Thanks for the report! It does help me think through a few things.

 

[wendow]

Thanks. Back to the drawing board. I think we will have this issue with all cat 4s though, not a place we want to stay a week. Anyone find a good place? Ours will be used in July.

I have the same cert. not really put much thought into it yet as I’ll probably try to extend mine but there are options around DLR that have been mentioned. Also, I think there is a Marriott Village outside wdw that was mentioned. I haven’t looked other places yet. Are you wanting to use in Seattle or are you just exploring locations?

 

[amalone1013]

Proud of DH again. Last night I mentioned to him, that due to his very generous gift, we have quite a bit less to go on MSRs than expected. Just tallied them up and have $750 each on my CIP and his SW Biz, and $250 on his SW Priority. That was more than I was thinking last night but that's okay. After currently scheduled payments, I'll have around $7k left on my car loan. So I mentioned that we have less left on the MSRs than planned, so we'll have to figure out if we just want to settle and maximize our regular spend... and he immediately goes, What about your car? What do you mean? All of the points we could earn paying it off! So I will spend some time here exploring options to pay that last $7k through plastiq - I've still got $1500 in FFD, so that would be about $140 in fees on the remainder. I think the rewards will outweigh that. Just need ones that will let me pay a car loan, so no AMEX.

 

[schmass]

Thanks. Back to the drawing board. I think we will have this issue with all cat 4s though, not a place we want to stay a week. Anyone find a good place? Ours will be used in July.

I have the same cert. not really put much thought into it yet as I’ll probably try to extend mine but there are options around DLR that have been mentioned. Also, I think there is a Marriott Village outside wdw that was mentioned. I haven’t looked other places yet. Are you wanting to use in Seattle or are you just exploring locations?

I also have a cat 4 that I'm trying to find a use for. I was thinking of the Residence Inn in Charleston, SC. https://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/chsri-residence-inn-charleston-downtown-riverview/

@disneymagicgirl Do you have any thoughts about that hotel/area in Charleston? Would it be a good place to spend a week? My kids will be 6 and almost 4 at the time. Also, I'm so sorry to hear that your recent cruise wasn't the best. I am a huge DCL fan, and can only imagine that after having many wonderful DCL experiences, that a subpar cruise would be even more disappointing than if you didn't know what to expect.

 

[StephPlum]

Thanks. Back to the drawing board. I think we will have this issue with all cat 4s though, not a place we want to stay a week. Anyone find a good place? Ours will be used in July.

I'm using mine at a Springhill Suites in Colorado Springs. When I was looking to try to find some spots where I could stay a week, saw some in Orlando that looked nice, Fort Walton on the panhandle, a Westin in Tucson...

Here is the directory where you can sort by category in each state https://www.marriott.com/hotel-search.mi

Article in TPG with some good Cat 1-4 properties. The Tucson Westin is in there. https://thepointsguy.com/guide/best-marriott-category-4-hotels-for-families/

 

[disneymagicgirl]

@disneymagicgirl Sorry about all the issues with your cruise, but if you will allow me to say...you have the cutest kids ever! Here’s to hoping the next cruise is super fantastic to make up for it!

Thank you!

 

[disneymagicgirl]

Finally my BS in Applied Math is useful (actually very helpful in becoming an actuary). Take the limit ($19) and divide by the % off (.30) and you get the max to buy. It is actually 63.33333 but really hard to buy a gift card in that amount . Weird that they picked that limit. I just went to staples and they were out of the variable home depot cards. I was going to get 2 $60 cards. I did two $75 purchases - $50 Home Depot x2; $25 panera; $25 CVS.

thank you!!!!

 

[punkin]

I just realized we didn't use our $100 credit from the Amex Gold DH opened in November. Will it be too late to get a gift card and have it credit this calendar year? We will be using it for checked bags on Alaska in 2019. Can't believe I procrastinated this long!

I just bought a gift card from American Airlines today. It still hasn't credited, but the people on flyertalk say to give it a couple days. I'm hoping it comes through.

 

[disneymagicgirl]

Thanks. Back to the drawing board. I think we will have this issue with all cat 4s though, not a place we want to stay a week. Anyone find a good place? Ours will be used in July.

I think we will use ours in CHS this summer. There are 2 properties downtown, not in Mt Pleasant where I'd prefer, but downtown is fine. We can easily do a week with visiting friends, family, beach, and playing tourist.

 

[disneymagicgirl]

@disneymagicgirl im so sorry that the cruise wasn’t as amazing as it should have been. I’d be upset. Have you contacted Disney? I know they cannot control the weather but they should have better options for days when the weather is bad.

Your 3yo is just precious and looks like she had the time of her life! I’m can imagine your ds disappointment at not getting to go to CC for his bday.

Thanks for the report! It does help me think through a few things.

I am planning to send them some constructive criticism. You're welcome for the info and good luck deciding! Thanks for the compliments.