5% cashback Chase Freedom categories and RiteAid..

Chase Freedom has got some exciting new categories for the 5% cash back for the first quarter of 2016. Usually they give just gas purchases but this year they have also included transit options such as subways and trains as well as local commuter transportation options such as taxis and buses. This is exciting news for many folks who live in the metro areas as well as near big cities with such options. Also, this is a good step to move away from gas to more eco friendly rewards. Good job, Chase Freedom folks!

Meanwhile, for those who follow this blog, they know that Serve is more preferred here compared to Bluebird or Target card or whoever is the new kid in the block. Well, for some time now the Amex folks have partnered with only Family Dollar after leaving the CVS and other places. Walmart is pretty much up in the air as far as the reload goes. Even if it does work in some, the pain of standing in front of usually huge lines and crowded experience and then explaining to the customer representatives about what needs to be done just adds to a discomforting experience about the whole Serve reload process. Family Dollar if that works is definitely better though they have very limited options and most stores are far and few in between. And often in not so good parts of the town. Enter RiteAid. No doubt they are also far few and in between and simply no comparison to far bigger chains such as CVS or Walgreens, they are still not that bad. They have the old Kmart/Sears aura around them. Most people go there if they cant find their vaccines anywhere else. I had myself gone there for some vaccines earlier this year. So this was my first real trip to Rite Aid and the store when checked out was not all that bad. I mean one cant imagine in the current world of iDevices and so much stuff on internet, there are still chains such as RiteAid which bring in the revenues. There are lot of real people who still frequent it. It does have a more local aura compared to a more corporatey CVS or Walgreens.

There is an ice cream parlor too inside! :). Anyhow, I made the trip and tried to talk to the cashier about the Serve reloads and they promptly declined stating the debit cards needs to have my name on it. Dejected, I left. Only to come back again next week. This time a different cashier seemed to be more knowledgeable. Off the bat, the debit card was accepted as long as it is Vanilla. This was pretty smooth experience and whats more Rite Aid it near by many major malls and main roads. Far more density compared  to Family Dollar. Certainly bigger and a bit more user friendly. So in all, I am excited about this Serve loading options as long as it works fine.

On other news, the credit card rewards seems to be levelling. Even scourging through other blogs, most bloggers are seeming to be focusing on the side activities or "hustle" or any thing that would net you some few bucks here and there. Not being judgemental, if you have time, more power to you but the actual credit cards itself with huge bonus offers seems to be far less in this period of time. But dont lose hope. This is a good time to build some solid credit. Your credit score and reports matter a lot and a 3 months quite period usually puts the number on the top. Me also focusing on the build credit profile part till first quarter of 2016. 

Interest rates are again on the rise. As of today there is a 25 basis point hike by Fed. With interest rates back in picture, there is going to be more savers, increased loan rates, increased interest rate in the credit card land and thus increased competition to get customers. Which means increased bonus offers for us all.  One big factor is also the ongoing consolidation in the airline world as well as hotel industry world. Once all that is settled, the competition becomes more clear. The increasing rates means days of cheap credit will be over soon and if you are a credit card user who pays on time, has a decent enough credit score ( above 675 or so ) and have good payment on time record, you should be in for good targeted offers. All in all, the days ahead are good and nothing to worry about!

Reason for no posts

... for such a long time is that there is nothing exciting going on. Thanksgiving came and went by and contrary to popular notion nothing happened this time around. Even the american express small business saturday was a washout.
The general giving away by the credit card industry was muted. Usual offers and programs were on, which I did not think merits your time and hence did not post. The discover deal of the year, proclaimed by the other blogs, but pointed out correctly by this blog as a dead deal was indeed dead! The rest of the year is going to be just sail thru with no major offers in the offing. Hence, happy holidays all! For all the holiday seasons out there - life is not just about collecting points. So go out and enjoy and spend some. You might have collected a huge cache of points but what is the use of that if you dont spend them ? So spend it all away and come back refreshed next year so that we can tackle this mileage earning activity with more fun that before!

Shout out to AutoSlash - car discount program and other notes

AutoSlash:

 

Readers of this blog already know that we are not a big fan here about car programs loyalty. However, we are big on the algorithms that are smart enough to get you lower prices. Many algorithms and software, and thus the websites, are basically one time scan and get you the latest prices. Here is where, a service called AutoSlash differs. I used it to book multiple reservations in Hawaii, Texas, NY and few other places and each time, Autoslash would automatically keep slashing the rates and constantly found me the best rates. Few times, I found there were other sites which offered on par but they were often late to the party. Any simple search will give you a host of car rental comparison sites and fairly easy to find some codes or loyalty discount which might give you about 10 to 20% off the rates. Not much in the long run as the car sites usually have their rates way above this 20% to cover this margin. The only service that I found that seemed to undercut was autoslash. So based on experience and the need to fill a gap to have effective car rentals, we fully like Autoslash for all our and hopefully yours auto rental reservation needs.

 

 

Discover Apple Pay:

 

As predicted first in this blog, the chances of this deal are on the lower end though it might work for some. Many fellow bloggers said it will not work at all or just held up hopes, despite the very first week glaring warning from the discover app, stating explicitly that gift cards have been excluded. Some folks do report getting some rewards for the first purchase but were told by discover that gift cards are really excluded.

 

New programs:

Chase Saphire offers higher points ( from 40k to 50k ) for new card signups. Worth it? Well, if you have not had this card for the last 24 months and want to have a good sign up bonus with a regular card, this is good. But so is Chase Freedom, which is now offering a new sign up bonus of $150. American express has not had a solid hit in a while. While Chase is still doing the same programs that has ran successfully for some of its cards in the past. Barclays came up with a new card with a 1.5% cash back which falls short of its own 2% cashback from Arrival or the Citi 2%  cash back card. Speaking of which, Citi continues on its Executive and AAdvantage offering which counters Chase United targeted offering of 50k points to lots of established customers. Other banks - regional and smaller are doing their bit. One card that I really liked is the BBVA Amex card. Nice features such as higher percentage cash back on gas and certain purchases and upto 100 USD for the first timers. I think it is better to focus on such lower hanging fruits for now and get that credit score bulked up so that when the right card comes along, you will be approved without doubt or delays. Hotel cards are offering the same old same old. Hyatt seems to be better compared to the rest as Marriott and SPG are looking at merger. Amex SPG was one of the favorite card of this blog as well as many. But the loyalty program as well as the card itself could be in danger while Marriott is a decent card and a nice hotel chain too but in the long run there is uncertainity over how the programs would merge. Usually merger is never good for anyone. As there is lot of belt tightening for all. But that writing was up in the wall when Starwood put itself for sale this March. So that practically sums it up. It seems like an odd throwback to the recession era thanksgiving where there were not many deals going around and it was just same continuation of the existing marketing programs for many popular cards.

Our advice would be the same as in the last 3 months which is hang on tightly, apply to lower cards that might not cause significant dent to your credit profile, take up the smaller spends and build up the bigger ones.

Discover cashback runs only on Apple iphone iOS9

There is a datapoint for the Discover cashback deal which has got some people pretty excited in the credit card community and blogosphere. Basically, you get 10% cashback. 

Yesterday, I tried this on various versions of iOS 8 and then downloaded and installed iOS 9 and it works only on iOS 9. Apple or Discover do not support it though the error message says the bank does not support this card currently for iOS 8.

Say whatever you want about Apple, they make things very user friendly. The credit card reader was spot on. Pretty accurate reading and easy to use interface to add the card. 

There is some small difference though - in iOS8, the Apple Pay app is inside another app and you can also access it from Settings directly. In iOS 9, this is replaced by Wallet. Which is am more intuitive name for this. As Wallet has cards storage and pass ( concert tickets or boarding passes etc) and it is a neat tool. One should give it to Apple for designing things in a way that does not make it hard to find. It just flows. While Android is there too, Samsung especially is nice with all this but there are other devices which are really not upto the game which blemishes the whole platform.

Finally, kudos to the Discover marketing team if they could pull this off. I mean, these are the days of cut  throat competition in the credit card sector and I have seen lots of folks cutting down their credit cards or just opting for a plain vanilla one from a neighborhood big bank. In a way it simplifies things a lot and one has to give credit to the marketing teams here who come up with programs such as these where it is not about big sign up bonuses but rather you are incentivized to forget about other cards for an entire quarter!

As I covered in the earlier post, this deal is good but has a huge spending. If you have some big spending coming around the corner and the retailers where you shop use Apple Pay ( just ask them directly thats the best way as different swiping machines have different logos and support different protocols) then this is a nifty deal for sure.

Ting Referrals

Ting is a pay as you go data and voice plan that is pretty popular these days with millenials and getting traction amongst masses. It is just ala carta menu instead of the buffet that the big carriers serve. It is a neat service, neat website and the cost seems less for folks who rely on wifi for most part but want the odd directions when then venture out. If you consistently go overage - which is industry term to denote that you go over 1 GB, then you are better off using a fixed plan such as AT&T which gives 2GB for $25 and there are myraid number of MVNOs - another industry term for secondary data providers .. which means these are private operators who offer the plans which run on the Sprint or AT&T or Verizon networks. Boost Mobile or Cricket or Metro PCS give $30 plan. There are a bunch more for $20 or so. These are better than the bigger ones such as T-Mobile.

My referral if you choose to use is https://zfhaib4h08c.ting.com/

This will give us both $25 each and now for a limited period of time, till September end, you can get a ting sim card for $5 with free shipping. The phone selections that they have is not half bad either!

September app run and discover deal

For September, after a long time, I apped a bunch of cards from Discover It miles, club carlson, best western inn,  citi cards, fairmont, choice cards from Barclays. It was fun seeing the instant approval page after a long time. The focus, as you could tell was on the hotel cards since I have got a good arsenal of airline points at the moment. The hotel cards however are a different game and often time they would give you free nights but when you go for redeeming it is hard to get those. One exception though is Marriott from Chase and they have very good deals often. The other cards such as SPG or Hyatt etc are also good. And it is not as bad as rental loyalty programs but not exactly as good as some of the airline programs out there. So it is pretty broad out there when it comes to miles programs. But not bad if you load up on both hotel and airline cards at the moment as they are having some good bonus rounds from the bank sites directly.

First up, Discover. Many blogs covered it and I think it is a good deal but not worth the hype or a dedicated post. Turns out from tomorrow, i.e. September 16, if you link a Discover card with Apple Pay app which comes with iphone 6 and above versions and use it to pay at stores where they accept Apple Pay, then Discover will give cash back upto 10% of 10,000 which is 1000. If this card is new, then you get $2000. I already had Discover It card. So I tried to app for Discover It miles card as both these cards are different and got approved for the second one. You can have both cards simulataneously. Generally the Discover IT card is good as there is rotating 5% categories. But IT miles card is not that bad and their redemptions options are good and not to mention, the points accumulate faster too. So the plan is to load up these two cards in Apple Pay tomorrow and get on the next spend of $10,000 on this. Which is what my sore point about this "deal of the year". Even if one is talking about finding some stores and getting Vanilla gift cards, $10,000 is huge. You are getting 1000 or 2000 vs a typical offer like this which nets you about 100k points. Make no mistake, this deal is nice but is also a huge spending requirement. So unless you have some expenses coming up say a deck or HVAC or something on the heavier side, there is little day to day use of this one. I would not use this towards gc of airlines or hotels. Or prepay any utilities for that matter. Which all leaves to only one or two options such as buying some other gift cards or just doing the usual spending cliche thing that is out there. So tread with care on this one. People - especially bloggers have a vested interest in pushing products. But this blog aint no shrill for no one. And even if we in future get some ad partners, we wont sell something for the sake of selling. So read up the discover deal and more importantly check out your stores whether they accept apple pay before you venture into this deal.

The other cards such as Choice and Fairmont etc are good hotel cards deals. And many of them are coming with no annual fee at the current time. I have already written about the Best Western Inn Mastercard. For residents of US, this is a new opportunity since this card was available for only canada. But now they have started issuing it in US. I would urge to fully take advantage of this card and go for the premium card and get the free nights. 

The citi cards are good deals - specifically the ATT card where you have to sign up for the ATT data plan for three months minimum and you can get an iPhone 6 or Samsung 6 for free for upto $650. This is a good deal and no one knows how long it will last but I have verified that it works. If you get iphone 6 then you can use it in discover deal such as above.  Once done, you can always buy something from the local best buy for much less. iPhones fall down on values pretty quickly. I got it for $700 from ATT store unlocked and now if I were to sell back I would be getting 50% off .. which is just $350. Then again you can turn to craigslist but the current going rate of $550 is still less in open markets such as eBay, Amazon, craigs among others.

Chase is back with its Southwest 50k promotions. It is a pretty  common promotion for this time of the year. I would not hold back on having this card for the long haul as it gives you annual points on lesser annual fees. Bank of America is intensely promoting their cards in the wake of intensified competition from the likes of Citi and Chase. So that is pretty much it for now. As we enter mid September, this is a good time to load up on Amex cards for the upcoming Small business Saturday. But other than that, it is advisable to stay clear in October for new cards since November end and December is  the time when the marketing team will go in overdrive to meet yearly targets of customer acquisitions.

Rental cars loyalty programs - are they worth it?

As you accumulate the airlines miles and hotel cards points for your next travel, the only other component of travel that is left is car rentals. You will dine in based on your credit cards again! Of course, dont be so cheap to go for free food even then! And your other needs are taken care off by your well earned money. I have been researching a lot on the car rentals these days. 

There are some good sites such as carrentals.com or rentalcars.com and so many other permutations and combinations to get on top of search engine SEO ratings that you would be confused by so many aggregators and actual car rental sites that are out there. Sometimes, man amazes me by making these things so so complicated that a simple act of reserving one basic car outside an airport or a city has turned into a mapping appliction + algorithm + revenues and so many things that the poor you and me will end up paying high rentals. 

To blurt it out, I think car loyalty programs are a waste of time.

They just offer menial things such as avoid lines ( big deal!), some percentages off ( likely 10 or 20 % off which you can as well get by searching for some codes online) and many rudimentary things like upgrading cars from economy to SUV or something like that. Really speaking, there are lots of analogues of Southwest out there in car rental space. It is one of the cheapest business out there to bootstrap. US alone has some 600 million cars on the road. Tons of cars by the year, massive rolling in inventories means there are so many mid year cars in the road that you can share these inventories and front end a rental car business. This business is just about grabbing customer eye balls and reserve them. The big players are Avis/Budget and Hertz, Nationals, Enterprise and so on. Depending on markets there are thrify, alamo, fox, dollar and so many myraid amount of car rental stores out there. A new kid in the block, usave, is also making huge waves in metro areas in the east coast. All in all, these discount players have already positioned their cars in rentals at about 50% less than premium players such as Avis or Hertz. If you search casually in major airports, Avis and Hertz might dole out a car of $60 while the same ones or economy ones are given by Dollar or Thrifty for about $30. They margin is tight. These can be easily outsourced to various card programs such as AAdvantage which is another big player and also the american airlines mileage program or Ultimate rewards from Chase or Amex Membership programs. They make the money in the addons such as insurance and selling you upgrades such as bigger cars, GAS fillups, toll programs and so on. There is really no discount in that space. Be smart and book the cars using a Citi Prestige card or Amex card and save on such insurance programs. 

So that leaves only the starting price. Most car companies will be glad to give you running offers such as 10% discount and what not. They may give you free weekends if you rent for the whole week etc. Given the ultra competitive market, this commodity is easy to break and it is not really worth the time to sign up for their rewards program. It is not like you are going to get free add ons or free rentals. Gas is anyway your cost and if you are just trying to score a free rental, most likely you are going to pay for it in other way. From National to Hertz, they have one free rent available for rent after 7 to 15 days. If you are business consultant who often rents the cars for long time, it makes sense to sign up and at times get some free days. But I think in the grand scheme of things, waiting for this code to arrive and then booking for a free car for a day etc. is not worth the pain. I mean, if you are going somewhere you look at the big picture and the big expenses such as airlines and hotels. The rentals and incidentals could be just another 100 bucks. Would you wait and argue with a travel desk clerk who is going to most likely sigh at you since you got a free reward and then go for a free day ( which is more often than norm to be used by so and so date ) , use this certificate online and then still be liable for gas and insurance which will simply take it closer to the price that you would have paid had you not been enrolled in first place. In all I think despite free rentals that you may score thru corporate programs and travel, you are looking at only 20-40% cost reduction. And in say about 10 trips, you might come ahead by about $250 at maximum. For all these pains, you are just tacking on additional processes - something this blog aspires to keep so low and down that you are not doing any additional work. 

Bottomline, in its current form, rental cars are where hotel programs were 10 years ago. Hotel programs and airlines programs were forced to change in the last 10 years to be more meaningful. They did away with old bad programs and expiring points and survived the recession. Airlines were the first to realize this given the rampant bankruptcy in that industry. Soon to follow the suit, albeit reluctantly and sloddily is the hotel industry. Rental cars might not even follow suit given the cheap booting required for such businesses. They are better off and you as a customer are better off if some one just gives you a lower practical rate. Imagine if hotels were to just price rooms with basic amenities at 50 bucks a night, would anyone really care much about points? Yeah, if it is just out there in the table but not worth it otherwise. Rentals and parkings fall in that category. No point in it as of 2015.

Hotel cards - Best Western MasterCard with free sign up points!!!

Long time no posts here! :D

Mainly because we have stayed true to our ideals of not posting garbage and wasting your time. There is really nothing exciting happening here - whether you are a freebie or veteran or just casual user of credit cards and using them wisely for some good travel. The usual cards that are listed in the good credit cards section above still stay valid. But finally, I found something that was exciting and not being covered in other blogs. 

The Best Western Inn credit card.

The best western inn is a canada based inn. Similar to holiday inn or hampton inn, it is distributed pretty well geographically and can be also found in places such as Hawaii or Grand Canyon or New York area among others. So what is the big news out here? Welll till May of this year, there was no Best Western credit card to speak off for US residents. Canadian residents had some Mastercard which was giving some rewards points. The points credit and redemption with Best Western is pretty aggressive to say the least. They market their offers and rooms pretty well. If you stay there, you will get automatically enrolled and you might get multiple loyalty cards till you sign up in their website. The credits are quickly stacked similar to Marriott and in any many ways their redemption is opposite to that of Hilton HHonors which have greatly devalued their programs in recent times.

The hotels and rooms in Best Western Family themselves are pretty decent. In many places such as New York or California or Western US or in the rugged middle, you are there to witness and view things and not necessarily to enjoy the hospitality. You may want a room to essentially sleep for 8 hours and get fresh in another hour. So this 9 hour is essentially what you need a room for. For such cases, I think Best western inns are good. They are safe, secure, neatly staffed, good rooms, free breakfast and internet, not much hassles and bells and whistles. Their checkin / checkout is pretty quick and smooth. And their hotel family is vast - like any of the major chains. For more information, you can directly visit their site: https://www.bestwestern.com/rewards/

The one drawback holding me back to endorse this chain was lack of credit card. I had stayed in this hotel chain multiple times and had overall good experience. The credit card missing was a sore point. However, I checked recently and they have tied up with First Bank to offer a great credit card.

Direct link to the credit card is here: https://www.firstbankcard.com/bestwestern/landingpage/rewards/index.html

As mentioned earlier and through out this site and blog posts, we are not affilated with them or any other credit card issuer or bank per se. We do not get paid a dime for the above referrals and we are solely ad supported. However, if you do use the above links, maybe the stature of this website will grow and we can put in more useful info if such info arises.

Back to this card, it is a neat and nifty card - reminding of how Amex was once upon a  time and how Chase gives some good card offers. It is not some random paid card which gives you some free nights on days which you dont want and no free nights are available for the nights you want. It is way better than US Bank/Club Carlson family in terms of redemption offers, the credit card sign up bonus and the offers that they have put on. The cards are neatly classified into secured, personal, premier and business. On the free version, you get a 20,000 sign up points - enough for the best western inn in waikiki beach in Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii. Then there is $59 annual fee for the premium card which gives you 70,000 points and more than makes up for the annual fee. I would strongly recommend this version of the card. Then there is the secured card and the business card with 20,000 points. 

The premium card has its annual fee waived for its first year. From second year, you pay the $59 fee. The bonus points are creatively given in stages rather than just sign up bonus or spending x amount of money. For the premium card, it is 

25,000 bonus points after you spend $2,500 in first 3 billing cycles²+25,000 bonus points after you spend total of $5,000 in the first 6 billing cycles²+20,000 bonus points when you spend at least $10,000 during each 12 billing cycle period.²

It is a nice mastercard to have in your wallet. The points add up quite quickly as do the rewards and the positively oriented redemption options. The spend of $10,000 does sound daunting but you are gaining quite a bit of points in return. 

For similar cards in this space having such creatively staged rewards, Chase BA or American Express cards, the spending of such money does net you points in the region of about 50,000 to 100, 000. I would certainly rate Best Western points on the same scale as say SPG points, given the redemption rates in the big hotels of Hawaii or CA or NY region is pretty similar. The east coast and west coast spread of these hotel family brands are quite common and so is the availability and the point scale and category in terms of geographical locations near major parks and cities and beaches. 

Going into the hotel cards space a bit, this is a very offey space. Not quite exciting as Airlines cards space. If you are a newbie, certainly accumulate airlines miles and then go for the Hotels space. 

In the hotels credit cards, the big ones are Hyatt, SPG - both of them are pretty good hotels and nice points etc. Best Western Inn/ IHG family brands such as Holiday inn etc./ Hilton family such as Double tree, Hampton Inn etc. - they are all good. Better off applying this cards in anticipation of your travel. I wish they start a Airbnb card with safer guesthouses and something that is very rudimentary. As outlined in the start of the post, most people just need those 8 or 9 hours to replinish their energy levels, recharge themselves and move on. There is really no point in having anything other than basic hotel accomodations. Like other industries, hotels and likely they call themselves, hospitality services, have come to rely more upon customer services since real estate, room saturation etc have all played. Add to that, the younger millenials are gravitating towards Airbnb, couchsurfing and something similar where they share space with one another in exchange for rented services or shared services and you have a very tight industry with already tight margins who have to manage their costs in an ultra competitive market. 

For a traveller, I would suggest pool in points from all major hotel brands, that would give you the flexiblity to choose and go ahead swiftly with what is available and focus more on the fun part - planning on the actual travel and executing it! The major hotel brands that offer credit cards are SPG, Hyatt, Best Western, IHG, Hilton, Club Carlson, Wyndham.. and of course there is the whole bunch of inns and chains and the simplest way is to search them in online maps, go their site, check out and apply for credit cards. Likely you might come ahead by 70 or 80 bucks. In the case of biggies such as SPG you might well come in ahead by about 400 to 500 bucks based on the cities. 

New credit cards offers as of July 2015

The current cards offers that are good are :

1. Chase Marriott 80k points offer - however, judging by the general Chase offer vs this offer, I would stick with the  general one that you get from the Chase credit card site.

2. Citi 80k Hilton Hhonor card offer - This seems interesting. However the spending is increased. More importantly, hilton massively devalued their program which means your average hotel is going to be in the 30k/40k range. So this gives you at max. 2 nights. Hilton is no Hyatt or Marriott or SPG. I would not say it is really that much worth it.

3. Citi AAdvantage card: This one from the website is a good offer if you have about $7500 spending lined up.

The link from the Citi site is here.

I would not break sweat on any of these cards and would recommending just wait it out. This will also give some much needed cooling off period for your credit report and credit scores. This will put you in a better position when the bigger offer comes down the line.

Travel Inspirations!

Often time, we come across the question as to why do we collect the points? I mean really at a very basic level, forget about the cash back but many of us are in this for airlines miles or hotel miles mainly or some other thing which would help us reach that travel goal quickly. So at the core of it all lies the desire to travel and explore new geography, culture, history about a place and more importantly the nature and spiritual aspect of it. Meeting the people, having the local food, the travel part itself, just roaming around the planet, making new friends, checking out how different and yet same the world is, maybe checking out a beautiful part of this planet earth before it could be possible gone in this ephemeral existence. If you look at the big picture, from a very very high altitude, you will realize that travel is one of those things that will stay with you as a core experience. They say life should be made of stories and experiences and not just accumulating materials and human made stuff or accolades. The latter is pretty cheap and withers down quickly and it easy. The former though it really great. Nothing matches the majesty of the giant Sequioa trees. Or really even a place like New York City at night is stunning. So experiences and travel are what makes your memories and you as a person. 

Towards this, I came across a very wonderful blog which I wanted to share with you all. http://worldbicyclist.com/. Kudos to this person for simply taking time off and travelling so much part of this world. I wish and hope someday I am able to travel large parts of the world. Or at least the big countries and couple of smaller and cooler ones such as Nepal and Indoneasia among others. 

This person also did a cool AMA today on Reddit ( for those who know me know that I spent an insanely large amount of time on that site which I am going to cut down pretty soon ;) )

Link to the AMA: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3ay40s/ive_visited_125_countries_on_a_15_a_day_budget_ama/

Anyhow, have fun and keep kindling that desire to travel more in life!

Buying airline gift cards ..

There is no major news going on these days in the credit card world. Chase has tightened some rules around credit card issuance. Citi continues to put some good credit card offers. But no one had really upped the game. Then this is also not one of those time of the year with great offers. As promised at the outset and remaining true to this blog's values, if there are no news worth your attention or my attention, then there would be no posting either. There is no point in having a financial or credit card blog roll with daily 1 or 3 posts minimum to satisfy advertisement view page requirements. 

One idea that stuck me while meeting recent cards spending requirements is the buying of airline gift cards. While this is kind of obvious in that one buys gift cards of grocers/restaurants and shops that one visits often; the airline one stood out. While the goal of this blog is to generate points and thus free travel, often times it is good to bulk up on cards from domestic airlines which have a hub nearby. United or Southwest or American - all of them are good with hubs in many places. Southwest and Jetblue fly to a lot of destinations. In such cases, it is better to load up on gift cards from this. I fly southwest a lot and will be using them for sure in many instances. So it makes sense to load up on SW gift cards as they never expire. Just an idea- many of these obvious but we kind of miss them in our daily grind of the lives as well as not having a clear tip on what we can and cannot do.

Happy Memorial Day cards!

Happy Memorial Day weekend ...

For the long weekend, I am planning on exploring the local neighborhoods and get some local flavor. But before that, I was casually scanning the credit card landscape for any exciting offers.

The Citi cards from the previous posts are still available.

Chase has some good cards that are available for the next few days:

One is the chase business card:

https://creditcards.chase.com/ink-business-credit-cards/ink-plus-card?CELL=6KQR

The ink plus card is a good card but this year they have introduced it with an annual fee of $95 where as usually they do not have an annual fee for this card. But the points are now increased to 60k instead of the regular 50k. So kind of the 10k point offsets the $95 annual fee. Any individual can qualify as a self employed business. You just have to provide your SSN and address and mention your current income as self employed one.

The other exciting card from Chase is a long time stalwart .. it is a good United/Continental Card and has decent benefits. The annual fee is waived which is usually $95 while the bonus points have increased from 30k to 40k to now 50k!

Chase link direct is here: https://creditcards.chase.com/ink-business-credit-cards/ink-plus-card?CELL=6KQR

Other than that really nothing much going on in the credit card landscape. For those with Excellent credit score, visit capitalone.com as there flagship Spark branded Credit cards have a high 50k offer that is on for some time. Nothing super exciting about this card. But if you got nothing better to do and want to have a fun side hobby which lets you travel for free - go for it!

I am posting less on this site these days as I have ramped up my general finance blog site which will address the philosophy of finance to the millenials and Gen X and Gen Y crowd. Granted there are tons of resources out there but there is nothing that is clear cut and to the point. I am planning on automating most of finance and have a general gist of finance which will them remain consistent for the next several decades and require only minor tweaks.

The other blog site is: https://millenialfinanceblog.wordpress.com

Thanks for visiting this site and as usual leave any comment or contact me via contact link for any ideas and suggestions!

New cards from Citi with good sign up bonuses

From the start of 2015, Citi seems to be very intent in coming up with new and creative offers. The marketing strategy has been to use big bang offers to attract the new as well as veteran crowd. Like last year, when they came up with a 100,000 bonus offer for a Citi American Executive card, this year they did something similar with the Citi Prestige card. Note that both cards have very high annual fees, about $450 which is not waived for the first year. Yet, note the high degree of interest and applications that these two cards have generated implying that if you put a really good product out there, people might come out to buy. I am still on the fence as to whether to quantify this as a good card. I did apply for the Citi American Executive card last year and have more or less used this 100k points in various travel related activities.

Citi Prestige is a different ballgame altogether. My skeptical reviews are here. However, Citi seems to be going aggressive and released better bonus offers for two more cards.

All in all, here are the links sans any sponsorship and direct link to citi website:

1. Citi Prestige card: $450 annual fee, $200 statement credit per calendar year, 50k Thankyou points and that's pretty much it apart from some fringe benefits. Minimum spend is 3k.

2. Citi Thank you premier card: 50k bonus points after you spend 3k on the card. Annual fee waived for the first year.

3. Citi AT&T card: Now this card is interesting. There is an annual fee of $95, a free unlocked phone worth up to $650 from AT&T is awaiting once you spend $2k on it within the standard 3 months. It is pretty interesting card. I would give it that. I am not a big smart phone user but this card is too hard to resist. A 2k spend is pretty average for  most US households - rent, gas, groceries simply add up to that amount quickly in a month or two. If you are living in big coastal cities, then this is an easy task. It is as if you are going to get an unlocked Apple iPhone 6 or Samsung S6 for under 100 bucks. Not at all a bad deal if you have to get a smart phone quickly.

My order of recommendation remains the above three in the numbered order. Given that there is virtually no other provider right now with any exciting offers, it is rather obvious that most people, new and veterans are applying for one of the cards from Citi. In the first quarter of 2015, given the slow pace of the sign up bonuses, this seems a decent start and no harm in applying for one or two cards that Citi seems to limit per user.

Some better bonuses in the horizon..

After a really long drought (! .. not like the california water one :D ), it seems some banks are finally rolling off their sleeves and giving some real bonuses to the new customers.

While Chase has the official Southwest card at 25k points, one can easily get referred by friends to snag a 50k bonus points. If you need me to send you an invite offer, just put your email in the comment section or subscribe or just message me privately and I would be glad to offer you the deal. Read my review of this card here.

Citi started with the Citi Prestige card. I was not a big fan of it to begin with but all said and done, it is not a great card nor a totally worthless card. If you have a travelling itinerary lined up, this card could be a good addition. Just when I was thinking about this, Citi came up with another surprise. They improved the bonus terms in the Citi Premier card.

Non affiliate link is here. I do not get paid or am affiliated with any marketing companies or Citi or any other banks for that matter. This card was pretty good back in the day until Citi decided to split its 50,000 bonus points to two different years by spending $3000 on each. Now this offer is a return to the old strategy and seems like this is pretty nice in terms of attracting customers. From a customer point of view, this is pretty neat as this card does not carry any annual bonus for the first year. So I would highly recommend to apply this card anyway.

As you might be aware, the best airline cards to apply these days are the Barclays US Airways and the Citi American who are slugging it out. Remaining all airline cards are on holding pattern at the moment. The hotel cards have not given much incentive and the Chase IHG card is the way to go for best points at this moment. Given that there is finally some rustle in the credit card landscape, it seems that finally some big companies like Amex or Bank of America might wake up to catch up to Citi or Chase and come up with a big offer.

Base Minimum Credit card and other accounts

Someone that I know who is not interested in anything related to the world of finance, asked me what is the base minimum of accounts and credit cards which also serve as quite optimal in terms of getting rewards and points. Obviously, this person is simply not interested or has time for the bonus points. She much rather prefers to earn cash and spend them as per need. Not interested in having to juggle with having a big stash of credit cards in wallets or for that matter having multiple accounts, she tasked me with designing a very basic package of accounts. Now she is also with Bank of America and has been disillusioned with their fees and banking account structures in general. This task is quite easy. No bank - regional or national - is going to come close to your good old friendly neighborhood credit union. So the best way to have a good checking and savings account would be to have a nice credit union. A simple online search or using the maps such as Bing or Google would give you the nearest credit union. There are also sites dedicated to finding the nearest credit union near you or your zip code. To have this basic account is a no brainer. Sometimes it is also good to have a national level checking or savings account mainly due to access to the customer service when you are involved in international travel or to have a global banking presence. Though bank of america is good, Chase is another bank that came to my mind. Mainly, due to the fact that having a good Chase banking relationship is often an entry way to their credit card world which is often the best out there in terms of the rewards along with American Express. So it was a no brainer to recommend Chase. For savings account, nothing is beating the online savings account. A quick check in bankrate.com gives a lot of results such as Synchrony, GE Capital Bank or the Ally Bank or Ever Bank etc. I prefer going with the two known names such as Discover Bank or the American Express Savings bank. Both have good customer service and are quite fast in terms of incorporating the latest technology in their banking sites. Not that the other banks such as Ally are any behind. The rate differences are almost minimal from 0.90% APR to about 1.05% APR. This is anyway for emergency funds parking only.

Now comes the big question of which credit card to choose. After going thru the list of credit cards in this site, which is pretty much a filtered and sorted list, I thought I would go with the below:

Barclays arrival+  card( 89 ): Good ongoing bonus with annual fee of $89 waived for the first year was the main thing other than the 2% bonus which is pretty much the maximum for all-purpose rewards card. Mainly, this card is hard to get once you have a good amount of credit history. So better to get it immediately. See my other post about the order in which to get the credit cards.

Close Second would be American express blue cash preferred: Simply one of the best cards around from an awesome customer service team, there is a 6% cash back for groceries and 3% gas which are among the highest out there. There is an annual fee of $75 which could also be offset by the high rewards structure. There is a blue cash counterpart as well as everyday card which is simply not the cup of tea for many users out there who do not want to be bothered with going to various stores and loading money.

Bottomline:

Credit card: Barclays Arrival+ and then the American Express Blue Cash Preferred.

As an aside, I would recommend to apply cards with Chase though no need to carry them in your wallet on day-to-day basis. Cards such as the Freedom card or the Southwest card are always good to have.

Savings account: American Express Savings

Credit Union: Find your local one using the online tool.

Checking Account: Chase Total Checking

Citi Prestige Card - worth the hype?

Going contra is sometimes cool but going contra with logic is sometimes a solid perspective on the scheme of things that happen in the credit card world. Recently, Citi came up with the Citi Prestige card and upped the bonus to 50,000 Thank you points which are generally okay and if you redeem in American then you are supposed to get $800 worth of flights. Now travelling in American, getting flights and seats on them.. that itself is a pain. There is also $250 annual credit that can be used if you buy airfare and other incidentals such as baggage fees or inflight entertainment and meals. The $450 annual fee is offset by this is what the claim of many a blogger out there. Of course, the high referral fees is another hidden reason why all blogs are promoting this credit card left right and center. Do I think this is a good card? It is decent. It gives you access to American Express lounges. If you are like the majority of travellers like me, I would like to keep the transit time as short as possible and get home rather than sit near a juice bar and wilt away time in some lounge in some airport. There is a global entry permit of $100 or so. Again, a common feature with many cards and in the grand scheme of things, not really making too much of a difference. A few lines here and there is not going to break you. So it all boils down to $450 annual fee that gives you 50k Thank you points and $250 * 2 airline credit. If you have planned travel coming up, by all means go ahead and get a card but if not, is there a reason to invent travel and go just for the sake of miles and points?

Remember: 450 Annual fee. That is not waived for the year. You could close it on time before they bill you for next year. But still. 450. That is not chump change. In the world of regular 500 reloads, people become sensitized to 450 or anything under $500. Ha, I would recover that in a few reloads. But that is not the point. $450 is no chump change for a huge number of people. You are putting that as a fee. There are folks out there who are regular business travelers and get reimbursed by their companies. Many of course, do not have the time or necessity for such point accumulation. For the rest who do not have access to such travels and would rather prefer the short and sweet world of point accumulation, where does one draw the line? This does look highly commoditized and calculated. But more importantly, it is leading to real and perceivable change in consumer behavior of people like you and me. Remember the monkey is taught to do the tricks of buying stuff online and act in a certain way and after some time, it pretty much does that on its own. The whole credit card bonus points and cash back is just geared towards that. Make you use the credit cards more and  more so much that you don't even think about using cash and would rather just pay extra and return to your default of being "credit card nirvana" state. It is stunning to see how many otherwise reasonable bloggers are doing credit mile runs, going to china for a weekend just because of some few extra points or a $500 "mistake" fare while the capitalist producers simply laugh at the way the humans can be manipulated into relative action and minor changes in behavior. So maybe I might rethink my line on this particular card but I wanted to take a moment and recognize this aspect of having to simply pay huge fees so that there is an "offset" of some invented travel in future. Something that may well be avoided and instead, one can go visit the local library or local zoo or just sit in a beach or a park somewhere nearby!