May June 2016 Credit Cards

For May and June 2016, the credit card blogroll is lead by Chase Bank.
Chase has some good cards up their sleeve like the Marriott Card and Chase Ink Card.
The Business version of the Marriott card is offering the best bonus of any card for any hotel across the previous decade:
https://creditcards.chase.com/credit-cards/marriott-business-credit-cards.aspx?CELL=6TKV

That is a direct link to the bank site and this site is not an affiliate with Chase or any other bank or any affiliate company.

The personal version of this credit card offers about 80,000 points.
The Chase Ink card is also a versatile card that offers 60,000 points. Both these cards have no annual fee waived for the first year.
Is it worth it?
I would highly recommend both these cards over any other card in the market right now for the bonus points and are definitely worth it.

Runner up is the Citi Cards - Prestige/American are still good.

Rest of the cards for this period is pretty much the same as it was earlier-Nothing exciting!
 

Shoutouts

There are few blogs and sites which catch our attention and we subscribe  to it and visit it daily to get the view points or rather monitor the trends in a particular space - say credit cards for this site, or finance for other sites or travel.

So some of the recommended sites in finance are:

http://millenialfinanceblog.blogspot.com/

https://millenialfinanceblog.wordpress.com/ 

Mr Money Moustache Blog

My Money Finance blog

For auto deals: There was only place that is worth recommending which is www.autoslash.com

There are multitudes of other apps in both Apple iOS and Android where you can download them and try for their features. They might not be really great and simply an extension of what your text. word or excel files does but it good to have them handy but to tune off the noise you are better off just putting them in a document and then transferring over to a calendar or task manager and execute them from there.

Credit Card Diet

April is almost over. Last weekend of this month! There are quite a bit of credit card offers swirming around: PNC Bank has a new credit card; Citi has cancelled a lot of their sign up bonuses; Chase has implemented stricter rules though the Chase Ink card is still available with 60k points or 70k points if you visit in branch and give them the business code; American Express has also tightened its hold; lot of regional and local ( city/state/county) specific credit unions have average offers coming up - the best way is to listen to the radio stations or just search for the local banks and then apply in their site directly. But all in all, this seems to be a time for a credit card diet! 

Yes, this blog is going to be unique in advocating a credit card diet to most people out there. This thing has gone on for a while and like an obese person, many credit card appers have just binged on credit card apps willy nilly. And like an obedient restaurant, banks have served up the feast rather quite well. So now is the time to just cool off a bit, maybe run around in a beach or park, maybe go outside and do other activities .. or maybe just go shopping without thinking of a credit card. Wait! What is that ?? Well, it is the same free feeling that one used to get right after getting a job in their early 20s when all one could think was what to buy and what is the budget. While these days it is mostly which credit card to buy with and how much should be the spend etc. Just be free like the old days and go out and buy and have fun. Which is why we are celebrating the next few months as credit card diet months - a period of about 3-4 months when no matter what one is not going to apply for a new credit card. This will also be the time when the credit score will likely get back to higher ranges positioning you to better offers down the line. And the credit report will get a breather form incessant inquiries and you can review it as a silent period and bookmark it as a time when you did not have much activity going on. 

In future, we will tend towards having at least a few months per year when there is no credit card app. And also the apps themselves will be in silos rather than just apping 10s of them on a single day.  The reason being getting spaced out or edged out of this game as you accumulate more and more credit cards. The rules prevent you from getting too many points repeatedly and many banks will deny you points if you apply in the last 1-2 year. So all in all, this will become a more choosy game as times flies by.

March 2016 updates

For credit cards bonus signups, this early period of 2016 has pretty much dried up many quick spending options that does not cost you much. Some good old strategies still run while the credit card issuers themselves have tightened up the belt.

Sample this:

Amex is no longer offering repeat sign on bonus for any of their cards - personal or business.

Chase has begun very strict approval of their cards. There goes the top bonuses.

Citi is also having strict card opening process and not giving any new big bonuses.

The rest of the pack all fall somewhere behind all this. Is it a logical end for the people in this blog space? Are they evolving to more of a finance blog rather than just travel or credit card blogs that they aspire to ? Many of them just put daily deals and "buy tickets to europe" or "buy tickets worth $1500 for $1000" or something like that. I think those are pretty much click bait or spend bait articles. Yeah, they will fulfill the basic contractual obligation of having to publish at least 1 article per day as required by some affiliates and advertisers. It might require you to publish some images and silly captions under the guise of some informative article but cut thru the noise and it is just empty. In this blog, we vowed to never publish empty noise. If there are no deals, then no need to publish anything. We not depending on advertisers or affiliates gives this blog a rather independent and pure voice without bias. If there is good deal, we will publish it. No urgent deals or something that will require you to click on it and make a split second decision. 

Some of the current deals that are worth looking:

Chase Slate card: The online version is pretty good.

Bank of America/Slate/Discover It/Capital One Quick Silver Spark One card: All of those are good for balance transfer offers.

Any Chase cards with Hotels: Fairmont  and Hyatt are top of the line and better to apply them now given the tighter policies of Chase.

American Express Gold and Platinum: There are offers worth 50,000 points to 75,000 points directly from the bank site.

Few credit unions and banks have decent yet repetitive offers - nothing new.

That is it .. nothing else for now! 

February 2016 credit card updates

So by now, most people would have heard about the recent change ups in the way Amex handles its prepaid cards such as Serve or Bluebird among others - the primary tool for those that want to increase the credit card spend. It was shut down massively across for many people and blogosphere erupted one fine day about so many cancellations. This method is all but over with those that persisting with spending via serve or bluebird or any similar cards just inviting it from the big banks to shut down their accounts. So whats left? Well, it is pretty much legitimate spending that is left! Never ever do manufactured spend or needless spending and in any case the system has caught up to those that do and really the only avenues left are using the credit cards for just and legit spends.

Now with that in mind, let us look at some good cards going on as of February 2016:

Chase Sapphire: Pretty good for new comers with 50k points bonus offer.

Chase Ink: For those with business, with 60k points.

Alliant Credit Union: Yes, a credit union is finally coming up with something strong. They have one of the best offers right now with 30k points. Pretty high for very low spending requirement. Details below.

This is a pretty good deal. Lot of redemption options are there including cash back and booking for airlines. Details below:

The selection on gift cards are also very good on this site. And there is no fee on this card. So in all, a very good deal!

For Business users, Capital One has the Venture and Spark cards with 50k points offer.

There is also the better SimplyCash from Amex with about $250 bonus offer.

The rest of the cards are as listed in the top cards section of this website. No major changes so far in 2016. Let us see how this industry shapes up thru this year.

Annual Reports on Credits Cards, Airlines, Hotels and State of Travel.

So this small blog is by no means as big as some of the bigger agencies out there but we thought it would be a good idea to have an annual report sort of which summarizes not only 2015 but also gives some look ahead on things that one can expect in 2016. This is not extensively data oriented or nuanced but it is well researched and presents our views, opinions, ideas and our take on the state rather than present the reality perspective. However, for an average reader, this will give some sort of closure and a good perspective on not only 2015 but also the years that led up to it and how things will likely be in 2016.

Credit Cards: 

The main idea of this blog is to maximize credit card spend and rewards using various automated or close to automated means which would also be simple. Now, in the past the leading candidate has mostly been American Express. Any agencies out there will usually put them at the top across various segments. Rewards, just like their customer service, is no different either. So if you really want to not have to deal with a lot of cards and have just one, go with one from this bank and you are in good stead. In 2015, though Amex still leads the rest, the rewards are strictly hohum. I would not recommend applying for any old cards or go after anything particularly new ones at the moment. Discover has caught on with equivalently good customer service but not at all a match to Amex when it comes to rewards. Chase was as usual good. Like Amex, if you want to have one card with wider acceptability like Visa and Mastercards with Secure pins to boot, go with Chase. In fact, I would say they are good to have in your wallet and credit report in general. There are lots of cons too which we have detailed elsewhere but overall Chase is a close runner up to Amex. Citi was the surprise kid in 2015. Now, for those in 2000s know that Citi was the front runner for many years but got shanked in the financial crisis and they suspended many programs and cut down on credits drastically. But 2015 was good for citi lineup with many decent cards. We argued that some are not necessary or just entice you to give in for high fees etc. Nevertheless, it was good for Citi. Is it that one card with one bank that you can go with? I would say no. That would still be Amex or Chase in general. But if you have to go with Citi for whatever reasons, that card without doubt would be the Citi Cashback 2%  card. And that card can easily beat the best from Amex or Chase or rather anyone in the market at the moment. The only downside is no sign up bonuses here. Those are the big three. No major credit unions offers. Barclaycards continue to climb up the US credit card industry with more and more cards and good offers all around. They seem to be loosening up a bit after losing US Airways but have landed Jetblue likely. And they are good too. At least better than the ones below such as US Bank or Fidelity or MBNA or whatever. These banks continue to lag at the bottom.

Bank of America and its cards are still decent but dont expect anything out of this world. BBVA is a new kid in the block with good Amex/NBA partnerships. It is a good card for sports fans. Discover ran some interesting promotions. Capital One was Capital One. Still decent and conservative and an indicator of excellent credit. That is it!

Airlines:

The airline industry in 2015 had a good year overall but for customers the rewards could have been better. The miles earnings models are shifting to more revenue generation. Which means the credit card earning route is all the more valuable. But you have to know how and when to go with this route. Southwest leads the pack with best program and the best card in Chase southwest card. This is one card where one need not mind the fees at all. Jetblue is second with fantastic service but credit cards wise they need to really amp up the game. United is pretty good amongst the rest of the legacy carriers. American comes in after United and that is mainly because of the tie up with their partners British airways whose avios points are still good. Delta is as usual dead last and even if you pay for this bird, you are coming out pretty unsatisfied. Foreign carriers are interesting nice. A lot of them are pretty decent with miles but let us keep this domestic. Virgin America, Spirit, Airtran, Frontier et al are there and have decent programs. But where airlines differ from some other industries is that airline sector is mostly static and slow. Things dont change and are less inspirational. More competition is needed so that prices go down and rewards accumulate. Even if you look back in the last 10-15 years, this industry is not exactly the trend setter in its space or something that excites others.

Hotels:

Hyatt/Marriott/SPG/IHG are all pretty good and depends a lot on the location where you chose to avail their services. Lot of mergers and acquisitions happened and continue to do so. Hopefully this industry does not go the way of airlines and gets stuck in the stagnated route. New sites like Airbnb are really creating a dent in this market. Likely will continue to do so in 2016. A shout out for the Chase IHG card which is the only card with a free night for an annual fee of $49. It is pretty much the lowest of the hotel cards right now and we would recommend keeping this card if you are going to use a free night worldwide on IHG Chain which are pretty good with holiday inn and the likes. 

Rental Cars:

As is the line of this blog, we dont focus much on rental cars loyalty programs per se. It is one of those perks that if its there or you get a 20% off coupon, one just uses it. A big shout out to autoslash - a pretty nice algorithm that keep aggregating relentlessly to find you the best rates over time. I wonder why no one is doing the same for the hotel industry at least because that would be super tough to achieve in the airlines world - not technically but for the closed nature of this industry. I guess hotel lobbyists would also jump too much in arms if there would be more openness to reservations systems of a hotel. Expect Uber, Lyft etc to dent into this market and chip in the share so hard that the car rental guys will have no option but to cave in with way lesser rates similar to what is happening to taxi unions.

That is it! Hope this give you some perspective on things. Travelling for work sucks in general. Unless it is a different location and hotel etc. That adds some varieties and spice to your work life. The same old scenary and same old cramped plane - week in and week out just jades you. I think one can reasonably do travelling for about 10-12 weeks before they need a break and settle down to a more regular work travel rhythm or a work from home routine. For travelling folks, it would be tough to keep track of miles and often the preference should rightfully be to get to and fro destinations quickly. Same with hotel and other things. A best case scenario that is also humane for a decent travelling worker usually involves about 20 flights and with revenue based model that would give about 10, 000 points. You could wish the best case scenario of this being a southwest flight. Essentially this points can be redeemed for one or two short haul flights. Too much inefficiency! Forget about rental cars and the best in class hotel would give you something like 1 night free for about 15 nights or so. Unless you have a card such as Citi Prestige which gives you 1 free night every 3 booked nights! But then you might run into billing issues there. But keeping these things aside, I think hotel industry is also not up there in terms of efficient way to earn miles.

All of this pretty much lays emphasis on the need to use credit cards strategically, now more than ever, and the lead credit cards have over actual travel in the way one earns miles. There is simply something nice about credit cards rewards and redemptions which lack in the business travels. No matter how you spin it, those are business expenses and given a choice of your business expense, would you like to conduct business remotely and pocket in the travel expense or actually go thru the travel and pocket measily miles? In 2016, we predict the status quo would be maintained more or less. We will see some exciting offers, some changes, a few bonuses here and there but mostly the same.

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.