Happy Holidays!

So to all the dear readers who read this blog, Happy Holidays from the Honey Badger world!

We have not been posting a lot these days. There is not much traction in terms of good offers and the holidays were a big let down in terms of good offers. If anything, there were some negative news which I did not want to post here and spread the gloom around. The Amex Small Business Saturday was there as usual. And so were many other typical holiday offers like free gift card shipping and no fees. US Airways is running a limited time promotion for those who fly US Air - 50,000 points instead of the regular 40,000 points found on their website. There is an annual fee but the points are worth more than that. Southwest and United are on with their usual offers. So is British Airways. All these have been covered in the past posts. Many spending programs are bringing their axes down so Vanilla Reload is being discontinued. The PayPal program, which was not much to begin with, is also doing some belt-tightening as it is being hived off into a different entity or a separate company. Oh well, enough with this gloom and doom. On the plus side, this means more and more offers are being lined up in the cut throat competitive credit card world. There is a sign of credit criteria being eased by many banks. Most likely, we will see better offers in the first quarter as the targets have to be met by the banks. 

In any case, this is the time of the year when it is good to lay off the credit card for a while and focus on good stuff like the travel and fun. After all, we are doing this just for the memories!

Bank of America 5% cash back Offer

Bank of America has been mailing to its credit card customers about a 5% cash back offer this holidays. The categories are pretty broad and includes stores that sell Books, Toys, Electronics, Sporting goods and Department stores.

For more clarification, the codes are as follows:

The above MCC codes are helpful since you can ask the cashier about the code to which your card would be billed to and get your card eligible for some discounts.

The email is along the following line and read the fine print carefully. From what it seems, multiple cards could be eligible for this promotion. Since the category of stores are so wide and almost anyone buying a gift will have a high probability of visiting one of these stores it is free 5% cash back on top of the promotions that most stores are running during the holiday season. There is nothing in the fine print related to gift card purchases. So I plan to stock up gift cards and then use them at a later point of time.

The original activation email:

There is a $25 limit on each card, which means a purchase limit of $500. Since the average Thanksgiving/Holiday season gifts fall in this range, this offer is applicable for the vast majority of users. There is no other bonus category card across the board, including Chase and Discover or Citi, that have the 5% on such a broad range. Discover has 5% cash back for online purchases.. same as Chase Freedom which has similar offer for Amazon purchases. So in all, this card from Bank of America stands out as a real winner. I have this card and it is pretty versatile in terms of design and usage. Usually, Bank of America is not the first bank that springs to mind when it comes to big bonus rewards or category rewards. But this holiday season, Bank of America seems to have really done well with this program. There is quite a bit of Twitter and social media buzz around this campaign and good user adoption would mean more such programs in future.

Transitioning back to Blogger

There are advertiser issues and other issues with Wordpress including freedom of expression. It seems Blogger is a better home for this blog at the moment. I will be tweaking this in the coming weeks and playing a bit more before finding a final solution. If nothing works, I guess the only option would be to host it in a separate new domain. Maybe that is the best solution as that gives maximum control to bloggers like me to have their own creative space as well as freedom.

Recent Credit Cards worth applying

In the past month or so, a spate of credit cards came by. Again, nothing much worth applying if you are hard-core user. There was nothing exciting in the bonus world as the new cards were pretty much the rehash of existing card offers or they were discontinued for some time and again rebooted keeping in mind the holiday season.

The main cards and the links were as follows.

Citi AAdvantage card: A bit higher rewards than the original one. Right now, it gives 50,000 points but the kicker is no annual fee for the first year.

Chase Southwest credit card: Gives 50, 000 points after account opening and if you accumulate 100k points, there is a free companion pass which lets your companion travel for free when you book the tickets. This is one of the best offers out there. They generally recur it and based on past data, this offer should go on till at least April 2015.

Chase British Airways Credit card: A much better version of the previous credit card. I have this card and had to shell out $95 annual fee. However, this current version, for the first time has the annual fee waived for the first year. This card is good to accumulate points that can be used in American Airlines flights. Pretty much everywhere else, you are going to get dinked. With AA though, you get pretty good flight deals which surprisingly is not even there in the AA website - whether you want to pay in cash or points. Anyhow, for now, it seems a good deal. In general, this card is versatile and good addition to your wallet,. Never mind, the annual fee. It gives good gas points, rounds of lots of categories. So all in all, it is not a bad card to have.

Barring these three cards, nothing really has kicked in high gear as of yet. So for 2014, the big card was the Citi AA Executive card which so far seems to be the only 100k card, though with a reduced annual fee. The BA card - original offer seems to be still available where you can get 100k points but the spend is simply too high at 25k .. which is fine if you do not have any other card to put your spend on.

So, hang in tight!

Recent Credit Cards worth applying

In the past month or so, a spate of credit cards came by. Again, nothing much worth applying if you are hard-core user. There was nothing exciting in the bonus world as the new cards were pretty much the rehash of existing card offers or they were discontinued for some time and again rebooted keeping in mind the holiday season.

The main cards and the links were as follows. The links point to the direct bank account link and no referral fee whatsoever to this blog or me.

Citi AAdvantage card: A bit higher rewards than the original one. Right now, it gives 50,000 points but the kicker is no annual fee for the first year.

Chase Southwest credit card: Gives 50, 000 points after account opening and if you accumulate 100k points, there is a free companion pass which lets your companion travel for free when you book the tickets. This is one of the best offers out there. They generally recur it and based on past data, this offer should go on till at least April 2015.

Chase British Airways Credit card: A much better version of the previous credit card. I have this card and had to shell out $95 annual fee. However, this current version, for the first time has the annual fee waived for the first year. This card is good to accumulate points that can be used in American Airlines flights. Pretty much everywhere else, you are going to get dinked. With AA though, you get pretty good flight deals which surprisingly is not even there in the AA website - whether you want to pay in cash or points. Anyhow, for now, it seems a good deal. In general, this card is versatile and good addition to your wallet,. Never mind, the annual fee. It gives good gas points, rounds of lots of categories. So all in all, it is not a bad card to have.

Barring these three cards, nothing really has kicked in high gear as of yet. So for 2014, the big card was the Citi AA Executive card which so far seems to be the only 100k card, though with a reduced annual fee. The BA card - original offer seems to be still available where you can get 100k points but the spend is simply too high at 25k .. which is fine if you do not have any other card to put your spend on.

So, hang in tight!

Citi Double Cash Credit Card and Target Redcard from Amex

Earlier last month, Citi started issuing a new type of credit card which has a very good design and offers a 2% cash back effectively. They broke this into the standard 1% cash back on purchases and another 1% cash back once the statement balance is fully paid. It is a slightly clever marketing ploy while encouraging and rewarding those who pay the bills on time. Other banks such as Fidelity Amex or Barclaycard Arrival have long offer similar 2% cash back on all purchases.

The significant advantage that Citi has over all others is as follows:

1. MasterCard Network which has a pretty wide acceptance compared to the Amex network.

2. No annual fee on this card.

We covered some of this card here. It is not too exciting but still something that could be added to your arsenal. I guess if a good chunk of us do not apply for this card, at some point, due to small numbers and marketing targets to be met, the sales team at Citi would be forced to offer at least few thousand bonus points as a way to attract few big spenders.

In all, this seems to be a good deal for those who just want to swipe away without worrying too much of the credit cards as to which one would fetch maximum rewards at a given time. Honestly, there is not much too much difference. At the high-end, you have the Amex preferred with 6% cash back on groceries and this card gives you 2%. If you smartly apply for big bonus cards and divvy up your spend on other 5% cards, there is hardly a difference. In most cases, you could actually even come out ahead in 2% cards. Then there is this obvious psychological ease in not having to think too much about which credit cards to use at which stores.

Citi card link for those who are interested is here. This is a direct link to the citi bank website.

Another update is the Target RedCard. This is similar to the Amex Bluebird or Serve card. Amex used to offer a Target prepaid card while Target had its own Redcard which fetches 5% returns. This is a totally different and brand new prepaid card issued by Amex and the intention is to operate along similar lines as Serve card. So far, the findings with Target Redcard has been that it is reloadable with your credit card in any Target Location. That is a cheap, quick and efficient way to complete minimum spending requirements, though not necessarily to gain points. For those, you still have to rely on drugstores or grocery stores among others. So in all, it is a great addition to the roster of prepaid cards. Will have to wait and watch as to where to fit it in one's overall strategy. For now, I would suggest to hang in tight on one's Bluebird or Serve card while targeting big bonus spend cards that are likely to emerge starting next month till end of holiday season.

 

Eff Paypal

Seriously EFF Paypal. As a company they are not that good .. nor is any of the eBay or PayPal services in general. I have seen lot of reports recently about them cancelling accounts and in many cases keeping the money in the account for 180 days!

..gasp..

180 days!

..gasp..

Seriously, what is wrong with this company? With the talk of it being hived off from eBay, it would have had some sense to continue garnering its revenue. But many many users report that their accounts are being arbitrarily shut down.

Seriously EFF _Paypal_.

How to test the load of Paypal or Serve?

With the constant cycle of loading up Serve or Bluebird as well as PayPal or other prepaid cards such as Netspend or Green Dot or Western Union among others, the head goes into a tail spin as to what is being loaded where, withdrawn how and has the transaction posted yet? So, my computer programming mind, thought about automating or converting a part of this into non-thinkable ( and thus non-taxing to your mind) process.

How to test Bluebird or serve ( since you can have only one or the other ) ?

The questions that top the mind are:

- is there an unused gift card (slang used will be gc from here on) somewhere?
- as gc is used for many other options such as paying rents or mortgages via money orders, is this all accounted for?
- gc main card is say chase - so chase spend = serve credit + rent + mortgage + anything else such as bill pay options (Serve/Bluebird has a neat transaction search and filter feature on their site)
- From August/September, I am just running audits ( ha ha .. corporate style!) that would identify if +/- does not add up
- another option is the chase card such as freedom and then either bill pay chase freedom or just use it for other legit bill pay options so as to not invite scrutiny

Actual Test is:

- The inflow is from credit cards
- The outflow is money order + bill payment to credit card only now
- Test the online account statements of bluebird/serve/banks and bill pays
How to test PayPal?
- is there an unused PayPal card somewhere?
- did PayPal  load correctly into PayPal  site?
- did the money from PayPal  go to my bank account?
- did the money go from bank account back to the credit card account or some other bill payment options?
- main card here is a periodically changing card .. which right now is the chase ba card .. money from here mostly flows to chase cc and other bank accounts
- the main bill pay here is chase ba or other cards

Actual Test is:
- The inflow is from chase card
- The outflow is only bank account withdrawal for now and from there back to chase bill pay card
- The limits are USD 4,000 PayPal  cash card load.
- The place to test is the paypal.com website/ bank website and credit card website

With the closure of Amazon payments as of mid-October only these two primary options remain. It is in a way easier to manage this spend and track them. Like in all fields, the cream rises to the top and only the best of the best will remain and in true capitalism style, the non-competitive cards are going to die their natural deaths. There are of course, immediate emails and alert notifications that come to  me but I just wanted like a website or a dashboard where I could track or monitor all these things as they are automated or mindlessly performed.

Is there any testing or tracking methods that you follow? Please share!

Best Business Card Yet... with more points now!

The exciting news from the Credit Card world is the enchanced bonus on the Chase Ink or Bold Business card.

Direct link from Chase:

https://www.chase.com/online/business-credit-cards/ink-business-credit-cards.htm?CELL=63WS

This card is already mentioned in the best card section of this site. Normally they give 50,000 points which went up to 60,000 points in recent times. However, if you go in branch then the bank was giving 70,000 points. Now, for a limited time, this offer has moved online. So, anyone of you waiting for the right offer, this is the right time to jump. Most of the individuals in US can claim sole proprietership as their business if you have a valid SSN. You could rent your place to others or have some minor business activities and as long as you can justify the income, this should be a home run.

This card is one of the best out there and is Visa branded with Signature chip and good protection on rental cars among others. Best of all, you get the points in the form of Ultimate Rewards Portal which can be redeemed for cash at par value of 1 dollar per 100 points. You can get better value with car rentals and airlines bookings though. Basically, it gives you lot of options to consider and gives you more tools for your next journey.

A direct link is posted above as this blog is not affiliated with any programs where we get paid for Chase products ( or really any other products for that matter!).

Anything new?

Probably nothing. Citi came up with a 2% card back but without bonus and a great rewards structure, it was not as if having this card is a must. Honey Badger would recommend to stay put as there could be more exciting options down the line.

The hotel points continue to be devalued and overall raise a question about whether it is even worth accumulating this on a long term basis rather than follow a "apply card-get points-burn them" strategy. Any other way to accumulate points would add and keep your points alive.

Its good in a way that there is no activity here so that we could go out and see what else is out there in the world :D

Reload Cards Options

Quick round up on all the available reload cards or prepaid cards - which are the bread and butter of the spending strategies. This is the primary tool across all blogs and the main weapon in your arsenal to strategize your spend.

Vanilla Reload: This is what started it all for most folks. It is a very basic reload, prepaid card where the user pays cash or debit card to load money. There were few places such as CVS and 7-11 stores which used to load it via credit cards. But as of mid-2014 this option is pretty much gone.

MoneyPak: Another card that is being gradually phased out by end of 2014.

Paypal cash: Now this is a great card. So far many stores accept this card to be paid via credit card. Prominent among them is the 7-11 stores which accepts credit cards and most banks, except Amex, count them as gas purchases. Which means getting the 3%-5% category bonus. Chase ink and bold cards give upto 2% while the US Bank Flex Rewards program is known to give upto 4% cash back if it is redeemed for airlines. Though, US Bank does not have the best rewards program redemption when it comes to airlines travel choices. Hence, I would rather stick to the Chase ones - mainly Ink/Bold or the British Airways card. They all give back rewards on gas purchases from 7-11. Chances of some 7-11 accepting credit cards are quite high given that there are quite a few of them (about 25 in my area in 10 mile radius). There are restrictions such as just one $500 transaction per day per customer. These are not major league bad. I use them mostly during the weekend. The goal is to get the car fuel costs reimbursed. Even if I load 2 Paypal cards, worth about 1000 bucks, at $10 cost and $20 return from Chase, that is a $10 profit - enough for my weekend driving excursions/shopping and grocery finding around the town. 10 bucks gives you about 3 gallons at $3.33 per gallon, enough to net you about 3*30 = 90 miles or so. That is more than sufficient for a small trip. This card is also a go to card for many people. There is a limit of $4000 in this card per month. Not too shabby.

Just any other random cards:

Evolve paybucks : Stands out if you manage to find this card at some store and get the store to accept credit card at register. Most Netspends cards and other prepaid cards in that aisle fall under this category. It is hit and miss. And you do not want to be caught holding your money in this card where they have temporarily suspended it. So the best approach would be to stick to the brand names card.

Not really a direct load cards, but American Express Bluebird and Serve are well covered along with their less famous bertherns such as the Amex Target card.

If you find anything else, please leave it in the comment section.

Debit Cards

Why debit cards? Because some of us still like it and are used to it - the simplicity of it is what started it all. It simply deducts the money from your checking account and prevents any over spending. The best debit card programs are the:

1. Bank of America Hawaii Debit card: This used to earn pretty good rewards which got devalued recently

2. Local Credit Unions: One such was Perkins which also devalued their programs. Still check your local credit unions. I found Fulton Bank and Citadel Credit Unions to be a good one when it comes to accumulating and redeeming points.

3. Suntrust Delta Debit card: Again a decent card once upon a time, it is fraught with statement credit issues, account opening issues and just so many issues that it is really not worth it.

For the brave and more enterprising, the BankAmex debit card offers American Airlines miles. So does BankDirect - an online bank based out of Texas. Most of these seem decent options but beware - the programs are known to get shut down quite arbitarily and the redemption options are really not that up to the mark.

Bottomline, I would check the local credit union and stick with one which earns you between 1 - 3 cents per dollar spent. Niche reward points are more than welcome. For instance, my local credit union has redemption options for local restaurants which are quite generous. Since I frequent those places anyways, it makes sense to accumulate those points.

Apples to apples, debit cards do not stand a chance against credit cards. Decidedly banks have moved more towards the credit card berthern in the recent past for obvious reasons. Since there are tools such as Serve which allows to load $1000 per month via automation, I find it easy to keep the points running in some small credit card. It might not count for much but maybe buy you a free dinner every few some months.

 

 

 

Online Trackers

To continue on the last post about online tools to manage rewards

Excel: There are good providers such as Zoho, Google, Microsoft Live docs among a multitude of free services which offer online Excel programs. There are also a few ways you could manage it if you are paranoid about sharing the documents with large companies. You could put the docs in Dropbox. Spideroak or any of the online backup companies and share the link with only yourself. You could also password protect it and/or share with only family members. With the availability of these tools in plentitude, this section hardly needs coverage.

RewardsWallet: This is a pretty nifty tools few years ago when most airlines participated. However, like Expedia and Orbitz among others, many of these sites have no access to major airlines loyalty programs who would rather the customers visit their website.

 

 

Travel tools

I generally recommend home-grown tools such as Excel or Word or anything basic enough to manage your travel points. Honestly, even your notebook should suffice if you plan your trip well and want to keep it simple. There are a lot of online and offline programs which offer you free templates. It is easy to build one yourself as all you really need to enter in an online excel which is in the cloud is details about the program such as program name, expiration date and possibly a list of zip codes around which your travel is planned. Just plug-in the zip codes and check which hotels and airlines offer the best deals.

Most of the times, you would find the best deals online. Many major chains simply put them online and have the same info access to both you as well as their employees. I know that sounds counter intuitive as one may guess that employees or travel agents have the best deal. But really, these guys get the margin offers. As in, they get the deals based on volumes and hence work best if you are doing bulk bookings of corporate bookings. At which point, it makes sense to pick up the phone. For a normal traveler, single or with family, it hardly makes sense to try that hard. Though, certainly I am not discouraging you from pick up that phone and call to check about any ongoing specials in air or hotel.

Awardwallet.com is pretty good and so are a bunch of other sites. I like Reward programs sites that list down your points as well as earn you points on activities such as dining or using local business. I usually prefer going directly to the airline websites though. Most offer a multitude of tools that could be used to manage your travel.

To round-up, as indicated at the start, build your own, home-grown tools. It need not be something fancy but anything that is a combination of computer docs - online or offline that only you can access without the hassles of login/password OR simple index cards based tracker are really all that is needed. For scheduling, there are free calendars - again both online and offline.

The best tool that you have is planning ahead. Pick up two airlines and hotels and stick with them and accumulate crazy number of points and spend them during an off-season. Nothing really could beat it!

Best Hotels by Area

The hotel industry is ever evolving. What I do not get especially in the US is the fact that many of the mega Hotel chains such as IHG, Hilton, Starwood or Marriott sit on such huge amount of prime real estate and yet they would rather let their rooms empty rather than give you or me some free rooms :)

Anyhow, this industry had one of the worst loyalty programs which were revamped for the better in recent times, towards the end of the decade. I would not recommend accumulating any of the hotel chains points for long time. Few months would be a good exit point. There are some credit cards which partner with various hotels. But do not expect any gift card redemption option or sensible airline point conversion. The only exception to this rule is the Amex Starwood preferred card. Which is surprising, given that it is a hotel card at its core but seems to integrate well with airlines. The drawback is of course the hefty annual fee on this card. Another good option is the Wyndham credit card. I stick with Hilton or IHG (Holiday Inns) though I do go to Marriott at times along with other hotels depending on the deals.

So, credit card wise the best would be the Chase cards, Amex cards and the US Bank driven Wyndham cards. Hotel redemption wise, in the US, the best options are the Marriott and the IHG. Wyndham is decent and so is Hilton. Internationally, Hilton and Marriott have strong presence at multiple locations. Starwood is something that you could apply in a targeted fashion if your travel destination has significant presence of this chain.

In the Asia/Europe/Africa sector, you are bound to find a good amount of Hilton/Marriott properties. Australia is a different game while Canada has options very similar to the US. For South America, I would stick with known brands such as Marriott. There are lot of franchising and local corporate-run chains which tend to significantly dilute the service of other well known brands.

Finally, I think once in a while, one must experience very high end hotel stays. Westin is one such which is pretty much a good example of what a high end hotel has to offer. There is of course a lot of niche hotels which cater to the high heeled but in my opinion, it is better to not make an ass of yourself or come off as a cheapstake by bargaining about hotel points in the lobby of such big hotels. Usually, one is better off if a business sponsors you to the higher end of the hotel chains and get you reimbursed. The point redemption options here are not there or are simply not worth it. The business model of really top notch hotels depend on service and margin and is really not loyalty focused. You would pretty much find yourself in needless arithmetic when you enter this zone.

Best Airlines by Travel Segments

I will keep this short and sweet :)

If you are in the US, right now the best airfares are with Southwest Airlines and JetBlue. Not only these two airlines offer superior service compared to legacy ones, they are way better when it comes to performance, incentives, rewards flights and connectivity to major points.

If you are near smaller airports, check out Frontier, Spirit or similar regional airlines.

Legacy airlines: I stick with United given their redemption options and the fact that they have hubs at major cities. They run specials fairly often and seem to be better compared to the other airlines. If you have American Airlines miles, likely they would not be used well if you go thru the aa.com website. However, the trick is to accumulate British Airways Avios. That can be easily done using the Chase British Airways card. Since British Airways and American Airlines are partners, in the US, you can use Avios for travel in American Airlines. The real fun and an open industry secret is to use the Avios for short leg flights in American Airlines.

Often times, I have found 4500 points - 10,000 points as the baseline for many short-haul flights. Booking is fairly easy in either of the sites. And with BA, you pay less fees while with AA, you would end up paying $80 if you book within 21 days of travel. I would also check out other state specific airlines such as Alaska Air or Hawaiian Airlines among others.

Last but not the least, avoid Delta. The miles usually come from Amex (same as Jetblue) but the redemption options, for lack of a better word, sucks. You simply will be spending way too much money to get back a decent flight. Better option would be pay money upfront with a cheaper flight alternative.

International travel: I stick mostly with United/Continental and country specific airlines such as Lufthansa, Jet Airways, Singapore Airlines, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic or Thai Airways. Most of these airlines are connected thru Star Alliance or other mega partnership. They are roughly same and I do not recommend redeeming full-scale on long haul flights. Though, generally the airlines mentioned here have decent programs. With the coming merger of US Air and American Airlines, it would likely add more travel options internationally but do compare apples to apples when making decision between domestic vs international redemption.

Space Travel: There are no miles here but it would be nice if they offer some. That would net you some decent miles. So far only Virgin is the travel option. Speaking of which, I hear Virgin America as a good option while travelling domestically in US. There are few other companies who may want to carry you to outer space for a few coin.

Recent updates in credit card land

Well, given the drought of quality posts across many sites, it is quite obvious that the credit card space has been still and quite for some time now. No new big offers came by. This site was among the first to know and tweet about the the Citi 2% cash back card - a new card that was launched with some good design and has an advantage for those folks who just want to get 2% cash back no matter where they shop. This card is pretty good if you are the big fish who just looks at big sign up bonuses and do not want to second guess which card to use or make decisions at run time about whether there is a better alternative than to buy directly with a credit card at hand.

To be sure, there is nothing innovative about this new card as Fidelity has been already doing it with two flavors - Amex and Visa. There are other cards such as Capital One and Barclays which also give you 2% on all purchases. In the days of 5%, somehow the lower category feels inadequate. With 5% category cards and some targeted strategic spending - the kind that is outlined in this site, it is quite possible to jump ahead of the rest. After all, there is limit to number of new cards with big sign on bonuses and the number of times that you are going to get approved with a credit card. Also, you may want to save your credit profile for a bigger card down the line.

On and off, some offers came but none worth posting or meriting your attention.

Keep churning!

Car Rentals - Points or Cash?

Time and again, I have debated about what is the best way to rent a car?

Do you get them via points redeemed from your credit card rewards programs such as Chase Ultimate Rewards or Amex Membership or just use plain old cash.

I tried this out with various car rental agencies such as Avis/Budget and Hertz/National et al. The costs tagged at the end of the return has convinced me that you are better off paying them off with your cash. You could join the loyalty programs and simply get offers such as one day off or weekend rental off - programs which you cannot redeem in your reward portal. If you must use points, you could always redeem the points for gift cards and then use it at a car rental company. So use cash, enjoy the ride and save your points for other biggies such as air reward travel or gift cards.

Like everything else, it boils down to your requirement and what you got at hand.

 

How to use Evolve billpay and Money Orders

Evolve billpay is a pretty nifty tool that is available as of start of 2014. www.evolvemoney.com is a startup that lets you paybills using your debit cards. In an age, where one simply links one's accounts online and forgets about it, it is kind of pain to use services such as Evolve Money. That is, until you recognize the full power behind them. You cannot use credit cards on this site. Only debit cards and gift cards are allowed. Yep, gift cards. That is where the reptilian part of the brain should fold your hands and play with the fingers. The kind that a honey badger would do.

With gift cards being accepted, you could simply follow the templates and load up on gift cards from those credit cards where you could earn high percent category bonuses. Once you have the gift cards, simply key them in and pay off the bill. The whole setup is very easy and all online and not worthy of a picture. It is quite easy and the site remembers your billers as well as old debit card info. I use them for my utilities payments or internet payments among others.

The big bonus feature is it can also be used for some mortgage payment. Some months, when I have to make extra payments on the principal, it is much easier to log into this site and just payoff with a handy gift card.

What else do you do with any remaining gift card? Money order is the answer. While Wal-Mart and USPS are likely places, both of them might stop or already have stopped accepting non banking debit cards. Which means only grocery stores are the left over options. For me, the payments such as rent on an apartment is done by money order since the property management does not accept any other form of payment nor has any online interface. Speaking of which, there are some good online tools for rent pay such as WilliamPaid or RentShare but all of them charge quite a bit high transaction fees. If you don't mind them or are desperate to achieve a credit card spend, they could be one way. But if money order is an option, and in most cases they are, then it is quite easy to convert your debit gift cards to money orders using grocery stores. They charge between 29-99 cents and are quick and painless. Once you get them, remember to write down the name of the payee and put it in a safe place. You could deposit it using ATM or mobile apps in Chase or Bank of America or Wells Fargo or any of the leading banks with apps out there.

Money order is one handy tool in your arsenal with which to liquidate your holdings. Evolve money gives you a legit outlet to pay bills and accumulate some points in the interim.

How to Load PayPal Cash cards

Why Templates? gives you a set of valid reasons on why to use such templates or basic workflow diagrams on a day-to-day basis. To summarize, if you run out of big bonus spend cards (or soon enough you will), the world of category rewards aint so bad. You could make some decent money, though not as much as the 100k or 75k cards. But still, I think it makes sense to pursue this during lull times. The reason to use templates is to simplify your process and think less about which cards and where to spend. I just print them out and put it in my room or car. If you wanna go real agile (software programmers know what I am talking about), you could print it out and paste it in your study room or bed room. Trust me, it just frees up the mental resources down the line. These money loading business could quickly go out of hand with you not knowing where you loaded and how to verify it, which store to go and which card to put the spend on. The best way is to just write it down, the good old-fashioned way. Eventually, it will evolve to just a bunch of templates that you could be tweaking as these rewards structure, the way the prepaid cards are loaded and the credit card programs inevitably change.

Now that we have seen the Amex prepaid cards usage as intermediary, it is time to move on to other cards. One card that has often helped me meet the minimum spending requirements as well as the category bonuses is the PayPal cash card. The Paypal MyCash card is a form of prepaid card which can be bought from 7-Elevens mainly. Since Chase and Discover classify this as gas station, you are likely to get the 5% category bonus which in a given quarter, on a $1500 spend, amounts to $75 per card. That is not super much, again, but enough to go to that fancy restaurant and chug it all in, in a guiltless fashion :).

The PayPal MyCash card can be loaded immediately from the paypal.com/MyCash website. So it is very similar to the Vanilla Reload card network. There is a monthly load limit of $4000 which after years of bugs seems to have been fixed by PayPal (finally) in July 2014 where this limits resets at the start of calendar month.

The PayPal MyCash card costs $3.95 and is the least expensive card out there. And hopefully this card and 7-Eleven sticks around though many 7-Elevens accept only cash due to some abuse by over zealous spenders. It is an effective tool to meet minimum spending.

For category bonus, apart from Discover IT, Bank Amerirewards and Chase freedom, the Chase Ink+ or Chase Bold offer 2%.

Is it worth it or really any cost benefit analysis is there? At 2% its a bit difficult to justify. At 5%, it seems there are reasons to justify. There are some cards which offer 4% such as the USBank Flexperks, provided you use their redemption programs.

This is one of the main bread and butter programs for many including myself. This method gives decent payout. You are coming out ahead with 40 bucks after spending $1000 on the 5% category cards. So that is $160 when you are in full flow. With Bank of America cards, that is 3% instant cash back. Still that is decent enough reward points. Who would not like $80 after expenses per month for other stuff? It is like fun money or charity money or just restaurant money to try out new stuff.

Like in all other programs, use this one too with discretion and don't get shut down by PayPal or 7-Elevens. As long as you buy something and pay bills, you are using other services and hence would be in good standing with these companies.

Using Square Cash with Debit Cards

Why Templates? gives you a set of valid reasons on why to use such templates or basic workflow diagrams on a day-to-day basis. To summarize, if you run out of big bonus spend cards (or soon enough you will), the world of category rewards aint so bad. You could make some decent money, though not as much as the 100k or 75k cards. But still, I think it makes sense to pursue this during lull times. The reason to use templates is to simplify your process and think less about which cards and where to spend. I just print them out and put it in my room or car. If you wanna go real agile (software programmers know what I am talking about), you could print it out and paste it in your study room or bed room. Trust me, it just frees up the mental resources down the line. These money loading business could quickly go out of hand with you not knowing where you loaded and how to verify it, which store to go and which card to put the spend on. The best way is to just write it down, the good old-fashioned way. Eventually, it will evolve to just a bunch of templates that you could be tweaking as these rewards structure, the way the prepaid cards are loaded and the credit card programs inevitably change.

So how would you load money using Square Cash and Debit Cards. Just like the Bluebird or Serve cards, it is mostly done online. In fact, it is much easier given that there are no restrictions in Square Cash similar to the Amex cards. So I just use two emails, register them both online and two different checking accounts. Then I just one debit card to send $1000 a time into email account 2 and from there to bank account 2. Again, dont abuse or overuse this system. Once deposited, use this funds for legitimate bill pay or student loans. I use mine for sending mortgage payments from account 2. It makes it easier to manage if I have one checking account from where the mortgage payments are made.

How to Load Bluebird from Chase/Amex/Others Cards

Why Templates? gives you a set of valid reasons on why to use such templates or basic workflow diagrams on a day-to-day basis. To summarize, if you run out of big bonus spend cards (or soon enough you will), the world of category rewards aint so bad. You could make some decent money, though not as much as the 100k or 75k cards. But still, I think it makes sense to pursue this during lull times. The reason to use templates is to simplify your process and think less about which cards and where to spend. I just print them out and put it in my room or car. If you wanna go real agile (software programmers know what I am talking about), you could print it out and paste it in your study room or bed room. Trust me, it just frees up the mental resources down the line. These money loading business could quickly go out of hand with you not knowing where you loaded and how to verify it, which store to go and which card to put the spend on. The best way is to just write it down, the good old-fashioned way. Eventually, it will evolve to just a bunch of templates that you could be tweaking as these rewards structure, the way the prepaid cards are loaded and the credit card programs inevitably change.

In the last post,  we saw how to load Amex Bluebird/Serve from American Express Credit Cards. In this post, I am slightly tweaking the template to use other cards such as Chase or Barclay's as well as other American Express cards to load the Serve account offline. The limit is $5000 per month and daily limit is $2000. Though, to not really raise any flags, I tend to keep it in the $500 - $1000 range per day. The modus operandi is pretty similar. Chase Freedom for instance used to give 5% on drugs purchases. Chase Ink+ or Bold gives 2% (not much) or simply have very high sign up bonus spending requirements. Hence, I use these cards using the picture below and just execute them rapidly. For instance, the $5000 minimum spending requirement is entirely attainable within a few days though you have a 90 day limit to get over to that level of spending :).



In the coming days, I plan to put on more templates as well as possibly apps if there is significant interest which would make life easier to accumulate reward points.

 

How to Load Serve from Amex Cards

Why Templates? gives you a set of valid reasons on why to use such templates or basic workflow diagrams on a day-to-day basis. To summarize, if you run out of big bonus spend cards (or soon enough you will), the world of category rewards aint so bad. You could make some decent money, though not as much as the 100k or 75k cards. But still, I think it makes sense to pursue this during lull times. The reason to use templates is to simplify your process and think less about which cards and where to spend. I just print them out and put it in my room or car. If you wanna go real agile (software programmers know what I am talking about), you could print it out and paste it in your study room or bed room. Trust me, it just frees up the mental resources down the line. These money loading business could quickly go out of hand with you not knowing where you loaded and how to verify it, which store to go and which card to put the spend on. The best way is to just write it down, the good old-fashioned way. Eventually, it will evolve to just a bunch of templates that you could be tweaking as these rewards structure, the way the prepaid cards are loaded and the credit card programs inevitably change.

One of the hallowed programs are the American Express one and the ones depicted on the picture below is the American Express branded Blue Cash family one (so Blue cash Preferred, blue cash - old and new one). You could also substitute this with the new EveryDay card and EveryDay card Preferred. In each of these cards, you basically buy the gift cards/vanilla reloads/one vanilla gift cards/whatever from CVS/7-eleven/whatever and then load directly into your BlueBird/Server Card from the money kiosk at Family Dollar/Wal-Mart/CVS itself/whatever. Note that at the time of this writing, the Wal-Mart/CVS does not work as their softwares no longer support loading money. It is their company policy rather than regulatory or any such thing. Hence the reason I have put whatever, since one door closes inevitably leads to another one opening. You could use any of these cards and then check your point balances and decide for yourself. This is probably my bread and butter way to earn credit card reward points. This also seems to be the most popular one for the other bloggers out there. Again, dont over use or abuse it and just use other strategies mentioned in this blog and you should be mostly fine.

Also note  that Amex really does not consider 7 - eleven to be a gas station or a standalone gas station so likely, you would not be getting any points off that.

 

Workflow Diagram/Simple picture to load money from Amex Credit Cards to BlueBird:



 

Why Templates?

Once you are post the big sign up rewards phase and you just apply to them on the side, you are on the hunt for something more sustaining and gains you point in perpetuity ( or at least till the credit company kicks you in the rear :D). There are many combinations of stores, rewards and cards among many other variables that come into play. In this series, I would start covering a few of them. I would put them all under the "Template" tab as well as put it in the "Badge It" link. I think these are the unique points and features of this blog. I have seen no other blogs or forums which provides tools at this level. The idea to provide this tool is to give you the workflow which can be followed to maximize your rewards and spend in a sustainable way. Note that I am not going to post something crazy like double hoops (buying gift card A and then buying gift card B OR buying items and then returning them or selling them on eBay OR relying too much on cash back portals) because each of this step involves more extra steps and extra process on your brain. Your mental resource should be free and have fun doing this activity. It should be similar to doing your daily spend and getting paid to go to Disney doing that. Of course, with limited bonus points sign up, the category bonuses are the best way and in many ways even better than the big sign up bonuses.

So why do you need such templates and apps to make life easier? Do they make life easier at all? Or is it just go to grocery and pick up cards there and at CVS and 7-elevens along the way? Often times, I found myself asking what cards to use. Which stores to go? what are the limits? What is the best way to liquidate the cards? When to get the money orders? When to get the paypal cards as there is a limit of 4 grands per month on them? Which store to get your money order from? (Do you know Food lion gives money order for 49 cents - the lowest I have found among any grocery stores including Wally)

Now imagine, your Siri or Android or Cortona or your car or whatever suddenly becomes so smart that it has developed the artificial intelligence to track your habits. It automatically tells you that for this month you have yet to buy some more gift cards or money orders and then alerts you to the nearby drug stores or gas stores and also tells you in specific which card to take in and swipe? It updates all this info real-time. Chances are all these are being done by you. And rightfully so. There is no Robot yet to go to a gas store and show your id and get the card. Besides that wont work either. So these are the steps that has to be done by you. But what about other steps. Could it be automated by a software. Being a software programmer, my first instinct is to program anything that I find that I am doing or at least the ones where they repeat. But few experiments and side projects showed that it would be essentially just a bunch of business rules that need to be coded. Now, instead of over thinking this problem, we could look at it from a process view. In the enterprise world, not everything is computerized or automated. Many processes where the payoff is better with manual actions, easy instructions are laid off so that a human can follow these instructions. As a matter of fact, these steps are often so simple that any untrained human should be able to do that. The genesis of products such as iPhone or iPad were that any child would be able to use it without documents. And in such processes, the automation is done at a process level. So in essence, you would see that there are workflow diagrams or actionable steps which if you do then you reach a point or state. Repeatedly doing this over a period of time nets you a tangible benefit - in this case, good amount of points and cash.

Removing the stress and thinking factor from one of your most critical faculty - mental processes leads to looking at this activity in a fun way and doing more of it thus getting more points along the way. Your mental strengths and resources are limited. Attention span is drastically dropping. How we wish that there was a Staples Easy button for this task! ( or every other one in life ). The end goal of this site is to reach a state where we list or create those tasks, tools, apps and processes so that you just print them out and execute it like a robot. Thus freeing up your mental resources for the stuff where you could actually use it.

And that is why I am creating these simple templates. Print them and stick them to your rooms and cars (in the trunk of course!) or wherever you can view them. Put them in your index cards. Whatever it takes to just have them just when you need them and not before/after that. Customize them. Share them. Badge them or do whatever you want with them.

Best cards for gift cards

If you are like me, often time apart from cash back, the second best option is the gift card. Many reward programs such as the Ultimate Rewards from Chase or American Express Membership rewards which often best and diverse array of gift cards that are redeemable for hotel gift cards, car rental gift cards, airlines gift cards, amazon or any other retailer gift cards as well as restaurants. However, barring the cash back gift cards, not all programs have good gift cards in them. I have burned my hand in several local credit unions rewards program when they did not have good redemption options. As a thumb rule, the best cards for gift cards are usually tied to a reward program rather than a credit card.

As in most cases at the moment, Chase leads the pack of credit cards which have a good amount of gift cards in their arsenal through their Ultimate Rewards program. Second runner-up is the Discover Program which also has quite a good number of options. Topping off the third rank would be the American Express which lags only because some of their redemption options are not up to par when it comes to certain merchandisers such as Wal-Mart or Target,

So the list would look something like:

1. Chase Freedom: The added benefit should you have a checking account with them is the 10% bonus that accrues at the end of year. The other major benefit is you could transfer points between various members for free and in a rather painless fashion. Another mention here is Chase Sapphire Preferred.

2. Discover IT: The best feature that I think is unique to this card, at least when it started was its integration with amazon checkout process. Deducting the points directly from your amazon checkout bill is amazing and seamless. No bugs there! It just makes you want to go shopping at Amazon again and again.

3. American Express EveryDay cards: Mainly for the Membership rewards program, these cards have two flavors, one paid and another paid but nevertheless both accrue points into the Membership Rewards program. If you don't mind shelling annual fees then, Amex Gold and Platinum cards are the way to go. They have huge bonus points and category rewards on daily spend. But not as much as other cards that we will cover in future.

Carpe Diem posting model

Now many bloggers out there use different schedules to print their posts. Some use nightly builds or post schedule so that the twitterverse and blogosphere etc are neatly aligned for the posts next day morning. Some use paid bloggers - big ones from big companies who can afford it. Some use regular bloggers who just draft the articles regularly and then time it to publish it in future. All of this methods have common themes - they lack spontaneity and creativity. In the world of just in time, real-time information, it is tough to keep up with twitter type service if you were to blog so far in advance. Having a reactionary model based on social media gives less analysis time to actually check up on the offer and compare and contrast with the other offers and check whether it pays to participate in said offer.

Here is where we differ. We use carpe diem model. We blog spontaneously based on the most recent available information. We don't blog in advance. Rather than that, we collect all knowledge information at one go and blog that particular period till we have completely analyzed and broken down the options for you. That way, when the real world offers hit, we are pretty much ready to make on the spot decision on how this offer stacks up, whether to wait or move on and when to exit.

This approach helped us tremendously during the Spring of 2014 when back to back big credit card offers hit in the form of Citi AA Executive card and then the Chase Ink card. The Citi one started with 60k offer then scaled it up to 70k and then 80k and then finally 100k offer which is where we pounced and took the offer. The well oiled templates in this blog means we achieved the 10k spending within a period of 15 days. This led us to cancel the Citi card soon after that and get the $450 annual fee reimbursed. Bottomline, we came out ahead with 100k bonus points, $200 credit, $450 annual fee reimbursed, couple of entries into lounge - all with a short and quick 10k spend. Same thing with Chase Ink, though we did not cancel this account. It makes sense to hold on to this account for a long time. The 60k bonus points offer was a good one and it typically comes around June or July of a year. This blog gives you that kind of insight so that you know not to knee jerk react to any offer. Rather wait and chew on in, take our advice and then act when the time is about right. Only if we could do something similar on the stocks world!

Meanwhile, this approach is why the carpe diem model of blogging fits us. There will be times where this blog will have tons of published materials while other days there will be some lull. Which is pretty typical if you think about it. Not all credit card companies and banks line up with offers all day. They have cooling off period. Just like the Summer of 2014. They will wait for some time and then again back towards the end of the year, they will rake the bonus points and offers up. So we will fill in as per the need and not as per the affiliate demands or web hosting economics. Rather, honey badger blogs when it has to blog.

However, we do promise that we would blog fairly frequently and in between rather than long periods of silence.

Best Rewards Programs

This blog is US specific. Without too much blurb, the best rewards programs in the credit card/debit card et. al segment is the Chase Ulimate Rewards. It is easy to accumulate, has good credit cards in it and redemption options are great.

The top two

Ultimate Rewards program has lot of redemption options including cash, gift cards and most importantly transfers to other partner airlines and reward programs. This is an extremely valueable tool to keep your reward points from expiring. The program itself is simple and easy to enroll and available with credit cards such as Chase Freedom, Chase Sapphire and Chase Preferred. It is also available with the Chase Ink and Chase Bold business cards. Since this blog is not affilated with anyone at  the moment, I am not going to link all the cards. They can all be found in the Chase website.

Close runner up is the American Express Membership Rewards Program. Like the Ultimate Rewards, this also has transfers, cash back option (not too useful!) and the gift cards (some good and some not so much). Gathering this points is a bit of pain though.

Other Notable programs

Citi Thankyou points are very useful, especially when redeeming to Mortage or Student Loans besides giving a lot of gift card options.

The Discover Rewards Program is very similar to the Citi Thank you Rewards program in terms of redemption options. It has an added benefit of being directly redeemable at Amazon. This is a standard template for other rewards programs run by Barclays, US Bank and others.

The Bank of America cash back programs or the cash back programs run by regional banks or credit unions are also notable for their simple cash back rewards structure.

Most Recent Updates from Credit Card world.

All blogs have various links and posts which often gets outdated fairly quickly. It is a pain to maintain them so I am going to maintain this link as the most go to place in the internet - the one with THE facts about the most recent and up to date news related to the best credit card and reward program out there. I will maintain it on a day to day basis. So any time tweet or any online talk forum talks about it, I would come here and update it as long as it is the best deal out there. As is the nature of this blog, I am not linking to any affiliates nor any parent companies. If at all required, I will directly link to the bank which issues the credit card. This helps the site stay hygenic.

Without much adue, the best credit card program out there today for bonus is:

Personal Sign up Bonus:

Chase Saphire Preferred (fees waived for first year)

Barclays Arrival+ Card(fees waived for first year)

American Express Gold/Platinum (if you dont mind the fees)

Personal Ongoing Basis:

American Express Cash (Old one gives 5% cash back after $6500): Nice rewards, category bonuses and a simple, basic card

American Express Blue Cash Preferred (6% upto $6500): Has annual fees but nice rewards!

Chase Freedom : Nice rewards, category bonuses and a simple, basic card

Discover It : Nice category bonuses

Bank of America Cash Rewards - Neat and clean reward structure

Business Sign up Bonus and ongoing basis:

Chase Ink+ Card

Chase Bold Card

Face it, at one point the bonuses are going to dry up or you are going to be banned from applying. So the best way to evolve and graduate to next level would be to get the cards with good rewards on ongoing basis. So say you load up lots of gas, then go for the 5% gas rewards card. As you can see, there is no one best card. Different cards do different things well. As a consumer, you cannot jugle between cards frequently. Hence, it makes sense to keep a few of them for specific purposes. For instance, if you shop at Brooks Brothers, no card from any issuer is going to beat their store brand card. No card will beat the Exxon Rewards in Exxon Mobil Stations. So, individual spend matters a lot and this blog will just list down all the cards. It is your job to find the best offers and best cards that suit you! Having said that, we will make it obvious and the above cards are something that would perform well on an average basis. These are kind of the o(log n) algorithm average case performance. For the best constant time performance, analyze your spend using tools such as Mint.com or YNAB  and then target anything over $200 for niche rewards.

How to keep points alive?

In the previous post, we saw how to have a simple, home-grown rewards tracker where you just enter the program name and the expiration date. In this post, we will explore this more to make this productive, simple and actionable to you. One thing I have found to be very useful is having an online doc. That way you can access the document regardless of the device or the OS that you are on. I am usually on a ton of those and lots of OS in every single laptop and not to mention office and remote access. The doc itself, as we saw last time, need not contain any confidential data and just have the expiration dates across each program. Now as you enter this document, feel free to include any targeted programs that you think you might need in say 5 years from now. Alaska Airlines program is one such for me. It had 0 points for close to about a year and then got few hundred points from various promotions. I just plan to keep it open for few years and then scale it up as I plan a trip to Alaska. But I don't see that happening for years since I have a very specific Aurora related reason to visit Alaska. Not to digress but the time (specific month in a year) and duration ( new moon day) are highly limited. Hence, I plan for such trips and wait patiently accumulating points for such trips. Such programs can make entry into your excel so does the airlines that you might take weekly or regularly for business purposes or for visiting family.

Now, as soon as you enter these values in an excel document online, Immediately note it down in a calendar tool that you regularly use like Outlook or Google Calendar. Set a weekend entry for a month before that. This particular month, transfer some Membership Rewards or Ultimate Rewards points to the said account. Usually those are in increment of 1000 points. If that sounds too much or you are in no position to spare that much points, check the rewards dining program of the said program. Chances are it is enrolled in Rewards dining program - a concept in which you go to locally listed restaurant from their website and spend say 25 bucks. Since one dines out here and there, it is just a matter of choosing the right restaurant and then putting that money on a credit card. Make sure that you enroll this credit card in that Rewards program so that when you spend $25 dining out, similar amount of miles is posted in your enrolled rewards program. And you should see that the expiration date has been reset in your program by another year. It is a simple, quickest and most frugal way to keep your points alive. It is very efficient for long haul mile gatherers. I am targeting one United mileage account to have a million miles so that some day in future I can take a really expensive international air trip for free. Posting miles intermittently also has the added advantage that your account will live longer and have a larger shelf life. It is always nice when the customer service rep. says: "Thanks for being a member since 2002". They pay more attention to you and also might wink on that seat upgrade or give access to a lounge for free. Seriously, this has happened to me. Multiple times, JetBlue bumped to an earlier flight. American airlines gave me lounge access while Southwest gave free vouchers.

So keep them all alive if possible or as many do, just target a few and keep them alive. Personally, there are so many options out there and limited opportunities if you target a few that I think it makes sense to target all of the airlines. For instance, I am no fan of Delta or US Airways but their partners are pretty good and might fly on your route. But I do accumulate them if they are just a few clicks away. Better than me spending that time on Reddit or Wikipedia. Or you could always donate the miles to charities. So you always have the options down the line as to what to do with all those hard-earned miles :D.

Bottom line: The best two-way to keep your points alive: transfer from Ultimate Rewards or similar programs OR enroll your credit card/rewards program into a Rewards Dining Network program.

Some Dining Network link:

http://www.rewardsnetwork.com/ : American, Delta, United among others

http://www.rapidrewardsdining.com/: Southwest

If you have any suggestion to keeping your points alive, please put them in the comment section. Happy Dining for keeping points alive!

 

August app run

In the latest app run in August, I checked out few hotel cards. The ones that stood were the Marriot Chase Rewards, Citi Hilton Signature (especially since there is no annual fee) and the Amex Starwood cards.

On the cash back or travel cards, the one card that has rivalled the Chase Sapphire preferred is the Barclays Arrival Card. They have two flavours - one with 20k sign on bonus and another with 40k bonus. The 40k bonus is valued at roughly $500 worth of travel redemptions on certain airlines. The points earned are valued at 2.2% as the arrival plus card has a return of 2% and can be redeemed for extra 0.2% for travel. This is a good card to have in the wallet, though a little hard to get approved. So the best advice here would be to apply for the Barclays card as soon as you begin applying for various other credit cards. Not having much credit history tends to give you an upper leg in getting the card approved.

Barclays arrival plus card can be found here.

The Citi Hilton Visa Signature, 60k bonus point offer is the best one available. Link can be found here.

Legal, Privacy, Disclaimer bbblah ...

So, in a nutshell, in layman version:

1. This blog is not liable for anything

2. This blog is not liable to anyone

3. We are not affiliated with anyone. In true startup altruistic mentality, we are just going to link the best credit cards and offers and DIRECTLY link them to banks and not via any third party links.

4. We have to eat too. So likely we will have a different link for affiliates and inform our readers of the same if and when we link them.

5. We wont do any sneaky sub-text links or some such to get few bucks of referrals.

6. Transparency would be key for us and we are open for improvements and change. If you feel strongly about any content and want us to change, please reach us out here.

Affiliate Disclosure

As of July 2014, we are not affiliate with any companies. We have no relationships with any banks, finance companies so we are not hawking credit cards or bank accounts. Though these are responsible accounts to open for any one, right now, we are not focussing on geting you on the bandwagon on some company so that we could earn some commissions. Though there is nothing wrong in that, there is a conflict of interest and depends on the blogger to tread it carefully on the site. Part of the reason of this site was to sidestep all such bloggers out there who provide travel and other info and link you to various sites – usually ones paying the highest payout at the moment. Our philosophy is to grow and gain good traction amongst loyal readers. Beyond that, we will just continue what we enjoy doing most – which is to provide the most creative tools out there for maximizing spend. We are not going into “manufactured spend” or outrageous strategies which would involve buying/selling and move you from your real life. Rather the intention of this blog is to minimize such steps and hopefully we all reach a point where we are spending less than 10 minutes in this and another say 10 minutes looking into finance and so on. We do this during the work week, during work hours and leave the rest of the time for other pleasurable things such as fun and family. Hence, dont expect “breaking news” from us during weekend! As part of getting you the latest info, I would also be scouring the twitter and online forums to get you the best link. As a rule, most links that would be in my sites, would directly link you to the bank. This keeps things neat. Affiliates are tough to get by, they have conflict of interest and I dont want this blog to convert into amateur content site with dumb comments under the guise of hilarity. Nor do I want contextual ads. Nor creatives or links to banks and credit cards when it is much easier to do a quick internet search and get the best links yourself.

Many times even when you get the links, the banks do not honor the points mentioned in a flyer as it is not targeted at you. Taking screenshots etc are not a worthwhile endeavour. There is no point is hustling and haggling with a poor customer service rep from a big bank.

Better yet, follow these strategies:

1. Select the card or bank account which makes most sense to you.

2. Visit their website directly from our website

3. Call the representative and courteously ask for any promo or bonus offer. Most often, they would honor or point you in the right direction.

4. Before calling, do a simple internet search using different search engines, social media searches and gather the highest bonus information for your product – credit card or any card or bank account. Just keep them on the side after listing them.

5. Compare notes with what customer service rep says with this list. Usually they will give you a good offer if you have good credit and have not pissed them off in the past. If not, take some time to build a good relationship history with them. In the long run, it will pay huge dividends.

6. Settle down on one good offer and dont worry about the lost offer or that you are getting few thousand points less. The higher payouts are anyway highly targeted and built on a model that only so much applications would get approved. Remember, they are on a budget too.

7. Dont worry too much about this hustle as there is a next one right around the corner.

8. … does this ever end ???

Remember, it is not the end of the world. Hustling requires time and patience. It happens only over time. There is no perfect algorithm for this, Even seasoned hustlers and point collectors or milers make mistake. It is just a side bit. So dont beat yourself up. There is always tweaking and continous improvement needed. There is change to deal with in an era of rapid information changes and flows. Change is the only constant in this game of rapid and contigous evolution.

My Philosophy

My philosophy behind this blog is simple: provide tools, apps, strategies so that there is less chaos and confusion and more actionable items which the readers can simply follow to maximize their gains.

When there are lot of credit cards and rewards, there is a lot of if / else that can be done which change over time and it is hard to keep up to date on most of these. For most people, reading up flyer talk forums or many of the forums is not possible. For me personally, I would not wish to devote more than 10 minutes a day on this. Even that would be hard pressed at times. Though there are micro blogging tools and readers to aggregate data, it is often hard to keep up. It is similar to technology world. On top of that, there are simply too many information streams to keep track of. This site would not be able to keep track of all that but it is a niche, highly focussed site on credit cards only. It is not going to hide behind travel or any such flavor blogs. This is a credit card blog. Maximize spend using the strategies we outline here is the key mantra. As this evolve, we might follow similar philosophy to other blogs which we will link out here.

There are tons of blogs out there on variety of topics. There is no point in rehashing or repeating them over. No point in just presenting old wine in new bottle – new format or new presentation styles or some such. So no “mobile” version or different media versions would be there for any of these new blogs. They will have something new or at the minimum strive to reduce the noise out there in information highway.

Individual airline rewards tracker

For those that is not there in other apps such as Rewards wallet.

There are some good softwares such as AwardWallet, Rewards Wallet, various apps in the mobile stores, all of which essentially pull the latest points and their expiration dates from various hotels, airlines, rental points and anywhere they provide points. For me, the best way is to use the points as soon as possible or work towards a goal - like say a 4th of July vacation or labor day vacation. Such planned vacation and activities are easier to track, set a goal and reach the goal. While sometimes it is worthwhile to live the life and just do air travel and a mini vacation spontaneously. The point is use the points rather than keeping them there. Now, it is quite possible that at a middle stage of collecting points, you just are not sure where and when to spend these points. At the time of this writing, I have a few hundred points with Chase Ultimate Rewards, Amex Membership Rewards and few cash balances here and there. Cash ones are the easiest since you just apply them in your next statement balance while the points are sometimes hard to track in the daily grind.

For the points, the apps are a very helpful option though they come with limitations too. For instance, AwardWallet, one of the leading app trackers that had some big programs such as United, Southwest and JetBlue at one point. Subsequent policy changes on the airlines part means this APIs were closed. APIs Basically the interface from which the outside apps get information about your mileage, expiration dates and other information. This leads to having a ton of apps for such as basic purpose of looking mainly at the expiration dates. Now, if you look at the basic features of these "apps", they are mostly enhanced or glorified excel. Forget about the recommendations or various pie charts and views and what not, at the root these are just data manipulation on two values : your mileage expiration dates and your actual mileage.

For simplicity, I just put them in excel. Now to qualify to make an entry in excel or to come in the current sheet of excel or the topmost view, given the limited attention span I have, I just list down the airlines or places where I have the big rewards. Big Rewards are anything more than say 5000 or 10000 points, values at which I get at least one free ticket or one free night stay among others. Anything less than that, I would rather be reminded by the company about it and then I act on it. For instance, Delta - an airline with the stingiest and most uncool rewards programs on the planet, sent me an email about my remaining 5000 points which were due for expiration. Like the 10,000 and 15,000 points before that which I donated to charity, I donated these too. No point in tagging this long or keeping them alive. I avoid flying Delta and when I have to on a free ticket, I would rather get a sign-up bonus and then use it and then discard it. The Delta program makes it difficult to cash your rewards and go upwards for 40k points for even short-haul flights. Back to the rewards tracker, it makes sense to put down only your favorite programs or the ones that you are focussing to build maximum miles on or the ones where you happened to accumulate huge points.

Open a Google or Zoho Excel doc or any online doc and then enter your program name and just the expiration month and year. This would give a quick and clear view on the top programs that you are enrolled in and the date by which these points are going to expire. It also does not lead to information overload and give you a ton of other reward programs that you just enrolled in some promotion to clog your sight. It helps focus, limits values. Once in a few months, do log into all the accounts and check for promotions and ways to accumulate points. Many give you points for social media participation or spending on dining programs among others. This way you keep the point balance alive. This is the topic which will explore in the next post.

Bottom line: Do not get too caught up on the apps. Fill them up once and watch them once in a few months. Also login to said programs and keep track of any small miles here and there. For the miles that matter to you, simply put them in an online doc with expiration date next to it.

How to Load Serve from Chase Cards Online

Why Templates? gives you a set of valid reasons on why to use such templates or basic workflow diagrams on a day-to-day basis. To summarize, if you run out of big bonus spend cards (or soon enough you will), the world of category rewards aint so bad. You could make some decent money, though not as much as the 100k or 75k cards. But still, I think it makes sense to pursue this during lull times. The reason to use templates is to simplify your process and think less about which cards and where to spend. I just print them out and put it in my room or car. If you wanna go real agile (software programmers know what I am talking about), you could print it out and paste it in your study room or bed room. Trust me, it just frees up the mental resources down the line. These money loading business could quickly go out of hand with you not knowing where you loaded and how to verify it, which store to go and which card to put the spend on. The best way is to just write it down, the good old-fashioned way. Eventually, it will evolve to just a bunch of templates that you could be tweaking as these rewards structure, the way the prepaid cards are loaded and the credit card programs inevitably change.

This post details about how to load Credit Cards and Debit cards money into Serve or BlueBird from American Express online. Note that there is a limit of $1000 as of now. The process is fairly straight forward and should not ideally require a picture below. But in the interest of just having it as a process, I put them in a diagram. I refer to this picture and open a spread sheet where it mentions whether this action has been done for this month. If not, I simply log into the Serve website and then set up an auto pay using the Add Money Settings for the next 5 days. Then check back again after a week, update my spreadsheet. Rinse and repeat every month.



Unlike Bluebird, Serve allows loads online up to $1000 from both a credit card as well as debit card. If you have ISIS Mobile payment, this limit is bumped by $500 each.



The debit card program is similar to the credit card one. For Amex prepaid cards, Serve and Bluebird, you have to call them and verify your identity before they allow your cards to be linked. Hence, I just stick with cards that I will use for a long time. For credit cards, the Chase ones or Citi ones are usually good and earn points while Amex credit cards don't earn any points. For debit cards, the best ones are the local credit unions or ones like Fulton Bank or any other regional banks. I am yet to experiment on Airlines debit cards though they seem to earn 2 points per dollar spent.

Is it worth it, one may ask? Well, that is up to you. If you look at an annual basis, that is $120 on one card. So for credit as well as debit card, that is likely $240, though you may fall short on the debit card portion but still you may get something like 2500 reward miles. All for just routing your bill pay from your debit card to Serve card. For credit card, the $120 per year could be used to splurge. More often than not, you could redeem it for restaurant gift cards or Amazon cards or anything. To put it in perspective, this is about the same amount that you would get charged if you were to use an average active mutual fund in the US on an investment of about $10,000. So it might not be a lot in the grand scheme of things, but still it might get you that new gadget or round off that much-needed rewards for a plane ticket.

Got a Twitter Handle

Twitter is the primary form of communication for this blog. So the best way to reach me and the other authors of this website would be to simply use the twitter handle that can be found on the right hand side of this site or here:

@creditsteroids

Or directly click on the link below:

https://twitter.com/creditsteroids

The main goal here is to spend money on credit card as fast and effecient as possible and return back to my own time. Then travel with collected points to every place possible.

Rinse and repeat.

Blog Main Link

http://creditcardsteroids.wordpress.com/

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This blog will serve as an ancillary host for the main blog site:

http://creditcardsteroids.wordpress.com/

Power of automation

For those dealing with computers on a day to day basis, it is common knowledge that computers, applied scientific creations and technology, robots etc are tools that help automate various aspects of life thus allowing humans to do what they do best - sleep like a bear. Honey badger really likes that concept and tries to get all its eating/sleeping/spending/living habits out of the way so that it can remain in its state of iowa (which is blissful state of ignorance and being) as soon as possible. There are so many activities and things to do in life. There are the good stuff like fitness, yoga, travel, experimenting on concepts such as minimalism, learning finance and spirituality or simply helping out other humans and pursuing math and science and so on .. (there is also TV :D ). While not aspect of life can or should be automated, it is possible to achieve a balance which helps your mind being mindful while keeping oneself engaged and on. Take the example of driving - in my view, do I like shift stick manual driving? Probably no, that is a bit too much work. What about driverless car - again no. Not due to lack of trust on technology but it is simply nice to drive oneself and get that experience. It is kind of a yoga in itself and takes off your mind from its current context. Maybe at a later point of evolution and time, with a particular activity such as exploring maybe driverless car looks enticing. But, I would really like to be in a spot where I do driving for the sake of it and not because it is stressful. There is already a driverless car in place - it is called train or hiring another human as driver. I think technology can aid or help as a tool. To completely automate it and treat it as a black box kind of takes the fun. Of course, to each his own. There is nothing wrong in having a view and application consistent with one's own comfort level. In the context of credit cards, there are people who automate the credit card spending and keep track of things in their minds or in excel sheets. Frequent changes means frequently revising all this. A simple case of changes that happened in 2013-2014 can be tabulated as follows:

1. The sign up bonuses came in targeted and in certain periods of a year
2. The tools mainly used such as reload cards underwent drastic changes in terms of fees, locations where they are available, locations where they frequently ran out, how they could be loaded
3. Some of the main tools such as Amex Serve card or Bluebird or Paypal or Netspend/Go/Vanilla reload kept changing the rules about how they can be loaded - some stores accepted credit cards while some wont. 
4. Walmart accepted loads on the prepaid cards at first and then stopped
5. Same with CVS
6. Same with ... you get the gist!
7. Online bill pay service stopped or limited number of users per service

In the meantime, the customers had their target of spending 5k to 10k within 3 months would get fatigued with too much gift cards at hand and less money to spend. Not everything can be or should be automated. For instance, I had some minor automation in some online sites to load money from a certain credit card. Not only the site changed its rule regarding the loading limits and automation, the credit card itself fell out of favor in terms of points raked. Now, on a given day with a busy work schedule takings its toll on mind and body, it is difficult to keep tab on such things and make necessary adjustments. Let alone missing opportunities, sometimes automation at this level becomes a burden. Those with software background can appreciate the negatives that too much automation cause to a process. Hence the approach of this blog is going to be flexible. There are no written rules in the land of hustling, no optimization, no crying over missed offers and so on. There is no point in being rigid. Rather best to adapt and use a tool well. This blog would give well crafted images - essentially flow charts or work flow. One can mindlessly , like a drone , simply execute the steps on the way without thinking and reap the benefits of strategic credit card spending. Some day when there is a computer which will do some of this via open API, it would make sense to have a program that reads this image and converts that to point earning action. Till then, we would just change and adapt as per need.

The image instructions would not be as simple as loading an app or getting a code to scan on a store. Those are unit actions in themselves which us humans can do quite well. But when it comes to having to chose between 5 stores to load, 5 cards to choose from, 5 stores where they can be purchased and then keeping track of these, you may want tools that help you achieve these in under 10 minutes time on a weekday. That is the aim of this blog.

Bottom line, look at the images that come up on this site and execute them. If this gain traction, I might even come up with a few apps which help you give the tools require to manage them well. The tools would be generic enough for beginner to advance level folks to use. Aim is simplicity, ease of use and learn, easy to use quickly and highly customized solution to a problem which simply solves the problem. The aim is to reach a balanced level of automation in a moving goal post such that it optimizes our time and effeciency. 

Some tracking apps such as reward wallet are good but they dont seem to integrate with a significant number of airlines or hotels. Of course, many folks counter that with an excel that is customized and has important information such as end dates, expiration date of rewards or annual fee due dates among others. A better tool would be to remind you to use a set of credit cards every six months or simply transfer over 100 points every six months from some of the better reward programs such as the Amex Membership rewards or the Chase Ultimate Rewards program. 

As of 2014, some tools are better used by human minds rather than computers. They are simply better computers than man made computers. For instance, looking at a moving story from a charity organization and getting inspired by it enough to donate one's miles to the charity instead of taking that trip to a tropical destination is something that can be done by a human mind with a single thought for now. So while sentinels need to do the sentinel thing, lets get together and create the visual and functional tools to speeden up the point raking strategies.