What do you mean by ? They're not going to pay you interest if you just link your Discover Savings account. You will have to move money into your Amex account to receive the interest...

Otherwise, 1.05% seems pretty standard these days. You can find slightly better percentages from other banks, or way better (like up to 5%) if you want to meet some requirements (like debit transactions, or direct deposit).

I think he's referring to the fact that most high interest accounts require you to make txns, or direct deposit, or billpay X times per month to get the high rate?

6 withdrawals per months is a federal regulation for savings accounts. 1.05% is a pretty good amount for just parking money in an online savings account and not touching it. That's what I do (in process of saving for down payment too... albeit slowly...). I use Capital One 360, its only like 0.75% or something though.

If the 6 transaction minimum is a problem for you, some online banks (like Capital One 360) allow you to make multiple savings accounts for free (I think you can have up to 20 or something like that on Capital One 360). Can create additional accounts online in a matter of seconds. I wouldn't think the 6 transaction minimum would be an issue for you though if you are just using it to hold cash. In my case if my checking account gets low I just send over a couple grand and that tides me over til next paycheck or end of month.

One downside I'll add regarding online savings accounts is the lack of the ability to quickly access the money in case of an emergency (and using a credit card to cover the emergency isn't an option). For example if I wanted $5000 cash I would have to go to my Capital One 360 savings account and initiate a transfer from it to a bank where I have a checking account that actually has a branch (e.g. BoA, Wells Fargo, Chase, etc.), and then go to the branch to collect said money. That process would take up to a week potentially, whereas if I had my savings with a bank that had a branch I could access the money immediately.

You can see the best "basic" high-interest savings accounts HERE.

I have had one for years now and am quite happy with it. If you need to make more than 6 withdrawals in a month, you're doing it wrong.

Os,

I mean that Amex says "No need to switch banks — you can simply link your American Express Personal Savings account conveniently to your existing bank accounts".

imjosh, RG,

Yeah I mean all else failing I could obviously just make one withdrawal to a different account and billpay from that other account, rather than billpaying from the main savings account. 6 withdrawals a month is not a problem for me.

imjosh,

Thanks for the link, list, and thoughts. I'll have to think more about how much I'm willing to do in terms of carving up money in order to max out interest. I doubt I'm willing to open maintain 20-40 accounts to gain an extra point or two. I'll be careful not to put 100% of my rainy day money into hard to access accounts.

RG,

Glad to hear from someone actually using the service. Will probably make decisions this weekend.

Anybody heard anything about UR points getting nerfed in the near future? Saw some squawking on twitter fwiw

its a rumor based on a survey someone took.
if you're concerned just move your URs to the best redemption card (like CSR) right now, although it shouldn't matter since Chase will likely give us advanced notice if it is true.

I used my Chase Ink card to book a conference which allowed me to hit my bonus. My conference just got cancelled and i am getting a refund. Will they strip my bonus now? I still have some time on the 3 month thing to try and make up the spending deficit

If the bonus is already awarded then you're fine. I hit my bonus and cancel purchases afterwards all the time and so far it's been like 15/15

if not, then you might need to spend more, calling them to find out won't hurt

Calling them to find out is a bad idea. It could possibly get them to do a manual review and they would probably cancel the bonus, EG take back the points or blacklist, as it states in the TOC that returned items don't count towards the min spend usually.

what's to review? he either has the bonus and the conversation is over or he doesn't and he knows how much he needs to spend

Many banks will pull the points back if you return an item and go back under the min spend required. If he can't hit the min spend at that point, having a CSR review his spending could cause him to lose the bonus.

To play it on the safe side, he should just calculate how much spend he would need without the purchase and then make sure to hit it.

oh definitely if he can play it safe he should do it

ime they never pull the bonus once it's awarded, I usually wait 2-3 billing cycles to return the purchase though, sometimes I even end up using bonus points first

Points nerds,

I have a boatload of Amex points and want to use them for first class tickets from the Midwest to Hawaii in January. What's my strategy?

What's your actual nearest airport? And your destination in Hawaii?
Most likely will be Delta, hawaiin, Korean, or Airfrance

Or just paying with points if no saver level availability is around.

this site kicks ass riverman

http://www.awardhacker.com/

Thanks. Awesome site. Columbus to Maui.

My first experience trying to use Ultimate Rewards points for travel didn't go as planned, and I wanted to run it by people who have used UR for your thoughts. So my girlfriend and I both got CSR cards in the past eight months. During that time, I also got a CSP and Ink Business Preferred. We're accumulating points for a European vacation next summer, but in the meantime we decided to go to Seattle this summer and figured we've got a good chunk of points accumulated so let's give it a try.

I found a roundtrip flight for two on Alaska Airlines for 28,800 points. I booked the tickets and then was given the option to request my seats. I requested the aisle and middle seats on an exit row for both flights. It concerned me that my email confirmation didn't list seats, so I called up Chase and the woman verified they had the request but said I should call Alaska to confirm. So I call up Alaska and the woman tells me that the request for the seats is there but she can't guarantee them. Since I've never used a third party for flights before, this confuses me. I ask her if this means we are in the seats unless the airline needs to move us for some unforeseen circumstance. She leads me to believe this is correct.

Day of the flight, I go to check in and find us separated into two middle seats. When we get to the airport, I speak with the Alaska rep at the gate and he tells me from what he can tell we weren't moved. We were never given the seats we requested. He says it's a pretty full flight but he can put her in a window seat and me in the middle seat of the same row on the opposite side of the aisle, then once on the plane we can ask the window seat on my side to switch with her. We take it, and as we're waiting to board I call Chase to see what happened with our transaction. The Chase rep tells me that what she sees is that we were placed in the seats we requested and then moved by Alaska, and that I should call and speak with them.

The next day in Seattle, I call Alaska to discuss the situation and make sure we have seats next to each other on the flight home. The Alaska rep tells me that our request of seats was rejected, and it is the third party site's responsibility to notify us of that rejection. He says third party sites can only request seats, and you need to confirm those seats with Alaska. I tell him I called to do so right after placing the order for the tickets, and that she said she couldn't confirm him. His explanation was that exit row seats can't be confirmed. Oh, also for the flight home we've again been separated into two middle seats, which is ridiculous even if they had rejected our requested seats as this was a late flight on a Tuesday so there were whole rows open on the plane. He moves us to a window and middle.

After we arrive home, I call Chase to follow up with the Alaska rep's assertion that our request for seats was rejected and it was the third party site's responsibility to notify us. The Chase rep says that is not true, that they don't do that. She adds that in the future we should not request seats through the Chase UR portal, and should instead take the confirmation number from booking at Chase to the airline site to choose seats there. She says she will transfer me to card benefits, and maybe there they can do something for me in terms of returning some points for the inconvenience. I tell the whole story to card benefits rep, who tells me that they wouldn't handle that and I need to speak with an UR rep. I say that's who transferred me to you. She says she can get me a supervisor at UR. I say OK, and she comes back saying she is transferring me to a UR rep, who will transfer me to the supervisor. The UR rep says she is getting me to the supervisor, then for the first time in my 43-minute call I hear an automated message to call back if I'm disconnected. Coincidentally, I am instantly disconnected.

So any UR travel veterans have any advice for me here? Is it normally this difficult to get the seats you requested from the UR portal? Did it make a difference that I requested the exit row? Is it right that my novice mistake was trying to request seats from the portal, and I should take the confirmation number to the airline? I'm concerned that we're saving points to travel for a program that makes it a pain to do so. The positive is that we were able to use priority select cards to hang out in an airport lounge for the first time.

gaddy, its possible that exit row seating on alaska has an upcharge to book, so they rejected your request for those seats.

I really doubt chase is able to see that you "were placed in the seats we requested and then moved by Alaska". Why would chase have access to see what alaska does on their own system. That sounds like some phone rep BS to me.

In the future I do agree that you should just take the conf # from whatever airline you booked and go to their site to get the seats you want. Especially if it's a foreign carrier.

If that is the case that the problem started from requesting the exit row, well then Chase shouldn't list those seats as an option. Then on Alaska's part, they should have told me this when I originally called in to confirm the seats, and also shouldn't have separated us in middle seats for the flight home that had plenty of seats available. Certainly some issues in reserving seats through Chase, and some concerning disconnect between Chase and the airline. But hopefully using the confirmation number to book through the airline site in the future will fix that. Perhaps Chase should be pushing that as the way to do it rather than having this function to request seats.

A couple of notes on my experience with the CSR.

1. Did my first price match with them on some overpriced flip flops on Amazon. I found a site that had them $50 less but not available in my size. Ordered on Amazon, submitted the other website, got a check in the mail. Pretty easy.

2. My metal card is delaminating. I can't be arsed to do anything about it except post about it here so far, but I barely use it physically. Anyone heard of this?

Interesting, I'd forgotten about the price match.

Could I purchase from somewhere else and use Amazon as the price match? Or do they not allow that because there could be some sketchy sellers, etc

staples used to price match with amazon iirc

You can for sure. You just need a screen shot that includes the date and time. It's funny because it would be easy to fake but I guess they are just keeping honest people honest.

Pro tip--if you are buying a big ticket item that you know may be worth the match, put the item on a wish list on Amazon and check in every day to see if it drops. The algorithm will sometimes wig out and either drop because of a web crawl or because vendors can set bottom prices when stock is low to blow through the last of it.

Also, the item does not have to be available, only advertised at that price in order to qualify. I didn't test it but I assume that means things that went on sale for prime day that you missed would work. The stipulations for what is not allowed are pretty simple.

Eta: they also will price match regardless of whether you or not you also receive a price match from the place you bought it.seems like an angle worth playing in some cases....for example a mattress store that guarantees to beat prices. You could get the difference back twice.

If you want to monitor amazon prices, camelcamelcamel.com is fantastic. You can set price alerts and it will email you when the item drops below the threshold you specify.