Depends how you define "big."

They added a 5x multiplier on airfare (purchased direct from the airline or Amex travel dept) on the personal platinum. Good if you spend a lot on airfare, I guess, but doesn't do much for me, personally.

They also made some changes to the biz plat... An increased multiplier for any single purchase over $5k (1.5x iirc), and an increased rebate if you buy certain airfare using pay with miles (can get a 50% rebate under certain circumstances, which would mean your getting close to 2 cents per point when you redeem that way.)

Positive changes, but nothing earth-shattering, imo.

Just got approved for sapphire reserve. My last 5/24 slot, was worried I wouldn't get it with semi lowish credit score (700ish). Will have 200k ultimate rewards points when i clear that bonus. Pretty huge since I want to take a europe trip next year (preferably london so I can finally see my fav soccer team play live).

good work!

Wouldn't have been able to do it without this thread. My only regret is getting a capital one card early on along with the secured card the thread recommended so I could have one extra 5/24 slot.

If I was going to try to get another chase card should it be an ink card, sw card, or united card?

If not what route should I go next? I feel like I have a big hole in gas/groceries points with just the chase freedom/sp/sr combo?

If you're at 5/24 already, it is pretty unlikely that you can get any of the ones you mentioned. A targeted offer *might* be the only option. How long would it take to wait for your first or 2nd card to fall out of 5/24 range? Ink + would be great to add UR, which are great because they transfer and they're always worth 1 cent per point for cash if you prefer or need.

Other than Europe, what are your plans for travel? What airport are you near? Do they have good SW, United, Delta, AA flight availability? There's always some AA points from Citi available, Amex has an increased offer on their Delta right now, SW point values can be great for continental travel in the US.
If you don't have any travel planned, what about some hotel rooms in Europe? There are SPG, Marriott (can combine the two since the merger!), Hilton, Marriott, IHG, Hyatt, Best Western, etc. cards out there that can get you one or two nights at a swanky hotel in downtown Paris, London, Rome, etc. or that can get you 10 nights in a little, out of the way, hotel.

There's also the Barclays Arrival+ that can get you $400+ in travel credit (so you could fly RyanAir or something hopping around in Europe), no FTF, and 2% CB everywhere, even abroad. It's also one of the few Chip + Pin cards available to Americans. Might be a good card to have for travel.


The biggest thing I've seen is people chasing big signup bonuses without any plan or clue where they want to go. Getting a SW companion pass can have almost unlimited value, but isn't worth much if you don't have a SW hub near you. So consider what you want, and then find the cards that match those needs.

I got back earlier this week from a trip to Costa Rica for my honeymoon! Thanks to our favorite banks, we paid for a good portion of it with points, which allowed us to have a basically unlimited budget for eating out, drinking, and activities.

For myself + wife it cost 42k Rapid Rewards points (Southwest) for our roundtrip ATL to SJO. We paid cash (well really credit) for our resort room that was $150 per night, which totaled to $1050 after 7 nights. She just got the Reserve, so we paid for a portion with that, which was reimbursed for $300 for the travel credit, and the rest with my Arrival+, which I had roughly $500 worth of rewards to redeem. We used Marriott points for two nights in San Jose at the Marriott there (wow, was it nice!) as well.

So for flight+lodging for 9 nights it cost us $250 total.

It would have been nice if we could have found a Marriott resort that we liked to use that for and use the travel credits on other expenditures, such as shuttles, taxis, tours, etc., but we couldn't find one that was where we wanted to be.

Also, this was the first trip that she was personally a part of planning and signing up for a CC to directly use towards this trip, which got her a lot more involved and excited about using points for future travel.

I'm in Pittsburgh so it's a pretty ****ty international hub. Sw united seems to be the best options. My plan was to try for companion pass, but timing needs to be perfect. Been saving erewards dollars since they count towards it.

I think I got my first card some time in March/april so 1.5 years to drop. I do have some leverage with chase since there are no banks where I live 30m is closest chase. So can threaten to leave as well as tease the fairly large investment accounts I have with Merrill Lynch to potentially get another card or two while over 5/24. Not sure how effective it is but it's worth a shot.

I definitely agree people don't plan well enough. Getting as many of the best chase cards is obv optimal and why I didn't get other cards until I got the reserve (if I wasn't approved my plan was prob sw at end of year and try to grind comp pass next year).

So something to consider since you have all of those URs...

You can get some great value (depending on what you're looking for) from the Marriott Hotel + Air package. URs transfer at 1:1 to Marriott, which I would normally say was mediocre value, but these packages are pretty solid. You can also snag a companion pass out of it.

Example:
For 7 nights at a Cat 1-5 hotel + 110k air miles, you need to redeem 250k Marriott points. That's enough to get companion pass alone if you transfer to Southwest (you can also get plenty of other air miles, including British Airways for your London trip). This would basically cost $2.5k if you transferred all that from URs. Pretty expensive, but 7 nights is enough for a week-long trip, and 110k points can go pretty far, especially in the USA, and especially if you get a Companion Pass out of it. If you wait until Jan 1, your CP will be good for 2017 AND 2018.

So, instead of transferring URs, how else can you get Marriott points you ask? The Chase Marriott card can get you 80k points (AF has to be paid though for $85), the Chase Business Mariott can get you 80k points (AF of $99). The SPG can get you 25k points that transfer at 1:3 for a total of 75k points with no AF first year, and same with the SPG business.

If you got all 4 of these, that would be 310k points, more than enough for the package. It would cost you $184 for the AFs, plus opening 4 new cards and hitting their minimum spending requirements. You could also do a combo of the SPGs + UR transfer to get there, especially if you got denied for a card.

Marriott cards currently DO NOT fall under 5/24 right now. SPG cards might or might not go away in the near future because of the merger with Marriott.

It looks like PIT has some solid choices. SW flies pretty much everywhere. American, United, and Delta all have a decent presence.

Doing a random check, I found a roundtrip flight on Delta for 60k points + $175 in fees from PIT to LHR at a random time in March. So one Amex Delta signup gets you to London... Definitely worth looking into rather than trying to book a Southwest flight with points and then something else with points.

Ostornado, if you transfer a 110k UR points to Southwest, you get companion pass? Are you sure those transferred points would qualify as "companion pass qualifying points"?

I believe he's referring to transferring to Marriott for the flight and hotel combo

No. Transferring UR to SW will NOT get you companion pass qualifying points. If you transfer UR to Marriott and then use the Marriott Hotel and Points package with Southwest, it will give you Southwest points and those WILL count towards companion pass. Sorry if I didn't word it well.

Man I hate having stuff to pay for/buy when I'm waiting for a new card that I need to min spend on.

PSA: If you have a Freedom card (not the newer unlimited), the 5% cat this month includes drug stores for an easy 5% cap. Keep in mind that they might also change to 10% later in the quarter, like last year, and reset the cap. So hit it early!

Also, the Discover IT card has 5% at Sam's or Amazon this quarter. Yet another easy way to get some MS done!

I have plenty of Airline and Hotel miles for future travel (although you can never have enough), so I'm focusing on making some $$$ this quarter. I think I'm finally going to track it and see what my profit turns out to be.

I thought they only dit it last year since both freedom and it had 2x cash back and it was doing the double your cashback. Cant see them doing it again

Anyone else do small balance forgiveness waivers? Between those and BBRs I'm getting ~$30 in Amazon every month.

This happened to me with my USAA card a while ago and I didn't really know why. I just read the old DoC article about it. I'm going to start doing this with all my applicable cards. I wonder if there are any risks for abusing it, though.

Was going to put a screenshot of my small balance transaction history but it's too long, and that's just the 99c ones (not the $1, or $2 ones). I've been doing this since I read that Dr. of C post in 2014. I haven't had any issues yet across multiple card issuers (knock on wood)

also ****!
RIP Radpad

They did it last year because the IT card had double points. It still has double points for new users. So anyone that has signed up in the past year for the IT still gets double points this quarter. There are rumors that Chase *might* do it again. Either way, might as well max the MS early if you're planning to do it anyways, just in case!

I read the DoC article a while ago, but never really paid that much attention to it because 99 cents seems so trivial, but when you multiply that by 20-30 cards, definitely worth it.

I just got paid for my first quarter of BBR. Definitely nice and I think I'm going to try and get a few more.

JL: I'm only able to autopay a certain amount on my BBR, eg. set it to pay $10 every month. I don't have a lot of fixed monthly charges (Netflix is the only one). Is there any way to simply autopay the total amount of the statement each month? Every other freaking bank in the world has this option, but it seems like BOA does not...

Not sure if they have an autopay ability - I haven't looked too deeply for one but I imagine you're right and they don't. I don't need it bc I just setup an amazon allowance for $10, and an auto-transfer from BOA checking for $10 to 'pay it off'.

My wife uses her BBR for spotify, so her transfer is $9.99. Plenty of fixed charges out there if you want, sock clubs, hulu, prime monthly, etc. I don't use any of that stuff so Amazon Allowance is the best for me.

The 99c thing used to be better when amazon allowances were first introduced bc it was completely automated. After a few months of that though they updated allowances to need to be $5+, so now every month I just run through all the cards - takes about 10 minutes. Even with just one or two cards I think it'd be worth it. Just bookmark the amazon reload site and takes maybe 30s while multitasking to add a buck to your balance.

So are you just going into CVS and buying 1500$ worth of visa cards and then using them for regular spending?

No. I'm using those cards to purchase money orders, which I deposit in the bank and then pay off the credit cards with. You could do it with natural spending if you wanted.

Thanks for the Amazon allowances suggestion for a set amount. Should work well.

i have a secured card with $600 limit. would bumping up the limit to say $1000 or $1500 help increase my credit score? i already keep the utilization as low as possible, so it would not help me out in that regard. i'm just wondering because i only ever hear about how utilization % affects your score, but i never hear anything about how the actual overall amount of your credit limit affects your score.

Presuming that the card reports, then yes, you should see a bump from increasing the limit. It also helps to potentially avoid other issuers giving you a toy card when approved down the road...

It is not the total dollar limit that impacts the score but rather the percentage OF that limit that is in play...thus, if you have a $30 balance showing on a $600 line, you have a greater percentage in play than if that same balance is in play on a $1,500 line.

The alternate option is to get a second secured card which then gives an additional line and is another manner of score manipulation.