Find out your statement close date on your SWCC first

Do you have UR or MR points?
http://millionmilesecrets.com/2012/0...est-companion/

This is overly cautious advice. Credit utilization has no history. If you are at 95% utilization for 2 years, then keep it at 10% or lower for the 1-2ish months before you plan on taking out a loan, it will have the same effect as always having 10% or lower utilization. It's a better strategy (IMO), to just call your credit card company every 3-6 months and ask for a higher max limit so you don't have to worry about utilization %. If you might need a loan that you can't plan for 1-2 months in advances, then definitely just always keep utilization low.

There is a targeted Amex offer for a $15 credit on $35 spend at Walmart online. I got it on only one of my six cards. Picked up this gift card and it's shipped. Apparently Walmart is really bad about cancelling gift card orders because of fraud alerts, but I had no problem. I ****ing hate shopping at Walmart, but there is one right by the Kroger I always go to so I'll pick up $35 in groceries at 43% off.

seems like its highly targeted, the offer seems to be quite limited from what i have read

Financial Gurus. How can i transfer either paypal money, or money from my credit card to my PNC bank account, so it shows up as a direct deposit, so i can get their bonus they are giving out? I don't want it to show up as a cash advance, and pay to move the money. People apparently do this, but i could not figure it how. Paypal only seems to let me send money to other people's paypal, not my own bank account.

Anyone who has successfully done this, some sort of help would be great.

you need to link your bank account to your paypal in your account settings, then choose "transfer to bank". transferring from paypal to your bank is an ACH transfer that counts as a direct deposit for the PNC promo

this may be correct but a good rule of thumb is to "push" the money to PNC. So you request the money to be sent via your non PNC account. if you log into PNC and request the transfer this would be a "pull"

for these promos, pushes are better than pulls

what i meant by that is he needs to add his bank to his paypal account and transfer money from paypal-> bank

Grabbed both the amazon and walmart offers on my amex card. Nothing like buying money for less money!

I want to do a bit of MS'ing as I haven't done many of the miles/points bonuses, but I've been reading it's getting more and more difficult. I read some threads on flyertalk and I'm seeing lots of stuff on how the usual methods either don't work anymore or are getting more and more difficult, like Visa VGC's not working to load Serve. Seems like Walmart access is key too and while I can get to one I have to go all the way out to LI so a bit of a hassle.

I know OST and some other guys are experienced MS'ers out there, is there anything I'm missing? From what I'm seeing the standard is:

Buy Visa GC with CC
Load Visa GC onto Serve at Walmart via Money Center or cashier
Use Serve to pay off CC

sounds simple but I'm seeing issues with PINs not working, certain places selling different types of Visa GCs, etc. is there something I'm missing or a current resource somewhere I can use for answers?

1. Learn Serve
2. ???
3. Profit

The wiki in the serve thread on FT is an excellent resource. If you want to be spoon fed (sounds like you do), hope that someone is nice enough or go look around MMS' blog.

is it illegal to make two user accounts on gift card websites(swappable, card pool)? IE; sign up with exact same name and shipping information but with different emails? am i a moran for asking?

should i be maximizing my stays with e-certificates and Hyatt stays? i have a Club Carlson e certificate and some hyatt qualifying stays(some for wife signing up for Hyatt cc and 1 awarded for my annual fee paid).

So, in the past, once or twice, I have used these certificates or qualifying stays on some "pit stops." for instance, when my family was driving south this past summer I used a qualifying Hyatt stay somewhere in north carolina i believe. We literally pry arrived at the hotel at 3 am and were out by noon or whatever, making for a quick stop, only sleeping.

I am under the impression that the qualifying stays can land some decent hotel stays, like 4 star rooms and most likely in some nice areas. Is this the case? Should I be taking more advantage of these?

Thx, I'll read that. I poked around some blogs and MS threads on FT, and just saw stuff about recent issues coming up with VGC/Serve. But I guess FT is about as good of a resource as you can get, so I'll just read as much of they as I can.

Here are my thoughts (I give them for free, so you get what you pay for, etc. )

- Getting ANY value out of the certificates is almost certainly better than letting it go unused. So, if the certificate is about to expire and the only place to use it is before it evaporates is a cheap Hyatt Place during a road trip, go ahead and use the cert and save your cash. That being said, if you are paying an annual fee to get a cert and then having a hard time finding a good use for the cert, you might not want to keep the card long term.

- Going somewhere you don't want to go or spending a lot of extra money just to get "max value" out of the cert is foolish. For example, lots of bloggers talk about using the Hyatt certs in the Maldives. They get great "value" because those rooms are so expensive. I have no particular interest in going to the Maldives and, if I were going to fly all of the way there, I would probably want to stay for way more than 2 days, so I'd end up spending a lot of cash on the additional nights, which, imo, harms the "value."

- My personal approach is to try to have a rough idea of where I have to/want to travel in the next year, and then consider all of the certs/points/ cash I have available in order to come up with the best plans. I try to use certs / points during times and in places where I know hotels will be in high demand and cash when rooms should be cheap (i.e. when I'm planning a multicity European swing, I'll try to use a cert in London and cash in Budapest.)

Thought I remembered reading this, I double checked today and the offer was online only.

"too late to edit" edit: You can however buy a $35physical gift card for use in stores, and it seems to work. http://www.walmart.com/ip/Basic-Blue...ype=10&veh=aff

BTW, has anyone got their $15 chase credits yet? Wife and I still have yet to get ours. Seems like this offer was a while ago.

for visa checkout?

confirmed for sapphire and freedom (x4) i believe

yeah the visa checkout for freedom. havent got mine yet, bought $15 GC on bestbuy

i got that pretty much instantly for a purchase at staples

looks like i may have been swindled

i didn't get it from bestbuy either

I didn't get mine from bestbuy (x2). Oh well. Was worth a shot. I won't be asking about it because I'd rather not have eyes looking into details of my accounts.

I prefer Bluebird over Serve, but that's just me. I have multiple Walmarts very close to me, so it's very beneficial to me. I also have a few grocery stores around that sell me MO's to debit.

I haven't had any issues lately. Best places to buy VGCs are Staples (If you have an Ink card or SimplyCash), grocery stores (especially with any cards that give grocery bonuses), or you can always buy on giftcards.com. You can also buy at Walmart and Target, but won't have any card multipliers to take advantage of.

If you just want to MS to hit minimum spend, it's pretty easy and very +Life EV. If you want to try and profit from it, it's still possible (I do it when I'm going to be by those stores anyways), but it might not be +life EV.

PM me if you need anything. I check this thread every few days, but with a PM I'll get an email and get back to you pretty quickly most of the time.

BTW, giftcards.com is selling $500 cards again. They have free shipping occasionally (like on Cyber Monday). I purchased a lot then, so I will see if they work out. I hadn't purchased from them since September because they had removed the $500 cards.

Also, Staples has a $20 visa rebate GC for $300 worth of Visa or MC starting next week. Not scalable for more than a few addresses though because it's limited to 1 per household, but still a great deal for MS (especially with Ink or SimplyCash).