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Episode 5: New Apps & The Schwab Elephant In the Room
328 Plays8 months ago
Hello Points Project Listeners,
In this episode, we are reminded that it's already October 2024, and that means Q4 is in full swing. With that, we've decided to load up on some new cards, but not everything on that front was a success. Synchrony, Amex & Chase have some highs as we prepare for more wedding banquets, while BofA and Wells Fargo are still odd and fickle beasts. Lastly, we review what's left for cashing out MRs post-October 1st—hopefully less valuable cash outs mean we'll be focused on high-value aspirational travel in 2025. -TPP
Please consider subscribing to our Patreon for access to our credit card rewards enthusiast content, including access to the members-only The Points Project Slack community at https://www.patreon.com/ThePointsProject.
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Intro / Outro Music Credits:
"Vibing Over Venus"
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Recommended
Transcript
Impact of Schwab Devaluation on Rewards
00:00:00
Speaker
In this episode of The Points Project, we get into a whole lot of new cards and the Schwab devaluation.
Maximizing Q4 Rewards Strategies
00:00:13
Speaker
Hello and welcome to The Points Project with your hosts Christoph and Raymond. Hey Raymond, it's been a while. How have you been? What's going on, Kristoff? I am doing well, and you know what? It's a change of seasons right now. We are officially in Q4, and there's a lot of things to catch up on, so let's dive right into it. So Q4, obviously, if you've been in the game a while and you've had the chance to collect some of these 5% rotating category cards, Q4 is another opportunity to earn at least, let's say, $75 worth of cash back.
00:00:51
Speaker
um But on some cards, you know, you might have the chance to earn actually a little bit more. Let's get into some of these 5% rotating category cards and what are some of the bonus categories that you can earn 5% back on. So I think the best one here is the City Dividend card. And if you have this card right, Some of the rules about that card are that you can get 5% up to $300 in total cashback per year. And in Q4, assuming you haven't really finished your spend there yet, you can earn up to $300 cashback on restaurants.
Leveraging Q4 Categories for Maximum Cashback
00:01:23
Speaker
Christophe, do you happen to have a city dividend in your arsenal?
00:01:27
Speaker
I do not, actually. i For a long time, I have not been really using Citi, and now, well, there's only the 5X cards from Citi that go up to, you know, like $500 in spend or so. So that's not really that valuable for me. and That said, and there's a couple of very interesting options, still with other issues. Of course, you know, that's Discover. The Chase Freedom is probably legendary at this point.
00:01:57
Speaker
And then, of course, there's, I know, US s bank and even some other issues as well. Yeah.
Optimizing Overlapping Credit Card Benefits
00:02:02
Speaker
Discover this quarter has a 5% cap up to $1,500 spend. And here we can do Amazon dot.com purchases and Target dot.com purchases. And, you know, for me, yeah, I could go ahead and spend that much money at Amazon, at Target. um But really this kind of overlaps with, you know, at least in my portfolio,
00:02:24
Speaker
I have the Amazon store card by Synchrony, which is a great card. It gets you 5%. I don't think that there's a cap there. Plus, there's you know other interesting things about Synchrony cards that really make that 5% more until you could say 6.5% to 7%. I really like ah that card over the Discover card.
00:02:43
Speaker
Also with target, right like I can't ah can't really make use of it too much there because, again, I have also the target circle card, which also earns 5% back at
Benefits of Bank of America's Cash Rewards
00:02:52
Speaker
target. So really, I don't think I'll be touching my Discover It card this quarter, um but you know it is an option if that's the card that you have.
00:03:02
Speaker
um Again, Christophe, like you mentioned, the Chase Freedom. ah This quarter, it's McDonald's. It's also PayPal, which seems to be a little bit interesting there. And then Pet Shops, Vets, and Charities were also listed as the Q4 category. And so, what looks interesting to you there, Christophe?
00:03:21
Speaker
Yeah, clearly McDonald's, right? You can stack this with your $5 meal deal there. ah You'll get, what, 5%? So you get, you know, 25 cents or so back on it. That's really worth it. I find it interesting why they would target McDonald's, but yeah, I guess it was in the marketing budget. So here we are. I think PayPal might be more interesting, especially ah for me. If I look at my options, well, guess what? I can pay some property and income taxes with PayPal.
00:03:51
Speaker
And so that's a very, very easy win. I mean, essentially, one transaction and you'll max out the category there. ah Pet shops, yeah, well, we don't have a pet anymore. So ah that's that. And charities, well,
Managing Amex Credits for Maximum Value
00:04:04
Speaker
charities are always fine. I wonder though if there are some category restrictions on this, as Chase used to have with the pay yourself back categories as well. Interesting.
00:04:14
Speaker
Yeah, I was thinking with that McDonald's category. Maybe they're like, OK, if you max out your 5% at McDonald's, you might also increase your cholesterol percentage just by at least 5%. So I don't know what their marketing team was thinking there. But oh, man. And then finally, US Bank Cash Plus card. This is sort of a lesser known one of these 5% earners in particular categories every quarter. But you can spend up to $2,000 on um whatever your two chosen categories are.
00:04:41
Speaker
So um that's another one to look at. You know, reminder, if you have that card, go back and double check what you have access to because they do have a a wider range of categories and you can select them, right? These other cards like the city dividend, discover it and chase freedom,
Insights on Tax Payments and Cashback Strategies
00:04:56
Speaker
right? They give you the categories. And the nice thing about the cash plus with US bank is that you can select your categories there.
00:05:02
Speaker
One other thing about Q4 is that if you have some of these B of A customized cash rewards personal cards, those also reset. And again, just as a reminder, you get 3% in a selected category of your choice. And for me, you know I like to choose the online shopping category. And one thing I like about that is that usually PayPal will trigger what's considered an online um an online type of purchase. So that's what I like to focus on there. um the only you know The only downside, and I wish they really bumped this up, is that you can only get up to $2,500 and spend on that 3% category. So I'm always going to max this one out. And Christophe, how many of these do you actually have?
00:05:49
Speaker
Yeah, actually I used to have quite a few of those. I think, you know, in the household we had four. So that was already pretty decent per quarter. So I guess the the first tip here is, well, it's nice to have multiple of those cards. So there's apparently no really strict overall limit. ah Each of those cards has its own $2500 limit per quarter.
00:06:11
Speaker
ah Another thing that has kind of changed, you know, I mentioned tax payments with PayPal. ah These ah B of A card used to code, at least for me, as all on purpose as for these tax payments before, but they apparently cut down on that severely. So even though there are some online transactions, you know, say for insurance payments or for taxes and so on, while they used to pay 5%, they don't any longer.
00:06:37
Speaker
So maybe yeah you know if this is something that you've been using for a while, actually check the bonus, whether it posts for these B of A cards. ah You might be surprised that some online purchases that are not really you know classic online shopping may not actually count as 5X anymore.
00:06:56
Speaker
ah But still, I think this is one of the nicest ah cards there is. I mean, it's really a no-brainer, right? I mean, it's like $10,000, spread out across the year, and you just get 5% back on that, no annual fee. It's actually yeah one of my favorite cards, especially, of course, well, maybe a caveat here. Of course, it's typically ah a 3% card. but Maybe the implicit assumption that I made here is if you have some money with the Bank of America, you have to have preferred ah rewards program and that ends up but bumping up the rewards on all kinds of personal credit cards. Actually, the same thing exists on the business side as well. ah But for the personal side, ah this makes it ah way more interesting to put spend on these Bank of America cards. Because you know for one, two, like maybe three percent, yeah well, there's many options out there.
00:07:45
Speaker
But if suddenly you get you know like 5% back or 2.6% on all spend, depending on which card you have, then hey, this is valuable again. Yeah, for sure. um I've actually been wanting to look more into getting B of A status. I don't currently have it, but um you know I have a B of A branch right down the street from me, and um I need to start getting on. you know let's Let's get serious here. like I need to get in on this Platinum Honors, this Roadshow, because it is really a nice little bump, right? You get 75%.
00:08:19
Speaker
ah extra rewards, right? So if you're earning 3%, you know, times that by 1.75 and then you'll work your way up to 5.25% on some of these bonus categories. So that's something that I definitely want to get into.
00:08:31
Speaker
Transitioning on into Amex. Amex, right, they are basically the coupon book that everyone loves. Maybe they don't love it so much. But every month your Amex credits on various charge cards or credit cards are going to reset. And so, for example, if you have the Amex Gold, right, you'll get your $10 Uber credit, your $10 dining credit.
00:08:51
Speaker
And also, you know if you have an MX Platinum, you'll get your $15 Uber credit. um In addition, right if you have an MX Business Gold, you'll get your $20 office supply store credit. So that's something you know definitely to make sure that you put back on your list to make sure you take advantage of for this
Unexpected SoFi Bonus and Legal Speculations
00:09:07
Speaker
month. And then also, like if you have an MX Business Platinum, don't forget about your $10 wireless credit. right So if you have multiple of these, it's definitely worthwhile to maybe, you know depending on how many cards you have, go through and make a spreadsheet and make sure that you hit all of these. Because you know in the past,
00:09:21
Speaker
as much as i've tried not to forget about these things man every month with the coupon book stuff it just happens that i i miss one or two of these credits and you know that really just eats into the um the profit and loss statement on your uh on your charge cards there anything i missed christoph Yeah, breakage is the name of the game there, right? I mean, with MX, we now have what? We have ah monthly credits, ah we have quarterly credits, and we have, of course, these semi-annual and an annual credits. I mean, there's a vast variety there. And that honestly, if
00:09:57
Speaker
You're only one person and you have like one of each cards and you try to harvest these credits. It's really, it's a chore because you go to 10 different places to get, you know, five to $10 everywhere. And the alternative is, well, it only becomes more interesting if you have multiple players that actually have multiple of the same types of cards. Let's say ah you have multiple people with multiple business gold cards. Hey, yeah suddenly you can Go to stables dot.com and, for example, order a bunch of items with these $20 credits stacked on top of each other. Same thing goes for wireless credits, right? I mean, just getting $10 off your wireless bill is fine. Yeah, okay. um But you know if you have like two, three, four of these cards, ah then hey, suddenly ah there's some industrial scale to it and it becomes more valuable.
00:10:44
Speaker
and then of course there's our all favorite credits right there's the Dell credits that we all love if you can actually get an order through with Dell congratulations whatever items we bought office chairs and other items right but yeah like the monthly credits and the quarterly credits also don't forget about the refreshed Hilton cards some of which come with uh quarterly credits now And for airfare, there might be some biennial credits as well for resorts. Apparently the resort category list has changed as well. So, you know, MX is really, yeah, they're in the game of coupon bulk in order to cause as much breakage as they can.
00:11:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's for sure. It's something to keep up with and something that you'll always have to remember each month, right? But we they've they've definitely got us you know working for them. So I have some follow-up here um on a random SoFi checking bonus that actually, this is from a while back, maybe so I'll say eight months ago. So last September, I opened a SoFi checking account um and it was really just for a small $150 bonus.
00:11:51
Speaker
And I just thought, you know, it would be good to have this SOFI checking opened up so that way, because I have the 2% SOFI MasterCard. And if I redeem to the checking account, then I'll get the full 2% in rewards earned there when I go ahead and redeem them. And so I opened that checking account, you know, really for the purpose of rewards redemptions, but they also had that bonus. So why not? And so I went in.
00:12:14
Speaker
They had a direct deposit requirement where you needed to deposit. I forget how much exactly. But basically what ended up happening is that after three months of direct deposits um that were above the threshold required,
Credit Card Application Journey
00:12:27
Speaker
I did not get the bonus. And I even remember like filing an inquiry with SoFi and saying, like hey, um I did all the requirements for this bank account bonus. Like, why didn't I get this $150? And anyways, they responded saying, hey, you've actually gotten a SOFI checking bonus in the past in a previous checking account that you had. And, ah you know, there's like a once per lifetime customer bonus, at least in the terms and conditions here. I guess that's what they were referencing. I don't know. At that point, I just kind of gave up because I just like, whatever. it Sometimes you open a bank account and you don't get the bonus and it just doesn't happen to work out perfectly.
00:13:04
Speaker
Well anyways, a couple days ago I get this email ah from SoFi and they're like, hey, while reviewing your account, we determined that you did not receive a direct deposit bonus that you were entitled to from your direct deposits. And so to make this right, we issued you a credit of $150 to your SoFi checking account on September 30th.
00:13:23
Speaker
And I mean, like, that's just a nice little windfall. And, you know, I guess I already wrote that off in my head in the past, even though it's kind of like lost money. But I just wonder, like, what is going on? Like, I think this happens from what every once in a while. right Like a bank will realize that they make a mistake and then they decide to make things right.
00:13:43
Speaker
like'm I'm just wondering, Christophe, what are your thoughts on this? like Is this from a legal standpoint? like Maybe a lawyer who works for the the bank, they review you know a couple of complaints that they get, and maybe they go back and review their terms and conditions, say, oh, maybe we weren't too explicit or explicit enough to deny people the bonus, and maybe they're just trying to avoid some legal ramifications. like What do you think is going on when a bank decides to just credit a bonus when maybe they previously denied it in the past?
00:14:11
Speaker
yeah I think there's multiple ways to go about. right so Some banks really do it out of customer service. I know some of them have audit processes where they just run through hey all the checking offers that they should have you know paid out and then when they see they didn't pay out, ah they just make it right. and you know Some of them, of course, ah get just good old the regulatory complaints or a maybe get to actual lawsuits or maybe complaints on ah on a higher level. And then they go down and go back and make sure to pay out so that there's no major legal ramifications. um It's a nice windfall. like I know this happens ah from time to time. I also say, hey, let's go for this checking account bonus. And then sometimes say ah my wife gets the bonus and I don't, even though we had the exact same sequence of events.
00:15:03
Speaker
And sometimes they pay out later, and sometimes you have to reach out. But you know if it happens, so say like once a year that something doesn't post quite as it should have, yeah I also tend to just write it off unless the amounts are major. It's nice to eventually get the money if i know something like this happens. But yeah it's just part of the game.
00:15:22
Speaker
It is part of the game. That's very true. Yeah. I mean like $150, you know, how much effort am I willing to put in to sort of chase that? And, you know, for me these days, like if it takes more than an hour.
00:15:34
Speaker
Yeah, I really don't want to chase it too hard, right? Like, so I guess I could say, you know, my hourly rate for chasing something down that didn't go right could be $150 an hour. So just food for thought there in case, you know, something like that ever happens to you. Like how much time are you willing to put to go chase something that went haywire? You can, you can kind of weigh out the pros and cons and whether or not you want to chase something after that.
00:15:59
Speaker
So Christophe, I've been really busy with new credit card applications lately. And one of the cards I wanted to talk about first here is the Synchrony 2% MasterCard. And so I applied for this, I think like less than a week ago. Let me look. It was actually on October 1st, I applied for this. And um you know to my surprise, I was expecting that they may not ah ah approve me. And you know apparently Synchrony still likes me. And so I got the 2% MasterCard for the second time.
00:16:26
Speaker
And so I did have this card in the past. right And so it was actually closed in January earlier this year. And um you know they I guess I just had a really intensive use case for this card, and I was using it a lot. And apparently they didn't like that too much. And so I'm just surprised that I you know i got an approval for this card on a card that previously was closed down on
Credit One Wander America Card Analysis
00:16:49
Speaker
me. And um you know it's a great card, 2% back with synchrony. That's always something that, ah you know that's my everywhere card, basically. right like And this time around, I think I'm going to behave a little bit more with my use of this card. Basically, what I learned from this experience with Synchrony, right, is like, if you if you get your card account closed by the bank, you know, it's not the end of the world. You can always reapply and see where things go from there. Now, Christophe, I know that you, in our last public episode, talked about this Credit One, Wander America card, and you got me so excited with all the 5x categories that it offers. I really want to hear what you've been up to with this card.
00:17:26
Speaker
Oh yes, the credit one. And I want to emphasize this credit one, not capital one, but like credit one. Won the America card. It's a card that has a $95 annual fee. But man, it has 5x categories everywhere. 5x on restaurants, 5x on gas and 5x on travel. it It blows my mind that this card actually exists and it is issued by well none other than Credit One, ah which is not exactly famous for you know premium-grade ah ah rewards cards.
00:17:58
Speaker
But yeah, here we are. I mean, it doesn't offer any major protections. um it It doesn't really have a lot of perks. ah It has a hundred dollar annual fee. But yeah, 5x categories, um we can put them to use. And hey, well, um many payment options.
00:18:15
Speaker
The only thing that ah really stands out and you know now that I've used it for two months, of course, always max the card out very easily. um I only got a very small $1,000 credit limit on that card.
00:18:30
Speaker
and Funny enough, i think if you think back to the ah previous episode, well ah you know on the approval letter they suggested that hey my credit application was impacted by the number of bankruptcies included in my credit file.
00:18:46
Speaker
So I guess ah if I want a higher credit limit with credit one, I have to add more bankruptcies because so far there are none on my credit report. But yeah, overall, um this card has been doing very well. And I will just keep using it, you know get the most out of it, and then hopefully ah bump up that very tiny credit limit after some time when you know they see that I use it responsibly.
Maximizing Bonuses with Bank of America and Chase
00:19:13
Speaker
Yeah, that's really key there. I think like just using the card responsibly and probably using the entire credit limit up every month, you know eventually some algorithm is going to run and they're going to say, you know what, maybe we'll give this guy you know a $4,000 credit limit. And then you know then we we start talking about getting into a little bit higher scale on these categories, and that's going to be useful in the long term. So I'm glad that Credit One is treating you well so far, Christophe.
00:19:42
Speaker
And I can't wait to hear more about how you're able to scale up the use of this card. It still blows my mind that I'm using up 10% of my credit limit to PDNO fee. Yeah, that's actually hilarious. Oh man, credit won. Who would have thunk? So I have more credit cards that I applied for in the past one to two weeks and I wanted to get a little bit more into Bank of America because for me, Bank of America seems to be a really useful bank right now.
00:20:13
Speaker
And um so I kind of went hard on applications with them. I applied for a B of A premium rewards elite and that one, you know, 75 K point bonus after $5,000 in spend in three months. And I got denied on this card. And, you know, I was kind of bummed about that. Like I actually have a premium rewards that $95 annual fee card. And I was hoping to sort of like add this on as a as a brother to that card.
00:20:39
Speaker
and um you don' really make use of the priority pass. The priority pass on this card is great because I think it gives you four priority pass memberships on one priority or maybe one you know parent card. and so That would have been pretty useful you know to have on an ongoing basis and even to share um that priority pass membership with folks. so yeah I'll keep trying on this one. This one is still on my list. right It's a good bonus and um you know we'll see.
00:21:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think this Bank of America premium Elite card is really underrated. I mean, yes, like it has a high annual fee, but on the other hand, ah well, maybe they even did you a favor here. I think the best timing to get this card is like the second half of December.
00:21:23
Speaker
ah simply because this card has some really calendar year ah benefits. right they They give you credits for airfare, credits for lifestyle, so you know food delivery or it know gyms and so on. so These are all credits that you can very easily you know ah take advantage of.
00:21:41
Speaker
And so if you get it late in the year, or very late, you can actually not just double, but even triple dip these credits. right there You can do it once at the very end of December, ah once for the following year, and then usually just barely at the beginning of the next year before the annual fee posts on that card.
00:22:00
Speaker
And so the other thing that you mentioned is that this card has some nice, well, priority pass benefits. And you mentioned sharing. We actually did this very extensively. So both I and my wife actually got that card late last year. right so So we're on track to take maximum advantage of the annual credits. But the the other part was that now everybody in the family has their own Priority Pass membership, which in turn also includes guests. And I think this Priority Pass also still includes the restaurants but which have fallen off many of the other famous Priority Pass cards. And so in contrast to say the Chase Sapphire Reserve that really used to be famous for their Priority Pass benefits, but eventually also lost the restaurants,
00:22:49
Speaker
Well, with the Bank of America card you still have them. So enjoy it while it lasts. I definitely like this card and you know if they deny you now, no problem. They might have done you a favor. They are just telling you to get the card late in December so you can take maximum advantage of it.
Applying for Amex Cards with High Bonuses
00:23:05
Speaker
Ah, yes, that is a good point. I wasn't thinking about the calendar year benefit when I applied. I was just like, ooh, nice shiny bonus, right? Like, oh, priority pass. that one I can make some use of that. And yeah, maybe in December, I'll give this one another go and we'll see how my credit looks then to Bank of America.
00:23:24
Speaker
So I have more B of A credit cards that I applied for. I didn't just apply for this one. I actually applied for the customized cash rewards business card. And if you're sort of in the game, this is probably a pretty notorious card because this card gives you up to $50,000 spend per year in bonus on a selected category. And you know some of those categories really make sense, at least for my spend profile.
00:23:52
Speaker
And so the offer was spend $3,000 in three months and you'll get a $300 statement credit. And it also offers, you know if if if you liked the 0% APR games that ah some people play in this game, ah you get seven months of 0% APR. So if you can make use of that, you know maybe not for me specifically, but for you, that might be a useful thing to look at in terms of you know being able to you know float about Maybe that that'll make sense for you. But yeah, I did get approved for this card on my first attempt and I was given an $8,000 credit limit. So, you know We'll see if I'm able to max out that 3% category before the end of this year um But definitely, you know, I'm glad to get at least that one approval
00:24:35
Speaker
So after I got that first approval, I reapplied for the same card again, just to see what would happen. right B of A is known to combine hard inquiries on the same day. And at least for me, the way it worked out is like my personal hard pull on my credit reports.
00:24:52
Speaker
pulled, seemed to pull one credit report and I didn't really check, but then the business side pulled a different credit report, and but each subsequent personal or business application did not repole credit. So I think there's something going on with B of A there. So anyways, on this second ah B of A application for the same card that I just got approved for, I was denied And that was unfortunate. um you know I wanted to get that same offer again. Oh, well. So then I turned to another card, the unlimited cash rewards, which is a card that gives you 1.5% cash back. And it also has that same seven months of 0% APR.
00:25:29
Speaker
But it doesn't have the 3% selected category up to $50,000 in spend per year. um same Same bonus there, $300, $3,000 in spend, 90 days. And again, I was denied for this one. And you know in the past, I have been successful with getting multiple of these business customized or unlimited cash rewards cards. yeah i have I have kind of like a stable going. And unfortunately, this time, it didn't work out too well for me there.
00:25:55
Speaker
And then last B of A card I applied for, you know, while I was at it, right? Like, just keep the keep the ah keep the applications flowing, right? With B of A. I decided to just go ahead and throw in an application for an Alaska Personal, because, you know, I do like Alaska Miles. And um I applied back on... September 30th and it went pending and it went pending for a few days and um you know finally just today I was able to get the approval through and ah apparently it was because like they just needed to do a little bit of a identity verification process with me and I called and cleared that up just today
00:26:30
Speaker
And got approved. So 50,000 Alaska miles with, I think it's like three or $4,000 spend. And I got a pretty decent credit limit there. So I won't have to like go crazy with cycling on that card just to get the bonus. So I'm pretty happy, you know, two out of five approvals, which is, you know, a lot better than what I've done in the past. Nice. That was actually a great finish then. Okay. So an Alaska card and another 3% card. Sure. I mean, I take it.
00:26:56
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, B of A cards, definitely worth looking into. And Christophe, you know, enough about me and B of A, right? We have a long standing history of applications there, some successes, some denials, but I know that you have done a little bit of an Apparama with Amex. You want to get
Navigating Wells Fargo Application Challenges
00:27:15
Speaker
into that?
00:27:15
Speaker
Does that even count? I mean, like if Amex approves your card, does this even count, right? It's more like ah you have a pulse and you didn't miss any payments with Amex, chances are you're gonna get approved, right? So I actually got a new player started and that means there's lots of room for activity there.
00:27:34
Speaker
All right, are both on the personal and on the business side. And so that new player already had a little bit of a history with American Express. But yeah, so we wanted to take the opportunity to go all out and see ah how far we can expand our relationship with Amex there.
00:27:51
Speaker
And it was quite a bit. So there's a few offers on the business side. Of course, there was ah business platinum offers and business gold. I think the platinum was a targeted offer for 250,000 points. That's a lot. For $20,000 in spent, still good. um The application actually went pending, but you know I was not deterred. And so I went ahead for a business gold application. So that one was with referral.
00:28:19
Speaker
um That one was $175K for $15,000, I think. That one actually got approved on the spot, so that one's on the way. And then we figured, well, ah you know we've done something on the business side, but there's also really good offers on the personal side.
00:28:34
Speaker
And I think one of the like the the best things that I've seen on the personal side is that Amex has this offer kind of that is co-branded with Rezi right for the personal Platinum card. And in fact, the standard offer there is 10x, I think, plus 100,000 points. right So this is 10x on dining plus like the 100,000 points just for signing up.
00:28:58
Speaker
And we actually managed to get a targeted offer there for now at 15X on dining ah plus the 100,000 sign up bonus. I mean, that's pretty massive, especially, you know, this 15X goes up to, I think, something like, what, $25,000 in spending.
00:29:16
Speaker
And yeah, well, there's a wedding banquet waiting, so that will help us ah get this category maxed out. And then, of course, we'll hopefully put every restaurant bill that we can find on this card. ah probably It probably doesn't hurt that that that person is active in sales.
00:29:33
Speaker
It will help us max out that category and really get benefits from this. I think if ah you do the math on this, 15x on 25k plus 100k sign up bonus, I think this is almost 500,000 points from a single card sign up. i mean that is just i mean Amazing. it is It is out there. right so But yeah, amazing. so this is you know We applied for it. The card got approved. and Yeah, well, so now let the spending begin. right And then besides this, well, we you know we promised to get some additional cards. There was still the increased offer for the Bonvoy Brilliant card. and We also were able to get that with a referral. And then there was still some room there on the business side. So we figured, hey, yeah let's throw in an application for a Hilton business card. And that too got approved also with a referral. So, you know, major, major activity there on the Amex side.
00:30:29
Speaker
But yeah, um several thousand dollars in annual fees waiting to be paid, but also a massive amount of points, almost a million points on the way there, ah plus you know some some like hol hotel and benefits. so yeah i mean I love Amex. It's awesome that you know they they actually tolerate this kind of stuff, but yeah, i mean they get paid for it.
00:30:53
Speaker
so yeah But in the end, again, MX approvals are not maybe as exciting as B of A approvals because with MX, as long as you check the boxes, they'll approve you and you'll also pay for the cars. But on the other hand, the annual fees are massive. fred so ah You can do this once it's ah once at a lifetime. Maybe then you get a targeted offer that has no lifetime language, right so you can get a card again. But yeah, I mean, going all out like this is it's fun, but it doesn't happen every day.
00:31:25
Speaker
Yeah, just wait for your post office worker to deliver all those envelopes. They're going to have a lot of fun. Yeah, I actually you know i have a couple Amex applications also sort of in this pending state, just waiting to, I guess, get under you know the charge cards limits.
00:31:41
Speaker
um so I can actually you know actually call in and ask to have these applications reconsidered, right? So I also have a ResiPlat 10X. I wasn't able to pull up that 15X, but i'll I'll continue to try. ah we'll We'll see if that ah you know you know if if I do get that 15X, I'll definitely put an application, but I do have the 10X pending and I also have a 250K BizPlat pending and I'm just waiting you know for the right time to ah to to fire that kind and call in and let's see if we can get another approval through. But I just need to get a couple charge cards off the books here and a couple credit cards off the books. Yeah, so Amig is really a whole class or category of its own. like Yes, yes, there's the coupon books and yes, the annual fees are high. But yes, the bank is also extremely generous right when it comes to points of benefits. So it's really one of the staples of the game.
00:32:35
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think we could do a podcast without even mentioning Amex. We could do like an Amex shot, right? Like every time somebody says it, you got to take a shot. Oh man. We'll never get through the podcast at that point.
Successful Chase Ink Application Strategies
00:32:48
Speaker
um So anyways, continuing on, right? Like I wasn't done with my B of A applications here. I also went in for a Wells Fargo built card.
00:32:57
Speaker
And I submitted that, I forget, I think it was probably September 30th when I submitted this. And today it's still pending. And so I called in and I was like, hey, what's going on with this application? And apparently they all they need at this point is like an income verification. And so I've had a long relationship with Wells Fargo in the past, but earlier this year I decided to close you know my checking account and my one or two credit cards that I had with them.
00:33:22
Speaker
And so now I don't have a relationship and I tried to get back in, you know, two months ago, didn't wasn't successful there. And I was like, actually, you know, I should actually just go in on on this built card because, um you know, some some of the transfer partners with the built program are actually pretty useful to me and I can i can definitely make use of them.
00:33:38
Speaker
And so um they didn't deny me instantly like they did with that Wells Fargo autograph journey card that I applied for in August. And so that seemed to me like a good thing, right? Like if a bank doesn't instantly deny you, it's probably, you know, maybe they just need to, you know, cross check a couple things before they can approve you. And so they asked for two years of tax returns and like my tax returns are pretty long. And so they were like, we need you to fax, fax this in.
00:34:07
Speaker
I'm like, come on, Wells Fargo, like the bank with like the old, it seems like you guys have like the oldest IT t in the game, right? You guys are still doing faxes, like for a tier one and a half, maybe bank, like they're still doing fax. And so it's just very frustrating that you can't even like, you know, upload secure email.
00:34:24
Speaker
Uh, and so yeah, I faxed those documents in and like my, my hello fax bill came to like $20 all said and done. And I was like, okay, if that results in approval, that's a $20 well spent. And, uh, you know, I don't want to, you know, have to drive to the UPS or just effects tax returns.
00:34:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's not surprising. I mean, the carriage is still in the logo, right? So they deliver it with the Pony Express. Yeah. yeah Actually, speaking of Wells Fargo and faxing things in, see, recently I also went in on the $2,500 premier checking bonus. I think that's what they call it, right? So it's kind of like the same thing that exists with most banks like Citigold or, you know, ah Chase has like the private client.
00:35:08
Speaker
So they have these offers where, hey, if you transfer enough assets and these assets can also include, of course, IRAs or retirement accounts. And then, well, um in order to make this happen, do you have to open a brokerage account, you know, you have to transfer the assets over.
00:35:25
Speaker
ah But guess what, ah Wells Fargo also expected me to send in faxes. And you know one fax for the yeah account transfer, and another fax for also some verification of documents. So of course I went into a Wells Fargo branch, I got them to help me, I got them to fax it in. And of course the immediate response was that the fax was not legible or it was missing something, even though it came straight from a Wells Fargo branch.
00:35:51
Speaker
And then I figured, okay, well, do I have to fax this N here as well? Well, turns out that Wasp Fargo still has a secure messaging feature that is actually turned off on the main page. right So if you go into secure messaging ah from the main web interface, it says, hey, yeah yeah you can only receive messages, you cannot send them. But it turns out that for brokerage purposes, if you click on the brokerage view and you tell them to send a document, They send you right back to that view under Parity, click some invisible button for you so that you can secure message them ah with the upload forms and the documents so that, hey, ah you don't have to use Halifax, but only for brokerage bonuses. So, you know, I'm not sure this would have helped with the build application there. But yeah, well, Swago man.
00:36:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's, oh man, Wells Fargo is such a frustrating bank, but they have good cards. Like they have unique opportunities, right? With the autograph journey. They have a few like choice hotel cards and like, you know, every once in a while I look at that and I'm just like, am I missing out on something here? And, um you know, definitely we're missing out with Wells Fargo because they have no sense of, you know, streamlining IT t and the customer experience when ah when, you know, trying to interact with the bank. so I don't know, maybe it's a good thing that I'm not approved yet. like They're trying to keep me away from all of the the bad customer experience that they're going to give me, but they have good cards.
00:37:16
Speaker
And who knows? Maybe you still have one of these cards and you don't even know about it. Right. like They probably are like, is this the same person? Because we also have another card open for him still. I don't think he knows. Oh, man. So ah you know we'll follow up on this built card application. um you know i'm hoping I'm really hoping, man. I've applied a couple times. if I had the built card before, but it was with Evolve Bank before they switched over to Wells Fargo. Man, my Evolve Bank built card. It had a paltry credit limit of $1,000, so I wasn't able to do much damage with that. But um they closed it on me because I had like maybe nine months of inactivity. Well, with the $1,000 credit limit, like what's the point of spending on the card in the first place? right so You can't really do much. and so you know We'll see. I'm trying to get back into the built ecosystem here.
00:38:06
Speaker
and hopefully, you know, make some hay with that. Yeah, I think even for the people that still had the wealth cards open, I think Bill eventually closed them on the people and then had the generous offer that they can always apply through Wells Fargo directly. I guess they wanted to receive some more faxes there.
00:38:27
Speaker
yeah of um And so last but not least, um you know, still continuing on with the theme of new cards. um My player too, actually, you know, I was, you know, perusing her online banking the other day.
00:38:43
Speaker
And i so actually, I saw a targeted offer for a basically, hey, you're already approved. Just pick a card, submit your application, and ah you'll you'll get one of these cards. And so I think it was like it was showing me the Chase Inc. Premier, Inc. Cache, Inc. Unlimited, and Inc. Preferred. And they you know these aren't like the 120K ultimate reward bonuses that we've seen you know a couple months ago.
00:39:08
Speaker
But I mean, like, just thinking about, like, I really wanted to expand my P2 relationship. And so Chase is probably a really obvious choice there because, um you know, with business cards, it doesn't affect your 524. And, you know, that might be, it might be better to start off with business cards, then maybe, you know, Chase Sapphire Reserve, maybe a Chase Hyatt card, like, afterwards.
Optimizing Multi-platform Credit Card Benefits
00:39:29
Speaker
Like, I was thinking business cards should probably come first here, at least in Chase's eyes.
00:39:34
Speaker
And so yeah, um I went in and looked and I saw this targeted offer and I was like, hmm, that's interesting. 90,000 UR, I think 6K spend, 90 days. And you also get that 12 months of 0% APR on purchases. Like that seems pretty juicy to me. And um there's like no, they they say you're already approved, so.
00:39:53
Speaker
um I thought about this and I was like, tempted to just straight up head on apply. And I was like, let me see. Cause if they're saying that they're going to approve her for a card, why don't I just ask for a referral first? And so, you know, I went in, asked a friend for a referral, got it, and went ahead and applied. And she was immediately approved for a, I think a $9,000 credit limit on a Chase Inc. Unlimited. So it's it's ah it's not an in cash, but um I did like the Inc. Unlimited for at least the, approve ah for this credit card application.
00:40:23
Speaker
And so with that first approval, right? That's nice. You get the bonus and everything. That targeted, quote unquote, already approved offer was still staring me right in the face. And I was like, I wonder what happens if I just apply for another one here. And so, yeah, I went in with that application via just the targeted offer and again, approved another time. And this time it's funny because she got a higher credit limit. She got a 16K credit limit on this one.
00:40:49
Speaker
And so it's funny to me that like they'll extend you $9,000 of credit as a customer, and then you know you use maybe a targeted offer, and then they're like, here, well I don't know what it is. right like They're giving you more credit limit. Usually it's the other way around. As a bank ah approves you for more cards, the credit limits that they're willing to extend you get smaller and smaller.
00:41:09
Speaker
allla like Citibank, for example. And so I was just, you know, I'm happy that we were able to get two chase inks for V2, and we're going to start working on that 6K spend requirement on each one and hopefully have, you know, a nice influx of ultimate rewards, which seem pretty hard to come by these days.
00:41:26
Speaker
Very nice. I mean, two of these approvals, which is always juicy, right? I mean, ultimate rewards are very, very easy to use for Hyatt. I mean, United is another option, but I think like Hyatt is probably the the most valuable choice there. And I think another thing that you pointed out here, this reminded me of the MX days, where there were ah sometimes targeted offers that you received for a card, like say a business platinum card or even like a personal gold card or something like this that said, hey, yeah this is you know a specifically a targeted offer to you. ah You get this number of points for the card. ah you know ah Do you accept this offer? You're essentially already approved. And then the real way to game this was to actually go in and apply for a card that you know
00:42:11
Speaker
would have possibly excluded that bonus. right For example, i don't know you apply for a gold card before signing up for a platinum card. right so You would go in and say, hey, um if I just accept the offer for the platinum card, I'm no longer eligible for the gold card. I'm no longer eligible for the bonus on the green card.
00:42:30
Speaker
So you go in, you apply for the green card, you apply for the gold card, and then you accept the targeted offer for the platinum card, right so that you kind of you get all the bonuses. And this is essentially the same thing, right? So I'm surprised to to ah see that, hey, yeah the same thing that applies to Amex suddenly works with Chase as well.
00:42:49
Speaker
Yeah, these are these things in these games, right? Where it's like, hey, here's a great targeted offer. It's like, oh, it looks good. You know, not just accept it. It's like, no, wait, wait, there's an opportunity here. And great to hear that this worked out. I guess, ah again, the chase ultimate reward points are actually ah very juicy.
00:43:07
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. This is one of those gamification of applications things, right? Like, you know, you already got a winner in one, ah you know, if if you choose to go this route, you're a winner there. And so like, it's always important to like, if you see something really valuable, don't just jump on it immediately.
Post-Schwab Devaluation Strategies
00:43:25
Speaker
Like maybe take that second look and say, okay, I know I have this approval pretty much, right? Like it's not a guarantee, but it pretty much guaranteed, but like, see what else you can do in the meantime, before you actually take advantage of that. Right. So.
00:43:37
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like we're always trying to optimize or gamify things. and i mean I was thinking to myself, like maybe I should have thrown in a third card, but I didn't really want to push, especially with P2 and Chase. like I didn't want to go too hard there. um But you know potentially, you could throw in a third application. I guess the worst outcome is that you just get a denial, right? like We're not doing anything too crazy with P2's chase profile, so I don't know. It probably could have been worthwhile to try it. Maybe instead of a referral, instead of this targeted offer, just a head-on offer. I don't know if that matters or not, but ah just another thing to think about. But um you know I'm happy with two approvals, and we'll we'll get to work on you know that amount of spend that we have to do there.
00:44:21
Speaker
The other thing I was thinking about, at least for these Chase Ink Unlimited ah cards, is that you know eventually, once you get the bonus, you know I'm thinking that really my favorite Chase Ink card is the Chase Ink Cache. Well, actually, my favorite is the one that you can't even get anymore. And these are Chase Ink Plus back in the day. Do you remember this Kristoff Chase Ink Plus Chase Ink Bold? They had the 50K office. i closed I had a bunch of those, and I closed them. Man, I'm really kicking myself for that.
00:44:48
Speaker
um Yeah, apparently $95 annual fee when you're in grad school and no income. $95 is a lot of money back then. But yeah, um I'm i'm yeah chasing cash, but that card you know is really what I'm looking to downgrade these two cards for P2. So once we get the bonuses there, I'm pretty sure Chase is okay with this and you can just downgrade two different product. It's not even a downgrade really, right? Like it's just a lateral transfer, if you will.
00:45:17
Speaker
Right. You're not, you're not paying less of an annual fee. It's the same annual fee level, just different set of benefits with the spend on that card. Okay. That was a lot of new cards here. Chase, Amex, Bank of America. I mean the whole gamut. So what else is left? Some housekeeping and of course some more Amex. Yeah, we can't st stray away from Amex here.
00:45:39
Speaker
I think this is probably the elephant in the room, right? The Schwab devaluation has officially begun. And so just to recap, what actually happened is on October 1st, 2024, Amex said, no more Schwab cash outs at 1.1 cent per point in an unlimited fashion. And they've actually capped how many points per year that you can cash out at 1.1 cents per point.
00:46:04
Speaker
you can only cash out up to a million membership rewards to your Schwab brokerage at this elevated 1.1% rate right per point. And anything after that, you will have to transfer at 0.8 cents per point. right So if you were if you had a million points and that was previously as far as cash out, you know you could get $11,000 in your brokerage. Once you hit that cap for the calendar year, now you're only getting $8,000 for the same number of points. So you know that's a pretty hefty devaluation there.
00:46:34
Speaker
And um i don't really I don't really see myself you know going past 1 million per calendar year now. right like I'll take my 1.1 and then from there, right if 0.8 is my you know now new floor, what am I going to do here? right There are other ways that we can ah you know use our MRs with ah with a better uplift than 0.8. Christophe, what's probably the number one thing that you might be thinking of here?
00:47:01
Speaker
I mean, the first probably most valuable direct use of points is, well, transfer them out, right? And then find some flights. But if that doesn't work, well, the business platinum still has that rebate of 35%, right? So essentially, if you book business of first class or more importantly, like the selected airline that you have in flights,
00:47:26
Speaker
then Amex will rebate you up to 1 million points per calendar year for those flights. right so Let's say you book, I don't know, we're in San Francisco here, so you book a United flight, even if it's economy, it say round trip for like $500, then well, you will first pay about 50,000 points with Amex at a rate of like one cent per point. But after about a month, or I think like 32 days or so, FX will rebate you back 35% of that amount. right So you'll get back about, let's say like, what is this, like 16, 17K points? 16K, yeah.
00:48:08
Speaker
yeah And so that can be interesting, right? It's no longer, okay, well, you know, here you just push a button and like 2 million points disappear, but you can probably consume your membership reward points this way, at least a little bit.
00:48:24
Speaker
Also, sometimes, especially for round trip fares, if you look at business class, there's actually still some decent fares that you can get where then booking a round trip with cash, so to say, is, well, you know, still say 100K or so to Europe after the re the rebate.
00:48:44
Speaker
So typically what you would have paid with points anyways. And, well, you still get points because, well, it's a revenue fair, right? So if you buy a revenue fair with your MX card and you get your rebates to the airline, it still looks like you paid cash. And that means that, you know, if you then apply and this flight to, you know, Alaska, America, you know, whatever metal metal you're flying on, and the Alliance, then you still get some miles back from that too. or So that really,
00:49:14
Speaker
adds to the benefit. I know like I've used this in the past and I'll definitely make use of this business platform credit going forward. Now, what else is there? um Well, there's the Morgan Stanley Platinum card, right? So that one essentially gives you a floor of, I think, god one cent per point. but So similar to the Schwab flavor, there's the Morgan Stanley flavor. ah The Schwab flavor had the advantage that it was 1.1 cents, but it still is, but capped. Why not get the Morgan Stanley Platinum, right? So there you don't drop from 1.1 to 0.8, but instead it's just a flat one cent cash out.
00:49:52
Speaker
unlimited. Who knows? Maybe they'll cap it, too. But so far, the Morgan Stanley Platinum seemingly was unaffected by these devaluations on the Schwab site. There's also the Amex business checking account that essentially gives you the same benefit, right where you have up to a million points per year, I think, that you can cash out at also one cent per point. That's that.
00:50:14
Speaker
I think, I don't know, if you want to to go with more complicated options, and I'm sure there's people who are essentially acting as brokers right for like ah points, whether they're for LN miles or like MX points. like Maybe I don't really have that much experience with this. like Raymond, do you have some experience with that?
00:50:31
Speaker
ah Not too much experience with brokers recently, but um I have heard right like the rates are better than 1.1 cent per point cash out and that sort of incentivizes people um to actually pursue this option because it's a lot more complication. right You're like working with two other parties that you're dealing with and so the middleman is just taking a small cut. right so I don't know if that's something that I want to pursue. It seems a little bit risky. And ah it also seems very complicated. So I think I'll stay away from you know delving into the the realm of brokers. I think I'll just stay away from that for now. um But yeah, I mean, I think, you know, what else do we have here? Like redeeming for gift cards? Crystal?
00:51:09
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of other options like gift cards and so on, but honestly, in my experience, like the MX points are most valuable when they are transferred. And I say if there's a transfer bonus to Hilton, for example, I mean Hilton added the small luxury hotels of the world now, right?
00:51:25
Speaker
They snatched it away from Hyatt. Actually, the way that Hilton has implemented it, it's ah like it's it's pretty good. right So there's certain outlet there. On the other hand, well, yeah, LNML is still working with the business platinum 35% rebate. I'm sure I'll you know get to use up a good chunk of the points that I earn. and um Maybe it's going to be more piecemeal, right so I cannot just click a button and then flush like 500,000 points into my brokerage account.
00:51:54
Speaker
But well I'll just have to go and say, like hey, you know somebody in the family is taking a trip here or there. And then I was saying like, OK, let's just book it and maybe have like ah one platinum for United and another platinum for American and another one for Delta. And you know that way, yeah we are brokering the points in the family, so to say. I think that's going to be much easier than dealing with any kind of third parties there. But yeah, definitely the devaluation of Schwab hurts. But yeah, that's
Episode Conclusion and Patreon Promotion
00:52:22
Speaker
what it is. The game always evolves.
00:52:24
Speaker
Yeah, i I love that actually. the you know Making sure now, right? like If you want to like yeah maximize your opportunities here with 1.54 cents per point, at least on that Amex Business Platinum rebate. like you know we We have a few Amex Business Platinum's in our inventory here and you know you could select a different airline and you know make sure like no matter what your travel need is that you're getting a really good rate, 1.54.
00:52:48
Speaker
on that on that booking, whether it be in premium cabin, and yeah but really this is like for you know those times where you need to fly economy, you know you can book with the correct business plan for the rebate you want and get your uplift that way. But overall, unfortunately, 1.1, unlimited, uncapped, I'm really gonna miss that. It was already you know pretty hard for me to like give up 1.1 and I was still doing it.
00:53:14
Speaker
But you know i miss the you know I miss when 1.6, 1.5, 1.25, all these other uplift redemptions existed. And they just seem to have been going down, down, down over time. And um yeah, i'm i I'm even concerned about that Morgan Stanley Platinum. right like It's eventually going to get nerfed, I think. right like More people are going to start moving to that because it's an easy thing to do. And the more the the easier something is and the more obvious that that's the right amount of value you can get. like You can get 1.0.
00:53:42
Speaker
just transferred to your Morgan Stanley plenum brokerage. You know, more people are going to do that. And so, you know, I'm thinking in the future that might get nerfed as well. So, um, yeah, definitely max out your, your, uh, 1 million if you can before the end of the year, because, uh, you know, from October 1st to December 31st, you're going to have a fresh 1 million that you can cash out. And if that's your thing, go ahead and max that out. And then you get another bucket ah starting on January 1st.
00:54:08
Speaker
All right, um I think that covers all we had today. Christophe, anything else that you wanted to bring up? and That was a lot of action. I mean, so many cards, right? Applications and applications and actually quite a few approvals there. Now the game is always involving, but yeah, I very much enjoyed the conversation. It was very nice catching up again.
00:54:30
Speaker
Very nice, yeah. And it seems like you know with all these new cards, we're going to have a lot of points to redeem. And so hopefully 2025 is going to be a very strong year for travel. And we're going to be documenting that as we go along here. Well, I think that wraps it up. Anything else, Christophe?
00:54:45
Speaker
I think it's a show. Alright, thanks everybody for listening to this episode of The Points Project with your hosts, Christoph and Raymond. Have a good one everybody. See you next time. Hey there, Points Project listeners. If you enjoyed today's episode, we also have a Patreon feed where we expand upon many of the topics we discuss on this show. If you'd like access to the enthusiast member-only content and Slack group, please consider subscribing to our Patreon.