Credit Card Rewards for CY20

[Alex The Great]

My setup too, but use the BOA Travel card as my automated charge card, so if there is a hacking of any other card, I don't have to reset all the automated payments.
I use the Premier card (same 2.6%) for other purchases and the $95 fee is effectively reimbursed by the $100 baggage allowance in normal non Covid years.
I use 3 cash cards for the 3.5%/5.25% scenario.

Not mentioned here is that one must have 100k in BOA/ML in order to get these rates.

As I can see, in order to get back 5.25% with BofA Travel Card and Platinum Honers you have to redeem points using Bank of America "Travel Center", correct? How limited are options there? Typically, tickets on web site like this one are much more expensive than direct purchase through airline web site for example?

 

[Sunset]

^^^^^
I use the BOA cash card for the 5.25% as I'm a Platinum Preferred Rewards member.

This is straight cash as the reward, redeemable to credit my account.

 

[Sunset]

..
I use 3 cash cards for the 3.5%/5.25% scenario.

..

I nearly missed this point, I never considered getting more than 1 cash CC so I could set it to a different category reward.

Am I understanding correctly you have more than 1 cash reward card ..

 

[kimcdougc]

Made about $1,700 of Fidelity's 2% back on everything card and another $300 on my Capital One 1.5% cash back on everything card. Total about $2,000 for the year.

 

[GalaxyBoy]

I don't play the CC rewards game much, except I have the Capital One Quicksilver Card that pays 1.5% on everything and the Amex Blue Cash Preferred that pays 6% back on groceries and streaming services (with an annual fee that is more than made up for). Maybe we could play the games and get more credit but it's just not worth keeping track of more than groceries vs. everything else.

One thing I like about Cap One is that they automagically credit the rewards to the account. With Amex I have to remember to log in and claim them, a minor PITA.

 

[mystang52]

$825, net after annual fee

 

[Dtail]

As I can see, in order to get back 5.25% with BofA Travel Card and Platinum Honers you have to redeem points using Bank of America "Travel Center", correct? How limited are options there? Typically, tickets on web site like this one are much more expensive than direct purchase through airline web site for example?

You have cash/travel card credit/transfer to other CC options for the Travel card.
IIRC, the cash option is less than the other 2 options, so I transfer the points to one of my other credit cards and then redeem those points on that card. This way the cash reward is maximized and since I use the travel card as my recurring expense card, I don't have to deal with travel credits if I don't travel.

Yes, the main reason I don't use the BOA travel website vs. booking directly through the airline web site, is that the deals on the BOA site are not as good, even after taking into account the extra points for booking with them directly.

 

[Dtail]

I nearly missed this point, I never considered getting more than 1 cash CC so I could set it to a different category reward.

Am I understanding correctly you have more than 1 cash reward card ..

Yes, I have 3 cash CC plus the Travel and Premier cards.
This way I can maximize the 2500 quarterly points maximum on each card.
I usually set the cards to Dining/Drug Store/Gas. I usually charge the groceries to the gas card, as that gets the least usage.
If one category is short in the 3rd month of a specific quarter, then I change the category from another card which might already be at the max.

Obviously, this requires keeping a log of the purchases on each card. This is part of my 5 minutes daily of tracking expenses.

The 5th card I use is for everything else, which is the Premier card.

 

[Alex The Great]

You have cash/travel card credit/transfer to other CC options for the Travel card.
IIRC, the cash option is less than the other 2 options, so I transfer the points to one of my other credit cards and then redeem those points on that card. This way the cash reward is maximized and since I use the travel card as my recurring expense card, I don't have to deal with travel credits if I don't travel.

Yes, the main reason I don't use the BOA travel website vs. booking directly through the airline web site, is that the deals on the BOA site are not as good, even after taking into account the extra points for booking with them directly.

Thanks for explanation. But it looks like travel card return just 1.5% for all purchases, including grocery for example. Which translates into 2.625% for Platinum Honor. Then you transfer these points into cash reward card, and redeem for cash back correct? But it would be still less than 2% (3.5% for Platinum Honor) returned with grocery purchase using cash rewards card. Not sure what would be the reason to use travel card in this particular case?

 

[audreyh1]

Thanks for explanation. But it looks like travel card return just 1.5% for all purchases, including grocery for example. Which translates into 2.625% for Platinum Honor. Then you transfer these points into cash reward card, and redeem for cash back correct? But it would be still less than 2% (3.5% for Platinum Honor) returned with grocery purchase using cash rewards card. Not sure what would be the reason to use travel card in this particular case?

You can directly redeem for statement credit from travel purchases including dining and hotel on the BofA travel rewards VISA. They usually save a year’s worth of qualifying purchases for you to redeem against.

The main advantage of the BofA Travel Rewards VISA is the no foreign transaction fee.

 

[calmloki]

Just got a failed frig call. Warm in both frig and freezer sections. A quick visit to Lowes online and order of an in-store $648 frig with $30 haul-off, tenant phone # for delivery this Saturday, and used the Gal's Chase Sapphire Reserve card for payment. Figure it will burn up $452 worth of points since it is a building material store and they are treating it at travel redemption rates. Love it!

 

[pb4uski]

Just got a failed frig call. Warm in both frig and freezer sections. A quick visit to Lowes online and order of an in-store $648 frig with $30 haul-off, tenant phone # for delivery this Saturday, and used the Gal's Chase Sapphire Reserve card for payment. Figure it will burn up $452 worth of points since it is a building material store and they are treating it at travel redemption rates. Love it!

Does the Chase Saphire reserve card that you used extend the manufacturer's warranty? The last fridge that I bought I happened to use a card that extended the warranty and 18 months later I received $700 for repairs from the credit card company. Fridge only had a 12 month warranty.

 

[audreyh1]

Just got a failed frig call. Warm in both frig and freezer sections. A quick visit to Lowes online and order of an in-store $648 frig with $30 haul-off, tenant phone # for delivery this Saturday, and used the Gal's Chase Sapphire Reserve card for payment. Figure it will burn up $452 worth of points since it is a building material store and they are treating it at travel redemption rates. Love it!

Must be going around. Ours stopped cooling Dec 20 and had a new one delivered Dec 26. CC points of course.

 

[Dtail]

Thanks for explanation. But it looks like travel card return just 1.5% for all purchases, including grocery for example. Which translates into 2.625% for Platinum Honor. Then you transfer these points into cash reward card, and redeem for cash back correct? But it would be still less than 2% (3.5% for Platinum Honor) returned with grocery purchase using cash rewards card. Not sure what would be the reason to use travel card in this particular case?

Good question. Let me explain further as how I use the cards.
I originally got the Travel card for maximizing the travel rewards % by booking through the BOA site, which I think uses Orbitz. The deals were worse using the BOA site, even after subtracting the rewards value. IIRC, the rewards rate was between 4 and 5%.
So I now effectively use the card for automatic bill paying at 2.625% rewards, so hoping the card is better protected from fraud. The types of bill paying are not the 5.25% choices that one has on the Cash reward cards.

Next step is I transfer the points to my Premier card and redeem for cash. The Premier card I use as my default card, except for the Groceries/Special categories that I use on the cash cards. This rate is 2.625%.

Lastly, I use my 3 different Cash cards for the categories mentioned above. I maximize the quarterly 2500 maximum dollars/points usage each quarter, so I can't use these cards for travel.

 

[FANOFJESUS]

We make about $168 a year on our credit card.

 

[Markola]

I'm not really playing the CC games right now. A few years ago, I was hitting it pretty hard with manufactured spending and signup bonuses, and took home over $17,000 worth of points and cash back in one year.

Manufactured spending is how to really move the needle with the points game, from what I’ve read. Would you share how you did it? I understand some people buy money orders but that method has been regulated.

 

[sengsational]

I got some good sign-up bonuses at the beginning of 2020 by putting travel on some new cards. I utilized the bonuses. Then I got reimbursed for travel due to the pandemic, so had negative balances. And just got done closing the cards to avoid the annual fee (waived the first year). They didn't try to claw-back the rewards.

I'm reporting no dollar figures, because my choice of accounting methodology doesn't make it easy; I don't keep a separate asset account for each card's points. And the kickbacks get allocated to the original spend category. So, for example, if that month's card was used primarily for travel, then the kickback would just be used to reduce the travel total for the month. Those kickbacks don't look much different than, say, a payment, so hard to write a report that pulls them out for reporting. I might be able to do it, but lack motivation.

I've asked this question before, a long time ago, if people keep an asset account for points. Seems like a lot of work. With our 2% Fidelity cards, when the kickback arrives, I just ping-pong it back as a payment against the card using Fidelity bill-pay back to Elan.

One last comment...on the 6% groceries Amex, I did an analysis (kind of a PITA), and determined it was no better than 2% on the Fidelity card for us because of the $95 annual fee and the fact that our groceries often come from places not considered "grocery stores" in the eyes of Amex. So dumped that card, along with it's annual fee.

 

[PatrickA5]

I got some good sign-up bonuses at the beginning of 2020 by putting travel on some new cards. I utilized the bonuses. Then I got reimbursed for travel due to the pandemic, so had negative balances. And just got done closing the cards to avoid the annual fee (waived the first year). They didn't try to claw-back the rewards.

I'm reporting no dollar figures, because my choice of accounting methodology doesn't make it easy; I don't keep a separate asset account for each card's points. And the kickbacks get allocated to the original spend category. So, for example, if that month's card was used primarily for travel, then the kickback would just be used to reduce the travel total for the month. Those kickbacks don't look much different than, say, a payment, so hard to write a report that pulls them out for reporting. I might be able to do it, but lack motivation.

I've asked this question before, a long time ago, if people keep an asset account for points. Seems like a lot of work. With our 2% Fidelity cards, when the kickback arrives, I just ping-pong it back as a payment against the card using Fidelity bill-pay back to Elan.

One last comment...on the 6% groceries Amex, I did an analysis (kind of a PITA), and determined it was no better than 2% on the Fidelity card for us because of the $95 annual fee and the fact that our groceries often come from places not considered "grocery stores" in the eyes of Amex. So dumped that card, along with it's annual fee.

I use Award Wallet to keep track of how many points I have in all of the various travel/awards programs. Once a year I plug those points/miles into a spreadsheet and value them based on a couple of different websites. I've got a little over 2 million points/miles accumulated valued around $20K. Hopefully I'll be able to draw down some of these later this year.

I don't do manufactured spending, but do take advantage of bonuses for opening new CC's. About 10-15 years ago it was much easier to churn accounts for bonus points, but the CC companies caught on and nixed a lot of the opportunities. Now days I might do 2 or 3 a year.

 

[Sunset]

...
I've asked this question before, a long time ago, if people keep an asset account for points. Seems like a lot of work. With our 2% Fidelity cards, when the kickback arrives, I just ping-pong it back as a payment against the card using Fidelity bill-pay back to Elan.

...

What I do is simply have a column for my CC rewards in my spreadsheet.
So when I make use of points for something (airline ticket, payment to CC account, buy gift cards). I just stick it in the spreadsheet, whatever the value is.
Since I do redeeming of points when looking at my accounts via my computer, it's no effort to open the spreadsheet and record it.
(this is one of those things I don't track in my spending tracker app).

In the case of buying for example an airline ticket, I would put the value in both travel category and my CC reward category, as travel is an expenditure and the other is simply wanting to know how I'm doing reward wise.

When I'm feeling lazy, I spread out my redemption of rewards so that there is just one per month, so I don't have to add them together in the column.

It would be harder for me to give an exact $$ value per CC as I just mix them together for redemptions in the spreadsheet.

 

[Sunset]

...
I don't do manufactured spending, but do take advantage of bonuses for opening new CC's. About 10-15 years ago it was much easier to churn accounts for bonus points, but the CC companies caught on and nixed a lot of the opportunities. Now days I might do 2 or 3 a year.

Same here, no manufactured spending.
Just didn't feel it was worth the effort and the risk of buying a scammed/number recorded gift card.
I know some folks do it great, others have told me the story of buying a $500 gift card and the money disappeared.

I'm happy just getting 1 or 2 new CC per year with big bonuses and not doing any special spending

 

[Markola]

One last comment...on the 6% groceries Amex, I did an analysis (kind of a PITA), and determined it was no better than 2% on the Fidelity card for us because of the $95 annual fee and the fact that our groceries often come from places not considered "grocery stores" in the eyes of Amex. So dumped that card, along with it's annual fee.

Thanks, I wondered about this. During Covid I’ve gotten addicted to the convenience of drive up groceries and don’t intend to return to the old way. However, those purchases flow through Instacart, so I doubt I’m getting grocery points.

 

[audreyh1]

One last comment...on the 6% groceries Amex, I did an analysis (kind of a PITA), and determined it was no better than 2% on the Fidelity card for us because of the $95 annual fee and the fact that our groceries often come from places not considered "grocery stores" in the eyes of Amex. So dumped that card, along with it's annual fee.

Yes, it’s good to do the analysis and see if it’s worth it. Amex provides an annual report - you can see what your rewards were, spending, etc.

We do spend a lot on groceries, even outside Costco, so it works for us.

This year I’ve also been getting back 6% for streaming type purchases - music, video, even books. I guess Amex Blue will continue this as long as the pandemic is limiting people traveling.

Also got $30 back on one of my wine.com orders. Just luck to stumble across that offer.

I’m willing to put up with he card for now, because the rewards are paying off. But if that changes I’ll drop it.

Quicken helps me track. I use Cash Rewards as a category, it shows up as a credit in my spending report, and I can easily look at it by account.

 

[Dtail]

Thanks, I wondered about this. During Covid I’ve gotten addicted to the convenience of drive up groceries and don’t intend to return to the old way. However, those purchases flow through Instacart, so I doubt I’m getting grocery points.

We have used Instacart and it is classified as "Groceries" on our BOA rewards card.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

We have used Instacart and it is classified as "Groceries" on our BOA rewards card.

Amex does the same.

 

[audreyh1]

Doesn’t Instacart charge so much extra that it blows away any CC rewards?