Posts made by calwatch

Alliant is good if you have a lot of checks to deposit, since they use the Co-Op Network of deposit taking ATMs. Their rates have been non competitive recently though.

Is there a reason why you aren’t including Consumers CU?

@pricelessprice I just got an OBC a couple months ago. You have to find the secret link and it is good for $50k in spending at 5%, after you first qualify by having $6500 in spending at 0.5% for the non bonused categories or 1% for the bonused ones. Unfortunately I got it right as the PO MO shut down.

This offer periodically pops up. It is good for anyone, no attendance required. If you miss it it will come around in a few months.

Yeah, got a $18.93 check.

Do you find it worthwhile to grind $50,000 in gift cards from the supermarket to max out OBC? Unless you are in an area which is promiscuous in taking gift cards for MO I just think it does not have its luster. I maxed out the $50k on Ink once, but that was due to a confluence of $300 Staples VGC in the mail, Walmarts with kiosks, and Bluebird/Serve (I had access to three). Once the kiosks were eliminated, and later Serve died, grinding the points wasn’t worth it. If you have built that relationship with your favorite MO vendor, sure, but the 2.5% delta that you mention seems like a lot of work.

In person meet ups have been very helpful. Grant Thomas of Travel With Grant organizes them, as does the Freequent Flyer on Twitter for his subscribers, and the FT thread has MS meetups. If you want to spend money you can go to a FTU or Chicago Seminar. I went to an FTU once and it was interesting, although I would not spend money to go to one again. I did meet several heavy hitters of the old Delta Skymiles debit card though and a better networker could probably build good relationships with local MSers.

There’s the Saverocity “Level 2” group (although that doesn’t really add much in terms of secret stuff or new deals, but rather franker discussion of existing ongoing deals like buying coins that pay off eBay bucks from reputable dealers as a means of MS) and the Freequent Flyer newsletter (the guy is a character but he does share interesting deals like the now dead OD/OM unlimited rewards on VGC if you put your zip code in a target market). I do check into the FT thread though, before I do something that I haven’t done recently, like buy money orders at the post office or WM, in order to make sure nothing has significantly changed.

The low hanging fruit, like Vanilla Reloads, Serve/Bluebird/Redbird, Visa Buxx, etc. are gone. The HH who make a living on this are generally sharing amongst a few dozen people, at most, and probably less and more selectively. I only treat it as a hobby since I have thousands of unspent UR from the days when Chase was mailing VGC to your doorstep and you could take it to Kate to get money back.

The one reason you may not want to sockdrawer the Double Cash just yet is that the BOA card is a Visa (after all, Visa used to be called the BankAmericard). There are certain use cases like Plastiq where MC is accepted but not Visa. As for Chase Sapphire Preferred, just make sure you have another premium card to transfer points out of, should you use that option. I personally use Chase Ink because hitting Staples when they offer rebates on Visa/MC/Amex GC pays for my membership fee, but that option of a 5X premium card is no longer available.

Note that you need a premium Chase card in order to transfer points out, and this qualifies. Combine with Chase Freedom and their 5% categories to get more Ultimate Rewards Points. While United is the most commonly cited one (I burned 160,000 miles in business class for me and my mom for a last minute family event, which would have cost $3,000+ with cash), don’t overlook BA Avios or Hyatt (good Hyatt redemption values in major cities like Seattle).