Good rewards card for a $3500 property tax payment costing $80?

[ender]

Our property taxes are due in September. We can pay using a credit card, but it will cost us around $80.

Seems we might as well use a rewards card for this since it likely will be better than the $80 fee.

Recently hit the CSP bonus, so that's out. Are there other cards that have good cashback? The chance for $3500 manufactured spend seems pretty good since we nearly never get that much in such a short period of time. I guess I assume there's a good card for that fairly irregular chunk of spending.

[Psychstache]

If you are a traveler, the Starwood Preferred Guest from Amex might be a good one for this occasion (25k for 3k spending, annual fee waived first year).

Here's the basics:

https://www262.americanexpress.com/apply-card/spg/106/spg-330

If you are interested, you can PM me and I can send you my referral link (same offer, but I get a few points for the referral).

[ender]

If you are a traveler, the Starwood Preferred Guest from Amex might be a good one for this occasion (25k for 3k spending, annual fee waived first year).

Here's the basics:

https://www262.americanexpress.com/apply-card/spg/106/spg-330

If you are interested, you can PM me and I can send you my referral link (same offer, but I get a few points for the referral).

Hmm, we don't do a whole ton of traveling currently, though I guess if it was free we might more. We do infrequently spend money on hotels I guess.

[Rubic]

@ender:  Tomorrow Chase will be releasing the Chase Sapphire Reserve Card
(it's different from your CSP) which will include the following benefits after $4000
spend:

• 100,000 Ultimate Reward points
• Fee credit of up to $100 for Global Entry or TSA PreCheck
• Priority Pass Select airport lounge access
  
• $300 travel credit per year

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-credit-card-will-give-you-100000-bonus-points-and-cost-450-a-year-2016-08-19

If you or your spouse have applied for less than 5 cards (from any bank)
over the past 24 months, you should be able to easily qualify for the CSR,
assuming you have an excellent credit score.  I intend to wait for some
more data points to emerge before applying as I'm well beyond the 5/24
Chase rule, if it applies to this card.

Update: The $300 travel credit is based on calendar year. So you get
a $300 credit for 2016 (now until Dec 31, 2016) and one in 2017.

[ender]

Wow is that card ever a good deal! I wonder if my current score is good enough, I think it's around 750+ or so. Mint guesstimates it at 751, which I suspect would be good enough for this?

We spend at least $300 a year in "travel" (though it is whatever categories they decide). Though is that a "total reimbursement" or a "one time credit" type of thing?

So basically, assuming I only used it for property taxes and cancelled it (or downgraded?) after the first year it'd net me, in cash:

$1040 in rewards (104,000 rewards points)
$300 in statement credit
-$450 in card fee
-$80 in extra processing charges
-------------
+$810

Am I understanding that right? It seems to good to be true and that's converting the points to cash, which is not as good as if it was to travel points.

[Catbert]

Your math isn't exactly correct.  The $300 travel credit is on a calendar year basis so the first year you have the card you get $600 is travel credit ($300 in 2016 and $300 in 2017).  To max it out you'll need to ensure that the charges for 2016 post prior to your December 2016 end date which is likely earlier in the month than the 31st.

So total savings is $1110. !!

[Rubic]

Wow is that card ever a good deal! I wonder if my current score is good enough, I think it's around 750+ or so. Mint guesstimates it at 751, which I suspect would be good enough for this?

FICO > 750 should be good enough.  You want to report your combined income
(both you and you spouse's) on the application.  Also you don't want your total credit limit
at Chase to exceed a certain percentage of your reported income.  Example: If your CL
on the CSP is $30K and your income is $50K, then it might be denied because the CSR
would put you well over what Chase would want to lend you.  If you think you're close to
the limit, you can ask Chase to preemptively lower your CL on your CSP (maybe to $10K)
so your CSR application will breeze through their automated system -- avoiding you having
to call recon and offer to lower your CL after submitting your credit application.  If you
decide to do this, wait several days for the lowered CL to percolate through the Chase
system before you apply for the CSR(*).

We spend at least $300 a year in "travel" (though it is whatever categories they decide). Though is that a "total reimbursement" or a "one time credit" type of thing?

Chase travel categories appear to be pretty broad, even including toll roads.  If
I can't travel, I just purchase airline gift cards, e.g. I currently have 7x $100 gift
cards with American Airlines -- these never expire.

So basically, assuming I only used it for property taxes and cancelled it (or downgraded?) after the first year it'd net me, in cash:

$1040 in rewards (104,000 rewards points)
$300 in statement credit
-$450 in card fee
-$80 in extra processing charges
-------------
+$810

Except you can add an another $300 of reimbursed travel credit
since the benefit is tied to the calendar year, i.e. $300 of credit in
2016, then another $300 in 2017 (before your anniversary date).

So your minimum net is $1110, exclusive of finding better deals on
utilizing your UR points at a conversion rate > $0.01/pt. **

* I don't know if this is strictly necessary, but I generally assume that
requested changes to my accounts may take a few days to be put
into effect.

** Disclaimer: The above information is based on all the data points
I've currently collected.  YMMV.  Please read the terms carefully before
submitting your credit application.

[KickingRocks]

I've yet to find a card that would break even with rewards on the fee the county charges by paying your property taxes with a credit card.  My county charges 3% to pay with a credit card or debit card.  I even questioned this method last year.  Saying at least with a card you get the money right away and a check could come back bad.  They didn't care.  Thinking this year I'll take my wheel barrow up there with $6,600 in pennies.

[Psychstache]

I've yet to find a card that would break even with rewards on the fee the county charges by paying your property taxes with a credit card.  My county charges 3% to pay with a credit card or debit card.  I even questioned this method last year.  Saying at least with a card you get the money right away and a check could come back bad.  They didn't care.  Thinking this year I'll take my wheel barrow up there with $6,600 in pennies.

It only works if you are using a new card to meet the sign up threshold.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[crazy jane]

Make sure the taxes are not considered a cash advance. They won't count towards the minimum spend if it is. I learned the hard way with my property taxes last year. I had to eat the fee. Lesson learned.

[Rubic]

Make sure the taxes are not considered a cash advance. They won't count towards the minimum spend if it is. I learned the hard way with my property taxes last year. I had to eat the fee. Lesson learned.

Good point.  For any card that I'm considering for manufactured
spending, I set the cash advance amount to $100.  I'd set it to
$0, but some banks won't allow it to be set to zero.

You really, really want the purchase to be coded as a purchase
and not a cash advance.

[ender]

I'll probably do something like plastiq which should avoid that problem.

I've been looking for a reason to set that up anyways as their 2.5% processing fees are well worth it if you can start using it to hit signup periods such as with the CSP or that new Chase card. We really don't spend that much in discretionary normally (well except when our car asplodes right after buying a house, so we had some serious spend that month). But do have about $1500-2000 a month in auto ACH transfers. Plus property taxes

Plus, setting it up would be the starting step towards paying our mortgage with credit card signup periods :-) There's a lot of cards that have pretty easy to hit rewards bonuses for cashback.

It'd be nice if there was a service like plastiq that allowed you to basically pay the credit card fee to put it into a standard bank account held in your name, which you could then use for normal ACH transfer to pay bills. This would be ideal, you could transfer in $X and then know you had $X to auto debit your account. It looks like with plastiq the account is not actually in your name and there's no holding period for your money there.

[chasesfish]

I would suggest the Capital One Venture card for the tax payment.  $430 or for $3,000 spend.  Must redeem against hotel, rental car, or airfare for that conversion level.