The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: wealthviahealth on March 16, 2015, 01:39:55 PM
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I just checked my CC score and was happy to see I am now above 750.
I no longer have plans of purchasing a house in the next 5 years, would this be a good time to jump aboard the CC sign up bonus
and churn game?
I have three credit cards as we speak and have managed them all with great benefit.
For folks who have been in a similar situation of having a great credit and not needing to worry about a mortgage, what has your strategy been?
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The wife and I went on a spree last summer, signed up for a bunch of cards and earned 1MM+ miles. Well worth it. Credit took a small hit in the short term, then went back up.
If you have no plans for needing your credit in the next year or two, I'd say that's a great use for your credit. Why have it as a useless asset?
Just don't get in over your head, always pay your bills in full, etc. But it can be very lucrative, and even help your credit score, so when you go to buy a house your score is even better (or solidly in the highest echelon so you don't have to worry about it dipping down and affecting you).
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I concur. Through signup bonuses my out of pocket costs for an open jaw itinerary, flying into Korea and flying out of Japan, was just $100.
Obviously this is nowhere near the scale that arebelspy achieved. But it's definitely something I'd get started on! Just make sure, as arebelspy said, to keep it all organized and don't get in over your head.
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Have your insurance company run your credit score. We recently hit a pretty high number and was able to have our insurance guy run the numbers and base on our credit score we were able to save almost $40 a month.
Sorry to be so off topic via CC...I do not have a opinion on CC. As that is not something I want to try to figure out at this point in time.
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Personally, I'd start small rather than go on a spree.
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The wife and I went on a spree last summer, signed up for a bunch of cards and earned 1MM+ miles. Well worth it. Credit took a small hit in the short term, then went back up.
If you have no plans for needing your credit in the next year or two, I'd say that's a great use for your credit. Why have it as a useless asset?
Just don't get in over your head, always pay your bills in full, etc. But it can be very lucrative, and even help your credit score, so when you go to buy a house your score is even better (or solidly in the highest echelon so you don't have to worry about it dipping down and affecting you).
I'd love to hear more about how you earned a million miles! Is there a thread on that by chance?
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Start small to ensure that you can meet the sign up bonus spend requirements.
Also realize that the free FICO score your CC gives you is different than what banks use for mortgages. A CC recently started providing FICO scores. When I saw my score of 860 I was initially pleasantly surprised b/c the last time I got a mortgage it was 810. Then I thought, wait a minute don't FICO scores only go to 850? A bit of googling revealed that while normal FICO scores only go to 850, the CC companies have their own FICO algorithm that goes up to 900. So just be aware that the FICO score you see on your CC statement maybe 50 points higher (or I suppose lower) that what the mortgage company sees.
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The wife and I went on a spree last summer, signed up for a bunch of cards and earned 1MM+ miles. Well worth it. Credit took a small hit in the short term, then went back up.
If you have no plans for needing your credit in the next year or two, I'd say that's a great use for your credit. Why have it as a useless asset?
Just don't get in over your head, always pay your bills in full, etc. But it can be very lucrative, and even help your credit score, so when you go to buy a house your score is even better (or solidly in the highest echelon so you don't have to worry about it dipping down and affecting you).
I'd love to hear more about how you earned a million miles! Is there a thread on that by chance?
IN for this as well. Have 760 score and have had one CC my entire life.
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I just signed up for an Amazon Visa and Amazon store card to get $110 in Amazon credit. Easy money (no minimum spend requirements).
I'm wrapping up the (hefty) minimum spend for my Chase Sapphire (40k bonus points); next is likely Discover IT ($100 Amazon credit for $500 spend) or Citi ThankYou ($150 Amazon credit for..$1k minimum spend, I think). Those will be really easy to do over three months (probably without manufactured spending)- then I'll start looking at some of the larger cards (British Airways, Barclay, etc).
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Yeah - as others have said... can be a good idea. My credit score dipped maybe 30 points from opening ~5 credit cards, but four months later it is almost completely recovered. I got over $500 and 50k miles in bonuses and was able to get the right cards to get 5-6% on every major spending category and 2% on everything else.
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The wife and I went on a spree last summer, signed up for a bunch of cards and earned 1MM+ miles. Well worth it. Credit took a small hit in the short term, then went back up.
If you have no plans for needing your credit in the next year or two, I'd say that's a great use for your credit. Why have it as a useless asset?
Just don't get in over your head, always pay your bills in full, etc. But it can be very lucrative, and even help your credit score, so when you go to buy a house your score is even better (or solidly in the highest echelon so you don't have to worry about it dipping down and affecting you).
I'd love to hear more about how you earned a million miles! Is there a thread on that by chance?
No thread yet, but it wasn't anything complicated.. my wife and I signed up for about 10 cards each, w/ each having about a 50k signup bonus (some had 30k, some 70k, but most had 40-50k, averaged about 50k overall) = 1MM miles (plus change from the spending we did on them to hit minimum spends, came out to just under 1.1MM). Total cost of fees not waived first year and manufactured spending was about 1k. We've already had 11 round trip flights, 2 nights at a hotel, booked 3 round trip flights for others (for which they reimbursed us, but saved them money overall versus paying for it themselves, and it recouped about 700 of that 1000), and still have about 700k miles left. So non-reimbursed out of pocket costs to date are $300, and we have dozens of flights left. (And I could redeem ~300k of those miles for $3000 cash, so I could literally having them pay me money, and still have a ton of miles, if I didn't have better uses for it.)
It was well worth jumping into, and I wish we had done it sooner.
Your credit score is an asset, and that's one of the best ways to use it.
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The wife and I went on a spree last summer, signed up for a bunch of cards and earned 1MM+ miles. Well worth it. Credit took a small hit in the short term, then went back up.
That is awesome!
Is there any validity to the idea that you should apply all at one time? Reason being to mitigate potential short term damage to score.
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I'd get a couple, but first you need to find out which airlines operate out of your local airport(s). Try to figure out where you might want to go and see which airlines can get you there.
That being said, I did post this on another thread, because a very good card is disappearing in a month. It is about getting to Hawaii, but could get you most places, as long as American Airlines works for you:
This would be my advice: Get the US Airways credit card right now. After April 12th it will no longer be offered, because they are combining with American Airlines.
1. Get US Airways card, make one purchase and pay a $89 annual fee, get 50,000 US Airways miles that become American Airline miles.
http://www.worldgotbigger.com/us-airways-credit-card/?campaignId=2062&cellNumber=8&referrerid=PTRBA89FEE
2. Get a Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select Mastercard. Get 50,000 American Airlines miles after spending $3000 in 3 months.
https://www.citi.com/credit-cards/credit-card-details/detail.do?ID=citi-aadvantage-platinum-select-credit-card&category=travel-reward-credit-cards&afc=150
With your 100,000 American Airlines miles, you should be able to get a roundtrip flight to Hawaii in First Class or at least Business class.
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I'd get a couple, but first you need to find out which airlines operate out of your local airport(s). Try to figure out where you might want to go and see which airlines can get you there.
That being said, I did post this on another thread, because a very good card is disappearing in a month. It is about getting to Hawaii, but could get you most places, as long as American Airlines works for you:
This would be my advice: Get the US Airways credit card right now. After April 12th it will no longer be offered, because they are combining with American Airlines.
1. Get US Airways card, make one purchase and pay a $89 annual fee, get 50,000 US Airways miles that become American Airline miles.
http://www.worldgotbigger.com/us-airways-credit-card/?campaignId=2062&cellNumber=8&referrerid=PTRBA89FEE
2. Get a Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select Mastercard. Get 50,000 American Airlines miles after spending $3000 in 3 months.
https://www.citi.com/credit-cards/credit-card-details/detail.do?ID=citi-aadvantage-platinum-select-credit-card&category=travel-reward-credit-cards&afc=150
With your 100,000 American Airlines miles, you should be able to get a roundtrip flight to Hawaii in First Class or at least Business class.
Oh nice- thanks! I'll have to snag the US Airways card.
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Start small to ensure that you can meet the sign up bonus spend requirements.
Also realize that the free FICO score your CC gives you is different than what banks use for mortgages. A CC recently started providing FICO scores. When I saw my score of 860 I was initially pleasantly surprised b/c the last time I got a mortgage it was 810. Then I thought, wait a minute don't FICO scores only go to 850? A bit of googling revealed that while normal FICO scores only go to 850, the CC companies have their own FICO algorithm that goes up to 900. So just be aware that the FICO score you see on your CC statement maybe 50 points higher (or I suppose lower) that what the mortgage company sees.
This. CreditKarma has been telling me that I'm now at about 780, but when I had a mortgage broker get a preapproval, my score was 698 (due to a friggin $58 paid collection from Time Warner FOUR YEARS AGO).
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Yes, I would say now is a good time to take advantage of some sign up bonuses. Just be sure you map out a plan to actually hit the spend requirements for each card before opening it. If you can't hit the spend requirements within your normal spending (Plus some manufactured spending), the sign up bonuses are worthless.
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The wife and I went on a spree last summer, signed up for a bunch of cards and earned 1MM+ miles. Well worth it. Credit took a small hit in the short term, then went back up.
If you have no plans for needing your credit in the next year or two, I'd say that's a great use for your credit. Why have it as a useless asset?
Just don't get in over your head, always pay your bills in full, etc. But it can be very lucrative, and even help your credit score, so when you go to buy a house your score is even better (or solidly in the highest echelon so you don't have to worry about it dipping down and affecting you).
I'd love to hear more about how you earned a million miles! Is there a thread on that by chance?
No thread yet, but it wasn't anything complicated.. my wife and I signed up for about 10 cards each, w/ each having about a 50k signup bonus (some had 30k, some 70k, but most had 40-50k, averaged about 50k overall) = 1MM miles (plus change from the spending we did on them to hit minimum spends, came out to just under 1.1MM). Total cost of fees not waived first year and manufactured spending was about 1k. We've already had 11 round trip flights, 2 nights at a hotel, booked 3 round trip flights for others (for which they reimbursed us, but saved them money overall versus paying for it themselves, and it recouped about 700 of that 1000), and still have about 700k miles left. So non-reimbursed out of pocket costs to date are $300, and we have dozens of flights left. (And I could redeem ~300k of those miles for $3000 cash, so I could literally having them pay me money, and still have a ton of miles, if I didn't have better uses for it.)
It was well worth jumping into, and I wish we had done it sooner.
Your credit score is an asset, and that's one of the best ways to use it.
I am SOO intrigued by this. I just read your post out loud to SO and we are very interested in jumping into this.
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I'd love to hear more about how you earned a million miles! Is there a thread on that by chance?
As ARS said, it isn't too hard when you have two people doing it. My fiance and I got right around 1 million miles/points our first year as well. Most of the bonuses are 50,000, but there have been a few 70-75,000 offers as well.
We got around $5500 in redemptions in 2013, and $6500 in 2014. We still probably have almost a million miles in our accounts right now.
This is a good site to bookmark to watch for the best offers: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credit-card-programs/1177334-special-credit-card-offers-master-thread-subscription.html
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Is there any validity to the idea that you should apply all at one time? Reason being to mitigate potential short term damage to score.
Likely doesn't make that much of a difference, but if you want, go for it. :)
The wife and I went on a spree last summer, signed up for a bunch of cards and earned 1MM+ miles. Well worth it. Credit took a small hit in the short term, then went back up.
If you have no plans for needing your credit in the next year or two, I'd say that's a great use for your credit. Why have it as a useless asset?
Just don't get in over your head, always pay your bills in full, etc. But it can be very lucrative, and even help your credit score, so when you go to buy a house your score is even better (or solidly in the highest echelon so you don't have to worry about it dipping down and affecting you).
I'd love to hear more about how you earned a million miles! Is there a thread on that by chance?
No thread yet, but it wasn't anything complicated.. my wife and I signed up for about 10 cards each, w/ each having about a 50k signup bonus (some had 30k, some 70k, but most had 40-50k, averaged about 50k overall) = 1MM miles (plus change from the spending we did on them to hit minimum spends, came out to just under 1.1MM). Total cost of fees not waived first year and manufactured spending was about 1k. We've already had 11 round trip flights, 2 nights at a hotel, booked 3 round trip flights for others (for which they reimbursed us, but saved them money overall versus paying for it themselves, and it recouped about 700 of that 1000), and still have about 700k miles left. So non-reimbursed out of pocket costs to date are $300, and we have dozens of flights left. (And I could redeem ~300k of those miles for $3000 cash, so I could literally having them pay me money, and still have a ton of miles, if I didn't have better uses for it.)
It was well worth jumping into, and I wish we had done it sooner.
Your credit score is an asset, and that's one of the best ways to use it.
I am SOO intrigued by this. I just read your post out loud to SO and we are very interested in jumping into this.
It's worth it. I wish I hadn't waited so long to dive in. I heard of it years before, but kept dismissing it as "too much work" or "not worth it" -- It absolutely isn't, and it certainly is.
Now some people go really hardcore and do tons of MS for the few % cash back.. we didn't care about that, but just went for the low hanging fruit. I knew that if it was gonna be a hassle, I wouldn't bother, so we just went with the easiest methods possible, even if there was a slightly more efficient way or slightly cheaper way.
In other words, if I could spend $1000 to earn $20,000 and make it very little work, or spend $800 to earn that 20,000 and have it be much more work (to the point where I wouldn't bother), probably better to spend the extra to make it less hassle, so that I will actually do it. In "normal" life I'm willing to put in the effort to save a buck, but with this I decided I'll just go for the easy so I don't have an excuse.
The best way to get started is subscribe to a few of the travel hacking blogs and podcasts, and after a few weeks/months of reading and listening, you'll know what you need. It's a lot to wrap your head around at first, but just learn a little bit at a time, and don't be afraid to try it out. :)
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Worth a read (obviously not all of it, but the first bit and last few pages): http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/632935/
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I am looking through the current promotions and so far haven't seen much in the way of great signup bonus + having a
0% apr at the same time.
Do these two usually not go hand in hand?
I suppose I could open one card for the bonus and a second card with a 15- 18month 0% apr.
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I am looking through the current promotions and so far haven't seen much in the way of great signup bonus + having a
0% apr at the same time.
Do these two usually not go hand in hand?
I suppose I could open one card for the bonus and a second card with a 15- 18month 0% apr.
Why does the APR matter? You should be paying off everything every month. Especially if travel hacking and doing manufactured spending, because the "spending" you do is swapped with cash in your account (that you use to pay off the card).
I have no idea what the APR on any of my cards is, and I never pay a cent of interest.
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I am looking through the current promotions and so far haven't seen much in the way of great signup bonus + having a
0% apr at the same time.
Do these two usually not go hand in hand?
I suppose I could open one card for the bonus and a second card with a 15- 18month 0% apr.
Why does the APR matter? You should be paying off everything every month. Especially if travel hacking and doing manufactured spending, because the "spending" you do is swapped with cash in your account (that you use to pay off the card).
I have no idea what the APR on any of my cards is, and I never pay a cent of interest.
I dont care about APR's either, I'm just interested in the 0% offers for the sake of the "free" loan.
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I dont care about APR's either, I'm just interested in the 0% offers for the sake of the "free" loan.
And that's fine, and I did some credit card arbitrage like that in college.
Now I generally find that isn't worth the time.
I mean, say you transfer 10k. You earn 1% sticking it in a savings account. Over the year of free interest you earn.. $100? Meh?
(And that's if it has both 0% APR and no balance transfer fee, which is fairly rare, though it does happen.)
Whereas with a travel bonus you can earn 5x that quite easily in a much shorter time frame, with the same amount of work (much less per dollar amount, and even less if you do multiple, cause you can do them at the same time, it scales better).
So yeah, they may have some high APR, but if you're going for the signup bonus and never going to pay any interest, go for the best signup bonuses, they're much better than a small arbitrage you'll get from a 0% borrow.
:)
(Not to mention that 10k sitting on your account hurts your utilization, affecting your ability to get more even moreso than opening new lines, in my experience. Travel hacking/MS & paying them off doesn't do that.)
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I dont care about APR's either, I'm just interested in the 0% offers for the sake of the "free" loan.
And that's fine, and I did some credit card arbitrage like that in college.
Now I generally find that isn't worth the time.
I mean, say you transfer 10k. You earn 1% sticking it in a savings account. Over the year of free interest you earn.. $100? Meh?
(And that's if it has both 0% APR and no balance transfer fee, which is fairly rare, though it does happen.)
Whereas with a travel bonus you can earn 5x that quite easily in a much shorter time frame, with the same amount of work (much less per dollar amount, and even less if you do multiple, cause you can do them at the same time, it scales better).
So yeah, they may have some high APR, but if you're going for the signup bonus and never going to pay any interest, go for the best signup bonuses, they're much better than a small arbitrage you'll get from a 0% borrow.
:)
(Not to mention that 10k sitting on your account hurts your utilization, affecting your ability to get more even moreso than opening new lines, in my experience. Travel hacking/MS & paying them off doesn't do that.)
You are VERY good at this game... thanks for the tips!
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I'd get a couple, but first you need to find out which airlines operate out of your local airport(s). Try to figure out where you might want to go and see which airlines can get you there.
That being said, I did post this on another thread, because a very good card is disappearing in a month. It is about getting to Hawaii, but could get you most places, as long as American Airlines works for you:
This would be my advice: Get the US Airways credit card right now. After April 12th it will no longer be offered, because they are combining with American Airlines.
1. Get US Airways card, make one purchase and pay a $89 annual fee, get 50,000 US Airways miles that become American Airline miles.
http://www.worldgotbigger.com/us-airways-credit-card/?campaignId=2062&cellNumber=8&referrerid=PTRBA89FEE
2. Get a Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select Mastercard. Get 50,000 American Airlines miles after spending $3000 in 3 months.
https://www.citi.com/credit-cards/credit-card-details/detail.do?ID=citi-aadvantage-platinum-select-credit-card&category=travel-reward-credit-cards&afc=150
With your 100,000 American Airlines miles, you should be able to get a roundtrip flight to Hawaii in First Class or at least Business class.
My Wife and I are in the process of doing this. We both got the US Airways card earlier this year and have met the minimums for earning the sign up bonuses so we should get 100k from those two. I got the AAdvantage card through Citi and we are working on meeting the min spend requirement on that card now which was 2,000 when I signed up for it. After we meet the min spend requirements for my card the wife will sign up for one. Hopefully she gets approved and we can get another 50k miles. If everything works out we will end up with 200k AA miles across two accounts which we are planning on using for a trip from Alaska to Greece next spring. It's a low cost vacation graduation gift to myself :P
I plan on closing the cards before the fee hits and then moving onto whatever other cards are offering good sign up bonuses.
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These deals looked so good I had to try them out...
The US Airways deal now appears to be expired :(
As for the Citi AA, $3k in spending in three months is more than my usual budget. Any suggestions for working around this?
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Suggest you check out fellow mustachians richmondsavers.com and miles dividendmd.com. they have a great course on this topic.
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These deals looked so good I had to try them out...
The US Airways deal now appears to be expired :(
As for the Citi AA, $3k in spending in three months is more than my usual budget. Any suggestions for working around this?
PM me your email and I can send you a referral link for the US airways card.
EDIT: Sadly, I can't refer people anymore =(
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Posting to follow
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As for the Citi AA, $3k in spending in three months is more than my usual budget. Any suggestions for working around this?
How much short would you be? I'm not interested in doing manufactured spending. I do, however, keep gift cards and prepaid cc's as a fallback means if I run a little short of required spending. If you'll just be several hundred dollar short then buy some gift cards for things you regularly use (e.g., grocery store, Starbucks, ITunes) or buy a Vanilla MasterCard ( or similar) to use as your cc for the next month. Obviously this doesn't work month after month, but its a good fall back.
Or wait until you anticipate a once a year payment (e.g., property taxes, insurance) and pay with a cc.
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As for the Citi AA, $3k in spending in three months is more than my usual budget. Any suggestions for working around this?
How much short would you be? I'm not interested in doing manufactured spending. I do, however, keep gift cards and prepaid cc's as a fallback means if I run a little short of required spending. If you'll just be several hundred dollar short then buy some gift cards for things you regularly use (e.g., grocery store, Starbucks, ITunes) or buy a Vanilla MasterCard ( or similar) to use as your cc for the next month. Obviously this doesn't work month after month, but its a good fall back.
Or wait until you anticipate a once a year payment (e.g., property taxes, insurance) and pay with a cc.
These are great suggestions. I do have a tax bill coming up that I could use it for... Thanks!
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Churning is such a wonderful complement to mustachianism.
I wrote about that concept here:
http://www.milesdividendmd.com/a-most-mustachian-endeavor/
And if you want a step by step course on how to maximize this pursuit, by all means sign up for our free course.
http://www.travelmiles101.com
At the end of 30 days you will be an expert travel hacker, an a member of a fun community of fellow miles game players.
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Any Navy Federal Credit Union members? They are offering a Go Rewards Visa card with a 15,000 point bonus until April 30th. You have to spend $1500 in the first 90 days.
You can redeem the 15,000 points for a $150 Visa awards card. If you need to do some manufactured spending, NFCU also offers Visa gift cards that you can pay for with your credit card.
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Have your insurance company run your credit score. We recently hit a pretty high number and was able to have our insurance guy run the numbers and base on our credit score we were able to save almost $40 a month.
Sorry to be so off topic via CC...I do not have a opinion on CC. As that is not something I want to try to figure out at this point in time.
Are you talking health insurance or car insurance? I signed up for health insurance in college (both parents lost their plans) when I had bad credit (around 2010), but my credit is great now (nearly the same as the OP) so I wonder if I should call them up to re-negotiate.
Also posting to follow.
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Ended up signing up for two more cards.
The Amex blue cash 3% supermarket, and the Barclay Arrival Plus.
Netted some great sign up bonus's between these two, my score did dip significantly for two months but
now is right back to where it was!
Someone on here said that your credit score is an asset that you should leverage and I completely agree.