topic Re: Whats next after completing Chase Trifecta/Quartet? in Credit Cards

Whats next after completing Chase Trifecta/Quartet?

Anonymous — Sun, 16 Sep 2018 23:05:50 GMT

Just thinking ahead for fun. My current goal is to finish up the Chase Trifecta /quartet. But I'm curious about what cards you guys would suggest once that is complete. Doesn't have to be cards based purely on % back, unique perks and benefits also mean something to me.

Re: Whats next after completing Chase Trifecta/Quartet?

redpat — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 00:03:29 GMT

Stick to UR points if that is the reward program you picked. Your citi DC is now worthless IMO once you went the UR route.

If you want a travel perk card none is better than Amex plat or Amex Hilton Aspire card. Do your own research for additional travel cards that is best for you.

Also, I suggest using Chase’s UR shopping portal for additional UR points on spend.

Re: Whats next after completing Chase Trifecta/Quartet?

wasCB14 — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 00:22:23 GMT

@redpat wrote:
Stick to UR points if that is the reward program you picked. Your citi DC is now worthless IMO once you went the UR route.

If you want a travel perk card none is better than Amex plat or Amex Hilton Aspire card. Do your own research for additional travel cards that is best for you.

Also, I suggest using Chase’s UR shopping portal for additional UR points on spend.

I still find my DC useful for price protection. Purely as far as points are concerned, though, it is superfluous.

I like my Schwab Platinum for lounge access.

Chase's portals are often good, but you can sometimes earn more from airline/hotel portals. Cashbackmonitor is a good place to compare.

It's nice to occasionally get a big new travel bonus, but I can say I don't have much appetite for trying to find a keeper card for some particular 3% or 4% category.

Re: Whats next after completing Chase Trifecta/Quartet?

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 01:11:43 GMT

@redpat wrote:
Stick to UR points if that is the reward program you picked. Your citi DC is now worthless IMO once you went the UR route.

If you want a travel perk card none is better than Amex plat or Amex Hilton Aspire card. Do your own research for additional travel cards that is best for you.

Also, I suggest using Chase’s UR shopping portal for additional UR points on spend.

Yes, I am aware it is worthless now. That was my first credit card and was great for my situation at the time. To get some value out of it still, I am planning to make a lateral change to the Citi Dividened card.

As much as I would love the Amex Platinum card not quite sure I can justify the annual fee when the CSR and platinum kind of dillute each other with overlapping benefits.

Re: Whats next after completing Chase Trifecta/Quartet?

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 01:17:28 GMT

@wasCB14 wrote:
@redpat wrote:
Stick to UR points if that is the reward program you picked. Your citi DC is now worthless IMO once you went the UR route.

If you want a travel perk card none is better than Amex plat or Amex Hilton Aspire card. Do your own research for additional travel cards that is best for you.

Also, I suggest using Chase’s UR shopping portal for additional UR points on spend.
I still find my DC useful for price protection. Purely as far as points are concerned, though, it is superfluous.

I like my Schwab Platinum for lounge access.

Chase's portals are often good, but you can sometimes earn more from airline/hotel portals. Cashbackmonitor is a good place to compare.

It's nice to occasionally get a big new travel bonus, but I can say I don't have much appetite for trying to find a keeper card for some particular 3% or 4% category.

I agree with your last statement. The main category holes with the trifecta, is gas and grocery. Punching in the numbers I am looking at like maybe $30-$40 benefit over the course of a year by switching to category specific cards. I know some people will nickel and dime everything. I personally cant justify opening up new cards for such little benefit.

Re: Whats next after completing Chase Trifecta/Quartet?

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 02:06:41 GMT

How do you define Chase "trifecta" and "quartet"?

I would think the Freedom card with its 5% rotating categories is next for you.

These categories are worth 7.5% in travel once transferred to the Sapphire portal.

Freedom Unlimited 1.5% is worth 2.25% once transferred.

You can product change your Citi Double Cash to a Citi Dividend card and get 5% rotating categories that are typically distinct from your Freedom rotating categories.

However, Discover's 5% categories are pretty closely aligned with Freedom. They do match for the first year (i.e. 10%), but after that you won't use Discover much.

If you shop at Amazon or Whole Foods, I would recommend the Chase Amazon Prime card. 5% back at each. No AF (aside from Prime membership).

Another 5% card with unique categories is US Bank Cash +. No AF.

Ducks Unlimited by FNBO is 5% back on gas and sporting goods. No AF.

You'll want to consider whether some of the hotel cards that offer an annual free night are worth their annual fees for you. Such as Chase Hyatt, Chase IHG, SPG, etc. If so, you can rack up some nice SUBs with those cards.

Re: Whats next after completing Chase Trifecta/Quartet?

wasCB14 — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 03:10:13 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@wasCB14 wrote:
It's nice to occasionally get a big new travel bonus, but I can say I don't have much appetite for trying to find a keeper card for some particular 3% or 4% category.
I agree with your last statement. The main category holes with the trifecta, is gas and grocery. Punching in the numbers I am looking at like maybe $30-$40 benefit over the course of a year by switching to category specific cards. I know some people will nickel and dime everything. I personally cant justify opening up new cards for such little benefit.

True...though they're not significant spend categories for me as a Costco cultist.

Between ED/BCE/CostcoAnywhere/Freedom/Discover I'll usually have some decent option for regular gas/grocery.

@Anonymous wrote:
How do you define Chase "trifecta" and "quartet"?

True...the cards have changed a bit and yet the terms linger.

CSP or CSR? Which Ink? Personal or Business Unlimited?

Or even no-AF CS with an Ink Preferred?

Re: Whats next after completing Chase Trifecta/Quartet?

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 03:24:23 GMT

I agree with the others. The reason people like the Trifecta is it covers most all categories in some way, and lets you build up a lot of UR points. Which means you really won't be charging many expenses to any other cards.

So only makes sense to get a card if you can really make use of the perks. As other have said only ones that come to mind are a hotel card if you frequent a certain brand, or possibly the Amex Platinum if you can justify it for the extra perks. Other than that, i'd just stick with the simplicity of the Chase cards.

Re: Whats next after completing Chase Trifecta/Quartet?

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 04:29:08 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
How do you define Chase "trifecta" and "quartet"?

I would think the Freedom card with its 5% rotating categories is next for you.

These categories are worth 7.5% in travel once transferred to the Sapphire portal.

Freedom Unlimited 1.5% is worth 2.25% once transferred.

You can product change your Citi Double Cash to a Citi Dividend card and get 5% rotating categories that are typically distinct from your Freedom rotating categories.

However, Discover's 5% categories are pretty closely aligned with Freedom. They do match for the first year (i.e. 10%), but after that you won't use Discover much.

If you shop at Amazon or Whole Foods, I would recommend the Chase Amazon Prime card. 5% back at each. No AF (aside from Prime membership).

Another 5% card with unique categories is US Bank Cash +. No AF.

Ducks Unlimited by FNBO is 5% back on gas and sporting goods. No AF.

You'll want to consider whether some of the hotel cards that offer an annual free night are worth their annual fees for you. Such as Chase Hyatt, Chase IHG, SPG, etc. If so, you can rack up some nice SUBs with those cards.

Appreciate the responses!

@wasCB14 and Chiclets So for the quartet I would use CSR, Freedom, Freedom Unlimited, Ink business Cash.

Amazon prime would have been my no questions fifth card, since I shop heaviliy on Amazon, but considering i live close to an office depot I could make use of the Ink cards office 5% category by getting Amazon gift cards. 7.5% towards UR is significantly more attractive to me than 5% cash back.

I am definitely open to annual fee cards, even another premium card. I just want to make sure I can make full use of it I dont want too much benefit/point category overlap between cards. I will check out the cards you suggested more in depth

@mpz650
On paper the Chase Cards cover everything extremely well and without card overload. For my spending habits its practically a perfect fit. But I've been sucked into the cards game! I'm not looking to go crazy and get 20+ cards like some people, but if there is more out there that makes sense I'd definitely want to know about it.

Re: Whats next after completing Chase Trifecta/Quartet?

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 04:40:08 GMT

Oh i get that. I've just started in the reward card game too. I want 6 different cards, among a bunch of different issuers. Which I realize is silly since they don't provide much additional tangible benefit to me since I can't really spend enough to justify some, but I still just want them!

I think I'll settle on the Chase trifecta, the Hyatt card, and the Platinum for the benefits. Those would cover pretty much everything, and avoid me having that awkward converstion of explaining why 20 cards makes perfect sense to my friends and family.

Re: Whats next after completing Chase Trifecta/Quartet?

shiftomnimega — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 04:48:50 GMT

If I was completely brand new to credit I would first go for the Chase Trifecta: Feedom, Unlimited, CSR. Then I would start adding cards with perks. Duplicating the benefits of the CSR may trouble some, but there are some cards you can add where you can cover your AF with minimum effort.

Good airline cards always seem to have AF so the ROI is heavily contingent on who has the oligopy in your home airport. Southwest and Alaska are two that come to mind immediately as good candidates. Each of them have pretty low AF relative to the SUB and the yearly benefit in the form of bonus points or a free ticket respectively.

Another addition could be a hotel affinity card. I think the strategy here is to pick up a card that would give you a free night at a hotel. I am keeping SPG AMEX for this purpose $95 when the hotels usually cost around $100 something is fair enough trade.

Re: Whats next after completing Chase Trifecta/Quartet?

wasCB14 — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 05:21:51 GMT

I'm not sure what OP's income or CLs are, but it's worth keeping an eye on total Chase CLs relative to income.

There is some limited anecdotal evidence that by around: 33%-50% of income...or $45k-$60k of Chase credit...whichever comes first...applications start to get more scrutiny (which is not to say they will necessarily lead to denials).

Re: Whats next after completing Chase Trifecta/Quartet?

redpat — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 06:12:27 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@redpat wrote:
Stick to UR points if that is the reward program you picked. Your citi DC is now worthless IMO once you went the UR route.

If you want a travel perk card none is better than Amex plat or Amex Hilton Aspire card. Do your own research for additional travel cards that is best for you.

Also, I suggest using Chase’s UR shopping portal for additional UR points on spend.
Yes, I am aware it is worthless now. That was my first credit card and was great for my situation at the time. To get some value out of it still, I am planning to make a lateral change to the Citi Dividened card.

As much as I would love the Amex Platinum card not quite sure I can justify the annual fee when the CSR and platinum kind of dillute each other with overlapping benefits.

I think that you are incorrect about overlapping benefit and dilution. First if you live near a Delta hub or a Centuruion lounge hub Plat gives you access to their airport lounges, second you can get 5x on selected airline, third you get free hotel gold status w/ Hilton and Marriott which also gives you additional point structure w/ your hotel stays and just recently you can use Rockmiles hotel portal and get MR points for any hotel stay for additional MR point rewards.

I have used Rocketmiles twice so far and paid $5 more for each hotel stay but received +20x MR points on my stay which is well worth the $10 and better than what I would get in UR points.

In addition, lately I have found that MR points have been more valuable than UR points because Amex runs transfer bonuses with their transfer partners. For example right now Avios transfer rate is 40% better, 1,000 MR points is 1,400 avios miles where chase is always 1:1 w/ their transfer partners.

When you are looking at travel cards you really have to do a lot of research and stick to a reward model around travel. If you start mixing cash back and are always worried about things like price rewind which is like playing the lottery you can start to dilute rewards based on your spend.

Re: Whats next after completing Chase Trifecta/Quartet?

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 09:14:13 GMT

@shiftomnimega

Majority of my flights are short 2.5 hour flights back to where I grew up. Most of these trips I fly Spirit or Frontier because they are usually $50+ cheaper. I could possibly make an argument for the Southwest card though.

As far as hotel cards go I am really struggling to find one that sticks out. They all seem kind of the same, and its really hard to say which will be more common in my destination area, since I dont plan to constantly go to one location all the time.

@wasCB14

$50/hr (~100k/year) My Reserve is only at 10k and my Freedom Unlimited is at 6k. Looks like I still have some room to play with.

@redpat

Im not disagreeing with what you're saying. I know there are unique benefits to Amex Platinum that the Reserve doesnt have. In the right circumstance the Platinum and Reserve could work very well together. Unfortunately for me most of the unique things about the Platinum are just things I wouldn't take full advantage of. My airport only has Priority lounge. My hotel nights per year are pathetically low, and while I could make use of the uber credits, I feel like the other credits would just be forced extra spending that I wouldnt normally do. So for me that annual fee just wouldnt offer me enough benefit. But my whole goal with cards was to kind of force me to travel more, so maybe this could be a card that will make more sense for me to add someday.

Besides that, the Rocketmiles could also be used with a free Membership rewards amex card like the Blue Every day card, right? If thats the case that sounds like it could be worth getting.

Re: Whats next after completing Chase Trifecta/Quartet?

redpat — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 10:29:43 GMT

BCP/BCE are not MR reward cards. You would need PRG, Plat, EDP or ED cards to book MR points w/ Rocketmiles.

From the sounds of you responses you don’t travel much. It might be better if you stay with cash back cards. If you don’t travel for work or get reimbursed for business expenses getting a lot of points for travel can take along time. In addition, you would also need to travel a lot personally to get the additional points, perks and benefits of travel cards

Many of my points like others comes from business travel and business expenses. I use personal travel cards and shopping portals for additional points I get from business to accumulate more points that I already get. If I didn’t have the business points I would probably be in the cash back side.

Do use credit cards to force you to do something.

Re: Whats next after completing Chase Trifecta/Quartet?

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 10:38:07 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Amazon prime would have been my no questions fifth card, since I shop heaviliy on Amazon, but considering i live close to an office depot I could make use of the Ink cards office 5% category by getting Amazon gift cards. 7.5% towards UR is significantly more attractive to me than 5% cash back.

Had not thought of that. Good point.

If OD sells gift cards for Southwest Airlines or Hotels.com, could get 7.5% on travel with those partners using the same trick. But you would lose the trip insurance.

Re: Whats next after completing Chase Trifecta/Quartet?

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 16:02:22 GMT

@redpat wrote:
BCP/BCE are not MR reward cards. You would need PRG, Plat, EDP or ED cards to book MR points w/ Rocketmiles.

From the sounds of you responses you don’t travel much. It might be better if you stay with cash back cards. If you don’t travel for work or get reimbursed for business expenses getting a lot of points for travel can take along time. In addition, you would also need to travel a lot personally to get the additional points, perks and benefits of travel cards

Many of my points like others comes from business travel and business expenses. I use personal travel cards and shopping portals for additional points I get from business to accumulate more points that I already get. If I didn’t have the business points I would probably be in the cash back side.

Do use credit cards to force you to do something.

I have to assume you misinterpted what I said when I used the words "Force me to travel more". It sounds like you think I am referring to the point earning side of things. That I am implying I need to travel more to get more points. This is not at all what I am talking about. "Forcing" me is referring to the fact my points earned will need to be USED for travel related expenses to get the most value back. Therfore it is indirectly "forcing" me to take time to go on trips.(Also please note I have enough discretionary income to do this). Cash back, as everyone already knows, does not give you the most bang for your buck. It's not my goal and not necessary for me to go for the lower return.

Hopefully that cleared everything up. Now about the Blue cash cards, you may be right. I dont have first hand experience I was just basing membership point cards from this chart I found online and from the verbiage used on the Amex website. It describes rewards as being through the "Membership Rewards Program". Maybe you can fact check it. Source listed below.

https://upgradedpoints.com/american-express-membership-rewards-review/

"The following is a list of Membership Rewards credit cards:

The Amex EveryDay® Credit Card from American Express
The Amex EveryDay® Preferred Credit Card from American Express
The Platinum Card® from American Express
The Business Platinum® Card from American Express OPEN
Premier Rewards Gold Card from American Express
American Express® Green Card
Business Green Rewards Card from American Express OPEN
Gold Card from American Express
The Business Gold Rewards Card from American Express OPEN
Blue from American Express®
The Blue Business℠ Plus Credit Card from American Express
Mercedes-Benz Credit Card from American Express"

Re: Whats next after completing Chase Trifecta/Quartet?

wasCB14 — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 15:43:15 GMT

A lot of Amex cards have "Blue" in the name.

Blue Cash Everyday "BCE" is a personal card that earns cash. No AF, mediocre rewards. This is the only card that can be reasonably called "Blue Everyday".

There are the Amex "EveryDay" (ED) and "EveryDay Preferred" (EDP) that earn MRs, but these cards are silvery-white and have no "Blue" in the card name (or blue in the design, apart from the little Amex logo on the back).

Blue Cash Preferred "BCP" is a personal card that earns cash. Higher rewards, but an AF.

Blue Business Plus "BBP" is a business card that earns MRs. No AF, but the rewards fade on spend beyond $50k per calendar year.

Blue Sky (I believe closed to new apps) earns points that can be redeemed for a travel credit. I'm not sure if there are Business or AF versions.

Blue (Possibly closed to new apps) earns MRs. There are business and personal versions. These personal and business cards are inferior to the ED and BBP.

Re: Whats next after completing Chase Trifecta/Quartet?

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 15:59:08 GMT

Ahhh thanks, I half ass researched this. I wont be getting into Amex cards for a good while still. I just wanted to confirm that if I wanted to get into the rocketmiles rewards with MR points that I could do it with a free card. Blue might be out but Everyday should still be good. This is something I can ponder about later though.

Re: Whats next after completing Chase Trifecta/Quartet?

wasCB14 — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 23:09:28 GMT

@redpat wrote:
In addition, lately I have found that MR points have been more valuable than UR points because Amex runs transfer bonuses with their transfer partners. For example right now Avios transfer rate is 40% better, 1,000 MR points is 1,400 avios miles where chase is always 1:1 w/ their transfer partners.

When you are looking at travel cards you really have to do a lot of research and stick to a reward model around travel. If you start mixing cash back and are always worried about things like price rewind which is like playing the lottery you can start to dilute rewards based on your spend.

Thanks for mentioning it! I wasn't aware. Moments ago I made a 100k:140k BA transfer. I'll use it mostly for domestic AA travel, so transatlantic surcharges aren't a concern.

Price Rewind can be a lottery...but sometimes it's preferable to buy something quickly in person and not wait for the cheaper online item to arrive. Or there's comfort in buying certain products directly from the manufacturer full-price (or from some other trusted merchant) vs. through some questionable third party.

There definitely is a lottery component to many rewinds, but it's not always the case.