topic Re: Help with Strategy in Credit Cards

Help with Strategy

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Oct 2018 21:51:57 GMT

My company allows me to use a personal card for business expenses. Which is great but they added a rule that only business expenses can be made on the card and not personal. I guess people are bad at blacking out their personal expenses.

This news is going to alter my plan. I was going to get the Chase Trifecta as I just got the CFU last month. The plan was to use the CSR for business expenses as I spend $5,000 a month of which 90% is coded as travel. If I cannot use the CSR for personal use then I will have to:

A. Come up with a new strategy

B. Do not use the CSR for personal use

Plan B seems unlikely as I do 2-3 trips a year for pleasure. So I would want to get the points and use the travel perks.

I am thinking for the business expenses:

1. Open the Chase Ink. I do sell stuff on eBay but have not sold anything in a year. Nor do I have anything listed although I can probably start posting things around the house. I also tutor on the side but it is for cash and it is a small amount so filling out a 10-99 would not be worth it.

2. Co-Branded Hotel or Airline - I can use my UR for whichever I do not get. I can easily the SW companion pass with a $5000 a month spend and the SUB. I like Mariott hotels so that is an option too.

3. CSR - I can use business expenses here only and use a FU and F card and use the points to book travel but will have to book it using my FU card. I will then get a Hotel Card or Airline card as listed above.

What advice would you give me?

Re: Help with Strategy

frank784 — Tue, 09 Oct 2018 22:25:44 GMT

I would get the Chase Ink Preferred. Currently 80,000 UR points with $5K spend over 3 months and only a $95 annual fee. Unless the majority of your spend is eating out, you would still get 3x UR points on your travel (Hotels, airfare, etc). I know their language states that you will get 1.25x on travel with the CIP but in my experience I can transfer my UR points to my CSR and get 1.5x travel.

So lets say of your $5K you spend a month $4K of that can be coded as travel. You would end up getting 12K UR points per month equaling 144K US points annually. If you switch the UR points to your CSR (Others say they can't but I have multiple times) you would end up with $2160 in UR travel credit or $1440 if you just decided to do that cash back version.

Re: Help with Strategy

iced — Tue, 09 Oct 2018 22:54:09 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
My company allows me to use a personal card for business expenses. Which is great but they added a rule that only business expenses can be made on the card and not personal. I guess people are bad at blacking out their personal expenses.

This news is going to alter my plan. I was going to get the Chase Trifecta as I just got the CFU last month. The plan was to use the CSR for business expenses as I spend $5,000 a month of which 90% is coded as travel. If I cannot use the CSR for personal use then I will have to:

A. Come up with a new strategy
OR
B. Do not use the CSR for personal use

Plan B seems unlikely as I do 2-3 trips a year for pleasure. So I would want to get the points and use the travel perks.

I am thinking for the business expenses:

1. Open the Chase Ink. I do sell stuff on eBay but have not sold anything in a year. Nor do I have anything listed although I can probably start posting things around the house. I also tutor on the side but it is for cash and it is a small amount so filling out a 10-99 would not be worth it.

2. Co-Branded Hotel or Airline - I can use my UR for whichever I do not get. I can easily the SW companion pass with a $5000 a month spend and the SUB. I like Mariott hotels so that is an option too.

3. CSR - I can use business expenses here only and use a FU and F card and use the points to book travel but will have to book it using my FU card. I will then get a Hotel Card or Airline card as listed above.

What advice would you give me?

That's a very unusual policy. Usually, it's the other way around; they give you a corporate/business card that they can track expenses on and you can't use that card for personal expenses. Without them having some access (to your personal card!) to track your spend, how would they even know/enforce such a rule? I'm not advocating that you break their rule, but you might ask for clarification if you haven't already as that's a very, very strange one...in fact, this is the first I've ever heard of an employer with such a policy.

If indeed this is the case, I'd do some math over an annual basis to see how much dining/travel you're missing out on with personal spend vs. business spend. If this is working out to $60,000/year business dining/travel versus $10,000 for personal dining/travel, the clear choice is to let business expenses go to the CSR and you find an alternate for your dining/travel.

If a bulk of your personal dining/travel is dining, and a bulk of your business dining/travel is travel, that's also something to factor in. For example, if $4,000 of that $5,000 per month is airfare/hotel and you can book direct, I'd consider something like an AmEx for 5x. If your personal dining/travel is mostly dining, there's viable alternatives to the CSR you can use.

The hotel/airline cards aren't a bad idea, but I also don't know what your endgame goal with UR is. If your plan is to transfer all UR to one airline, then you've found your goal and build around that with complimenting airline cards. I'm not going to casually recommend to get any of them without knowing what your long-term strategy is, though.

The key point here is that there's (usually) more than one "good" card for each category, so what I would recommend is that you figure out which point program means the most to you (think airline or hotel here, then build off that with UR/MR/something else) and allocate the best earning card for that to the highest-spend category (business travel on CSR, for instance), then build downward from there, complimenting that point program where you can. Since we don't have enough of that information here, you'd still have some homework to do, but I think you get the general idea.

Re: Help with Strategy

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Oct 2018 23:02:10 GMT

They do offer corporate cards but give you the option to use a personal card instead of you want rewards points. Their only caveat is the statement I submit must be absent of personal charges.

Some more DPs

The majority of my personal spend is groceries, dining, and entertainment. My job pays for my gas and EZ pass. I only travel personally 2-3 times a year. I was thinking of the Uber Card for myself but ideally I would like to be able to pool my points rather than have separate rewards. I understand the importance of diversity amongst points but it’s easier to pool it all.

I was considering the gold card with the added perks personally but I wouldn’t get the 3X travel when booking through the chase portal. That’s why I was thinking a co branded travel card that I can transfer MR to. Luckily I’m only at 1/24 so I do have options with chase.

Re: Help with Strategy

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Oct 2018 23:06:03 GMT

My end game is UR I can book travel with. Two years of domestic flying then in 2020 I’ll start traveling abroad. Ideally if I can book business /first class flights for cheap or for free that would be a solid endgame. Hotel status is nice but not important since I only travel a handful of times a year personally.

Re: Help with Strategy

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Oct 2018 23:08:46 GMT

Last DP: my business charges for travel are our monthly EZ pass bill which is anywhere between $3k and $4k a month. Rest are other non airline or hotel travel expenses with another $500 a month in dining.

Re: Help with Strategy

frank784 — Tue, 09 Oct 2018 23:25:42 GMT

If I'm reading your last post correctly then $4500 per month would be coded for UR travel via CSR or CIP. $4500x12 months = $54,000 spend x 3 UR points = 162,000 UR points annually. With CIP bonus you would be at 242,000 UR points which is $2420 in cash or $3630 in UR travel portal if transferred to CSR.

If you know a good amount about UR points you can get much higher redemption via tranfer parters as well. I have about 300K UR points currently and the sky is the limit with travel that might normally be too pricey to justify.

Re: Help with Strategy

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Oct 2018 23:42:56 GMT

You are exactly right. I’m thinking of using the CSR for business and if I have to I’ll book my personal travel with another card. The opportunity for a lot of UR is too good to pass up.

Re: Help with Strategy

redpat — Wed, 10 Oct 2018 01:59:55 GMT

Why would your company need your personal credit card statement? That makes no sense at all.

Can’t you simply supply them with receipts.

Re: Help with Strategy

spiritcraft1 — Wed, 10 Oct 2018 05:48:27 GMT

How and when will they pay you? Will you be forced to carry a large balance? Despite the points lure it would seem safer to use their card.

Will they pay the interest charges? I assume that if they need the statement, this will not be a PIF account?

Re: Help with Strategy

Anonymous — Thu, 11 Oct 2018 17:23:38 GMT

UPDATE: I called my CFO to ask some more questions pertaining to this.

She said, "Personal cards should only be used on items that we can't pay through our normal vendor payment process (check, or ach) and any reoccurring charge should be made on a company credit card which earns cash back rewards . We will be initiating this change for all managers and controllers before the new year. That being said, I have no problem with you using your personal credit card for purchases that don't fall into that criteria (like travel arrangements). So you can charge business expenses to your personal credit card and just submit the receipt and not the statement. The new process will elminate the need to submit statements. Just keep in mind that in order to be reimbursed you will need the original receipt and the expenditure will need to be approved."

This is good news so I will now go with a Chase Sapphire card. I will try for the R first and then the P if I am denied. I am hoping my score increases from 711 after the next round of reporting as I bought one of my cards down from 75% to 0% UTIL and my overall will be around 3%. I can apply for a new Chase card on 10/25 but I will have one inquiry fall off on 11/1 so I am going to wait until then.

This will limit my business spend as the EZ Pass is recurring but we have the Christmas Party and End of the Year Meeting coming up soon and both will cost about $2500-$3000 each. The dinner will obviously be dining and the meeting will be at a hotel so it should be classified as travel. This will help with the SUB although I would have no problem reaching it alone. I may still go with the AMEX Plat to diversify my points but that will have to wait until I get a Sapphire card and a Freedom.

I was also of thinking of getting the Preferred instead of the Reserve as my credit file is still a little thin and just PC the Preferred to another Freedom and applying for a CSR. I am at 1/24 and should be 3/24 by next year to make the move.