topic Re: NFCU Flagship offers in Credit Cards

NFCU Flagship offers

flash123 — Fri, 02 May 2025 02:23:27 GMT

Reminder that NFCU offers are usually good for amount of spend. Last year, as I remember, they had travel, dining and grocery spend offers. My new offer is 6000 points for two times spending on utilities, insurance, phone, internet, or cable services. You must active the offer between May 1 - June 30.

Chase, US Bank or Amex have similar offers but not as wide number of categories for spend.

Re: NFCU Flagship offers

ptatohed — Fri, 02 May 2025 05:31:44 GMT

This thread was literally 7 down from your thread:

https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/NFCU-Flagship-Spend-Offer-Targeted/td-p/6820986

Re: NFCU Flagship offers

Realist — Sat, 03 May 2025 13:35:19 GMT

Makes me wonder now.

They sent me a preapproved 50k offer, and a free year of Amazon sub. I think the 50k offer is valued at $500 bucks. Still not yet sold on it. I like cash valuation no doubt, but I highly like hotel valuations. It seems, not enough, but I'll look.

So, NFCU. I guess it's going to have to be a maybe.

Re: NFCU Flagship offers

coldfusion — Sat, 03 May 2025 12:02:26 GMT

@Realist wrote:
Makes me wonder now.

They sent me a preapproved 50k offer, and a free year of Amazon sub. I think the 50k offer is valued at $500 bucks. Still not yet sold on it. I like cash valuation no doubt, but I highly like hotel valuations. It seems, not enough, but I'll look.

Points redeemed for travel in the portal are valued the same as for cashback - a penny a point.

Re: NFCU Flagship offers

ptatohed — Sat, 03 May 2025 23:09:02 GMT

$500 is hard to beat. I think the last time was 2019/2020ish. The first year AF was waived too. Required $4k spend vs the regular $3.5k spend.

Re: NFCU Flagship offers

Realist — Sun, 04 May 2025 02:09:13 GMT

I'm finding the NavyFed offer to be a hard sell for my position, and can't justify using a hard inquiry on it. But, cash welcome offers like these got me started years ago, working for much less in rewards then. Today, I try to fine tune my selections for the best value. How did I determine it wasn't for me?

Some of my criteria.

1. I try to target a welcome bonus for hotel or airfare.

In the case of hotel, you can typically acquire room value of double what the cash welcome bonus offers. Just on the welcome bonus alone, the hotel value typically wins out. As an example, I just ran some numbers, and a $500 cash bonus, versus an other CC point bonus, those points will secure a 4-5 night vacation valued at $1200, in a premium location to my area. Three star, free breakfast, and while the stay is a newer build, it's the surrounding areas that are the main attaction. In the case of airfare, you can secure CC welcome offers that provide 75k points upfront. This can secure two round trip airfare tickets.

2. I'm not seeing transfer partners, which can significantly matter.

If I was in the market for a card similiar to this type of NavyFed card offer, I would try and go with the Strata Premier card. At least when it was the $750 offer. Today it's a 60,000 point offer, which still offers some value. $600 in cash, or, the opportunity to use a transfer partner and to convert those points into double. This trick works better with a P1 and P2 combo, but you can take those 60,000 x2 points, and transfer them into 240,000 points. The $1200 in cash equivalent, will book an exact vacation I have coming up, same amenties, in the same location, but different hotel line, valued at $3500. By shifting numbers, along with a careful card selection, you've created $2300 in added value, over and above the cash welcome bonus.

3. I don't typically do cash back cards, beyond the welcome bonus (I know this is a point system, but it's still basically a cash back card). It's last on my list of bonus to acquire. I've shared this story before about one of my in-laws. He's happy earning his 2% cash back, or whatever it is. $800 bucks at the end of the year, I'm happy he's happy, he doesn't want to do anything differently. We cycle the same amount of cash throughout our cards in the year, but only by using welcome offers strategically, can you increase value to over $10,000 in the same timeframe, using the same cycled money. And when you are gardening, then maybe cash back the rewards, or instead apply it to a generous point reward card.

Sorry for the winded reply. Mine often are. But I believe in sharing knowledge where possible. In my case, I think I can justify a better use without this offer. But, at the end of the day, there is no wrong answer, in taking a banks welcome bonus money. No matter the offer.

Re: NFCU Flagship offers

ptatohed — Sun, 04 May 2025 02:28:55 GMT

So, @Realist , which card are you saving your hard pull + intro spend for? Also, do you have amazon prime?

Re: NFCU Flagship offers

Realist — Sun, 04 May 2025 04:01:31 GMT

@ptatohed wrote:
So, @Realist , which card are you saving your hard pull + intro spend for? Also, do you have amazon prime?

I do have Amazon Prime, but I don't use it for the 5% cash back. It's a healthy line, so I keep it open to add to the total available line value. Chase shoved a number of lines at us some long time ago, and we acquired them. Only, they weren't the ideal rewards cards we were looking for. We've grown since then.

I have found over time, that many cards like to cycle quarterly 5% bonuses, and yes this can be useful, if you want to micromanage multiple balances across multiple cards, to edge out a small percent of overall gain. I'm not knocking this path, just saying it's not for me. I micromanage in other areas. Instead, when I choose to garden, I like to toss everything onto a single card, in which averages out to be 4x points, or what might be considred 4% on average. It's much less headache, and keeps everything in a unique bucket for things we like best. Vacationing. So we use the CC welcome bonuses for a significant boost, and we use the added point value useage, to accrue points for our stays. Only while gardening, or between welcome bonuses.

We use bank welcome bonuses to fund the "cash" portions of our vacations. Two different avenues, but both highly beneficial. Can we pay for these vacations? Yes. Do we want to? No, free is better. Can we add our personal funds to pay our way through these vacations? Yes. Do we want to? No, free is better. As for free, I know these instituations are selling everyone's data, so they make money also. Only this time, we can make something on it also.

As for cards I'm looking at to apply for, I'm in the gardening stages at the moment. Providers are tossing offers at me, preapproved, NavyFed recently, among a few others, but in the time of my downtime, I'm carefully selecting who I want to deal with next - when that time comes. There's just so many opportunities. I could acquire NavyFed now, or another line with no issue, but I want to garden out closer to a clean hard inquiry slate. I suspect another six to twelve months for me, which is ok. We have multiple "pointed" vacations lined up, and in between, we want to use the bank bonus money to pay for vacations we want to visit - that points aren't relevant towards. We aren't lacking for the next opportunity, while our hard inquiries reset.

We started out on a lower end of the spectrum for our rewards. This time, I'm thinking larger scale, Marriot, Hyatt, or those that transfer partner into them. Their point valuations aren't yet attractive. But in time, they should be again. I don't let certain hotel lines distract me, such as Hilton. In my opinion, they have one of the worst rewards programs going as far as welcome bonuses. The Strata card is on the table. Perhaps an EX card with high point value. Everything is still fluid, and today isn't the best offering in point values, at the moment.

So, we sit and wait, and watch. When the time is right, then we jump.

Re: NFCU Flagship offers

ptatohed — Sun, 04 May 2025 05:47:17 GMT

@Realist wrote:
@ptatohed wrote:
So, @Realist , which card are you saving your hard pull + intro spend for? Also, do you have amazon prime?
I do have Amazon Prime, but I don't use it for the 5% cash back. It's a healthy line, so I keep it open to add to the total available line value. Chase shoved a number of lines at us some long time ago, and we acquired them. Only, they weren't the ideal rewards cards we were looking for. We've grown since then.

I have found over time, that many cards like to cycle quarterly 5% bonuses, and yes this can be useful, if you want to micromanage multiple balances across multiple cards, to edge out a small percent of overall gain. I'm not knocking this path, just saying it's not for me. I micromanage in other areas. Instead, when I choose to garden, I like to toss everything onto a single card, in which averages out to be 4x points, or what might be considred 4% on average. It's much less headache, and keeps everything in a unique bucket for things we like best. Vacationing. So we use the CC welcome bonuses for a significant boost, and we use the added point value useage, to accrue points for our stays. Only while gardening, or between welcome bonuses.

We use bank welcome bonuses to fund the "cash" portions of our vacations. Two different avenues, but both highly beneficial. Can we pay for these vacations? Yes. Do we want to? No, free is better. Can we add our personal funds to pay our way through these vacations? Yes. Do we want to? No, free is better. As for free, I know these instituations are selling everyone's data, so they make money also. Only this time, we can make something on it also.

As for cards I'm looking at to apply for, I'm in the gardening stages at the moment. Providers are tossing offers at me, preapproved, NavyFed recently, among a few others, but in the time of my downtime, I'm carefully selecting who I want to deal with next - when that time comes. There's just so many opportunities. I could acquire NavyFed now, or another line with no issue, but I want to garden out closer to a clean hard inquiry slate. I suspect another six to twelve months for me, which is ok. We have multiple "pointed" vacations lined up, and in between, we want to use the bank bonus money to pay for vacations we want to visit - that points aren't relevant towards. We aren't lacking for the next opportunity, while our hard inquiries reset.

We started out on a lower end of the spectrum for our rewards. This time, I'm thinking larger scale, Marriot, Hyatt, or those that transfer partner into them. Their point valuations aren't yet attractive. But in time, they should be again. I don't let certain hotel lines distract me, such as Hilton. In my opinion, they have one of the worst rewards programs going as far as welcome bonuses. The Strata card is on the table. Perhaps an EX card with high point value. Everything is still fluid, and today isn't the best offering in point values, at the moment.

So, we sit and wait, and watch. When the time is right, then we jump.

That was a very long answer to a somewhat simple point I was trying to make with my amazon prime question. What I was basically trying to add was (in addition to the $500 cash bonus you would get from your rare Flagship offer + the approximately $80 or so you'd earn while meeting the spending offer) , you'd - if you have amazon prime, which you do - receive a potential $139 credit year after year. Just a benefit to consider when deciding your answer of 'No'.