Questions About Signup Bonus

[Beast26]

How do you choose to hit your bonus spend? 

Do you make big purchases which would require planned applications or would you stop spending on all of your other cards until you reach the bonus spend with the one card?

Another question I have is will I still get the signup bonus if I make a large purchase with a card to hit the bonus and choose to take advantage of the 0%APR period and pay it off over time?

[simplynoir]

The first part of your question depends on the spending requirements and the amount of spend someone can put on the card. There are some people who have to shift all their spend on the card in order to the meet the signup bonus especially for the big ones that require $4k+ without a big purchase/expense to put a dent in it. Others where one or two purchases will be enough to satisfy the requirement; on a similar note a few have so much spend they don't have to devote spending from other cards where it would be more lucrative like 3-5% cards

For your second question you get paid the signup bonus when you hit the spending requirement, anything after that is on the customer to pay back whether it's PIF or over a period of time. It's usually not recommended to do that since the interest will eat into the rewards unless you have an intro offer like you mentioned

[cws-21]

For me, I typically only shift my grocery spending to a new card that I am trying to meet minimum spend for a signup bonus. This is what I will actually do soon with my new Citi Custom Cash. In fact, I just received my card recently and I will not even start spending on it until the middle of July because I have a promotion with one of my wife's cards for which we have to meet the minimum. Even with the delay, we will have no problem spending $750 in a little over two months just in groceries. If the minimum spend is more, even much more, we typically put all of our spending on the card and meet it with entirely organic spending.

[Brian_Earl_Spilner]

I'm impatient and forgetful so I will move all of my spend to get it out of the way asap if I don't have a large purchase coming up. Would rather finish than forget I still have $1030 to go in 24 hours. Because that will totally happen to me.

[tcbofade]

I've done both.

Currently, DW is using a new card with a zero percent offer and a sign up bonus as her grocery card, and she'll have no problem hitting the required spend in 90 days.

When I know that a major expense is coming, we can plan an application for a new account knowing that we'll hit the sign up bonus easily.  Earlier this year, I hit the required spend on Cash + paying for the renewal of car tags. 

[SouthJamaica]

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@Beast26 wrote:

How do you choose to hit your bonus spend? 

Do you make big purchases which would require planned applications or would you stop spending on all of your other cards until you reach the bonus spend with the one card?

Either or both.

Another question I have is will I still get the signup bonus if I make a large purchase with a card to hit the bonus and choose to take advantage of the 0%APR period and pay it off over time?

Yes

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[Loquat]

There are lots of ways to go about hitting minimum spend. Some folks switch all of their spending to that one card until the spend is met.

Some do other things like prepay utilities, insurance premiums, pay for big lunch/catering for office parties. Some folks offer to pay bills for friends and family and in turn have the friend or family member give them cash.

Just so many ways to go about doing so that I don’t believe most folks would have a hard time these days.

[JNA1]

For me, it depends how much spend is required. Since we have the AOD card, 3% is our floor for cash back. If I can, I try to only replace the 3% spend if I I'm sure I can hit it in 90 days. If I cannot totally hit the spend amount that way, I'll try to throw some gasoline spend on it, which is 4% on the PNC card, if not in the Disco 5% quarter. 

I basically just try to replace a chunk of spend at the lowest rewards rate I'm getting at the time, whatever that may be. 

[FalconSteve]

Most require you to spend  a certain amount, not pay it off. Of course you don't want to pay interest. Hitting it depends on your organic spend

[FieryDance]

Taxes, income and property.  By far our largest organic spend.  On top of what is actually owed you can overpay when good SUB opportunities arise.  At the moment I am going full speed with multiple Amex MR cards with BIG SUBs.  

Home improvement projects.  Most can be planned, decently large with no category bonus, perfect for SUBs.  

Everyday non-category spend, medical, auto services, insurances, utilities, bills, etc.  

To your last question I have never dealt with it but I believe an initial 0% APR is technically part of the SUB so yes you should be able to get the 0% APR period on top of any points/cashback bonus.