@Anonymous wrote:Your undertaking is notable! My problem is culling the herd and having withdrawal afterwords. Need to drop a few more cards but, I am wrestling with the withdrawal.
I told my GF, "I gave away $43,000!!" by closing the BofA card.
But of course, it isn't really any sort of money, it's just pretend. Until you load it up, then it's serious debt.
@bourgogne wrote:Both BofA and PenFed will keep drawing out that monthly autopayment amount, so the cards don't work well in the SD.
Hi, can you please expand on this - if a penfed card has a $0 balance penfed will still take the min payment out or they will turn off the autopay feature or what exactly? thank you
LTL says PenFed won't keep drawing it out, so there's probably a way to do that. The few times I finished up a BT, and didn't change my autopay amount, it looked like they were planning to go to perpetuity. I could be wrong, maybe there was some setup I didn't have just right in the autopay request which could make it more reasonable. I won't be finding out 
@NRB525 wrote:
@bourgogne wrote:Both BofA and PenFed will keep drawing out that monthly autopayment amount, so the cards don't work well in the SD.
Hi, can you please expand on this - if a penfed card has a $0 balance penfed will still take the min payment out or they will turn off the autopay feature or what exactly? thank you
LTL says PenFed won't keep drawing it out, so there's probably a way to do that. The few times I finished up a BT, and didn't change my autopay amount, it looked like they were planning to go to perpetuity. I could be wrong, maybe there was some setup I didn't have just right in the autopay request which could make it more reasonable. I won't be finding out
thank you. didn't notice, do you use biz cards and what is your main form of reward on cards?
My rewards points are scattered. Many are from SUB or Upgrade bonuses. I earn some points from business travel, but I am an employee so no business cards (except Corp AMEX).
We are using up AA miles, Alaska, some United, but I haven’t used much of my 200k Delta miles. That may get some good redemption later, but at 1.2cpp it’s pretty well stable, and I have Silver status on Delta. So by using the United, AA and Alaska miles, it’s burning them as not favored.
We have 250k or so of Marriott points, and a nice boatload of Hilton points for another high value stay somewhere. Moved some UR and had Hyatt points which are being applied to a trip later this year at Hyatt.
I am building MR points, drawing down UR points, and Diners points are used for filler here and there.
We don’t use points on all stays, because a lot of the time the redemption is not good, so I’d rather build up for better rates / higher value. So we do pay a fair amount of cash for vacations but try to get good bargains for that cash.
We are using up AA miles, Alaska, some United, but I haven’t used much of my 200k Delta miles. That may get some good redemption later, but at 1.2cpp it’s pretty well stable, and I have Silver status on Delta. So by using the United, AA and Alaska miles, it’s burning them as not favored.
We have 250k or so of Marriott points, and a nice boatload of Hilton points for another high value stay somewhere. Moved some UR and had Hyatt points which are being applied to a trip later this year at Hyatt.
I am building MR points, drawing down UR points, and Diners points are used for filler here and there.
We don’t use points on all stays, because a lot of the time the redemption is not good, so I’d rather build up for better rates / higher value. So we do pay a fair amount of cash for vacations but try to get good bargains for that cash.
Interested to see what you come up with.
I was once again shaking my head at the amount of tradelines I have and while I am still irritated at myself to have left a hardcore FICO optimization mess with those dumb lates on EQ/TU I realized I can’t even find all my credit cards currently. Buyer’s remorse I suppose for just taking two SUB’s which were just hanging out and easy to snatch... still hasn’t materially changed my spending pattern and now I find myself having to look up whether SF hotels are Marriot or not before booking, sigh. Two nights at Park Central last week which depending how Hotel Tonight went through might have triggered the credit on the Brilliant.
May have tried to get too cute
I was once again shaking my head at the amount of tradelines I have and while I am still irritated at myself to have left a hardcore FICO optimization mess with those dumb lates on EQ/TU I realized I can’t even find all my credit cards currently. Buyer’s remorse I suppose for just taking two SUB’s which were just hanging out and easy to snatch... still hasn’t materially changed my spending pattern and now I find myself having to look up whether SF hotels are Marriot or not before booking, sigh. Two nights at Park Central last week which depending how Hotel Tonight went through might have triggered the credit on the Brilliant.
May have tried to get too cute
@Revelate wrote:
Interested to see what you come up with.
I was once again shaking my head at the amount of tradelines I have and while I am still irritated at myself to have left a hardcore FICO optimization mess with those dumb lates on EQ/TU I realized I can’t even find all my credit cards currently. Buyer’s remorse I suppose for just taking two SUB’s which were just hanging out and easy to snatch... still hasn’t materially changed my spending pattern and now I find myself having to look up whether SF hotels are Marriot or not before booking, sigh. Two nights at Park Central last week which depending how Hotel Tonight went through might have triggered the credit on the Brilliant.
May have tried to get too cute
Yes, that is an area I am getting too far out on a limb: "Travel Credits". Cards like the AMEX Bonvoy Brilliant with the AMEX Platinum, doesn't make much sense. The annual "free night" is nice but it boxes me in to pre-spending the $450 to get it back.
Three sets of AMEX Airline credits is ridiculous also. So far I've been able to get some of it back, but that was with two Airline Credits.
A week ago we used the Hilton free night in SF to go see Hamilton on a weekend trip to the city. Used free nights from our two Marriott cards, along with points, to go to Whistler in March. That's the other side of the "prepaid travel", it can be quite useful in situations to get a person out the door to experience the world.
@NRB525 wrote:
@Revelate wrote:
Interested to see what you come up with.
I was once again shaking my head at the amount of tradelines I have and while I am still irritated at myself to have left a hardcore FICO optimization mess with those dumb lates on EQ/TU I realized I can’t even find all my credit cards currently. Buyer’s remorse I suppose for just taking two SUB’s which were just hanging out and easy to snatch... still hasn’t materially changed my spending pattern and now I find myself having to look up whether SF hotels are Marriot or not before booking, sigh. Two nights at Park Central last week which depending how Hotel Tonight went through might have triggered the credit on the Brilliant.
May have tried to get too cuteYes, that is an area I am getting too far out on a limb: "Travel Credits". Cards like the AMEX Bonvoy Brilliant with the AMEX Platinum, doesn't make much sense. The annual "free night" is nice but it boxes me in to pre-spending the $450 to get it back.
Three sets of AMEX Airline credits is ridiculous also. So far I've been able to get some of it back, but that was with two Airline Credits.
A week ago we used the Hilton free night in SF to go see Hamilton on a weekend trip to the city. Used free nights from our two Marriott cards, along with points, to go to Whistler in March. That's the other side of the "prepaid travel", it can be quite useful in situations to get a person out the door to experience the world.
That's another good point actually.
I really enjoyed my work trip to Asia in 2017; I was working sure, but I had time to get out and experience some things and I'll never look at life quite the same again.
I don't have millions of points but I am accumulating them far quicker than I'm spending them; maybe when the economy finally tanks and all my gigs fall apart I'll just go see how far my English and extremely limited Spanish and French can get me travelling around the EU for a bit just because I can and I suspect I can probably do it cheaply... unless school is coming up on a session start boundary that I can leverage for doing anything else haha.
AF on the Delta Reserve hit a few days ago. $450 I could use elsewhere. I had added AMEX Platinum in mid-2019 on the Corporate Advantage program, so at $400 net AF that covers nearly all of the Delta Reserve benefits. The Companion Certificate we are using on a first class flight, but each of those seats is only ~$500 so not much marginal benefit. I did use the Reserve in 2018 a lot for Delta SkyClub access, so no regrets about getting it.
No retention offer was made, and I let the CL of $20k+ go, as I'm sure I could add to either Hilton Aspire or Marriott if I really wanted to.
Delta Gold was my first AMEX ( excluding the Gold I had in the late 1980's ) and I have gone through a couple sets of D Gold, D Platinum and D Reserve, so this is the first recent time I haven't had a direct Delta AMEX. I will survive