Home run with Rakuten Dell biz spend on 2/14 a little over $5k = 80k+ MR points (14x + 2x BGR), easy for at least $1,200 worth of travel.
Sticking to everything MR ecosystem.
Personal Cards: Amex Plat | Amex Delta Res | CSR | Citi AA Exec Business Cards: Ink+ | Amex BGR
@longtimelurker wrote:
@Remedios wrote:
@AverageJoesCredit wrote:Ideal cashback card would be no minimum redemption . Us LIErs hate $25
Income has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.
I barely spend $35.00-$50.00 per month on gas. If I had a designated gas card, I'd put maybe $500 per year on it.
If minimum redemption is $25, it would take me a whole year to reach it at 5% return.
That has nothing to do with income, but with spend specifics, hence my original question.
IMO, minimum redemptions, like an FTF can be a warning sign. These aren't "needed" and are just a way for the issuer to earn/keep more money. Ideally, this would enable richer rewards or lower rates say, but often just a sign of an issuer trying to save!
Banks love float, and the $25 minimum adds to float. Rates are so low that float isn't what it used to be, until rates skyrocket. Then we'll see banks really trying to maximize it.
I love thought provoking threads like this one. It's always cool to see other people's strategies and often learning about cards/deals/perks that I never knew of.
Not counting SUBs, so far this year through 2 statement cycles, I've earned $433 of cashback on $11,593.61 of spend, which is an average of 3.73%. This is a little misleading because quite a bit of that early to mid December spend was Christmas/Holiday spend, so these two months are more than 2 typical months. OTOH, Most of the December cycle until the last week I didn't have the PNC card, so I was getting 3% on gas (BCP) and 2% of restaurants (PPMC). I'm now getting 4%/3% on those categories. I expect to get well over 4% average for the next 5-6 months with new 5% Cash Magnet. The lowest % I'll get through those 5/6 months will be 3% on utilities and restaurants. As much as I can, I'm going to try to just replace the spend I'm normally only getting 2% for, and leave groceries at 6% (BCP), gas and Warehouse Stores at 5% (Disco), Bills and Utilities at 3% (BBVA) and run everything else through the 5% Cash Magnet. I could easily dump bills and utilities on it and max out the $10K 5% cap in a little over 3 months, but after that, I'd go right back to regular yield that includes a lot of 2% spend. After running the numbers, I stand to earn a bit more by stretching it out and just replacing the 2% spend with 5% for 6 months.
I feel like I can average close to 4% for the year, which would yield close to $2K for my spend, plus a $100 SUB from BBVA, a $150 SUB I'm waiting on from PNC, and hopefully $700-$800 worth of SUBs from NFCU later this year. I earned a little over $1700 last year with my Disco (1st CB year match), a $300 SUB from my BCP and a $50 SUB from my PPMC.
This journey has been fun and exciting, and I've loved finding new ways to maximize rewards with the help of the fine folks here!
@Anonymous wrote:
@wasCB14 wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@wasCB14 wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@JNA1 wrote:
I don't mind the redemption thresholds so much because I like to save up my cashback anyway. I can see that being a real nuisance if I was needing it though.I never save. As soon as the minimum is met, I redeem. I'm not going to have a devaluation or closed card cost me money.
$1 today is better than $1 tomorrow. It can earn interest or pay down debt. Unless someone is redeeming for gift cards that may go on sale later, there's no reason to wait. Miles are more complicated because their value can be very different in the future.
I'm used to redeeming for flights and hotel rooms. If a $25 or $50 redemption threshold was a problem for me, I would take it as a sign that I was spreading my spend too thinly. I would use a simpler day-to-day wallet and maybe focus more on SUBs than minor category cards.
I mean your income is a lot higher than mine and AJC's incomes are too. $1250 to hit $25 on a 2% card doesn't sound like a lot to you I'm sure but to he and I, that's not far from our monthly incomes.
It also poses an issue going for the good SUBs because it takes a lot more spend to hit them.
I do have higher total spend. But I'd point out that a few of my cards are really just for perks (like IHG's annual night) so my spend is actually concentrated into fairly few cards. A lot of my cards also "pool" into MRs/URs or are from the same issuer.
I do have some little "orphan" reward balances on my DC (65 cents) and Arrival (~$16). The former is because I had a ~$20 credit from some late-posting price rewinds and made a ~$45 charge rather than request a check. The latter is a little upsetting, I feel it....but I got the card for its PIN capability and not rewards. That ~$16 balance has grown slowly since my last redemption almost 4 years ago.
A lot of reasonable SUBs are available at $1k/month ($3k/3 months) or less, though.
18 cards with less spend can provide something as far as an emergency fund (exactly what, I dare not speculate) but optimizing spend with it seems like a guaranteed way to have hassles.
It hasn't really been a problem honestly. I only really use 9 of them for optimizing and since I'm homebound I don't really need to worry about using the wrong card somewhere. It's all online so it's not too difficult to deal with.
As for my spend, I have to inflate things to hit SUBs. I spend about $375 on credit cards every month for recurring expenses. Even if I prepaid my Comcast bill for a year, that would only take care of $1680. [b]I got myself into trouble chasing SUBs last year because I started spending a bunch on app purchases to try to hit them so I think for me it's better to try to figure out how to land a bank bonus or two and leave the credit card SUBs alone unless they're $500 or $1K spend thresholds.[/b]
As bad as I'm wanting to jump on the NFCU, this Cash Magnet card is kinda forcing me to stay in garden right because of that same reason. I know I'm most likely going to have to get 2 NFCU cards to get the Flagship I want, so I'm thinking I'll get the More Rewards first and then try for Flagship at 91/3. If I do that, I wouldn't want to miss out on those SUBs, so I figure I'll wait and apply for the More Rewards when I get near the end of the Cash Magnet's 5% running out, dump all uncategorized spend on it and then do the same thing 3 mos later and (hopefully) get that sweet $500 SUB on the Flagship. If I could swing $500/$300/$500 on the Cash Magnet, More Rewards, and Flagship while maxing out the 6% category on my BCP, 4% for $8K on my PNC, and leave my $1100-$1200/mo bills and utilities at 3% on my BBVA card all year, I'd be a happy feller! 
