@Jackie_22 wrote:Sorry in advance for the long post, but I wanted to be as detailed as possible to get useful feedback. My family needs a place to stay for 2-3 months starting in three days.
My options are:
1. 6 month lease
^ I can sign a lease for a minimum of 6 months and pay $1800 a month. This doesn't include electricity or internet and is unfurnished. I have no furniture either, but I guess we could tough it out and sleep on a blanket on the floor since I *should* only need this temporary solution for 2-3 months.
2. do a month to month
^ Someone offered me a month-to-month lease of $2500. This place is unfurnished and is about 6.2 miles from my job.
3. rent an airbnb
^ This option is about 12.2 miles from my job and will cost around $2500, but it is fully furnished.
I would like to explore the third option a bit and then, hear your opinion on the best option to take here.
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For the third option, I was thinking I could use my credit card to pay for the AirBnB and potentially have the points I earn reduce the overall cost of the stay to give me some value out of the stay. Options 1 and 2 will get me no value at all since I will have to pay via cash or a cashier's check.
For my wife and my own credit cards, I have the chase sapphire reserve, marriott boundless, freedom unlimited, american express green and gold cards and the amex hilton aspire. My wife has the american express green card, the chase sapphire preferred card and the united mileageplus quest card.
Here are the points we have earned on these cards:
AMEX
- my green and gold card combined total: 162000
- my amex hilton aspire: 182000
- wife's amex green: 40000
Chase
- my freedom unlimited: 22000
- my sapphire reserve: 69000
- my marriott boundless: 5 free nights and 10000 points
- wife's Sapphire Preferred: 100000
- wife's United Quest: not finished with the SUB yet
**Note**: I am active duty military, so my wife and I don't pay any annual fees on any of the above cards. They are all waived.
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I was reading that I can potentially quadruple dip on the third option by doing something like this:
First, link united quest card to wife's account on the mileageplus x app, because I think there is a 25% bonus on all purchases on that app if a united mileageplus card is linked to the account. Second, use a different credit card to buy airbnb gift cards on the mileageplus x app account. I think using my wife's Quest card would be good here to finish the SUB. Third, use the e-gift cards on the airbnbdelta website to get miles for the airbnb transaction. I think this is a quadruple earning example, correct?
The first dip is the credit card points for buying the e-gift card through the mileageplus x app shopping portal. The second dip is the 25% bonus just for having a united mileageplus credit card account linked to the mileageplus x app account. The third dip is the United miles given for buying the airbnb e-gift card through the mileageplus x app shopping portal. The fourth and last dip is the Delta points given for using the airbnb e-gift cards on the deltaairbnb site to actually make the airbnb transaction.
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One potential issue I think I need to figure out is I have the AirBnB account, but my wife has the mileageplus quest card. IIRC, only the primary cardholder can get the mileageplus x app 25% bonus when purchasing the airbnb gift cards. so, my wife may have to get her own airbnb account, but I would rather use mine since it's very established with a long history and nothing but positive reviews.
For the first month, I will use that spend to satisfy the spend requirement for my wife's Quest SUB. For the following month(s), I was thinking she could open a different card and use the spend of the second month towards a new card's SUB. I have too many already AND we are trying to purchase a home, so I will not be getting any more cards until I finish purchasing a home. Are there any cards that you recommend for my wife for this situation? All of our cards were opened within the last three months and we both have Experian credit scores over 700. Income is $90,000 and we don't really have a preference for a specific card since we don't spend much. We do want to do a bit more traveling in S. Korea, Japan, and especially the Philippines.
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I had AI analyze this just to get an idea of feasibility, but I wanted to still check here since AI tools are incorrect alot. This is what was summarized:
https://chatgpt.com/s/t_68ab6b12efac8191b0a4d8c372e2ddc6
What do you think of my potential plan? Am I missing things? Will it not work in your opinion? Or maybe you feel it's a good plan, but can be improved even more? Please share your thoughts. Thank you!
I have not used AMEX cards to purchase MPX e-GC. I have heard that sometimes they do not code correctly for the category on AMEX cards. There is a risk of 1x vs bonus cat multiplier/x. It looks good. If you are willing to go with business cards, CIC and then you can buy VGCs at office supply and then use those VGCs to buy discount air BnB GCs at Costco/Sam's. If you have the Costco card and executive level membership it could be even more of a stack. Just a thought. And thats not counting the SUBs.
Philippines in a hidden gem, it is still developing (good value for the dollar though) but keeping that in mind it has amazing natural beauty and the people are very kind. And the 2 official languages are English and Filipino (a mix of Spanish, Tagalog, and English) so English is commonly spoken, until you venture into the provences then much less.
