I love credit cards so much! v3.0 (see first page for add'l details)

[SouthFayetteFan]

Hey now.

You're new here...stick around and you'll see just how pretty we are!!

Trust me when I saw this is 100% unequivocally the best thread on the DISboards!

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

Hey now.

Plus we operate on the budget board where off topic fun rules the day and gifs and memes are widely embraced!!!

 

[CastAStone]

Anyhoo, just wanted to 2x check because it seems crazy: Chase’s business cards DONT count against 5/24? I want to sign my wife up for CIP, SW Business, and SW personal and she will be down to 4/24 on 2/1. Trying to best plan a strategy

 

[SouthFayetteFan]

Anyhoo, just wanted to 2x check because it seems crazy: Chase’s business cards DONT count against 5/24? I want to sign my wife up for CIP, SW Business, and SW personal and she will be down to 4/24 on 2/1. Trying to best plan a strategy

It is a beautiful thing... Chase business cards (and any business card for that matter that do not show on your personal credit report) will NOT count in the “5” or add to your count. It’s simply amazing. I am 0/24 right now despite opening somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 cards in the past year.

 

[CastAStone]

Plus we operate on the budget board where off topic fun rules the day and gifs and memes are widely embraced!!!

Uhhhhhhhh huh. I come over here for advice and find insults!

 

[mom2elal]

Wow, that looks gorgeous! Did you stay in one of their regular view rooms?

I think we got upgraded to a better view. We didn't have any casitas behind us and we had a view of the golf course and the "boulders". It was amazing! It's a huge resort and guys in golf carts drive you around everywhere. And you're not even supposed to tip them, it's included in the resort fee, which we of course, didn't have to pay since we used a reward night. I love that about Hilton. The Aspire is really making me loyal to Hilton. Because of their promotions and the spend that will be reimbursed on the Amex, we earned about 10k points on two free nights!

 

[mom2elal]

Very nice! DH and I got engaged at the JW Marriott Camelback Inn back in 1998.

I'd never been to Scottsdale before. It was so nice! And the scenery around there is gorgeous. For a desert, it's SO green!

 

[CyndiLouWho]

That’s is a long time for your Amex airline credit not to post. After two weeks you can chat them and they can manually process it for you if it was “legit”. What did you buy?

Taxes on 3 flights, $5.60 x3.

 

[afan]

Uhhhhhhhh huh. I come over here for advice and find insults!

It's all in love. I mean we send people to the shun corner, but it has snacks.

 

[CyndiLouWho]

So guys... I have a confession to make. And it's not easy to say this... but I've been cheating on this thread...

You see... this new ride, Rise of the Resistance (RotR) opened up at WDW. And there was a thread...and one thing led to another...and I became their spreadsheet guy. I didn't intend for it to happen, I promise!! I only looked, I didn't touch!!

Don't worry...after I head to Disney World next week, I promise I'll break it off!!! Please forgive me!!!

Sorry I don’t think I can forgive this indiscretion.
You’ll be hearing from the my divorce lawyer soon.

 

[Haley R]

I forgot to mention that I called Capital One about my Venture hitting one year and waiving the AF. They said they can't proactively waive it so they'll have to wait until it hits my account. I was approved 1/17 last year and I still haven't seen the AF for this year. I guess I just keep waiting until I see it and then call?

 

[PolyRob]

@ten6mom I am just catching up, but I am so happy you saw and enjoyed Mean Girls! We are a great influence.



You are also officially invited to "sit with us"

 

[gottalovepluto]

Taxes on 3 fights, $5.60 x3.

Bummer

 

[PolyRob]

Hey all. My kiddo woke me up way too early so I thought I’d use this time to (try to) catch up.

I haven’t been around much because I’ve been busy, but also so exhausted. The long weekend didn’t really help, despite staying local, what with spending time with the kiddo and trying (finally) to get our home in order for the new year. Is it still only January?

The churn goes on!

I finished my CS Platinum and Hilton Aspire MSRs way too quickly, and both SUBs posted promptly. I got a 15k MR/$2k MSR retention offer on my Gold, despite spending over $30k on its 4x categories last year. Not great, but not bad considering it’s a card I’m keeping anyway. I guess the takeaway is spend, but don’t spend too much on only the bonus categories? I’m taking the MSR on my Biz Platinum a little more slowly, and spending organically where it makes sense on the rest of my Amex cards to keep the pop ups away. Meanwhile, DW is on her way to building up her MR balance. She finished the MSR on her 45k MR Green and we used the Away credit to get a blush pink carry on for DD that she happily wheeled around on our trip to Hawaii. DW also finished up her 25k MR Biz Green and picked up the tiered 75k MR Biz Gold recently. DW also got the Hyatt card, and I plan to get my own sometime after I get back under 5/24. It’ll be a long couple of months until then.

On redemptions, I don’t know if it’s premature to say, but we bought DVC at Aulani — with points. We’re still doing the paperwork and the balance isn’t due for a few weeks, but yeah, we've got our DVC account and points and – it’s happening!

This is something DW and I had thought about for years, but the timing or budget never seemed right. Meanwhile, we’ve spent some part of our last four holidays at Aulani as well as an impromptu trip there last October, and too many thousands of dollars on Disney Gift Cards. And we’ll likely keep returning to Aulani as long as we continue to visit family in Hawaii. It just made sense. And it really is our happy place. We looked into resale, and we took a tour while at Aulani (and scored $150 in Disney Gift Cards), and in the end we felt more comfortable buying direct and adding on via resale later. And hey, we'll get a "blue card"! Although we’re probably getting a little more than half the value going direct vs. resale, being comfortable with the purchase was important, and we’ll get the 2019 UY points that we've noticed are [along with 2020 UY] often stripped from a lot of contracts on the resale market, and that gives us some time to find a resale contract that’ll work as an add-on. We just had to make the money work. So I’ve cashed out 1.2 million MR and 500k UR to fund our purchase, and we don’t have to worry about anything out of pocket or when we'll "break even." We’ll hit several MSRs with this purchase, and pay for it with cash from points. It’s a tidy circle.

I never thought about using credit card rewards to buy DVC, but then @hulagirl put the thought into my head. Thank you for the inception, @hulagirl.

And special thanks to @calypso726, @3 DD love princesses, @PolyRob, @speedyfishy, @wendow, @kmc8826, @striker1064, @vanjust14, @bernina, and anyone else I might’ve missed for all the encouragement and advice along the way.

I was looking at award space on United for next Christmas over the weekend, and wow dynamic pricing is really in effect. Last year, I was able to book saver award seats to HNL for 22.5k miles per person, each way. This year, economy saver awards are running 45k miles per person, each way. I think I’m going to have to try a different approach this year.

But hey, while I was clicking around United’s schedule, I noticed I could fly my family to Japan over Thanksgiving week for 35k miles per person, each way. So I’m going to! (I think we’re going to be in Japan while @ten6mom is still there!) It’s crazy to think United will fly us all the way to Japan for fewer miles than it would take to fly to Hawaii. But here we are. So a little past midnight, with my ladies asleep, I made a snap decision to forego our family tradition of spending Thanksgiving at Disneyland and taking the family to Tokyo instead. If we spend Thanksgiving Day at Tokyo Disneyland, that still counts right? Anyway, I booked our flights using United miles. Sadly, no lie flat seats for us. I’m flying a family of 3 and have a little redshirt who’s not in the game yet, so I need to budget our points and miles. I’ll be using my airline fee credits to bump us up to Economy+. I transferred some UR over to Hyatt and booked three nights at the Andaz Toranomon Hills for 30k/night. I used Hilton points, and booked three more nights at the Hilton Tokyo Bay for 80k/night. I need to math that last one out. Anyway, it’s an amazing feeling to have planned all this out in less than two hours, and very humbling to realize I have the points and miles to do all of this. I ran all this by DW in the morning, and she eagerly agreed it was a good change of pace. But before then, it was 2 a.m., and like my man Ted Mosby said,

Keep on churning on!

CONGRATULATIONS and welcome home!!! That is so exciting!

 

[CyndiLouWho]

Bummer

That’s legit, no?

 

[gottalovepluto]

That’s legit, no?

No Taxes and fees are part of an airline ticket purchase. Imho maybe they give it to you via chat if you try something along the lines of X amount of fees on AA haven’t been reimbursed yet. “Selecting seats” in MCE by chance or paying for bags? Because that’s covered.

Latest FT reports are taxes and fees on domestic trips or getting reimbursed https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ame...0-reimbursement-reports-aa-only-2020-a-4.html before it was hit or miss.

 

[gottalovepluto]

@ten6mom I am just catching up, but I am so happy you saw and enjoyed Mean Girls! We are a great influence.

View attachment 467128

You are also officially invited to "sit with us"

The cast of that movie still boggles my mind. So awesome.

 

[bernina]

Just booked our March 2021 spring break cruise on RCCL Harmony of the Seas using URs via CSR.

I shopped around for cruise and room I wanted then called Chase Travel. She took my info, pulled up the cruise and booked the room I wanted. I paid about $250 extra for a fully refundable deposit and added ~$400 in prepaid gratuities to the total. Used just shy of 300k URs for a Central Park view balcony for 4 (we add one of my nieces to our room so SIL doesn't have to book a cabin for 5). I'll monitor prices and see if I can move to an Oceanview balcony as the cruise gets closer. I may also check out the savings of doing an onboard booking during our cruise in July. One of the benefits of the refundable fare is I can keep price shopping.

Now to replenish my UR balance which is looking so sad.

 

[afan]

Sorry I don’t think I can forgive this indiscretion.
You’ll be hearing from the my divorce lawyer soon.

 

[PolyRob]

So guys... I have a confession to make. And it's not easy to say this... but I've been cheating on this thread...

You see... this new ride, Rise of the Resistance (RotR) opened up at WDW. And there was a thread...and one thing led to another...and I became their spreadsheet guy. I didn't intend for it to happen, I promise!! I only looked, I didn't touch!!

Don't worry...after I head to Disney World next week, I promise I'll break it off!!! Please forgive me!!!