taxes on most European flights have gotten out of control in the past year or two. I was looking up rewards flights to England and France, taxes were like $700 and $500 per ticket, respectively.

England has always been that way (I think they're worse now, though), but the rest of Europe never really had that crazy markup.

1/18/2014 11:13:16 AM

Yeah - Italy looks around 600$ per ticket

1/18/2014 11:15:46 AM

A must read for anyone playing the game.

http://www.onlinetravelreview.com/2014/01/20/top-5-us-paper-currency-denominations-for-january/

1/24/2014 7:28:57 AM

fail

1/24/2014 1:34:35 PM

i tried to skim it

gave up quick

1/24/2014 1:38:27 PM

ditto

1/24/2014 3:58:09 PM

Success is what the three posts above me meant, right?

1/24/2014 10:35:11 PM

If you consider success a dumpster fire of a post, then yeah...GREAT SUCCESS!

1/25/2014 12:37:00 AM

^Did you ever sell your points?

1/25/2014 3:36:34 PM

naw still sitting on those chase points

1/25/2014 3:58:23 PM

why is that - couldn't find anyone to buy?

1/25/2014 4:04:18 PM

Probably gonna try sellmyrewards for $930...Bruce is offering $100 less. Lame.

1/25/2014 5:30:05 PM

Never heard back from Bruce, i guess most places don't respond on the weekend

1/26/2014 11:40:56 AM

Next churn will take place in a few weeks.
Focusing on hotels this time
Probably virgin airlines (to xfer to hilton), IHG, and Marriott
In other news

http://www.usatoday.com/story/todayinthesky/2014/01/27/southwest-airlines-to-announce-for-international-routes/4936143/

1/27/2014 12:07:26 PM

Quote :

"01/28/2014 Credit Card Rapid Rewards Credit Card 01/26/2014 +53,114"

1 down 1 to go

1/28/2014 2:20:49 PM

Bastards!

Quote :

"So you got a 1:2 ratio (2 Hilton points for 1 Virgin Atlantic mile) for transferring Virgin Atlantic miles to Hilton. But from February 6, 2014, the transfer ratio changes to 2:3."

1/29/2014 9:14:16 AM

HELLO

1/31/2014 4:23:59 PM

Going to hold off next churn til after the superbowl
Got a sweet card through an nhl promotion last year
Eyeing the 100K aa mile deal now, but 10k in 3 months will be tough.

1/31/2014 5:39:17 PM

^ I know we discussed in past, but bluebird is a great way to churn for very, very cheap. $4 on 500 for the vanilla reloads. That and amazon payments is good for $3k in 3 months and that's totally free.

2/3/2014 5:00:26 PM

yeah, been avoiding blue bird, but may have to suck it up
actually just ordered a square, if I'm just a grand or two short I'd rather pay the 2.75% vs $5 on a $500 reload
thanks


[Edited on February 3, 2014 at 5:50 PM. Reason : ]

2/3/2014 5:49:37 PM

^^call me a retard but I still don't grasp the bluebird/vanilla spend technique. Anyone care to [re]explain?

[Edited on February 3, 2014 at 7:50 PM. Reason : ]

2/3/2014 7:50:04 PM

You can buy the reloads with your credit card ideally for a small fee, which puts your money you just paid with your CC onto reload, sort of like a gift card. Then deposit the reload into your bluebird account. The money comes off the reload (now its worthless) and goes into your account, just like a bank. You'd use bluebird to pay those companies who dont take credit card as payment such as mortgage or utilities, etc. Bluebird will take reloads as a deposit, most other banks wont. Wasnt a bad option at first, especially if you could get away with it for mortgages or loans to quickly meet a new credit card spending limit bonus.

Im not a churner so IMHO its not worth the hassle, especially now that I hear they seem hard to find and most CVS/Walgreens dont seem to carry them. From what I've read if they do there's a higher chance they wont accept CC as payment, but I know some people dont mind dealing with it; different strokes.

[Edited on February 4, 2014 at 12:18 AM. Reason : .]

2/4/2014 12:11:59 AM

I wasn't necessarily talking about using bluebird to actually pay stuff off (although with a mortgage you could as they don't take CC anyway I wouldn't think).....once you have applied and recevied your BB, you can buy the vanilla reloads on your CC at CVS. You take vanilla reloads and add them to your BB online, very simple stuff. BB will let you transfer a grand a day and a total of 5k per 30 days (month) into your BB account. Then login to BB. Once you've added your regular checking account to your BB account, your transfer money from BB out to checking account (2 business days). Then pay your credit card off. About a week turnaround (for what equates to a 0.8% short term cash advance).......

The chase gift cards they were doing from April 2013 to Sept 2013 were the best, although that required visits to Walmart as you couldn't make the transfer to BB online, but, there were no fees to buy a chase gift card and you could buy $2,500 a month per chase card....There is more than one way to churn spend at either no charge or very minimal. Minimum spend on a CC is never an issue unless the spend is over 25k in 90 days, then it might be tough. Also amazon payments is an easy 1k churn a month at no charge.

[Edited on February 4, 2014 at 8:54 AM. Reason : .]

2/4/2014 8:44:41 AM

Yeah, currently using amz for excess charging.
I went to walmart many times last year.
Was always such a pain and a hassle.

2/4/2014 9:21:25 AM

hmm...wouldn't let me downgrade from the Ink Plus to the Ink Cash to avoid the annual fee. Threatened to cancel and got enough points to cover the annual fee but may still cancel and reapply for something else.

2/5/2014 2:17:34 PM

Just got two new cards
13K spend in 3 months.
This should be fun...

http://millionmilesecrets.com/2014/01/28/american-express-simply-cash/
http://millionmilesecrets.com/2014/01/28/100000-american-airlines-miles-200-statement-credit-with-the-citi-executive-card/

2/10/2014 5:18:19 PM

Those kind of suck...I guess cash back sign up rewards are never that good anyway.

2/10/2014 5:31:47 PM

How does 100K miles suck?

2/10/2014 5:38:58 PM

^How in God's name are you supposed to hit 10k in 3 months? I could potentially pay off either my school loans or car loan and cover it with my tax return, but I'm not sure either are worth trading that much in liquid assets (both loans are super low interest).

Still, about to go on some serious international travel and this would be pretty awesome to use for the lounge access baggage and priority lines/boarding.

2/11/2014 2:04:19 AM

^ I'm about to pay off $12k in taxes with my new card.

Add that to my normal school loans and bills and I'll be hitting up some crazy rewards this month. Just have to get the damn card in the mail.

2/11/2014 7:44:58 AM

Do you have to pay a fee to pay taxes with a CC?

2/11/2014 8:39:22 AM

Yes. About 2%

http://millionmilesecrets.com/2011/12/27/taxes/

^^^

I'll knock out a good chunk using amz payments.
I'll prepay my power bill and anything else possible.
I'll resort to gcs or using square if I'm a few thousand short.

2/11/2014 9:09:27 AM

What's the best way to get points out of PenFed? Points used to be worth a cent each for Visa cards, now they've devalued them to ~ .85 cents per point. Lame.

At least I'm still earning 5% gas/3% grocery (although I guess it's more like 4.25%/2.55% with this point devaluation)

2/11/2014 12:49:20 PM

I'm still pretty pissed about that. they gave the 5% cash back gas card an annual fee too

2/11/2014 1:07:14 PM

Quote :

"How does 100K miles suck?"

I entirely missed the 100k points part. Haha. Sweet.

[Edited on February 11, 2014 at 1:40 PM. Reason : s]

2/11/2014 1:39:35 PM

^^ Have you been hit with one yet? I haven't...

2/11/2014 1:46:06 PM

I don't have that card, but one of my coworkers does. they hit him with the fee so he cancelled it. I signed up for the Platinum Rewards card instead since it was 5/3/1 points (instead of just 5% on gas), but this decrease in points value is lame. I'm almost better off using my BoA 3%/3%/1% card since it lets you use the points for statement credits. the best I see on PenFed is gift cards.

2/11/2014 2:13:22 PM

Quote :

" I signed up for the Platinum Rewards card instead since it was 5/3/1 points"

Yeah that's the one I have...no annual fee yet. Still, 4.25% on gas isn't too bad, especially when I can use the same card for 2.55% on groceries. If anyone knows of something better let me know...

2/11/2014 2:22:26 PM

I've got the actual 5% cash back credit for gas penfed card, still no fee yet.

On a different note, anyone have suggestions on what to do with an old best buy credit card account thats due to be deactivated from inactivity? I used it to help boost my credit when I bought a big TV 5 yrs ago and havent used it after I paid it off immediately. I'm on the fence on using it to keep my overall credit up but at $3000 CL it's almost not worth the hassle of using since I lost all the account info and remember their online and phone payment system sucked, at least back then. I actually think I literally cut it up after paying it off.

2/11/2014 2:44:23 PM

Quote :

"I've got the actual 5% cash back credit for gas penfed card, still no fee yet."

I've also got the actual 5% card, but it's not really 5% when their points are worth .85 cents instead of a cent. Tried to redeem lately?

2/11/2014 4:24:57 PM

Quote :

"On a different note, anyone have suggestions on what to do with an old best buy credit card account thats due to be deactivated from inactivity? I used it to help boost my credit when I bought a big TV 5 yrs ago and havent used it after I paid it off immediately. I'm on the fence on using it to keep my overall credit up but at $3000 CL it's almost not worth the hassle of using since I lost all the account info and remember their online and phone payment system sucked, at least back then. I actually think I literally cut it up after paying it off."

Go in there and buy a coke and bag of fritos, then pay it off. The store can probably charge to your account without the card present. Just bring ID and your SSN.

2/11/2014 4:41:13 PM

Quote :

"Yes. About 2% http://millionmilesecrets.com/2011/12/27/taxes/ ^^^ I'll knock out a good chunk using amz payments. I'll prepay my power bill and anything else possible. I'll resort to gcs or using square if I'm a few thousand short."

Yeah, my taxes are withheld, so I have a big return coming my way. But all the other options I'm seeing basically just mean dumping my cash into a much less flexible financial vehicle. I used to rely on the mint and reload cards, but both of those loopholes are closed for churns this big.

Maybe I'll talk to my parents and see if they've got a big tax burden this year. Last year I churned a 3.5k spend by reselling straight talk refills. It was a little work, but I only lost ~5% on the churn and ended up with cash in hand again.

2/11/2014 5:35:51 PM

I'll hit almost 10k in one month from work travel. Benefits of a small company.

2/11/2014 6:39:11 PM

^We have corporate Amex's for all travel, so I can't funnel that way either unfortunately

2/11/2014 6:56:01 PM

Synapse, my card doesnt have any points, I get a 5% automatic cash credit applied to my statement every month for all gas purchases. No points or redemptions required. I only had a note on a statement a while back that they were getting rid of the 1% cash-back-on-everything-else feature.

Gonna have to stop by the local best buy I guess, last time I tried to pay locally they couldnt accept it.

[Edited on February 12, 2014 at 12:22 AM. Reason : .]

2/12/2014 12:08:25 AM

^ Wow, I haven't ever heard of that one before. How long have you had it? I'm thinking that was the Platinum Rewards program they were running before I got mine. Do you also get the 3% on groceries?

2/12/2014 2:23:36 PM

Quote :

"^We have corporate Amex's for all travel, so I can't funnel that way either unfortunately "

Yeah benefits of a small company. We just do expense reports and charge everything ourselves.

2/12/2014 3:01:58 PM

^^It is, they still have that card available but requires you to have some sort of other business with them in order to qualify for the "plus" version. IIRC the easiest option if you didnt already have a mortgage or some other business with them was to open a small money market savings account (not certificate) for $25 deposit, not bad IMHO.

https://www.penfed.org/Platinum-Cash-Rewards/

It looks very similar to the points version but the only cash back on it now is for gas. I drive a lot for work (35k miles+/yr) so it works out well.

[Edited on February 12, 2014 at 3:22 PM. Reason : .]

2/12/2014 3:21:23 PM

Anyone have recommendations on where/who to sell my Chase Ultimate Rewards to?

2/13/2014 9:38:41 AM

what price are you looking for?

2/13/2014 10:36:21 AM