I love credit cards so much! v2.0 (see first page for add'l details)

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I am planning a trip to Florida in November. It is split between Disney and Marco Island and I need some advice. What are your thoughts and can you think of anything that I’m not? Roundtrip flights with SW RR points already acquired.


1) 11/2-11/6 at Beach Club. Paying with AA points on aavacations. I don’t have quite enough but want to book now so I don’t lose BC. It would be all of my points (253,500) and $292.60 cash. What would you use to pay? CSR or an AA card (or something else I’m not thinking of)?

2) Disney 4 day park hoppers. 2 adults and 2 kids on UndercoverTourist are $2073.06. Any cards with a travel credit I could sign up for to help knock this payment down?

3) Food at WDW. $xxx.xx Discounted Disney gift cards?

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4) 11/6-11/11 at JW Marriott Marco Island. Using UR points, completely paid for.

5) 11/6-11/11 Rental Car. Planning to use AA points from next batch of SUBs.

6) 11/6-11/11. Food will just be out of pocket on CSR.

Sounds like a great trip! We were just at the JW a couple of weeks ago.
1. I’d use CSR for the Beach Club balance. More versatile points.
2. Barclay Arrival +, Capital One Venture

4. Beautiful resort. Resort fees and parking were extra at the JW.
 
Going through some paperwork, little embarrassed to admit I am just reading insurance stuff that was sent last July. :rolleyes1 It says that even though our credit score is still better than most peoples it has gone down and may have affected our rates. Our Homeowner rate went up about $20 from the previous year. Just chalked it up to increasing rates at the time. Our car rates are a little harder to compare as we have added teen drivers. It also mentioned that we had applied to no credit cards in the previous year. Which was true for DH but not for me at that time. Now I am a little worried about what it will say this year. DH has opened 2 personal and 3 biz cards this past year, planning another personal soon for him. Unclear to me why insurance cares about this. Anyone else notice credit cards affecting insurance rates?

Also noticed our Home policy says it only covers $200 in cash and prepaid gift cards. Seems very low to me. It is fine for us, we rarely have cash, but I know a lot of you collected a large amount in gift cards, just hope you have them somewhere safe.
 
Plastiq Update:

I added up all of the MSRs that went towards our auto loans for fun. And I put it in a nice format so I can keep adding :) I did not count the car that my ILs bought from us last year. That one would be easy because over 95% of the MSRs for a CIP and 2 CSRs were covered by that.

For this purpose I figured out what % of the MSR went towards the cars and thus what % of those points could be attributed to it. I also included the 20k CIP referral points (ie I referred DH for his CIP 2 and counted it here as being worth 100k points total)

A CIP 1 = $3900 payments, 81.9k URs
A CIP 2 = $295 payments, 6.3k URs
A CIC = $1843 payments, 37.7k URs
Z CIP 2 = $4160 payments, 89.7k URs
A A+ = $1000 payments, 16.4k pts
A AA Biz= $1951 payments, 4.2k pts
Z AA Biz= $1951 payments, 4.2k pts
A Brilliant Upgrade = $590 payments, 13.2k pts

Total Payments: $15,690
Total Plastiq Fees: $253
Total CC AFs: $285 (3 CIPs)
Total Value of Points: $4,344

Points value does not include getting 60k AA Biz match or selling the AA GCs yet. Also DHs CIP 2 has about $700 to go on MSR and my CIP 2 has about $4300 to go. So even though I included all the CIP fees, not all MSR has gone to them yet. My A+ has about $800 to go.

As of this morning I have paid $10,000.12 in payments through my Plastiq biz account. About $1300 of that was with non business cards... haven't seen any FFDs yet.
 
Going through some paperwork, little embarrassed to admit I am just reading insurance stuff that was sent last July. :rolleyes1 It says that even though our credit score is still better than most peoples it has gone down and may have affected our rates. Our Homeowner rate went up about $20 from the previous year. Just chalked it up to increasing rates at the time. Our car rates are a little harder to compare as we have added teen drivers. It also mentioned that we had applied to no credit cards in the previous year. Which was true for DH but not for me at that time. Now I am a little worried about what it will say this year. DH has opened 2 personal and 3 biz cards this past year, planning another personal soon for him. Unclear to me why insurance cares about this. Anyone else notice credit cards affecting insurance rates?

Also noticed our Home policy says it only covers $200 in cash and prepaid gift cards. Seems very low to me. It is fine for us, we rarely have cash, but I know a lot of you collected a large amount in gift cards, just hope you have them somewhere safe.
Honestly our insurance pretty much always says that. Like a disclaimer. Our credit scores are both over 800, a few points change up or down is not going to change insurance rate.
 


When my wife went pending it didn’t say “further info” so that’s a different message. I think the general consensus is that you’re safe to call with Citi. Probably just verification of some kind...if you aren’t in a hurry you could wait it out for a few days though. They have an online application status website you can check.
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@DisneyMandC even without your warning I would have been ok. I read about it online a couple months ago, I follow them and the show on fb/twitter. I love the specials but I am bummed that it'll be all that. I liked the combination because this was how I got my car info. I don't remember if they gave the reason for it though. And they'll each be doing an individual show on Amazon, I think James comes out first but I'm not 100% on that.
 
Going through some paperwork, little embarrassed to admit I am just reading insurance stuff that was sent last July. :rolleyes1 It says that even though our credit score is still better than most peoples it has gone down and may have affected our rates. Our Homeowner rate went up about $20 from the previous year. Just chalked it up to increasing rates at the time. Our car rates are a little harder to compare as we have added teen drivers. It also mentioned that we had applied to no credit cards in the previous year. Which was true for DH but not for me at that time. Now I am a little worried about what it will say this year. DH has opened 2 personal and 3 biz cards this past year, planning another personal soon for him. Unclear to me why insurance cares about this. Anyone else notice credit cards affecting insurance rates?

I absolutely noticed a difference the year I had a 0% interest card for a year and left a chunk of charges on that. Much higher rates due to credit utilization I guess. I won't do that again!
 


I have an eligibility question for the Bonvoy Amex Biz card. My DH has the Chase Marriott personal card. He did take the upgrade last fall. Is he eligible for the Biz card?
I CANNOT keep the names of all of these Bonvoy cards straight! And the eligibility makes my head spin.
 
Honestly our insurance pretty much always says that. Like a disclaimer. Our credit scores are both over 800, a few points change up or down is not going to change insurance rate.

Ours are both over 800 also. I knew bad credit could affect our rates, but the way it was worded that even though it was still good just going down could affect our rates. And the number of credit cards in the last year is what really threw me. I think they must have pulled his credit right after we got our HELOC last year. It is still at 0 balance, but I am pretty sure just getting it decreased our score a little bit.
 
With the Starbucks reward thing switching on Tuesday has anyone seen any more info on it? I'll have enough for two free items tomorrow once the bonus stars hit. Not planning on using one tomorrow which leaves me with Monday. I don't drink more than one hot chocolate a day and don't eat stuff there. I'm just curious if the free item I have will revert to stars or stay as is. It's 150 bonus so I guess either way it doesn't matter too much except that one would leave me with 25 stars left towards my next one and the other would use them all up. I thought by now there might have been more info, I didn't see anything in the app that would tell me.

I got an email. At the time i had like 14 free drinks and they confirmed that yes, the points for those will be going from 125 to 150 pts on Tuesday (so I would have lost 2 free drinks with the change). I have been using them up at a faster pace. But there will be some lower pt things, which don't really help me - 25 pts for an extra flavor shot, 50 pts for a hot brewed coffee, croissant or lemon loaf cake were the examples, and 200 pts for sandwich or salad. I'm not thrilled with it and think it may be time to break the Starbucks habit!
 
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I want to do this...among others...while we can get DD's CM discount. I think I need to do a short solo trip and just focus on tours.
Have you done the Wanyama Safari? Idk if there is a cm discount but on a solo trip it’s a more affordable splurge than taking a whole fam as it’s just over $200/person now but is an incredible experience. The safari is nice as the guides are very knowledgeable & Disney-Level friendly. But the food experience at Jikos after is out of this world!! It’s specially selected for the groups, served family style some things & individually plated other items so it wasn’t awkward to share the meal with strangers. So many incredible dishes, each presented by the manager who explained what they were & various wines were paired throughout including an on spot cocktail to start the meal and a dessert wine at the end. (They also did great with the allergies in our group if that’s a concern.) Expensive for sure but an incredible experience worth it to me. Can’t wait until I can put together enough extra cash to do it again someday! (After you will stuffed and well liquored up so no driving yourself!) Even if you don’t drink I think the tour/meal is worth it.
 
I got an email. At the time i had like 14 free drinks and they confirmed that yes, the points for those will be going from 125 to 150 pts on Tuesday (so I would have lost 2 free drinks with the change). I have been using them up at a faster pace. But there will be some lower pt things, which don't really help me - 25 pts for an extra flavor shot, 50 pts for a hot brewed coffee, croissant or lemon loaf cake were the examples, and 200 pts for sandwich or salad. I'm not thrilled with it and think it amy be time to break the Starbucks habit!

Thanks for the info! I looked at the email I got about the free drink I've earned and there's nothing about it expiring etc. I wonder how well this is all going to transition. I'm using it tomorrow and the 150 bonus stars for the challenge I had haven't posted yet, but it's enough for a free drink under the new thing so it'll be fine just would have been nice to have that 25 towards the next one. I only drink hot chocolate so it's not like I get anywhere fast at 3.80 a cup. Though it's weird, I was looking at my star history and the one's I get at the SB inside Fred Meyer give me 7.6 points and the one's from an actual SB give me 6.9 yet they are the same price at both. Not sure I understand that but I like getting them inside Fred's more anyway, they mix their mocha syrup so it's not watery and I get fuel points even if it's not many. Plus they know me and my drink :)
 
I hit the $10K on Wednesday and all was business cards. No sign yet of the bonus. Hopefully they will post soon!
Hmm, I went back through the normal personal account referrals and they seemed to post within a day of the person hitting the spend. When I referred dh it was two hours after his payment was processed for the normal $500 amount that I got an email on my account that I earned the referral FFDs...
 
Have you done the Wanyama Safari? Idk if there is a cm discount but on a solo trip it’s a more affordable splurge than taking a whole fam as it’s just over $200/person now but is an incredible experience. The safari is nice as the guides are very knowledgeable & Disney-Level friendly. But the food experience at Jikos after is out of this world!! It’s specially selected for the groups, served family style some things & individually plated other items so it wasn’t awkward to share the meal with strangers. So many incredible dishes, each presented by the manager who explained what they were & various wines were paired throughout including an on spot cocktail to start the meal and a dessert wine at the end. (They also did great with the allergies in our group if that’s a concern.) Expensive for sure but an incredible experience worth it to me. Can’t wait until I can put together enough extra cash to do it again someday! (After you will stuffed and well liquored up so no driving yourself!) Even if you don’t drink I think the tour/meal is worth it.

We did this one year over spring break. The price was ridiculous, but we loved it!! Wine tasting at Jiko was fun too.
 
I have an eligibility question for the Bonvoy Amex Biz card. My DH has the Chase Marriott personal card. He did take the upgrade last fall. Is he eligible for the Biz card?
I CANNOT keep the names of all of these Bonvoy cards straight! And the eligibility makes my head spin.

Its so confusing! Try the chart here (about halfway down the page) - https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/marriott-bonvoy-complete-guide/

It looks like he might need to wait 24 months after receiving the upgrade bonus.
 
See that’s the answer! You just have to go to both. :)

I think my experience at the one close to Universal was affected by it was harder to get too and it was on a Sunday. I can see how the store itself would be potentially less crazy/picked over.

Yeah, it's super inconvenient to get to it. I can't remember what days I went in previous years but this year, I went on a Thursday and Friday, both shortly after opening and I didn't have to park far at all. In previous years, I got there later in the day and I swear, we walked like a mile to get there. It was nuts. I don't like that outlet mall as much overall. It's overrun by the pushy booth people.
 
New to this thread, and I'm only up to page 960 (don't worry, I started on 950), but had a question.

Can I pay for DVC dues and/or my current DVC direct loan with a travel card?
Only payment method seems to be banking.

Thanks!
 
New to this thread, and I'm only up to page 960 (don't worry, I started on 950), but had a question.

Can I pay for DVC dues and/or my current DVC direct loan with a travel card?
Only payment method seems to be banking.

Thanks!
Definitely can pay for dues with a card. I use my CSR or with gift cards that I’ve bought with discounts from other cards. No experience with loans though.
 
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