Credit Card Hacks 101

If you have a renewal on a credit card call in and try to get them to waive the annual fee. You get the most value from any card the first year you have it as the sign-up bonus is usually worth many times the annual fee. Often people will have a card for a year then cancel it to avoid the next annual fee. Before cancelling it is always worth asking if they can waive the annual fee. Many times they will say they can’t but in some instances they may waive the fee entirely, partly, or offer you a credit for spending a certain amount. In many cases this will make the card worth keeping and save you money.al fee

Most of the major banks have some kind of referral program that allows you to refer other people to a credit card. Anytime your spouse or partner signs up for a card you should first see if you can refer them to the card.

Always check that the combined value of the points from the referral and the offer you refer them to is higher than whatever offer is publicly available. There can be instances where the best publicly available offer is better than what is available via referral. Also referral bonuses unlike credit card bonuses are taxable so keep that in mind when deciding between referring and the best public bonus.

Refer your friends at the links below:

American Express

Capital One

Chase

Citi

Bank of America and Barclays do not have referral bonuses

Credit card bonus offers can very significantly. Usually there is a best publicly available bonus. Checking sites like Doctor of Credit or All the Hacks and clicking on credit cards will usually help you determine the best public offer. However, for certain cards like the American Express Platinum the sign-up bonus can vary significantly. For the American Express Platinum recently the highest offer was 250,000 miles whereas most people were being offered 175,000 or 200,000. To ensure you are getting the highest possible offer use incognito mode, different browsers, your cell phone, your friend or partner’s cell phone, and other computers to see if you can get a higher offer to populate. Sometimes the offer will be the same everywhere but its always worth trying.  

Although credit card signups have a limited impact on your credit score, they do have some impact. In addition, a lot of inquiries will limit your ability to get approved for some card issuers. You should therefore have a threshold for how much money you get on a credit card signup. I usually expect to make at least $500 above the annual fee from the sign-up bonus. In most cases I am looking for $750 or more.

Many personal credit cards like the Chase Hyatt/Sapphire Reserve cards and the American Express Green/Gold/Platinum cards have business equivalent cards. Although your personal credit will still be run when you apply for a card (a “hard inquiry”) some issuers won’t count it as an inquiry. For example, Chase historically had a 5/24 rule where you could not have had 5 or more credit card applications in 24 months and still get approved for a new Chase card, but they did not count business cards. Also American Express typically only allows you to get a bonus on a card once in your lifetime. However, business cards are considered a separate product type so you can get a bonus on both the personal and business card, for example you can get the American Express Platinum and the American Express Platinum Business.

Cards often have category bonuses wherein you get paid a higher number of points per dollar spent. For example, 3 points on groceries, 2 points on gas, 5 points on office supply stores like Staples etc. I wouldn’t go out of my way to maximize a bonus, but if you are already going to a particular store with a bonus category you should always use the card that gives you the bonus.

All card issuers but Chase, American Express, and Citi in particular have offers from retailers. You have to opt in to the deals by clicking on offers and then adding the offer to your card. The discounts are usually nothing to write home about, but occasionally they can be significant. Some companies like HBO, Disney+, and Dropbox almost always have pretty big discounts you can get from offers.  You can also often “stack” offers by going to a shopping portal such as Rakuten and purchasing the good or service using the card that has the offer.

Normally buying points is not a great deal as airlines and hotels will charge considerably more, often 1-2.5 cents per point, than the true value of the points, but it still may sometimes make sense to buy points under certain circumstances. If you are close to having enough points to redeem for a valuable reward, you may end up saving more money buy paying for points even if they are expensive on a per points basis. For example, you have 47,000 miles out of the 50,000 you need for a discounted business class reward ticket to Europe that has a cash cost of $5,000 and points that are worth 1 cent when redeemed on economy cost 3 cents each. You will end up paying an extra $60 for the 3,000 miles but the savings from the overall redemption more than make up for the extra cost.

When there is a sale it also may make sense to buy points. IHG, Hyatt, Air France, and American along with a number of other airlines and hotels have frequent point sales where the price of the points becomes a lot more reasonable. In these instances, it can be cheaper to buy points than it is to pay for the room or flight with cash. I recently booked the Hyatt House Jersey City and the price for booking around New Year’s Eve was roughly $500 a night vs 16,000 a night in points which I could purchase for $320, saving about $180 a night.