Lazy Man and Money

Travel for Free by Hacking Your Taxes?

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Many personal finance bloggers love to write about travel hacking with credit cards. As you can tell by that link, I’m one of those bloggers who have written about it in the past.

Hack Travel Taxes

Last year, we had a lot of expenses in renovating some investment condos. It required us to put up a significant amount of money into the projects. It’s money we had in our various emergency funds. My wife and I applied for quite a few credit cards that had bonuses for spending a minimum amount. Most of them earned us the equivalent of $500 in travel if we spent $3000. That’s the equivalent of getting more than 16% back as long as you use the points.

Back then, I would keep track of what all our points/miles and worth. It was around $6,000 which is pretty exciting! It wasn’t all from the credit cards. Some of it was from saving up Marriott points for years at our timeshare. Some of it was from my wife’s work travel.

We used some of them late last year and will use some more this year. We’re saving up a large portion for a potential return to Australia. Hopefully our trip won’t collapse the United States’ Financial system like it did 10 years ago.

You’ll notice that this article has been about my travel hacking last year. Why? We haven’t been able to do it much this year. Many of our expenses aren’t ones that we can pay with a credit card. Our mortgage can’t be paid with one. The kids’ school can’t be paid with one. We don’t pay for electricity due to our solar panels. I like to reduce our expenses on all the other stuff, so there’s often no guarantee that we’ll get to the minimum spending necessary to earn the rewards.

Then I read an article from Joe of Retire by 40. He’s hustling for free travel using credit cards. I’ve been following Joe’s blog for a long time and we have a lot of financial similarities. One of the differences is that he’s paying estimated taxes on his blog earnings. We don’t pay estimated taxes. I’m an employee of my blogs S-Corp (and have taxes taken out as part of payroll). My wife also chooses to withhold a little more money on her day job.

It turns out that you can pay taxes with a credit card. The processing fees vary, but it looks like it can be as low as 1.87%. (Why would anyone choose the other options to pay more?) If you had to pay $10,000 in taxes that’s $187 in fees. At first it sounds like a raw deal.

However, if you are putting it on three credit cards that have $3000 minimum spending, it could earn $1500 back in travel points depending on the credit cards. Would you pay $187 for $1500 in travel rewards? Of course, right? If you are going to travel anyway, that’s $1300 in free money.

I have to admit that I really haven’t looked at changing our withholdings. It’s been nearly a couple of decades since I even thought about how it works. I usually like, “Set it and forget it.” It fits with my whole Lazy Man brand. However, I’m willing to change my ways if it means an extra thousand or two a year in free travel.

I have to admit that I’ve never heard of anyone doing this. (That doesn’t mean it hasn’t been written about before as it is pretty close to Retire By 40’s plan.) Maybe there’s a gotcha that I’m not seeing?

So to recap, here’s the plan to hack free travel with credit cards and taxes:

  1. Increase withholding allowances so less tax is taken out of your paycheck. (Needed a correction there.)
  2. Get a credit card that offers a $500 reward for spending $3000 in the first 3 months. (That’s an example. I’ve seen a lot of these around.)
  3. Use the credit card to send a tax payment to reach the minimum.
  4. Pay off your credit card from the money that wasn’t taken out of your paycheck in step 1.
  5. Repeat steps 1-4 quarterly or as often as you can depending on how much tax you need to pay.
  6. Enjoy your reward bonuses (minus a little in fees for using a credit card) of travel.

What do you think? Does it work?

Travel Hacking with Rewards Cards (Part 1)

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I hope all the Americans had a good Independence Day yesterday. Even if you don’t live in America, now is a good time to reflect that half of 2017 is over. Hmmm, let’s be optimistic about having a whole half of 2017 left!

This week doesn’t feel like a real week. Many people weren’t working the Monday before the 4th and we’re taking a little time off on Friday to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. So exciting! It’s the busiest dog sitting time of the year, so I could use a little break.

Travel Hacking with Credit Cards
Travel Hacking with Credit Cards

Today, I’d like to write about rewards cards. I’m presuming readers here have at least a couple. I realize some people are against credit cards and that’s okay too. Personally, I like the opportunity to get some money back on something I was going to buy anyway.

For a long time, I’ve been a fan of Fidelity’s Retirement Rewards card. It’s been a steady 2% statement credit for years (once you reached 25,000 miles). Unfortunately, the last time I tried to redeem for statement credit, they changed the miles so it would only give me 1% of the value back. You can still get 2% if you transfer to a Fidelity Retirement account, which I have. I preferred the immediate statement credit much more.

Travel Hacking: The New Reward Card Strategy

Over the past month or two, I’ve been revamping our credit card rewards strategy. I’m trying to hack as many travel rewards as possible. There are two major reasons why:

  1. Our children are 3 and 4, which means we now have to pay for full seats wherever we fly. It’s hard to see our costs to fly double like that.
  2. We’ve had a few big expenses come up. For example, those surprise condo assessments. In addition, my wife is going back to school to get her Masters. She can pay that with a credit card. Finally, we’re nearing the last few months of being able to pay for pre-school with a credit card. In September the new school is going to ACH and checks only. We should have been working to earn bonus points the whole time.

For those new to travel hacking with credits cards don’t be ashamed, my hand is raised too. The general idea is to spend a certain in a certain time. Typically you need to spend around $3000 and $5000 in about 3 months. If you complete the requirements, you’ll get a tens of thousands points as a bonus. They can usually be used for cash back, but are best used for travel rewards. The travel cards tend to give you more value when using your points for travel (which is easy to remember because it makes sense!) And if we using the points for cash back, this wouldn’t be a very good travel hacking article.

I’ve found that the rewards for the best cards are worth about $500 (used cash) or $625 (used as travel). Those are rough numbers, but since we need to spend about $3000 a few times, we might as well get 20% back in the form of travel, right? And that’s just the bonus points. We’ll get regular points on the spending of $3000 itself (about 3000 miles/points). So maybe we get around 22% in travel expenses overall. That’s a lot better than 2% in Fidelity rewards. (Sorry Fidelity, it’s not your fault.)

I used to think it was a ton of extra work, but with autopay on the credit cards, I don’t miss any payments. There’s almost zero risk of incurring any extra fees. The money comes out of my bank account just like any other credit card. Setting up auto pay with Chase and Amex are very, very easy. (I haven’t tried other banks.)

The Cards We’re Using

A friend gave me a tip on credit cards which have “hot” rewards now. That said, there are always a few “old standbys” that you can usually count on.

My first card was a Starwood Preferred card. This was directly on that tip from a friend, which I took on blind faith. It looks like this card bumped up the rewards from 25,000 point to 30,000. (I may be off on the exact numbers here, but I see 34,066 points in my account which would be consistent with 30,000.) I’m reading that Starwood points are pretty valuable and worth about 2.2 cents a piece. If true, that’s roughly around $650.

Next, I got a Southwest Preferred Card. They are running a 60,000 point promotion, where it’s usually 40,000. If you fly Southwest, this is the time to get it. My wife had gotten the 40,000 point last year and we cashed in nearly $1000 of travel rewards to go to Aruba later this year. It’s about the half off. That’s conveniently enough for the two kids to fly free. I’m 40,000 points away from a companion pass for next year. I’m hearing that some people sign up for the Southwest Plus card as well, so get that. I might try that in September or October.

I’m seeing that Southwest points can be worth around 1.5 cents, so the 60,000 should be worth around $900.

Lastly, I got the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. I should have gotten the Reserve version when they were doing a 100,000 promotion, but I missed it. Instead, I’ll only get 50,000 worth of Chase Ultimate Reward points. In the travel hacking world, these supposedly have a tremendous value in cashing in with a ton of airlines. With the Preferred card, I’ll get a bonus and the 50,000 points should be worth around $625.

My wife got a Starwood Preferred card to use. That’s another $650.

As the fourth card in a short time, this is enough spending for now!

If you add it all up, we’ll get around 200,000 points on various programs. If we spend them right, I think they’ll be worth around $3000… maybe just a little shy.

Active Duty Bonus Leads to One More Points Card

My wife got a credit card offer in the mail last week. It’s a rare 100,000 American Express Platinum card. I believe this is the highest amount of points that American Express offers. The only downside is a HUGE annual fee. I think it’s around $550. However, the card comes with $200 Uber credits (that are parsed out monthly and expire monthly) and another $200 in airline credits (for things like extra bags, food, or other fees outside of the core cost of the ticket). There are other perks as well such as a few different airline lounges and possibly that speedy pass to cut the long lines at airports. (See how technical I am with all this stuff!)

This wasn’t exciting until I learned that Active Duty get their annual fees waived at most credit card companies (except for Chase it seems). So this American Express looks to be 100,000 points and hundreds of dollars of value… for free! Why thank you for the invite, Mr. Express… or should I just call you American?

One More Card

And of course, there’s always one more thing, right? Steven Jobs wouldn’t have had it any other way.

While I was going through the research of the Fidelity card’s statement credit change, someone in some forum mentioned USAA’s Limitless Cash Back Card that pays 2.5%. That’s another Active Duty benefit (though military and family are likely eligible to join USAA). I take the extra 0.5% and phase out the use of Fidelity card.

A natural question to ask is, “Why have a 2.5% card at all, when I’m getting 22% in travel rewards?” The answer is simple. These are one time bonus rewards. We’ll have to cancel the cards, wait some time, and try to get them back in the future to get the bonus points. (Although I think we’ll just keep the American Express forever.) I’m not sure how that process works. I know that Chase has a limit a 5/24 limit which means that they’ll probably not approve you for a new card if you’ve gotten 5 in the past 24 months. I’m probably going to be close to bumping up against that.

Final Thoughts on Travel Card Hacking

There was a lot of research that went into writing this. However, you can tell that it gets so complex, I “yada yada yada” most of the details. (Although they are minor details in this case.)

I’m just starting to “build a base” of understanding the ins and outs of various programs. I’m a little torn, because there’s something nice about using the USAA Limitless card and getting an easy 2.5%. I think that if there aren’t bonus points to be earned by spending, I’ll just use that card. Then again I carry a few other credit cards such as an Amazon one (5% back for Prime Members) and an American Express Blue Preferred (6% back at grocery stores).

Have you done any travel hacking with credit cards before? What are your favorite cards?

Make a $1000 a Year with Reward Credit Cards? Yes!

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I’m a strong believer in disciplined personal finance. Part of that discipline is having the self control to avoid superfluous spending on credit cards and paying them off every month.

I believe everyone can develop this discipline. If you need a carrot stick for motivation, this post (and $1000 a year) is for you.

Let’s start with what’s in my wallet:

Reward Credit Cards in my Wallet
Reward Credit Cards in my Wallet

Here’s a breakdown of each card and why I carry it. I’m going to put them order of awesomeness, which is different than the picture above.

  • Fidelity Retirement Rewards – This card gives me 2% rewards on everything I spend. For those who are math-challenged that’s twice as good as what you get from most rewards cards. This is the catch-all card, which we found particularly great for things like daycare. Though this card is supposed to make it easy to put the rewards into your retirement plan, Fidelity couldn’t figure it out for me. Instead, I use the rewards for statement credit. You need to get around 25,000 in rewards points ($12,500 spending) to redeem at the 2% level, but the $250 statement credit is very nice.
  • American Express Blue Preferred – This gives me 6% cash at grocery stores (not Wal-Mart or Target). It used to not give rewards for my local military commissary, but they’ve finally fixed that problem. Though it has an annual fee, the 6% rewards on groceries more than cover it.
  • Chase Ink Business – This gives 3% cash back at restaurants, office supply stores, and home improvement stores (Home Depot, Lowe’s, Ace, etc.) I don’t know if you actually need to have a business to take advantage of this. I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader. Even though we try to keep our restaurant expenses down, the extra 1% over the Fidelity Retirement Rewards card is nice.
  • USAA Rewards Plus American Express – This gives 5% back on gas and at military bases. With gas at around $3/gal, that 5% makes it effectively $2.85/gal. If you drive a lot, it adds up quickly. My wife recently learned about the military base rewards, which was news to me. The strange thing is that many places on military bases won’t take American Express.

    Now for the sad part… you probably need a USAA account to get this. Unfortunately USAA accounts are typically limited to members of the military and their families. If you are limited by this, keep reading, I’ve got something for you later in the article.

  • Amazon Visa – This isn’t pictured above. Why? Because I don’t keep it in my wallet. I signed up for it just to get the 3% rewards at Amazon. I added it to my Amazon account and then hid it away. Unlike American Express, don’t leave home WITH it. With the other cards, there’s no value to it.
  • Chase Freedom – This card gives 5% cash back on categories that rotate every quarter. Sometimes it’s restaurants and beats out my Chase Ink card for value. A couple of quarters ago it was gas, which is almost useless given my USAA card above. Because this card is very hit or miss, it is low on totem pole. I don’t like having to think about how it saves me money this quarter. I also don’t like having to “activate” the rewards, even if it is as easy as a click on the web. Big demerits for relying on breakage, Chase.

Here are cards that deserve mention. I would carry some of them myself, if it weren’t for a specific situation to me that prevents it or limits the value.

  • Citi Double Cash (MasterCard) – This card gives you 1% when you spend and 1% again when you pay in full. Because the assumption is that we pay in full, this gives the equivalent rewards as the Fidelity Retirement Rewards card above. The difference is that this is MasterCard and is useful a few more places that American Express is not. If you had neither, I would suggest this over the Fidelity card that I use. Since I already have the Fidelity card, it isn’t worth it to me to make the move.
  • PenFed Platinum Cash Rewards – If you aren’t eligible for the 5% USAA card, you can get a PenFed membership (it’s relatively cheap and easy, just do a search with your favorite search engine) and get nearly 5% cash back on gas with this.
  • BJ Perks Elite – We tried to get this card, but got rejected despite our nearly a perfect credit score. Their explanation? Our debt-to-income ratio was too high for their liking. Because the BJ Warehouse membership was in my wife’s name, she had to be the one to apply. I wonder if she low-balled our income perhaps leaving off what our three investment properties bring in? It is a mistake that I often make, because the income balances off our expenses. A credit check would bring up the debt and our reported income would seem low if we don’t include that income.
  • US Bank Cash Plus – This card allows you get 5% on categories that you choose. They used to have utilities, which made it the only card would give 5% on such things. It looks like they have some useful things such as electronic stores (5% Best Buy, Apple, etc.), gym memberships, and cell phone. This card may save some people $50-100 a year with some of those categories.

    Unfortunately, I have to pass because you can only apply in a branch and they don’t have any in New England from what I can tell. True story… while on vacation I tried to apply in a branch, but they couldn’t send the card to a state that they didn’t have a branch in. So as my British friends might say, I will politely invite them to “get stuffed.”

  • PenFed Premium Travel Rewards – This gives you 5% on airlines. What I like best is that it isn’t limited to any particular airline. My wife books the majority of our travel (it’s usually for her work). I think she might have this credit card, but I’m not 100% sure. If not, we should get it on our list. We used to not travel much, but we are traveling a little more of late.
  • Discover – I’m thinking about this one. Like the Chase Freedom above with rotating categories, it might prove useful some quarters. I’m still stuck in the 80’s thinking of when my mother got one of these cards and couldn’t use it anywhere. I think it is mostly taken everywhere now, so it may be one of the next credit cards on my list to get.
  • Sam’s Card – Sam’s Club has the cheapest gas around for us, but it is still 20 minutes away from our house. When we are going by there anyway, we fill-up, but it isn’t worth the trip otherwise. The downside is that Sam’s doesn’t take the USAA gas card mentioned above since it’s American Express. If you lived close to a Sam’s Club and used it to fill up often enough, it would be worth it to get this 5% card.

You’ll notice that I don’t have a lot of travel cards here. Some people do very well with them. We don’t travel enough to save up tons of rewards points on every airline. We could choose one airline to pile up points in, but what if another airline is offering a better deal? I’d rather have the George Washington Points (commonly referred to as “cash”) that I can use everywhere.

Also, some people rotate through credit cards to get the sign-up rewards. With some of them, you might be able to make a few hundred dollars per card in just a few months. The returns on those can be upwards of 15%! It’s not terrible plan, but I like to keep a core set of cards and have them on autopay. This way I never have to remember to write a check or put a stamp on a bill… and I never get charged a fee.

So How Do I Save More than $1000?

I don’t subscribe to a system of meticulous budgeting, so I’m going to give you estimates based on our spending for a year. And yes, I realize I could sign into 6 accounts and get year-end statements for more exact numbers. There’s two things stopping me from doing that 1) Laziness and 2) Really not wanting to look at our spending on that Fidelity Rewards card (ouch!).

Day Care – $12,500 – Fidelity Rewards (2%) – $250
Groceries – $4500 – American Express Blue Preferred (6%) – $270
Restaurants – $3600 – Chase Ink (3%) – $108
Gas – $2000 – USAA (5%) – $100
Amazon – $1200 – Amazon (3%) – $36
Office and Home Improvement * – $300 – Chase Ink (3%) – $9
Miscellaneous (not in a category above)** – $15,000 – Fidelity Rewards (2%) – $300

The grand (estimated) total is… $1073!

* I often buy Home Depot Gift Cards at a 10-12% discount on CardCash.com using my Fidelity Rewards (2%) card. The combination is a far better deal than Chase Ink’s 3% cash back. The only reason I spend $300 in the first place is when I forget to bring my Home Depot cards or shop at Staples where I don’t have a gift cards.

** This may be a very low estimate. We manage three rental properties. Buying new appliances, kitchen updates, HVAC units add up quickly. If we were to get the BJ’s card and the travel card some of this spending would move from this category to one making 5% increasing our total rewards a bit… maybe enough to hit $1100.

Maximize Your Points

This may seem obvious, but I try to get the highest percentage reward cards for a category. The magic number for many categories is 5%. Sometimes you get a 6% and sometimes you have to settle for 3%.. I never think about cards that offer less than 3% because I’ve got my Fidelity that earns 2% on everything to fall back on.

I’ve had most of these cards for years and years now. Spending with them is second nature to me. My wife likes to put a sticker with a reminder of the category on her cards. As I mentioned above, all of these are on autopay, so I just need to make sure I have the money in the bank, and the rest is automated. Not everyone’s spending is the same, but I think that nearly everyone could easily make at least $500 a year with no additional work, simply with rewards on credit cards.

Using Credit Cards to Repair Your Credit

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[Editor’s Note: Sometimes I forget some of the basic levels of financial trouble that some people have. Today’s article fills a gap in addressing how people can get good credit when they don’t have good credit.]

Credit cards can be useful, but they can also be dangerous. Because they make lines of credit readily available, if you don’t have strong spending habits, it’s easy to spend yourself into a deep financial hole that can take years to get out of. If the hole is deep enough it will not only impact your current finances, it can also affect your ability to get future credit, and even affect your job prospects.

Because of the risks associated with credit cards, it might seem odd that some financial experts recommend that people with credit problems use credit cards to rebuild their credit. As strange as it sounds, the practice can actually work quite well as long as you do it properly.

Get a Secured Card

There are two main types of credit cards: secured and unsecured.

With a secured card, you have to make a deposit to your card and all or part of the deposit applies toward your credit limit. The deposit acts as collateral against you defaulting on your balance. If you do default, then lender keeps the deposit.

With an unsecured card, the lender simply gives you a credit limit and expects you to pay it back if you use it to make purchases. If you have a spotty credit history, it can be very difficult to get an unsecured card because the lender would need to be able to trust you.

Secured cards function just like unsecured credit cards. You can make purchases, you have to make monthly payments on the balance, and you will also have interest and finance charges. The most important part is that, just like a regular card, the credit card company reports your payment and spending history to the credit reporting agencies.

Secured credit cards are not the same as pre-paid debit cards. Prepaid debit cards essentially function like electronic checks and withdraw money from your checking or savings account. There is no credit involved, you don’t have to make monthly payments on the balance, and the bank does not report anything to the credit agencies. Debit cards give you some of the convenience of credit cards, but they won’t improve your credit score.

Determine How You Will Use the Card

In order to build your credit, you have to actually use the card and make regular payments. If you just sit it, it won’t prove to the creditor that you can be responsible. However, you don’t want to go nuts with your spending either. The amount of your deposit will put some limits on your spending, but if you don’t have a clear plan for how you will use your card, you could end up back in the same boat.

One suggestion would be to designate that card for a specific expense, such as your cell phone bill or gas or groceries. You would use that card solely for that expense and stick within a budget.

The point of having the card is to rebuild your credit, not to spend, so it’s a good idea to use an expense that you would normally pay out of your checking account, and which is much less than the credit limit on your card.

Pay Off the Balance Each Month

Although secured credit cards give you the option of making a minimum payment each month, paying the balance in full will go a long way toward improving your credit rating. If you can’t pay the balance in full, then you should at least make more than the minimum payment each month; and make sure you make those payments on-time, or even early. Even one late or missing payment can undo all of your hard work.

If you find that you can’t keep up with the payments, or that you are not able to pay off the total balance within three months, stop using the card until you can catch up and zero out the balance.

Keeping a balance on the card for long periods of time can actually hurt your credit, and it will also cost you more money in interest and fees.

Keep Track of Your Credit Report

Credit card companies report to all of the agencies every month. Sign up with a credit monitoring service so that you can keep track of your rating and see what the credit companies are saying about you. There are free services like Credit Karma, which are pretty much do-it-yourself; there are also companies that offer a range of credit services for a fee.

Whether you decide to go with a free service or a paid service, you should always check the consumer reviews of credit repair companies to see what their customers think of them. You should also check industry rating sites to see how they rank against the competition.

You can also contact the companies directly to get their list of products and services, and to determine if they offer what you need; some companies just monitor your credit report while others can actually work with you to help rebuild your credit.

Switch to an Unsecured Card

Once you have gotten the hang of using your credit card responsibly, and making timely payments, you can then graduate to an unsecured card. Some companies might even allow you to convert your existing secured card to an unsecured card, and might even refund all or part of your deposit.

Switching to an unsecured card shows the credit reporting companies that the lender trust you, which can raise your credit score.

Don’t let yourself fall back into old habits, however. Once you switch, you need to maintain the momentum and keep making wise spending decisions and paying off the balance.

Are You Friends With Your Checkbook?

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signingcheck
Who couldn’t be friends with this guy?

Most of us strive to try to keep a budget each month. Everyone has fixed costs that have to be covered, such as the rent or mortgage, insurance, and food. Some people call these a “monthly nut”, but I’m not a squirrel. I like to call these “necessary expenses” and have tracked them over time. For many people keeping to a budget was easier years ago. Nowadays, are a ton of electronic payment methods available. Their convenience makes spending money we do not have that much more tempting. Impulse buying becomes easier – all you have to do is swipe either your debit card or your credit card.

This can result in a well-planned budget getting out of the water. Maybe I’m showing my age, but I remember when people would write checks at the grocery store. It slowed everything down. As one of those “quick swipe” credit card people I found this really annoying.

Looking back on it today, I have to respect it a bit. Those people actually spent time balancing a checkbook, so they knew exactly how much money they had. It was a great system for accountability reasons. With today’s credit cards a lot of that accountability is gone.

I have to admit that I’m not very good friends with my checkbook nowadays. I thought about it for a bit and here are some of the reasons why:

  1. I’m Lazy – I type thousands of words a day. It may sound crazy, but I barely know how to use a pen anymore. Adding an item to a grocery list is comical.
  2. I Don’t Need the Accountability – I spend more than enough time thinking about money by writing for this site. In return this website gives me accountability.
  3. Checks can be Expensive – Last year I switched bank accounts. It’s a long story, but since my tenants wouldn’t get out when the lease was over, I had to stop accepting payment from them in order to evict them. However, they had the ability to automatic deposit money in my bank account, which allowed them to stay indefinitely… unless I switched bank account numbers.

    So I switched, but that required getting all new checks. It was well over $25 for 120 checks of the very most basic design. That’s almost half the cost of a stamp, simply to use my own money. I decided to go home and order cheap checks online. It was much, much cheaper. Not only that, but the bulk pricing was much better my bank’s.

Sorry Mr. Checkbook, but for now we’ll just have to be occasional acquaintances.