Monday, March 18, 2013

My 5x Ultimate Rewards points day!


As you know, I am all about the points.  My favorite credit card rewards are still from the Chase Ultimate Rewards program.  And today was a great day of 5x Ultimate Rewards points earning.

I started off the day getting 2 bill pay emails.  One bill was for my AT&T cell phone bill for $101.17 (reimbursed by my company):

The other bill was for my wife and sister’s Verizon family cell phone plan for $162.34:
Both bills were set to autopay on my Chase Ink business credit card.  
The Chase Ink card gives me 5x points on cell phone bills paid with the card.  If you're wondering whether a business credit card can apply to you, anyone can be a “sole proprietor” and be eligible for a business credit card.
Milevalue has a great write up on how easy it is to be approved for a Chase business credit card (idea applies to other business cards as well). 

I've been needing some new shoes, so after dinner the wife and I walked around the local mall.  I stumbled upon these snazzy Lacoste loafers at Macy’s:
I tried them on and they felt and looked good to me.  Plus, we had some left over credit on a Macy’s gift card that I wanted to use up.  The shoes cost $130 at the store.

The first thing I did was pull up my iPhone and direct my internet browser to www.evreward.com to see if I could buy the same shoe at Macys.com through a credit card shopping portal to get more points for my purchase. 

Turns out Chase Ultimate Rewards mall was offering 5x points per $1 spent at purchases at Macys.com!  I knew I wasn’t about to make this shoe purchase at the mall.  I would wait until I got home, make the same purchase, and get 5x the points.  

On the way home I stopped by the Chevron near my house, filled my vehicle up with $50 worth of gas with a Chevron gas gift card that I paid for with my Ink card.  
The Ink card gives me 5x points on office supply stores (picked up the gas gift card at Office Depot).  
The best part of using a gas gift card to purchase gas is that you pay for the “cash” price of fuel, and not the “credit” price, which in my case would have been 10 extra cents per mile.

Got home, logged onto www.ultimaterewards.com to see some of the featured offers:

Then I clicked on Macy’s to see that I would be earning 5x points per $1 spent:
I made my purchase, which came out to be $100.69 after my gift card.  Conveniently, the same pair of shoes was on sale online (kind of annoying that the same store would charge more:
Then I excitedly sat down to write this post.

Total spend for the day: $413
Total points earned: 2,065 ($413 x 5)

Not a bad way to earn over 2000 points (which can be converted to airline miles) on my routine spending.  Another way I could have optimized the spending was to pick up a $100 Macy's gift card at Office depot for 5x points on that purchase, but I didn't want to do all that driving.

When you optimize your rewards credit card spending, you earn points very quickly and easily.    

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