blogging and housing thoughts

Hi Jenners,

Another post from me!  I am back to work this week. On my bike to work the first day, I kept having the feeling that I forgot the kids! I do like the intellectual stimulation I get from work, as well as the break from the kids. I loved being home with them for three weeks, but I think if I was home with them full time I would need to incorporate a little more time by myself. How do you manage that aspect as a stay at home mom?

One thing I really would like to try is creating a travel blog. There are good blog posts here  about how this woman increased her audience to 100,000 page views per month and here about how to use find and use keywords. Having a blog would definitely be work, but I like that I could do it from anywhere, and I wouldn’t have to work on it full time. I do not need to make a full-time income from my blog, my goal would be to make about $1000 per month, which I think is totally do-able.

Murr and I have been obsessing slightly about the own and build vs. sell and rent question. Lately we like the idea of selling our current house and renting. We like the idea of not having to spend weekends doing house maintenance. Murray especially gets stressed out by all the little things to do with the house. So this week we are thinking that selling and renting may work best. I also like the idea that we could take off for a year and not have any expenses at home, which is still something I dream about doing. Although I also like the idea of the kids coming back to our same house, and we really love our neighbours, so I go back and forth about this question...

Anyway, that was a bit random!

love,

anne

Canadian credit card thoughts

Hi Jen,

I will continue your credit card posts, from a Canadian perspective. J

American Express in Canada recently stopped the ability to churn cards, by creating a rule that only new card holders can get the card bonus. Since I have had most of the cards at least once, I need to start looking a little further afield for cards.

I also recently read an interesting article on One Mile at a Time, assessing the different methods of getting points (here), and found it interesting that using your airline credit cards for everyday spend is like paying 2 cents per mile, because you could be using a cash back card instead. That made me realize I should look into the cash back cards available in Canada. The MBNA Smart Cash has 5% back on groceries in the first 6 months, which is great. After that, the Scotia Momentum Infinite Visa gives 4% back on groceries, although it has a $99 annual fee so I read that only people who spend $400/month or more on groceries/gas should get this card. We do spend more than that, although about half of our spending is at costco, which I don’t think is considered groceries. And the annual fee is waived the first year.

There was also an interesting blog post by Don’t Call the Airline about how Canadians can get American credit cards. It has me thinking I could use my parents’ Maine address and try to apply for some. Perhaps you could use that technique to get Amex cards. The article is here.

Anne

One-ways for Europe!

Dear Annabelle,

I have been trying to figure out lately whether we have ANY chance of making a Europe trip in Summer 2016 work with points.  I was hopeful that I could get the Chase Sapphire Preferred and the United card because my FICO score is high enough but in applying for the CSP I was denied.  My AMEX history isn't on my credit report yet it turns out so they weren't able to approve a "premier" card for me :(

Andrew applied for the AMEX Gold Premier Rewards card and was approved the next day; we were able to find the 50K bonus with only a $1,000 spend.  He also applied for the Chase United Explorer with a 50k United bonus and we haven't heard anything yet.

If we get all the bonuses our points will look something like this:

Delta	52000	From Delta AMEX
AMEX	102000	From both having AMEX Gold Premier Rewards
Chase	57223	From CSP and Chase Freedom
United previous	16000	Andrew already has
United if get card	52000	Not sure will get?!?
Potential United if get card	125223

Without me getting the United/Chase cards, reaching a United balance of 240K is not happening in time to book a summer trip.  So I had started looking more into the frequent flyer programs that are transfer partners of both Chase and AMEX:  BA Avios, Singapore KrisFlyer, and Virgin Atlantic. Virgin Atlantic doesn't fly to Denver so that doesn't look very helpful.  KrisFlyer partner rewards need to be booked over the phone or fax so it is difficult to get an idea of availability and cost.  The conundrum on cost is that internet research gives a very mixed result regarding whether KrisFlyer passes on YQ on United flights on not, with both sides of the debate being very clear they are right!  Their North America to Europe RT is only 55K points though so that is nice.  BA Avios are more complicated because you have to be able to fly on one partner, or one partner and BA but then you have huge YQ, in order to not be charged the multi-partner rate that is huge.  It looks like Aer Lingus does have a codeshare out of Denver to Chicago (United plane) and then another flight Chicago to Dublin.  This is the ideal routing too because it only comes in at 27.5K each way for the two flight segments.  And no YQ because you are flying Aer Lingus.  So that is definitely a possibility but might be tough to find availability.

The only problem with this whole logic, I am realizing now as I write this, is that our United points wouldn't help.  So we would only have around 160,000 at the moment in AMEX and Chase points.  And I just read that "As of Oct 1 2015, transfer ratio will drop to 250 MR points for 200 BA Avios" so that is not helping matters either.  It would be hard for us to get to 220K in time in time for this trip.

The main reason I was trying to figure out whether it would be possible to use these points for Europe is because if it is not I might use them for the Christmas flights which I am trying to book now; at least for the return which has more reward seat availability.

Enter my current A-h-a! moment: we could use the points to book one way trips to Europe in both directions.  No need to have a program that lets you merge the points just book them separately on different carriers with different frequent flyer programs.  I have no idea why I didn't think about this until just now.

So what could that look like: with 102K AMEX points we could theoretically transfer to Delta but their reward fares are very high so this isn't really feasible in all likelihood.  We could transfer to BA but then the 102K would only be worth 81.6K; that is a sizable hit and I don't think we will have our plans set before October since my parents are waiting until they know where my Dad's work is landing.  It seems other options to consider would be Aeroplan, ANA, Cathay Pacific AsiaMiles (has Aer Lingus as a partner) and KrisFlyer.  I wonder if they have rules about tickets having to be RT?  At least some of them allow one-way flights but it looks like none of them allow stop-overs on a one-way so we would have to book intra-Europe travel separately.

If we got the new United card then the 125K we would have after the minimum spends would be enough right there at 30K*4 to cover one direction.  Otherwise we need to find another 47K to cover it.  Now we are spending still on the CSP because it has such great travel benefits.  So our flights to Florida and our flights home for Christmas time will go on it.  With a 2X bonus on travel this will definitely help.

I think the take home for me at the moment is that we might be able to do it on points so it is worth saving them for now rather than spending them on an Ottawa flight (apart from the Delta points).  As Andrew says we will have no shortage of Ottawa flights going forward.  Another cool realization is how much it helps me to write it all out here, as opposed to a spreadsheet where I had been jotting some notes.

Hugs,
Jen

Travel Benefits

Dear Annabelle,

I have been looking at our upcoming trips: Orlando in December and then Ottawa after Christmas.  I have also been trying to get my head around where we are at with our minimum spends and whether to get any more cards in the near future.  It seemed to me that the flight prices might line up well with making a minimum spend.

In order to inform the decision I started looking at the actual benefits the various cards have if you book air fare on them.  I was pleasantly surprised by what is available through the Chase Sapphire Preferred card:

• Trip Cancellation/Trip Interruption Insurance, up to 10K per trip for pre-paid, non-refundable travel expenses
• Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver
• Travel Accident Insurance for accidental death or dismemberment
• Travel and Emergency Assistance Services
• Lost Luggage Reimbursement for checked or carry-on bags up to 3K per passenger
• Trip Delay Reimbursement up to 500 per ticket
• Baggage Delay Insurance up to 100 a day for 5 days

According to this recent post the benefits are fairly easy to use, except the lost luggage benefit which "requires you to produce almost all of your original receipts for what was in the luggage and the luggage itself, making it much harder to get full value."

What was interesting was that the AMEX Premier Rewards Gold Card (that I was trying to make the minimum spend on) had so few of these benefits in comparison.  They only have car rental loss and damage, global assist hotline, and baggage insurance plan.  

I just applied for my own Chase Sapphire Preferred online.  I didn't get approved right away but if I do then I will be able to have these benefits and be working towards a minimum spend concurrently which would be lovely.  Here's hoping!

Hugs, 

Jen

Impact of Being an Authorized User

Dear Annabelle,

Andrew has been adding me to his existing cards and also on the new cards he has been getting.  In the US being an authorized user affects your own credit score.  Today I was able to get my FICO score through my AMEX card website (a new feature) and it is at 752!  Not only do I have a credit score in my new country I have a "very good" one.  Woohoo!

I had been wondering if it was good enough considering I have now gotten approved for two cards.  So given this I am thinking about applying for the Chase Sapphire Preferred myself.  I started to worry that being an authorized user on his CSP might exclude me from the bonus but a quick search seems to indicate that it doesn't have an effect.  This is especially great to know for the CSP and the United Chase card which both give an additional bonus for the additional user being added.

Found my information here, here, here, and here.

Hugs,
Jen