The Big Spend

Hello Annabelle,

Mid-September we decided, spur of the moment really, to go for a big set of credit card applications.  Or an App-o-rama as I sometimes hear them called.  I have heard arguments for both doing lots of applications at once (so you have a 3 month wait before new applications) and for waiting and doing them little by little (so you can take advantage for a short-term lucrative offer).

SO we applied to:

AMEX Everyday for Andrew AND Jen

• 25K MR points for 2K min spend with no annual fee
• Both approved
• We wanted to get this while the bonus was high and because we will use this to keep our MR points when we cancel the other higher fee cards (that were waived in the first year)

Citibank Hilton HHonors Visa Signature Card for Andrew AND Jen

• 75K HHonors points for 2K min spend with no annual fee
• Andrew got approved right away.
• I needed to fill in an extra form so that they could request my tax transcript.  I just heard yesterday that I have been approved.  

Barclaycard Arrival Plus™ World Elite MasterCard® for Andrew

• 40000 bonus miles (equivalent to $400 travel credit) for 3K min spend
• Annual fee waived first year
• Andrew got approved right away.
• This card has a pretty high amount that you have to spend to use the travel credit, I think it needs to be at least $100.  We charged our flights home at Christmas to it.  They are $340 a person so I wonder if this will be an issue to get the full value of the bonus?

Discover Miles for Andrew

• No fee card.
• 3X for first year.  So no sign up bonus but if you signed up now you got 3X for the first year instead of the normal 1.5X.
• Andrew approved right away.

TD Aeroplan for Andrew

• 25K for 1K spend.  Pretty sure that it has a fee but waived first year.
• Andrew had to phone and it was sent to a "senior lender" but then approval came in the mail.

US Bank REI Card for Andrew (didn't get)

• This card gave a $100 gift card for doing not much; one purchase maybe.
• We got a letter that Andrew needed to call but he was so busy with work that he never did.

AMEX SPG for Andrew and Jen (got for Andrew)

• 30K SPG points with 3K min spend.  Fee waived first year.
• This was the one where we learned you shouldn't apply for 2 AMEX cards on the same day.  They put the second application on hold for 5 days and then evaluate it, which given you have just done an app-o-rama is not the best plan.  Even with this Andrew got approved after the mandatory wait.
• I did not get approved because I had already got two lending cards in the past 90 days.  We think this means credit cards as opposed to charge cards.  At any rate I had just applied with the AMEX Everyday for my third AMEX in a fairly short time frame and this was my fourth.  

This has lead to the past month and a bit being quite focused on making these minimum spends, getting the payments set up, etc.  I have set up a system for payments where we have a spreadsheet that tracks when they have been paid and when they have been checked.  One of us pays and the other checks each payment.  We have been able to coordinate the dates so we each have two "credit card pay" days a month.  

All of these approvals meant we had $13,000 in minimum spend to make!   (Plus some left over minimum spend that we hadn't yet finished on a previous card at the time of these applications.) As I am writing we have $1000 left to spend!  Andrew got really into manufactured spending and did a bunch of research.  Great for me since that was not my interest (apart from the Kiva idea).  Some of big spends are listed below:

Gift cards to:
- Grocery store	200
- Gas	75
- General (AMEX, MC)	1000
Gift cards to Serve	4000
Kiva	335
Donations	2362
Carbon offsets	400
Christmas Travel	1716.38
Memberships	157
Neufeld course	526.16
Time share annual fee	400

The ideal was to have all the big gift cards transfer to Serve but it didn't work out for the AMEX and the MC ones he got.  The rest have transferred well and then we can send a cheque from the Serve account to me so it can go back in our bank account.  So for the gift cards we paid around $6-$7 per $500 card.  Worth it to make the minimum spend, especially since we tried to do it at stores where the card would get 2X most of the time.  

Most of the other expenses were things that we had been waiting to spend money on.  Andrew's shares from his first year of work vested in August so we had been waiting for the extra cash flow to do donations, carbon offset, Christmas travel tickets, etc.  Just worked out well that we were able to use these annual lump sum expenses to meet these minimum spends.  

Kind of exciting to think that with just this round alone we will earn this many points:

AMEX MR	50000
HHonors	75000
Barclay Miles	40000 ($400)
SPG	30000
Aeroplan	25000

Hugs,

Jen

Hilton HHonors

Dear Annabelle,

So as part of our recent app-o-rama, which I will write more about later, we both applied for the Citi Hilton HHonors Visa Signature Card which currently has a 75K sign up bonus and no annual fees.  Andrew has been approved and I will have some paperwork to do (coming in the mail) and then we will see.

The question I am pondering is whether it is worth taking advantage of the offer to "Fast track to Gold after four stays within your first 90 days of account opening."  Normally we don't stay in hotels much so I am not sure Gold status really matters but I am wondering if we might more in the next year if we do go on a Europe trip or do more local travel.  I am also really itching to do some shorter local trips this fall so the idea of making some one night stays in our general area of the country is actually kind of appealing.  Travel is Free has made a great map of all the Hilton Properties by level.  There are actually quite a few near us.

The thing is that both the Citi Hilton HHonors Reserve card ($95 annual fee; 2 free weekend nights) and the Hilton HHonors Surpass from AMEX ($75 annual fee; 60K bonus points) give you Gold Status for as long as you have the card.  So that appears to be a much cheaper way to acquire Gold status if we want it, than 4 one-night stays.  That said, if we want four stays in hotels anyways then two birds with one stone is OK.  One Mile At A Time summarizes which credit cards give you elite status for all the different hotel programs here.  Of note is that if you earn status in 2015, for example, you have it for the rest of 2015, all of 2016, and possibly into the beginning of 2017 (I am guessing this isn't the same for the card related status level).

Here is a review of what HHonors status is worth.  Ironically a lot of the benefits of Gold status (free breakfast, wifi, etc.) only apply when you stay in the more upscale places since they are available to everyone in the lower level sites.  How does that make any sense?  That said a bunch of the places in Europe are the more upscale side of the brand so maybe Gold would make a difference there.  Here is the Hilton summary of member benefits.  It is interesting that late check-out (which we would definitely benefit from!) is actually a benefit of the free level, you just need to ask for it.  Good thing to consider when staying at any brand of hotel.  To sign up for their program and see what rewards are included.

The main benefit I see, which is part of both the silver and the gold, is that you get the 5th night free.  Which is pretty sweet (although I think a benefit in other hotel chains as well).  So yes, looking at the list I am not sure we need the Gold status.

The only part of the HHonors program I don't really understand at the moment is that it has base points and bonus points and it appears that the bonus points can be transferred to airlines.  Or just that airline points can also be earned, in addition to hotel points.  But I don't have my head around how you earn them and how many.  The HHonors Ts&Cs are here and probably worth reading at some point.

I also realized that it is too bad that HHonors charges a fee for transferring points.  This post summarizes transfers in the different hotel programs and says that for HHonors "Transfer to anyone. Must transfer in increments of 10,000 points. Cost of $25 per 10,000 points. You can transfer a maximum of 200,000 points per year."  It is just that in order to qualify for the 5th free night you need to pay completely as an award and without our points being pooled we might not have enough to ever do that.

Hugs,
Jen