Tag Archives: Capital One

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How to Redeem Capital One Venture Rewards “Miles” for Travel Purchases

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Good morning everyone, I hope you all had a great weekend (with the exception of the recent AMEX Membership Rewards Changes).  My girlfriend and I are going to Greece and Malta this Summer, so we are busy booking flights, making hotel reservations, and researching things to see / eat / do in those countries.  During the airfare booking process, we have been using my girlfriend’s Capital One Venture Rewards “miles.”

Before we started redeeming the “miles” for this trip, she had 122,435 “miles”, which is equivalent to $1,224.35 in travel.  In this post, I will show you how to redeem Capital One Venture Rewards “miles” for travel purchases.  In tomorrow’s post, I will show you how to book airfare directly through the Capital One travel portal and how to pay with Capital One Venture Rewards “miles.”  Without further ado, log into your Capital One account and click on your “miles” balance.

a screenshot of a credit card

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*Some* Chase Credit Cards Charging Cash Advance Fees for Online Serve Reloads

Update: 7AM PST – Chase Sapphire Preferred and Chase Freedom reloads are showing up as cash advances online.
AMEX Serve Logo

*Some* Chase Credit Cards Charging Cash Advance Fees for Online Serve Reloads

There have been reports on FlyerTalk (link) and some Tweets that Serve is now charging cash advance fees for *some* online Serve reloads.  Most of the cash advance reports state that Chase is charging cash advance fees for online reloads.

RRGG on the FlyerTalk thread (link) has some good info:

It seems like you should include a little more information if you’re going to start a new thread. You didn’t mention the type of card for example. NOT EVERYONE is getting a cash advance from Chase, as mentioned in the Serve thread.

There are reports of no cash advance today on:
UA Explorer Visa
UA Explorer MC
Sapphire Preferred
Southwest Visa
Also Barclay, Citi cards (Prestige), Fidelity AMEX

There are reports of a cash advance today on:
UA Club
UA Explorer
Ink Bold Visa
Sapphire Preferred
Also a Capital One card

As you can see it’s not even consistent.

Finally, in the past sometimes Chase has posted these as cash advance at first. After a few days they get changed to a regular charge. If anyone actually got a cash advance fee, you might want to share that.

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Helping a Friend get out of Credit Card Debt (Part 2)

Off Topic: I updated the Bluebird Bill Pay post and the Bluebird Add Funds post to reflect Bluebird’s new website layout.

CCs

Helping a Friend get out of Credit Card Debt (Part 2)

Warning: I am not a financial planner/adviser/consultant, so please proceed at your own risk.

Please read part 1 before reading this post.  The first thing you need to do is assess the current situation without judging or asking “what did you buy at XYZ for $430??”  There are a few key pieces of financial information that you will need to find out.  Such as:

  • Current balance plus all pending charges
  • Current interest rate
  • Total credit limit

After determining those figures for all of your friend’s credit cards, you can see the big picture.

Card Name Date Opened Balance Credit Line Interest Rate
Store-branded credit card Jan 2011 $2,800.00 $3,000.00 20%
Capital One credit card May 2012 $650.00 $1,500.00 18%
Chase Freedom credit card Nov 2013 $2,800.00 $3,000.00 0%
Bank Americard credit card Nov 2013 $2,200.00 $5,000.00 0%

The last 2 cards have 0% interest through December 2014, so he/she has more than 10 months of no interest on those balances.   Continue reading →