Tag Archives: Discover It Credit Card

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March App-O-Rama: Which 7 Credit Cards am I Considering?

Good morning everyone, happy Saturday! Thanks for the comments on yesterday’s post regarding which non-5/24 Chase credit cards I should get. I think I have narrowed down my App-O-Rama (AOR) credit card list to these 7 credit cards. I plan on applying for these credit cards sometime next week. Please let me know if you agree or disagree with any of the credit cards on this list. If there are any credit cards that you think are worth applying for, please share them in the comments and I will check them out.

Based on yesterday’s post, I will apply for these 2 Chase credit cards:

  • Chase Marriott Business Credit Card: This is the only non-5/24 Chase business credit card and who couldn’t use more Marriott points? The current sign up bonus is 75,000 Marriott points after spending $3,000 in 3 months. The $99 annual fee is waived the first year. I already have the Chase Marriott Rewards Credit Card, so the annual category 1-5 Marriott free night certificates will pair nicely with each other. I don’t plan on spending much on this credit card after meeting the minimum spend requirement. As long as I can redeem the Marriott free night certificate for more than an $99 hotel night, this is a decent credit card to hold on to for a long time. *snarky comment alert* If Marriott keeps devaluing their program, by the year 2029, there will not be any Marriott category 1-5 hotels left…
  • Chase Iberia Credit Card: Since you can get 1 personal and 1 business credit card from Chase on the same day, I have decided to go for this personal credit card. The current sign up bonus is 50,000 Avios after spending $3,000 in 3 months and an additional 25,000 Avios after spending $10,000 in 12 months. The annual fee is $95. I don’t plan on booking any Iberia flights in the near future, so I won’t be able to take advantage of the 10% discount on Iberia flights. I don’t plan on spending much on this credit card after meeting the minimum spend requirement and will close the credit card when the annual fee comes due the following year.

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My Unlikely, But Entertaining 2018 Travel Predictions

Greetings from Uyuni airport in Bolivia.  I have a few minutes before my flight, so I wanted to get this post published.  Sorry for the delay in posting this list, my crystal ball was in the shop for a tuneup. As you can tell from my 2017 travel predictions, I am wrong 99% of the time, so take these predictions with a grain of salt (that I took from the Salar de Uyuni salt flats in Bolivia).  Here are some of my highly unlikely, but entertaining travel predictions for 2018.  Enjoy!

Airlines

  • After the Virgin America merger, Alaska Airlines will add new routes to Mexico, Canada, and the Caribbean
  • Delta Airlines will introduce cash and miles award tickets, then American Airlines and United Airlines will follow suit
  • Southwest Airlines will increase their Transfarency by automatically keeping track of travel funds in each account
  • JetBlue will add new routes along the West Coast and maybe to Hawaii
  • Singapore Airlines will allow you to book United Airlines awards online
  • British Airways will bring back the 4,500 Avios award price in the United States

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Which of these 2 Amazing Cash Back Credit Cards is Right for You? Here’s what I’m Getting!

What one credit card do you know the LEAST about? If there’s one credit card I don’t know much about, it’s the Discover It Credit Card. And yet, quite often friends and family members ask me about it. Just last week, my cousin received an email with an advertisement encouraging her to apply for a Discover It Credit Card. She’s smart, so she did what smart cousins do… she asked me what I thought :) My cover as a know-it-all regarding credit cards was blown. I told her to stay tuned and I’d check into the Discover It Credit Card and let her know my thoughts.

Then I did what smart bloggers do – and reached out to the source I knew who had written a ton about the Discover It Credit Card. In fact, from way back in 2015, I had it on my to-do list to reach out to him and ask him about the Discover It Credit Card. It was time to bring that to-do item to the top of the list – so I sat down with Harlan at Out and Out and talked all things Discover. And now I can give my cousin, and all of you, the best information and advice possible.

First off, Discover has two cash back credit cards to choose from and most importantly, it’s a lucrative card – especially in the first year.

Discover It Credit Card (Harlan’s referral link)

The Discover It Credit Card gives you 1% cash back, no annual fee, and no foreign transaction fees. It also has quarterly bonus rotating categories where you’ll get 5% cash back on up to $1,500 spend in those categories. And because Discover matches what you’ve spent in the first year, it effectively becomes a 2% and 10% cash back credit card for that first year. Harlan said the bonus categories are great and he never has trouble spending $1,500 in the bonus category every quarter. Here’s one important tip on this card. You MUST register your credit card each quarter before you start shopping to earn the 5% bonus. Activation is easy, so do it BEFORE you start your quarterly shopping.

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Visa Supplier Locator Can Find Hidden “5x Cash Back Restaurants”

Good morning everyone, happy Thursday and happy Q3!  Since the Chase Freedom Credit Card and Discover It Credit Card both offer 5% cash back (or 5x Chase Ultimate Reward Points) for restaurants this quarter (July 1 – September 30), I thought it would be fun to see if there were any merchants that coded as restaurants, but might have an MS angle too.  I first wrote about the Visa Supplier Locator website in December 2013 (How are Merchants Classified? Use the Visa Supplier Locator to Find Out!).  Luckily, not much has changed on the website during the last 3.5 years, so that post is still relevant.

Let me step back a minute and explain what the Visa Supplier Locator is and does.  Every merchant has 1 or more MCC (merchant categorization codes) that tells the credit card company what type of merchant they are (grocery store, restaurant, charity, hotel, etc.).  Without the MCC, it would be impossible to categorize transactions and award bonus points based on certain categories.  The Visa Supplier Locator allows you to search for merchants that use a certain MCC or determine what MCC a merchant uses.

In my 5% cash back restaurant example, I wanted to see which merchants have restaurant MCCs.  Some of the merchants might surprise you.  On the Visa Supplier Locator website, I selected  “RESTAURANTS / BARS – 5812” and “RESTAURANTS / BARS – 5814” from the MCC dropdown menu.  Then I entered my zip code, proved I wasn’t a robot, and clicked the Search button.  I ran multiple searches with different zip codes because each results page only showed 50 merchants.

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USPS Lost my VirtualPostMail Package Full of Gift Cards & Credit Cards

Buenos dias everyone.  A few months ago, I wrote about VirtualPostMail, the service I use to receive, scan, and forward my physical mail. I typically have them collect items for me over the course of a few weeks, and then I select the items I want to keep and have them shipped to wherever I’m going next. Since I was heading to Washington, DC for work last week, I asked VPM to mail a package to my post office box in Washington, DC a few days before I was going to arrive. This package included several important items:

  • My replacement AT&T Access More Credit Card (since someone tried to hack my account)
  • My new Discover It Credit Card in a different design
  • My Amazon Prime Store Credit Card
  • 1 $50 Hotels.com gift card from Amazon
  • 2 $50 Petco gift cards
  • 6 iTunes gift cards from Staples (3 x $100 and 3 x $50)
  • 2 sets of Cabela’s gift cards I purchased from SVM on eBay
  • My Hyatt Explorist welcome packet
  • My new Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance card
A screenshot of 12 envelopes of various sizes from my virtualpostmail dashboard

Will I ever see these envelopes?

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