Official Austin Chat Thread (Cool: panels, time, hours)

[ashbeeigh]

Could your service have something like this? https://www.biltrewards.com/card my complex keeps pushing this on us. I don’t need anymore credit cards at the moment, though.

[Need4Camaro]

Interesting card .. .. looks like you have to join a waitlist to apply for it. But no my credit cards don't do anything like that. At best, I could pay a 3rd Party which will incur a transaction fee between my card and the third party and then from the third party, they will pay the debtor by e-check.

The Bilt Mastercard seems to have it all enrolled in one system.. ..which is cool but I also am pretty full with credit cards. I would earn more points than the 1x bonus on most of my cards too.

[ashbeeigh]

Originally Posted by Need4Camaro

Interesting card .. .. looks like you have to join a waitlist to apply for it. But no my credit cards don't do anything like that. At best, I could pay a 3rd Party which will incur a transaction fee between my card and the third party and then from the third party, they will pay the debtor by e-check.

The Bilt Mastercard seems to have it all enrolled in one system.. ..which is cool but I also am pretty full with credit cards. I would earn more points than the 1x bonus on most of my cards too.

Properties pick it up and offer it to their renters. I would never have hunted something like that down. I’m too busy doing genealogy and dreaming of far away airbnbs and a stable non-stress inducing employment (inherent in social work, so it’s a pipe dream).

[Need4Camaro]

I just have time off to think so I'm reorganizing and optimizing financial stuff for the moment. For once I don't have to travel for the Holidays so I'm taking some 'me' time to get ready for next year.

[ashbeeigh]

Good for you N4C.

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by Need4Camaro

Does anyone think making monthly payments on a car loan or mortgage with a credit card is worth it to accrue credit card points assuming that you pay back the credit card immediately and do not allow the balance to accrue interest on the credit card?

The main issue is that most financing companies do not accept credit cards for loan payments directly, although that can be worked around with 3rd party services which will provide a way for you to use your credit card to make a payment to your loan company for a % of the payment fee, somewhere between 2.5% and 3% I believe... but I'm believing that these processing fee's may offset any gains provided by point accrual on your credit card. Not sure if it in any way positive impacts your credit score or not because I don't know if the balance is in any way reported if its paid back before the due date or even if it is not, if it still positively impacts your credit score.

I've set all my utilities, insurance, TXTag and bills to auto-draft from a CC so I can atleast accrue points, and just pay the CC back before the due date since this was money I had allocated for said bills to begin with. The only bills I have not (cannot) done this with are my car loans and mortgage without going through a third party or performing a cash advance.

Thoughts?

if you pay fees it isnt worth it, unless your cash back is higher than the fees. Way back in the day discover let you make charges up to your balance and gave you 1%. Smart people bought poker chips at casinos and then cashed them out to automatically make 1%. I forget why you couldnt do it over and over.

[atxcio]

Originally Posted by Austin97

if you pay fees it isnt worth it, unless your cash back is higher than the fees. Way back in the day discover let you make charges up to your balance and gave you 1%. Smart people bought poker chips at casinos and then cashed them out to automatically make 1%. I forget why you couldnt do it over and over.

I don’t ever remember casinos accepting credit cards without a major fee. I used one once a long time ago, when I ran out of cash and you had to sign all this stuff and the fee was like 9%.

[Need4Camaro]

That 9% fee is a gamble in itself

As a side note… I decided to do some Uber’s/Lyft’s this Holiday Season. I was expecting demand to be very weak but I was quite surprised that it didn’t die as much as I thought it would. The 4am Airport runs of course are still going very strong. Things are dieing a bit earlier (7am ish) during the weekdays and not much in the way of commute requests throughout the day … Weekends were still moderately lucrative though.

I will say another thing that helps a lot is … no commuter traffic making this gig alot easier.

[Trainwreck20]

Was getting new tires for my wife's car today. The wait was going to be ~1.5 - 2 hours, so I checked Uber for the cost of a ride home - ~$18 for 8 miles/12 minutes. Decided to make my wife come and pick me up instead .

Traffic is a bit of a bear out there - holiday shopping, I guess.

[Need4Camaro]

I guess it depends on where it is. There were areas in mid-day that were pretty congested during the day. Especially near malls and shopping plazas. During commute hours on the highway though it generally seemed much lighter as of late though.