I got an interesting question from a reader who agreed I could post his question but wished to remain anonymous:
I may very well be making a $100k to 150k purchase soon, which can be made by credit card. I’m not asking you to advise me as to what card to use, but I’m asking you that if you were going to make a purchase that size, and could do it by credit card, what card would give you the most bang for the buck, points wise? I could split the purchase up in to smaller purchases, in order to put it on various cards, if that made any sense, for some reason. Or, maybe it would be much more advantageous to just put it all on one card. What would you do?
My response
I thought about the question for awhile, and here were some of my general thoughts on the matter. Of course a lot of it probably depends on your individual situation regarding which cards you already have, which you might be able to get, what this purchase actually is, etc. Here are a few things that I’d think about. I chose to make it a flat $100,000 purchase just to make the math easier – obviously adjust up as needed 🙂
- At the end of the day, you want to compare it to a straight 2% cashback card. If you put all of it on something like a Citi Double Cash, you’d get $2000 back. So any miles and points you get you’d want to make sure you value those more than $2000
- Or better yet, the Alliant card which gives 3% cashback for the first year, or Discover It miles which gives 1.5% back but doubles your cashback at the end of the first year (both of those would give $3000 back if you could put it all on those cards)
- Your best bang for the buck is going to be meeting signup bonuses. For example, the current offer for the Chase Ink Preferred (affiliate link) gives 80,000 for $5000 in spend. So for those $5000, you get SIXTEEN Ultimate Rewards per dollar spent.
- I think you’re likely to run out of cards to get signup bonuses on before you run out of $100K to spend, so with that said, here are a few cards I’d look at (besides the cashback cards above)
- Amex Business Blue – no signup bonus but 2x Membership Rewards for the first $50K spent
- Chase Freedom Unlimited – 1.5UR per dollar spent – in conjunction with a Chase Sapphire Reserve which woudl let you spend them for (At least) 1.5 cents per point (more if you transfer to partners)
- SPG personal / business cards (only 1x SPG but SPG points are among the more valuable)
- Other hotel / airline cards depending on your travel plans – see the top credit card offers page
The other thing to keep in mind is depending on what this large purchase is, even if you CAN make it on a credit card, it doesn’t mean that you SHOULD. I would definitely look into seeing if they will discount the purchase if you pay in cash (so that they don’t have to pay the CC processing fees)
What advice do you have?
Given that you don’t know anything about the situation of this particular reader, what kind of advice would you give? Do you agree with what I said? Or have anything else to add?
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this is an opportunity to bang out a spending-based status benefit on various cards (e.g. MQM/EQM on the Delta or American premium cards, top status on certain Hilton cards and the Marriott and Ritz cards), but it begs the question as to whether it’s worth it in lieu of better rewards per dollar on the cards you listed in the article. (e.g., sure, it’s nice to have Hilton Diamond and a handful of Hilton points, but how does it compare to a mountain of Chase UR? very subjective). it’s also an opportunity to earn a free-night cert on many hotel cards, or the companion cert via the BA card or the AA Barclay Silver card (neither of which I find to be very lucrative).
if the reader makes large purchases frequently, putting the charge on one card as opposed to multiple (which may be possible via pre-purchase discussion with the card issuer, particularly Amex) may be worth the ease of the process (and would setup automatic approvals for this sort of thing going forward).
i’m not sure if one should be including those sign-up bonuses to skew particular products. The Amex once-ever rule and the Chase 5/24 rule can easily throw the equation off balance.
since many cards have special goodies once you hit $15k or $40k or $xyz spend threshold (e.g. bonus MQM, Hilton Diamond status etc etc) I think the reader’s question is more about how to route the $100k-150k to maximize both the regular earn as well as the goodies that only trigger at the thresholds.
Just spread it around to maximize points on each card I have. I would surely maximize MR, UR, TY points. I would certainly put a bunch on the Arrival Plus and a bunch on the Uber card.
I get all these things in the mail for moving money from one account to another at 0%. I wonder if any of those give you points/value if you moved money. Kinda a double dip.
Where do you get a card with that much credit limit?
yeah seems like it would have to be a charge card like an amex platinum for it to work, not sure who offers straight 100k lines. But I guess you could always do 25,25,25,25 on four cards.
A key too is to see what the merchant gets tagged at, im assuming this 100k purchase is jewelry related would be interesting though if it wasn’t and could be considered a bonus category for a specific card.