After getting the Chase Sapphire Preferred card $500 in airfare bonus, I developed a taste for Ultimate Rewards (UR) points. You can cash out UR points at a flat 10,000 points = $100. You can also use them towards travel at an Expedia-like portal for 10,000 points = $125 toward airfare, hotel, and car rentals. The prices are not marked up and you can combine cash and points however you like, so I use 1.25 cents per point as a baseline value. Example of combining cash and points:
Finally, you can transfer them to United Airlines, Southwest, British Airways, Korean, Hyatt, and Marriott rewards at a 1:1 ratio. If you use United and British Airways for international and/or business-class flights, you can get closer to 2 cents per point in value.
Therefore, in my last round of application I decided to apply for the Ink Bold® Business Charge Card which was a small business card offering 50,000 bonus points – after spending $5,000 in the first 3 months your account is open. I wouldn’t mind only earning 1 UR point per dollar on most of my business spend, although they do offer 5X points per dollar in select business categories. (More details on the Chase Ink Bold Business Charge Card here.)
Spending $5,000 on a card over three months is not something I usually do and I didn’t have any large business expenses coming up, however, I do have to pay quarterly estimated taxes to Uncle Sam. As a result, I found PayUSATax.com (accepts Visa, Mastercard, and Discover) which had the lowest fee for making tax payments with a credit card at 1.89%. You can verify them as an authorized payment provider here at IRS.gov.
The IRS deadline for quarterly payment was coming up, so I decided to make a $5,000 payment for one quarter now and another $5,000 payment on the next billing statement for the next quarter. This meant I could charge $10,000 ($5,000 x 2) which would earn me 10,000 Ultimate Rewards points ($125 value) and I would be charged a $189 fee ($94.50 x 2). However, this would satisfy the spending requirement and would get me another 25,000 UR points ($312.50 value). Still a nice net win even after taking the fee into account.
As you can see from my statement scans below, the first $5,000 tax payment and $94.50 fee went through separately with no cash advance charges or other issues.
I also received my first 25,000 points on my very first statement:
Another useful perk of Ultimate Rewards points is that you can transfer them over to any other person’s account with no fee. This is handy to transfer between family or household members for pooling points and miles. My small business Ink Bold Business Charge Card UR points are in a different account than my personal Sapphire Preferred points, so I just transferred them over and it showed up instantly.
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My husband and I have a Chase Sapphire for our personal use and we love it. We make all of our purchases on it and pay off the balance each month. We usually use the points for cash back or statement credits.
Thanks for the idea. I just applied for this card yesterday!
Wow! You can pay your taxes via credit card? Good deal.
Good to know. My Sister n law has had problems with the Sapphire card being scammed. They have had to have it replaced 3 times for fraud so I have stayed away from Chase.
Sorry for the ignorance here, but you totally sold me on the 2% credit cards a few years back once the 5% gas/grocery cards died up in 2007/8 ish. And I appreciate your communication of both Mastercard and Amex Fidelity cards. They are phenominal.
Does the bonus you describe above surpass a 2% card? On 10k in purchases, you would have accumulated $200 in cash. I don’t completely follow the math in your post with fees and such. But if I’m missing out on some cash back/rewards action with my 2% cards, I’d love to hear about it.
Thanks for the blog and I hope your wife is doing well in her pregnancy. We’re probably expecting our child around the same day. Ours is due on Aug 3rd. It’s coming up really fast!
@Baughman – This post is more about the upfront bonus than as ongoing rewards. Spending $10k on this card (ignoring the tax payment part) would net you 60,000 Ultimate Rewards points (50k bonus + 10k from spending) which are worth at least $750 towards any travel and completely usable down to 1 cent increments. Being able to charge estimated tax payments allowed me to satisfy this requirement in 5 minutes online with a fee of $189. I don’t plan to keep charging taxes on this card unless there is a reason I want United miles really badly.
hi there, once I got the card, I emailed using the contact us to confirm the offer and they actually said that you only have to spend $5000 (not the $10,000). you may want to check that out.
What is the process to ask for reconsideration? and the #? I got a rejection letter saying something about not having long enough history. Probably because I cancelled Sapphire Preferred with them.
Thanks.
The phone numbers for the Chase credit reconsideration lines are 1-888-245-0625 (personal cards) and 1-800-453-9719 (business cards).
I saw on a blog that the Ink is a charge card, not a credit card so is considered to be a debit card by PayUSAtaxes. I may ave overpaid tis time on commission, as the debit card has near zero rates. Worth checking into- i shall.