I wrote my experience signing up for the U.S. Bank Smartly 4% card and all the details involved. I’ve been happy with U.S. Bank thus far, and have started using their checking and savings account a bit. I have done some large charges, but have not yet done large tax payments and the like; I’m hoping they’ll be good with those charges too.
Interestingly, since getting the card I’ve been less likely to sign up for other credit cards since they almost always have a spend requirement. Take, for example, a card with a $500 signup bonus after spending $5,000. Assuming that card earns 1% back (or the points equivalent value of 1%), I’m losing 3% on the $5,000 in spend. That’s $150 knocked off the bonus which brings the real net bonus for me at $350. This is even more pronounced on cards with large spend requirements of $10,000 or $20,000.
In the end, I’ll continue to cherry pick the better credit card offers, and I’m prioritizing those with lower spend requirements. I signed up recently for the (expired) 70,000 American Airlines offer from Barclays which has no requirement spend amount.
Am I blind, or U.S.Bank just made points more worthless? 100$ – 13300. On sale gift card 100$ – 12000
I remember when that dork from the Facebook “Travel Hacking” (later Award Travel) group started getting a taste for shilling and tried to convince people BofA was a better award system than Chase (this was years ago, by the way).
I support the logic Chuck. Lot of people giving you a hard time in the comments that don’t seem to put any value on their time.
This “hobby” can easily become over consuming, makes sense to draw lines
So give up 11% to get 4%. Oookay
And also manage another account and have another card on the credit report. At some point it not worth it so some people
i hope this post is a joke
this logic is so backwards
The writing above appears more like a solicitation or advertisment for US Bank products than a simple review since there is no good logic for people to bind themselves to such demanding accounts like the checking account which requires maintaning high daily balance and lose on interest instead of keeping that fund in a differnt or better high-paying investment or saving accounts in order to earn little more cash back on spendings with their linked credit card !!
Get a 2% cash back card that has flexible redemption option and you intend to use without hassle and forget about all the craps banks these days want to attch you to so you need to get or open more of their unneccassary and absurd products just to use the one you like to use,
Be brave to say no and resist their unfair and pushy business practices !
So true. I still can’t stop laughing at this backwards logic: “I’m losing 3% on the $5,000 in spend. That’s $150 knocked off the bonus which brings the real net bonus for me at $350.”
Yeah compared to your $0 net SUB on the card that you already have. I’ll take $350 any day, thanks.
Yeah but you agree fundamentally that you should consider *marginal earnings* in your calculations. And while perhaps you’d take $350 in exchange for (probably) the hard inquiry, no annual fee and the hassle of applying for, receiving, activating and using another card, there’s almost certainly a positive dollar value where you wouldn’t.
$350 for a hard hit is pennies.
Last year Ink Cash had 90k or 120k SUBs, plus 40k for a referral. With P2 you could bank 160k UR points, worth a min of $1600 cash or even more depending on how you spend the points.
Those deals aren’t available anymore. Are you going to forgo all lesser offers? If not then this post is irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
My point is, don’t waste hard hits and 5/24 spots on SUBs that only payout something like $350, so when an offer like last year’s Ink offers come out, you have a slot and can take the hit.
Or do bank account bonuses and avoid [most] hard hits altogether.
Exactly
…and pay taxes…and have to commit cash and/or DD work…
Oh no! The horror of paying taxes on income! And the minimal effort of setting up an ACH and parking money.
I’ve made $20k+ in 5+ years doing just bank bonuses, but clearly a little work and effort is not for you.
Way to overreact. You said “or” as if the two are mutually exclusive, and only pointed out potential negatives of CC bonuses.
Also, while $20k is a respectable number, gotcha beat by a long shot lol.
So paying taxes, parking money, and setting up ACH is bad, yet you’re doing it at scale more than me? That’s quite the contradiction.
Not a competition, but I’ve made 15k doing the same, and I took it pretty slow. Parking cash in high interest checking/savings (5-7%) is the easiest cash I make with money-on-hand.
Hold on, let me start my time machine for these Ink trains.
Just fill up your 5/24 slots and I’ll be on the next Ink train waiving bye bye to you stuck at the platform waiting in the queue
I thought the monthly fee for the checking was automatically waived if you held one of their credit cards?
The real loss is not being able to churn US Bank for their bonus.
My semi-annual property tax was close to $5000, I paid with US bank smartly credit card, they charged me $100 or something for using a credit card. Smartly gave me 20,000 (4%) points for that payment, which I could have gotten $200 back as a statement credit. Off-setting $100 fee, I made $100! I think it’s worth it. I mainly got it for big purchases like that TBH.
thanks for the dp!!
How is it worth it? You could have opened a new card that requires $5000 spend and came out with SUB let’s say $500 instead of your $200 statement credit.
Last I checked $500 > $200. Everything else you say is mental gymnastics.
This US Bank card makes sense if you already have it and for small everyday purchases but for large planned purchases or tax payments, opening a new card for SUB makes infinitely more sense.
Disclaimer: I do not have this US Bank Smartly card but I do hold some VTI shares at Merrill Edge for BofA Preferred rewards game (5.25% category / 2.625% normal cashback).
Listen, I have a few Chase business cards as well but it’s getting harder to get approved. So, this is in the meantime, when I am not working on SUBs. And to be honest, sometimes I hate to overspend to meet the spending required to get SUB, (last one I did was 250,000 amex pts for $15,000 spend in 3 month)!
If I am going to spend everyday stuff, I might as well get 4%
I’m not following the math here. For instance on a current chase ink biz unlimited the bonus is $750 for 6k spend = 12.5% return on spend vs 4% on this? What am I missing? Genuinely trying to understand.
The author is saying your $750 bonus is actually only worth $600 if you had the Smartly available and had used that instead. Is that still worth it to you? What did you buy/hoops did you jump through to meet the 6k spend? Only you can determine the answer to that…
Where is the $600 coming from? I think that’s what I’m missing, since this post says 4% on the smartly. I’ll have to re-read the linked post to see what I’m missing.
Say you have a credit card offer that pays you $750 if you spend $5000 on stuff and you’ll also earn a base 1% cashback in addition to that. You can do that, but if you had used the Smartly card instead you would have earned 4% cashback. So if you didn’t, you’re now down 3% on that $5000 spend vs. using the Smartly, or $150. And at the end of your day, that $750 bonus you were counting on is now only $600.
Math is hard
Least helpful comment
The $600 comes from leaving out the referral bonus for the CIU.
Same hoops the author jumped through to spend $6k on the Smartly.
Author got $240 and saved an inquiry.
Person got $840 plus $200 referral for P2.
Person sold an inquiry for $800 (minus tax on the $200, so maybe ~$750). After 6 months the inquiry won’t matter.
Last year the Ink Cash SUBs were 90k or 120k, plus 40k referrals, it was possible to bank 160k($1600 cash) on a single SUB/hard hit.
I did 4x 90k Inks last year for 4x 130k with the referrals. Two of the MSRs are still floating at 0% lol.
Sadly the train slowed in Q4, about the same time they slashed the referrals. Cutting back to 2x/yr.
US bank hasn’t gave me any credit on their “do this and get $x dollar” pop-up offers when I logged in to look at my account. I enroll the offers and completed the requirements long before the deadline, but never got any credit since 4 statements generated after the offers ended
talked to their cs and was told I’ll get response in mail within 7-10 business days, but nothing ever came after more than 30 business days. disappointed with US prank. pranks after pranks
This post makes zero sense. You suggest taking 4% over 11%+ (10% SUB and 1% earnings at a minimum).
Also suggesting US Bank to hold your assets …
Depends how much your time/mental capital is worth.
IOW, the less you value it, the less this might make sense. lol.
Of course. If you aren’t chasing SUBs then yes, 4% is great (apples v oranges). However, this post reads “less likely to sign up for other credit cards since they almost always have a spend requirement” which is making a direct comparison between Smartly at 4% and a new SUB.
Seems you completely missed my (and the author’s) point.
Preaching mental capital while getting 4% returns…
Sorry you suck at reading market momentum…
not worth my mental capital …
Are you guys just trolling or what? Not everyone wants to chase a $$$ when they understand a deal… Having money, I think it’s a deal at 4% cashback and 3.5% APY. Believe it or not, the typical American can’t sustain the first requirement of $5K for 2.5%. USBank and their bean counters know this, but will accept the loss for more depositors: affluent, middle class, or poor. My boxes are checked: no fees and no taxes on cashback. IRAs and Roth are great transfer vehicles, but if they are tied up in TSP or a Company 401K, you cannot pass up this deal as is. Now, all they need to do is come into the 21st century with their technology and policies.
Is it true to ACH or wire out from US Bank brokerage/checking/savings, the limit is only $2,500?
It may differ per depositor, but 5K seems to be the max per day and 8K per week.
any good card for 50k-100k spending?
I think Chuck’s point is that it makes some bonuses less appealing, especially those with large spend requirement as the opportunity cost is higher than having a 2% card.
For example would you sign up for a card with a $5 bonus? Probably not, what about $50? $100? $200? $350? Everybody has different thresholds based on how much the mental energy is worth.
This comment is far clearer than the original post