**Just paid off dh's Southwest Chase rewards. Just waiting for the rewards to show up so we can redeem $250 in Amazon gift cards. Mine took a few days, so I will just keep checking.
**Earned $50 on Fidelity AmEx this month. We had switched back to it mid-August for ongoing rewards. With vacation and all, it's possible we will earn another $50 in October. These rewards go straight into my ROTH.
**I got my new Citi Card. Plan is to charge 2 months of health insurance. I might just pay ahead this month so I can kill this card sooner. That and about one tank of gas on the minivan should do it. Hope to earn those rewards by the end of the month.
**I plan to send an e-mail to Chase Monday to close all my accounts with them. DONE!
**Dh needs to call Citi and also to close two Chase cards. His rewards are all earned! I will wait until we get these Amazon gift cards in hand, first. I suppose he can call Citi next week and then we can e-mail Chase when we get our reward. Heck, can probably e-mail Citi, but I probably don't remember the login at this point. So many to keep track of!
I had personally wanted to get approved by Citi before I closed all my one-time rewards cards. That is done, so I can move on.
---------------------------------------------------
Officially Received, between 1/1/11 and 10/10/11:
$1230 cash (Chase Sapphire $1030 + Chase Frdm $200)
$1265 gift cards (Citi $500 + SW $515 + SW $250)
$ 400 deposit to ROTH (Fidelity Am Ex)
-$99 annual fee (SW card)
-$69 Fee (SW card)
-$23 lost value for exchanging some Citi gift cards for cash and amazon gift cards
---------------
$2704 TOTAL
**Still expecting $300 gift cards from Citi - should be able to redeem in November. One or two more AmEx $50 redemptions will ensure we hit $3,000 by 12/31/11. I am also expecting 1% cash back on our regular visa (for places that don't take AmEx). That may be another $35 or so, cash.**
***Both dh and I applied for 3 cards each for one-time rewards, so far this year. Our regular AmEx is 2% cash back on all purchases, and our regular visa is 1% cash back.***
Credit Rewards Update
October 8th, 2011 at 08:23 pm
October 8th, 2011 at 10:59 pm 1318114758
October 13th, 2011 at 04:33 am 1318480419
$2000 from the 2 Chase Sapphire cards
$150 from MasterCard
$100 from Amex
minus $75 fee & $15 (paid late fee & interest from missing 1st Amex payment)
= $2160 (plus dribs and drabs of rewards money from all the cards; we buy almost everything on CCs now and the rewards really add up, especially the 6% on Amex for groceries!)
We have a MasterCard that we just need to spend $500 on to get $200 back, and AS will apply for a Capital One card that will get us $100 after we spend $500. So if both those work out, we'll be at $2460 for the year, not counting the incremental rewards coming in. And it's all thanks to you, Monkey Mama! If anyone less level-headed had talked about doing this, I'd have been too suspicious to try it.