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Credit card referral bonus

December 1st, 2019 at 09:12 pm

A few weeks back, someone on the forums mentioned looking at new credit cards. I suggested the one we have and they ended up signing up for it with my referral link so we got 20,000 bonus points. It's a Marriott card so that's at least 1 free night and maybe more depending on the hotel.

We scored a ton of Marriott points last month between travel, spending, a promotion they were having, and that bonus. All together in one month we earned just over 64,000 points. A typical hotel stay for us is 15,000 points so we earned more than 4 free nights last month alone. We are using points for one night in NYC in a couple of weeks but we really need to plan some other times to use points as we now have over 500,000 on our account.

2008 Credit Card Usage Totals

January 7th, 2009 at 12:24 am

It's that time again. Time to look back and review the spending for the year. This entry covers our credit card usage for 2008.

Marriott Visa: $31,652.26
AOL Visa: $5,831.72
Discover: $3,265.06
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Total: $40,748.04

That's just about $300 more than 2007 which isn't bad at all considering we had the Bat Mitzvah this year and spent a lot of money on that. The only major expense that wasn't charged was the caterer.

As for rewards, we earned 35,287 Marriott points. That would get us 6 nights at about $90/night, so $540 in rewards.

From AOL and Discover, we earned cashback of $258.21.

We also got a free night certificate from Marriott Visa worth between $150 and $200.

That gives us total rewards earned for 2008 of $950-$1000.

As always, all bills were paid in full and on time, no interest charges or late fees. The Marriott card does have a $65 annual fee, but since we got rewards worth over $700, I think it is well worth the price.

Adding up the 2008 bills

January 4th, 2009 at 04:01 am

I've started the process of adding up all of our bills from 2008. I'm not nearly ready to post any final numbers yet. Maybe by tomorrow night. So far, I've done water, gas, electric, cable, cell phone and our main credit card (Marriott Visa). I'll try and do the rest tomorrow. I also need to add up what we earned in CC rewards. That's always an estimate because we have reward points that haven't been redeemed yet so I don't know for sure what they'll actually be worth - depends on how and where we use them - but I can come up with an approximate value.

More to follow.

$60 Cashback from Discover

October 1st, 2008 at 12:09 am

I just redeemed $40 on my account and $20 on my wife's account for our Discover cards. We use them pretty much only to take advantage of the 5% cashback bonus offers. The past 3 months, that included gas stations so 5% back was helpful. I also signed up for the 4th quarter which is restaurants, grocery stores and movies. We won't use the movies but we'll definitely use the other two. Just have to remind DW to use the Discover card for those purchases.

2007 Credit Card Usage Totals

December 26th, 2007 at 11:44 pm

As I start doing the year-end financial stuff, one thing I always do is tally up the credit card charges.

Marriott Visa: $36,068.81
AOL Visa: $3,206.25
Discover: $1,176.39
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Total: $40,451.45

As far as rewards earned, we got 41,384 Marriott points. That's enough for up to 7 free nights with some points left over. At $80/night, that's about $560. We got $40 cashback from Discover. We haven't redeemed our AOL reward points yet but they're worth a few more dollars, so total rewards are a little over $600 for the year. We also got one free hotel night from Marriott that we get every year on our account anniversary. That saved us over $200. We used that when we went to New York for our anniversary in July. So really, our rewards were over $800.

I was a little surprised to see the total is nearly $9,000 more than last year. Looking back, I can explain most of that. My wife had surgery in 2006 that I didn't pay for until 1/07. That was a couple thousand. She then had surgery again in 07 that cost another $800 and some. We also started planning my daughter's Bat Mitzvah which is in September and gave deposits to the caterer, the DJ and the photographer totalling a few thousand dollars. Add in a couple of costly car repairs on our two 100,000-plus mile cars and that accounts for almost the whole $9,000.

All in all, not so bad. No late payments. Every bill paid in full each month. Zero interest charges. And only the Marriott card has an annual fee ($65) but as you can see, it is well worth paying for what we get in return (over $760 in free stays earned this year).

Got a check from Discover today

March 29th, 2007 at 02:40 am

I only use my Discover card when they have a good 5% cashback bonus special. As a result, I haven't used it for a few months. But a few months ago, I also redeemed my cashback bonus for $20 to be applied to my account. The only problem was I ended up having a zero balance when that occurred, which left me with a $20 credit. I kept meaning to use the card since I had a credit, but I forgot. Yesterday, I got a check in the mail from Discover for the $20 credit. I guess it is better for them to pay out the money than to keep tracking it on my account. Honestly, I'd rather have the money and not have to worry about using the card to utilize it.

2006 Credit Card Usage Totals

December 31st, 2006 at 03:03 am

I just compiled all of our credit card statements for 2006. One of the forum threads made me do that because I wanted to see our total charges for the year. Here's the breakdown.

Marriott Visa: $25,173.77
AOL Visa: $5,879.22
My Discover: $413.83
Wife's Discover: $309.75
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Total: $31,776.57

To look in terms of rewards earned, with the Marriott card, we earned 27,698 reward points. That's enough for up to 4 free nights with points to spare. Even the cheapest Marriott runs about $69/night + tax, so those points are worth over $300. Add in the free AOL service we earned (until they stopped charging) and the cashback we got from Discover and our total rewards were probably in the $500-$600 range. Not such a bad deal.