AllieKat

You're in for a lot of fees... universities sometimes don't take Visa because they're the only one that doesn't allow surcharges for schools. However, the others do not allow you to surcharge them if you don't surcharge Visa as well.

gold07

I need advice on which card/s will be the best option to maximize, I am going to pay for tuition so I will be charging $30-40K. Thanks in advance.

txflyer77

Are you sure you can pay for your tuition with a credit card?

darthbimmer

A few questions to answer for yourself:

1. Does your college accept credit cards? (Not all do)
2. Does it charge a convenience fee for using a credit card? These fees in the range of 2-4% generally outweigh the value of the benefits you receive.
3. What form of benefits do you want: Cash? Flights? Hotel nights? Is there any particular airline or hotel that works best given your travel needs?

gold07

I am open to any, just looking for the best bang for the buck.

kmandrew

When we paid our kids tuition we had to pay a 2 point charge. That being said I would advise the Citi AA, 50k bonus after 3k spend - $85 waived the first year, charge 50k and you will have enough points for a business class round trip to Europe worth probably $4000. The trip will be hard to book but if you are flexible you should be able to get it done.

darthbimmer

One strategy, if you've got the credit rating for it, would be to open several credit cards that offer sign-up bonuses. Look for the bonuses to spending $1000, $2000, or more; these are typically more lucrative than bonuses with small or no spending requirements. Charge a few thousand dollars to each card to meet its bonus target. Even if your school charges a convenience fee for using a credit card, the value of the bonus points will far exceed 2-3%.

onthego15

What do you consider to be the best bang for the buck? Some people want miles, some want cash back, some want status, etc. It's a very subjective question that different people give different answers. There is no one card that is best for everyone.

BeyondtheWrap

It sure would be great if there were a credit card that gave cash back on education purchases. Unfortunately, I do not know of any.

onthego15

https://www.salliemae.com/credit-cards/sallie-mae-card/

Biggie Fries

Well, now I can answer my own question: The school that accepts Amex payments will take Amex Gift Cards as online payments. The only "trick" is that after the gift cards arrive, I have to call and register -- over the phone, you can't do this on-line -- my name and my address with each card. This is because on the school's pay website (and anywhere on-line where you might use an Amex card) you need to put in a name and address associated with the credit card. To make the purchased gift card work, there has to be a name and address associated as well.

The Barclays Arrival portal has bit the dust for Amex gift cards as of this writing, but BeFrugal and TopCashBack soldier on. Sometimes you can get 2.25%. For whatever reason, that has become my "buy" point lately. One good thing is that the value of cards you can buy in a day has increased to $10,000. So the economics are something like this: Say, $6,000 order put on a Barclay Arrival + card yields 2.2% toward travel and 2.25% for cash back. The vigorish on use of the American Express card is 2%, and each card costs $3.95 (2 x $3,000) and shipping is $8.95 an order. So I just "made" (netted) $131.15 on the payment of $6,000 in tuition. Basically a 2% discount.

Which brings me to what some of the other posters are saying, just above. I'd rather make a few dollars less than that with another card (than the Barclays Arrival +) where/when I was simultaneously meeting some spend requirement, especially one that I wouldn't or couldn't "naturally" meet otherwise. When I am doing that all of this nonsense feels more worth it.

Simultaneously, I am paying another school that does not take any credit card at any price. Here I am loading Serve and sending checks via Pay Bills. Made a huge difference in generating spend on a USAirways MC to get 10,000 PQMs for better status next year. Here again, this is not for the fainthearted. I have to have Serve cut paper checks. Between a big university having a hard time collecting and registering checks that show up in the mail and the fact that Serve has no real tracking (at least that I can see) on its Bill Pays, there can be anywhere from a week to 10 days where you (or I) have no idea what has happened to the money.

All of which is to say that the need to payout some non-trivial sums of money annually has generated some opportunities to expand and fine tune my card, miles, and benefits portfolios without going to Family Dollar or Walmart; but it takes a bit of strategizing and planning , not to mention those calls to wherever the Amex Gift Card operation centers are to register my name on the cards, over and over.

ASMASM

I came across this article the other day & got some really great ideas!

http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml

Once idea I like is how the couple was able to pay off their mortgage early by using credit cards with 0% interest. The article does not elaborate on how they were able to do this.

What is the know the best credit/reward card that I could do this with? Our mortgage is with Wells Fargo and we are so close to paying it off soon!

Any suggestions ?

ORD-TGU

A wild guess. Get a free balance transfer offer from your credit card. Terms 12-18 months free interest. Say $20K. Pay off mortgage principal with $20K. Then pay off credit card and save mortgage interest. But I don't think it is possible nowadays. And it is a huge gamble if anything goes wrong. Mortgage interest is 3-6%, credit cards can be up to 20%. Banks are hoping you can't pay the balance and then you are a lifetime slave paying huge interest.

Back before 2008 these offers were common, and many people took as much as $50K from credit card and put it in CD from online banks that offered up to 5%. Easy $2,500 interest profit. Rinse repeat.

Duke787

I have a big tuition bill coming up at the end of the summer and I'm fortunate that a good chunk of it is being paid in cash instead of via financial aid. Of course my first though it how to maximize mileage earning opportunities from this since it's a good $30-40k.

I'm willing to pay a fee but my school doesn't accept cards and actually gives the following requirements for checks:

Your check should be:

-Payable in US dollars to "XYZ University"
-Include your name and student account number (from your bill)
drawn on
-A U.S. financial institution (such as Wachovia (Wells Fargo)), or
-A U.S. branch of your financial institution (example: the New York City branch of Barclay's Bank PLC)

The first two aren't of concern to me but the last two are. I was thinking of using Plastiq at their 2.5% rate. First, is there a better alternative (I thought about Bluebird but I don't think I can MS $40k in gift cards by the beginning of August)? Second, is it safe to say that someone like Plastiq will satisfy one of the last two requirements (aka it will be drawn against a major US financial institution even if it isn't my own - Chase)?

OliverB

My wife just sent me an email about this new (to me anyway) app called "RadPad" that enables you to pay your monthly rent online with a credit card. They charge a 2.99% service fee for credit card transactions.

We pay approx. 3.5k per month (slightly less) and I would love to reap the benefit of points for our monthly spending. That would be just over 40K per year in UR points.

It would also cost us approx. $1,200 per year in service fees though.

Does anyone think that paying roughly $100 per month is worth 3,500 UR points??

Annually, the exact ratio would be 39,156 Chase UR points : $1,170.76 in fees -- Is that considered a poor value?