My travel patterns are similar to yours. I consistently set a threshold of 1.5 cpm myself. Occasionally I can do better but that number helps me to avoid overpaying for the miles.

You might want to consider diversifying. Traditional programs are great for the long flights. But there are other programs that do much better for short. As an example, Avios costs as low as 9000 miles for the shortest roundtrips (SFO-LAX-SFO, for example). Also, each Southwest point is worth roughly 1.7 cents in cash value toward advance purchase fares. So there are frequently great redemption values on cheap flights.

To put it in perspective, on the shortest/cheapest flights, 50k miles or points in each program could be commonly used as

2.5 roundtrips on UA
8 roundtrips on Southwest
11 roundtrips on Avios

In general, they are not equally easy to acquire, although there are frequent 50k+ credit card signup offers in each program.

Yeah I agree, UR points can go into any of those three which is why so far this spending has stayed there. If there was something more valuable I would like to capitalize on it, but I guess this is to unique of a spend to get any additional bonus.

I'm still young so my spending power is not very high, but I'm trying to make up for it by maxing my spends return.

I may do more applications later but I've mostly just applied for cards I want to add. I've added both Sapphire pref, freedom both in the last ~9 months, and extremely happy with the two cards, got great bonuses and earning valuable points fast.

For Clubs/Restaurants as you spoke of in the first post I use TWO Discover cards to reach a max of $1500 each month (this quarter but ends) Next month will be Chase Freedom at 5% Restaurants which includes clubs and bars dj events.

That's a good point one or two clubs I do go to hit restaurant category. I use my sapphire pref for 2x points. But, I didn't even think about using freedom. That will for sure help.

But the other event's hit those weird/other categories and I do spend a lot of money for myself and friends there that would be great to capitalize. That's really where I was looking for ideas, but thanks for reminding me of the freedom! Then again I'm going to max that category for $1500, pretty fast even without adding clubs.

Does it fit in one of the 5% categories of this US Bank card?

https://cashplus.usbank.com/index.cf...ries/demo/true

It's possible it might hit the department store category because of it shows up that way for chase. Is there any way to find out without apply for a card and making a purchase?

Also, I think the categories rotate from what I read before about this card? Or did I get it confused with another product. If that's true I may have to keep an eye out and see if event tickets or something similar pops up as well.

Can I get clarification from chase as to why it shows up the department stores? I guess I can send a secure message? Either way it should be more like event tickets or entertainment or recreation. Can't seem to find cards that reward entertainment/recreation/event tickets.

That's not the way I understand it. The ticket purchases are showing up in a broad category, created by Chase for its own purposes, which also includes the merchant type "Department Stores". I think you need to focus on the actual, very specific, merchant classifications, and ignore Chase's broad categories.

Merchant classifications are assigned by the acquirer, not by the merchant and not by the card issuer. Generally they will be the same for MasterCard and VISA, but American Express classifications may be different.

Oh, ok. I understand that now. Do I contact chase to ask the exact classification it falls into? Do I contact groovetickets? Then from there see if anything fits that from another company? I'm thinking there may not be very much hope this will be a bonus anywhere, at least currently.

I think this tool will allow you to find the VISA merchant classification, but you will need to know the location of the business and (perhaps) their real name which might be different than their trade name:

http://visa.via.infonow.net/locator/...tLoadAction.do

The tool is really designed to the opposite (find a particular type of merchant), but I suspect you can play with it for this purpose.

I was able to find groovetickets the main one I'm looking for. "GENERAL MERCHANDISE -5999" Not sure where to go from here though, I don't know of any card bonuses that would help maximize it. I did learn some new stuff though. It makes sense for the categories it's showing up in, though.

I daresay you will not find a card with a bonus for this category, you will need to focus on card which award more than point/mile for all spending or which have an annual threshold bonus based on total spending.

Thanks mia for posting that.

It looks like I am missing the 5% bonus on grocery store from the Freedom card, on a supermarket in our area, despite it is listed on the Visa site as GROCERY STORES/SUPERMARKETS/BAKERIES -5411 - so I am going to send Chase a SM on the missing bonus. Since it is a few hundreds pts missing, I think it is worth the effort to follow up - give Chase the specific charges / dates and ask it to investigate.