I'm not sure if this has been addressed before, but if someone was considering making an extra payment toward the principal on their mortgage, could making this payment via credit card (using chargesmart) be a decent way to meet minimum spending requirements?

I'm not familiar with chargesmart, and I know that they charge a fee for such transactions, but just wondering if that fee might be worth it for someone struggling to meet the minimum spending requirements for a CC bonus. I suppose this could be done for a regular mortgage payment as well, but for someone considering prepaying anyway, the chargesmart fees could be partially offset by the reduction in interest paid on the mortgage due to paying down principal amount. Obviously, this could be done with no fees by prepaying via check, but just a thought related to someone trying to meet spending requirements.

Pros/cons to this idea? Anyone done this?

How much do they charge?

Last time I checked, their fees weren't terrible -- I remember it being ~$20 to make a ~$2500 payment.

It depends on the amount and lender I guess... I pay $1500 and they charge like $34 in fees. They do show smaller fees in the beginning but add a significant bit on larger amount on subsequent pages (you see everything before you make a payment).

Are you sure? That's <1%. I highly doubt anyone would process your CC for that rate, especially a $2500 transaction. Rate probably goes up for higher amounts to cover greater risk.

Good point Dave. I'd never done it before, so I wasn't aware. The fee I was quoted was $22.95 for a payment of ~2600. But the in the final step I was also charged a "large payment security fee" of another $40+, bringing the total % to about 2.5% The website describes the fee this way:

<b>What is a large payment security fee?</b>
For larger than standard payments, there is a higher incidence of fraud. We purchase insurance to cover this risk. The large payment security fee is the insurance premium required to submit these payments in the most safe, secure way possible.

Note that you can get $10 off the fee by making it an automatic payment.

I have not seen anything on ChargeSmart less than a 2.2% fee. Up to you to decide if the boost is really worth that to you. If you just have a short way to go, it could be, but if you're talking about charging tens of thousands of dollars, you're paying a hefty amount.

Please see existing threads --
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...edit-card.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...e-tuition.html

I'm sure there are others.

Use one of the existing threads above.