Getting miles for McDonald's and mortgages?
 

A WSJ piece says credit card companies are trying to penetrate "cash" markets and allow customers to charge for just about anything - from mortgage payments to McDonald's hamburgers.

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I can pass on McDonalds, but I've already figured a way to pay for my mortage on my credit card, though it is a little work to do so. Only a few more payments and I've earned a free flight!

Care to share?

Pay mortgage on your CC....

Dear lord. Please share.

Yes please share, I would love to know how to do that!

Mortgage payments with CC's http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/eek.gif

How, share the wealth!

Most of the McDonald's I go to here in Chicago already take credit cards and a lot of them have Mobil Speedpass lanes which are tied to credit cards. As for paying rent, someone posted a link in another thread to a company that would do it for you, but it had like a 3% charge. Way too much for me.

The little miles do add up. I've gotten bunches from the Kellogg's AA cert program with more to come.

A day without miles is....a disappointment.

The article is posted here:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum1/HTML/006618.html


BSL

Didn't see any info there on how to get miles making the mortgage payment.

Happily I just found out (never thought to ask before this thread) that my local fast food joint of choice, Crazy Bowls and Wraps, accepts my AA MC http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

[This message has been edited by Mvic (edited 04-19-2002).]

All, thank you for your many email inquiries, I was a little surprised when I checked my email this afternoon and was flooded with inquiries. As I mentioned, it is somewhat of an involved process and though we all love points and miles, my guess is that most will not have the patience for this.

I will post the complete details in the coming days, I apologize, I'm getting ready to go on a trip this weekend and have had little time to reply to those who have asked about the somewhat indirect process of earning miles for a mortgage.


Thanks,

raffy

Though I try really hard to avoid them - I have noticed a couple of Burger Kings accepting credit cards, including American Express. And not just at the airports...

Since the Chicago area seems to be the only McDonalds accepting speedpass (and even some here can't get them going) is that I buy gift certificates at the ones that do, and use them at the ones that don't. Did that before driving east. Also they give you change.

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DtG

I think history dictates otherwise.

Hmmmmmm.. I wander if RAFFY has a credit card that treats travelers checks as purchases then pays his mortgage with those?

Maybe we can get McDonald's to join the Dining for Miles program.

I don't think that isgoing to happen anytime soon!

In Canada, it is easy. CIBC has had for many years the Aeromortgage, where the interest portion of the mortgage earns 1 Air Canada Aeroplan point per dollar. Of course, they also prevent negotiation on the interest rate, so when you can generally save about a percentage point, they can be considered to be very expensive miles.

I do not know if there is anything similar in the US.

Actually there were a few McDonald's at LAX and ORD that use to participate in idine/UA programs a few years back...

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ValueConsumer.com Home of Tripple Dipping Online Shopping

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/thumbsup.gif

[This message has been edited by Aspirapolvere (edited 04-22-2002).]

Just thinking aloud:

1.there are cards which offer no interest till october eg discover; mbna had something where they would put cash from your credit card into your checking account (max $40 fee). Are there reward cards which will do something like this.

2. Are there reward debit cards which can be used to pay mortgage. Is the checking account somehow linked to debit reward card?
eg. use electronic check payment (debit card with same number as checking account?)

3. Balance transfer checks (from reward card) with no fee (you should have credit balance on your card so you are not charged interest).

We ALWAYS charge at McDonald's on our Qantas Telstra Visa card here in Australia.

Just this arvo we had two spicy and delicious McDonald's Tandoori Chicken fillets on McDonald's own Naan bread with a mint-yoghurt dressing. Served with Curry Puffs (samousas) and same dressing.

I also had a diet coke.

$A13 = 13 Qantas Frequent Flyer Points = $US7

Don't McDonald's in the U.S. have EFTPOS terminals at each register? What do you do, pay cash?

No points there!

We even pay credit at the local corner store. Points for daily newspaper + milk mostly!

Cheers,


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Glen,
QFAA

would you like to supersize that, sir?

So did anyone figure out how to pay your mortgage and get miles?

I was describing this thread to my wife during dinner tonight, and suddenly his possible technique occurred to me!

1. Use a mileage card to buy savings bonds in an amount corresponding to your mortgage payment.

2. 6 months later, redeem the bond and use the proceeds to pay that month's mortgage payment.

The cost? Holding 6 months of mortgage payments in savings bonds, and losing 3 months interest due to early redemption.

Does anyone see any hole in this method?

Launder the money from your mileage card (AA works for sure) through C2it to your bank account. I do $2 to $3K per month.

[This message has been edited by blueeyes_austin (edited 04-27-2002).]

Not to be dense, but could you spell this out in a little more detail. I'm not getting it. Thanks.

blueeyes - you haven't gotten nailed by the c2it police for that?

Chetney - what's the difference between that and just buying $10K of savings bonds at a time and 'recycling' them?



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- Sameer

"Didn't we just leave this party?"
www.liningup.net

Chetney,

Your idea goes straight to a point that I've made a couple of times in the past to friends. Essentially, it's possible to treat savings bonds like a bank account as long as you work out the issue of the 6 month holding period.

One way is to take your "emergency fund", i.e., the 3-6 months of money meant to tide you over in case you lose your job and put 1/12 of that into savings bonds each month. The idea is to not get caught with all your money tied up in savings bonds and be out of a job. You can tailor how much you put into the savings bonds based upon how the probability of your needing the money over the next few months. Then, you can just roll the money out every 6 months and into new savings bonds.

(Note that by spreading the money out, you are never more than 6 months from having all of your money, and you should have about half of your emergency fund in the bank at any time. Since my emergency fund is supposed to last me 6 months, that should be safe for me.)

You can clearly follow the same strategy for any periodic payments that you have. The key is to know your finances well enough that you don't get caught short in any given month. (There's no way to get that money out earlier than 6 months that I know of.)

Some McDonalds and Burger Kings in France (the ones on the Champs Elysees) as well as some in Canada accept Visa and MC.

Many fastfood restaurants are individually owned so there is really no uniform policy.

Fastfood restaurants in Canada all have Interac POS machines, which work for credit card authorization as well. I always give them my Aerogold Visa and half of the time, it will go through even without any stickers displayed on the doors.

These merchants open and rent Interac machines from big banks like CIBC and Royal Bank. They often bundle the Visa card processing free of charge to the merchant. So they sometimes do not know they can take it until a machine returns an authorization...

So in Canada, try it and you may get lucky.

In the USA, you guys are even luckier. Some property management firms are starting to take credit card for rent payment. You can pay taxes, buy money order, do currency exchange using your cards... these are not available in Canada yet.

Interesting. Something to think about - a LOT of fast food places have those new cash registers with integrated credit card scanners. I'll have to try my AA card next time I'm there. Almost all airport fast food places, for example, will take a credit card.

Is it possible to buy money orders and not have it show up as a cash advance? This would obviously work to pay a mortgage but where can one do this? Go ahead get my hopes up...I hate not getting miles every month on two mortgages!

So where do you go (on line?) to buy your bonds and get the FF miles?

http://www.savingsbonds.gov/ols/olshome.htm

Did I miss this?

Thank you all for the many inquiries that I have received over the past few weeks. I was able to reply to a handful of emails with my recipe for earning miles via a credit card for my mortgage payment, but as I mentioned to those who I was able to reply to, this scheme has been discussed before by others, so it’s not really a untold secret, in fact, one could use this method to earn miles for pretty much any large purchase or payment, I just choose to pay my mortgage this way.

Other posts have discussed other mile/point earning opportunities, such as buying savings bonds, but that ties up your money for up to six months and interest is lost when they are redeemed just after 6 months. Others have suggested buying travelers checks with a credit card and while this was offered by Chase Manhattan prior to 9/11, one was limited to $1,000 per transaction and a limited number of transactions each quarter. While it was a great way to earn some miles, since there were no fees involved, including free shipping, 3,000 miles was the max one could earn every three months. Other ideas have been posted, but all include some type of fee, so the option to use a credit card for miles wasn’t viable, since you were essentially paying a fee for the miles, my goal was to not pay anything for them.

My system to earn miles on my credit card and then paying my mortgage, though indirect, is as follows:

The items needed include:

- Citibank issued MasterCard or Visa
- c2it account
- Personal checking account linked to your c2it account

Those three items alone have, I’m sure, already have some members of FT saying, “That’s no big secret” or something similar, since they know where I’m going now.

Once you have established your c2it account, you need to register your Citibank issued MasterCard or Visa and begin transferring funds from the credit card to the c2it account. Since c2it, also a Citibank product, processes these transactions as a sale, as opposed to a cash advance, there are no fees to pay, but one earns miles for the transactions. Once the funds are in your c2it account, you then transfer the funds into your checking account, write a check to your mortgage lender from your checking account where your credit card funds have been transferring into and that’s how you pay your mortgage with a credit card and earn points.

Although it’s really an indirect way of paying your mortgage with a credit card, you could use the same system to purchase anything and earn miles in the process. OK, some are saying, well, if I can purchase anything, why not just charge it to begin with? Perhaps there is a merchant or a service that needs to be performed, such as a plumbing repair and the company does not take credit cards. Recently, this happened to me. The lowest bid came from a vendor who didn’t accept credit cards, though he came highly recommended. Dreading the thought of not earning miles for the plumbing job, I simply transferred the amount of the plumbing job from my MasterCard and then paid the contractor with a check, in essence, paying with my credit card.

That’s it. I hope I didn’t terribly disappoint anyone.

Chase Manhattan offers a mileage earning debit card, where one can purchase money orders from the US Postal Service and earn miles for doing so. Drawbacks: there is fee for each money order and there is a limit to the amount of each money order. If you're fortunate enough to have a small mortgage payment, then this would work well and the fee would be nominal.

I must be missing something here. Why not simply transfer the maximum allowed by your credit card to the c2it account each month, and then to your checking account? You can then use the money in your checking account to pay off your credit card bill. In addition to miles, you would get the float on the money each month (and even interest in an interest-bearing checking account or money market).

How long have you been doing this? There are MANY reports that once your account has done $20,000 in transfers that it is closed down since it is obvious as to what is going on. Have you gone over this magic #?