Can I Pay My Taxes with a Credit Card?

credit cards

Yes, you can pay your taxes by credit card, but it isn’t free. In order to pay your taxes by credit card, you must use one of three payment processors. They charge slightly different fees to process your credit card tax payment. How Much Will It Cost to Pay My Federal Income Taxes with a Credit Card? Depending upon the credit card processor you use to pay your federal income taxes with, the fee will range from 1.87% to 1.98% with a minimum payment of $2.50. If you owe $3,000 on your federal taxes, your fee will be $56.10 to $59.40. That is a lot of money and probably not worth it unless you are doing it for some special reason. Is It Worth It to Pay My Income Taxes with a Credit Card to Get Credit Card Points or Miles? As a former financial planner, I still get a lot of money questions and have a lot of money conversations with friends and colleagues, like, “Can I pay my taxes with a credit card?” The number one reason people tell me they pay their taxes with a credit card is to earn credit card reward points or credit card …

Read More

Chase Sapphire Preferred Card Benefits

chase sapphire preferred rewards

I don’t need more credit cards. My Capital One card has something like a $35,000 credit limit. I pay it off every month. So, why am I getting a Chase Sapphire Preferred rewards credit card? However, while the easiest thing to do is to just get a good credit card that earns cash back, I like earning points that I use on travel. Up until now, I haven’t really hacked travel rewards points like this guy does, but after reading through some of his stuff, I feel like I should. Money is fungible (that means money is the same no matter how you use it), but people aren’t robots. I don’t care that the spreadsheet that is my net worth says that earning $2,000 cash back is the same as getting a $2,000 hotel stay for free. The thing is, I have money, what I want is that hotel stay, and I don’t want to feel like I’m paying for it. And, voila, travel rewards are better than cash back, for me. Credit Card Miles Hacking Why should I get a Chase Sapphire Preferred card? I’ll re-up my article about how getting cash back, or cash equivalents is often as …

Read More

Citibank Rewards Catalog

free travel rewards beach trip

There are tons of Citibank rewards credit cards. Like most other credit card rewards programs, there are a wide range of items that you can redeem your credit card miles for, ranging from travel items like free airline tickets to discount car rental or free hotel room nights. In addition, you can redeem your Citi rewards points for merchandise, gift cards and even get cash back from your Citibank MasterCard or Citibank Visa rewards card.  One popular card is the Citibank Rewards Premier Credit Card. The Citibank Rewards catalog is a great way to look through what you can redeem your miles for. Citibank Rewards Catalog Travel A while back, the Citibank travel rewards were changed from flat-rate awards to awards based upon the actual cost of the airline ticket. The current rate is approximately 100 points for every dollar the plane tickets costs. So a free airline ticket reward for a round-trip fare that costs $300 would require redeeming 30,000 points.   Note that in order to redeem Citibank ThankYou rewards for free airline tickets, you must book the plane tickets through the Thank You rewards website which always seems to have fares that are slightly higher than the …

Read More

VentureOne Card Review from Capital One

VentureOne Credit Card Image

Capital One has different types of Venture rewards credit cards. One of them is the VentureOne Rewards Credit Card, which is similar, but different from the main Capital One Venture card that Alec Baldwin pitches on TV. This VentureOne credit card is yellow instead of the Venture card which is blue. Earn VentureOne Credit Card Miles The VentureOne credit card is a travel rewards credit card, so cardholders earn miles instead of earning points, although in practice, it is the same thing. Owners of this credit card earn 1.25 miles per dollar spent on every purchase. There is also a one-time bonus for new cardholders of 10,000 miles if you spend $1,000 during the first three months you have the card. The amount of miles you can earn each year is unlimited and the miles do not expire. Redeem Miles for Free Travel The best feature of the VentureOne card rewards catalog is that there is no need for a rewards catalog. Unlike getting the Capital One rewards catalog for the Miles Plus program, there is no need for this card’s reward catalog to come in the mail. Instead, the number of miles needed to earn free travel is equal …

Read More

Capital One Miles Redemption Chart

capital-one-rewards-catalog

I promised a look at the value of the Capital One No Hassle Miles Travel Rewards after looking at the value of the the Capital One Miles Rewards Catalog for gift cards in a previous post. One of the nice features of the Capital One Miles program is that you can both purchase travel with your miles, or you can get a “statement credit” for travel that you have already taken.  The great thing about this feature is that if you don’t have time to sift through the usual rewards catalog website and redeeming rewards process, you can just book your travel like you normally would, pay with your Capital One No Hassle Miles Reward card, and then use your points after the fact to pay for your trip. Do it before your payment is due, and it is just like you went through the usual booking process to use your miles or points costing you no interest payments. Capital One Miles Redeem For Travel Rewards Chart Number of Miles Ticket Value 15,000 Miles Up to $150 Ticket 35,000 Miles $150.01 to $350 60,000 Miles $350.01 to $600 Ticket Price X 100 Above $600 The basic Capital One No Hassle …

Read More

Save Money on Vacation Travel Airfare

Most of the time, if you find information for saving money on travel, you’ll find tips on how to get the lowest airfare, or how to get discounted hotel rooms. Unfortunately, these tips are often impractical for the vacation traveler, or even the business traveler. While it may be true that new airfares on released on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, I never seem to be going to the kinds of places that have a cheap fare just because it is Tuesday. In fact, what is seldom mentioned in these travel tip articles is that the most volatile airfares occur either on the least popular routes, or on travel at the least popular times That is because those planes are not already full, so the airlines have to jockey around on the price in order to sell the seats. Realistic Airfare Savings Tips There really aren’t any secret airfare tips that you can use, unless you can be pretty flexible in your travel. If you need to leave on a certain date, or even at a certain time, the “tricks for saving money on airfares” won’t help you. To see what I’m talking about, open up any travel website you like. Try …

Read More

Credit Card Rewards Programs – Are New Laws Making Them More Stingy?

It is standard lobbying practice for any industry about to come under additional regulation from Congress to shout to the press, and whoever else will listen, that any and all proposed regulations or laws of any kind would adversely affect the poor customer. Thus, any additional rules or regulations of any kind on credit card companies would make things worse for credit card customers. More reading: Citibank Thankyou Points catalog. Grandstanding aside, while poorly thought out regulations can hamper entire industries and harm customers, many times new government oversight can have a positive affect both on the industry as a whole, and on the experience of customers as well. In the case of recent credit card legislation, the new rules and regulations on banks and credit card issuers were thoroughly debated not just between Republicans and Democrats, but within those parties as well. Fortunately, the by-product of real debate is often good legislation. Unfortunately, the power of lobbyists can overwhelm good debate when the sides are fractured. What emerged from Congress in the form of newer, tougher, credit card industry regulation was indeed thoroughly debated, but was it good for customers, or did it, as the industry claimed, hurt ordinary …

Read More

Capital One World MasterCard No Hassle Rewards Miles

Existing Capital One MasterCard holders may or may not be getting the same deals, but new credit card offers from Capital One are arriving in the mail to new credit card users. These are not reserved for highly qualified borrowers with high credit scores either. How do I know? One good piece of financial advice that I frequently give is to use phony names when signing up for certain things, especially promotional offers and magazine subscriptions. The reason is that these companies like to turn around and sell your name and address to other companies that then send you plenty of junk mail. These mailing lists can be more profitable than the actual business of writing a magazine or newsletter! Nothing helps sort out a real “Urgent! Response Required,” mailing from a phony one like seeing one of the fake names that you used to sign up for something in the past. Just like the one that appears on my no annual fee Capital One No Hassle Rewards World MasterCard offer that came to my house under a name used for magazine subscriptions. Since that isn’t even a real person, let alone someone with a high credit score, we know …

Read More

How To Fight Credit Card Company Interest Rate Increases

With Congress passing legislation to reign in some of the worst credit card abuses, credit card companies have been scrambling to get their terms and conditions, also known as the card contract, changed to terms more favorable to them before the new rules take affect. By changing your credit card agreement before the new credit card law takes affect, these card issuers can avoid having to play fairly as dictated by the new rules. However, this can mean bad things for customers and credit card account holders. Apparently, the banks aren’t concerned about losing business, because they are modifying terms on credit accounts left and right regardless of the person’s credit score or credit history. What can the average credit card customer do to fight back? Unfortunately, not too much, but there are some things that you can do to keep the credit card companies from cheating you out of your hard earned money. Credit Card Interest Rate Increases Under the old law, whenever a bank wanted to increase the interest rate it charged customers, it just sent out a letter saying that they were changing raising the interest rate. Consumers had no rights to do anything about it. The …

Read More

Review Citibank Rewards Points Elite Level Premier Pass Card

The Citibank PremierPass credit cards offers higher point earnings for frequent travelers, but comes with a steep annual fee.  And, most cardholders were recently nailed with a steep increase in interest rate even if they had good credit.  Do the PremierPass pros outweigh the cons?

citibank-credit-card-premierpass-elite

Earn Points Citi Premier Pass Card

The basic Citibank rewards points chart looks like this.

  • 2 ThankYou Points earned for ever $1 spent at Grocery Stores, Gas Stations, Drugstores, Parking, and Public Transportation like subways.
  • 1 Thank You Point earned for all other $1 spending.
  • 1 Thank You Point earned for every mile flown on any airline, including other people whose tickets you bought with the card.

ThankYou Points Redeem Chart

Points / $ Travel Reward* Spending Required Cash Back Equivalent
Grocery, Parking, Drugstore, Gas 2 Points / $ 20,000 points (for $200 ticket) $10,000 2%
Everywhere Else 1 Point / $ 20,000 points (for $200 ticket) $20,000 1%
50 / 50 Split 1.5 Point / $ 20,000 points (for $200 ticket) $15,000 1.5%

* Since there is no fixed flight option anymore, I tested a couple of flights through the booking system and it appears that tickets are pricing at approximately 100 points per dollar.

Reward Value is average unless you maximize shopping at the 2 for 1 points locations.

Read More