credit card rewards

Can I Pay My Taxes with a Credit Card?

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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 …

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Is Capital One Quicksilver Card Worth It?

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capital one quicksilver card offer

Capital One sent me a marketing mailer for the Capital One Quicksilver Card. Lately, I’m about racking up points or miles in order to travel first class for free, but a good cash back card is useful for many people. So if Capital One is going to send me credit card offers in the mail, I’ll write up a personal finance article about it. Win-Win! Capital One Quicksilver Cash Back Card So, unlike the Capital One Venture Card, or the Capital One VentureOne Rewards card, which are travel rewards cards where you earn Capital One rewards points and redeem them for items on the Capital One rewards chart, the Capital One Quicksilver card is a cash back card. Current Capital One Quicksilver Offer Different people get different offers from credit card companies based largely on their credit report and credit score. That’s why it is important to get a look a your free credit score and keep an eye on how your credit is doing. The offer that came in the mail is a $200 one-time cash bonus and 0% interest rate until December 2022. It would also offer unlimited 1.5% cash back on every purchase, along with no annual …

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Chase Sapphire Preferred Card Benefits

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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 …

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Citibank Rewards Catalog

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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 …

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VentureOne Card Review from Capital One

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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 …

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Car Rental Scam Fees Explained

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Recently, I had a very nice family vacation. Now, I travel on occasion for business, and often when we travel we setup via the same system. The rental companies don’t really bother with the tricks, because they have a blanket contract with the company. This time, however, the family and I went on our own. In doing so, I noticed more than a few of the most common travel company tricks have been updated, and some new ones are out there as well. So, without further ado, let’s look at the latest car rental company tricks to increase your bill. Rental Car Fee Scams The travel industry was once the domain of luxury travelers and big spenders. Travel companies just charged high, profitable rates for everything from hotel rooms to car rentals. But, along the way, travelers got savvy. Internet travel websites opened people’s eyes to the vast difference in pricing, and the race to the bottom was on. One way travel businesses, like rental car companies, compete is by offering a rock bottom, low price, for a car rental, with every intention of boosting those rates back up with fees when you actually rent the car. Avoiding a high …

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Citibank Rewards Credit Card Offers: Premier Card

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Citibank updates its credit card rewards programs from time to time and when it discontinues an old rewards program like the Citibank PremierPass rewards card, it moves those customers to one of its current Citibank rewards credit cards. One of the many cards that offer the company’s branded rewards program called Thank You Rewards, is the Citi ThankYou Premier card. (Note: Citibank is the official name, although some people look for City Bank MasterCard or City Bank rewards when trying to find out more information.) Is the Citibank Premier Card a good rewards card? Let’s take a look. First, the Citi ThankYou Premier Card comes with a $125 annual fee PLUS ANOTHER $50 fee for each authorized user. That means a husband and wife credit card account with Citibank for this card will run an eye-popping $175 per year just for the annual fee. It’s waived for the first year, but otherwise, that is a pretty solid strike against any credit card offer unless it has a lot of benefits to back it up. Don’t look for a great interest rate to offset that big annual fee. The terms and conditions list the rates as 13.99% , 17.99% , or …

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How To Compare Rewards Credit Cards

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Not long ago, comparing rewards cards was pretty straight forward. Most credit card offers gave cardholders one point, or one mile, for each dollar spent and charged to the card. Credit card rewards programs sometimes offered bonuses for earning miles either for using the cards during specific periods of time or when shopping at certain types of stores. Often, these special offers came in the form of “double miles” or even “triple points”. These days, such offers are non-expiring specials on some credit cards. Other cards, such as some Capital One rewards cards offer a base miles earning rate other than 1 mile per dollar. My Capital One No Hassle Miles credit card, for example, has a base miles earning rate of 1.25 miles for each dollar spent, with two times miles per dollar spent when the card is used in certain types of retail shopping establishments. Of course, comparing which card offers the highest miles earned per dollar spent is useless without also comparing what rewards those miles or points can be redeemed for. In order to determine which rewards cards are good values and which ones are below average (or worse) it pays to keep in mind that …

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

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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 …

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