As planned, I finished the sign up bonus for the American Express Business Gold (referral link) card in January. The bonus (175,000) plus points from spend netted me 179,688 Membership Rewards for the month.
After finishing that bonus, I debated my next card. I don’t want a new personal card just yet because I’ll be eligible for a new Chase Sapphire card in a few months and Chase will only approve people who have opened fewer than five personal cards in the last two years. No business cards had standout offers, but the Chase app showed a preapproval for an Ink Business Preferred with a 90,000 Ultimate Rewards bonus. The card does have a $95 annual fee, but the bonus is well worth it. I just started working on that spend requirement, so I currently have only 1,399 Ultimate Rewards.
While I was deciding which card to get, I had some expenses come up and used those to keep a few older no-fee cards active. I added 121 American Airlines miles and 1,931 Thank You points.
For non-credit card earnings, I had a terrible Amazon Shopper Panel month with only $3.20 earned. I really don’t like the changes they’ve made. I got another $5 Amazon gift card for answering a survey from a local university. I still have plenty of Swagbucks (referral link) and the games seem to be tracking again, so I redeemed for the discounted $25 MasterCard which I then used to add to my Apple account balance. After the holidays, I had a lot from TopCashBack (referral link) to redeem. I could’ve gotten cash and maybe I should have, but there was a 5% bonus for getting a Starbucks gift card so I now have $108.19 to spend there. I redeemed some points for cash this month though–$15 from InBoxDollars (referral link) and $10 from MyPoints (referral link).
