I didn’t apply for any new cards in March, but I did product change one. There’s a rumor on Doctor of Credit that the Citi Rewards+ card isn’t going to be available much longer. With a signup bonus of just $200 it was low on my list of cards to get, but I did eventually want to have it since it rounds up to the nearest 10 points for every purchase (making it great for small purchases) and rebates 10% of point redemptions on the first 100,000 points redeemed each year. My plan was to amass a lot of Citi Thank You points and then pick up this card. With its future now unknown and not wanting to get over the limit of cards one can open to be approved by Chase since I want to get the Sapphire Preferred in a few months, I decided to change my rarely used Citi Double Cash into the Rewards+. I can apply for the Double Cash later and get the $200 bonus so it will work out the same.
At the end of the month, I finished the signup bonus for the Chase Ink Business Preferred. I thought I was going to have to prepay rent and maybe some other bills, but my car had different plans. A new radiator made it easy to meet the spend.
With the spend and bonus, that’s 97,255 Ultimate Rewards added to my account. Since I needed to have that bonus complete by mid-April, I didn’t put too much onto the American Express Gold (referral link) card I have the retention offer for–just 291 Membership Rewards for the month.
I also found a good bank bonus this month! American Express is offering $250 for making a new checking account and direct depositing at least $1000 twice in the first 90 days. It expires April 15, 2025. I have a business checking account (that I got a 50,000 Membership Rewards bonus for last year), but this is for the personal account so I was able to get it as well. My second direct deposit is this week, so I might be able to start another bank bonus in April.
In non-credit card earnings, I redeemed some Swagbucks (referral link) for the discounted MasterCard that I used to add $25 to my Uber (referral link) account which I used while my car was in the shop. I also had $25 for PayPal (referral link) with InBoxDollars (referral link). Unfortunately, right as I was about to hit the $30 mark that I wanted to redeem for, they added a $.30 fee. It’s not much, but still a good reminder to not sit on points.
Like last month, I found some no alcohol purchase beer rebates (unfortunately expired now) that got me $14 in MasterCard debit cards. They’re a bit of a hassle to use in the small amounts, but very low effort as I already scan receipts for other programs . My disappointment with one of those programs really hit me in March as I had over 10 receipts and ended up with only $2.85 from Amazon Shopper Panel. With the previous earnings system, those 10 receipts were a $10 Amazon gift card. But I admit the receipts are still worth more with Amazon than with other receipt scanning programs like ReceiptHog (referral link).
