May was a simple month in terms of credit card points, but fantastic for non-credit card earnings. I earned 3,880 Ultimate Rewards putting me at a little over halfway done with the $5,000 spend needed to earn the 100,000 bonus on the Chase Sapphire Preferred (referral link). I also earned 1,992 Membership Rewards across various American Express cards that have benefits for some of the travel I’m booking this summer.
One thing that wasn’t so simple was canceling the US Bank card I opened last year. It had a $900 bonus, but a $95 annual fee and no credits that I could use to offset that. It seemed easy enough at first as I canceled via chat, but then I got hit with a late fee for the annual fee (I hadn’t used the card in months). I did another chat to get that reversed and was assured the card was closed. A few days later an interest charge posted! Yet another chat to reverse that and now I have a letter confirming the closure although the card still shows in my account. Fortunately this is the first time I’ve had an issue, but I definitely won’t be looking at any annual fee US Bank cards anytime soon.
My non-credit card earnings were much more lucrative. The $250 American Express checking bonus posted as did the Chime (referral link) bonus from InboxDollars (referral link). That was $40 for opening the account and another $500 for having two direct deposits of $300. I redeemed $525 for PayPal (referral link) with a bit left over for June. Two other PayPal redemptions were $5 from Checkpoints and $21.84 from Ibotta (referral link). I also signed up for a Discover checking offer via MyPoints (referral link). The bonus is pending until June, but will be another PayPal redemption.
I had some bonus offers for Fetch (referral link) giving me enough points for a $10 Bath and Body Works gift card. Another May redemption was the discounted MasterCard from Swagbucks (referral link) which I turned into $25 for Uber (referral link). I also had $2 in prepaid MasterCards from beer rebates (no alcohol purchase required). Amazon Shopper Panel was just $1.65 for the Amazon gift card in May; I expect that will go down even more as they’ve reduced receipt value again.
I went on two weekend trips in May. First up was San Diego, then Portland at the end of the month. For San Diego, I used a free night certificate from my Marriott (referral link) card to stay at the Courtyard next to the House of Blues. It was actually so close that I had to walk away from the venue in order to join the line for The Used.
I hoped to check out the Aspire lounge at the San Diego airport, but Southwest flies out of Terminal 1 which doesn’t have any lounges. At least by flying Southwest I used some of my airline credit which totals $500 across three cards.
Fortunately the Portland airport now has an Escape lounge, so I experienced it for the first time on my trip. It was good food with plenty of seating and outlets for charging devices. I flew American using 16,500 of the miles I earned last year.
I wanted to be close to the Moda Center, so I stayed at the Crowne Plaza. I don’t have an IHG card and the hotel wasn’t on the Fine Hotels and Resorts from American Express, so I booked through Swagbucks to get 2,985 back in points. Those points will post in June. The stay also earned 2,500 IHG points.
My Club Member status with IHG got me a late checkout which was nice, but didn’t include any dining credits; so one night for dinner I walked a few blocks over to the DoubleTree to use the $50 quarterly Hilton credit from my American Express Business Platinum (referral link) card.
