Tag: US Bank Business Leverage Card

So it’s about that time. The flights, trains, buses, hotels and Airbnbs are all booked. Our passports are in our hands. In some respects, this is crazy. I’ve always wanted to go to Europe, it’s been something that I’ve dreamed about since I was a kid. It was just always unreachable or impractical. I’m sure we could’ve made it work at different times, but it probably would’ve been crippling to us financially. I could never justify it. Now that we’ve figured out how to make this work, it seems unreal that it’s actually happening. All we have to do now is wait and of course, pack.

A Change in Flight

We changed our flight from a two-leg flight from Chicago to Zurich with a 12 hour layover in Brussels to a direct flight from Chicago to Zurich. That cost us 28,000 United miles, of which 22,000 came from Jenn’s United accounts and 6,000 came from transferred Ultimate Reward points. There was a whole ordeal where Jenn had merged her business and personal United accounts and because of that the plane tickets she booked for Alex and I somehow became completely unreachable for customer service. It was some kind of insane glitch that ended up taking about 4 hours on United’s customer service to unravel when Jenn was trying to change our flights. Customer service felt so bad about the mix up that they upgraded us to economy plus, which at the time they were charging over $200 per ticket for an upgrade, so 4 hours on hold for $800 worth of upgrades, sure I’ll take it (especially when it wasn’t me on hold). Ironically, Jenn was considering upgrading her and Emma to business class which would have cost an additional 80,000 points, but because we had been moved to economy plus, the upgrade didn’t make as much sense to her. It’s one thing to spend 40,000 points per ticket to move from basic economy to business class, it’s another to spend 40,000 points per ticket to move from economy plus to business class.

The bad thing about this flight change is that we aren’t going to see Brussels, but the good news is that if we’re exhausted from the flight, we will now be able to take a nap once we’ve checked into the hotel. Also, this ends up giving us an extra day in Zurich, which I felt like we weren’t going to be in long enough. Also, since it’s now a direct flight, that means much less time spent in airports. This is going to make the trip simpler and I’m sure, better.

Jenn’s New Card is the Same as My New Card

Jenn applied for the US Bank Leverage Card and her application was accepted. This is the same card that I am still working on a sign up bonus for. The US Bank Business Leverage Card is a cash back card that gives 2x on your top 2 spending categories each month and 1x on everything else. It has a $750 bonus after $7,500 in spending in the first 4 months. It also has a $95 annual fee which is waived for the first year. It’s not a very exciting card, but with our points stacking up nicely, it seems more important right now to accumulate some cash for those expenses that points can’t cover. $750 is a pretty nice sign up bonus, even if there’s a fairly hefty spend requirement to get it. Essentially this works out to 11 to 12 percent cash back on everything we spend up to $7,500. I’ll take that.

On to the Point Check!

I spent over $3,200 on my US Bank Business Leverage and earned around $51 in cash back. Jenn spent over $200 on her Wyndham Business Earner card and earned 1900 points. She also spent over $300 on her Chase Ink Unlimited Card and earned 500 Ultimate Reward Points and $1000 on her Chase Ink Cash card and earned 2,900 Ultimate Reward Points.

With the redemptions and the earnings, we finished the month with 25,400 Citi points, 23,700 United miles, 80,200 Delta miles, 5,200 American Airlines miles, 58,300 Marriott Bonvoy points, 1,600 Hyatt points, 272,300 Chase Ultimate Reward points and $525 in cash back. Using the monthly valuations published at The Points Guy this brings our total to over $10,400 which is down a couple hundred dollars from last month because of the extra points and miles used to change our flight.

A Moment of Gratitude

We’re about to embark on a trip which Jenn and I have been planning for the better part of a year and a half. It’s not lost on me just how amazing it is to live in a time that I can just hop on a plane and overnight be transported to another continent. I feel incredibly lucky and privileged to be able to make this journey and be able to do it while my kids are at an age that they should be able to appreciate what they are experiencing. It also is not lost on me how much information we are able to digest in order to make this trip possible. I learned how to use points and miles by reading blog posts and listening to podcasts. I’m learning how to speak different languages by using an app on my phone. We have even gotten all kinds of travel and packing advice from watching YouTube videos. All of the information is readily at my fingertips which makes this trip possible and will hopefully enhance our experience. This is an incredible age that we live in and I’m very grateful to be able to take advantage of this opportunity.

This was the second straight month of a huge jump in value of points, miles and cash back. In all fairness, we had probably opened way too many accounts at once. It turned out to be a lot to keep track of and it left a lot of room to make mistakes. I think at one point we had 5 credit cards that we were trying to get sign up bonuses on. That’s probably not something we’re going to want to do too often, if ever again. But it did mean that we jumped from a value of points, miles and cash back of around $1,400 in December to $10,600 in May.

US Business Leverage Card

I applied for the US Bank Business Leverage Card and the application was accepted. The US Bank Business Leverage Card is a cash back card that gives 2x on your top 2 spending categories each month and 1x on everything else. It has a $750 bonus after $7,500 in spending in the first 4 months. It also has a $95 annual fee which is waived for the first year. It’s not an awesome card, but it helps us with two things, accumulating cash we can use on our trip to Europe, and with the $7,500 minimum spend it slows down this torrid pace of opening new cards we had earlier in the year.

A Minor Redemption and a Business Trip

I had one small redemption this month and that was to buy skip the line tickets for the Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel. For that I spent $100 of cash back.

I went on a business trip this month which boosted my mileage totals. I received 6,700 Bonvoy points by staying at the Springhill Suites Downtown/Riverwalk for 4 nights. I also earned 3,440 American Airlines miles by flying with American Airlines.

Anyway, on to the Points Check!

Jenn spent $400 on her Chase Ink Unlimited Card and earned 600 Ultimate Reward Points, she also spent $500 on her Ink Cash Card and earned 2,100 Ultimate Reward Points. Jenn also spent around $900 on her Wyndham Business Earner Card and earned around 2,500 Wyndham points and the 45,000 point sign up bonus. Jenn’s United Business Card renewed and she paid the $99 annual fee but she did get the 5000 point anniversary bonus for holding the business and personal card. Jenn also spent over $3,600 on her Delta Business Card and earned around 3,900 miles and the 75,000 mile sign up bonus.

I spent less than $300 on my Citi Premier Card and earned almost 500 Citi Thank You Points. I also spent $1,400 on my USBank Business Leverage card and earned around $23 in cash back. I spent less than $400 on my USBank Altitude Card and earned almost 600 points and the 50,000 point bonus. Since, I can’t figure any reasonable way to get more than 1 cent per point on those points, I’m treating it like cash back, so I’m counting that as earning $506.

At the end of the month, this left us with 25,000 Citi Thank You points, 45,700 United miles, 80,000 Delta miles, 5,300 American Airlines miles, 58,300 Marriott Bonvoy points, 1,600 Hyatt Points, 274,900 Ultimate Reward points, 49,500 Wyndham points, 83,300 Capital One Venture miles and $470 in Cash Back. By using the Points Guy valuations located at https://thepointsguy.com/guide/monthly-valuations/ that comes to a total value of $10,650. Those points are in a number of programs and it might seem difficult to use those points easily, however, the transferable points make them more useable than it looks on the surface, as I describe in this post.

Planning for the Future

With our trip to Europe around the corner, we’re doing our best to accumulate cash to reduce the cost of the trip which will be used as soon as it’s earned. After that, we will probably be looking to pick up credit cards with sign up bonuses that can pair well with the transferable points we already have. One possibility would be any of the Chase Avios cards (Air Lingus, British Airways or Iberia) because they could be topped off with Chase Ultimate Reward points. A lot of it will probably be determined by where we might want to go for spring break next year. Whatever we decide, because of the points that we have available we should be able to have a variety of options and that’s going to make that decision a lot of fun.