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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No, you have to pay a 3% fee. That would be almost $4000 for me this year and my credit limit isn't that high anyway. [/quote]

OP, unlike this moron, we follow IRS suggestions and use Pay1040 to make periodic tax payments at a very reasonable rate of 1.75%. We use our Chase Freedom Unlimited card (which has a $75K limit) to make estimated quarterly payments of around $53K each. This works out to be about $3710 in fees. The spending earns us 1.5X per dollar spent which is about 318K Chase points per year. We also have a CSR credit card which allows us to transfer 1:1 to Hyatt points which are nominally valued at about 1.7¢ each. [b]This means we’re getting at least $5406 in value for only a $3710 expense[/b].

Truthfully, though, we cash in those 318K Hyatt points to book multiple rooms or suites for week-long vacations at places like the Park Hyatt Maldives, Alila Ventana Big Sur, or the Impressions by Secrets in Cancun.

DH and I are staying at the Park Hyatt Tokyo in June for 7 nights using 315K points plus a Suite Upgrade Certificate. This is peak pricing! The cash price for the most entry level room over the same dates is $14K. When you factor in the suite upgrade, we’re looking at a standard suite that would otherwise cost $22K.

So, yeah, we’re cool spending an extra $4K in CC fees to land a luxury suite in Tokyo that would cost a cash-paying customer an extra $18K. This is why our family takes 5-6 luxury vacations every year to most people’s 1-2. [/quote]

Certainly this is unassailable logic. Because no one has ever had health issues or family issues that prevent planned travel. And we all know that hotel and airline points program NEVER devalue their points currency.

PP, the certainly with which you speak makes you look foolish.[/quote]

PP here who earlier said it makes sense when chasing a big signup bonus, but probably not in most other cases.  Have been in the points/miles world for a long time, getting most points from big signup bonuses.  Have spent a lot of time redeeming Amex, Chase, etc points into various hotel and airline currencies.  The valuations presented by THAT PP were on the high end, and assumed certainty of availability that you should never have.  For example, Alila Ventana Big Sur might only have saver availability right now for a few mid-week days a year in advance.  And it's not reasonable to compare cash prices at luxury places if you would never pay those out of pocket-had a friend who used Chase-->Hyatt for a weekend at a luxury hotel in Napa Valley. I think it was around 130k points for a 3 night stay, the hotel would have been around $1600/night in cash.  You could calculate that as 3.7 cents per point in value, but this was a splurge in points gained from bonuses, if they were paying out of pocket they probably would have stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn (still probably $600/night because it's Napa) and been fine with it.

Well said in that "certainty makes one look foolish".  There is a lot to learn in this game, and the nuances are where you get a lot of value.  PP would have so many more points than 318k/year from estimated taxes of $200k/year if they were getting big bonus cards like the Amex Biz Plat and using those strategically.  Could easily be above 1 million/year in Amex points just from that alone.  Personally I would never pay taxes with a credit card for unbonused spend.  Juice not worth the squeeze.[/quote]

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