Seeking CC help/suggestions - Specific conditions

Yeah, if only CFPB still had some teeth…

Just for my own understanding… do banks report each opened or closed checking/savings account to Chex? Or only if the bank feels the closing was too soon?

They only report bad things, like overdrafting and bounced checks. That’s what they are checking for, but there’s also a tally of how many banks have checked. The quantity of inquiries is what generally prompts our rejection, since banks want to be your new bank, not one of your many new banks.

Account opening and closing aren’t reported at all.

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Thanks for the info, Glitch99.

Check it regularly though. I’ve had banks that I’ve never even had an account with report me to Chex for fraud.

Yep, get your Chex and AWS EWS reports for free annually. It’s good to know what’s in there. Just make sure you are sitting down before reading them, but not near any throwable objects, like hammers or vases.

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What do you find on your ChexSys report that makes you want to thrown things? For 30 years my report has consisted of nothing but a list of inquiries. Quite literally nothing but inquiries.

Chex is fine, relatively speaking. EWS may lead to breaking things.

I wrote “AWS” in my previous post, LOL.

I wrote that over two weeks ago. This is an update . . . sort of:

On background, I’m one of those people who hangs onto credit union memberships. I realize the preference of others, when a CD has matured for example and no other great deals are on the horizon, just to resign and give up membership in order to avoid the hassle of maintenance, even possible penalties if you are neglectful.

Over the years, in accord with the above, I have accumulated perhaps twenty-five CU memberships, more or less. Today I discovered, completely by accident, that another one of my dormant credit unions has converted to a new online system (website upgrade) which permits purchase of three month CDs with a credit card.

As I started down the “open new account” path at their upgraded website I realized early on that I had seen the entire format prior, elsewhere. Sure enough, after working through it all I discovered a “pony” as payoff at the end of the process. And the CDs they are offering to allow me to purchase are better (i.e., larger) than anything else I have at present. Pretty sweet!

Today’s discovery bolsters my earlier statement that more and more credit unions (I dunno about banks) are shifting to allowing CD purchase with a credit card. This is internet gold. Life is good! :grinning:

This thread is now over two and one half years old. I’m that much older, too, and I realize better now than back then that I could be out of touch. Specifically, persons running credit unions today are all MUCH younger than myself. Perhaps my thinking right along about some stuff has been in error. And that “stuff” is germane to this thread.

This has always been about a form of MS (manufactured spending), doable from home with no travel involved, which involves CD purchases with a credit card. Here is what I was thinking at the outset, two and one half years ago:

Purchases of short term CDs with members’ credit cards is not profitable for a credit union because CU must pay interchange fees to the CC company. This is true even if the CU pays a very low rate of interest on these CD accounts.

Hey, live and learn, right? Apparently the above is increasingly being seen as erroneous by today’s CU managements. Please do not look to me for an explanation. I have none.

What I do have, in marked contrast to the situation when this thread commenced, is a surfeit of counterparties willing to let you open certificates with a credit card . . . . with more appearing all the time. So in the spirit of “sharing is caring”, here are several names for anyone who might be interested:

Sun East FCU
Justice FCU
Merck Sharp and Dohme FCU

Anyone is permitted to join those credit unions. All offer three month CDs which can net you between 6% and 12% APY on your CD investments, tax free. My own returns run between 6% and 24% APY, tax free, but average right around eight to ten percent. Note there is, in addition, a tiny taxable component to your returns, but I mostly just ignore that because it is so small.

Anyway, more and more of these opportunities are surfacing all the time. I do not understand why. But given the very low CD interest rate environment currently existing, I worry less about understanding and more about simply cashing in. :wink:

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What has been your average volume with a given CU?

I’m assuming that if someone tried to do the NCUA max insured, they would shut you down pretty quick.

is it a hassle to received the $$ at expiration and then re-charge it?

So the question really is, how much can be done while flying under the radar.

I think what you’re getting at is the ease of doing large dollar certificates, and the ability to do so.

I no longer am able to do large dollar certificates, as was the case far up thread with my beloved First Advantage Bank, God rest its soul. This inability is, of course, a PITA. However:

I have run into no perceivable trouble doing large dollar volumes incrementally. Said another way, I have a large number of small (below $3000) certificates here and there with no pushback whatsoever and none anticipated. To me the annoyance of such granularity is outweighed by the size of the returns. It is, after all, a challenge today to earn even 2% APY taxable on a new CD. So I live with the extra work of opening larger numbers of smaller CDs paying me north of 8% APY tax free. Obviously this is a personal decision, and if anyone finds it not worth the extra work I understand.

Yes and no. You sort of learn the ropes after a while . . . and I have been doing this for a while.

There is a bias at all the CUs toward renewal at maturity as a default. This is a big time PITA, and you have to overcome it. Upon request they all will code your accounts so the money moves, instead, into savings upon maturity. After that recycling is easy and straightforward.

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I have both Sun East & Justice CU accounts.
So you open a 3 mo CD, funding it with your Credit card. You gain the interest rate on the cash back you gain from the CC??
Is there a max on how much they allow using a CC?

Seems like 6%-12% interest would be an unmanageable amount. Can you give me an example?

So, what does this mean, Are you buying a $2.5k CD every day at each institution? Or do they limits on how frequently you can do this?

I decided to log into my Justice FCU account. They allow $2500 on the CC. I went ahead & opened the 3 mo CD $2500. They will e-mail me in a couple days.

Supposedly I should receive 2% on my Double Cash Credit Card.

I thought Citi was notorious for Cash Advances on cash equivalents? Or maybe things have changed?

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Thanks so much for sharing!

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Some do. Others do not. You have to inquire . . . . or even just try. :wink:

Agreed, and I think you will. Just keep an eye on things to be certain the charge goes through as a purchase and not as a cash advance.

This thread is testament to my having run this as a side hustle for over two years. Naturally, as you would anticipate, during that length of time you “learn stuff” about the process, about the pitfalls, and about the rewards. For example, anyone who has followed this thread knows I lost two credit cards - two shut downs - a while ago. They never came back, by the way. So sure, there are risks and you have to learn by doing. You will make mistakes like I did and you will reap rewards just as I have. I don’t have time to write a tutorial here, though if you read through the entire long thread you will learn about some of my errors . . . . and successes, too.

Remember, the returns are quite decent given conditions now, and even though you are buying short CDs your money obviously still is NCUA insured. So you are not achieving a high interest rate at the expense of extra risk to your principal. I think that is a very important point.

I believe the max at Sun East is three grand. I have never opened a hustle CD at Sun East, but I know it is possible to do.

OK, here is an example:

Suppose you have only a Citi DC (DoubleCash) card. You buy the CD and Citi pays you 2% as a reward. Three months later your CD matures and you do it again for another 2%. You can rinse and repeat twice more within a year, so you make a purchase four times during the year earning 2% each time in tax free rewards, all on the same principal amount which you just keep on recycling.

Hence using Citi DC you earn a total of 8% on your money for that year. If you use an Alliant Visa Signature card instead, you will earn four times two point five percent, or ten percent for the year assuming you disregard the $99/ year annual fee.

I currently operate a stable of twelve credit cards to enable spreading charges around. This is something I learned back when I had cards cancelled because I charged on them too strenuously. My poorer cards, which are least used, pay only a 1.5% reward. But consider this:

Even with a pathetic 1% reward card you still can earn 4% APY tax free on your money. Sure 4% stinks compared with 10%, obviously, but would you turn your nose up at 4% APY tax free compared with the CD yields available today? Tell me where you can buy a CD today paying 4% TAX FREE!

Please tell me because I still have most of my money in CDs unrelated to this hustle, and the best I’m doing is 3.25% APY TAXABLE using my add-on opportunities. Truth is I only have a single 1% card and it remains mostly in the sock drawer. But I do buy a CD with it infrequently from time to time for charge spreading purposes, because to me 4% APY tax free is a decent yield.

Great hustle, but please stop promising people it is tax free. AFAIK, you are not a tax attorney and this is far from being a clear stance from the IRS. (Please correct me if I’m wrong and you’d like to provide tax advice to all of us.)

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