Which credit card do you use for your STR expenses

Question

Hi all-

Just curious which credit cards everybody uses to charge all of their STR expenses? We just finished up our first summer with an STR and would like to streamline everything moving forward with a credit card dedicated to this STR.

Thanks!

John Underwood · Answer

Capital One Spark Business. 2% back on everything.

I use a credit  card of some sort for almost everything I buy. I pay the bills off in full each month no matter what I put on it. I'd buy a house on it if they'd let me.

Ryan Moyer · Answer

I am one of those CC points hoarding freaks that spends my free time reading about how to maximize credit card rewards.

I think really you have 3 options.

1) Amex Blue Business Preferred - 2 membership rewards points on all purchases.  Note that Membership rewards points are roughly twice as valuable as equivalent cash by most points site's valuations.  Most of these sites value 1 MR point = 2 cents.  So getting 2% back in MR points on any purchase means you're essentially getting 4% back on all purchases once you factor in the value of a MR point.

2) Capital One Spark Business - 2% back.  This is "cash" which is not as valuable as MR points, but the nice thing here is you can redeem them AFTER a purchase to "erase" that purchase.  That means you can still pay for an expense to use for tax purposes, and then "wipe" it afterwards.  So IE if you needed to book a flight to check on one of your properties and you spend $500 on that, if you booked that flight with your MR points you would have nothing to write-off as an expense.  With this card you would book for $500, expense it, and then redeem the miles against that purchase later.

3) Chase Business Ink Cash - 5% on a lot of common STR utlities like cable/internet/etc.  Only 1% on everything else so you'd have to do the math whether the 5% categories make up the difference on that or not.  If you have a premium ultimate rewards card you can transfer these points to that UR account which effectively doubles their value (similar to the AMEX membership rewards points) so it's almost like you're earning 10% in those utility categories and 2% on everything else.

IMO the flexibility of membership rewards and Chase Ultimate rewards far outweighs actual cash back because with a little bit of effort you can get a lot more back in redemption.  For instance I just booked a flight to Hawaii for our family where the ticket cost was $1200, but I was able to book it for 50,000 points I transferred out of my Chase ultimate rewards to those airline miles instead.  If I had redeemed those 50,000 points for cash I would have only gotten back $500 on them.

Bruce Woodruff · Answer

I prefer debit cards and cash. But there is a school of thought that says to have 2 cards, 1 that gathers airline miles and the other that gains redeemable points.

Pam Smith · Answer

Thanks Account Closed I'll also take a look at the Lowe's credit card as we get a ton of stuff there for our place.

We also always pay off our bills every month in full so it makes the most sense to get something back for our money!

Account Closed · Answer

@Pam Smith

Might want to check out the “All the Hacks”podcast.  They had a recent episode along these lines.

Pam Smith · Answer

@Ryan Moyer thank you so much! We have the suite of products for chase ultimate rewards for my other business and personally and we love it. I've been thinking about adding the Amex MR to our suite so perhaps we'll do this for the STR. Our cleaners allow us to charge their cleaning bills to our credit card for no fee so this is where we really rack up the points!

Curtis Mears · Answer

@Pam Smith

Lowes as they give 5٪ back on all purchases.

Brian G. · Answer

@Bruce Woodruff I’m with you. My life is simpler without credit cards. Though I do wonder if I could actually use our normal biz spending to generate reduced flight costs, ie travel rewards. Not sure it’s worth the hassle.

Jim K. · Answer

Discover Miles. I think most people should at least look at it for the first year double-miles bonus, which comes out to 3%. We've always liked Discover for the customer service but the miles pile up nicely and redemption is easy.

Ralph Poirier · Answer

I use a fidelity visa. I get 2% cash back on every purchase with no limits and no annual fee. My analysis should it to be better than any of the travel cards.  I put everything possible on the card. Pays me over $100/month.

Which credit card do you use for your STR expenses

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