One of my New Year’s resolutions is to travel more, so I recently applied for a credit card with a fat air miles joining bonus. The value of the bonus miles easily outweighs the annual fee, so I am confident that as long as I pay the card off in full each month (my usual practice) the first year, I will come out ahead.
Naturally I would like to boost my mileage account as much as possible, but truth be told, I don’t spend a lot each month – *except for rent. *I’d love to have my rent expenses translated into air miles. But my landlord will only accept a check for rent payment.
Is there a way to pay my rent with a check, such that it will go on my credit card, and thus earn miles? (My other credit cards send me unsolicited blank checks every now and then which appear to work just like regular checks, but go on my credit card account. Is that the sort of thing that would do the trick for me? If so, can you request such checks, or are they sent at the card company’s whim?)
You can try asking for them, but bear in mind those checks typically don’t have the grace period associated with regular purchases. So you’ll have to pay the interest on them from when the check clears to when they send you a statement.
Also, it’s possible that those checks don’t qualify for reward points. You’ll have to check with the issuing bank.
Another alternative is asking your landlord if he’ll accept a money-order, and pay for that with the CC. Obviously, it’s an extra step to get one, and there will be a fee, but it might end up being less than the interest on those CC checks.
My first thought is to connect your cc to paypal. Charge your rent to paypal which will then be charged to your cc, and then have pp send you a check for your rent. Then pay your cc from your regular checking account.
Bouv, I loved your idea of using a money order but I just checked on the USPS website and it seems you can’t buy a postal money order with a CC. They only accept cash, debit cards, and traveler’s checks.
You’re going to lose a fee somewhere in the process. The reason that your landlord only takes checks is so that he doesn’t eat the credit card fee (2-3% depending on card type and your processor). That % is why you can get rewards/airline miles/etc. If you say, pay yourself with paypal, you eat that fee instead - you will charge say, $800 and your paypal account will only get $784 or whatever. That method can still be valuable for clearing spending requirements for an initial bonus (ie, spend $3k in 3 months, get $400 is one I have seen), but the miles you get are never going to be worth the % charge you eat on an ongoing basis.
It’s almost certain you won’t earn any points for using access checks. Rewards programs are designed to encourage retail spending; which is why you don’t earn points on things like cash advances, direct deposits, or checks. Plus they’ll be a fee involved, no grace period unless it’s a promotional check, and the interest rate may be higher than your purchase APR.
RBC Royal Bank credit card cheques/convenience cheques
With RBC Royal Bank credit card cheques, you always have access to your RBC Royal Bank credit card account at times when it may not be convenient to use your card. You can access all, or a portion, of your unused credit card limit simply by writing an RBC Royal Bank credit card cheque for rent, groceries, household expenses and more. You can order personalized cheques free of charge by simply calling our Customer Service line at 1-800-769-2512. Any cheque amount will be credited directly to your RBC Royal Bank credit card account as a cash advance and interest will be charged from the time that your cheque is cashed.
If it’s a privately owned property you might consider negotiating with the landlord.
For example, since he’ll have to eat the ~2.75%, maybe offer to pay two or three months in advance rent. This way he gets his cash in hand sooner, and you get the miles. The only thing you would be out is the interest earned on the rent you would pay in advance and that’s negligible.
If he has other tenants, try to convince him of the advantages of taking credit cards. If he uses something like Square he could pay one flat fee per month and be able to offer another payment method. He could greatly reduce other tenants late payments with an option like this.
Personally if I owned a property, I’d build the 2.75% into the rent and offer a discount for auto-pay (through checking) tenants. I don’t know why more people don’t do this.
Not only does this not say if there are cash advance fees (there probably are), but you start accruing interest (usually at a higher-than-for-purchases rate) even before you get the CC statement. I do not think you can come out ahead in this deal; it will be the most expensive “cheap” vacation ever. If there are no cash advance fees, you’d need to write the check to the CC company on the same day you wrote the convenience check to the landlord, maybe even before you write the convenience check to the landlord. Also double check to confirm that convenience checks accrue miles the same way that purchases do otherwise you’re going thru lots of gyrations for no benefit.
My credit card company won’t allow this. If, for instance, you owe $100 and send them a check for $200, they’ll only take $100 out of your checking account.
Please disregard most of my last post as I don’t know if it works that way with checks, but I do know they won’t allow overpayment with online payments.
Generally, there isn’t going to be a way to do this, unless you chance upon a (usually temporary) loophole.
Credit cards get fees of 2-3% on transactions. They offer their users bonuses like airline miles, typically at 1-2%, to encourage them to use their cards more and the CC companies make money off the difference (plus off of interest paid by cardholders).
In a cash advance, no one’s paying the 2-3%. The card company makes up for this by charging you a higher interest rate, having no grace period, and not giving you any rewards.
Occasionally, there are loopholes that people find. A while ago, there was one with the US Mint, where you could buy dollar coins with free shipping via a credit card. That still left the problem of how to convert a bunch of boxes of dollar coins back into useable money, but some people figured out how. That loophole has since been closed. You can hang around on sites like FatWallet and FlyerTalk to find new loopholes, but don’t expect them to last long. You’re not going to find a way to do this over the long term unless your landlord somehow agrees to eat the fees (not likely).