Welcome back to Part 2 of my Credit Card Hacking to a More Affordable Wedding series! Back at the beginning of August, I promised to provide an update on how paying for my wedding with credit card hacking was going at the beginning of each month.
I’m a little late for the month of September so I apologize. But I do have some great updates!
If you missed the first post, check out Part 1 of Credit Card Hacking My Wedding here.
September Updates of Credit Card Hacking My Wedding
My Blue Cash Business Credit Card
In the last post, I mentioned I had hit my spending requirement for the Blue Cash Business card. But I didn’t realize that Venmo payments did not count towards the spend requirement (make sure you always read the fine print!). This wasn’t a huge deal, I just continued using the card for another week or two to hit the remaining amount.
So my $50 Referral bonus automatically applied to my balance on 8/3/2022, the $250 bonus applied on 8/16/2022, and cashback for the second billing statement came to $26.62 and applied on 8/27/22. Since I used this card to pay for my wedding dress and the cashback is automatically applied, I am applying all of the cashback to that charge. The 0% interest is also a huge help here!
My Fiance’s Blue Cash Business Card
Due to the higher spending requirement his Blue Cash card offer came with, we are using it for almost all of our spending right now. We just hit the first $250 bonus once I booked the Airbnb for my bachelorette! Woohoo!
So we had $3.34 in cashback apply to the first quick billing statement on 8/31/2022 and $61.76 just applied after the second billing statement (and payment) on 9/18/2022 and the $250 bonus applied on 9/20/2022.
FYI, the cashback earned on your monthly charges is applied to your statement after you make a payment.
Fidelity Bonus for New Account
I had forgotten I had applied for a new Fidelity account with a $100 bonus after depositing $50 in the new account back in December. I guess there was a typo on my application that had prevented the bonus from posting to the account but after reaching out to their customer service, they got it resolved and deposited the $100 bonus to my account on 8/23/2022.
Even though I had previously planned to invest this $100 in the account, I decided to transfer it to our High Yield Savings account for the wedding instead! So $100 got transferred on 9/9/2022.
Since this was a cash bonus instead of cashback on a credit card, I will have to pay taxes on this come tax time. I will account for this as a 20% deduction to the total saved for our purposes here, following the lead of the Miles to Memories series I mentioned in Part 1.
Upcoming Bonuses for Wedding Hacking
For our next bonuses, we also each opened U.S. Bank checking accounts for a $400 bonus after $4,000 in direct deposit. We will both complete this direct deposit requirement by the end of October and the bonuses should hit our accounts shortly after that. Should be a relatively easy $800 there (minus taxes).
My fiance also opened the Capital One SavorOne Rewards card. It came with a $200 bonus after $500 in spend. We chose this card because it also has 0% interest for 15 months and 3% back on dining, entertainment, popular streaming services, and grocery stores. The main one I’m concerned about is dining though. I believe our venue will track as dining and if we can get 3% back on our venue credit card fee, that will bring the fee to use a credit card down to just .5%. And the 0% interest will let us carry that cost for a bit. We have the cash but want to hold onto it as long as possible in case of any unexpected expenses.
Once we finish the direct deposits for the US Bank bonuses, we are going to both go for the Chase Checking $300 bonus. So that will be another $600 there which isn’t too shabby.
Roundup of Total Saved for the Wedding
Below is the total saved so far for July through mid-September and we have 7 more months to go:
July 2022 – $34.49
August 2022 – $329.96
September 2022 – $411.76 (-$20.00 taxes) = $391.76
Total saved: $756.21
So far, so good for not that much work. As long as you keep the details of everything straight, and stay on top of your bonuses to make sure you hit all the requirements, you can certainly make a good chunk of change by credit card/bank bonus hacking! The sky is the limit here, I can’t wait to see how much of a dent we can make in our wedding expenses.
If you are new to credit cards and want to know how to use them properly, check out this guide to credit cards!
Cheers!