Questions and Answers

Hey guys, so I’ll be paying roughly $40K for college tuition soon. But the way the payment works for Cal is that its not all a one time payment. There are several different payment installations. Like in 1 week, I have a 1900 payment due. Is there any card that racks up bonus miles because college tuition falls under some kind of category? And this is discounting the freedom unlimited”s 1.5 points/ $. If I’m going to be paying a 2% fee on 40K I want to be sure I’m getting the most out of it. Thanks very much in advance.

Hello! Typically I used my SPG for small Installment like that…but not so sure after the merger. But I would be using my everyday perfer card from Amex for those. The fee for using credit card also counts as another purchase -> that way you get your 30 transaction easily for the month and get that x1.5 on MR points.

Another part is that if the installment goes above 5k, I use Amex business plat – it has x1.5 once you have a 5k+ purchase! Hope that helps! 🙂

I think you might want to think about the value of the points you’ll be accruing, and whether or not it makes sense to pay those credit card fees in this situation.

If you’re paying a 2% fee, you need to be earning points worth at least 2¢ in order to break even. So sometimes that can make sense if you’re meeting minimum spend, or if you have threshold bonuses you’re trying to reach, but I wouldn’t default to assuming that this is a situation where you should definitely use a credit card.

You might have better luck if you can find a cash-back card that pays more than 2%