21 hours ago
3
You pay your tuition with them $200 at a time. (If you’re using ParentLocker, $194.46 at a time, plus a $5.54 processing fee.) I’ve been doing it for years. It’s a PITA, but it can be nice earnings if you can use the Chase UR well. Keep in mind, this is only worth doing with the Chase Ink Cash cards, which earn 5% back on office supply stores. The math:
$20,000 tuition bill.
$20,000 / $194.46 = 102.85 cards * $5.54 processing fee per card = $569.79 in processing fees.
$20,569.79 * 5% = 102,849 Chase UR points. ($1,028.49 at 1¢ each.)
$1,028.49 – $569.79 = $458.70 profit on bills you would have to pay anyways.
If you can get more than 1¢ of value (e.g. booking a flight for 1/5 the cash price), you can start to see how this can really be worthwhile.
The math works better for things like grocery bills (since they eat the cc processing fee), especially if you can put a couple on your account rather than having to swipe every time you go and have to track the remaining card balances.
One potential additional plus – If you are TEMPORARILY in a tight financial spot, and if your tuition is on a monthly payment plan, you can try to time the purchase of the cards for right after your statement closing date, which gives you ~7 weeks to pay. DO NOT CARRY BALANCES ON YOUR CREDIT CARDS OR USE CREDIT CARDS FOR LONG-TERM FINANCING, it is very much not worth the cash-back.
Of course, you have to be willing to spend the time to make it worthwhile. You are on Dan’s Deals – it may be free, but it doesn’t mean free of effort!
