New Card Earns Points on Mortgage + 100k Airline Card BONUS

In this video, I want to look at a new credit card that lets you earn points on mortgage payments. And the card has a load of statement credits, too, that provide over $760 in value per year. Something very unusual for a no annual fee card. Then, secondly, in this video, we also have a 100,000 point bonus on a certain airline card that you may also want to look into. Hey, credit warriors, welcome to the show. My name is Ben Hedges aka the credit shifu and on this channel I cover US credit cards, personal finance, and luxury travel. If you like the sound of that, please subscribe. But let's get into the video. Oh, and today's episode is brought to you by Silo, who's offering up to $5,000 in cash back on your brokerage account, but more on that later. So, first up, I want to talk about this new card from a company called Messa. Now, let's go into a little background first. So built the very popular card and platform for paying rent and earning points on that is bringing in the ability to pay mortgages and earn points later this year. However, it seems that Messa has beaten them to it with their new homeowners card. Now what this card does is it allows Messa to link to your bank and observe your financial data. And when they detect a mortgage payment, they will award you one point per dollar for that payment up to 100,000 points per year. So, you don't actually pay your mortgage with the card, but having the card gets you into their system so you can earn points on a mortgage, if that makes sense. And there is a requirement that you spend at least $1,000 on the card each month in order to earn points on your mortgage payment. This is kind of like built make five non-ren purchases per month in order to earn points on rent. Although it's a bit harder to make $1,000 in purchases than just five small purchases, which could be like, you know, five packs of gum purchased separately or something for, you know, less than $10. I don't know. Anyway, so since you have to spend $1,000 on the card each month, here are all the bonus categories. So, the first one is, well, it's not actually on the card, but in the Messa system, you already know about it. Earn one Messa point per dollar on your monthly mortgage payments. And then we have the actual card categories. So, three points per dollar on home and family expenses. And this includes home improvement, decor, maintenance, utilities, and daycare. Then we have two points per dollar on everyday purchases. So it's groceries, gas, EV charging, and more. Then we have one mess point on every other dollar spent. But the thing that really interests me is the credits because this is a no annual fee card, but it has a load of coupon book style credits. It's like, what's the catch, guys? You don't have an annual fee to offset. Okay, you don't need to do this. But they did it anyway, and it provides a lot of value. So, let's actually go through uh every credit that they offer. All right, so here are all the credits. A complimentary big box store membership. And this apparently works at Costco, Sam's Club, and BJ's. And it's up to $65. My Sam's Club, for example, it costs $50. So that's within the amount that the credit allows. Then we have a $200 Thumbtac credit. Now, Thumbtac is a site where you can book handymen and stuff for home jobs. All right? Like, I don't know, someone to clean your gutters or someone to install a deck or or whatever you need, right? Maybe even cleaners and stuff. Um, and it's $25 per job. Okay? So, that would be eight jobs per year. Then, we have a $120 Wag pet credit. Okay? Now, WAG is for pet care and stuff, pet sitters, that kind of thing. Uh, and it's it's mainly probably geared towards dogs and this is $10 per month. Then we have a $120 farmer's dog credit. This is for healthy food for dogs, right? You can check out their website. It is pretty interesting and it's also $10 per month. Then we have a $120 Lowe's credit. I haven't seen the terms on this one, but I assume it's $10 per month as well. We then have a $100 Armadillo home warranty credit, and this is only for your deductible if you have a claim. Okay? Okay, so it's not for your monthly premium, which kind of reduces its value a bit cuz ideally you don't want to have a claim. Then we have a $100 Cozy Earth credit, and that is just a $100 gift card. So, you can see that there are some restrictions on many of these credits, okay? They aren't as good as they initially sound, especially the $100 home warranty deductible credit. Like, ideally, you never have to pay a deductible because you never have a claim, right? And then most other credits are small amounts per month, like $10 per month, etc., Except for the Cozy Earth one. That one's awesome. It's just $100 right away. Now, for me, let's add up what I use. All right. I think I would use the big box membership. That's $50 Sam's Club membership fee refunded. Then I'd probably use some of the thumbtack credit. Let's say $50 worth. Okay? So, that would be two jobs. Then none of the farmer's dog credit because I don't have a dog, right? I have cats. H. And probably none of the wag credit either since although I have cats, cats are pretty low maintenance. All right? I don't normally need a pet sitter. I just have a buddy just check the house once a day and add some food to the bowl and water and that's it. I definitely would use the whole Lowe's credit. Okay, I can easily spend $10 a month at Lowe's and I'd probably use the whole cozy earth credit as well. Probably buy sheets and stuff, replacement towels for my Airbnb. So, I would estimate me personally I'd get probably about $320 back. And, you know, to be honest, that is not bad for a no annual fee card. All right, if it was a, you know, $500 annual fee, I'd be like, "No, it's no good." But on a no annual fee card, it's actually awesome. All right, now we know about how many points you earn and the credits. How can we actually use the points and crucially, what are they worth? But first, I love delivering great value to you guys. And that is why I have partnered with Silo, a company that I personally have an account with to bring you the opportunity to earn up to an extra $5,000 per year. Interested? Keep listening. Silo is looking to disrupt the brokerage industry by becoming the first cashback investing platform. They saw all these other brokerages, not naming any names, giving one-off deposit bonuses or free stocks worth like $2 each for new users, and they knew that they could do better. They will match all the money in your brokerage account, whether it is invested or sitting there as cash, by 1% every year for life, up to $5,000 per year in cash back. So, let's say you invest in the S&P 500, which averages 8% a year, well, now you have 9%. Or putting it in simpler terms, if I have $100,000 in a silo account in an S&P500 index fund, and on average, cuz it's the S&P 500, I'm getting $8,000 in returns per year. Well, that's now going to be $9,000. For this deal, there is a monthly fee that starts at $10, but that means that you only have to have an account size of $12,000 to offset that monthly fee. If you are a serious investor who is growing their portfolio over several decades, that extra 1% will literally add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Silo allows you to buy US stocks, ETFs, and corporate and US bonds. Investments are held with Interactive Brokers, where your money is SIPC and FDIC insured. So, if you want to earn up to $5,000 every single year, don't wait. Use my link siloarkets.com/ben or click the link below and start investing today. So, there are a few different ways to use Messa points. You can redeem them for statement credits. That is the worst use of the points at 0.5 cents per point. They're also worth 0.75 cents per point when you redeem them for gift cards and 1 cent per point through Mass's travel portal. And then in addition, you can also transfer them out to airlines, which should be the highest value redemption. Okay, you may be able to get up to 2 cents per point that way. And here is the list of transfer partners. Era Mexico, Air India, Thin Air, Hainan Airways, Thai Airways, Vietnam Airlines and those are all at a 1:1 ratio. Then we have Cafe Pacific at a 3:2 ratio and AOR hotels also at a 3:2 ratio. Now this is their initial offering of transfer partners. And while there may be no Delta, United, British Airways, etc. the usual suspects, you do have airlines from all three major alliances amongst the partners. Okay? So you should in theory be able to book any airline in those major alliances which includes the major US airlines like United and Delta etc. So what's my take on this card? Well, it is certainly an interesting prospect and with no annual fee, there's no downside to getting it apart from maybe well having a credit check I guess could be the one downside. And earning points on mortgages is really great. The credits are interesting, although like you saw with my example, most people probably won't be able to use every single one of them. But having to spend $1,000 a month in order to earn points on mortgage payments is the biggest downside I can see. Now remember, you don't have to do that. Okay? You don't have to earn points on mortgage payments. You could just use the card for the other stuff. But let's just talk about this. Why is it a downside? Well, it is an opportunity cost right there. If you don't have spending in the categories that earn three points per dollar on the Messa card, you'll have to shift that spend from other cards and it may not actually end up worth it even though you're earning extra points on your mortgage. For example, let's say if I spend $1,000 a month on groceries and just for this example, let's say that's my only credit card spending per month. Okay? So, I've just got my mortgage payment and $1,000 on groceries. I use the AMX Gold card for that and I get four points per dollar back. Okay? So, that's 4,000 points. If I move that $1,000 spend to the Messa card, I get two points per dollar on grocery spending. So that's only 2,000 points. But I would then earn one point per dollar on my mortgage, which is 1,800 per month. So that is 1,800 points. Add that to the 2,000 from the grocery spend, and we are at 3,800 points. That's still 200 points less than if I use my gold card. Okay, gold card would be 4,000. And on top of that, the points are not as valuable as MX points. So, you guys are really going to have to do some analysis of your spending to determine if the card was worth it. In my case, if my mortgage was a bit higher, say 2,500 points, well, that would be an extra 2,500 plus 200. So, that's 4,500. So, that's more than the MX points. Okay? But then they're not worth as much. So, you're going to have to do a deep dive through your finances, through the value of the points, and see if it is worth it for you. If you do sign up, though, currently there is a 50,000 point welcome bonus. You have to use the code bonus 50 when you sign up. Thank me later. All right, let's now move on to checking out this 100,000 point bonus on a certain airline card. All right, so we have a new 100,000 point bonus for spending $10,000 in 3 months on the City Advantage Executive Platinum World Elite Mastercard. It's always a mouthful to say that card's name. That is their top tier card from American Airlines from City with a $595 annual fee. It does offer full Admirals Club membership and is currently the only personal credit card that offers that in the US. Now, the value of AA points according to the points guy is 1.55 cents per point. So, that gives us $1,550 in value for the whole bonus. That is great value. My only concern is the amount of spend that you need to do. $10,000 in 3 months. That will be out of reach for a lot of people because they simply don't have that much spend that they can put on a card. And it also lowers the value proposition, too. It's only actually 10 points per dollar, whereas many other cards bonuses earn you 20 points or more per dollar. So, there's opportunity costs there, too. You could go for maybe two other bonuses on other cards, $5,000 each, that get you 20 points per dollar. But if you are a regular AA flyer and you do have the spending, maybe you book your own business flights and your company reimbures you for it. So, you know, you're not really losing anything because you've got so much spend. So, you know, in that case, you might want to check it out. It is a limited time offer. There isn't an end date published yet, but you know, you get it. Be quick. All right, guys. That is the video for today. Don't forget to earn up to $5,000 bonus cash back every year with Silo. Link is in the description down below. Please subscribe to the channel if you're new. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye.