What's With These CRAZY HIGH Credit Card Bonuses

In this video, we are going to cover two new ultra high welcome bonuses on US credit cards. We then have a completely new card that just hit the market and a couple of transfer bonuses with Chase that let you get a bit more value out of your points. So stick around to the end for those. 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 it. Oh, and this video is brought to you by Mumu, but more on that later. All right, so the first thing I want to cover is this 100,000 point bonus on the Capital 1 Venture X card. Now, the Venture X card is popular. Most people rank it as the most affordable card that gives unlimited lounge access in more than one airport lounge program. It's a $395 annual fee, but there is a $300 travel credit, and you get 10,000 miles given to you each anniversary, which is valued at at least $100. So, basically, the card ends up paying you $5 a year to have it, whilst giving you full Priority Pass lounge access, which features over 1,800 lounges and experiences, and also Capital 1's own lounge network that features six lounges, all in the US so far. So, it is a popular card. Okay, it has offered a 75,000 point welcome bonus for spending I think it was $4,000 in 3 months for a long time. Basically since the initial launch bonus of 100,000 points ended, it has been 75,000 for all this time. Oh, it seems it went up to 90,000 briefly, but then it came back down. But now we have a new offer. 100,000 Capital 1 miles for spending $10,000 in 6 months. So, that is $1,666 you have to spend per month to get the bonus. It is 10 points per dollar on top of the two points per dollar that the card earns on most things. So, that's 12 points per dollar that you're going to earn on that $10,000 in spend. And the 100,000 point bonus is worth $1,850 if you use a point sky valuation for the 1.5 cents per point for Capital 1 miles. But remember, since it's 2x on all spend on this card, well, actually, there's a few more bonus categories, but it's 2x minimum that you can earn, you're actually going to end up with $120,000 Capital 1 miles in your account, and that is worth $2,200. So, this could be a way to get enough miles for one of those aspirational business or first class trips. >> If I could go on a trip. >> Yeah. No, I definitely can't. >> Capital 1 has a load of transfer partners with most transferring at a 1:1 ratio. This is a limited time offer. Not sure exactly when it's ending, but do be quick. And the only rule with this is that you can't have had a new card member bonus on this card in the past 48 months, which is four years. All right, let's move on to another even higher welcome bonus. This one is on the Capital 1 Venture X business card, and you can tell something is up when they're using that really weird yellow color. All right, what is this? It's a 400,000 mile bonus, and it's split into two halves. 200,000 mi once you spend $30,000 in 3 months and then an additional 200,000 mi once you spend a total of $150,000 in 6 months. So yeah, I mean 400,000 is obviously just for the headlines. The spend requirement is obviously skyhigh and you could spend way less to get 400,000 points by opening say three different cards each with 150,000 one with 100,000 bonus and even if you had to spend $10,000 on each that's only $30,000 in spending. But for small businesses that have a lot of spend and have already got bonuses on many other cards and are kind of now scraping the bottom of the barrel as to what they can get, this could be a good option. If you get the first half, it's worth $3,700 when you value Capital 1 miles at a point Sky valuation of 1.85 cents per mile. You have to spend $30,000, which is $10,000 a month to get it. And it works out about 6.6 miles per dollar in addition to the 2x the card earns on everything. So, actually, if you add in that 2x, it's going to be 8.6 miles per dollar. Then, for the second half of the bonus, you have to spend an additional $120,000 to get another 200,000 points. So, that's only 1.6 miles per dollar on top of the 2x that the card earns. So, they are basically giving you a card that earns 3.6 miles per dollar on everything for a limited time. If you get the full 400,000 points, that's going to be $7,400 in value. But like we said, it is not a very optimized way of getting that amount of points, but it might fit some small businesses with a lot of spend. Just be aware that this is a charge card. You have to pay it in full every month, which you should be doing anyway, and it has a $395 annual fee, same as the personal version of the card, and the bonus is, of course, a limited time offer. All right, let's now look at a brand new credit card that just came out. But first, the stock market is crazy right now. AI stocks are jumping 10% in a day and then crashing the next. Also, in the crypto market, Bitcoin was up at $125,000 one day and nailed down to 95,000. It's a double-edged sword of risk and opportunity. But here's the good news. There is a way to play the market without risk and still win real cash. It is the second global US stock paper trading championship hosted by Mumu and NASDAQ. Yep, NASDAQ, the one with the giant screens in Times Square. What's awesome about this contest is that you're trading with real market data, but it's all virtual money, so there's no risk. Yet, the prizes are real. There's $200,000 in prizes up for grabs. And if you make it into the global top three, you can each win up to $10,000, plus a custom NASDAQ trophy and even a chance to see your name on the NASDAQ screen. On top of that, Mumu accounts, the ones that use real money, let you trade US stocks, crypto, and options all in one place. Fees are super low. Zero commissions on US stocks, zero contract fees for options, no minimum deposit, and no account fees. So, once you know what you're doing with paper trading through their competition, you can then start your real investing journey. New accounts can earn up to $1,000 in Nvidia stock depending on size of deposit. Idle Cash can make 8.1% APY, and transferring from other brokers can get you up to $600 in cash back. My followers get extra perks for joining the championship. New users earn an extra $5 cash reward, and funded users get 30 days of realtime options quotes. If you're interested, click the link in the description or the comments to join and unlock all those perks. All right, let's now look at this brand new credit card. And this is from Gemini. The Gemini American business card. What's American about it? Just the fact that it exists in the American market. I mean, I guess that is true. Or that they put stars and stripes on it. I don't know. I guess that's it. All right. Anyway, here's what they say in the press release from a couple of days ago. Today, Gemini released the Gemini American Business Card, the first instant cryptorewards business card to serve American businesses. The card is currently available to sole proprietors with all other entity types to follow soon, including LLC's and corporations. And that's actually pretty cool. They're starting from sole proprietors first, the smallest type of business. Often it's the other way round. You have to have a company and really small sole proprietorships aren't eligible. Anyway, what are the benefits of this card? Well, the card earns 1.5% in the crypto of your choice back on all spend with no cap. You can see here there is a little rewards calculator where it tells you how much your rewards could have appreciated. So if you chose Bitcoin and you spent a total of $50,000 throughout 2022, your rewards would have appreciated 169%. So gone from $2,250 to $6,000. I mean, that's cool. If you'd held on to those coins all that time, and that could be a good strategy actually for people who aren't that confident investing money they've earned in crypto because they see it as speculative. So, they just want to invest so-called free money that they earn as rewards on their credit card. And I actually use this strategy. I have the personal version uh of the Gemini card, which has been out for a while. And uh that's how I buy a lot of my crypto, just through the rewards and doing referrals to the card. In addition to rewards on spend, this card also has a $500 welcome bonus for spending $6,000 in 90 days. Okay, I know the spend requirement is kind of high, but it is a nice amount of money to kickstart a crypto portfolio. And Bitcoin, for example, has just dropped down to $95 from $125. So, that's like over a 20% drop or more. And if it goes back up, right, if you get the bonus now and then it goes back up, you could easily add like another $100 or more to that bonus as it goes up just through the appreciation. There's also no annual fee on the card and no foreign transaction fees. Like I said, I personally have Gemini's personal crypto card and I really like how this one gives me 4% back on my gas spending. Anyway, the Gemini business card is available now for sole proprietors and you can get on the wait list if you are an LLC or a corporation or whatever. I'll put a link to the card and the press release down below. It's not sponsored. I'll also put a link to the personal card if you want uh that one if you're interested, too. All right, let's now talk about these Chase transfer bonuses. So, transfer bonuses are when a credit card company gives you an extra percentage on the points that you transfer over to airlines and hotels. So, if it was a 20% bonus and you transfer over 1,000 points, you will get 1,200 points in your airline or hotel account. So, the first one we have, and this one was around earlier this year and it's actually now back. It's a 70% bonus to Marriott Bonvoy. This one runs from November 14th to November 30th. So basically until the end of the month. Now Marriott points are only worth 0.7 cents each if you use a points guy valuation. So adding 70% to that gives us 1.19 cents in value per point. Now if you book a really high-end hotel, you might get better value for the points. Okay. So obviously this makes transferring your points to Marriott better than doing a cashback redemption for your Chase points at just 1 cent per point. But you may still be able to do better using the points boost feature that many Chase cards have. Like if I search Ritz Carlton Grand Cayman, did I mention I went to Grand Cayman? And this is using my Chase Inc. preferred business card. Well, I can find that hotel for $1,500 per night or about 100,000 points plus $110. Maybe that's a resort fee or something. So, this is close to 1.5 cents per point in value. So, I would advise always checking what you're offered through the travel portal to make sure that you can get better value by transferring, okay? And then just see what you're getting directly with Marriott, transferring the points over with this bonus added, this 70% bonus, and then see which is better value. And case in point, I just checked that Ritz Carlton Grand Cayman on my phone, which is a really high-end hotel, the one I stayed at in that video I made a few years ago, and it was 126,000 Marriott points plus $110 resort fee. So, if you had 100,000 Chase points like you used for the other one, you transfer them all over to Marriott, you'd end up with 170,000 Marriott points, and you'd only have to use 126,000 uh to book that hotel. So, you'd have like 44,000 left over. So, in this instance, booking this high-end hotel with this transfer bonus, it is a better deal to transfer to Marriott. But, if your points were just if it was just a 1:1 ratio, it would be better to book directly through the Chase travel portal. Then the second bonus we have is on Virgin Atlantic and that is a 40% bonus and you have until November 20th to take advantage of this. And then on November 21st that bonus actually goes down to 30% until December 5th. So it's like an early bird discount. It's the first time I've seen that. It's pretty cool and it's a great bonus if you already have a trip on Virgin in mind and you've already found availability. All right guys, that is the video for today. Don't forget to check out Mumu in the links below. You can get up to $1,000 worth of free Nvidia stock. If you're interested in any of the stories in this video, I'll put links to a lot of them down below. Things like the Gemini cards, etc. I'll also put my review of the personal Gemini card on screen. If you're interested to check that out, you can click in now. Thank you so much for watching. Please subscribe if you're new. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye.