Found Money roundup: $934.60 in credit card points for summer vacation!

My favorite hobby is collecting Found Money—that’s money I can access outside my regular income. Anything from coupons to credit card points to cash I earn selling my clutter counts as Found Money.”

For this week’s Found Money roundup, I added up the points for all of our credit cards. We finance a huge amount of our annual Disneyland spending with Found Money. Most of our Disneyland trips through October are already funded, so I’m temporarily shoving all Found Money into our summer vacation fund.

We’re going to Pittsburgh for 2 weeks and hopefully spending a week in Washington, D.C. too!

I usually scoop up credit card points as soon as they post (to use them for our Disneyland trips), but I’m letting the credit card points build up in each credit card account for now. I just started tracking a dozen sinking funds to make sure my estimates are correct in our real, income-based budget. (That real budget is separate from our Found Money savings.) As soon as I get on top of the sinking fund tracking, I’ll start tracking our summer vacation Found Money fund in detail.

I’ve started researching flights, hotels, restaurants, car rental, and attractions for our trip. Once I have a ballpark figure for each vacation spending category, I can make a real goal for saving up for our summer vacation!

Along with my credit card points totals, I have the links for the credit card bonus offers for each of the credit cards we use. If you just want to see the credit card bonus offers, here they all are in one spot:

All Day Mom Credit Card Bonus Offers: $300 Amex Blue Cash Preferred, $200 Disney Visa (no annual fee), and more here.

Here are all the credit card points we have hanging out in our credit card accounts and how I’ll use all this Found Money to fund our summer vacation!

This post includes affiliate links.

Disney Visa #1: $310.94

It’s always a great day when I check my Disney Visa rewards and see a huge number like $310!

$300 is from 6 Disney Visa referrals at $50 each.
$10 is from regular spending at 1% cash back. The regular spending adds up really slowly because we only charge a couple small monthly bills on this card, like Netflix and our crappy internet service.

We have 2 Disney Visas and can earn $500 on each card with referrals per year. Obviously that’s a great perk of the card, plus the Disney Visa gets us into the 2 exclusive character Meet & Greets at Disneyland (and Rey is coming to the Star Wars Meet & Greet in May!)

It’s the No Annual Fee Disney Visa, so the $500 bonus plus the Disneyland Meet & Greets make this my favorite card!

Get a $200 cash back bonus when you open a No Annual Fee Disney Visa with my referral (the regular bonus is only $100!) updated 5/2019 kh

I can use this $310.94 as Found Money for a Disneyland trip. That’s easy for us to use up at Disneyland: 100% free, Found Money!

Disney Visa #2: $10.68

The points on this credit card build slowly since we only charge 1 recurring bill on this card.
Once I hit $500 in referrals for Disney Visa #1, I’ll start referring Disney Visa #2.
We’ll use the points from this second Disney Visa at Disneyland as well.

American Express Blue Cash Preferred: $163.37

I can only cash out $150 right now because Amex cashes out in chunks of $25, but since I’m letting the value build up until summer, I’m counting the entire value.
This is one of my favorite credit cards because we max out the $360 cash back a year on grocery store purchases by buying gift cards, usually Disney gift cards! Stacked with Fry’s Fuel Points, we save 19% or more on every dollar we spend at Disneyland!
Amex Blue Cash Preferred also offers 3% cash back on gas, which is less than the Costco Visa’s 4% cash back on gas, but I hate waiting all year for that Costco check! Amex pays cash back monthly.

Amex new referral! Get $250 cash back bonus (statement credit) when you spend $1000 on the card within 3 months. Apply for the Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express with this link for the $250 cash back bonus. updated 5/2019 We can both get rewarded if you’re approved!

The current Amex Blue Cash Preferred offer includes 0% on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months.

Southwest Visa: $110

Note: we closed our Southwest Visa because it did not provide any value—we have only flown once ever as a family, and the value for redeeming points for gift cards on Southwest is no longer competitive.

I keep hanging on to the Southwest Visa just hoping we’ll start flying (we’re big roadtrippers, but we never fly). Right now I have $110 in flights value. Finally, we’ll fly to Pittsburgh so we can get the card perks rolling!
Usually I calculate Southwest points as 1.5 cents per point, but I just checked and my 6100 points will buy a $110 flight, so it’s more like 1.8 cents per point value right now!
The points are from my yearly 6000 points bonus, and a bit of shopping through the Rapid Rewards portal.
- I shop through Ebates unless Rapid Rewards offers the same value, then Rapid Rewards are actually worth more than the Ebates cash back, because of the 1.8 cents per point value.

We plan to fly on Southwest to Pittsburgh this summer, because of the flexibility with changing flights if needed, and the free checked bags.
We’re getting a second Southwest Visa to get the 50,000 points offer and help fund our summer vacation. That’s enough for at least 3 of us to fly free, even if we don’t get a super deal on the flights, and accounting for the $99 annual fee.

Costco Citibank Visa: $167.80

This is actually the cash back from last year. The Costco Visa doesn’t pay out until February—just once a year! While it’s nice to get a large chunk of money each year, I hate the wait.
We can buy groceries and household items with the check and move the cash amount into the Found Money fund.
Costco will give me change in cash from this check (if I just buy one small item, for example, or I can cash it out completely at the front desk) but it is really easy for our family to spend $167 at Costco in one go.

Amazon Visa: $45.79

This is the Chase Amazon Prime Visa that offers 5% cash back on Amazon purchases. It looks like I’ve been spending less at Amazon lately! It’s good news budgetwise when I don’t have a ton of points from the Amazon Visa!
For our trip, we can buy luggage, clothes, etc. from Amazon with the points, or just buy our usual vitamins with the points and move the cash we would have spent into our Found Money Fund.

American Express Blue Cash Everyday: $93.92

KC has this No Annual Fee Amex that has really good perks, almost as good as the Blue Cash Preferred:
- 3% cash back at grocery stores up to $6000. We use this card as “overflow” for grocery store gift card purchases once we max out the Blue Cash Preferred benefit.
- Since there’s no annual fee on the Blue Cash Everyday card, we don’t have to worry about maximizing cash back to offset an annual fee.
- This is another Amex that cashes out in increments of $25. Again, K.C. is letting the value build right now, so we’re counting the whole value even though technically only $75 is available.

K.C. here! The current offer is for a $200 cash back bonus when you spend $1000 within 3 months. You can also get 15 months 0% for purchases and balance transfers! Here’s my link, I’ll be rewarded too: Apply for the No Annual Fee American Express Blue Cash Everyday credit card for $200 cash back bonus here.” updated 5/2019

Citi Double Cash Mastercard: $32.10

This is a neat little card, because it offers 2% cash back on EVERYTHING, and there’s no annual fee.
It pays out 1% cash back when you make purchases, and you only get the extra 1% cash back when you pay off the purchases—so you have to pay the card off each month to get the full 2% cash back. It’s like a built in spending leash.