Recently, I wrote about how I paid off my mortgage with Plastiq.com. I have been working hard to pay off my house anyway, so why not earn some rewards in the process?
I used my Barclaycard Arrival Plus World Elite MasterCard to funnel the rest of my mortgage prepayments through Plastiq and earned around $2,000 in flexible travel credit in the process. Of course, this strategy only worked because I racked up enough referrals through Plastiq that I could make all those payments for free. Otherwise, it’s a 2.5% fee to use the service.
Which Bills Should You Pay through Plastiq.com?
One of the biggest challenges of paying your mortgage with Plastiq is the fact that you can no longer pay a mortgage using the service using Visa or American Express. This leaves MasterCard mainly, which isn’t ideal for everyone. I thought the Barclaycard Arrival Plus World Elite MasterCard was the best option to pay my mortgage since I earned 2% in travel credit, but I could have also used my husband’s Citi AAdvantage Gold MasterCard and earned American miles I suppose.
Either way, it’s important to know you can pay bills with Plastiq other than your mortgage. Doing so can even be advantageous despite the 2.5% fee when you’re trying to meet a minimum spending requirement and can’t get there otherwise.
Here’s an example: If you sign up for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card and know you need to spend $4,000 in three months to earn the 50K bonus, you would only pay $100 to Plastiq to funnel $4,000 in bills and payments through the program. That’s not that bad of a deal to earn 50,000 points worth $500 in cash or gift cards or $625 in travel, after all.
But, which bills can you play with Plastiq? While the options are nearly unlimited, here are some to consider:
- Auto Leases
- Auto Purchase
- Business Services
- Club Fees
- Mortgage
- Employees
- Freelancers
- Insurance
- Legal Services
- Rent/ Lease
- Tuition
- Taxes
- Utilities
This is not an all-inclusive list. Recently, my husband and I decided to add an addition to our house. I’m going to funnel some of the payments to our contractor through Plastiq using fee-free dollars so I can rack up more flexible travel credit. I also recently learned that I could pay my life insurance premiums via Plastiq — and this was after I had been paying on that policy via online banking or a personal check for over ten years. Make sure to think outside the box for other bills and payments you can make provided it makes sense to use Plastiq in the first place.
Earn Fee-Free Dollars through Referrals
While using Plastiq can make sense in certain situations when you’re paying a 2.5% fee, you should really try to avoid this fee if you can. One way to do that is by signing up for Plastiq and referring your own friends. Once you have your own Plastiq account, you get $1,000 in fee-free dollars for each friend you refer who signs up and makes $500 in payments through the service.
You can also get $500 in fee-free dollars from Plastiq by signing up through someone else’s referral code, so here’s mine. Go to Plastiq.com to sign up and use the code 671741 to get started.
If you don’t have any fee-free dollars to spend, don’t funnel bills through Plastiq unless the 2.5% fee makes sense. Most of the time, it will only make sense if you’re earning a huge signup bonus or a greater return in cash-back or travel rewards.
Do you pay bills through Plastiq.com? Why or why not?
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