What does the Frugal Travel Lawyer want for her birthday? More points and miles of course.

My dad applied and was immediately approved for the Chase Sapphire Preferred Visa link. The annual fee is waived for the first year. By spending $3,000 on the card in the first three months and he will earn 40,000 bonus. What does this have to do with my birthday? As a birthday gift my dad is giving me all of his 43,000 Ultimate Rewards points as soon as he earns them. He will transfer those points 1:1 into my British Airways, Hyatt, Marriott, Southwest, and/or United account(s) depending on the points or miles I prefer. The perfect birthday gift, thank you very much dad!

I applied and was approved for two new cards:

The American Express Business Gold Rewards card offering 50,000 Membership Rewards points after spending $5,000 on the card in the first 3 months link. The annual fee is waived for the first year. This offer is good through November 26, 2012. If you have had any other Business Gold, Green or Platinum Card account within the last 12 months you are not eligible for this offer.

This AMEX Business Gold Rewards earns 3 points for every dollar spent on airfare, 2 points on gas and 1 point on everything else. Another great benefit of the card is OPEN savings. Here is link to the OPEN savings chart. My favorite is the 3% cash back from Hyatt. Some of the Marriott brands including Courtyard, Fairfield and Residence Inn offer 5% cash back when using this card to pay for your stay.

Hoping Membership Rewards will offer some great transfer bonuses after earning the bonus points from this offer.

The Chase Freedom credit card link is offering $100 cash back or 10,000 Ultimate Rewards points, since I have the Ink Bold MasterCard. (Holders of Chase Sapphire Preferred and Ink Plus also may transfer earnings to UR) I have been wanting to get this card for some time, but the sign up bonus is much less than other Chase cards. This is a no annual fee credit card. It gives 1% cash back and 5% quarterly bonuses throughout the year. The current 4th quarter bonus is good through the end of the year and is 5% back on airlines, hotels, Best Buy and Kohl’s on up to $1,500 in purchases. So I plan to spend $1,500 on hotels (booked through the hotel websites as required) and earn 7,500 Ultimate Rewards points for this quarter while meeting my minimum spend on this card.

To get approval for this card I did call the Chase reconsideration line 888-245-0625, because my application initially was pending. I moved some of my credit from another Chase account and then needed to be transferred to the fraud department. The fraud department was closed for the weekend, so I had to wait until Monday morning to finalize the process. After final approval I was told I would be receiving my card in 7-10 business days. I explained to the agent that my birthday was in less than two weeks and I wanted to start earning my 5 percent 4th quarter bonus. He offered to send me my new card in 2-3 days without any extra fees.