Credit card bonuses are the best way to get miles and points, if you are eligible to apply in the US. The only problem/limitation comes with policies from issuers that allow you to only receive one bonus per lifetime of the card product. That means, if you have applied for the Chase Sapphire Preferred and received the 40,000 Ultimate Reward points (or, even better, the 50,000 UR points), you will not be able to get that same card and bonus again. So what do you do when you go through all of the personal cards available to you?
The answer is to start applying for business cards! There are a number of small business cards available from Chase and American Express. Having a small business can unlock all of those cards and the bonuses that go with them. To give you an idea, you can get both the Chase Ink Bold and the Chase Ink Plus – each carry a sign-up bonus of 50,000 Ultimate Reward points! That gives you a total of 100,000 Ultimate Reward points after you have already maxed out the personal cards.
In addition, when it comes to Chase, you are able to get the same bonus for the same card when you apply under a different business. That means you can earn that bonus on the Chase Ink cards for as many times as you have businesses! That is huge and can be very helpful.
But, what about these businesses? Many people start their business as whatever they may do to get extra money. For some, that may be things like home repairs, remodeling, lawncare, tutoring, musical instruction, consulting, babysitting, web work, eBay, and the list can go on and on. You may not realize that you have a small business in the making with what you are doing right now! From that point, many people apply for business cards using their own name as the business (and their social security number in place of the EIN) or apply for a DBA (doing business as) to operate in a different name from their own.
That works fine and has worked well for many people. However, if you would like to actually organize and register your business, as well as receive that EIN, you may be looking at other avenues of organization. While years ago, it would have required hiring a lawyer or doing a lot of legwork on your own, online companies have simplified the process and made it somewhat affordable to get yourself up and running. I have used a couple of them for various registrations and one of the companies I have used in the past is Legal Zoom.
As I am sure you have heard from their commercials, Legal Zoom is not a law firm but they assist you with legal documents at your specific direction. In other words, you select your product of choice, fill out the page by page wizard and you are good to go. It does not get easier than this!
BUT, in honor of National Start Your Business Month (who knew?!), Legal Zoom has a discount of 15% on those documents so if you have ever thought about organizing your size business into a small business and wish to apply for more credit cards (the business ones), this would be a great time to do it. Go to LegalZoom and enter code SAVE15 for any business documents before midnight on March 31 (PST). I get no referral from Legal Zoom, but have been a satisfied customer of theirs before and feel it may help some of you in your business needs.
