Parking Money in Bluebird, Personal Expenses on a Business Card & Funding Checking Accounts with a Credit Card

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Your Questions Answered

For the past week I have been asking readers to send in their questions so I can answer them. Here are the related posts:

• Your Questions Answered – Most Common Points & Miles Acronyms
• Credit History with Converted Accounts, Max Number of Amex AUs, Money Orders at Walmart & More
• Ink Bold or Plus, Paying for Someone Else’s Global Entry & Shopping Portal Clawbacks after Returns
• Credit Card Application Strategy – How to Decide Which Cards Stay & Which Cards Go

If you want to get your question answered, simply head over to this post and leave the question in a comment. I am working to get through most of them this week.

Question 1

Our first question comes from Robert:

Can you still open a Citibank checking account and fund it with a credit card? If so, what type of Citibank account do I want to open (link?), and which credit cards could I fund it with?

The answer is yes. Citibank allows you to fund a bank account quite generously with a credit card. Some banks do charge cash advances though, so it is important to be careful. A good strategy before trying to do this would be to lower your cash advance limit to $0.

If you are looking to fund a bank account with a credit card Doctor of Credit maintains a great list of banks that allow this. (Along with cash advance data points.) As for which Citi  account you should open, there are a lot of factors to consider, but I would choose the Citigold and pickup 30,000 AAdvantage or 40,000 ThankYou points as a bonus.

Question 2

The next question comes from CJ:

For business credit cards such as Ink, if i dont have a business setup yet is it ok to to use it to pay normal bills to hit the minimum spend requirement? I know the terms say not to but what is the downside to doing this?

Business credit cards are designed for business expenses. With that said, I have never heard of anyone having issues putting personal expenses on a business card. Yes it can be a violation of the terms and is not generally something I would suggest doing, but I know a lot of people who have done similar things without incident.

With that said, any time you are violating a credit card issuers terms then there is always the possibility of consequences. With a card like Ink, Chase could take all of your Ultimate Rewards points for example. So I guess the short answer is that I know of people who do it without consequence, but there is always a risk when violating a card’s terms.

Question 3

Our final question comes from Jan:

I would like to use Bluebird to pay tuition for my daughters (yes, two tuitions). I’ve been loading BB with GCs but am a little unsure as to whether everything can just sit there until August, when I write two large checks. Then repeat the process in December. Does BB have a ceiling on check amounts? Would doing this raise any red flag? Thanks!

This is actually a great question. Without knowing how much the tuition is, I can’t answer your question specifically, but I can shed some light on the topic for you. Here are the Bluebird limits that pertain to your situation.

• Maximum Account Balance: $100,000
• Bluebird Check Limit: Subject to Total Account Balance and Add Money Limits

So as long as your balance remains below $100,000, then you should be able to keep the money in the Bluebird account and write a check. Keep in mind that you can also transfer the funds out to a normal bank account instead of keeping them in Bluebird. I do not think either strategy is a red flag based on my experience.

If it were me, I would probably transfer the money out to a savings account every month and then send the payments from there. Bluebird checks are a little strange since they require pre-authorization and I try not to keep too much money in my Bluebird/Serve/REDcard account. With that said, your strategy is perfectly fine and should work.

Conclusion

There are quite a few more questions left to answer and I’ll be trying to get to a few each day. If you want your question answered then please leave a comment here. Also, feel free to chime in with your experiences and opinions about any of these questions in the comments! Have a great weekend!

Disclosure: Miles to Memories has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Miles to Memories and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers.

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