Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card Expired

Have zero desire to travel to Japan unless you pay me. Nothing beats cold hard cash.

So just the freedom unlimited doesnt allow that kind of partner transfer?

You're not- but if you're someone who travels significantly you'd already have another UR card that allows point transfers, and higher portal rates as well (either 1.25 or 1.5 depending on the card).... Hell I just got ~7.4 cents per point in value with an airline transfer and an open jaw business class booking to Japan... (granted, this was using Amex points moved to ANA, but you can do similar stuff with chase points)

How many points? From where to where? Why just business and not first?

85,000 points (and $763 in taxes)-for a ticket whose cash price is ~$7200.

And not first because the point cost roughly doubles and the jump in benefits from coach to biz is large, and the jump from biz to first is quite small.... AND availability for first seats, especially on ANA to Japan, is much more scarce....you're pretty much NOT getting 1st seats unless you book exactly 355 days out when schedule opens, or you're willing to wait till 14 days before travel for the "we couldn't sell these for $" seats open up.


Routing is JFK to Haneda, then Haneda to LAX (traveling with 2 others, 1 who lives on west coast other lives on east- and we are all planning to spend a couple days in each US city on each end of the trip).... the routing also lets us experience two different ANA biz products, one of which is The Room, arguably the nicest business class in the air (the other is the more typical 787-9 business class, which is still nice)


Cash price would've dropped to ~5k if both ends were from the west coast... or risen to ~10k if both ends had been from east coast....

To transfer points to hotels or airlines with Chase you need to have any UR earning card that has an annual fee (Sapphire Reserve, Sapphire Preferred, Ink Preferred as examples).... if you travel any decent amount the Reserve is usually the easiest to make profitable above the annual fee

85,000 points (and $763 in taxes)-for a ticket whose cash price is ~$7200.

And not first because the point cost roughly doubles and the jump in benefits from coach to biz is large, and the jump from biz to first is quite small.... AND availability for first seats, especially on ANA to Japan, is much more scarce....you're pretty much NOT getting 1st seats unless you book exactly 355 days out when schedule opens, or you're willing to wait till 14 days before travel for the "we couldn't sell these for $" seats open up.


Routing is JFK to Haneda, then Haneda to LAX (traveling with 2 others, 1 who lives on west coast other lives on east- and we are all planning to spend a couple days in each US city on each end of the trip).... the routing also lets us experience two different ANA biz products, one of which is The Room, arguably the nicest business class in the air (the other is the more typical 787-9 business class, which is still nice)


Cash price would've dropped to ~5k if both ends were from the west coast... or risen to ~10k if both ends had been from east coast....

To transfer points to hotels or airlines with Chase you need to have any UR earning card that has an annual fee (Sapphire Reserve, Sapphire Preferred, Ink Preferred as examples).... if you travel any decent amount the Reserve is usually the easiest to make profitable above the annual fee

I see 2 offers:

Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card vs Ink Business Cash® Credit Card

Is one better than the other? Can one apply for both?

Do you write a blog on these or something? Would like to follow if you do..

You can apply for both but you'll want to read up on the chase application rules... especially the 1/30, 2/30, and 5/24 rules.

The short versions of which are:

You can not be approved for more than 1 chase business card every 30 days

You can not be approved for more than 2 chase cards total (biz+personal) every 30 days

You can not be approved for ANY new chase card if you've opened more than 5 new cards (from ANY bank, not just chase) in the last 24 months**


**For chase business cards, they check if you are below 5 in the last 24 months- but once approved new business cards don't count AS one of the 5 for future checks... so you generally want to churn all the business cards you can before personal ones so as to keep your 5/24 score under 5 as long as possible







Nope... there's already a ton of blogs that cover the common sweet spots for this stuff-- then you just have to put in some work to find availability... (in the case of my booking I had to look up what airports ANA flies in/out of the US, then search each one to find availability one airport at a time-- and even then only found ONE seat on ONE flight each way- and at different airports, for the entire month during which I was looking to plan the trip.

So some flexibility of schedule is usually a good idea for these really high value redemptions.

THAT said, flights on Japan routes are especially difficult outside of those 2 narrow time windows I mention--- I've had much easier time getting good (4-6 cent a point usually) biz airfare redemptions to Europe for example... and got a nice stacked-bonus deal via Alaska to Hawaii in first class a few years ago too (though Alaska first is not lie-flat). For the non-japan ones I've sometimes had to shift my dates around by a couple days either way, but nothing major and my schedule is reasonably flexible anyway... for Japan I actually had to shift the original dates I had in mind by almost 2 weeks but it was still in a workable range.


As a general rule if you just google "best use of points to X" where you put where you want to go for X you'll find helpful stuff from the usual suspects (TPG, million mile secrets, upgradepoints, etc). Theres usually one or more MUCH better options to any given place than some others.... (for example my Biz to Japan ticket was 85000 miles.... a similar ticket via points on Singapore airlines (also really nice, but not NEARLY as good a sweet spot to this specific destination) would've been over 200,000 points)


Read several and you'll get a decent idea of what to be looking for as far as airlines or routes... then use the appropriate tools... (usually one or two specific airline websites, and sometimes some other tools like expertflyer or flightconnections to find availability that'll work for your dates.

Thank you. For the 2 cards provided - does one provide an advantage over another?

You could consider opening as a Sole Proprietor, in which case your SSN will be your tax ID.
LLC and TIN are not required.

Get an EIN from IRS. It's free and doesn't affect your taxes

Difference in earnings value- both can be useful though.

Ink Cash provides 5x UR for phone, cable, and internet which is excellent but narrow.... plus 5x at office supply stores (which can be more useful broadly if you have an office supply store that also sells gift cards to other things)

Unlimited is 1.5x UR on everything. So it's great as your "non category" card.


Most folks who want to min-max the points game will have multiple cards... some that offer 3-6x rewards in specific spend categories (gas, grocery, telecom, online shopping, etc) and then one card they use for spend they can't fit in any specific category.


For example in the chase ecosystem right now:

Grocery spend gets 5x on Chase Freedom (and its variants)
Travel and restaurant get 3x on Chase Sapphire Reserve
Telecom and office supply gets 5x on Ink Cash
Non-category gets 1,5x on Ink (or freedom) unlimited cards



Amex likewise has a similar setup where you'd want several different cards to max value on your normal spend.... same with Citi or even Cap One now.... and for non-travelers who can also achieve BOA Plat Honors status there's some great cash-only value to be had over there where you can get 5.25% cash back on several categories and 2.625% cash back on non-category spending.



Of course, the BEST value on spend is always going to be new card signup bonuses... where you're usually seeing 10x or better on your spending-- so until you've churned through all of those you won't have to worry quite as much about this stuff.