If you are in the points and miles game, you will get some of them with credit cards. Either it’s by signing up for a co-branded credit card of a hotel or airline or just a credit card that has transferable points to other rewards programs like the American Express Platinum card.
The more cards you get, the harder it gets to keep track of what card to use for what, what your annual fees are on every card and so on. This can already get overwhelming with only 2 or 3 cards in your wallet.
A new way to manage your “wallet” is WalletFlo. This website will help you to manage all this. WalletFlo is brand new and just opened it’s doors today. It is also still in beta and there might be some issues or glitches. If you find any, please report it to the developer by clicking on “Contact Us“.
What is WalletFlo?
WalletFlo is your virtual wallet. It keeps track of your credit cards and gives notifications and information about all important aspects of your credit cards.
You are probably are asking yourself now: Why should I give all your credit card information a third party you don’t trust? Will they have access to all your credit card information?
Safety and Security
You don’t have to worry about that. You won’t actually link any of your bank accounts with this website. It is a very safe and secure way. All you do is telling the system what kind of credit card you have or have had. There is no need to enter any sensitive information like your Social Security Number or your Credit Card number.
The only details you have to provide are:
- Issuer of the Card (for example American Express)
- Type of the Card (for example Platinum Card)
- Opening Date of the Card ( 1.1.2000)
- Credit Limit of the Card (this is optional)
That’s it. As you see, there is no linking to any of your bank accounts. If the website ever gets hacked, the only thing hackers ever could find is the above-mentioned information and eventually the log-in information for WalletFlo.
Of course, you know to never use the same login credentials on the web.
Security Tip: Make sure your login information, especially your password is unique and you don’t use the same credentials on any of your bank websites.
Main Features
WalletFlo’s dashboard can show you all kinds of information and help you out figuring out the right card to use for different purchases. Everything here is just suggestions to optimize the use of your credit card(s). You still can choose to use different cards to pay for different categories. A reason would be that you are very close to an award you were looking for and only need a little bit more spend on a specific card to get it. It might be not the wisest to use this card in general but for you, as you will reach your goal, which of course only you can know.
Dashboard & Wallet Overview
The dashboard in the center gives you information about the annual fee of your cards if they have any. Most cards do nowadays. Hover over one of the horizontal bar graphs and WalletFlo will tell you what cards would be an upgrade or downgrade from your current card and what the annual fees would be of these cards. Very helpful if you try to cut back in annual fee spend. But don’t forget, you will also lose the benefits which come specifically with this card.
If you click on Annual Fees to the left of the bar graph, you get a breakdown of your annual fees by months. This shows you, what months you have to pay how much annual fees and for what cards.
Check the very first tab in the menu on the left. This is by default “Wallet” when you open your account. This section gives you a list of all your credit cards in your possession.
My Cards
shows you the total amount of credit cards you have and when you open up the submenu, by clicking on it, you get a breakdown by the issuer bank of your cards. By clicking on the “+” next to it, you can add another credit card to your portfolio. Remember, this is just to track cards and not to actually register for a new credit card.
Closed Accounts
To help WalletFlo to work best, you also have to add your closed accounts to the system. Why? Some cards can only be applied for once, then there is Chase’s 5/24 rule when it comes to applying for a new credit card.
If you don’t know what 5/24 means, here the short version. Your application for a personal Chase credit card will get denied if you applied for 5 or more credit cards in the last 24 months. It doesn’t matter if these cards were issued by Chase or another bank.
So don’t forget to add your closed accounts.
Cheat Sheet
Here you can find a list of what card to use for what charges. In my example you can see, that the best card to use for “Dining” would be the Chase Sapphire Preserve while paying for Airfare an American Express would be better. The Cheat Sheet also shows the multiplier for these categories like 3x or 5x and the percentage value for the points earned.
Apps (Applications)
The next tab in the menu on the left is for your applications. Add here the applications for future cards you like to get. You can also set a checkmark during this process to get notified when you are compliant to get this card. For example Chase’s 5/24 rule. In the other two categories, you can add applications for which you are awaiting a decision and denied applications.
This is a great way to keep track of all your applications from now on.
Points
Don’t we all love points and miles? They are a great way to make life more rewarding if used right. This tab is an extended version of the Cheat Sheet you find under the Wallet tab.
In the points tab, you see a list with all categories where you earn bonus points with the cards you currently have. In addition to the specific categories, you can also see how much your cards would earn on every day spent which doesn’t fall in any of the bonus categories.
Click on the “i” behind every card to see restrictions and additional information that apply for some of the cards. For example, let us look at the category “Hotel”. It shows that the Amex Platinum would earn 5x points per dollar spent. Now if we click on the little “i” we see that we earn these 5x points only on hotels booked through amextravel.com and must be prepaid. Alternatively, we could use our Chase Sapphire Reserve which earns 3x on Travel (which includes hotels) but has no specific restrictions. There are still some parts you have to be aware of, but WalletFlo tries to give you the best options available.
Fees
This is probably a tab we don’t like to see. Why? It will show you how much you spend yearly only on credit card fees. Both cards, the American Express Platinum and the Chase Sapphire Reserve had their fees increased from $450/year to $550/year. This would add up to a total of $1100 you just spent every year to have these two cards.
But WalletFlo is smart and it also shows you your total effective fees. This is a bit of a hypothetical number as for it to be true, you have to use all the credits each card offers.
Furthermore, in this tab, you can see a breakdown per card and see exactly how much the fee for each card is and what credits, if any, the cards come with.
For example, the American Express Platinum Card comes with a $100 Saks Credit, which is split into two $50 credits. One for the first and one for the second half of the year. If you are a big Saks shopper this is definitely a plus but what if you shop at Saks just to make use of this credit. Are you able to buy something for $50 flat? Probably unlikely. Either you won’t use enough of your $50 credit or you will pay more than that.
Advanced Features
Don’t go away yet. There are more features that WalletFlo has for you.
Notifications
Click on Notification Preferences and you will get a whole ist with notifications you can enable and disable. All of them are very useful and I would recommend you to enable all, even when you think you are on top of your game. It never hurts to have a failsafe in place.
Secondary Profile
As of right now, you can only create one additional profile. This could be your husband or wife for which you manage the cards. Or maybe you want to separate your Personal Cards from your Business Cards. It’s up to you. The intended use is for a second person, as you get asked for the name of this person. But you can just put anything like I did here and named the person “Test” and nickname “Demo”.
To add a second profile, click on the “+” next to your Nickname right under the WalletFlo logo in the top left corner.
Conclusion
Even though the website just launched, it makes a solid impression and has lots of useful features. There are a few features missing I know from a similar website, which is called Travel Freely (Affiliate Link: I might get a free T-shirt if you sign up through my link). I would love to see what my current 5/24 status is and which cards are in this status and for how long I have to wait before they fall out of 5/24.
I really love the dark theme of the website but that’s just my personal preference. What do you guys think? This website is for sure a great resource to manage your credit cards. Unfortunately, there is no app for your smartphone and the website doesn’t seem to be optimized to work on small screens, like the one of a smartphone. But as mentioned, this website is still in beta and will be continually improved.
Peter has a passion for Traveling, Photography, and Geocaching. These are the best ingredients for amazing adventures all over the globe. “Traveling is fun, no matter if you stay in a luxury hotel or travel like a backpacker.” Peter shares his experiences on his Blog www.gatetoadventures.com
Some of Peter’s photos are published on corporate websites, in-flight magazines, travel guides, and much more.
