I am a whore for miles, part 1.

I don't usually have a large tax bill. I pride myself on usually being within 250 dollars one way or another of my witholdings. after all, why should the feds be getting interest on my dollars all year?

but not this year. The sale of the florida house means large dollars flowing out of my accounts in the next few days. So, tempted by a double mile offer, I decided to pay my fed bill with my UAL visa. Yes, I do pay a 2.9% fee for the honor, but I figure the 300 or so dollar fee is worth the almost 26000 miles I'll receive. (wish AA had such an offer, but no such luck). Anyway, I happily clicked away...and only then decided to check how much credit i actually had on the card. Oops...

Yes, my greed sent me over my credit line! I've never done that before, but I knew a hefty fee was in the offing. What to do? My first thought was to goonline and pay the entire amount upfront to the card company, figuring with a huge balance, there's no way I'd get dinged for spending an extra couple thousand. But no----that's impossible. You can only pay the balance due...which was 187 dollars.

So I looked at the other card acounts I have with this bank, and realized I had enough to pay the bill twice over, but spread out over 3 cards. Perhaps I could move a few thousand bucks in unused credit from one card to another.
so I got on the horn, only to find out i had to call back this morning when the credit line adjusting people were back at their desks. I just rang back, and the problem was solved in about 30 seconds.

Now...time for the state payment. Hmmm....that's worth about another 11000 miles....