American Express Gift Cards 2.2% Cashback - Be Frugal

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Update 1/28/2015 - Back down to 1.5%

Be Frugal is offering 2.2% cashback for buying American Express Gift Cards. This is a very good sign considering there was a time when American Express Gift Cards disappeared from all the shopping portals.


American Express Gift Cards have long been one of my best buds in the manufactured spending world. Unfortunately, with the demise of Amazon Payments, they are far less useful, but they still can have their uses, especially loading RedBird cards.

What Can I Do With This Deal?

The maximum you can buy per person is $10,000 per 15 business days (this is new). If you purchase more than $5,000, your shipment will require a signature upon arrival. If you bought $10,000 last week, you are out of luck for this week. 2.2% is $200 cashback from Be Frugal. Purchase fees and shipping fees come out to $24.75.

Before I get into any heavy math, I will give you a preview of what you will get:

1. 4% cashback everywhere or $110.50 with a Fidelity American Express.
2. Meet a spending threshold and make $35 on a 1% cashback card
3. "Buy" your favorite miles for under a penny per point.

1) Fidelity American Express

• 2% cashback everywhere. For a $10,024.75 order, this comes out to $200.50 from Fidelity and $200 from Be Frugal. After fees, this comes out to about $400.50, which is 4% cashback to spend anywhere. Not too shabby!

2) Meet a Spending Threshold

• Recently signed up for a credit card and need to spend money to get the bonus? Me too! You can buy these gift cards to put money on your credit card now and use these gift cards over time.
• Assuming your credit card gets 1% cashback on every purchase, you will get $100 cashback from your credit card and $200 from Top Cashback for a total of $300 after fees or 3% cashback while meeting a spending threshold at the same time.

3) Buy Miles Cheaply

• You can take this as an opportunity to buy 10,000 miles on your favorite credit card for a very cheap price. You would want to cash out the gift cards to make it worthwhile. That comes next.

Using American Express Gift Cards

What should you do with these gift cards once you buy them?

1. Spend them like an American Express credit card. You can buy three $3,000 gift cards and one $1,000 card. I recommend not using them on any purchase that you might want to return so that you don't have to keep track of them later.
2. Cash out at Target with RedBird.  You would not be using your regular credit card to load.
3. Cash out elsewhere.  I don't know of any way to do this cheaply. You can use Google Wallet to send money to a friend (read: my wife) who can then withdraw to a bank account. This costs a whopping 2.9% or $290. You will keep about $9,710 of the $10,000.

• With Fidelity American Express you will end up keeping about $110.50 for about half an hour of work.
• If you are meeting a spending threshold on a 1% card, you will be $10 ahead and still be $10,000 closer to your target
• If you are buying miles, you will be getting 10,000 miles at a fee of $0.009 per mile.
• You are "buying" 10,000 miles for $90 after fees

No promo codes! Your cashback will be invalidated.


HT - Quickdeals from Frequent Miler