5 x $20 Silver Superman Coins from Royal Canadian Mint for $100 with No Fees - Canadian Citizens Only

The Royal Canadian Mint is offering a set of 5 $20 Silver Superman coins for $100.

The coins are legal tender in Canada so you can deposit them in the bank or you can try and sell them on eBay for extra money.

Let's Not Forget that Manufactured Spending is a Hobby!

Lately, there have been a lot of posts on the topic of cost benefit analysis of Manufactured Spending.

It mostly started after twitter was blowing up about earning $9.70 per AmEx Card via Ticketmaster with AmEx Express Checkout.  Many were questioning whether it was really worth the time and effort?



Blogger Reactions:


Matt, the head of Saverocity, feels that we are chasing too many small deals. We should be chasing the bigger deals.  The deals that will make a real difference in our bottom line.

William of DoC points out that he has different times in his life, some hours are more valuable than others.  If during his "free time" he can earn an extra $100, even better.

Shawn at Miles to Memories thinks we should all be calculating our ROI (Return on Investment) in Manufactured Spend relative to time invested and only focus on the most lucrative deals.

Chuck at DoC is also constantly calculating his ROI relative to time.

Freequent Flyer Book doesn't put a premium on his time. He is interested in saving/earning the most number of dollars from his dollars.


I respect all of these approaches, but my personal approach is actually quite different.

Manufactured Spending is My Hobby and I Enjoy It!

If MS was my job, there is no question that all the posts above would be correct.

It may not be The Hobby, but it is my hobby.


My wife likes to say that "some people collect trains and stamps, you collect gift cards.  At least your hobby brings in money instead of costing money!"

This is the approach I take to manufactured spending.  I enjoy it, I really do.  Does it take a lot of time?  Absolutely.  I might be better off doing something else, but I don't want to do something else!

@Made_By_Hugo asked on Twitter

Pause for thinking: if u won the Mega millions would you still MS? If so / not so, why / why not?

My answer on Twitter:

yes. Totally addicted. Love that feeling of a good deal!

I would like to add as well that I don't just love a good deal.  I love efficiency and maximizing.  When I can stack multiple savings at once, that's the best.

I love going to the grocery store, buying a $2,000 of Visa/Mastercard Gift Cards on my Old Blue Cash, earning $80 (once liquidated) and earning fuel points at the same time.  I went this week, bought $1,000 worth, earned $40, saved $2.00 a gallon and pumped gas for $0.19 a gallon!  On my 25 gallons between my car and my wife's car we saved over $50 besides the credit card rewards!  It doesn't get better than that.

I got into MS just like everyone else by the lure of cheap travel and extra money, but now I am totally hooked!

If you enjoy it too, don't let someone tell you that you are spending too much time doing it.  You are the arbiter of your own time.  If you want to focus only on the low hanging fruit, I get that.  If you think you are better off doing something else so go do something else, but if you enjoy it, go to town, even at Walmart!

Opportunities Are There for Real Money!

I don't want people to think that I do this for fun only.  First of all, my fun is commensurate with how much money I am making (and how much I needed to figure out for the deal ).  Second of all, I also know that at the end of the year I going to make some real money which adds up to real savings in my retirement and investment accounts.  It even seems like the amount of money grows every year as more deals are available and a lot of them from your Pajamas.


Take the last 2 months of American Express as examples of what can be possible:

$9.70 per AmEx card for Ticketmaster
$9.60 per AmEx card for Newegg
$10 per AmEx card for Allen Edmonds
$7.00 per AmEx card for Petco
$3 per AmEx card at Office Depot - Much more if you take advantage of the raise reselling promotion.
$20 off $100 at Staples - $14 off Visa Gift Cards
$15 off $79 at Walmart - $10 off Visa Gift Cards


I have over 30 AmEx cards between my primary and authorized users and my wife's cards.  I hope to increase that number significantly before Small Business Saturday in November (link is from 2014).  I'll let you do the math yourself.

The Staples and Walmart ones weren't available on all of mine, but the other ones were.  Throw in a few eBay gift card reselling deals (Link 1, 2 and 3) and you have quite a bit of money in the last couple months.

This doesn't include any credit card sign up bonuses, MS, fuel points, and reselling that I do.

My Takehome Lesson

I enjoy all these different facets of MS (I enjoy sharing the deals sometimes more than actually taking part in them) and I will continue to do it as long as I enjoy it.  I go less frequently for regular MS than I used to and you can pick and choose as well what you want to do.

It's important to note that I don't do every deal I talk about.  I almost never go to Walmart.  I don't enjoy the experience so it isn't worth my aggravation.  The employees at Family Dollar are much more pleasant so I go there instead, even though it isn't as lucrative per trip.


You are your own MS gatekeeper, choose deals as you please!

iPad Air 2 16GB $359 This Week at Target Via Cartwheel App

Update: You can buy Target eGift Cards from Gift Card Zen for 7.5% off.  These gift cards can be used online only unless you enter the gift card into the Target App.    Keep in mind that there is a 4 gift card per online order limit so $25 denominations might have a better discount, but are not as useful.


HT - DA via email communication pointing me to Fat Wallet

Target is having a major sale on iPad 16GBs this week (7/5-7/11)!

16GB iPad are normally $499 and are $399 this week.  Use the Cartwheel App for 10% off, dropping the price to $359 before tax.

One Crazy Day of MS Activities...

Today was a majorly hectic day for Manufactured Spend activities for me.

• It all started with this post from Doctor of Credit.  eBay was offering 20% off any item with a maximum discount of $80.
• I tried to buy eBay gift cards, but PayPal hates me, sometimes.  I wasn't able to buy anything sold by PayPal.  Instead I bought $400 of Staples gift cards sold by Gift Card Mall for $330.32 which is 17.4% off because of shipping fees.  
• I also earned $6.60 in eBay Bucks and $3.63 from Top Cashback.  That was a great start to the day!
• The deal went dead before I could post about it.  It came back again, but died very quickly again

The Next Manufactured Spend Frontier - Reselling Gift Cards and Merchandise for Fun and Profit!

Credit card sign up bonuses are by far the easiest way to get a lot of points and miles quickly.  The only problem is that if you get too many to quickly it can have some short term negative effects on your credit and you may start get rejected for cards.

After credit card bonuses, manufactured spend is usually the avenue of choice.  The problem with the usual manufactured spend is that avenues are constantly changing and it can be tough to keep up.  In addition, the most lucrative techniques are usually not talked about publicly on blogs.  

Also, many credit card issuers don't like this too much (not as lucrative for them and can look like fraud).  Some have been known to shut down accounts for this very reason (often justification is Perk Abuse - Why do you have the perk if it is abuse to use it?  I digress). 

So when you have exhausted all the worthwhile standard manufactured spend techniques, what is a points/cashback aficionado supposed to do?

 

Prepaid Card Loadable with Credit Card with Bill Pay Function

There is a new prepaid card making the rounds of Flyertalk and the Blogosphere.  If the reports are true, this card has the potential to be a game changer.  More likely, this deal will die a quick death due to more exposure or will lead to many shutdowns with people having money tied up for a while with MetaBank.

Nationwide Visa Buxx - Emergency Manufactured Spending Method

I bet you didn't even know that there was such a thing as emergency manufactured spending.  I mean, seriously, what is that?

Emergency manufactured spending happens when you have signed up for 8 credit cards in the last two months and you have activated each one and completed the spending required for the sign up bonus.  Everything is perfect, right?  Well, what about that one credit card that you put in your "to do pile" on your desk and forgot to take care of, just like everything else on your desk (is that just my desk?)?  Or, what happens when you go to your favorite 3 lettered drug store to buy some gift cards only to find out that they are out of stock and now, you have 2 days to complete $3,000 of spending or lose out on your bonus.  That, my friends, is a true manufactured spending emergency.



How are you going to spend that money without a big ding to your wallet?  This is where the Nationwide Visa Buxx comes in.  It isn't my go to tool, but it is always good to have a few tricks in your pocket.  Manufactured spending is an every changing game of Wack a Mole.  You don't want to be left needing to spend $10,000 in the next 3 months and no way to complete that spending because Vanilla Reload has been discontinued (Do people still use those?) or because Paypal shut down your account!  The nerve, seriously!



Nationwide Visa is a prepaid debit card designed to help your teenager with spending.  You sign up for an account and add your "teen" onto your account and a prepaid debit card will come in the name of your teen.  Funds can be added via Visa or Mastercard credit cards.  Cash can then be withdrawn via ATM.  While this is a fine system, the fees associated with the method make it, for the most part, not worth very much if you aren't in hitting a spending threshold.

Not Just for Teens

While the account is billed for teens, anyone can be a teen, since we are all teens at heart.  Seriously though, anyone can get an account.  Enter any correct social security number and that same person's correct age and you can get a card, even if your "teen" is your spouse who is 45.

Adding and Withdrawing Money and Fees

You can load up to $500 a day online, but you can only have a maximum of $1,000 in your account at any one time.  There is a $2 load fee so $1,000 will cost you $4.  Your first load will cost $5 for the permanent card, but according to Flyertalk you can use promo code 02050053 to remove that fee.


You can withdraw up to $200 at a time, but you can only withdraw up to $200 per seven days.

If you use an Allpoint ATM, there is no fee from Allpoint and a $1 fee from Nationwide Visa Buxx.  My local CVS pharmacies seem to all have Allpoint ATMs.  More on that later! Withdrawing $1,000 will therefore cost you $5 and will require 5 separate trips to the ATM over 5 weeks.  Kind of a bummer!


When you combine all fees, it costs $9 and fives trip to the ATM to manufacture a measly $1,000. If you assume you are loading with a standard 1% card, you get $10 of rewards for a gain of $1 after fees.  Not something worthwhile on a regular basis, but maybe something to consider to reach a spending threshold.


If you have a spouse you can get one account for each person and spend up to $2,000 a month.

Possible Manufactured with Bank of America Preferred Rewards?

The previous fee structure assumed a 1% earning credit card.  That isn't the only option.  You can't use Fidelity American Express because they won't accept American Express to load money.  Don't use a Citibank card like the Citi Double cash (2% cashback that isn't American Express) because Citibank codes the loads as cash advances and you will be charged a fee.



You can use a Bank of America Cash Rewards card connected to Preferred Rewards which will get you 1.75% or $17.50 cashback for every $1,000 you load.  The $9 in fees cuts it to $8.50 overall or $17 for two for the same number of ATM trips.  However, if you consistently go somewhere that has an Allpoints ATM, you might be willing to go through this for the $8.50 or $17.  I'm not willing, at least yet, except for a sign up bonus, but that's ok.



HT - flyertalk thread and Freequent Flyer Book

Target American Express Prepaid REDcard - AKA RedBird - Big MS Opportunity!

Within the last couple of months, Target and American Express have combined to come out with a new Prepaid card called REDcard, not to be confused with the regular Target REDcard, which is their regular store credit/debit card.


The features of the Prepaid REDcard are so similar to Bluebird and Serve that it is simply referred to as RedBird in the Blogosphere.  So similar, in fact, that you can only have one of the 3 accounts.  If you have Bluebird or Serve, you will have to cancel your account before you can get a REDcard.

Why You Should Care

REDcard is a major upgrade from Serve/Bluebird for Manufactured Spending if you live near a Target.  You can add up to $5,000 monthly to your REDcard at any Target register with any credit card and zero fees.  You can then pay your credit card bill directly from the money in REDcard account or withdraw the money to your Bank Accouint.

A regular Target REDcard gives you a 5% discount at Target and REDcard is no different, you will get the same 5%.

Limits

- $5,000 of monthly fee free credit card 

- $2,500 daily limit

- $500 limit for temporary version

You need to make two trips a month to Target to get the full $5,000.

How to Get the Card

To get a REDcard, you need to buy a temporary version in store and register it online to receive a permanent card.  The temporary version looks like this:

Unfortunately, the temporary version of Redbird is currently only available in certain states.  

Once you have the permanent version, you can load it with a credit card at any Target Location.

You can have someone else buy a RedBird card for you.  If you are buying for someone else, put in your information when buying the temporary card and then the personal information can be changed when registering for the permanent card.  You can only buy one temporary card per social security number per day.

Category Bonuses

You load at regular Target checkout lines so it is possible that if your Target has a pharmacy or is considered a grocery store that you might be able to get category bonuses on your credit card.  I haven't seen anyone confirm this.  Even if that doesn't work, you can still load with Fidelity American Express (2% everywhere) and get $100 per REDcard every month!  That's sweet!

You can still load $1,000 a month with a Debit Card online, like a Paypal Business Debit card, for even more money.  Paypal Business Debit gets 1% for loading to Serve, I assume the same will be true with Redbird

REDcard vs. Serve

There are a few differences between Serve and Redbird.  Serve can be loaded online with a credit card for free, but only up to $1,500 a month with Softcard.  Redbird's $5,000 monthly limit is much higher.  

There are only two reasons to prefer Serve:

1) If you have no Target that's convenient, Redbird is not for you.

2) If you really care about Amex promotions like Small Business Saturday.  I assume this will be added to Redbird eventually, but it is currently only available on Serve and Bluebird.  I haven't switched until now because my Serve accounts were worth $300 between myself and my wife and our subaccounts.

Other than that, Redbird kicks Serve in the pants! Enjoy it while it lasts.  Once it shuts down, I'm sure we'll find something else in our perpetual game of Manufactured Spending Whack a Mole.

I hope to be switching soon once someone from a different state sends it too me.

You can read more from Frequent Miler, Doctor of Credit, DansDeals and Flyertalk

Oren's Money Saver Beginner's Guide Part 4 - Manufacured Spend

Check out the other posts in the Beginner's Guide Series

Part 1 - Introduction
Part 2 - Maximize Savings Through Credit Cards
Part 3 - Savings Without Using Credit Cards

Manufactured Spend

What is Manufactured Spend?  Manufactured Spend is a way to create credit card spending (and the points that come with them) while keeping your fees to as close to zero as possible.  Usually, this involves buying American Express/Visa/Mastercard Gift cards, but not always.

Some of these techniques are lucrative and don't require much time commitment. Others require more time or aren't as lucrative.

In general, manufactured spend is most lucrative for sign up bonuses where you need to spend a certain amount of money to get a very large bonus. It is less lucrative on your credit card's category bonuses, but it can still be worth it.  Most of my personal Manufactured Spend is on the credit card category bonus type.  It can really add up over the course of the year

Ongoing vs. Limited Time Offers

There are two types of manufactured spend; ongoing offers and limited time offers. 

Limited Time Offers

Sometimes, a store will run a promotion that works very nicely for manufactured spend.  For example, in 2013 Office Max ran a promotion that gave you $15 off $150 of American Express gift cards.  The promotion negated the fees and in fact you made money before any credit card bonuses.  These types of promotions can be very lucrative, but they are by nature limited time offers so you can't count on any specific deals.

Ongoing Offers

Ongoing offers are where it's at and where you want to be.  The problem with ongoing offers is that sometimes they turn into limited time offers, like Amazon Payments A"H.

Here are a couple of ongoing offers.   

• Serve
• $1,000-$1,500 a month of no fee credit card spending, depending whether you have the app formally known as ISIS.  Withdrawals are simple as well.  See this post for more details. 
• No specific credit card required, but don't use a card that is processed by American Express, unless you don't want the credit card points.  You will receive rewards with your Fidelity American Express since it is processed by FIA Card Services, not American Express.  Confused?  Me too.  

• Visa Gift Cards at Grocery Stores
• Some grocery stores sell Variable load Visa/MC/AMEX gift cards that can be loaded with up to $500 for a $6 fee.   American Express Blue Preferred gets 6% cashback at grocery stores so you will get $24 cashback after fees for every $500 you buy (4.8%).
• $75 annual fee is well worth it, but cuts into your profits.

• The Power Trio
• Combination of 5% cashback at pharmacies, Paypal Business Debit and Serve.  'Nough Said.

• $200 Visa Gift Cards at Staples
• These come with a hefty $7 fee (3.5%) so why on earth would you buy these?  The Chase Ink series of business credit cards gives you 5% cashback at Office Supply stores so you will get 1,035 Ultimate Rewards points.
• If the card is a Visa Card, you will get an extra 1% cashback for signing up with visasavingsedge.com  Those points can be transferred to lucrative airline and hotel partners if you have a Chase card that earns Ultimate Rewards points with an annual fee. You need to travel a lot to make this worthwhile.  I don't personally go this route because even I think it is too annoying.  Check out this post from Dan's Deals for more details.

• 5% categories with Specific Credit Cards
• Chase Freedom
• 5% rotating categories included Gas for 6 months of the year.  7-11 is usually considered a gas station and you can buy Visa Gift Cards and Paypal reload cards there.
• Discover it
• Same thing as Chase Freedom for 3 months of the year and also have online purchases for 3 months of year.  Visa gift cards can be bought online for 5% back.
• Citi Dividend
• 5% rotating categories included pharmacies this past year when you could still buy Vanilla Reloads at Pharmacies.  We will see for next year.

• American Express Gift Cards
• For the moment these are on hold, but it used to be possible to buy up to $5,000 worth of American Express Gift Cards and receive 4.66% cashback.  Hopefully this deal will come back, but we'll see.

Our last discussion in this series will revolve around liquidating all of the gift cards you just bought after this post.

Oren's Money Saver Beginner's Guide Part 2 - Using Credit Cards for Maximum Savings

Check out the other posts in the Beginner's Guide Series

Part 1 - Introduction
Part 3 - Savings Without Credit Cards
Part 4 - Manufactured Spend

Using Credit Cards for Maximum Savings

I have a George Costanza wallet.  

I am currently carrying 16 cards.  I have credit cards, debit cards and gift cards and I actively use each one of them.  The number will vary, but I always have plenty with me to save extra money over the course of the year.  It's probably somewhere between $3,000-$5,000 a year, but I don't know exact numbers.  To me, that's pretty significant. For others, it may not be as important.  

To be fair, much of that is from Manufactured Spend, as I will outline in a later post, but a lot is also just from using the right credit card in the right situation.

I am well aware that it isn't normal to carry so many cards.  I also don't give my wife quite as many cards, though she has plenty and is a good sport about it.  I think most people would get a headache from it but, check this out, I really enjoy it.  

If you don't want to carry so many cards, don't, but just because you don't want to carry 16 doesn't mean that you don't want to carry 2 or 3.  You never know, you may start adding cards as you learn more.  I know, wishful thinking.

Which Cards Do I Actually Use?

First of all, check out the list of My Favorite Credit Cards.

This is my list with a short blurb on why I have it, but it doesn't include any cards that I happen to have in my wallet because I need to spend money for a signup bonus.

1. American Express Gift Cards
1. Over 4% cashback everywhere.
2. Visa Gift Cards
1. Over 5% cashback everywhere.  Not for normal spend if I can avoid it because I don't have an unlimited supply and Visa gift cards are more valuable than AMEX gift cards for manufactured spend.  More, in later posts.
3. American Express Fidelity
1. 2% cashback everywhere
4. American Express Blue Preferred
1. 6% cashback on groceries, $6,000 max spending per year.  $75 annual fee.
5. Bank of America Cash Rewards
1. Soon to be 5.25% cashback on gas for highrollers with Bank of America (100k)
6. American Express Blue Cash (AKA Old AMEX Blue)
1. 5% cashback at pharmacies, grocery stores and gas after $6,500 spending per year in those categories.  Very useful for manufactured spend.  Part of my Power Trio.
7. Chase Freedom
1. 5% cashback in useful rotating categories.  Very useful for manufactured spend.
8. Discover it
1. 5% cashback in useful rotating categories.  Very useful for manufactured spend.
9. Citibank Dividend
1. 5% cashback in useful rotating category (hint: pharmacies).  Very useful for manufactured spend.
10. Bank of America Better Balance Rewards
1. $25-$30 per quarter for making one purchase per month.
11. Chase Ink Business Cards
1. 5% cashback at office supply stores.
12. PenFed American Express Airlines
1. 4.25% cashback on airline purchases
13. Paypal Business Debit
1. Debit card that can be reloaded from purchases at Drug Stores.  Very useful for manufactured spend.  Part of my Power Trio
14. Charles Schwab Debit Card
1. Refunded ATM fees anywhere in the world without limits.  You can go to ATM without thinking about it.

Notice that I have no Airline Credit Cards, no cards that are exclusively points/miles since I personally prefer cashback over miles.  Also, none of these cards have an annual fee except the Blue Preferred, which is clearly worth it in my opinion.

Am I missing anything?  Please comment with your thoughts.

Oren's Money Saver Beginner's Guide Part 1 - Introduction - Extra Cash and Savings In Your Pocket

Check Out the Other Posts in this Series:

Part 2 - Maximize savings through Credit Cards
Part 3 - Maximize savings without Credit Cards
Part 4 - Manufactured Spend



Some of my reader's have pointed out that the site can be confusing for the novice and recommended something to get started.  You are expected to know too much to just jump in.  Therefore, I've decided to write a Beginner's Guide to help everyone learn the basics of what they need to know to understand most deals.  The idea is for this to be a permanent series of posts that can always be accessed.  So, here goes:




Oren's Money Saver is here to help you do accomplish 2 things, just about everything else I talk about is related to those 2 goals:

What You Can Gain From Oren's Money Saver

1)  Extra savings on purchases


2) "Free" and, hopefully, easy money



Let's talk about each of these in more detail:

Extra savings on purchases

You are spending the money.  You might as well get as much back as possible.  Here is the basic structure.

1) Using the correct credit card

Different credit cards give back extra cashback at specific types of stores.  If you use the correct credit card, you can get extra savings.

2) Discounted Gift Cards

If I have a $100 Walmart gift card I received as a gift, but I don't want it, what can I do?  I might be able to sell it online for $90.  The website can then resell it for $95.  That means that a third person can buy it for 5% off and everyone is happy.  Every retailer is different in how much of a discount you will get.

3) Shopping Portals

Many websites, referred to as Shopping Portals, will give cashback for starting at their site first and then going to the website you want to end up in.  Many times, you can stack these savings with previously mentioned strategies for a "double or triple dip".  Again, some examples in later posts.

4) Promo Codes

Just by putting in a promo code you find online, you can get extra savings.  The savings can range from $1 to 40% or more off

5) Credit Card Specific Offers

Many credit cards, including American Express, Discover and Bank of America have limited time deals at specific merchants.  You usually have to spend a minimum amount on your card at that merchant.  If you combine all of these different ways of savings, it can really add up.

"Free" and, hopefully, Easy Money

Why and how would I be getting free money?  Well, there is rarely someone giving out money for nothing.  Usually the money is an incentive to get you to do something that they think will make money long term.  Sometimes, the extra work is worth it and sometimes it's not.  Here is the structure of how it usually works:

1) Sign up for new accounts 

This includes credit cards, checking accounts etc.  These usually don't require much explanation and are constantly in flux.  I sometimes talk about these as they come up, especially if the sign up bonus is much better than usual or it is extremely easy, but it usually less of my focus.  If you want to check out the best current sign up bonuses for credit cards, I recommend Frequent Miler's page on the topic.

2) Manufactured spend

Basically, this means buying money for a price that is equal to or less than the value of that money.  For example, let's say your local bank was selling shiny new $100 bills for $100 and allowed you to buy them with a credit card for no fees (RIP U. S. Mint coins).  You could buy those $100 bills and deposit them in the bank to pay your credit card bill.  You would be left with your credit card points/miles and no out of pocket expenses. 

That would be nice, but let's say they were selling the $100 bills for $97 with no fees.  I think we can all agree that situation is even better.  Sometimes, it costs $97 and sometimes it costs $100, but you can get extra cashback from your credit card to be the equivalent of paying $97.

Manufactured spend is just like that except using more complicated financial instruments.  Concrete examples (nothing new to regular readers) to be explained in later posts.

We will start next time with using your credit cards effectively to maximize savings and go in order from there.

My Manufactured Spend Habits

Accounts you will need to have to take advantage of these ideas.  Continue on to learn more about each one:

1. Serve
2. American Express Blue Preferred
3. Bank of America Platinum Privileges Credit Card
4. American Express Fidelity

I try to only post about stuff I actually do.  If I don't have personal, reliable information, I don't think it's usually worthwhile to write about.  There are plenty of other sites out there and I assume that most of my readers are reading them so they will probably read about it.

This is why you won't see me taking about the Nationwide Visa Buxx (see Frequent Flyer Book for more information) even though it is a pretty cheap way to manufacture spend if you have it.

The first thing you should know about me is that I have a full time job.  I don't have time to make a trip to the store to make $6.  I try to have a high earnings to time ratio.  Some of my friends might find that statement laughable (I'm looking at you JF), but everyone's line of time to money is different.

I also have no access to Walmart without the trip taking over an hour so I avoid going to Walmart.

So here goes my usual Manufactured Spend Habits.

•  American Express Gift Cards
• Lately, this has been my manufactured spend of choice since I can sometimes get as much as 5.8% cashback after fees (currently closer to about 4.5%). I never know how the portal deals will change.
• Minimum $24,000 a year since I can use Amazon Payments for $24,000 a year to get the money back.  I also use them for my regular spending since 5.8% cashback is better than I get on almost any card.
• Net gain about $1,100 annually

• Visa Gift Cards at the Grocery Stores - 4.8% cashback after fees. American Express Blue Preferred
• $12,000 a year - my wife and I both have cards.
• $150 bonus for signing up
• Net gain about $1,000 annually after annual fees

• Visa Gift Cards/Paypal Reload cards at Gas Stations - think slurpies - Bank of America Privileges. 3.3% after fees.
• $12,000 every year ($6,000 per account and I have two accounts).
• Net gain about $400 annually

• Serve - Free online credit card loads
• $24,000 per year - $1,000 every month.  Both my wife and myself have cards.
• If you sign up phone for ISIS Wallet, you can increase your limit to $1,500 a month.
• Net gain - about $480 annually (2% cashback with Fidelity American Express)

That's $72,000 of reliable manufactured spending a year, which nets me about $3,000 a year - not too shabby - I am going anyways to the grocery store and everything else except gas stations can be done online. 


This does not include category 5% bonuses or the automatic annual $240 I get from my 2 Bank of America Better Balance Cards.

Serve - Free and Automatic Manufactured Spend

Update: Starting in April 2015, you can longer load via Visa, Mastercard or Discover.  Fidelity American Express will work and still should earn points.

American Express has a number of different types of Prepaid Cards.  For a few years, their Bluebird card was the darling of the Blogosphere since it can be loaded with Vanilla Reload cards at a low cost and easily unloaded back into your bank account.  If you needed to hit a spending threshold, Bluebird was your friend.  With the demise of buying Vanilla Reloads with credit cards, people have been looking for alternatives.

Serve is a great alternative.  I didn't have Serve until this week because you can only have Serve or Bluebird, not both, and I've been too lazy to cancel Bluebird, but I'm sorry I didn't switch over sooner.

Major Advantages of Serve

1) Online credit card loads 

This reason and the next one are the only reason I switched over.  You can load $1,000 a month for free from a credit card. There is a limit of $200 a day, so you need 5 $200 loads to get to the $1,000

2) Automatic online credit card loads

You can set up Serve to automatically load money from your card.  I set it up to load $200 everyday.  The first 5 times of the month it works, and the rest it doesn't work because I've reached my maximum for the month.

3) Bill Pay

You can pay your credit card bills from Serve

4) Participates in American Express Offers

American Express has some great offers for their card holders.  Most prepaid cards are not eligible, but Serve cards and their subaccounts are eligible for American Express offers.

5) Load Visa Gift Cards at Walmart

Another major advantage Bluebird had was that you could load Visa Gift Cards onto your Bluebird card for free at Walmart.  That's still true, but it's also now true for Serve.

6) Connect your phone and Download the Isis app and load even more

Check here to see if you phone is eligible.  With Isis, your daily load limit goes up to $500 and your monthly load limit goes up to $1,500.

Major Disadvantage of Serve

1) $1 monthly fee - The fee is dropped if you load $500 a month.  That should be very easy if you set up automatic loads.






A couple of Notes:

1) You might need to call and verify your credit card info.  When I first set up my credit card on Serve I kept getting an error message when I tried to load with a credit card.  The message told me to call Serve.  I called and Serve called up my credit card company with me on the phone to verify that it is my credit card.

2) Not every credit card will work to get points.  American Express credit cards will load money to Serve, but you won't get points.  Citibank, Chase, Capital One, Barclays and FIA card services (including the 2% Fidelity American Express) all will earn points for the online loads.  If you use your Fidelity American Express you will get $20 every month for no work.

3) I need to spend exactly $1,000 a month for 16 months to get 2 miles per dollar on my Citibank AAdvantage card so this is perfect for me.



You can check out Frequent Miler's post on the topic

Also check out this Flyertalk Thread

Using the Final Balance of your Visa Gift Cards

Manufactured Spending with Vanilla Reloads

The point of Manufactured Spending is to artificially create spending on your credit card for little to no fees and still get points or cashback.  A perfect example is using your Citi Dividend at CVS for the first quarter of the year.  The dividend card is offering 5% cashback on up to $6,000 in purchases at drugstores until the end of March.  You can buy Vanilla Reload cards that get 5% cashback with only 1% in fees.  After fees, I am able to get about $252 without actually spending any money.

Manufactured Spending with Visa Gift Cards

One of the usual methods of Manufactured Spending when Vanilla Reloads aren't available is to use Visa Gift Cards.  It is quite simple to extract the money from a Vanilla Reload card back into your bank account online without any extra fees.

Visa Gift Cards, however, while they are getting easier to liquidate with methods that treat them as true Debit Cards (see Evolve, for example), are still more difficult to unload without fees.  You can always bring them to Walmart to load to Bluebird for free, but that is time consuming and can be a pain especially if Walmart isn't close to you.  You also have to deal with the People of Walmart.


One method to unload them is to spend them, Heaven forbid.  The obvious drawback is that you aren't using your other credit cards so you aren't generating any new points.  That being said, this method keeps things simple and some people aren't quite ready for that level of complexity yet (Your day will come, JF, we just aren't there yet).

Spending the Final Balance

The problem is what do you do with that final $1.37 when you keep getting rejected for insufficient balance?  Such a pain.  You can try to ask the store to split up the transaction, but sometimes it's hard to remember which card has $1.37 and which one has $0.52 on it.


Here's what I do: After I am rejected, the Visa Gift Card goes into a pile of cards that don't have much money on them.  I keep a few of them in my wallet at all times.

There are stores that will automatically remove the balance from that card and you don't have to know your exact balance.  If my purchase is $4.50 and my balance is $1.25, I swipe and the price goes down to $3.25 automatically.  This is not an exhaustive list.  I just know that these three work.

Dunkin' Donuts
Walgreens
7-11
Starbucks
Ralph's


Walgreen's is perfect for me because I can spend $4 on prescriptions every month and spend down my gift cards.

Do you know of others that work too?  Leave a comment and help everyone out!

American Express Gift Cards Fee Free at the Post Office

Update: A commenter reports that he was able to buy the gift cards with a credit card.  Tomorrow is the last day to buy them

From now until 12/12/2013, American Express gift cards have no fees when you buy them at the Post Office.

I don't know if they accept credit card, but if they do accept credit cards this is a really cheap way of meeting a spending threshold for a new credit card or for manufactured spending as these can be liquidated via Amazon Payments.  You can use these gift cards over time as well.

If anyone tries it, please leave a comment whether credit cards are accepted.

$200 of Visa/Mastercard Gift Cards at Office Max - $10 Free - Free Points

Update 6/19 - Leaving with a bang.  I went to an Office Max I've never been to before in Buffalo (1701 Niagara Falls Boulevard, Space 700) and asked if they have any $200 visa gift cards.  They pulled out a stack of them.  The lady did't know that it changed to one per customer and I was able to buy $2000 worth on multiple cards for net gain of $30 and 2,000 points!


Update - 6/18 - extended for another week

Update: 6/11 - My local office max started only allowing one per person which makes this far less lucrative.  Your local office max may or may not enforce this.


This week, June 9th-15th22nd, Office Max is offering $10 off the purchase of $200 or more in Visa or Mastercard gift cards.  Visa and Mastercard gift cards normally have a high activation fee that make this cost prohibitive.  However, with $10 off, it will more than cover the fee for the $200 cards.

There is a limit of one $10 bonus per transaction, not per household.  The limit is 35 per store, which comes out to $7,000 of gift cards so you might be able to make a nice amount of money pretty easily.

It is very unlikely that you will find any denominations larger than $200 and you might find $200 cards, but even if you only find $100, the discount will still cover the fee.


This is a chance to get some free spending on your credit card and maybe even to make some money on the actual purchase along the way.

Your Haul

Assuming you buy the $200 card with a $6.95 fee, you will have spent $196.95 on your credit card and you get a return of $3.05.

If pay with the American Express Fidelity card, you will get another $3.93 in cashback (2% cashback on everything) or just about $7 for every $200 card you buy.

Pay with a Chase Ink Bold, Ink Plus, Ink Classic or Ink Cash and you will receive 5 Ultimate Rewards points for every dollar you spend at Office Supply stores.  This will be close to 1,000 Ultimate Rewards points for every $200 you spend.  Remember that 80,000 Ultimate Rewards points get you a free trip to Israel on United, one of the transfer partners for premium Ultimate Rewards points!

What to do with your Cards

You can load the funds from your Visa or Mastercard gift cards that have pins onto a Bluebird prepaid card at Walmart and you will not have to actually spend the money on any of those gift cards.  It can be a pain depending on how many you buy, but clearly worth it in my book.

A Word of Caution

There is a limit of 1 per transaction but not one per household.  The limit is 35 per store which is $7,000.  You could theoretically keep buying them.

Don't be an idiot!

Don't put all of your purchases on one card.  It will look very shady to have $7000 of office max purchases on 35 transactions in one day or even one week and you will probably get a couple calls from the fraud department.  Bring all the cards you have and spread out your purchases if you can.