Buy Money Orders at Western Union with Visa Gift Cards

I've talked about buying money orders with Visa Gift Cards at Pathmark before.  My local Pathmark has a Western Union area that sells money orders and you can pay with cash or debit cards.  Visa gift cards count as debit cards.  Your pin does not need to be set for One Vanilla or Metabank visa gift cards is the last 4 digits of the card number on the front.

The fee is $0.99 for up to a $1,000 money order and you can use two Visa Gift Cards to pay for one money order (split payment). There is a $1 fee for each debit card.  Total fees are $3.

Pathmark - 1 Money Order with 2 Visa Gift Cards!

I went to Pathmark the other night armed with 2 $500 Visa Gift Cards.  I had already confirmed that I could buy a money order with a Debit Card (Read = Visa Gift Card) at Pathmark.  The fee is $0.99 for up to a $1,000 Money Order, but I wondered whether you can combine 2 cards in one purchase in order to pay the fee one time.


I walked over to the Western Union area (the same place you return items to) and asked for a Money Order for $999.  I did not mention that I would be paying with two cards.  I swiped the first card and was approved for $500 from the first card automatically.  The POS machine asked for a new form of payment so I swiped the second card and was approved again.  Success!



Next, the cashier asked for the card and my ID to check to make sure they are the same.  Well, the card doesn't have a name on it.  I showed her the card and said there is no name, but I pointed to the "Debit" sign on the card.  She had already charged the card so she said, "ok, I guess."


Moral of the story:  Don't mention anything unless they ask beforehand to see the card.  Just start paying.  Just like every other deal, every store manager can have their own rules.  If they say ask for an ID, say "Ok, thank you," leave and come back when another manager is working.   The same thing if they say Cash only (my brother reported this).



Technically, I could have bought a card for $999.01 since the fee is $0.99, but I thought that would sound awfully strange and my goal is always to stay under the radar.

Coming Soon

Even better would be if we can figure out a way to get a Debit Card with you name on it that can be reloaded with a credit card.

Hmm, working on that now.  We'll see where that goes.  Stay tuned over the next couple of weeks as I experiment.

Liquidating Visa Gift Cards at Pathmark on the Cheap with Money Orders - Great for Teaneck

For quite some time, it has been a lot easier for me to buy Visa Gift Cards at a very high cashback rate than it has been to liquidate those gift cards.  I have often stopped myself from buying more because I already have too many.

My usual go to ways of buying Visa Gift Cards are in store from Pathmark and online from Staples. Couple that with the fact that I have been buying a lot of American Express gift cards lately and I have too much money in gift cards and not enough ways to unload them.  So, what is a manufactured spender to do?

Liquidating Gift Cards

Amazon Payments has been great for the American Express gift cards, but that still leaves me lacking for the Visa gift Cards since there is a max of $2,000 a month between myself and my wife.


Evolve Money is a wonderful and free tool, but it only gets me about $350 a month during the spring/fall and maybe about $450 a month during the summer/winter when my energy bills are higher.


For most people, Walmart is the way to go.  You can load up to $5,000 a month to Bluebird for free or buy lots of Money Orders for $0.70 each with a Debit Card (Visa Gift Cards are considered Debit Cards for this purpose).  The problem for me is that I live in Teaneck and the nearest Walmart is about 30 minutes away and I just can't justify the time.

Pathmark - My New Favorite Store, Again

I have been trying to find alternate stores that accept credit or debit cards for Money Orders, largely unsuccessfully, and I finally found one that works well for me.  Pathmark, which is less than a 5 minute drive from my apartment in Teaneck.

One can purchase a Western Union Money Order with a maximum of $1,000 on it with a debit card.  The fee for the MO is $0.99 or 0.1%.

Today I brought a $500 Visa Gift Card to Pathmark.  I asked for a Money Order of $498.  Success!  I chose that amount to account for the $0.99 fee and a possible $1 hold on the card that sometimes happens.  I came home and checked the balance and I had $1.01 on it, which means that there was never a $1 hold since that would take days to come off.

Next time I would ask for a Money Order with $499.01 so that I wouldn't have any money on the Visa Gift Card.

I don't know if you can pay for a $1,000 Money Order with split tender of 2 $500 cards for the same $1 fee, that will be my next experiment.  If someone has experience with that please comment.

$20 from Pathmark for Buying Gift Cards

Update: The weekly circular (pages 6-7) reports that this deal will last until 12/12.  If you spend $50 on gift cards, you get $5 off, if you spend $100, you get $10 off.  $200 gets a $20 coupon.  $500 gets $60 off.  This works on any type of gift card from the rack (I assume Pathmark gift cards are excluded but I'm not sure).


I was doing my usual monthly shopping at Pathmark for $500 Visa gift cards on the AMEX Blue Preferred for 6% cashback when a coupon printed out from the machine.  I don't usually pay much attention to the automatic coupons because they aren't very relevant, but I always stuff them in my bag until I get home.


When my wife looked at the coupon she asked me if I looked at it.  I said no.  She said, "Here, look!"


I was shocked to see that the coupon was for $20 off your next shopping trip of $20 or more! It says thank you for participating in our holiday gift card program.  No, thank you!  3 of them printed out for me!

$60 towards shopping.  Who can't spend $60 at a grocery store?  Since I just went shopping, I guess we will be having about $20 worth of meat this shabbos, and next shabbos and the shabbos after that! Anyone coming for a meal?


I will clearly be going back again this week to get some more Visa gift cards.  I don't know when the sale ends, but worst case scenario I'll just get some more $500 Visa Gift cards for some extra cash.  I usually go at about 11pm, see you there?




You can get the AMEX Blue Preferred - 6% cashback groceries up to $6,000 a year with a $75 annual fee - at this link ($100 bonus) or you can email me and I'll send you a link so that I can get a bonus as well and you will get a $150 bonus.

$500 Visa Gift Cards at Parthmark in Teaneck - Free Money

Free Money - Teaneck Style

Update 7/4 - Reader SW astutely pointed out that Pathmark is part of the company known as A&P.  They sell under the following labels:

Pathmark
A&P
Waldbaum's
Food Basics USA
Food Emporium
Super Fresh

Look out for the $500 visa gift cards in all of their stores.  Hey, you never know.

In addition, $500 visa gift cards have been found at Stop & Shop stores.


As part of my continual research for free money in Teaneck, NJ I have been looking for $500 gift cards at grocery stores.  Even before I moved I asked a couple people to look out for them.  Thanks IB for checking it out for me.

I went to Pathmark on 80 New Bridge Road in Bergenfield and found the Holy Grail.  Pathmark stocks  $500 Visa gift cards that can be bought with a credit card.  The most amazing part for me was that I saw veyr intelligent people walking right past them and not buying them.  There were a couple racks of them.  How could this be?

This is what you should look for.

As you can see from my online account, the purchase has been categorized as a grocery purchase

Who Cares?

I'm making quite a fuss about this, but why do I care and more importantly why should you care?  The answer is simple, this is an easy opportunity to have a free lunch.

There are credit cards that have special cashback rates for grocery stores.  The two big ones are American Express Blue Preferred and American Express Blue Everyday.

The Blue Everyday card gets you 3% cashback at grocery stores up to $6,000 a year.  If you buy one single $500 gift card there is a $6 fee.  You will get $15 in cashback so a net of $9 or 1.8% cashback.  A nice haul, but not incredible.

The Math for the year.  3% of $6,000 is $180.  $72 of fees brings it down to $108.  Probably not worth your time unless you go to Pathmark and Walmart anyways.

The Blue Preferred gets you 6% cashback on groceries up to $6,000 a year but with a $75 annual fee.  One $500 gift card gets you $30, a net of $24 or 4.8% cashback.  That is very exciting!

The math for the year.  6% of $6,000 is $360.  Annual brings it down to $285 (I got the sign up bonus so annual fee doesn't bother me).  $72 of fees for buying the gift cards and your total haul is $213 per card for not much work.  I have 2 cards so that will be $426 a year extra.  Not too shabby!

Using the Gift cards

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

• Use them like a credit card.  
• You are now getting 4.8% cashback everywhere up to $6000 a year!
• Gift cards can be annoying to keep track of as they start to get in the $20 or less range.  You also want to hold on to them in case you return anything because it usually will go right back on that card.

• Cash them out with Bluebird at Walmart
• These cards are issued by Metabank so you can add a pin to the gift card by calling up (the last 4 digits of the account number should also work but I haven't tried it yet).
• Once you have a pin you can bring it to Walmart and add to your Bluebird account and pay your credit card bill with it. If you bring two cards at a time you have just made $48

Maximizing The Deal - Easy There Cowboy

There are natural limits to this.  You get 6% back on up to $6,000 at grocery stores, after that you only get 1%.  

I have two Blue Preferred cards, one for me and one for my wife.  I now buy one $500 gift card every month.  Once I max out the $6000, I will begin to use my Blue Everyday card for my grocery purchases and get 3% on groceries + over $400 a year!

If that gets maxed out too (life is expensive but unlikely) I will switch my grocery purchases to the Bank of America Cash Rewards, which I normally only use for gas, but gives you back 2.2% at groceries if you have a Bank of America Checking Account.

Don't be an idiot - don't buy $6,000 worth of gift cards in one month.  You have the same $6,000 max for the year whether you buy $500 at a time or $3,000.  If you don't live in Teaneck, I would feel comfortable buying $1,000-$1,500 at a time to avoid extra trips and to minimize the chances that I've already cleared their shelves, jk.