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.

American Express for Target - Emergency Manufactured Spending, but Slightly Better

Update: you can no longer use credit cards to load this product.


It's always good to have a few tricks up your sleeve for Manufactured Spending.  If you need to spend a few thousand dollars for a credit card sign up bonus and you don't have access to more lucrative Manufactured Spending options, how can you do it quickly and inexpensively?  What happens when RedBird no longer allows credit card loads and you were banking (haha, get it?) on using that?  This is where your Emergency Manufactured Spending comes in.


In addition, some techniques like Nationwide Visa Buxx and American Express Gift Cards are not useful with Citibank credit cards since they will code the transaction as a Cash Advance.

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

Chase Starting to Charge Cash Advance Fees for Loading Serve?

Update: 10/6/2014 - As pointed out by Frequent Miler, Serve loads are still safe.  The loads start as a cash advance and then they change into regular credit card spending. 

According to this Flyertalk thread, there have been reports of people's credit card loads to Serve via a Chase Credit Card being coded as a Cash Advance starting today.  A cash advance gets no points and has a fee associated with it.

A lot of this is still unconfirmed, but please keep an eye out on how your credit card loads are being categorized.

You can always call the credit card company and change your cash advance limit to $0. Any transactions coded as cash advance will be declined instead of having a fee.




According to Flyertalk, the following has been found so far:

Oct 2nd- State of CC Loading to Serve

There are reports of NO cash advance for:

• Chase UA Explorer MC
• Chase Southwest Visa
• Also Barclay, Citi cards (Prestige, AA), Fidelity AMEX seem to be ok

There are reports of a cash advance on:

• Chase UA Club
• Chase UA Explorer Visa
• Chase Ink Bold Visa
• Chase Sapphire Preferred
• Also a Capital One card
• Discover IT

Earning and Using Frequent Flyer Miles - Part 2

Last Sunday, I gave a basic introduction to Frequent Flyer Points and Miles in Part 1 and I hope to continue that tradition every Sunday until I run out of helpful hints and tips.


As I already mentioned, I don't consider myself an expert in travelling cheaply.  I don't travel more than a few times a year and they are usually short haul domestic flights.  If you want to get real expert information, I would suggest the following blogs and forums.  Their authors travel a lot and really know the ins and outs of the different programs and are able to make a living blogging about it.  Much of my knowledge comes from them as well:

Here are my favorites:

• dansdeals.com - My favorite blog to read by far is dansdeals.com.  I check his blog every day, often a few times a  day, and his knowledge is unquestioned.  His amazing skills are especially on display in knowing how deals can be used by orthodox jews, but it is certainly not limited to that. 
• He knows more about airlines than the employees of those same airlines.  This is just one example from this post
• -If the agents in the airport are all clueless you should direct them to look up “gg onestandby” in their system (they’ll know what this is) and look around lines 85-89 which spell out the details of the procedure for this award. (Parenthetically, when trying to get a gate pass to access a club when I’m not flying I sometimes need to tell an agent to look up “gg checkpoint line 53″ which instructs agents to give you a security pass for you and your guests to access post-security United and USAirways clubs even if you aren’t flying.) 
• If you can get past some of the airline jargon, you will learn a ton.
• forums.dansdeals.com - After that comes forums.dansdeals.com or DDF (Dans Deals Forums) where like minded people come to share their insights and stories.  Since it is a forum not every member is quite as trustworthy as Dan, but there is quite a bit of information that never makes it onto the dansdeals site that is still great.
• extrapackofpeanuts.com - His information is great, but his writing style is wonderful as well.
• boardingarea.com - This is one site that has a lot of bloggers that write for it.  My favorites are dealswelike and frequentmiler but I always go to boardingarea.com and check the latest posts to see if anything interests me.
• flyertalk.com - flyertalk has by far the most information out there.  It is a forum site with over 470,000 members who just about only talk about flying and miles.  It is an overwhelming site but if you can learn to navigate it, you will learn more there than anywhere else.  Once again, since it is a forums site, you can't trust everything everyone says but you will quickly learn which members know what they are talking about and they will correct any errors.

There are lots of other sites out there as well, but I don't personally read them regularly so I can't personally recommend them.  What I can say is read, read, read.  Knowledge is key to learning how to maximize your rewards.


If you missed last week, here is part 1

Also check out  Part 3 for a discussion on the big Airline alliances and how that affects how to collect points and miles.  Stay Tuned


In Part 4, I discuss finding frequent flyer flights