Current manufactured spend methods

It seems every month, there is a new manufactured spend method.  I was using my AMEX old blue cash for a good 6 months before I got shut down.  Then I shifted to using my Wells Fargo 5% for 6 months before the promo expired.  And now I’m using American Express gift cards as my primary manufactured spend technique to “earn” 5% on my spend.  I wanted to go over my current MS techniques to help you learn and ramp up as well.

American Express Gift Cards for Target Red Card (33% of monthly MS)

• First off, you’ll need a Target Red Card.  More info here.  However, if you don’t live in a city with a Target Red Card, you’ll have to buy from someone online.  Last I checked, they go for $15-25, depending on who you ask.  There are good reviews from NoonRadar.  I don’t know how much he charges, but I wouldn’t pay more than $20.  You can then load $5,000 a month at Target using your credit card (currently anyway; we all think they’re going to stop this pretty soon).  Now the question is – which credit card to use?
  • The first choice will always be a credit card to meet initial spend bonus.  Got a card that gives you 50,000 points, but you need $3,000 of spend in 90 days?  Well, here you go!
  • The second choice would be the Wells Fargo 5% card that codes Target as a grocery store to give you 5%.  I was using this for a while.  You probably don’t have this card, so read below.
  • The third choice and my current choice is loading with an American Express gift card.  Let’s say you have a Barclays Arrival card that gives you 2.2% on spend, don’t just load it directly to your Target card.  Go buy an AMEX gift card through a shopping portal that gives you 1.5% to 2%.  Then use the AGC to load your Redcard.  Now you are earning 3.7% – 4.2% on your loads.  Can you do better?  Yes!  If you have an Ebates Visa card that gives you 3% + wait for a day that gives you 2%, well there you go, 5% on your Target loads.
• How do you scale up more than $5,000 per month because you only have 1 Redcard?  Get you some more SSN’s!  Sign your spouse up for one too!  Sign up your parents!  Sign up your inlaws!  Sign up your siblings!  Sign up your friends!  Sign up your coworkers!  Offer your friends/coworkers a free domestic flight in return for them signing up for a Redcard!  I’m serious!

Visa Buxx Cards (25% of monthly MS)

• Unfortunately you can longer get the USBank version of the Buxx cards, but current members can still get new cards.  This card lets you load $500 for a fee of $2.50.  And if you are using your Barclays Arrival card to make the load, you are getting 1100 Arrival points for $2.50, which equates to a 75% discount on all travel put on the card.
• The good news is that the Nationwide Buxx cards are still available.  My post on it is actually my most viewed page.  They only let you get 5 cards per address (don’t bother creating a 2nd account for someone that lives with you), so you can only MS $5K per month with these cards.  The good thing about this card is that you can pay Citi over the phone using these debit cards, so it’s free points without leaving the house.

Chase Ink Cards at Staples (25% of monthly MS)

• I have 2 Chase Ink cards for my wife and I.  The card gets you 5X Chase Ultimate Rewards points that you can transfer to United, Hyatt, or many other programs 1:1.  The trick here is to buy the Visa $200 gift cards for a $6.95 fee.  Every $200 gift card nets you 1,000 UR points at a cost of 0.7 cents.  Therefore, if your United miles redemption or Hyatt hotel redemption is getting you 1.4c of value, then that means you are basically paying half of the cash price by using points.  Quick example.  Let’s say a flight from SEA-IAH costs $350 or 25,000 United points.  $350 / 25,000 = .014 = 1.4c of value per United point.  Now to manufacture 25,000 United or Chase UR points, you’d have to buy 25 x $200 Visa gift cards at a cost of $6.95 each.  Therefore, $6.95 * 25 = $173.75.  See, now instead of paying $350 cash, you are only paying $174 worth of points you manufactured.  And what do you know, $350 / $174 = half off.
• Back to the point of this post.  So how much do I buy each month?  Since Chase Ink lets you only buy $50K worth per year, I limit myself to about $4K-$6K per card per month for fear of Chase shutting me down for abusing the card.  How do I unload these painful $200 Visa cards?  Well, I still have a couple of Bluebird/Serve cards that I use at Walmart.  But once I’ve switched to all Target Red Cards, I’ll use them to load some my Target Red Cards.

American Express Gift Cards for Reselling / Portal Points (17% of monthly spend)

• Last month, I sold almost $10K worth of stuff on Ebay.  These are items I bought from Kohl’s, Sears, and Bloomingdale’s.  So I’ll take my AGC that I hopefully got for 5% off.  Then I’ll convert that AGC to say a Bloomingdale’s gift card from Raise for 17% off.  I’ll then buy the item through a shopping portal for another 2X-10X portal points or use Discover Cash Back for another 5% off.  I’ll then sell the item on Ebay.  This method gives me the greatest margin at 20%-30%, but it doesn’t easily scale up since stores don’t like “resellers” and so they’ll start limiting order quantities or just start cancelling your orders (like Best Buy does to me).  I don’t understand these companies.  Have you walked into a Best Buy lately?  I know, me either.  Exactly my point.  So why stop me from buying your sale items in quantity?  Oh, you’d rather not lose too much money and want your sales to attract new customers?  That’s fine.  Have you looked in your stores lately?  Maybe if you didn’t charge 10% more than Amazon on 99% of your items, then maybe you’ll have repeat customers instead of bargain hunters who only walk into your stores when you have an actual sale?  Sorry, let me get off my soap box now.

Conclusion

Moral of this post?  Get your hands on a Redcard while they still let you load with a credit card.  And while you’re at it, get a handful more!  This is the lowest hanging fruit on the MS game after credit card signup bonuses.  Get yourself a NW Buxx card while you’re at it too if you’re feeling frisky.  Sign up and actually use your Chase Ink card if you have a United or Hyatt redemption coming up!