The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: StartingEarly on July 24, 2016, 03:45:28 PM
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I've been looking into credit card churning, however I don't really spend all that much, so most of them I wouldn't meet the minimum spend. Does anyone have reliable and relatively easy manufactured spending techniques?
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We've been paying our rent monthly using a service called RadPad. They do charge a fee, so it is really only worthwhile if there is a nice spending bonus involved. Rent is by far our biggest monthly expense, makes it easy to hit minimum spends without doing things like laundering gift cards or even leaving the house.
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I posted about this elsewhere, but here it is below. I've done a bunch of bonuses for myself, and now two $4k bonuses for my family members using this method. No fees, but you do need to visit ATMs once a week.
I have 3 Visa Buxx cards from Nationwide. They are prepaid debit cards meant for parents to give their teens allowances, but you don't need to have children at all - I have 3 "teens" all with my name and SSN.
Once you have the card, the process works like this:
1) Load $200/week to your teen's card from your visa or mastercard credit card
2) Withdraw $200 from any Allpoint ATM
3) Deposit that $200 to your usual bank's ATM
There is a $2 fee during step (1), but your new credit card should have at least a 1% points/cash earning rate, so it's likely free. Each card cost $5 initially.
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Search the web for manufactured spending. Also you can prepay some utilities like fios
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Following...
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You can use a serve one VIP card and vanilla visa gift cards purchased at CVS and load the serve card with them at dollar general then transfer the money back to your bank account. This is 5k a month you can also use those same gift cards to buy money orders at the post office and then make them out to yourself and put them in your bank account.
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You can use them to buy gift cards to places you know you'll shop. Fry's (Kroger) has gift cards to tons of restaurants, Home Depot, even to Fry's!
We also use them for big purchases like dental work, and our state has a school tax credit up to about $2100 so we donate to our niece's school by credit card, get the rewards points, then get the donation back each April.
We just signed up for this Southwest Rewards card https://applynow.chase.com/FlexAppWeb/renderApp.do?PID=CFFD2&SPID=FHV5&CELL=600F&MSC=1527184217
If you spend $2000 in the first 3 months you'll get 50,000 points, which is the equivalent of over $800 in free flights. It does have a $99 annual fee, but we still saved $700 on a trip to visit family.
Then cancel the card and reapply for the same great deal in two years.
You should have gotten 2 the premier and the plus and gotten the companion pass. Also chase cards are getting stricter with new rules. This is all alot more information than can be obtained in one forum response.
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Following just in case someone has a new cool thing I haven't heard of.
We signed up for a bunch of cards in April, knowing we were headed back to the States for a month in May, then had to do like 21k of MS, IIRC (nothing compared to when we first started travel hacking and got something like 20 cards at once between us, and had to do like 70k of spend in 3 months--about what we'd spend in 3 years!). We paid our taxes (not due til June since we were overseas), mostly did the CVS Vanilla to Money Orders, just cause it's the easiest (miss the days of Amazon payments and Serve loading that was all online, oh well). MS is pretty easy, especially if you don't care about trying to do the perfect method, but just choose the easiest method (even if it costs a few bucks).
We long ago decided that if trying to optimize meant we wouldn't do it (analysis paralysis), we're rather just lose a little bit of translation costs to get it done easily.
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Buy Staples $300 Visa gift cards; Metabank or US Bank issued Visa debits work best because you can buy a $.70 MO at Wal-Mart. Deposit the MO and pay off the CC. Wash, rinse, repeat. You can typically buy about $2k at one time from Staples.com, but take it easy at first until you're comfortable with draining the gift cards. Also, don't get greedy; too often you see jerkoffs on FlyerTalk post some panic story about having $10k in gift cards and not being able to drain them because a cashier at the Post Office became suspicious.
Many grocery stores also sell $500 Visa gift cards as well. I personally avoid the MasterCard gift cards because of issues using the Wal-mart debit machines. I do roughly $5k of MS a month on a couple cards (Ink, SPG) for airline miles and free hotel stays. Not much, but plenty to allow my family to travel in comfort for low, low cost.
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You can use them to buy gift cards to places you know you'll shop. Fry's (Kroger) has gift cards to tons of restaurants, Home Depot, even to Fry's!
While this is an effective way to meet your min spend on a single card, this isn't scalable. All you're doing with this strategy is paying for future spending today. You're not moving money in circles like in manufactured spending.
If that wasn't all that clear, imagine doing that for 5 cards in a span of 2 months. You'd end up with way too many gift cards for you to spend in a reasonable time frame.
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You can use them to buy gift cards to places you know you'll shop. Fry's (Kroger) has gift cards to tons of restaurants, Home Depot, even to Fry's!
While this is an effective way to meet your min spend on a single card, this isn't scalable. All you're doing with this strategy is paying for future spending today. You're not moving money in circles like in manufactured spending.
If that wasn't all that clear, imagine doing that for 5 cards in a span of 2 months. You'd end up with way too many gift cards for you to spend in a reasonable time frame.
You're right. We only aim for one or two cards a year with a $400+cash bonus each rather than dealing with a bunch of different travel points. Southwest is the first time we've done points because they have a big hub where we live and my husband's hometown. It seems like we're in T-ball and you guys are the Major League.
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It seems like we're in T-ball and you guys are the Major League.
Love this analogy! It stirred up a happy memory of my dearly departed Dad. When his grandson started playing T-ball, his head was so large, he needed an adult-sized helmet. (He grew into his crrranium; he's 6'5" now and playing college football.) My Dad thought T-ball was the funniest thing he'd ever seen and never missed a game. Laughed his ass off every week.
Okay, back to our regularly scheduled programming. Posting to follow.
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I know in our area, it's actually rather difficult to find Visa gift cards for more than $25-50, which means that the purchase fees start to add up. We can find AMEX cards no problem, but haven't really figured out a good way to cycle them back into cash like you can with the Visa cards. Just something to consider when developing your strategy.
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You can use a serve one VIP card and vanilla visa gift cards purchased at CVS and load the serve card with them at dollar general then transfer the money back to your bank account. This is 5k a month you can also use those same gift cards to buy money orders at the post office and then make them out to yourself and put them in your bank account.
You actually have a serve account that hasn't gotten shut down for MS?
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You can use a serve one VIP card and vanilla visa gift cards purchased at CVS and load the serve card with them at dollar general then transfer the money back to your bank account. This is 5k a month you can also use those same gift cards to buy money orders at the post office and then make them out to yourself and put them in your bank account.
I used to MS about $1K per week, but it also used to be much easier. Caveats to note above:
- Serve accounts used for MS are typically getting shut down within 3 months. In 90 days you can push through a lot of spend, but you should consider that your account WILL be shutdown. There are some ways to mitigate shutdowns. Some churners are preemptively closing their Serve accounts after 30 days, then re-opening a new one. Alternately, it appears the accounts are keyed to your email address (strange that it's not SSN) so some people have had success with opening a new Serve account with a different email address.
- Purchasing the One Vanilla VISA Gift Cards varies by merchant and location. Some managers have put in policies to refuse One Vanilla gift card purchases via credit card. For example, the Walgreens close to my office has such a policy, however if I go to the one a mile further down the road, there is no such policy. However, if the cash registers aren't specifically coded to reject CC purchases of gift cards, you can do some "social engineering" to bypass local policy (e.g. show the cashier your debit card, then swipe your credit card).
- Your first purchase of a $500 gift card at CVS/Walgreens will usually trigger a fraud alert, even if you've notified the bank in advance of your purchase. The cashier will state that your purchase has been declined. About 5-10 minutes later you'll get a text message or phone call and you can confirm this was a legitimate purchase. I usually just attempt the purchase at Walgreens #1, get declined, head over to Walgreens #2, confirm the purchase was legitimate, then make my final purchase of the gift card at Walgreens #2. Since the fraud alert was tied to the merchant, not the individual store, it's not a problem. Why not wait around in Walgreens #1? Because this behavior attracts the manager's attention which I want to avoid. Cashiers are generally in dgaf mode. Subsequent purchases of $500 gift card from the same merchant have typically not cause me any problems.
- As an alternative to manufactured spending with Serve, you can purchase money orders from the post office with your Visa gift card. However it's recommended that you don't deposit those money orders into your primary bank account, because depositing a lot of money orders can appear like money laundering. I have a different bank (originally opened for the $300 bonus) that I use for MO deposits. The funds are then transferred via ACH into my regular bank. If my MO checking account is shutdown, it won't disrupt my life.
These are my personal experiences, so I can't attest to how it may work out for OP or other churners. Thus far I've never had a bank account or credit card account shut down due to MS activity -- only my Serve account, but that is inevitable regardless of how conservative you are. Hope this helps.
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OP,
You can often prepay things like insurance, internet, and utilities for larger amounts than just the bill.
You might also consider taking a look here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/churning/
Beware of the rabbit hole.
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OP,
You can often prepay things like insurance, internet, and utilities for larger amounts than just the bill.
You might also consider taking a look here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/churning/
Beware of the rabbit hole.
johnny847 already explained why this may not be a great idea if you're getting into churning, although it can work if you're just doing one bonus. It doesn't increase your spending "capacity", it just moves some of it ahead, which will actually worsen OP's problem when they do the next bonus. Same goes for gift cards to your grocery store or other places you shop.
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Another option for self-employed folks is to pay quarterly estimated taxes with the credit card. Yes, it's a limited amount, but it's also pretty easy and totally legitimate. One of the options charges 1.87% to use a card, but many rewards and almost all sign up bonuses are more than this.
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Another option for self-employed folks is to pay quarterly estimated taxes with the credit card. Yes, it's a limited amount, but it's also pretty easy and totally legitimate. One of the options charges 1.87% to use a card, but many rewards and almost all sign up bonuses are more than this.
You don't have to be self employed to do this---you just need to owe taxes. I'm not self employed but I paid my tax bill with a cc earlier this year.
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We've been paying our rent monthly using a service called RadPad. They do charge a fee, so it is really only worthwhile if there is a nice spending bonus involved. Rent is by far our biggest monthly expense, makes it easy to hit minimum spends without doing things like laundering gift cards or even leaving the house.
Looks like a 3.49% fee for using a credit card. That's pretty high! What credit card rewards/bonuses do you get that are worth a 3.49% increase to your monthly rent? Are you just opening a new card every couple months to hit the bonus minimum? In that case, it would be worth it, but just for a standard 1-3% cashback, I don't see how that's a smart idea.
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Looks like a 3.49% fee for using a credit card. That's pretty high! What credit card rewards/bonuses do you get that are worth a 3.49% increase to your monthly rent? Are you just opening a new card every couple months to hit the bonus minimum? In that case, it would be worth it, but just for a standard 1-3% cashback, I don't see how that's a smart idea.
Yes, some people do this strictly for the sign-up bonuses when they have insufficient opportunities for manufactured spending or natural spend.
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Looks like a 3.49% fee for using a credit card. That's pretty high! What credit card rewards/bonuses do you get that are worth a 3.49% increase to your monthly rent? Are you just opening a new card every couple months to hit the bonus minimum? In that case, it would be worth it, but just for a standard 1-3% cashback, I don't see how that's a smart idea.
Yes, some people do this strictly for the sign-up bonuses when they have insufficient opportunities for manufactured spending or natural spend.
Got it. Over the past six months I hit two CC sign up bonuses without manufactured spending, and without using a service like radpad. It was tough, as my monthly spending is not usually $X/month that I needed to hit the minimum spend.
Maybe going forward I'd use radpad just for the month of two where I'm trying to hit the minimum spend. Cool.
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Manufactured Spending PSA
If you decide to purchase One Vanilla Visa gift cards, I'd like to add a caveat to my post above from yesterday.
It's possible for someone to filtch the gift cards from the rack, obtain the card ID info, then re-seal the packages and return the cards to the rack. The thieves then have a bot running to check whenever the card is loaded and immediately drain it. As a precaution I'd recommend having a plan to drain your gift card immediately after purchase. I would typically purchase the gift card and head straight to Family Dollar (Serve) or the post office (money order), to minimze the amount of time that my gift card was carrying a balance.
Who wants to carry around $500 cash equivalent in their pocket anyway?
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I just make a mortgage/rent payment using plastiq and it counts towards signing bonuses. Can pay extra towards mortgage principle to make the spending limit and be done with it very quickly. PM me if anybody wants a referral for plastiq. We both get fee free credit using the referral program. Can use it for other bills too.
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We only do one or two large-bonus cards a year, and we usually just wait until we have some other big expense. Like, we got a Chase Sapphire Preferred which had a hefty $4000 required spend in the first three months to meet the bonus. We had some medical bills that went on there, plus some planned travel spending.
If you owe federal income tax you can put that on a card very inexpensively, something like 1.3% of the amount you owe? Not great for regular cashback but good for making initial bonuses, and it's a very predictable expense. I can also pay my city taxes and parking pass fees with a credit card. You can prepay for a few months of internet and/or phone service - it all adds up.
Another good one is, if you go out for dinner or drinks with a large group, offer to put it on your card and have people give you cash/paypal/Venmo/etc. Doesn't work, obviously, if all your friends are stingy cheapskates or they're also doing manufactured spending.
For the right card/bonus I'd consider using RadPad or Plastiq, but if we time the card right we can usually make the spend without true "manufacturing."
I think that's the key thing - don't open the card until you have a plan for how you're going to make the spend.
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One option that I didn't see mentioned - buy paypal reload cards ($3.95 fee for a $500 card), then use paypal account to pay rent with the paypal debit card using Radpad.
I've been doing this for a few months now, and it's actually slightly profitable (no fee from Radpad, $500*1% back from Paypal debit card - $3.95 = $1.05 profit, plus credit card points).
Warning - paypal loves to shut down people who use the paypal reload cards, especially if you cash out to a bank account. YMMV.
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We've been paying our rent monthly using a service called RadPad. They do charge a fee, so it is really only worthwhile if there is a nice spending bonus involved. Rent is by far our biggest monthly expense, makes it easy to hit minimum spends without doing things like laundering gift cards or even leaving the house.
Looks like a 3.49% fee for using a credit card. That's pretty high! What credit card rewards/bonuses do you get that are worth a 3.49% increase to your monthly rent? Are you just opening a new card every couple months to hit the bonus minimum? In that case, it would be worth it, but just for a standard 1-3% cashback, I don't see how that's a smart idea.
Yes, as noted in my first post, it is only worthwhile for a large spending bonus. For run of the mill 1-3% cashback, definitely not worthwhile!
The giftcard laundering approach is pretty difficult in our neck of the woods (large denomination Visa cards hard/impossible to find, and the nearest spot to reload a serve card that I've been able to find is over 10 miles away so we'd have to drive there for just that as there's no other reason we've ever had to be in that area), so for us the fee associated with RadPad is acceptable (for spending/sign up bonuses) as it saves us a ton of time/effort.
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OP,
You can often prepay things like insurance, internet, and utilities for larger amounts than just the bill.
You might also consider taking a look here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/churning/
Beware of the rabbit hole.
johnny847 already explained why this may not be a great idea if you're getting into churning, although it can work if you're just doing one bonus. It doesn't increase your spending "capacity", it just moves some of it ahead, which will actually worsen OP's problem when they do the next bonus. Same goes for gift cards to your grocery store or other places you shop.
I read johnny's post. First, OP is looking to get the bonus. These techniques achieve that outcome alone.
Second, a good number of these companies actually let you charge more than you owe. When that happens, you can request a refund. Which I've done. I can literally pay a bill, right now, for $5,000 and call up the company to process a refund.
Or as an alternative, when you move service from one provider to another. IE,. Pay six months of auto insurance upfront then switch to a second (cheaper) company, and get a refund check from the first company. While you might say 'that's too much hassle for just a few dollars', consider the forum you're posting on.
I didn't mention anything about gift cards so I don't know where you're coming from there. Although they do work, I've found other methods much more effective, less costly (in terms of fees), and less time consuming. YMMV
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One option that I didn't see mentioned - buy paypal reload cards ($3.95 fee for a $500 card), then use paypal account to pay rent with the paypal debit card using Radpad.
I've been doing this for a few months now, and it's actually slightly profitable (no fee from Radpad, $500*1% back from Paypal debit card - $3.95 = $1.05 profit, plus credit card points).
Warning - paypal loves to shut down people who use the paypal reload cards, especially if you cash out to a bank account. YMMV.
Apparently there is a $4.95 fee for using debit cards now
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I just make a mortgage/rent payment using plastiq and it counts towards signing bonuses. Can pay extra towards mortgage principle to make the spending limit and be done with it very quickly. PM me if anybody wants a referral for plastiq. We both get fee free credit using the referral program. Can use it for other bills too.
Intredasting. Is there any fine print, restrictions, etc on this route?
I have always thought manufactured spending is not worth it so I waited for big expenses or paid internet/insurance/etc bills in large chunks, but this could be relevant to my interests!
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I just make a mortgage/rent payment using plastiq and it counts towards signing bonuses. Can pay extra towards mortgage principle to make the spending limit and be done with it very quickly. PM me if anybody wants a referral for plastiq. We both get fee free credit using the referral program. Can use it for other bills too.
Intredasting. Is there any fine print, restrictions, etc on this route?
I have always thought manufactured spending is not worth it so I waited for big expenses or paid internet/insurance/etc bills in large chunks, but this could be relevant to my interests!
2.5% for credit cards with plastiq, not great but it can be worth it. I think for the referral bonus money there is a minimum amount you need to spend to get it. I think it's if you spend over 20 dollars then you get to spend $400 the next time you use the service with no fee.
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I just make a mortgage/rent payment using plastiq and it counts towards signing bonuses. Can pay extra towards mortgage principle to make the spending limit and be done with it very quickly. PM me if anybody wants a referral for plastiq. We both get fee free credit using the referral program. Can use it for other bills too.
Intredasting. Is there any fine print, restrictions, etc on this route?
I have always thought manufactured spending is not worth it so I waited for big expenses or paid internet/insurance/etc bills in large chunks, but this could be relevant to my interests!
2.5% for credit cards with plastiq, not great but it can be worth it. I think for the referral bonus money there is a minimum amount you need to spend to get it. I think it's if you spend over 20 dollars then you get to spend $400 the next time you use the service with no fee.
these are a major rip off compared to buying gift cards at giftcardmall via top cashback portal and then buying PO money orders with them i actually make money MS'ing this way.
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Yes, it used to be much better.
People used to use the PayPal card and only get charged 1% which is cancelled out by the perk of the card. You could then reload PayPal account with reload cards bought with credit cards.
I should try the money order thing, I was just turned off by it because I read some stuff online about people not being able to buy money orders with gift cards or credit cards.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Yes, it used to be much better.
People used to use the PayPal card and only get charged 1% which is cancelled out by the perk of the card. You could then reload PayPal account with reload cards bought with credit cards.
I should try the money order thing, I was just turned off by it because I read some stuff online about people not being able to buy money orders with gift cards or credit cards.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
you just tell them its a debit card b/c thats what it is.. the gift cards say DEBIT on them.
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I should try the money order thing, I was just turned off by it because I read some stuff online about people not being able to buy money orders with gift cards or credit cards.
You read all kinds of crap online. Try it for yourself. :)
For example, for my MS this past spring, I went the MO route--Wal Mart wouldn't take the Vanilla Visa GCs from CVS to buy MOs, but Albertsons would, so I went there.
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I should try the money order thing, I was just turned off by it because I read some stuff online about people not being able to buy money orders with gift cards or credit cards.
You read all kinds of crap online. Try it for yourself. :)
For example, for my MS this past spring, I went the MO route--Wal Mart wouldn't take the Vanilla Visa GCs from CVS to buy MOs, but Albertsons would, so I went there.
have a new walmart opening up near by gonna try to exploit the new employees who dont know for as long as i can.
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For me, employees didn't care, but system was rejecting it after I put in the PIN. SoCal WalMart. Like I said, Albertson's fine. Just read online to see what works, and try it out for yourself. No downside to it not working and you go "oh, sorry, nevermind" and walk away.
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I just make a mortgage/rent payment using plastiq and it counts towards signing bonuses. Can pay extra towards mortgage principle to make the spending limit and be done with it very quickly. PM me if anybody wants a referral for plastiq. We both get fee free credit using the referral program. Can use it for other bills too.
Intredasting. Is there any fine print, restrictions, etc on this route?
I have always thought manufactured spending is not worth it so I waited for big expenses or paid internet/insurance/etc bills in large chunks, but this could be relevant to my interests!
2.5% for credit cards with plastiq, not great but it can be worth it. I think for the referral bonus money there is a minimum amount you need to spend to get it. I think it's if you spend over 20 dollars then you get to spend $400 the next time you use the service with no fee.
these are a major rip off compared to buying gift cards at giftcardmall via top cashback portal and then buying PO money orders with them i actually make money MS'ing this way.
ya, this is why I decided to draw the line at Manufactured spending when I first started following travelmiles101, points guy, etc.
If I have a purchase coming up that is 1000 or above, I can see which bonus makes sense, get the card and make the purchase, and its easy money. I am fine with paying my internet bill for a year in advance and other similar methods, but If I have to buy gift cards and cross my fingers that I can find a way to liquidate them, it seems like too big of a hassle. I also wonder what would happen if one were to accidentally lose one of the gift cards
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I just make a mortgage/rent payment using plastiq and it counts towards signing bonuses. Can pay extra towards mortgage principle to make the spending limit and be done with it very quickly. PM me if anybody wants a referral for plastiq. We both get fee free credit using the referral program. Can use it for other bills too.
Intredasting. Is there any fine print, restrictions, etc on this route?
I have always thought manufactured spending is not worth it so I waited for big expenses or paid internet/insurance/etc bills in large chunks, but this could be relevant to my interests!
2.5% for credit cards with plastiq, not great but it can be worth it. I think for the referral bonus money there is a minimum amount you need to spend to get it. I think it's if you spend over 20 dollars then you get to spend $400 the next time you use the service with no fee.
these are a major rip off compared to buying gift cards at giftcardmall via top cashback portal and then buying PO money orders with them i actually make money MS'ing this way.
ya, this is why I decided to draw the line at Manufactured spending when I first started following travelmiles101, points guy, etc.
If I have a purchase coming up that is 1000 or above, I can see which bonus makes sense, get the card and make the purchase, and its easy money. I am fine with paying my internet bill for a year in advance and other similar methods, but If I have to buy gift cards and cross my fingers that I can find a way to liquidate them, it seems like too big of a hassle. I also wonder what would happen if one were to accidentally lose one of the gift cards
not any real finger crossing all you have to do is go and try it ... once you try it the finger crossing is done. b/c it just works. it just also always changes.
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I just make a mortgage/rent payment using plastiq and it counts towards signing bonuses. Can pay extra towards mortgage principle to make the spending limit and be done with it very quickly. PM me if anybody wants a referral for plastiq. We both get fee free credit using the referral program. Can use it for other bills too.
Intredasting. Is there any fine print, restrictions, etc on this route?
I have always thought manufactured spending is not worth it so I waited for big expenses or paid internet/insurance/etc bills in large chunks, but this could be relevant to my interests!
2.5% for credit cards with plastiq, not great but it can be worth it. I think for the referral bonus money there is a minimum amount you need to spend to get it. I think it's if you spend over 20 dollars then you get to spend $400 the next time you use the service with no fee.
these are a major rip off compared to buying gift cards at giftcardmall via top cashback portal and then buying PO money orders with them i actually make money MS'ing this way.
ya, this is why I decided to draw the line at Manufactured spending when I first started following travelmiles101, points guy, etc.
If I have a purchase coming up that is 1000 or above, I can see which bonus makes sense, get the card and make the purchase, and its easy money. I am fine with paying my internet bill for a year in advance and other similar methods, but If I have to buy gift cards and cross my fingers that I can find a way to liquidate them, it seems like too big of a hassle. I also wonder what would happen if one were to accidentally lose one of the gift cards
not any real finger crossing all you have to do is go and try it ... once you try it the finger crossing is done. b/c it just works. it just also always changes.
ya, no pain no gain I guess
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I try to time it to when I have an actual large spend, like booking a hotel for travel, etc. Otherwise, I usually top it off by buying gift cards to either grocery stores where I usually shop, or Amazon. To get the 5k Starwood AMEX spend, my boyfriend at the time was moving and buying furniture, so I made him use my credit card, and then give me a check later.
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I've been using Plastiq to send money toward our car payment. They send a physical check and it seems to get there in about a week. I'm sure this could be used toward most mortgages or rental situations.
If you use my link and spend $20, you'll get your next $200 payment fee-free: https://try.plastiq.com/264149