Quick round up on all the available reload cards or prepaid cards - which are the bread and butter of the spending strategies. This is the primary tool across all blogs and the main weapon in your arsenal to strategize your spend.
Vanilla Reload: This is what started it all for most folks. It is a very basic reload, prepaid card where the user pays cash or debit card to load money. There were few places such as CVS and 7-11 stores which used to load it via credit cards. But as of mid-2014 this option is pretty much gone.
MoneyPak: Another card that is being gradually phased out by end of 2014.
Paypal cash: Now this is a great card. So far many stores accept this card to be paid via credit card. Prominent among them is the 7-11 stores which accepts credit cards and most banks, except Amex, count them as gas purchases. Which means getting the 3%-5% category bonus. Chase ink and bold cards give upto 2% while the US Bank Flex Rewards program is known to give upto 4% cash back if it is redeemed for airlines. Though, US Bank does not have the best rewards program redemption when it comes to airlines travel choices. Hence, I would rather stick to the Chase ones - mainly Ink/Bold or the British Airways card. They all give back rewards on gas purchases from 7-11. Chances of some 7-11 accepting credit cards are quite high given that there are quite a few of them (about 25 in my area in 10 mile radius). There are restrictions such as just one $500 transaction per day per customer. These are not major league bad. I use them mostly during the weekend. The goal is to get the car fuel costs reimbursed. Even if I load 2 Paypal cards, worth about 1000 bucks, at $10 cost and $20 return from Chase, that is a $10 profit - enough for my weekend driving excursions/shopping and grocery finding around the town. 10 bucks gives you about 3 gallons at $3.33 per gallon, enough to net you about 3*30 = 90 miles or so. That is more than sufficient for a small trip. This card is also a go to card for many people. There is a limit of $4000 in this card per month. Not too shabby.
Just any other random cards:
Evolve paybucks : Stands out if you manage to find this card at some store and get the store to accept credit card at register. Most Netspends cards and other prepaid cards in that aisle fall under this category. It is hit and miss. And you do not want to be caught holding your money in this card where they have temporarily suspended it. So the best approach would be to stick to the brand names card.
Not really a direct load cards, but American Express Bluebird and Serve are well covered along with their less famous bertherns such as the Amex Target card.
If you find anything else, please leave it in the comment section.
Evolve PayBucks are not a card or thing, they are a service (nothing you can find on a shelf or hang rack). You go to a list view of participating locations and look for any that list PayBucks. If the have re-loadits they will not have PayBucks. You go to the cashier and ask to buy PayBucks for $xxxx amount, pay for them, and on your receipt there will be a redemption code.
ReplyDeleteYou do not have to use the whole balance all at one time but you need to create an Evolve account to save left over funds in.
The trick is finding them where they allow CC payments. Happy hunting.
-HaleyB
Okay .. thanks for the info! I did not go too deep into Evolve bucks as the service itself seems to be quite limiting. Now, they have only one biller per account. And you can not create multiple accounts to point to same biller. So all in all that route seems very limiting or at the least not worth that much effort.
ReplyDelete