I generally recommend home-grown tools such as Excel or Word or anything basic enough to manage your travel points. Honestly, even your notebook should suffice if you plan your trip well and want to keep it simple. There are a lot of online and offline programs which offer you free templates. It is easy to build one yourself as all you really need to enter in an online excel which is in the cloud is details about the program such as program name, expiration date and possibly a list of zip codes around which your travel is planned. Just plug-in the zip codes and check which hotels and airlines offer the best deals.
Most of the times, you would find the best deals online. Many major chains simply put them online and have the same info access to both you as well as their employees. I know that sounds counter intuitive as one may guess that employees or travel agents have the best deal. But really, these guys get the margin offers. As in, they get the deals based on volumes and hence work best if you are doing bulk bookings of corporate bookings. At which point, it makes sense to pick up the phone. For a normal traveler, single or with family, it hardly makes sense to try that hard. Though, certainly I am not discouraging you from pick up that phone and call to check about any ongoing specials in air or hotel.
Awardwallet.com is pretty good and so are a bunch of other sites. I like Reward programs sites that list down your points as well as earn you points on activities such as dining or using local business. I usually prefer going directly to the airline websites though. Most offer a multitude of tools that could be used to manage your travel.
To round-up, as indicated at the start, build your own, home-grown tools. It need not be something fancy but anything that is a combination of computer docs - online or offline that only you can access without the hassles of login/password OR simple index cards based tracker are really all that is needed. For scheduling, there are free calendars - again both online and offline.
The best tool that you have is planning ahead. Pick up two airlines and hotels and stick with them and accumulate crazy number of points and spend them during an off-season. Nothing really could beat it!
Friday, September 5, 2014
Best Hotels by Area
The hotel industry is ever evolving. What I do not get especially in the US is the fact that many of the mega Hotel chains such as IHG, Hilton, Starwood or Marriott sit on such huge amount of prime real estate and yet they would rather let their rooms empty rather than give you or me some free rooms :)
Anyhow, this industry had one of the worst loyalty programs which were revamped for the better in recent times, towards the end of the decade. I would not recommend accumulating any of the hotel chains points for long time. Few months would be a good exit point. There are some credit cards which partner with various hotels. But do not expect any gift card redemption option or sensible airline point conversion. The only exception to this rule is the Amex Starwood preferred card. Which is surprising, given that it is a hotel card at its core but seems to integrate well with airlines. The drawback is of course the hefty annual fee on this card. Another good option is the Wyndham credit card. I stick with Hilton or IHG (Holiday Inns) though I do go to Marriott at times along with other hotels depending on the deals.
So, credit card wise the best would be the Chase cards, Amex cards and the US Bank driven Wyndham cards. Hotel redemption wise, in the US, the best options are the Marriott and the IHG. Wyndham is decent and so is Hilton. Internationally, Hilton and Marriott have strong presence at multiple locations. Starwood is something that you could apply in a targeted fashion if your travel destination has significant presence of this chain.
In the Asia/Europe/Africa sector, you are bound to find a good amount of Hilton/Marriott properties. Australia is a different game while Canada has options very similar to the US. For South America, I would stick with known brands such as Marriott. There are lot of franchising and local corporate-run chains which tend to significantly dilute the service of other well known brands.
Finally, I think once in a while, one must experience very high end hotel stays. Westin is one such which is pretty much a good example of what a high end hotel has to offer. There is of course a lot of niche hotels which cater to the high heeled but in my opinion, it is better to not make an ass of yourself or come off as a cheapstake by bargaining about hotel points in the lobby of such big hotels. Usually, one is better off if a business sponsors you to the higher end of the hotel chains and get you reimbursed. The point redemption options here are not there or are simply not worth it. The business model of really top notch hotels depend on service and margin and is really not loyalty focused. You would pretty much find yourself in needless arithmetic when you enter this zone.
Anyhow, this industry had one of the worst loyalty programs which were revamped for the better in recent times, towards the end of the decade. I would not recommend accumulating any of the hotel chains points for long time. Few months would be a good exit point. There are some credit cards which partner with various hotels. But do not expect any gift card redemption option or sensible airline point conversion. The only exception to this rule is the Amex Starwood preferred card. Which is surprising, given that it is a hotel card at its core but seems to integrate well with airlines. The drawback is of course the hefty annual fee on this card. Another good option is the Wyndham credit card. I stick with Hilton or IHG (Holiday Inns) though I do go to Marriott at times along with other hotels depending on the deals.
So, credit card wise the best would be the Chase cards, Amex cards and the US Bank driven Wyndham cards. Hotel redemption wise, in the US, the best options are the Marriott and the IHG. Wyndham is decent and so is Hilton. Internationally, Hilton and Marriott have strong presence at multiple locations. Starwood is something that you could apply in a targeted fashion if your travel destination has significant presence of this chain.
In the Asia/Europe/Africa sector, you are bound to find a good amount of Hilton/Marriott properties. Australia is a different game while Canada has options very similar to the US. For South America, I would stick with known brands such as Marriott. There are lot of franchising and local corporate-run chains which tend to significantly dilute the service of other well known brands.
Finally, I think once in a while, one must experience very high end hotel stays. Westin is one such which is pretty much a good example of what a high end hotel has to offer. There is of course a lot of niche hotels which cater to the high heeled but in my opinion, it is better to not make an ass of yourself or come off as a cheapstake by bargaining about hotel points in the lobby of such big hotels. Usually, one is better off if a business sponsors you to the higher end of the hotel chains and get you reimbursed. The point redemption options here are not there or are simply not worth it. The business model of really top notch hotels depend on service and margin and is really not loyalty focused. You would pretty much find yourself in needless arithmetic when you enter this zone.
Best Airlines by Travel Segments
I will keep this short and sweet :)
If you are in the US, right now the best airfares are with Southwest Airlines and JetBlue. Not only these two airlines offer superior service compared to legacy ones, they are way better when it comes to performance, incentives, rewards flights and connectivity to major points.
If you are near smaller airports, check out Frontier, Spirit or similar regional airlines.
Legacy airlines: I stick with United given their redemption options and the fact that they have hubs at major cities. They run specials fairly often and seem to be better compared to the other airlines. If you have American Airlines miles, likely they would not be used well if you go thru the aa.com website. However, the trick is to accumulate British Airways Avios. That can be easily done using the Chase British Airways card. Since British Airways and American Airlines are partners, in the US, you can use Avios for travel in American Airlines. The real fun and an open industry secret is to use the Avios for short leg flights in American Airlines.
Often times, I have found 4500 points - 10,000 points as the baseline for many short-haul flights. Booking is fairly easy in either of the sites. And with BA, you pay less fees while with AA, you would end up paying $80 if you book within 21 days of travel. I would also check out other state specific airlines such as Alaska Air or Hawaiian Airlines among others.
Last but not the least, avoid Delta. The miles usually come from Amex (same as Jetblue) but the redemption options, for lack of a better word, sucks. You simply will be spending way too much money to get back a decent flight. Better option would be pay money upfront with a cheaper flight alternative.
International travel: I stick mostly with United/Continental and country specific airlines such as Lufthansa, Jet Airways, Singapore Airlines, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic or Thai Airways. Most of these airlines are connected thru Star Alliance or other mega partnership. They are roughly same and I do not recommend redeeming full-scale on long haul flights. Though, generally the airlines mentioned here have decent programs. With the coming merger of US Air and American Airlines, it would likely add more travel options internationally but do compare apples to apples when making decision between domestic vs international redemption.
Space Travel: There are no miles here but it would be nice if they offer some. That would net you some decent miles. So far only Virgin is the travel option. Speaking of which, I hear Virgin America as a good option while travelling domestically in US. There are few other companies who may want to carry you to outer space for a few coin.
If you are in the US, right now the best airfares are with Southwest Airlines and JetBlue. Not only these two airlines offer superior service compared to legacy ones, they are way better when it comes to performance, incentives, rewards flights and connectivity to major points.
If you are near smaller airports, check out Frontier, Spirit or similar regional airlines.
Legacy airlines: I stick with United given their redemption options and the fact that they have hubs at major cities. They run specials fairly often and seem to be better compared to the other airlines. If you have American Airlines miles, likely they would not be used well if you go thru the aa.com website. However, the trick is to accumulate British Airways Avios. That can be easily done using the Chase British Airways card. Since British Airways and American Airlines are partners, in the US, you can use Avios for travel in American Airlines. The real fun and an open industry secret is to use the Avios for short leg flights in American Airlines.
Often times, I have found 4500 points - 10,000 points as the baseline for many short-haul flights. Booking is fairly easy in either of the sites. And with BA, you pay less fees while with AA, you would end up paying $80 if you book within 21 days of travel. I would also check out other state specific airlines such as Alaska Air or Hawaiian Airlines among others.
Last but not the least, avoid Delta. The miles usually come from Amex (same as Jetblue) but the redemption options, for lack of a better word, sucks. You simply will be spending way too much money to get back a decent flight. Better option would be pay money upfront with a cheaper flight alternative.
International travel: I stick mostly with United/Continental and country specific airlines such as Lufthansa, Jet Airways, Singapore Airlines, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic or Thai Airways. Most of these airlines are connected thru Star Alliance or other mega partnership. They are roughly same and I do not recommend redeeming full-scale on long haul flights. Though, generally the airlines mentioned here have decent programs. With the coming merger of US Air and American Airlines, it would likely add more travel options internationally but do compare apples to apples when making decision between domestic vs international redemption.
Space Travel: There are no miles here but it would be nice if they offer some. That would net you some decent miles. So far only Virgin is the travel option. Speaking of which, I hear Virgin America as a good option while travelling domestically in US. There are few other companies who may want to carry you to outer space for a few coin.
Recent updates in credit card land
Well, given the drought of quality posts across many sites, it is quite obvious that the credit card space has been still and quite for some time now. No new big offers came by. This site was among the first to know and tweet about the the Citi 2% cash back card - a new card that was launched with some good design and has an advantage for those folks who just want to get 2% cash back no matter where they shop. This card is pretty good if you are the big fish who just looks at big sign up bonuses and do not want to second guess which card to use or make decisions at run time about whether there is a better alternative than to buy directly with a credit card at hand.
To be sure, there is nothing innovative about this new card as Fidelity has been already doing it with two flavors - Amex and Visa. There are other cards such as Capital One and Barclays which also give you 2% on all purchases. In the days of 5%, somehow the lower category feels inadequate. With 5% category cards and some targeted strategic spending - the kind that is outlined in this site, it is quite possible to jump ahead of the rest. After all, there is limit to number of new cards with big sign on bonuses and the number of times that you are going to get approved with a credit card. Also, you may want to save your credit profile for a bigger card down the line.
On and off, some offers came but none worth posting or meriting your attention.
Keep churning!
To be sure, there is nothing innovative about this new card as Fidelity has been already doing it with two flavors - Amex and Visa. There are other cards such as Capital One and Barclays which also give you 2% on all purchases. In the days of 5%, somehow the lower category feels inadequate. With 5% category cards and some targeted strategic spending - the kind that is outlined in this site, it is quite possible to jump ahead of the rest. After all, there is limit to number of new cards with big sign on bonuses and the number of times that you are going to get approved with a credit card. Also, you may want to save your credit profile for a bigger card down the line.
On and off, some offers came but none worth posting or meriting your attention.
Keep churning!
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Car Rentals - Points or Cash?
Time and again, I have debated about what is the best way to rent a car?
Do you get them via points redeemed from your credit card rewards programs such as Chase Ultimate Rewards or Amex Membership or just use plain old cash.
I tried this out with various car rental agencies such as Avis/Budget and Hertz/National et al. The costs tagged at the end of the return has convinced me that you are better off paying them off with your cash. You could join the loyalty programs and simply get offers such as one day off or weekend rental off - programs which you cannot redeem in your reward portal. If you must use points, you could always redeem the points for gift cards and then use it at a car rental company. So use cash, enjoy the ride and save your points for other biggies such as air reward travel or gift cards.
Like everything else, it boils down to your requirement and what you got at hand.
Do you get them via points redeemed from your credit card rewards programs such as Chase Ultimate Rewards or Amex Membership or just use plain old cash.
I tried this out with various car rental agencies such as Avis/Budget and Hertz/National et al. The costs tagged at the end of the return has convinced me that you are better off paying them off with your cash. You could join the loyalty programs and simply get offers such as one day off or weekend rental off - programs which you cannot redeem in your reward portal. If you must use points, you could always redeem the points for gift cards and then use it at a car rental company. So use cash, enjoy the ride and save your points for other biggies such as air reward travel or gift cards.
Like everything else, it boils down to your requirement and what you got at hand.
How to use Evolve billpay and Money Orders
Evolve billpay is a pretty nifty tool that is available as of start of 2014. www.evolvemoney.com is a startup that lets you paybills using your debit cards. In an age, where one simply links one's accounts online and forgets about it, it is kind of pain to use services such as Evolve Money. That is, until you recognize the full power behind them. You cannot use credit cards on this site. Only debit cards and gift cards are allowed. Yep, gift cards. That is where the reptilian part of the brain should fold your hands and play with the fingers. The kind that a honey badger would do.
With gift cards being accepted, you could simply follow the templates and load up on gift cards from those credit cards where you could earn high percent category bonuses. Once you have the gift cards, simply key them in and pay off the bill. The whole setup is very easy and all online and not worthy of a picture. It is quite easy and the site remembers your billers as well as old debit card info. I use them for my utilities payments or internet payments among others.
The big bonus feature is it can also be used for some mortgage payment. Some months, when I have to make extra payments on the principal, it is much easier to log into this site and just payoff with a handy gift card.
What else do you do with any remaining gift card? Money order is the answer. While Wal-Mart and USPS are likely places, both of them might stop or already have stopped accepting non banking debit cards. Which means only grocery stores are the left over options. For me, the payments such as rent on an apartment is done by money order since the property management does not accept any other form of payment nor has any online interface. Speaking of which, there are some good online tools for rent pay such as WilliamPaid or RentShare but all of them charge quite a bit high transaction fees. If you don't mind them or are desperate to achieve a credit card spend, they could be one way. But if money order is an option, and in most cases they are, then it is quite easy to convert your debit gift cards to money orders using grocery stores. They charge between 29-99 cents and are quick and painless. Once you get them, remember to write down the name of the payee and put it in a safe place. You could deposit it using ATM or mobile apps in Chase or Bank of America or Wells Fargo or any of the leading banks with apps out there.
Money order is one handy tool in your arsenal with which to liquidate your holdings. Evolve money gives you a legit outlet to pay bills and accumulate some points in the interim.
With gift cards being accepted, you could simply follow the templates and load up on gift cards from those credit cards where you could earn high percent category bonuses. Once you have the gift cards, simply key them in and pay off the bill. The whole setup is very easy and all online and not worthy of a picture. It is quite easy and the site remembers your billers as well as old debit card info. I use them for my utilities payments or internet payments among others.
The big bonus feature is it can also be used for some mortgage payment. Some months, when I have to make extra payments on the principal, it is much easier to log into this site and just payoff with a handy gift card.
What else do you do with any remaining gift card? Money order is the answer. While Wal-Mart and USPS are likely places, both of them might stop or already have stopped accepting non banking debit cards. Which means only grocery stores are the left over options. For me, the payments such as rent on an apartment is done by money order since the property management does not accept any other form of payment nor has any online interface. Speaking of which, there are some good online tools for rent pay such as WilliamPaid or RentShare but all of them charge quite a bit high transaction fees. If you don't mind them or are desperate to achieve a credit card spend, they could be one way. But if money order is an option, and in most cases they are, then it is quite easy to convert your debit gift cards to money orders using grocery stores. They charge between 29-99 cents and are quick and painless. Once you get them, remember to write down the name of the payee and put it in a safe place. You could deposit it using ATM or mobile apps in Chase or Bank of America or Wells Fargo or any of the leading banks with apps out there.
Money order is one handy tool in your arsenal with which to liquidate your holdings. Evolve money gives you a legit outlet to pay bills and accumulate some points in the interim.
How to Load PayPal Cash cards
Why Templates? gives you a set of valid reasons on why to use such templates or basic workflow diagrams on a day-to-day basis. To summarize, if you run out of big bonus spend cards (or soon enough you will), the world of category rewards aint so bad. You could make some decent money, though not as much as the 100k or 75k cards. But still, I think it makes sense to pursue this during lull times. The reason to use templates is to simplify your process and think less about which cards and where to spend. I just print them out and put it in my room or car. If you wanna go real agile (software programmers know what I am talking about), you could print it out and paste it in your study room or bed room. Trust me, it just frees up the mental resources down the line. These money loading business could quickly go out of hand with you not knowing where you loaded and how to verify it, which store to go and which card to put the spend on. The best way is to just write it down, the good old-fashioned way. Eventually, it will evolve to just a bunch of templates that you could be tweaking as these rewards structure, the way the prepaid cards are loaded and the credit card programs inevitably change.
Now that we have seen the Amex prepaid cards usage as intermediary, it is time to move on to other cards. One card that has often helped me meet the minimum spending requirements as well as the category bonuses is the PayPal cash card. The Paypal MyCash card is a form of prepaid card which can be bought from 7-Elevens mainly. Since Chase and Discover classify this as gas station, you are likely to get the 5% category bonus which in a given quarter, on a $1500 spend, amounts to $75 per card. That is not super much, again, but enough to go to that fancy restaurant and chug it all in, in a guiltless fashion :).
The PayPal MyCash card can be loaded immediately from the paypal.com/MyCash website. So it is very similar to the Vanilla Reload card network. There is a monthly load limit of $4000 which after years of bugs seems to have been fixed by PayPal (finally) in July 2014 where this limits resets at the start of calendar month.
The PayPal MyCash card costs $3.95 and is the least expensive card out there. And hopefully this card and 7-Eleven sticks around though many 7-Elevens accept only cash due to some abuse by over zealous spenders. It is an effective tool to meet minimum spending.
For category bonus, apart from Discover IT, Bank Amerirewards and Chase freedom, the Chase Ink+ or Chase Bold offer 2%.
Is it worth it or really any cost benefit analysis is there? At 2% its a bit difficult to justify. At 5%, it seems there are reasons to justify. There are some cards which offer 4% such as the USBank Flexperks, provided you use their redemption programs.
This is one of the main bread and butter programs for many including myself. This method gives decent payout. You are coming out ahead with 40 bucks after spending $1000 on the 5% category cards. So that is $160 when you are in full flow. With Bank of America cards, that is 3% instant cash back. Still that is decent enough reward points. Who would not like $80 after expenses per month for other stuff? It is like fun money or charity money or just restaurant money to try out new stuff.
Like in all other programs, use this one too with discretion and don't get shut down by PayPal or 7-Elevens. As long as you buy something and pay bills, you are using other services and hence would be in good standing with these companies.
Now that we have seen the Amex prepaid cards usage as intermediary, it is time to move on to other cards. One card that has often helped me meet the minimum spending requirements as well as the category bonuses is the PayPal cash card. The Paypal MyCash card is a form of prepaid card which can be bought from 7-Elevens mainly. Since Chase and Discover classify this as gas station, you are likely to get the 5% category bonus which in a given quarter, on a $1500 spend, amounts to $75 per card. That is not super much, again, but enough to go to that fancy restaurant and chug it all in, in a guiltless fashion :).
The PayPal MyCash card can be loaded immediately from the paypal.com/MyCash website. So it is very similar to the Vanilla Reload card network. There is a monthly load limit of $4000 which after years of bugs seems to have been fixed by PayPal (finally) in July 2014 where this limits resets at the start of calendar month.
The PayPal MyCash card costs $3.95 and is the least expensive card out there. And hopefully this card and 7-Eleven sticks around though many 7-Elevens accept only cash due to some abuse by over zealous spenders. It is an effective tool to meet minimum spending.
For category bonus, apart from Discover IT, Bank Amerirewards and Chase freedom, the Chase Ink+ or Chase Bold offer 2%.
Is it worth it or really any cost benefit analysis is there? At 2% its a bit difficult to justify. At 5%, it seems there are reasons to justify. There are some cards which offer 4% such as the USBank Flexperks, provided you use their redemption programs.
This is one of the main bread and butter programs for many including myself. This method gives decent payout. You are coming out ahead with 40 bucks after spending $1000 on the 5% category cards. So that is $160 when you are in full flow. With Bank of America cards, that is 3% instant cash back. Still that is decent enough reward points. Who would not like $80 after expenses per month for other stuff? It is like fun money or charity money or just restaurant money to try out new stuff.
Like in all other programs, use this one too with discretion and don't get shut down by PayPal or 7-Elevens. As long as you buy something and pay bills, you are using other services and hence would be in good standing with these companies.
Using Square Cash with Debit Cards
Why Templates? gives you a set of valid reasons on why to use such templates or basic workflow diagrams on a day-to-day basis. To summarize, if you run out of big bonus spend cards (or soon enough you will), the world of category rewards aint so bad. You could make some decent money, though not as much as the 100k or 75k cards. But still, I think it makes sense to pursue this during lull times. The reason to use templates is to simplify your process and think less about which cards and where to spend. I just print them out and put it in my room or car. If you wanna go real agile (software programmers know what I am talking about), you could print it out and paste it in your study room or bed room. Trust me, it just frees up the mental resources down the line. These money loading business could quickly go out of hand with you not knowing where you loaded and how to verify it, which store to go and which card to put the spend on. The best way is to just write it down, the good old-fashioned way. Eventually, it will evolve to just a bunch of templates that you could be tweaking as these rewards structure, the way the prepaid cards are loaded and the credit card programs inevitably change.
So how would you load money using Square Cash and Debit Cards. Just like the Bluebird or Serve cards, it is mostly done online. In fact, it is much easier given that there are no restrictions in Square Cash similar to the Amex cards. So I just use two emails, register them both online and two different checking accounts. Then I just one debit card to send $1000 a time into email account 2 and from there to bank account 2. Again, dont abuse or overuse this system. Once deposited, use this funds for legitimate bill pay or student loans. I use mine for sending mortgage payments from account 2. It makes it easier to manage if I have one checking account from where the mortgage payments are made.
So how would you load money using Square Cash and Debit Cards. Just like the Bluebird or Serve cards, it is mostly done online. In fact, it is much easier given that there are no restrictions in Square Cash similar to the Amex cards. So I just use two emails, register them both online and two different checking accounts. Then I just one debit card to send $1000 a time into email account 2 and from there to bank account 2. Again, dont abuse or overuse this system. Once deposited, use this funds for legitimate bill pay or student loans. I use mine for sending mortgage payments from account 2. It makes it easier to manage if I have one checking account from where the mortgage payments are made.
How to Load Bluebird from Chase/Amex/Others Cards
Why Templates? gives you a set of valid reasons on why to use such templates or basic workflow diagrams on a day-to-day basis. To summarize, if you run out of big bonus spend cards (or soon enough you will), the world of category rewards aint so bad. You could make some decent money, though not as much as the 100k or 75k cards. But still, I think it makes sense to pursue this during lull times. The reason to use templates is to simplify your process and think less about which cards and where to spend. I just print them out and put it in my room or car. If you wanna go real agile (software programmers know what I am talking about), you could print it out and paste it in your study room or bed room. Trust me, it just frees up the mental resources down the line. These money loading business could quickly go out of hand with you not knowing where you loaded and how to verify it, which store to go and which card to put the spend on. The best way is to just write it down, the good old-fashioned way. Eventually, it will evolve to just a bunch of templates that you could be tweaking as these rewards structure, the way the prepaid cards are loaded and the credit card programs inevitably change.
In the last post, we saw how to load Amex Bluebird/Serve from American Express Credit Cards. In this post, I am slightly tweaking the template to use other cards such as Chase or Barclay's as well as other American Express cards to load the Serve account offline. The limit is $5000 per month and daily limit is $2000. Though, to not really raise any flags, I tend to keep it in the $500 - $1000 range per day. The modus operandi is pretty similar. Chase Freedom for instance used to give 5% on drugs purchases. Chase Ink+ or Bold gives 2% (not much) or simply have very high sign up bonus spending requirements. Hence, I use these cards using the picture below and just execute them rapidly. For instance, the $5000 minimum spending requirement is entirely attainable within a few days though you have a 90 day limit to get over to that level of spending :).
In the coming days, I plan to put on more templates as well as possibly apps if there is significant interest which would make life easier to accumulate reward points.
In the last post, we saw how to load Amex Bluebird/Serve from American Express Credit Cards. In this post, I am slightly tweaking the template to use other cards such as Chase or Barclay's as well as other American Express cards to load the Serve account offline. The limit is $5000 per month and daily limit is $2000. Though, to not really raise any flags, I tend to keep it in the $500 - $1000 range per day. The modus operandi is pretty similar. Chase Freedom for instance used to give 5% on drugs purchases. Chase Ink+ or Bold gives 2% (not much) or simply have very high sign up bonus spending requirements. Hence, I use these cards using the picture below and just execute them rapidly. For instance, the $5000 minimum spending requirement is entirely attainable within a few days though you have a 90 day limit to get over to that level of spending :).
In the coming days, I plan to put on more templates as well as possibly apps if there is significant interest which would make life easier to accumulate reward points.
How to Load Serve from Amex Cards
Why Templates? gives you a set of valid reasons on why to use such templates or basic workflow diagrams on a day-to-day basis. To summarize, if you run out of big bonus spend cards (or soon enough you will), the world of category rewards aint so bad. You could make some decent money, though not as much as the 100k or 75k cards. But still, I think it makes sense to pursue this during lull times. The reason to use templates is to simplify your process and think less about which cards and where to spend. I just print them out and put it in my room or car. If you wanna go real agile (software programmers know what I am talking about), you could print it out and paste it in your study room or bed room. Trust me, it just frees up the mental resources down the line. These money loading business could quickly go out of hand with you not knowing where you loaded and how to verify it, which store to go and which card to put the spend on. The best way is to just write it down, the good old-fashioned way. Eventually, it will evolve to just a bunch of templates that you could be tweaking as these rewards structure, the way the prepaid cards are loaded and the credit card programs inevitably change.
One of the hallowed programs are the American Express one and the ones depicted on the picture below is the American Express branded Blue Cash family one (so Blue cash Preferred, blue cash - old and new one). You could also substitute this with the new EveryDay card and EveryDay card Preferred. In each of these cards, you basically buy the gift cards/vanilla reloads/one vanilla gift cards/whatever from CVS/7-eleven/whatever and then load directly into your BlueBird/Server Card from the money kiosk at Family Dollar/Wal-Mart/CVS itself/whatever. Note that at the time of this writing, the Wal-Mart/CVS does not work as their softwares no longer support loading money. It is their company policy rather than regulatory or any such thing. Hence the reason I have put whatever, since one door closes inevitably leads to another one opening. You could use any of these cards and then check your point balances and decide for yourself. This is probably my bread and butter way to earn credit card reward points. This also seems to be the most popular one for the other bloggers out there. Again, dont over use or abuse it and just use other strategies mentioned in this blog and you should be mostly fine.
Also note that Amex really does not consider 7 - eleven to be a gas station or a standalone gas station so likely, you would not be getting any points off that.
Workflow Diagram/Simple picture to load money from Amex Credit Cards to BlueBird:
One of the hallowed programs are the American Express one and the ones depicted on the picture below is the American Express branded Blue Cash family one (so Blue cash Preferred, blue cash - old and new one). You could also substitute this with the new EveryDay card and EveryDay card Preferred. In each of these cards, you basically buy the gift cards/vanilla reloads/one vanilla gift cards/whatever from CVS/7-eleven/whatever and then load directly into your BlueBird/Server Card from the money kiosk at Family Dollar/Wal-Mart/CVS itself/whatever. Note that at the time of this writing, the Wal-Mart/CVS does not work as their softwares no longer support loading money. It is their company policy rather than regulatory or any such thing. Hence the reason I have put whatever, since one door closes inevitably leads to another one opening. You could use any of these cards and then check your point balances and decide for yourself. This is probably my bread and butter way to earn credit card reward points. This also seems to be the most popular one for the other bloggers out there. Again, dont over use or abuse it and just use other strategies mentioned in this blog and you should be mostly fine.
Also note that Amex really does not consider 7 - eleven to be a gas station or a standalone gas station so likely, you would not be getting any points off that.
Workflow Diagram/Simple picture to load money from Amex Credit Cards to BlueBird:
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