Updated at 9:30am PST on 1/31/2015: the winners of the contest have been chosen. Scroll to the bottom of this post to see who won.
This is an idea that came to me a few weeks ago, but I never gave it much thought until writing my recent tell-all MS posts (Part 1: My Manufactured Spend and Redbird Loading Strategy and Part 2: My Manufactured Spend Strategy with PayPal, Chime, Meetups, Reselling, and More!). If you assumed the miles, points, or cash back posted right away (rather than when the statement closed), could you MS during the week to pay for a weekend trip?
The Rules
To make things more realistic, let’s ignore credit card sign up bonuses and only focus on using the credit cards and prepaid cards you currently have today. Timing is everything, so let’s assume today is the first of the month and all your monthly MS limits have been reset (Bluebird, Serve, Redbird, PayPal, etc.). Your net out of pocket expenses should be $100 or less.
My Made Up Example
I currently have 3 Redbird Cards (me, dad, and brother) and 1 Serve Card (mom).
For my Serve Card, I would buy 10 PayPal My Cash Cards with my Old Blue Cash and load them to my PayPal account. $503.95 x 10 x 5% = $251.98 – $39.50 in activation fees = $212.48 “profit.” Load 5 PPMCCs to my personal PayPal account and load the other 5 PPMCCs to my premier PayPal account. Move the $2,500 from personal to premier PayPal account and use my PayPal Business Debit Card to load $5,000 onto my Serve Card. This would take 5 days and 2 trips to Walmart to finish loading my Serve Card.
Since I have $212.48 “profit” from my OBC, I can add that to my $100 starting out of pocket expenses, so I have $312.48 of “MS credit” to use. I plan on buying as many $200 Visa Gift Cards from Staples as possible. $312.48 / $6.95 activation fee = 44 Visa Gift Cards. That leaves me with $6.68 left over. I would use my Chase Ink Bold/Plus to purchasing 44 Visa Gift Cards, earning 44 x 206.95 x 5 = 45,529 in Chase Ultimate Rewards Points.
44 x $200 Visa Gift Cards = $8,800 in Visa Gift Cards. Since I can load $5,000 to each Redbird Card, I have a total reload limit of $15,000, which leaves me with $6,200 in regular credit card loads. Club Carlson has category 3 hotels available for 28,000 Club Carlson Points per night, but since I have the US Bank Club Carlson Credit Card, the second night is free. The US Bank Club Carlson Credit Card earns 5x everywhere, so I would charge $5,600 to Redbird to earn 28,000 Club Carlson Points. I would put the remaining $600 Redbird reload on my Chase Freedom to increase my total Chase Ultimate Rewards Point balance to 46,129. I could load all 3 Redbird Cards in 2 days by visiting 1 or more Target stores.
Now I just have to figure out which Club Carlson hotel I want to stay at for the weekend and how to get there. There are 299 Club Carlson properties in North America (US and Canada) and 12 properties in South America (Mexico, Caribbean, Central America, etc.). That is how Club Carlson groups their properties, I know Mexico is part of North American. Anyway, narrowing down my hotel choice is going to be tough.
Since I have 46,129 Chase Ultimate Reward Points, I need to transfer those to United, British Airways, or Southwest Airlines. Since 2 round trip tickets on United would be 50,000 miles, United is out. I’m ignoring Southwest Airlines for this post. Using British Airways Avios, I could get 2 round trip tickets for zone 3 travel. A few days ago, I found all the British Airways Avios routes from the Bay Area (SFO, OAK, and SJC). It looks like I can fly to Cabo, Dallas, Puerto Vallarta, Guadalajara, or Chicago for 20,000 British Airways Avios round trip per person.
After checking Club Carlson for the above cities, I was able to find a great hotel in Chicago for 28,000 Club Carlson Points per night (with second night free). It even has a free airport shuttle!
At the end of the day, I would have 6,129 Chase Ultimate Rewards Points left over, which I could (I wouldn’t) convert to cash, giving me $61.29 in spending money to go with my other $6.68 from above. I would have $67.97 to spend on deep dish pizza, Uber rides to the city, or whatnot. Not the most exciting weekend every, but still sounds like fun.
The Winner
What would you do and where would you go? I will pick my top 3 favorite responses and send you a $10 Amazon eGift Card. The Contest will end Friday night at Midnight PST.
The winners of the $10 Amazon eGift Cards:
The first winner is Sharon with this comment:
The second winner is Seth with these two comments:
If you have any questions, please let me know. Good luck to everyone and let the games begin!
Wouldn’t you be concerned about buying so many visa gift cards on the ink?
Yes, I would probably get flagged in the system, but this was more of an example of what is possible if everything went according to plan (which is hardly ever does in real life).
How does the target rep react to you when you’re trying to unload 44 $200 gift cards? Suspicious..
Back to reality though: what is a reasonable amount of $200 GCs to unload with the Redbird? 25000 UR points / month would be amazing, but I think my reps would quickly grow tired of me. I don’t live close enough to a target to split it into 3+ trips.
You are right, I would never try this in person unless I was sure the Target cashier would not mind. I would break this up into multiple trips to Target, there is one walking distance from my apartment, so I don’t mind visiting multiple times.
Haha you are putting my travel planning skill to test! Chicago is too cold this time of the year. I would head to 1) Portland, and Alaska Airline would take me there for 4500 avois one-way. I would stay at the Radisson Hotel or Country Inn & Suites by Portland Airport for 2 nights. Both hotels have free airport shuttle, and the light rail goes from airport directly into the city center. Flights and rooms are both wide open any weekend, including this Friday-Sunday!
2) If Superbowl wasn’t happening this weekend, Scottsdale would be a choice too. US Airways will fly you there for 4500 points one-way, and the Country-Inn in Scottsdale has great review. oh yeah you do need a car to get there, maybe use the chase points to rent a car too. This weekend the going rate for this hotel is $399 per night with two night minimum, or just 28000 points! :-)
I had a similar thought about staying near the Super Bowl, but I decided to find a city farther away so I could justify the extra miles and points I generated.
I’ll bend the rules a little bit and pretend this week is one of many that Office Max is offering $20 off $300 in gift cards. Monday – Thursday my wife and I will visit each of the three Office maxes within 15 miles. On Friday I’ll visit the closest one on my own. Each store we will each purchase 3 x $200 visa gift cards (master cards if visa is sold out). This is a total 25 purchases for $15,000 worth or gift cards with our Ink cards.
Each purchase includes $20.85 in activation fees and $40 in credits so the net purchase is $580.85. Netting $19.15 profit and 2904 UR points. This 25 times is $478.75 and 72600 points.
We are going to transfer 50,000 of those points to Korean sky pass for two tickets to Hawaii.
We take statement credits for the remaining 22600 points at $0.01 for $226. Now total cash = $704.75
To cash out I’m taking $10,000 to target with my two redcards
The remaining $5,000 I’ll cash out at Walmart with 6 $800 money orders and 1 $200 MO. each costing $0.70. For a total cost of $4.90. Total cash now = $699.85
Now I’ll go to a virtuoso site and find The Modern Honolulu for $349 a night which comes with room upgrade, early check in/late check out, but importantly free breakfast and an $85 hotel credit. Two nights costs $698 and I still have $1.85 left!
Now I have a problem because there is a mandatory $25 per night resort fee! I’m $48.15 short!
To resolve this issue I am going to pay for the room with my arrival card so I get $140 worth of credits I can immediately use to credit to the hotel stay!
Final tally is a surplus of $91.85
And I never even touched the $100 you allowed me…..I guess with that extra $191.85 I’ll buy 3 mixed drinks at the hotel bar!
Like a boss Seth! Great planning and execution. It will take me a while to verify the math…
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think if you paid the $700 hotel with the arrival you’d only get $14 not $140.
You’re right Andrew, $700 x 2% = $14
You are right. I’m so embarrased! I guess I only have $65.85. The key question now is if this is enough for even one drink at the hotel bar!
Depends if you order for everyone or just yourself ;)
I just got a weekend in Hawaii for 5 days worth of MS…. Next round is on me, everybody!
So impressive! I really need a redbird card. If anyone plans a weekend trip to Denver and wants to pick one up for me that would be great!
Haha, there are Temp Redbird Cards all over the country, hopefully you can find one close to you soon.
I would love to go Cabo as its 7.5k miles from LAX to SJD. And check out Holiday inn all inclusive as I have 130k points in IHG reward.
Cabo is great, I think most of the resorts have been repaired since the Hurricane last year. I loved the Hilton Los Cabos Golf and Resort, great place and a deal for only 30,000 Hilton points/night.
That might have been your best post ever. Thanks for the tips! Joe
Thank you Joe, glad you liked my tips and strategy.
Love the thought of MS spending for a week to earn a nice mini vacation & am most impressed with you (Grant) & the others who have figured out ways to make this happen. Perhaps Seth (the commenter above & my local mentor who happened to first lead me to this blog) will take me on his trip to Hawaii & help me master the ways of you Master MS’ers :)
Give a man a free trip to Hawaii, he/she flies for a weekend. Teach a man to MS a free trip to Hawaii, he/she flies free forever.
Why won’t you load the full $4,000 to each Paypal account? also, you should load VGCs to Serve and Paypal to RB, so you get 1% on the $5,000 (or $8,000) for a nice dessert after the pizza. And there’s also a $1,500 online CC load for Serve…
I was trying to show what is possible in five days, but to load the entire $4000 to PayPal, it would take eight days. That is why I split it between two PayPal accounts.
I also forgot to mention online credit and debit card loads to Serve. Good catch!
Is $4000 the monthly load limit for paypal? Thanks for the post Grant, this opened my eyes to new strategies since I just got the paypal debit card. I have enough points for my two trips later this year so I think I’ll try and use this to make money instead. Would love for you to do a similar post on MS for cash back
If you want cash back, you could essentially generate unlimited cash back if you cycled money several times per month. It will take time, but there are people that generate $2000+ per month in cash back to pay their rent/mortgage.
Since Bluebird options died and Redbird still isn’t in FL, I have fallen off the MS bus. My head is swimming with the more complicated options. We are having a lot of work done in the house and using a 1/1 credit card to pay them. Have any ideas how to get a better return?
I also pay my overseas developer via PP and need to know how to get more than 1/1 on sending him money. Suggestions? Thanks tons!
If your contractor will except gift cards, you can buy gift cards at many places to earn more than 1x. As for PayPal, you can buy PayPal My Cash Cards with a credit card at CVS or Walgreens and get a bonus. How do those options sound?
Here is a trip I could still pull off for this weekend with a little less legwork.
I’ll bring two of my Chase Freedom cards to my local grocery store and purchase 4x $500 VGCs (2 cards per Freedom) for the Q1 5x bonus. Each with $5.95 activation fee for a cost of $23.80 and a net of 10,119 UR points
I’ll load those $2,000 in gift cards to my Redbird.
I’ll also load $3,000 to my Redbird with my Club Carlson visa for 15,000 Club Carlson points.
With my points I’ll transfer UR points 9000 to Southwest and purchase a round trip from BWI to Charleston, SC for 8,970 points. Then I’ll get a ticket for my wife using her Companion Pass.
I’ll pay for the security fees of $11.20 for each ticket with my Wells Fargo Propel card. This $22.40 will be reimbursed as part of my annual $100 credit toward airline fees.
Once in Charleston, I’ll stay at the airport Raddison for 15,000 points the first night and get the second night free as a Club Carlson Visa holder.
Overall cost: $23.80
Left over: 1,119 UR points and 30 RR points
That is a pretty simple and straight-forward trip with minimal effort. Looks like you are on track to win 2 $10 Amazon eGift Cards (step it up everyone else!).
Here is a BoardingArea inspired idea. Just remember that sometimes it is about the journey, not the destination.
Mommy Points reports Frontier is having a $19 flight sale. While not $19, I can fly from Washington to Orlando for $29 one way. Therefore, my wife and I can get there for $58
The Gate shares the first part of his highly anticipated trip report on Megabus. We can get off the plane in Orlando and get in line early for the Megabus from Orlando to Atlanta overnight. Hopefully we will get there early enough to get the front seats on the upper deck….THERE IS A WINDOW IN THE ROOF! This costs $17 each plus $1.50 in fees, so $37 for this trip.
The next morning, we arrive in Atlanta well rested from a night in comfy bus seat sleep. Once off the bus, we can stretch our legs and meet some panhandlers. We will divide $4 among the 12 panhandlers.
We will then get in line for the Megabus trip from Atlanta to Richmond. This trip will cost us $49 + $1.50 per ticket for a total of $101.
Finally, in the middle of the night we arrive back in Richmond, no doubt having had the adventure of a lifetime!
Total trip cost:
Flight: $58
Megabus: $138
Charitable giving; $4
Total: $200
During the week, I will manufacture this by loading $5,000 onto of each of my Redbirds with my Barclay Arrival cards at 2 points per $ for a total of 20,000 points, worth $200 toward travel! I’ll even get 10% of my points back so I will have $20 worth of points to give me a head start on next weekend’s dream trip!
Oh Seth, your creativity never ceases to inspire me. Sounds like an epic adventure, one for the ages!